PR Deathwatch #4: Prepared Statements and PR Speak

Here's a quick review of the PR Death Watch list as it stands, and my latest installment.  The various topics together paint a picture of how our field has been changing.

PR Death Watch Continues
Endangered PR "Species" Continued
Death of Media Relations

Today's topic was inspired by a totally unnecessary exercise I witnessed, and provides a window into the glaring contrasts between PR of old - basically, "old" being anything before last year -  and how things are shaping up today.

 

The scenario (I'll leave the details intentionally vague) was that a blogger sent an inquiry asking a vendor to  confirm details of a topic that in my mind did not have earth shattering consequences - no CEO departing under a cloud, major product meltdown or recall, etc.

 

Before long a fire drill ensued - a drill caused in part by the fact that it was an important blogger asking,  some  key people were out of the office due to vacation schedules, and I guess some viewed the issue as potentially sensitive.

 

The PR folks proceeded to draft a statement, sent it around and made numerous revisions before producing what some might consider to be a very polished bit of text - text that in my view did not answer the question directly, and seemed like so much slippery PR speak.

 

Ultimately the team made revisions (keep in mind this all unraveled within just a few hours) to make sure they were being direct and clear in the response.  Of course,  by the time they were done and before they sent the response over the blogger had posted the story, saying in the post that we did not issue a statement or respond to his request.

 

So, what went wrong? Basically, a clash of cultures and styles.  Of course, the PR people cried "foul!" and pointed out to the blogger that we were not allowed sufficient time to respond.   But I am sure the blogger feels like he did nothing wrong.  Should it take a half day to get a simple question answered?

 

The irony is that, again, it was not earth shattering news and the resulting story in my view was not that consequential or negative.

 

There are many takeaways here,  but one of the more important ones is that simple questions sometimes require simple answers, social media does not have patience for PR planning and response cycles, and that prepared statments and PR-speak seems very much to be disonant with the tenor of the times.

Comments

[patricia]

thanks for reminding me why I got out of PR -- the fire-drill-by-committee b.s. "omg, a blogger/journalist is talking to us! quick, how does my hair look? is my lipstick straight? Wait, I want to try this outfit with different shoes. Hmmmm, maybe it was better with the first pair. Alright, one last spritz of perfume, and I think I'm good enough to step into the public domain. Here goes..."

sorry, babe, your ride already left.