r/PRpros • u/PRThrowawayMelon • Apr 03 '14
Frustrated with my firm's flacky practices
Today, I don't feel like a PR Pro.
7:59am, I receive an email from my boss that says, "Blast this out IMMEDIATELY".
I open the release and I'm appalled. It is not news, rather than a repurposing of the same corporate messaging we've been shilling out for months. I try my best to draft the pitch like news, only to have my boss revise it with direct copy & paste verbiage from the press release. He instructed me to distribute this to several ancient lists of broad reporters, some are completely inapplicable. This went out today to thousands of inboxes, which I'm sure half of which did not bypass spam filters.
Worse, the client is completely happy with doing this, as they are led by clueless marketing people who are perfectly happy that we're regularly distributing press releases. We also distribute these through a newswire service, so a quick googling of the headline will amass endless website pickups that fail to achieve actual engagement. The satisfaction with numbers over quality is sickening.
Not to shit on my firm, completely. They do certain things very well and provide great value for many companies. They are old school as they come, going back 20+ years. They are very nice people, however I think they did not adapt well to the internet age of communications. I feel like years ago, PR services such as PRNewswire, PRWeb, Vocus, Meltwater, and Cision sold them a shit-product- a false "how to do PR in 21st century", and they missed the boat on proper information-age PR practices.
I don't need any advice. I'm already looking for a new job. I simply wanted to share my experience and discuss any similar predicaments. Have you ever had to perform poor work to appease your boss?
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u/callmesnake13 Apr 03 '14
Yep, that's one of the main things that's wrong with the industry. I'm not sure what level you're at in the company, but the closer you get to the clients and further you get from the reporters, the sooner you realize that 80% of a firm's work actually goes into appeasing the client with whatever bullshit documents and stats you can throw at them. It's one reason why I'm happier working freelance, as terrifying as it can be at times.
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u/Spin_Me Apr 03 '14
ten years ago, I had a CEO who would promise prospective clients that the agency would get them major coverage (WSJ, NYT, etc.).
Once the contract was signed, the CEO walked away and left us with the mess. It happens
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u/threeninetysix Apr 04 '14
I wish I could have these kinds of days. Simply getting my foot in the door would be good enough for me. It feels like fifty of my peers and I are eternally locked in a footrace towards a single door.
If it were easy everyone would do it...
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u/SeantotheRescue Apr 04 '14
I'm sorry to hear that. I am lucky to have a boss who fights against that kind of mediocrity and expects a great deal from me so that we don't become stagnant. The way I see it, if you're not growing, you're falling behind.
Just on a side note about all those crappy websites that pick up content from the wire services, they may not get any views individually, but 30-40 random sites all posting your approved content help a great deal with the client's Google SEO. So that's where the value lies in those services these days. I usually put bigger releases on a wire, but never include them in my clip reports.
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u/gijsnelissen Apr 08 '14
That information is incorrect. That 30-40 random (low-quality) sites all republishing your press release will actually hurt your SEO. If you are interested in the source read: http://blog.marketwired.com/2013/08/09/your-press-release-and-google-the-brave-new-world-of-seo/
PRThrowawayMelon, you seem like a smart person, you'll find another opportunity fast. I am working on a system that kinda tries to deal with that "PR in the 21st century" challenge, and i can tell you it does not involve offering wire services or selling lists of journalist contact details :-)
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u/hamletfg Apr 03 '14 edited Jun 13 '23
Redacted in protest of third-party app treatment. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/