Sympra Public Relations Blog

Print, the Phone Call and Pressing the Flesh – They Aren’t Dead Yet.

The Blogosphere has fallen too much in love with itself, and that’s a problem. Overhyped and over-promoted on blogrolls and among bloggers, Weblogs can’t live up to their reputation. Everyone has a blog these days, or so it seems, and keeping track of what is relevant and worth reading is hard work. Feeds help, but not by much.

Granted, print media is having a tough time these days. The New York Times has begun selling ad space on its hallowed front page — a practice of other newspapers but not, until now, of the paper of record.

But print is not dead.

Neither is the telephone. For all the ease of communication that e-mail brings, nothing makes a connection with a journalist quite like a phone call.

Neither is pressing the flesh. One of the largest conventions held in the United States just ended. The Consumer Electronics Show drew 110,000 attendees to Las Vegas this year. According to an article in PC World, attendance was down 22% from last year. Still, over 100,000 people went to conduct business face to face.

PR and publicity thrive on the personal connection. Our profession thrives on news and points of view and providing journalists and producers with story ideas. This is an oversimplified analysis of our jobs, but you already know that.

The general wisdom says that as print pulls back, printing fewer pages per issue, there will be more competition for print space. But from what I’m seeing, companies are also trimming their PR budgets.

My theory is that we will see a resurgence of print. Less space means more competition for it, which means that what does end up in print becomes even more valuable.

Weblogs offer little to no actual newsgathering capacity. Blogs compile information and news from elsewhere, from real news organizations.

As Steven Waldman wrote in “Why the Huffington Post Can’t Replace the New York Times”, “The idea that the Huffington Post, or the explosion of interesting internet news or blogging sites, can replace journalistic institutions like the New York Times or other newspapers or dinosaurs of the mainstream media truly misunderstands the web, newspapers, journalism and the serious threat posed to democracy if the news gathering institutions fail.”

What wins out in these perilous economic times are old-fashioned PR strategies. The phone calls and face-to-face meetings to pitch stories to journalists and editors.

The companies that maintain and even increase their PR budgets have an edge in this competitive atmosphere. They have a much better chance of claiming a piece of that valuable print real estate.

While we don’t control the media, a successful pitch results in a newspaper or magazine article. And when clients have something to hold in their hands, to cut out and frame, then we realize all the more the value of a print story.

As a Brit working in a German environment I had a certain amount of adjusting to do here – there are the PR rules, for example, dealing with journalists is different here as opposed to in the UK, and then there are huge differences in client and agency-internal relationships, which are primarily underlined by the language. In German there are two forms of the word “you” – the politer “Sie” form and the “I’m on your level” “Du” form – this defines and maintains certain relationships – a complication that we do not have in the English language.

After working in Germany and in the PR industry for over 15 years, I have pretty much got to used to working here and so, it was with much excitement that we at Sympra co-founded the Public Relations Network (PRN) in 2005. I had visions of stuffy conference rooms filled with gesticulating Italians, highly-efficient and impatient Germans, and the late-comers from all over Europe! I am not going to say that I was completely wrong but I will say this – public relations is different in countries all over the world but public relations experts are surprisingly similar!

I must add here that one of our preconditions for joining the PRN is a strong vetting service that we carry out – obviously when selecting agencies we need ones that work in similar fields so our customers can rely on experts in the chosen country as well as the pricing being similar to ours (so we don’t have to reanimate our clients after showing them cost proposals), but our “personal” vetting service is in place so we can guarantee that we, and more importantly, our clients can work with these people – the world is smaller than we think, and people actually more similar than we can imagine!

So, now we have our Network – a hand-picked, and it really is hand-picked, selection of incredibly personable communication experts around the globe. International public relations may seem an impossible and insurmountable task at the beginning but if you are on a wavelength with your partners, then it is easier than you think. To our customers in Germany: The same rule applies as with drafting a national PR strategy – know roughly what you want to achieve, listen to the advice given by the experts of that country as they know their press and their market and then, simply lean back and enjoy being called “you”!