“Life is full of obstacles, don’t waste time finding solutions for it all beforehand, or you won’t be able to move forward.”
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
Public Relations: The Confusing Industry
17th January, 2011
Over the years I have worked with numerous clients from the wide spectrum of businesses as a Public Relations Consultant in Saudi Arabia, the biggest market in the GCC for anything. And for all that I know I have one thing to say about working in Public Relations, and that is, it sucks.
Now hold on to the barrage of demeaning words you might have assembled and targeted towards to me, and allow me to justify.
Public Relations as a practice is a great art of communication that will definitely place you in the minds of your consumers for long term ambitions. Unlike Advertising, which is the art of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money out of it (modified quote of Stephen Leacock).
Now there are countless number of definition as to what PR is and what it isn’t, but trust me I am not getting into that, at least not now.
Saudi Arabia being the largest Middle Eastern country has countless number of PR agencies. Some are great while others are more questionable than you finding out your employee visiting NSFW websites.
The main problem here is the total lack of understanding of what PR is, from both the clients’ and the agencies’ side. Everyone I know, well mostly everyone I know thinks that PR is all about press releases.
Aside from PR firms I have met several Advertising and Event Management agencies as well that bluntly say: “We have PR solutions and provide PR support”. Even agencies believe that their main role is the distribution of press releases, maintaining media relations and that the target audience for a client doing PR is the media only.
Now at this point I would like to take some heavy mining equipment and impale them right before I push them off a helicopter screaming down to the ground, just like George Carlin would. However I am sure that wouldn’t get my point across.
To sprinkle salt on an open wound and then massage it with sand paper, these so called agencies evaluate PR success by measuring the number of times a press release has appeared in all the newspapers and magazines. The best part is calculating the ROI of the campaign, which is done by measuring the Ad values of the total coverage of the press releases, over a week, month, or a year.
To put this idiotic scheme into perspective, they literally measure the length and the width of the article and multiply it by the cost of placing an Advertisement in that space, which is used to show the clients how awesome they are for saving advertising budget by having a press release instead … “Conveying Key Messages.”
You must be thinking that these are local, cheap and unprofessional agencies, well you got one answer correct, as both local and international PR firms carry out these practices, and charge an arm and a leg and your first born child!
What would probably shock you is that this is not exclusive to Saudi Arabia. In fact I found out that this sort of PR practice is carried out by most in the Entire Middle East. It gets funnier when they copy/paste the same strategy for two or more different clients. I know this for a fact, as I faced such a despicable situation in a PR agency before. In fact so much so, they just target daily print publications as a medium for communication, without even researching what source of information the target audience might be into.
It is crucial to understand that this has nothing to do with the country in question but rather with the availability of PR professional, which already is so rare.
Bottom line of this post is that I just wanted to get this message out somehow. After all Saudi Arabia is one of the best places to do business right now, but with a haphazard group of PR professionals, most businesses do not get proper exposure and end up declaring PR industry as a useless-service-needed-to-look-important.
As a conclusion to this, you should know for a fact that there is a handful of PR consultants and firms that provide outstanding PR solutions, and can do wonders for you and your business in the Middle East. It is just a matter of finding out who they are.
“Success is 99% Failure”
The hardest thing about decision making is not taking things personally.
- Kevin Hale
(via mhandy1)
“Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.”
Q: Such a sexy new theme... Who helped you pick it out?! :P
Anonymous
You Did :p
The Reason To Blog
Throughout last year, I have read many articles published by well-known bloggers, and public figures, with topics covering almost everything one can think of… well not everything, but you get my point.
After getting excited enough, I thought of giving it a try back in 2010. My mind went totally chaotic at the possibility of what I could write about. Topics were ranging from Video games to Automotive, and they are just a couple of examples. Cutting long story short, I wrote one post and then placed a giant Period on my desire to blog, due to discouragement.
The main problem was my reason to blog. I blogged because I wanted to be part the Web 2.0 and dreamt of myself being the Elvis of the Blogosphere, a Rockstar of the World Wide Web, with a giant statue of myself on the moon.
After I killed my blog with my own hands I did more research, and realized that you shouldn’t blog for the sake of jumping in the Web 2.0’s shinny wagon. It is like doing what the cool kids are doing, just so you don’t look like a buffoon, only to end up looking like a monumental moron.
In all seriousness the reason why you shouldn’t do it is because you wouldn’t be focused or dedicated to it much. Consequently you would ruin your online reputation even before you start having one.
Blogging should be considered as a personal journal (not similar to your sister’s spice girls’ diary). It is where you share you thoughts and views, regardless of who reads it, if any at all. You are not blogging for the online community, but for yourself, so it does not matter if you get 4 views or 40, the point is you did it for yourself.
You might ask, why blog? After all there are many ways to share your views. We have Facebook and Twitter to convey your thoughts, especially the latter, which is used for micro blogging. They are used for a two-way communication, a dialogue mostly. A blog on the other hand is more of a mirror to your mind, how you think, and what your views are with regards to the topic you choose.
I know that you can add a comment section under a blog post and have it as a two-way communications platform. However for some reason, it has been seen that Facebook pages and twitter are more interactive then the blog itself for the same post or article.
“For example, Facebook pages get a lot more interaction than blogs for some medical journals - you can count the comments on the NEJM Facebook updates (the range is 9-180) vs. their blog (0). The blog has comments enabled, of course.” (Casesblog).
You all might have heard about The Manalyst, well if not then you should, as she is my partner in crime, who posts pretty interesting articles in her blog. What I have learnt from her is that every time she has a new blog post, she publicizes it on her twitter, Linkedin, and her Facebook page. Weirdly her readers’ reaction or interactions take place firstly on twitter, then linkedin, followed by a small possibility of interactions on the blog post itself. So although a Blog CAN be a two way communication channel, most visitors or readers would rather comment on other platforms.
Seth Godin, a true Internet celebrity, and an Einstein of Marketing, at least for me, said the following, “Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say.”
Taking Seth Godin’s words, blogging is more of a therapeutic massage for your mind, where you develop your personality, and enhance how you think as a homosapien, it is a giant corkboard that represents your collective thoughts. You do nevertheless need to accept that, some people would like your way of thinking while others will probably chase you with a loaded gun.
Surely enough if your thoughts are interesting, and entertaining, you would eventually have readers, who would be on the edge of their seats waiting for your next post, as they cannot live without having a piece of your awesome mind.
You must acknowledge that you are blogging for yourself, your own benefit, and not for the sake of having readers, or increasing visitors, because at the end of the day no one can win everyone’s hearts.
So go head create a blog and start converting your uncluttered thoughts into a huge pile of binary madness, and take piece of the Web 2.0 as your own, after all, it is free.
… Pretty cool, my first official blog post.
The name is Abutaleb, (Abutaleb Quashem), but you can call me Taleb to make it easier for you. I am a Digital PR & Marketing Specialist, An Undercover Visual Communicator, Self proclaimed Rockstar, & A Social Behemoth. I am currently a Senior Public Relations Consultant, where I also practice the traditional art of PR.
