Let me start by addressing my fellow journalists:
My colleagues always ask me why I’m so polite to people on
the phone. Whether it’s someone cold calling from a bank trying to sell me a
credit card or, more often than not at a business magazine, a PR person
pitching their company, I try not to be an asshole. This surprises the people
who sit near me. I say sir or ma’am. I speak in a soft voice. I try to be
helpful even when I’m busy. Maybe it’s because I’m still new to all this. Being
polite costs NOTHING. It’s really the least you can do. The person calling you
is just doing their job. As someone in the media, it’s your job to listen. One
should always be skeptical, but that doesn’t mean you have a right to talk down
to a young lady who is just doing her job. You are the tenth person she is calling
today – please don’t think you’re special. If you are rude, you will blend into
stereotype of the dismissive journalist who has better things to do (ie. Watching
stuff on Youtube). If you’re nice, she will remember you. She will not bother
you if you explain why you’re not interested in the piece. Who knows, you may
just make a friend that could help you out down the line. Being polite will
earn you a genuine thank you. What could be better than that?
Now to the men and women of Public Relations.
Please first understand that most journalists, especially business
journalists, have a rather large chip on their shoulder. They meet and write
about fabulously successful people and think they’re better than you because
they know something about oil subsidies and ‘innovation’. The truth is, you
probably work less and get paid more than the journalist who is shouting down
the other end of the call or making disparaging remarks about you behind your
back. Journalists are not paid very well, so acting like they are smart and
influential is what makes them feel powerful. Humour them. If the vast majority
of journalists were actually as smart as the millionaires and rock stars they write
about, they probably wouldn’t be journalists.
Still, journalists and PR people need each other and if we
work together, we can give readers a fair deal. Not every article need be a
Tehelka sting operation. At the same time, there’s nothing more boring to a
reader than a puff piece. There’s a middle ground, where if an idea is
presented properly by a PR agency, a journalist can pick out an interesting narrative
and tell a story that sparks a debate or sheds light on some good work being
done. The reader gets some new insight, the agency gets paid, the company gets
publicity, the journalist gets some free drinks at an event and everyone’s
happy.
Here’s how you get the journalist to listen to your pitch.
Read the magazine! Read the last three issues of the
publication you’re calling. Try to figure out what their angle is. Do they
carry press releases? No? Then why send them press releases and ask them to
publish them? That’s your job! Have they ever published a story about a tie-up?
No one cares that a company has partnered with another to host a conference on industrial
design innovation. What we care about are results. Tangible outcomes are more interesting
than the potential for something to happen. Readers don’t have time to go
through what your client is planning on doing. Unless you’re Google and you’re
tying up with the US government, it’s not really a story.
Most of the answers to your questions are inside the
magazine. For God’s sake, don’t call and ask who the editor of the magazine is!
It’s on page 2, along with his photo and email ID. Am I seriously going to tell you my
designation over the phone? Would you mind telling me yours while we’re at it?
All our designations are on page 3. Do you want to speak to someone in the
Delhi office? Why not look for the contact number on page 4? Do you want to
know who covers specific beats? Why not have a quick look at the names on the by-lines?
There’s a lot of information in a magazine if you take an hour to go through it
carefully.
Don’t make claims in your pitch that you can’t back up. “xyz.com
is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms in India!” Really? Bigger than the
Indian Railways? Wow. How come we’ve never heard of you before? What does that
even mean? A good journalist will have some tough follow up questions, an
irritated one will really let you have it. Don’t come back with “the company
doesn’t share revenue/market share data”. Whether its business journalism or
some other form of journalism, no good writer is going to get inspired without
some hard evidence.
