In the Middle East there’s an uneasy, distrustful relationship between public relations practitioners and the media that can be traced directly back to the origins of the PR business in this region. In the West public relations evolved out of journalism. The first American PR practitioners in the early years of the 20th century were journalists who aligned themselves with corporate enterprise. In the Middle East, however, the practice of public relations emerged from advertising so that today both the market and the media tend to treat public relations as advertising in sheep’s clothing. Little more than a decade ago, advertising agencies would provide press releases and event management services as a kind of value-added activity for free to keep their clients happy, leveraging their ad-spend to get coverage, regardless of the merit of the content. Most releases at that time read like ad copy because in-house ad copywriters, rather than journalists, wrote them so there was no credibility. Just because a story is published doesn’t mean anyone actually reads it or believes it. Initially almost all press releases were promotional or a kind of vanity service for CEOs, to get their pictures in the newspaper. Arab business and Arab media got used to this approach and old habits die-hard. Today, even in Dubai, which is the most sophisticated public relations environment in the region, it is not uncommon to find advertising salespeople from the media attending press conferences in place of reporters.
With the emergence of independent public relations practices and the entry of global PR companies, either through direct equity participation or affiliation, the image of public relations has changed superficially but many of the same old attitudes and practices remain entrenched. Many practitioners have tried to compensate for having no advertising revenues as bargaining chips by building up very strong personal ties with the media. There’s nothing wrong with that up to a point but one hears clients over and over again say, when they give you a duff, uninteresting story that has no news value, “Well, you should use your ties with the media to get this in.” I’m not going to tell you what I want to tell them, but they are, after all, clients and they pay us to get exposure and we do our best, but this approach is unsustainable. Today in markets like the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia the press is inundated with dozens of press releases daily. Every single one of them is important to the client. PR agencies are under intense pressure to get coverage come hell or high water and in some cases they choose hell. By this I mean that some companies resort to bribery, which is a horrific practice that does untold damage to our business but exists here and elsewhere in the Arab world. We won’t do it as an agency and we’ve suffered for it but I know of other companies that do and I have to say, I can understand why they do it. Someone once was praising one of our colleagues in Dubai to me, saying, “He can get his daughter’s birthday on the front page of the business section!” My reaction was, “If that’s the case, then there’s something deeply wrong with the environment we’re working in.”
In this situation everyone is culpable: the PR industry, the Media and the Market. But as this business is our bread and butter we need to take the lead in changing the situation. We have to stand up to clients and start putting down ground rules. You have to be able to say to your clients that the story they’re asking you to place has no news value. But then you’ve got to offer them an alternative, a more creative way of getting their message across. We also need to educate the press as to what we’re really about. We are not promoters or crypto-advertisers. Our business is the business of commercial journalism. One of the other historical dimensions to our situation is that private sector business news was not seen as legitimate and has only in the last 10 years or so, been reported in any depth in the press and is only now being covered in the broadcast media thanks to the pioneering efforts of CNBC Arabiya and other broadcast news organisations. Still, for example, video news releases are not accepted at all in the regional broadcast media. I have been lobbying for a decade to get VNRs placed with virtually no success. The irony is that some of the channels that have spurned the idea of placing VNRs actually run pre-packaged programming from Europe consisting entirely of VNRs. A couple of years ago I had a discussion with one of the people responsible for programming on Dubai Television and asked him if they would consider running VNRs. He categorically rejected the idea. Not long afterwards I was watching a program on cars that came from Europe on Dubai TV and realized that the whole program consisted of VNRs from BMW, Mercedes, etc.
By the same token, the press has got to get off its high horse and recognize that public relations has a vital role to play in their business. There’s an unwarranted arrogance among a lot of journalists who think that somehow public relations output isn’t valid. If that were so, newspapers and magazines wouldn’t be filled with press releases. Public relations output provides an extremely valuable source of information on private and public sector activities. We are, in fact business journalists. We help organizations articulate their messages. We present issues and information that might otherwise be overlooked or glossed by reporters who don’t have the time to do the research and background for their stories. The press should be grateful to the hard-working public relations practitioners who provide their publications and broadcast organizations with news. In the West this is understood but in the Arab world, I have to say, the press needs to play catch up.
