The PRice to pay for PRice Undercutting in PR Biz

I was having lunch with a lovely former journalist who is now a proud owner of a public relations firm of potential. During the lunch, the topic of conversation turned around the subject of public relations and the media.

While the PR business is growing and will continue to grow in a developing country like Malaysia, already the ugly side of the business is emerging. She mentioned how price undercutting was robbing her of clients and how some organisation who engage PR firms based on promises of how they could do more with less.

I find this rather disturbing and every PR person who walks through the doors into my office is viewed with suspicion - is he/she waiting to pounce on unsuspecting editors and journalists, to sweet-talk the editor into giving the coverage the PR person has promised his/her client? For that reason, each PR material I scrutinise based on its merits. And if I so much as sense it was merely carpet bombing of editors on the editorial floor, (ie. send all releases to all desks in the hope of securing coverage) down go the release into the dustbin, waiting in line to be thrown away by my Indon cleaners.

The trouble with price cutting, I told the PR practitioner, is that it demeans people who actually work very hard to do their jobs as public relations practitioners - not make-up artists for any organisation. This means, the PR practitioners know the meaning of public relations, and how to best carry out dissemination of information in the spirit of garnering goodwill from the publics (yes, publics - not public ) in the interest of the company. This is not the same as getting come cheap publicity just because they are pally with the editors.

The PR officer who knows his/her job, is not only able to disseminate information well for use by the media, but is also able to measure the success of a campaign and provide follow-up analysis to the client - even if it is a piecemeal project. In marketing terms, this is after-sales service - you inform the client what his campaign has achieved and how he can strengthen his market share.

And for all the work a good public relations practitioner does, clients should also bear in mind that these activities, all measureable and quantified, cannot come cheap. And if anyone who offers this cheap promise should be asked to show hoe he/she would do it. They should not be given the job even if it was recommended by your PR director if the offer is not of merit.

If you are the CEO of any company who intends to engage any PR practitioner for any campaign, then you will have to know what PR is all about and what public relations practitioners do. Listening to PR pitches without this basic knowledge and only looking at the bottom line of the moment is like walking blind-fold into a minefield that may cripple a new product line or blow up and undo years of good branding and image building efforts.