Hi all,
One very
fine morning a few weeks back, I sat down at my desk with a coffee in toll.
While conducting my daily routine of clearing the morning emails, an email from
one of my managers jolted me awake. Titled "Woah", the email
contained nothing but the following link:
Have you
read it? I did. What did you think? I thought, "Woah", indeed. Cosmopolitan
Singapore, the magazine for ‘fun and fearless women’ as their tagline suggests,
takes fearless to a whole new level with this story.
The
article kept me occupied for a good 30 minutes as I scrutinized every word,
studied every tone and analysed every sentence of the article as well as the
comments.
If you're
not an avid reader, the article titled OPEN
LETTER: 5 THINGS WE REALLY WANT PRS TO KNOW tells of well, an open letter
from the people of Cosmopolitan Singapore to the PR practitioners in Singapore.
In a nutshell, it lists 5 things that Cosmopolitan wants PR people to know and
the message they wish to bring across:
1.
Don’t ever ask, “Is this a good time to call?”
- There is
never a good time to call, so do not ask.
2.
Media tracking is your job
- They
have better things to do than be a PR practitioners’ intern.
3.
We are not our colleagues’ secretary
- Everyone
is responsible for their own schedule
4.
Friday evening is a bad time for events
- We’ve
already worked hard all week, what were you thinking?
5.
Find out if a journalist prefers to be contacted on the phone or via email
- Keep a spreadsheet that details every single
journalist’s personal preference.
Needless
to say, the article sparked off a heated debated amongst the writers and PR
practitioners. Having interned for over two months, some of the arguments
raised were especially close to the heart.
In school,
we learnt about how important media people are key to reaching our PR targets
and KPIs as they determine whether there will be coverage or not. To do so, we
will need to impress the media with good press releases, build relationships,
etc. Yet, in the real world, PR practitioners have a job to do too which involves
calling journalists, sending them multiple press releases on behalf of one too
many clients as well as following up with them. The above mentioned problems
arise when the journalists are unreachable or refused to be reached.
An extremely
valid point brought across by a PR practitioner was that ‘it takes two to clap’.
Just like how Cosmopolitan wants PR practitioners to understand their
grievances, the same applies when roles are reversed too. No PR practitioner
enjoys having to entertain the media over the weekends or work overtime just to
accede to a last minute request by writers.
I believe
that the saying – ‘Do unto others as you want others to do unto you’ would be
appropriate in this instance. Journalists and PR practitioners should recognize
that working alongside each other (and having a little more bearing towards
each other) would be more beneficial than taking sides.
Till the
next,
Grace Ong
15230928
Curtin
Singapore
