Maybe. Maybe not. Mahalo poohbah Jason Calacanis says to do exactly that in this Silicon Alley Insider article (thanks to Wil Reynolds over at Seer Interactive for the heads up on this one).

I agree with a lot of what Jason says in the piece … up to a point. Of course, part of his PR strategy is to be provocative, so to say “fire your PR agency” makes sense for him … but probably not for most companies.

There aren’t many execs out there like Jason, meaning there aren’t many execs out there who are able to speak to the media with infectious enthusiasm while thinking on their feet.

That’s where a good PR company comes in — and I hasten to add (having done a lot of PR work over the years) that PR is a subset of marketing, not something that acts apart from the rest of the company’s marketing efforts.

PR gets a bad rap, mainly because most people misunderstand what it is. “Public relations” would be better termed “media relations” to reflect the fact that PR is that component of the overall marketing communications effort to express the company’s DNA to business and the public online, in print, on the radio and on television in ways other than pure advertising.

I have seen and heard about a lot of situations over the past two years or so in which companies dump a lot of dollars down a black hole because they want to go with a big PR firm that will land them the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Wrong! Here’s a corollary to Jason’s point #10 in his article:

Embrace the small boutique PR firms — they’re the ones who will absorb the DNA of your company and be able to communicate it to the outside world. The big firms? Not that there aren’t good ones out there, but more often than not you’re a small fish in a big pond, they write up a few standard releases, send something out over BusinessWire and they’re done with it.

That’s not PR, that’s not media relations, that’s not marketing communications … that’s just feeding the workflow and covering their overhead.

Takeaway for marketers: Any PR/media relations professional worth your dollars will (1) marinate themselves in what your company does, (2) look at your company as a genuine partner, not a client, (3) look at themselves as an extension of your company, not a disconnected agency, (4) help shape the stories and the news that will achieve maximum exposure in the media and (5) tell those stories — and enable your company spokesmen to tell those stories — with passion and humor and expertise that stands apart from the pack.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 9:08 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Rants 'n' Such.