media update’s Adam Wakefield was at The Holmes Report In2Summit South Africa in May, where the relationship between the news industry and PR came under the microscope.

The media marketplace is constantly changing, and PRs need to keep up

The panel that discussed PR’s relationship with the media featured Keri-Ann Stanton, group communications director for M&N Brands and head of communications for AVATAR South Africa; Tom Manners, managing director at Clockwork Media and journalist and media consultant, Marcelle Gordon. The Holmes Report editor-in-chief and CEO, Arun Sudhaman, lead the discussion.

Sudhaman asked the panel whether PR agencies today are fit for purpose, and Stanton said, “I’d say 50/50”, with her recent role as a judge at the PRISM and SABRE Awards influencing her view.

“The creativity is coming from the new, small boutique shops. It’s not coming from the big agencies, and I’m interested in what those new shops are going to do,” said Stanton.

Manners said Clockwork Media, founded less than a decade ago, focuses on strategic and creative work, partly because it was established without a pre-conceived idea of what a PR agency should be and Manners believes this has been beneficial.

The PR industry in South Africa and worldwide is changing, with large global agencies investing greatly in strategic and creative services, and no longer just focusing on earned media.

“South African agencies are lagging in this regard. We’re still constructing our agencies according to 20 to 30-year-old ideas of how a PR agency should look, based on structures that were in existence before the Internet came into being. It’s time to catch up, and I don’t think agencies are doing that now,” he said.

PRs need to understand the news industry in order to adapt  

Gordon asked whether local PRs have adapted to the changing media landscape. She said around 10 years ago, as communicators and marketers became enamoured with social media, it appeared PR agencies and their clients 'weren’t going to bother with earned media anymore'.

“Over the last three to five years or so, there has been a shift back towards the need for earned media, and that means we’ve gone back to square one where you are getting a phone call from somebody at a PR company,” Gordon explained.

That caller is invariably a junior person tasked with following up on a press release or event invitation sent on behalf of a client.

More often than not, the caller does not know who they are speaking to, who that person works for or why the PR needs media coverage from that journalist, editor or producer.

PR practitioners have also shown a lack of understanding of the daily pressures faced by the news industry, calling at inconvenient times or pitching stories that are not newsworthy.

“They [PRs] need to have a better understanding of what producers, journalists and editors go through on a day-to-day basis,” Gordon said.

Being able to identify a news angle will attract the right attention

Manners, following Gordon’s lead, said a major problem for PRs when interacting with news [media] is PR’s inability to identify the right news angle.

“At the end of the day, if you aren’t able to identify the angle, it means you aren’t able to think like a journalist. It is our responsibility as PR agencies to find the angle and bring it to them in a usable format,” he said.

Stanton said finding the right angle comes with practice. This is particularly relevant. If the subject line of a release is not on the mark immediately, there is little chance of it being picked up, since journalists do not have time or inkling to read through a whole press release.  

An exercise Stanton has run with members of her own team is giving a talk, and team members tweeting what she says.

This exercise, like practising written editing, hones the ability to quickly choose the most relevant information, condense it into a brief, digestible form and then present it to grab a person or journalist’s attention.

In summary, PRs need to get rid of their 'old and tattered' media databases and start from scratch.

They need to search for quality over quantity by identifying the media professionals who will have the greatest impact on their particular campaigns and brands. The era of 'spray and pray' is over

PRs should know those journalists' work, their organisations, consume the media they do and follow-up. This insight will be invaluable in ensuring PRs are able to work with journalists in a way where both parties can mutually benefit.

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Public relations has fallen behind advertising due to their lack of quality insights and analytics. If the industry seeks to remain relevant in the future, this must change. Read more in our article, PRs must modernise and lead to grow in the future.

*Image courtesy of Freepik, under this license