It appeared to come from the IT industry’s respected Forrester Research proposing the remarkable idea that our agency ranked among the best in the world! I took a second look, then a third.
PR Deadlines had indeed been chosen as one of the world’s best channel focused PR agencies. Since we had not been interacting with Forrester, this came as a complete surprise.
Three publishers and several senior journalists also recommend us when asked about the best PR agency.
We like to tell clients and prospects that some PR firms are more equal than others. Now it seems that some people believe us!
But why?
Simply because we work at knowing individual media people and their needs and give them exactly what they want, in their preferred format.
My earlier career as a senior journalist across three continents casts an invaluable light on those needs. Balancing the needs of a PR agency’s clients and journalists is key to the relationship and can lead to client success or failure.
Today’s technology and business writers tend to be time-poor. Recently we took an informal survey, asking key journalists how long it took them, on receiving a PR story or pitch, to decide whether to publish.
The answers averaged, wait for it… between five and 10 seconds!
Fewer journalists are writing and editing more copy, so they want clear, concise and relevant text devoid of adjectives or any hint of marketing hype.
Occasionally we apologise to media people for issuing releases from a client’s overseas headquarters, which we are obliged to pitch unchanged. Few journalists have the time or inclination to read a 200-word initial paragraph or decipher twin-deck headlines almost half as long. In such cases, we email a short, sharp message to grab their attention.
Today’s media receive an avalanche of material, good, bad and indifferent. PR acts as a filter between client and media, and the best agencies invest expertise and effort in ensuring that writers receive information in a format they find useful.
Imagine what life on the newsdesk would be like without that filter. A constant deluge of calls and emails from managers, marketing, communications and salespeople. A life of ceaseless, remorseless spam and jangling phones!
So being perceived as a reliable source of information is critically important in developing the media’s trust.
A good agency will apply our principles of high impact copy-writing across the entire communications spectrum. Disciplined writing is equally effective for social media, lead generation, advertising, presentations, speeches and more.
Good PR will leverage a client’s existing information. White papers, product briefs, brochures, blogs, ideas, and more offer a wealth of opportunity for sniffing out newsworthy items. A world class agency can transform all these into headlines.