My suggestion - for whatever it’s worth - is for PR agencies
to focus on specific sectors and really be in touch with what’s happening in
their clients’ space. No journalist is going to write a story that’s already
been done in a rival publication less than a year ago. What you can do instead
is explain to the journalist that there is another angle that hasn’t been
covered. This requires you to be somewhat of an expert yourself – and I see
nothing wrong with this. I am not necessarily going to write about a restaurant
chain that has opened a new joint in Mumbai. It’s already been reviewed by
every food critic in town. I may however be interested in a larger trend, of
which the restaurant is a part. Is it the 3rd recent non vegetarian
place to open in a previously conservative vegetarian neighbourhood? Is it the
first gourmet take on a traditional cuisine? Has the chef given up a big gig
elsewhere to fulfill his dream here? Why? Has the chain failed elsewhere – why do
the owners think it will succeed this time round? I can’t guarantee I’d do a
story, but I’d certainly want to meet the folks. Ask yourself: how would this
story be relevant to readers of an international magazine? Or is it actually
more in line with what a daily city newspaper would do? If so, why are we wasting
each other’s time?
If the journalist hasn’t responded to your email, there’s
probably a reason why. I don’t like getting calls from people when I’m in the
middle of writing. I always like to be ready for a call, so I can be prepared
and be focused on the issue I’m dealing with. If I haven’t responded to your
email about a Danish lumberjack who is launching a new line of innerwear in
India, do you think I’m interested in doing a story? Surely I would have called
you? I understand that you need to follow up – but you can do that with a
personalised email.
“Hi Shravan, didn’t hear from you about the Anders the
Danish underwear hunk – I take it you won’t be interested in meeting him and
testing out his snug-fit boxers? Do let me know. Thanks.”
I would definitely answer this with “Hi _____. Unfortunately
I’m not available be able to meet him. Regards.” And then you'd have your closure.
The best PR people I’ve met really know their space, not
just their clients. They will send you an event invite because they’ve read
your previous work. They know what you’re interested in. All our writing is on
the web anyway. Just as I do my homework before I go to meet someone, so a PR
person should do their homework before they call a journalist. Don’t send out a
list of your clients. No one is going to go through it. A journalist already
has a pretty good idea of what he’s comfortable writing about and of who he’d
like to meet. I love sports – Google my name and it becomes pretty obvious. I’m
always happy to meet people doing interesting work around sports. A new story
has to be something I know about, in a space I have covered before, but it can’t
be an idea I’ve already written about. There are a million people running
sports academies. I’m not going to write about yours unless you tell me it’s
different/better/interesting and I can see it for myself.
One thing which annoys me is when you get an email pitch
about someone which already includes tentative talking points. Mr _____ would
be happy talking about a, b and c. Fine. But why then would you email me asking
me to send questions of my own? You
have invited me. I just want to meet the guy and figure out what he’s doing. One
of the funniest meetings I’ve had was with a mid level manager at an
international bank with a small India office. I suffered the aforementioned
talking points/questions irritation and sent my questions in anyway. The PR
people came late. I say people because for some reason there were two of them.
When they finally arrived to escort me inside the office, there was another
Corp Comm person there. So five people crammed into the manager’s tiny office
and only two of us talked for 45 minutes. It was quite surreal – even worse
than when a PR person silently listens in on a conference call and you only
realise she was there all along at the end when she says bye.
The best PR person I’ve worked with was in the music
industry. She had read my stories. She sent me a polite SMS asking when we
could chat. She pitched her story in such a way that I really felt bad having
to say no to her. I really couldn’t attend the event because I had a prior
engagement. But I sent her message to a colleague and he went. You have no idea
how many event invites we get – we could spend our entire week at hotels and
conference centres, eating bad banquet food and trading pre-printed name-tags. My
office is at Matunga. I am probably not going to come for a 4pm event at
Andheri East that has nothing to do with what I cover. It’s just a waste of
time to even send me the email. It will get deleted in less than 5 seconds and
that’s the harsh reality.
“Hey Shravan, I read your piece on ______. I’m handling PR
for someone who is doing similar work with a different twist, but has been
hugely successful nonetheless. Their details are attached, if you’re
interested. They haven’t really been written about recently. Let me know if you’d
like to meet over a coffee next week.”
Now that’s something I’d listen to.
