There has been a mass of blogging about bad pitching and scattering-gun approaches to press releases, primarily bought about by Wired’s Chris Anderson and the Gina Trapani issue, and now everyone appears to be at loggerheads about what the correct protocol is and why we build relationships at all.

I thought I’d through my (albeit green) opinion in.

Public Relations is the art of building relationships with every stakeholder, for corporate gain. We (the PR people) are the conduits to the whole world, controlling every message and shaping image. How the hell is a PR person supposed to build a relationship by sending out group emails to people they have never even conversed with? A relationship is a mutual situation. PR people need to sell themselves and their interests before they sell a story, and they should only try to sell when they know the recipient wants to buy.

PR people who email random reporters are as bad as the renegade windscreen cleaners at traffic lights. They charge along, burst the personal space bubble and then demand a return on their time investment.

I work in PR, and I will admit that when I first began my post (my first job with no knowledge or experience in PR) I was told to create email lists as big as possible and follow up every email with a phone call;
Me: Hi, I was wondering if you got my press release?
Journo: Yes, I did.
Me: Do you need any more information?
Journo: Nope.
Me: Will you be writing about it?
Journo: Nope.
#dial tone#

After a few of those conversations I realised that that is not the way to build relationships, it’s the way to burn them.

Jeremy Pepper has nailed the cause of this… Budgets and training.

Budgets mean that relationships aren’t forged, can’t be maintained and never flourish!

Public Relations needs to evolve and agencies need to invest in training potential stars properly, otherwise they’ll end up on the scrapheap before they’ve even shone.

I also realise that I’m probably the last person in the entire world to write about this, sorry. It’s taking me a while to get up to speed, but bare with me!