This entire blog post (which I fear will drag on) can be summed up with one observation: my, I have noticed a lot of nepotism in PR lately. I am wondering whether Twitter has increased nepotism in our industry, by giving us the ability to create virtual cliques. We roam in packs, we do. Or it could be that Twitter just makes those packs easier to identify.
This is something that politicians have long been accused of. Nepotism is the easy road – hire those you know, and you know what to expect. But is it in the interests of your constituents? Obama was practically elected on the back of taking the anti-nepotism high road. His book The Audacity of Hope took me about three hours to read, I was so hungry for someone that ‘got this’ after Bush - who recognised the damage and wanted to reverse it. And he's no hypocrite; by appointing Hillary Clinton he let a valuable lesson sink in.
In PR, we tend to give exclusives to journalists we’re friends with. We are more likely to pitch ‘good’ stories to journalists we’re friendly, even chummy with. Increasingly, as journalists cross over to the ‘dark side’ of PR, and as PRs try to make a name for themselves as, ahem, ‘social media experts’, we are not just chums, we’re also business partners.
Is this making nepotism even more prevalent in our industry? What's the real impact? For some, I think it limits the ability to meet our real objective: raising visibility amongst new influencers for our clients.
I raise a specific example: creating a new 'award', and then giving it to yourself. People in other industries would probably find that incredible, but in PR it seems the norm.
Awards aside, editorial is far more important. Yes, PR is all about personal relationships and retaining professional connections. It's more important in some countries than others; the UK being high on this list. But if a PR agency simply gives stories to its business partner journalists, and the journalists tell people in the market this PR agency is the best at what it does, is that PR agency really achieving anything other than slapping itself on its own back? What do the clients get out of this situation?
When you ask people in the media scene their views on ‘key influencers’ the list is sometimes so nepotistic, it makes me feel queasy.
PR gurus – do you have a formula for avoiding this? How do you ensure your pitching is democratic enough? There are plenty of agencies out there that aren’t guilty of being overly-nepotistic. How do you ensure you’re not, as social media blurs the lines between PR and journalism?
I appreciate any thoughts on this matter and I’m not pretending I have all the answers. I just try to always meet new people to pitch and I try to spread the love of exclusives around as best I can. My first priority with granting exclusives is the audience of the publication, not who I know and like, because after all, serving my clients has to be my first priority. Is there another way?
