Comments on: Unnecessary meetings cost 17 billion pounds a year

By: John McGarvey

John McGarvey — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:04:17 +0000

Maybe all the PR people were in a meeting.

By: Mat

Mat — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:54:45 +0000

What a waste of money. The survey and subsequent PR cam out of someone’s budget. They should be be cross that follow-ups are not being properly handled AND that the debate has morphed from the cost of meetings to the performance of their PR company!

By: Heather Yaxley

Heather Yaxley — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:02:12 +0000

Confession – I am a PR person, but agree entirely with your thoughts on bad practices and how easy it should be to be helpful. My pet hate is not being able to find further information, even a press release, when you hear a story on the news – and most particularly the origins of data cited. I feel that it should be compulsory for press releases to back up assertions and statistics with sources or reference to reports that can be checked.

Also, the contacts should ideally be available – but in any event, they or whoever is able to help, should be informed and able to substantiate a story. I’m not totally convinced that PR consultancies are able to do that as well as in-house people. Even better, they should be able to put journalists who want to gain further information in touch with others in an organisation, such as engineers, etc. Less gatekeeping and more facilitating discussions.

We have to be much more professional – and being “awful”, which probably means being rude and unhelpful – is just not acceptable.

By: Matthew Stibbe

Matthew Stibbe — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:34:05 +0000

Back when I did a lot of journalism I was always amazed at the difference between good and bad PR firms. The good ones would always track down someone to talk to you – I don’t mind going to reception if it means I speak to a real person not a voicemail. The bad ones would put you through to voicemail or play twenty questions with you before actually helping you. Or, in the case of Bite, say ‘there’s no-one who can help you, call back in a week.’ What’s the point of those fat retainer checks if you can’t even field a simple request for a client?

The all-time worst PR experience, though is the Ministry of Defence press office. I could write a whole blog entry on how awful they have been to me over the years. They should have sent them over to deal with Saddam, it would have been cheaper and easier.

As for the blogging bit, they could easily link to a client site where the information was held. Or explain to their client that they needed to blog it as part of reaching the widest possible audience.

By: Andrew Denny

Andrew Denny — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:29:20 +0000

I can sympathise with BitePR not putting the info on their own blog, since it’s really client information. But there’s no excuse for not being available.

My own rant is about something I’m guilty of occasionally in my day job – putting someone down as a contact for a story, but in fact routing through to a switchboard and redirecting to someone else. Ideally I think a PR contact should be a mobile number, to one named individual.