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10 mistakes of media relations

Written by: Stephen Manallack

Article Overview: Too many companies make fundamental mistakes in dealing with media. By being fully aware of the pitfalls, your media liaison can be a source of strong profile.

10 mistakes of media relations

We’ve seen some high profile examples of how not to deal with the media, but across the board the business sector too often makes mistakes when using media profile to build reputation.

Many present themselves as anonymous corporations, running advertising with no human face and producing websites that focus on products and not people. This is even the case with small to medium enterprises that should know it is their people who give them the edge. Unless you understand that virtually every enterprise is at heart a people business, you will always overlook the importance of media profile.

Reputation plays a key role at the sharp end of marketing: it can be the factor that tips a prospect to choose you over competitors, and it continues to help reinforce that consumer choice. That alone is a big motivation for getting your media relations right.

But media profile goes further, creating a “reputation bank” that acts as part of your risk management strategy – we all need to draw on the goodwill of our reputations at some stage or other in life.

What we rarely see are the lost opportunities – those businesses that could have a strong media profile but fail to gain one.

There are many ways to go wrong with media, but here are some of the whoppers that occur again and again:

1. Cultivating journalists, not stories

Many business leaders will point to this or that journalist as a favoured contact, perhaps having lunch once or twice a year. But they have never gained any media coverage out of it. This makes us ask: just how much does the journo understand your business? We turn this thinking on its head – sure, we have good media contacts and enjoyable lunches, but only after we focus on delivering good media stories.

2. “Only when it suits us”

Many organisations chase media coverage when they have something to announce, yet disappear for the rest of the time, not returning media calls. Media liaison is a two way street, and to gain the right profile and relationships, you need to be prepared to comment outside of those occasions of pure self interest.

3. Wrong place, wrong media

It’s great to gain media coverage, but is your target audience reading, listening or watching? The right profile in the wrong place is ego tripping, so it is best to be really calculating about which media outlets matter most to you. The most common mistake here is to see CEO’s gaining a high profile among their peers but not in the market.

4. Poor timing

Timing is everything in life, and no sector is more time driven than media. Timeliness of issues and angles is bread and butter to good media relaters. Those with poor timing have great media releases, for last month!

5. Flogging dead horses

The media hate dealing with “the nag”, the person who is often quite right but just does not understand what drives the media. If your comment or story misses the mark this month, move on, leave it and maybe have another go in a new month. Not everything is such a big issue for the media, even if it is for you.

6. Overlooking your “gems”

“We’re not very newsy” is a frequent comment, but the fact is that every activity is interesting to media, once you find the right angles and the right outlets. Hidden “gems” could be actively building your reputation. Generally speaking, people who like the business they’re in and like the people they are with also have a good profile, whereas those who think things are dull around here generally help make it so.

7. Not treating media as “impressionists”

So, the media do get it wrong, or can’t grapple with the technicalities of the issue: Big deal. Like the artists we so love, the media are “impressionists”, providing a quick and sometimes flawed insight into life. Work with that, and you will be more effective. You might even enjoy becoming a bit of an “impressionist” yourself, and your clients will no doubt appreciate that you are in the picture.

8. The big cover up

Confession is good for the reputation, and honesty should be your first plank of media policy. Countless times we see companies refusing to comment or keeping part of the story hidden – boy, does this motivate the enquiring journalist. “We don’t have to tell them that”, is often the client’s plea to their media advisers. Many journalists believe that they are there to discover what we don’t want to tell them, so beware of this when you choose to make no comment about some crisis or issue.

9. Taking refuge in a low profile

This is the old “we don’t need that media stuff” approach and generally comes from people who do not get it, or lack the confidence to put their point across. Sadly, they miss opportunities and fail to use media as a reputation risk strategy. Low profile is actually high risk.

10. Speaking off the record

Our advice to clients before they meet with a journalist is to treat every comment as though it is totally on the record. Yet the desire to gossip about competitors and the industry seems to lead many into troubled waters. Media liaison should support business plans, so there is little room for gossip. Speaking off the record will eventually come back to bite you, yet surprisingly in an industry that is aware of risk management, this is an all too common mistake.

Gaining the right media profile can take hard work: one leading financial planner slogs it out each week on radio, involving a lot of preparation and a fair drain of energy. But he does this because he understands the importance that sustained repetition plays in building a positive profile.

Another head of an international fund manager puts out a regular supply of media releases; new products, people, comment on issues and more. It’s not that he wants to be famous, it’s just that he knows the “drip feed” of perseverance pays off. He has a philosophical attitude of “you win some, you lose some” to media releases, and this keeps his efforts well balanced.

Too often we hear of businesses paying lip service to “thought leadership” and being “intellectual power houses” when their profile does not reflect this. In media, you have to put your money where your mouth is. One positive example would be actually producing white papers on issues, if you do aspire to thought leadership in your field.

Speaking at a recent fund manager conference I pushed the theme “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. The message is that you keep people (clients and work colleagues) coming back by showing your caring side. By becoming a passionate high profile media advocate in your sector, you reveal caring and commitment: attractive qualities in the marketplace.

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