The Taylor Trash: Ah, PR types, press releases, media officers, press offices, I love you all dearly, and I need you in my professional life. But there are certain things I simply cannot abide in arts PR, and they must end, frankly, as they annoy me, and they give PRs a bad name – and there are a lot of good PRs out there that I enjoy very good working relationships with – and I don’t want to lump them into the same category as the bad ones.
6 comments:
Unfortunately this is another one of those common sense articles that we keep needing to put out there because if its not we are going to go on committing terrible crimes of lack of social skills. I don't do PR but I can see how these things could be an issue. If within your company you don't know who you've asked to review your shows, then you can't give them a ticket. Fine, okay, I can see that maybe slipping through the cracks. But not letting someone who wants to review your show, NOT review your show because they are not as big as you wanted? Who are you?! First of all the old saying that any publicity is good publicity, thats true. Secondly, if you were so high and mighty yourself, you would already have bigger publications wanting to review you. So you should play nice and climb the ladder like everyone else and not piss on everyone. Irritating.
I was a little disappointed with this article. Since I know close to nothing about PR I thought it would be interesting to read this article but I was disappointed that it only talked about common sense things. I can see however that it would get extremely frustrating if people kept making these mistakes over and over again. I agree with Sonia that you should let anyone review your work that wants to because the more people talk about your work the larger the number of people will hear about it.
Bad PR is an issue in every industry. So much so that companies often hire someone to do their PR for them. And even this person might be bad at doing PR. So what is "knowing something about PR?" People so often say, "Oh, I'm not that person." But who is that person? I believe that to be good at PR all one needs is an understanding of what people respond to. And, if you are any kind of observer of human nature, you probably know. You need to consider location, age group, social and ethnic demographics, and more, sure, but it can be done. And it doesn't take years of studying focus group to do it. Be welcoming, offer fair deals, consider what attracts the eye, consider what is popular, use your brain! Anyone can do anything, this is just another one that requires the proper mindset.
A lot of this article is "duh" common sense. Take care of those who give you free publicity, yes. However, there might be some reasons for what this author states as problems in this article, and the author is most definitely biased towards the journalist side of things. For example, on the e-mail the right publication side of things, maybe you are striving to gain a new audience so you e-mail someone new or try to find a new reviewer to come see your work. As long as you explain why you are interested in having them see it, then it is reasonable. So if a show might be interesting to car enthusiasts, then invite the auto magazine! Thats VERY smart PR.
Good article... if it may be blunt and rudely written, but nevertheless gives great rules/ a review of common sense. Of course bad PR is a big problem across all fields, and is therefore a big problem for the arts as well. I think this article is a good resource for many because it simply and plainly explains PR issues, which would be important for non-PR types to read, and understand, as well.
These are good, and important tips. They may seem very basic and I admit at first I thought it was a bit silly. But even though these are basic more people need to follow these tips. I know that my community theatre make these mistakes sometime. I don't know if I will ever work in arts PR, but if I do I hope that I remember to follow all of these rules. The rule the hit me the hardiest was the rule about what to call people. I think that when your asking a favor from a stranger it's very important to make them like you and using the wrong name is a really bad start. It's not something I would normally put much thought in to,but it's very important.
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