I was at an awards event last night where I had one of the most interesting and honest conversations with a fellow ‘practitioner’ (a very inspirational one too) about the work we do in this industry. We concluded, very quickly, every single one of us are addicts. And our drug of choice is coverage.
When we get a ‘hit’ it makes us feel amazing but the effects soon wear off. We’re constantly looking for that next big buzz, without giving much thought to whether it’s doing us or our client much good. What’s more, we’ve been dealing this drug to clients over the years, so that they’ve become addicted to coverage too.
But the sad fact of the matter is that no matter how much we get or how much more the client needs, coverage is just not enough. This week Speed hosted its ‘Brand Anarchy’ event where speakers such as Alastair Campbell and Will Whitehorn were discussing how coverage and controlling the traditional media is just not cutting the mustard anymore. What’s more, we’ve seemed to have lost our heritage as public relations practitioners in favour of becoming media relations practitioners.
In our pursuit for our next coverage fix we’re ignoring the one thing that made this industry so crucial, actually communicating directly with the public or target audience – in a bid to influence. We’re so fixated on coverage numbers that whether or not we’ve achieved any influence after getting that splash across The Times is merely an afterthought. We’re just high on the fact we got the coverage.
So am I saying that coverage is bad? Of course not, however there are just too many PR programmes that are solely evaluated on the volume of coverage gained and the number of times the brand is mentioned in a national. We need to break free from this and rehabilitate ourselves out of the addiction to coverage by evaluating the success of public relations through its impact on commercial objectives, direct engagement and influence.
Editorial content is of course critical, but this should be part and parcel of a well thought out reputation strategy not the sole foundation of the whole programme. What’s more, editorial content should be running alongside other content that addresses all communication channels, from live face-to-face engagement through to the virtual world.
Coverage should be just one of the many successes of a well thought out engagement and reputation management plan, not the ultimate end-point.
