Don’t spin out of control

Let me tell you a joke: a doctor receives a very attractive lady at his surgery who confesses to him: “Doctor, I have been married three times but I’m still a virgin.” The doctor is amazed. “How can this be possible?” “Well, my first husband was very, very elderly and the sight of me on our wedding night in a black negligee was too much for him, he had a heart attack and died.” The doctor expressed his sympathy and asked about the second spouse. “Oh, he found wearing my negligee far more attractive than me.” And what of the third husband? “He was the worst,” she declared, breaking down tearfully. “He sat at the end of the bed, told me he was in PR and said how great everything would be.”

I originally told this some years ago when I was editor of the late, lamented Fenestra Journal, but it deserves another airing if only for the fact that the same problems are present today. Many of us have a ‘sparky’ relationship with public relations; or, rather, we should do.

The majority of PRs I know have sat back, nodding or grunting at our observations, often coming out with that old defence: “Mate, I sympathise with you. You know, I used to be a journalist. Have another drink.” Yes, they’ve sympathized with the jaundiced, pickled hack and then, with their retainers, laughed all the way to the bank. They would argue that theirs is an honourable profession, not a rip off but ‘the practice of managing the flow of information between an organisation and its publics’. (Grunig, James E. and Hunt, Todd. Managing Public Relations.)

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But the devil is in the detail. Too often ‘managing’ that flow has meant distorting or withholding the very information that we as magazines should receive.

Let’s deal with distortion. I recently received a press release concerning Glassex@Interbuild from the PR for the exhibition scheduled for this October. It’s no secret that the organiser, Emap, is in a dreadful tizz about the fate of the event. Glassex was to be held as a standalone exhibition this March but, due to the appalling bookings, had to be cancelled. Ah, but had you read the press release and been at the hurriedly convened press briefing in January: the whole period had been a measured response ‘to growing demand from the window, door, conservatory and glass industries’. Silly us, Glassex wasn’t cancelled; it had been ‘relocated’. An event that had been likened to an oil tanker that couldn’t be turned around, suddenly had become a powerboat, turning (or spinning) on a sixpence and zooming off to become a stunning success at the NEC.

More recently, that same PR agency issued a release stating that: ‘Glassex is already basking in the halo effect of being part of the annual Interbuild show.’ (Did anyone concocting that release know the meaning of mixed metaphors?) But anyone visiting the Glassex@Interbuild website would see that there are only 15 paid for exhibitors and a couple of those have indicated that they are seriously considering cancelling. I, for one, would not have dreamed of running this story and have complained to the agency for sending out misleading baloney.

Withholding is more difficult to prove but there is no doubt that PRs will do anything to show their clients in the best possible light. Of course, they aren’t going to do the opposite but it can result in a partial story that requires the journalists to dig deeper.

That is what we should be doing but either due to laziness or lack of resources, we are guilty of letting the PR spin rule. I well remember when the two then leading conservatory roofing companies – Ultraframe and K2 – were going hammer and tongs at one another in the courts. Both sent out their press releases, giving their side and a number of magazines played safe and ran them separately. (One was so timid, it even placed them side by side, rather than using them as a base for a single story.)

Taking this approach certainly makes for a quiet life and the sales side on a journal will tend to appreciate a malleable editor than one who will get up the noses of PRs, a number of whom have some sway over the advertising spend of their clients.

We can’t do without PRs and they know it. (And before any write in, I’m indebted to some who put copy writing my way after FJ closed and my present job on Glass & Glazing Products came along.) But what we should do is cast a very wary eye at what comes in. Why, another press release arrived the other day, not so much praising the client and its latest achievements, but for its decision to stay with the PR/marketing agency! With some trepidation I wait to see who will run with that remarkable ‘story’.