PR Agencies, The “B-S” Factor and Lagging Farther Behind

Public relations agencies. Clinging desperately to decades-old methods, sidelining staff training because it cuts into billable hours and getting farther and farther behind fast-moving digital media trends.

Most agencies today have so-called digital teams. They’ll claim to be at the “forefront” of anything online. In reality, it’s just the “B-S” factor turned up full blast. Pull back the veil and you will find few agency people with deep experience or practical accomplishments, even now, in the online world.

Here’s an example. Stuff like this is repeated many times each day:

BoomerCafe.com has been online for more than 12 years as an online magazine for baby boomers with active lifestyles. Former ABC News correspondent and my old friend Greg Dobbs and I launched BoomerCafe.com in 1999 because we felt AARP was doing a lousy job of connecting with baby boomers. They still are. And, over those years, we have published and given voice to literally hundreds of stories from among America’s 78-million baby boomers – the largest and most affluent demographic group in the U.S.

Not only do we invite stories from baby boomers but we also reach out to PR agencies for stories. Would seem natural, right? Wrong. Very wrong. Even though we have clear submission guidelines on the site, PR people – consumed with pushing out stuff – never seem to recognize the persuasive influence of a real story.

What this reveals is how out-of-sync PR agencies are with what clients expect and what the media needs. Our needs for BoomerCafe.com are always eclipsed by what PR people want to promote. It’s been that way for years, and journalists at news organizations everywhere complain about this clueless behavior by PR people.

The other day, a person at the large PR firm of MSL Group Americas posted a public comment to BoomerCafe.com addressed to Greg and me. She suggested that we do a story on our “blog” about their client, P&G Brands, about Crest and Oral-B. BoomerCafe.com is not a blog … but that must have been in her script. She was just doing what she’d been told to do, no doubt.

It was really nutty because she posted the comment in relation by an essay by NPR’s Scott Simon about 9-11. Toothpaste and a thoughtful piece about the terrorist attack?! Naw, there was no connection, and we blocked it from appearing.

Clearly, this lady at MSL had so little knowledge about websites that she did not comprehend the difference between a public comment to a story and using the Contact page. I guess she just wanted to generate billable hours against the client by saying she had contacted online magazines.

I hope the MSL account person doesn’t get yelled at because the underlying problem is with the agency’s leadership, methods and, yes, ethics.

MSL Group Americas claims on their website to have “industry-leading experts, cutting-edge tools.” That’s barely a lucid statement and means nothing. Just PR babble, more B-S.

I have been in the business of strategic communications, not PR, a long time, and I don’t understand why PR agencies are not acting smarter, particularly in this digital era that presents so many opportunities to help clients. They are, to the contrary, clinging to decades-old PR tactics that rarely were ever effective in media relations.

Out of both kindness and a sense of pity, I emailed the person at MSL that if she would read our submission guidelines and send us a baby boomer-oriented story about Crest and Oral-B, we would consider it. Not surprising that I haven’t heard back from her. It’s happened before … PR people don’t want to be distracted by suggestions that might actually help their clients, I suppose.

I wonder what a large company, like P&G, pays MSL each month for such amateurish service … $75,000 … $200,000 a month? Possibly more?

P&G deserves a better agency. Clients in general should be have higher expectations from their agencies and demand better performance.

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Tags: BoomerCafé, Featured

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