PR – Not Free But Delivers More Bang For Less Buck

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After reading this half page article on Dunzo in ET PRIME, a customer, Anshuman Shrivastava, Director Toptier Energy Services and ex-Banker, commented that PR is free, unlike advertising.

Not true. Even if it appears that way at first blush.

You pay for both PR and Advertising, just to different people.

In Advertising, you pay an ad agency and for media. In PR, you pay a PR agency and for sponsored media – and, in addition, incur opportunity costs.

Before I deep dive into the costs of PR, here’s a quick primer on how the industry works. (While this post is baselined on print media, almost everything I’ve written here is also applicable to blogs and other digital media.)

PR PRIMER
  1. Supply of editorial content far exceeds demand for it
  2. You can’t dictate the content of an article
  3. Articles may deviate from the topic of your discussions with the reporter
  4. A journalist won’t run an article past you before filing it
  5. Headlines may bear a quirky relationship with what you discussed with the reporter
  6. PR has strict deadlines not set by you
  7. You can’t decide when your article will appear on print.

PS: Notwithstanding its print-oriented title, this primer is equally suitable for digital media.

These characteristics of the media industry introduce many costs that are often overlooked.

#1. PR AGENCY

In a mainstream publication, supply of editorial content far exceeds demand for it. According to anecdotal evidence, the mismatch can be as high as 5X i.e. if a newspaper prints 20 pages of editorial content, there are at least 100 pages of content vying for that space.

Therefore, you just can’t release an article and expect a newspaper to print it. Editors decide what goes in and what goes out on the basis of newsworthiness, topicality, and many other factors. They’re also not accountable to contributors (or the public) for their decisions.

As a result, PR is a quagmire. To navigate through it and earn press coverage on a consistent and scaleable basis, you need a PR agency. That could mean pricey retainers.

#2. FIREFIGHTING

You can’t dictate the content of an article – even when it’s about you, your company or your products.

A lot of industry people think that they alone know the subject matter and expect a reporter to just print whatever they say. Sadly, media doesn’t work like that.

https://twitter.com/AngelaDSaini/status/1130101237049974785

What @AngelaDSaini says about scientists is true of journalists in every field. Including IT.

In a previous life as head of marketing in an ERP company, I was responsible for media relations. I certainly knew a lot about ERP but most of the mediapersons I interacted with at the time were equipped adequately to probe my claims, challenge me with counterclaims and, sometimes, throw curveballs at me.

The way journalism works, the information you supply to a journalist is only one of the many inputs collected by him or her. They take what you give, ask you questions, consult others including your competitors, find out a suitable angle that they believe will resonate with the reader, and pen the article accordingly. Published articles may often cover a different – albeit related – topic than the one you discussed with the reporter. Everything you said in your one hour 1-on-1 meeting with the reporter may be condensed to just one or two quotes in the article, which may also have quotes from your competitors, customers, partners, and other stakeholders in the overall ecosystem.

No journalist worth their salt will run an article past you before filing it. So you won’t get to weigh in on an article before it appears on print. The article-as-published may even mention you in a not-so-positive light.

You can’t do much about it other than write a rebuttal letter to the editor. There’s no guarantee that your letter will get published. Even if it’s published, it won’t get the same visibility as the original article that carried the negative mention. As the old saying about newspapers goes, “Accusations appear on the front page, denials on the fourteenth page and apologies on the last page between salami ads”.

Take, for example, the following paragraph in the aforementioned article about Dunzo:

There’s also an emerging feeling in Bengaluru that Dunzo has been unable to cope with the demands of scaling up. In terms of everything from fulfilment, availability of runners, and the quality of service, users say Dunzo has nosedived in the last few months.

From personal experience with Dunzo, I tend to agree with this assessment. But it’s safe to say that you’d never find such negative copy in a Dunzo ad. But it has appeared in a half page article in a highly reputed publication. Dunzo has to deal with it.

As they say, consumers have 5X more trust in editorial content than ads. So, when a brand receives bad press, it can’t ignore it. Its leaders need to do a lot of firefighting to contain the impact of the negative coverage.

That doesn’t come free.

#3. COACHING

In a 30 minutes interview with a mediaperson, you may spend 29 minutes talking about topics X, Y, Z, P and R, and make a passing mention of topic Q for one minute.

You shouldn’t be surprised if the headline is about Q.

As with content, you have no control over the headline of the article on your company. Sometimes, the headline is not even written by the columnist.

If, God forbid, a negative message enters the headline, the amount of firefighting your leadership team will need to do goes up exponentially – because 70% of readers only read the headlines.

As I said earlier, some reporters are good at throwing curveballs. You need to maintain your composure.

Your leaders need to be coached to handle all this.

Coaching may be covered by the retainer you pay the PR agency. But the time your executives spend on getting coached is time they don’t spend on other important areas of the business.

That’s a big opportunity cost.

#4. MEETING DEADLINES

PR has strict deadlines not set by you. As such, it requires extreme agility on the part of a company and its spokespersons.

A reporter may be writing an article on some topic (say, Blockchain). The piece will have a tight deadline (say, the day before the CONSENSYS event). Last minute, he may need clarification from an expert. He will call you with his query if he considers you an expert on the topic. You’ll need to respond immediately, otherwise you’d lose the coverage opportunity.

There’s a cost to dropping everything – and perhaps falling behind on your other deadlines – in order to meet a journalist’s deadline.

#5. WASTED COVERAGE

Suppose you’re planning to launch a new product. You’d want maximum press coverage a day or two before the Big Day.

You can release an ad to appear exactly on the day you want but you have no say over when your article will appear in print (even after your PR agency assures you that it will appear sometime). Your story may break at a time when it doesn’t get you much mileage. Worse still, it may appear too soon and cause consumers to line up at stores before your product has hit the shelves.

That causes wasted – and potentially harmful – coverage.

There are ways – absolutely kosher ones, let me assure you – to avoid that, but they all require efforts, hence have a real or opportunity cost.

On a side note, there are parallels between PR v. Advertising and SEO v. SEM.

Both PR and SEO are related to organic content whereas Advertising and SEM pertain to sponsored / inorganic content. At first blush, both PR and SEO appear free. As I highlighted in SEO or SEM, SEO is not free. For reasons explained in this post, PR is not free either.

But there’s one big difference between PR and SEO. PR is on your face. It will expose readers to an article, whether or not they are interested in that topic. (The jury’s out on whether that’s a good or bad thing.) On the other hand, SEO will show you something only after you’ve expressed interest in that topic by Googling it.

In Advertising you pay for the media.

In PR, you pay to face the media. (Order wins, go lives, case studies, and fund raises are good times to seek “facetime” with the media.)

Good news is, you can flip the peculiarities of the media business to your advantage if you play the PR game well.

Some companies seem to have mastered the game e.g. RobinHood, Scandid and Theranos.

RobinHood:

Scandid:

Theranos:

As an innocent bystander who has no inside track into these three companies, I’m guessing that they get a disproportionately big bang for their PR bucks.

PR is not free, but, if done well, it can deliver a high Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI).