CorpComms Magazine

One of the wonderful benefits of Gorkana, is that we sit between the hacks and flacks and digest everything - so here are my views of how the industry is changing. 

It really is who you know. Too many PRs hide behind their emails. Releases are thrust out to thousands of journalists in the hope of coverage. Journalists are over worked, underpaid and the demands on them are becoming more onerous. Certainly, anecdotally a lot of journalists say it is now a lot harder to get away from their desks, make proper contacts and get close to the issues in their sectors. Establishing relationships should be a core key performance indicator (KPI) for every PR.

This leads onto loving the freelancers. With the continued consolidation and fragmentation of the media market, PRs need to reconsider these relationships, as more freelancers will be pitching work to editors. PRs will need to have their freelance strategy sorted if they want to deliver on their promises to clients.

For PRs used to managing messages, the model has permanently changed. Social media will be included in every client brief; it won't just be the shiny new toy that it was last year. For financial and corporate clients this probably doesn't come as easily as it does for their consumer colleagues. The reality is facts are expensive, whereas comment is cheap especially as there is so much specialist comment available on blogs, which seeps into newspapers - especially online. If the blog has passion, an informed view and is editorially robust then both consumers and journalists will be engaged. PRs need to understand this.

But the real concern facing PRs is just who is checking the content? The rise of collaborative journalism will continue to test our industry. We have professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story, linking to each other across brands and old boundaries to share facts, questions, answers, ideas, and perspectives. As Nick Davies, author of Flat Earth News, said: Much of it provided by people who are at best unreliable and at worst manipulative. Happy New Year!

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