Know what the worst thing about PR/media relations is?  The lack of control.

Ask anyone who is realistic and reputable in the public relations game and they’ll tell you that they can’t guarantee coverage.  If they guarantee you coverage, they’re evil gnarly humans lying.  Personally, I’ve got a ton of long-standing relationships with media, some of them even positive, but regardless, what a reporter or editor writes about a brand that pays BBPR millions of dollars for little results that partners with us is out of my control.

From time to time, media will miss something in the fact-checking portion of their story production.  That could include putting a typo in a brand’s URL or using the word carbon instead of Kevlar.  That’s disappointing, but it happens.  People make mistakes.  I make a ton just walking from my office to the coffee shop around the corner.

What’s tough to stomach for PR people, and even tougher for clients,  is when media omit facts or manipulate them with an agenda.

Take for example, ABC News’ coverage of what’s going on with Toyota and their accelerator issue.  If you’ve read Gawker recently, you may have seen their story uncovering of some interesting things about Brian Ross’ piece.

I’m not saying that Toyota’s recall isn’t warranted, but staging visuals is a little suspect, at least in my book.

With project BLUE, we’ve recently had an incident with the guys over at Drift Surfing.  Nothing was staged, but facts were not officially checked and some feedback left on their comment section by Vipe Desai (project BLUE’s founder) was deleted.

Last week we saw this article by Howard Swanwick about conscious shopping in the surf industry.  He makes a small, erroneous mention of Billabong in relation to project BLUE.

(note: at Vipe’s request, he has since updated it to say “Take Billabong’s involvement in Project Blue.”, which is more factual since project BLUE is a collaboration between numerous brands)

Howard’s is entitled to his own thoughts on project BLUE, but he missed a lot.  A simple visit to the About section of project BLUE’s site would have given him more info.  A Google search may have revealed a lot more, including that more than $140,000 has been donated to Surfrider as a result of the project BLUE partners, answering his question about “What has this much-shouted-about project achieved since its launch in 2007?”

When an online article is published with some information that’s either wrong or you don’t agree with, a brand can either opt to let it slide or provide feedback.  Vipe opted to provide feedback, elaborating on the initiative and $ donated.  Drift opted to delete Vipe’s comments because, according to Drift,  they did not meet the two criteria the site abides by, specifically:

1. They have to be constructive, whether they’re critical or complimentary.

2. They do not constitute commercial promotion for brands.

Vipe tells me there was some back and forth between himself and the people at Drift, but in the end, the article remained intact and Vipe’s comments deleted.  It’s their site and they can do what they want.  project BLUE doesn’t support them in advertising and even if they did, that doesn’t always mean you can get your agenda across in editorial.

Short story long, these things happen in the world of PR/media/editorial relations.  Not every piece that’s come out about project BLUE has been to my liking and there was one year that it seemed every journalist (ok, maybe four) who covered Rome SDS in the non-endemic media titled their article “When in Rome…” or “Rome, if you want to…  The guys @ Rome let it slide and so has Vipe.

As PR people, we have to be truthful with our clients in counseling them that negative pieces may appear and sometimes, there’s very little we can do about them.  Besides a long post on Experts & Insiders.

Want a piece of marketing you can have total control over?  Then buy an ad.  In fact, please do buy ads… they’re a valuable piece of the marketing mix and one I’ll get into justification for later.  Heck, I actually wanted to work in advertising when I graduated college!

If you want to get into the PR/media relations boat, welcome aboard, just don’t think you’re always going to be able to steer the ship.

Tags: advertising vs. PR, bad PR, fact checking, journalism, PR, toyota