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| Andrew Blum |
PR clients generally do what their PR people suggest but sometimes they can be their own worst enemy, and they go off the reservation.
By this I mean the following:
Ignoring your advice, blowing up an interview schedule, forgetting media training concepts, not allowing you to comment or reach back out to reporters, taking over the PR, pitching an exclusive themselves, missing deadlines, and my favorite: saying they want you to tell them what they want on a PR project.
Possibly the worst problem is sometimes they don’t want to comment when a negative story hits and they don’t want your help trying to clean up the PR mess. This has happened with several clients, ranging from instructions to not return media calls or emails when reporters ask for comment to not commenting when the issue is about litigation.
I tell clients there is always a way to make some kind of comment, even if it is a “no comment” comment. But sometimes they don’t want to do even that.
As Josh Luftin, strategic communications director with the Utah Department of Health and Human Services said in a post: “Did not respond to requests for comment. Seven words that tell the public an organization doesn’t want to engage in difficult conversations.”
“Those seven words make public relations professionals wince in pain, because an organization can almost always avoid them,” Luftin added.
Yes, but client decisions on no comment are more complicated.
Not responding to a request for comment can hurt a PR person’s relationship with reporters and their coverage of the client. That is worth noting to the client.
Let’s look at some of the other issues along the lines of going off the reservation.
They Ignore Your PR advice
Some clients try to take over the PR duties themselves -- even though they hired you for your expertise and are paying you to do the PR.
Pitching Exclusives Themselves
Once in a while, a client tries to pitch an exclusive themselves without telling you, and in the meantime, you lose out on a major outlet that you pitched when that reporter want to run a story as an exclusive.
Explain to the client that an exclusive pitch means one at a time – and they need to let the PR person know if they are doing this themselves. But just as above, why is the client paying you for PR if they think they can do it themselves?
Missing an Interview
This is PR 101 stuff – clients should almost never miss scheduled media interviews, except in cases of emergency.
I had a client lined up for a live international TV interview outside Parliament in London, and they changed their schedule at the last minute and missed the interview. I had to cancel the interview and spent the next several days trying unsuccessfully to re-arrange it as a remote interview from the U.S.
I had another client who just blew off a U.S. podcast interview I had scheduled – he said he wasn’t sure it was still on, even after I had sent him a confirmation.
If a client has a media interview planned anywhere – especially in another city or overseas – they need to make sure they have left enough time or planning to be ready in advance.
I told both of these clients that they can’t miss an interview like they did.
Forgetting Media Training Tips
Clients also can forget the media training concepts you gave them or they intentionally go off script during an interview.
I worked on a podcast interview script with a producer for a client interview, and then had a walkthrough with the client on zoom. The day the interview was taped the client inadvertently started making offensive comments to make a point -- and they stopped the interview. I apologized to the producer and tried damage control, asking that they redo the interview but they declined retaping.
When I spoke to the client about this, he apologized and couldn’t fully explain what happened.
Missing Deadlines
Every so often you get a client who misses deadlines. This is a no-no. Journalists don’t like a source or someone writing bylined articles who keeps missing deadlines.
This is a work in progress with some clients.
What the Client Wants
As I said earlier in this piece, my favorite example of a client going off the reservation was: saying they wanted me to tell them what they wanted on a PR project.
I was talking to a client about a new PR project and I asked what they wanted in this particular instance.
“I want you to tell me what I want,” the client said.
This client was a good friend who hired me to do PR and we had been working together a while. My response: “That is the dumbest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I could get away with that because he was a friend. If this was a client who was not a friend, I would never have said that.
In all the examples I cited here, the solution in addressing the client’s actions is stay calm, and be diplomatic and professional.
Talk to the client about the problem and make them understand why their particular one is undermining the PR process and hurting their chances of getting good media coverage.
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Andrew Blum of AJB Communications is a PR consultant and media trainer who has directed proactive and crisis PR for a wide range of clients and issues, including a Sandy Hook parent, John Edwards, Jack Abramoff, Richard Scrushy, and former NY governor George Pataki. He has also directed PR for more than 50 authors, and for professional and financial services firms, renewable energy companies, NGOs, startups and PR agencies. [email protected] or on X at @ajbcomms
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