I’m a believer in hiring a public relations firm. In my opinion they serve two purposes. First, they understand the process of taking a story, finding a newsworthy angle and pitching it to the media. They bring wise counsel and experience in determining what might be appealing to the media and what will be a turn-off that might do more harm than good. The second thing they bring to the table is connections. A good PR firm should have solid relationships with reporters, assignment editors and others in the media. They should be spending considerable time building and maintaining those relationships.
When a PR agency has the skills and the relationships you can expect good results. You should see quick progress in the form of quotes in stories and appearances on television. If, as a family law professional, you don’t see media attention within eight to ten weeks of hiring the firm then you need to try a different firm.
When the agency lacks one of these key ingredients – skills or relationships – things won’t work out for the client.
When an agency has relationships but lacks skills you will find a lack of ideas and input. A skilled PR pro will take your ideas and input and come up with something that appeals to the media. Hopefully, they come up with something creative, something you never would have thought of on your own. If the agency simply isn’t very good at crafting a newsworthy idea then having all the relationships in the world won’t help. Newspapers and magazines need ideas to fill up space. TV needs something interesting to fill the available minutes. No ideas (or bad ideas) means no coverage.
On the other hand, when an agency has skills but no relationships you will still get some attention. But that attention might not be positive and it might come back to bite you. Calling, or emailing a reporter, without have first established a comfortable relationship, can result in the reporter feeling hassled and harassed. An unhappy reporter can respond negatively to the PR person and they might take it out on that PR person’s client – you.
Pure PR, a London PR firm, sent an unsolicited email to a London reporter seeking to promote their client. I don’t know, but suspect, that an unhappy reporter decided to take out his or her annoyance with that unsolicited email by directing some hostility at their client, London divorce attorney Juliette Mace. The results, a story in the Guardian, were not, I imagine, what Ms. Mace was hoping to achieve. If the PR firm had combined their skills with a friendly relationship their client would have received better treatment.