Finally, I would say that the advertising industry should get out of public relations altogether. Stop creating corridor PR companies and focus on your core business. Advertising agencies will never, ever be able to deliver quality public relations services. We are an altogether different kind of business, with different economies of scale and different disciplines.
What is necessary, in my view is for those of us in the industry to educate our colleagues in the press and, most importantly, our clients out in the market. This is not an easy task but the way to do it is by raising our own standards and not being afraid to stand up to wayward clients and refuse to sell bad stories.
In my view, the press and public relations practitioners are in the same business, serving the interests of the private and public sector by disseminating information.
With the emergence of independent public relations practices and the entry of global PR companies, either through direct equity participation or affiliation, the image of public relations has changed superficially but many of the same old attitudes and practices remain entrenched. Many practitioners have tried to compensate for having no advertising revenues as bargaining chips by building up very strong personal ties with the media. There’s nothing wrong with that up to a point but one hears clients over and over again say, when they give you a duff, uninteresting story that has no news value, “Well, you should use your ties with the media to get this in.” I’m not going to tell you what I want to tell them, but they are, after all, clients and they pay us to get exposure and we do our best, but this approach is unsustainable. Today in markets like the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia the press is inundated with dozens of press releases daily. Every single one of them is important to the client. PR agencies are under intense pressure to get coverage come hell or high water and in some cases they choose hell. By this I mean that some companies resort to bribery, which is a horrific practice that does untold damage to our business but exists here and elsewhere in the Arab world. We won’t do it as an agency and we’ve suffered for it but I know of other companies that do and I have to say, I can understand why they do it. Someone once was praising one of our colleagues in Dubai to me, saying, “He can get his daughter’s birthday on the front page of the business section!” My reaction was, “If that’s the case, then there’s something deeply wrong with the environment we’re working in.”
In this situation everyone is culpable: the PR industry, the Media and the Market. But as this business is our bread and butter we need to take the lead in changing the situation. We have to stand up to clients and start putting down ground rules. You have to be able to say to your clients that the story they’re asking you to place has no news value. But then you’ve got to offer them an alternative, a more creative way of getting their message across. We also need to educate the press as to what we’re really about. We are not promoters or crypto-advertisers. Our business is the business of commercial journalism. One of the other historical dimensions to our situation is that private sector business news was not seen as legitimate and has only in the last 10 years or so, been reported in any depth in the press and is only now being covered in the broadcast media thanks to the pioneering efforts of CNBC Arabiya and other broadcast news organisations. Still, for example, video news releases are not accepted at all in the regional broadcast media. I have been lobbying for a decade to get VNRs placed with virtually no success. The irony is that some of the channels that have spurned the idea of placing VNRs actually run pre-packaged programming from Europe consisting entirely of VNRs. A couple of years ago I had a discussion with one of the people responsible for programming on Dubai Television and asked him if they would consider running VNRs. He categorically rejected the idea. Not long afterwards I was watching a program on cars that came from Europe on Dubai TV and realized that the whole program consisted of VNRs from BMW, Mercedes, etc.
By the same token, the press has got to get off its high horse and recognize that public relations has a vital role to play in their business. There’s an unwarranted arrogance among a lot of journalists who think that somehow public relations output isn’t valid. If that were so, newspapers and magazines wouldn’t be filled with press releases. Public relations output provides an extremely valuable source of information on private and public sector activities. We are, in fact business journalists. We help organizations articulate their messages. We present issues and information that might otherwise be overlooked or glossed by reporters who don’t have the time to do the research and background for their stories. The press should be grateful to the hard-working public relations practitioners who provide their publications and broadcast organizations with news. In the West this is understood but in the Arab world, I have to say, the press needs to play catch up.
Finally, I would say that the advertising industry should get out of public relations altogether. Stop creating corridor PR companies and focus on your core business. Advertising agencies will never, ever be able to deliver quality public relations services. We are an altogether different kind of business, with different economies of scale and different disciplines.
What is necessary, in my view is for those of us in the industry to educate our colleagues in the press and, most importantly, our clients out in the market. This is not an easy task but the way to do it is by raising our own standards and not being afraid to stand up to wayward clients and refuse to sell bad stories.
In my view, the press and public relations practitioners are in the same business, serving the interests of the private and public sector by disseminating information.
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