Some will read this and be spitting out their cereal, but I can’t help feeling shouty Property PR is death spiralling and subject to the law of diminishing returns.
Spittage will be caused by the fact I was there at the start, in the mid 90s, when PR was totally unserviced, let alone recognised or valued.
In a pre-Twitter environment, journalists were happy[ish] to be serviced by public relations companies bringing stories or ideas to them. I say ish as there’s always been a clear demarcation between those in the property industry who clearly know what they’re on about and those simply throwing out mud hoping some will stick.
In the early days, to some extent still the case, many companies still don’t ‘get’ PR or value time and resource put into it. Most CEOs are pretty useless at PR and finding someone within an organisation that can do it is also tough. It’s well worth the effort though – and the investment can yield a spectacular ROI if handled sensitively and the product has objective value rather than just being loud and everywhere.
I personally dread interest rate changes, or other world events, simply because of the litany of banal releases following them. The grammar is often terrible and there’s mostly little to say that isn’t obvious. Given I’ve written, and still do, for many publications, I’m still on many PR company lists and the guff I get sent daily is mind numbing.
Twitter has enabled most intelligent journalists to now bypass PR companies entirely and see developing stories without a filter – but they can still tell when someone is being shouty for the sake of it. Many PR companies haven’t looked beyond measuring their success in inches and numbers of insertions – a lowest common denominator in inverse proportion to its effectiveness.
In the early days being effective meant being selective and having depth – not something that can be said today. This experience is gained by many of the journalists I got to know being friends. They’re highly intelligent and don’t suffer fools – which must their job these days very tough indeed.
Aware a tin hat might be required and of course there are exceptions where intelligent PR companies punch beyond their weight with clients that need to be listened to, but in general it’s not a pretty picture.
I totally agree with your wise words Ed Mead, Property PR (not sure if this oblique reference to Mr RQ’s second named PR firm or just PR for property in general) but you thrust that PR agencies send out a release to news organisations with a veneer of topical reference – such as the Chancellor’s mini budget, when in fact the piece is really intended to get a CEO or founder’s name in print.
That is why we set up Proptech-PR, as a joke – on PR companies. We are actually a consultancy for Proptech founders, we grow and help them exit. Early on though we kept finding that propterty technology companies, having raised maybe 600K plus then could afford a PR company, who would merrily burn £4,000 a month of that budget, putting together PR pieces that failed to engage with the public. I mean who cares if a company has just raised £10m in funding or have just done a joint venture with XYZ, is that going to get read?
The sad reality is that all publications, digital or even in print, have very few journalists – they are far outnumbered by the marketing departments headcounts, who look to print news which is a thinly disguised Press release. This goes for the daily mail to most business publications, it is very rare that real news ever surfaces.
As an editor and journalist, I receive a dozen Press releases a day, I then see them appear as ‘News’ items, and I think if only journalists were being used rather than publications relying on a slew of releases to fill their pages.
We do create content, but it is original, researched and gets read, I did a recent analysis of the amount of reads that EAT, NEG, PIE, gets over a week, and for one publication it is less than 1,000 reads per article, another around 3,000, the reason as Ed states PR pieces are – not read. Proptech-PR can get 10,000 reads of one post on Linkedin, because it has real value value – it engages and makes the reader want to know more, and the audience is an engaged audience, that same post put across our other socials could be read by 50,000 in a day, maybe as much as 100,000, and then we get reactions – debate and create value. That is why influencers, who have an engaged audience – rather than publications – are winning the war to engage the reader.
As Robert Peston political editor for ITV, said recently at a live roundtable debate we had in the Grovesnor hotel, ‘people do not read news anymore’ he was not being profound, he just meant no-one reads a newspaper, ‘news’ is absorbed via multi platforms, through all the socials, yes we still have the national news, but speak to an 18 year old and ask them what is going on, and you would be surprised at their view. And there view may well be far more balanced than the PR echo chamber of the same companies paying people to push out non-engaging pieces.
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