Advertainments Anonymous

I read the news today, oh boy, about how the anchors on American ‘news’ station Fox have what look like McDonald’s branded beverages on the desk in front of them while they read their auto-cues to credulous breakfast time viewers throughout the Land of the Free.

It’s tacky. It’s fake. Only morons would fall for such plastic PR. Well, that’s the angle of the piece at least, which has a basic sub-context that runs: ‘let’s all pretend to be outraged but then scoff at the dumbass Yanks’.

Of course, the paper running the story (the Guardian) is really telling its readers that Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, is an unscrupulous scumbag who is controlling the media, ruining society and getting rich off the back of it.

There is nothing new about product placement. It happens all the time, everywhere, yes even in the Guardian. That’s just PR in action.

Product placement certainly happens in the more mundane world of B2B publishing. We’re writing about something, our readers want an unbiased report, getting people to speak negatively about stuff is practically impossible, getting people who produce stuff to speak positively about it is easier than breathing. PRs know this, yet refuse to understand why we don’t really want to speak to their client who produces Widgets when that’s what we’re writing about.

“Surely, if you’re writing about Widgets, you should speak with my client the Widget firm?” – seems reasonable, logical even.
“Well, maybe I can speak with one of the end users. It would add a lot more credibility to the story.”

In the world of Bad PR this goes one of three ways:

Way one: The PR promises a chat with an end user and then elbows in the client. Then the end user pulls out at the last minute. But guess what? The VP of marketing for the Widget firm is still available.
Way two: The client is unwilling to speak ‘on the record’, it’s too commercially sensitive apparently. But guess what? The VP of marketing for the Widget firm is still available.
Way three: There are no end clients. But guess what? The VP of marketing for the Widget firm is still available.

The boundaries between advertising and editorial are blurring. I work on a publication that makes money through advertising. Print advertising is dying on its arse apparently. Yet the number PR agencies is growing. Every firm says that they’re relevant to their target publications, they crave the readership’s attention. But they won’t buy an ad. We won’t exist for very long if we start producing ed for ad rags. The readership will fall away and you will have lost your channel to market and then the PR will no longer serve a purpose to their client. Everyone loses.

Buying ads should be part of the PR’s arsenal. Even if the publication isn’t actually covering your client’s specialist subject that month. If nothing else they will help keep the publication you’re trying to get your client mentioned in alive.

It’s not just cricket!

I got a classic this morning. As some of you may know (what am I talking about? Nobody reads this blog… it’s like screaming your despair into the empty night) there’s a test cricket series on at the moment, between England and South Africa. A while back, I got an email from the UK agency for a large firm asking me if I’d like to be their guest for the first day of the Oval test.

Yes, indeed, I said. I love going to the cricket and my mind drifted off to a great day I spent as the guest of 3UK during the triumphant 2005 Ashes series (also at the Oval test). No fancy stuff, just seats in the crowd, watching Flintoff smash Warne all over the park. Our hosts that day were exemplary; friendly and funny, they brought sun cream with them and kept up a steady supply of watered down lager. It was right out of the top drawer. Before the day all they did was send me a ticket. Afterwards, they thanked me for coming and I thanked them for their hospitality.

But it looks like this year things are going to be a little bit different, and not just in terms of the England team’s performance. I just got a call that went like this:

PR: “Hi, this is XXXX from XXXX PR, calling on behalf of TeleCorp*. I know you’re coming to the cricket with TeleCorp and I was just wondering if you’d like a catch up with their head of internet before the cricket?”

ME: “What, actually on the morning of the cricket?”

PR: “No, beforehand. He’s actually free on Friday and I thought that, well, you’re coming to the cricket and you might like a briefing, you know, before the cricket. Just so you know what’s going on… ahead of the cricket, perhaps.”

Jeez, come on. That’s bodyline PR, that is. Technically legal, but painful, aggressive, not a little desperate and certainly not in the spirit of things. You’ve invited me to be your guest, to spend time with your executives for a WHOLE DAY. You didn’t invite me to be your guest on the understanding that I’d have to have a totally pointless briefing beforehand as some kind of pre-emptive punishment for my guilt in accepting your offer.

You don’t ask somebody out for dinner and then phone them the week before telling them to bring some johnnies because, you know, they are coming out for dinner with you and you thought maybe it would be a good idea to get some johnnies ahead of them coming out for dinner with you. Because they did accept your invitation, after all.

“Fair’s fair, love. I bought you dinner. Time for you to do your bit. Just a quick one off the wrist if you don’t want to go the whole hog. Shouldn’t take long, I’m usually pretty quick off the blocks. Then we can get coffee and petit fours.”

No, that wouldn’t work at all. And that phone call this morning, that didn’t work either.

It was miles wide.

* Not the firm’s actual name.

Meetings: more than three’s a crowd

It seems straightforward enough. I arrange with PR firm to meet with one of their clients (because I think it’s going to be relevant to what I’m doing) and agree on venue and time. Venue could be either PR’s offices or, preferably, somewhere else that’s quiet and you can get a coffee or - if everyone’s up for it - a beer; basically anyplace that is not where I work and is within easy reach. (One reason for agreeing to meetings in the first place is to get out of the office.)

So far, so good. When I arrive at the meeting, the only person I want to speak to is the one I intend to quote. I don’t particularly want the PR account manager to be there but I realise he/she has a job to do as well: check what the client is saying; follow up on any unanswered questions; appear to be busy; and, it has to be said, pick up the tab. No problem. Fine.

What I don’t want to see on my arrival at the meeting, particularly when an alcoholic beverage is not on the agenda, is a crowd scene worthy of Ben Hur.

For a start, it’s not a good idea to have more than one account manager there. It’s highly unlikely anyway, Bad PR, that this trick alone will convince the client you’re channelling lots of resources towards them and giving them their money’s worth. All it does is make the senior exec even more reticent to speak freely if there’s more than one PR scribbling feverishly on their notepads. This then diminishes the prospects of editorial coverage.

The problem is made worse when the in-house PR bod (or bods) are also in attendance. Throw into the meeting the junior management team as well, who are keeping the senior exec company on his trip abroad, and the whole thing becomes deeply unpleasant.

For one thing, such a scenario usually sets off a competitive urge among the eager-to-impress PRs and company lackeys to chip in with opinions of their own (but think will chime with those of the senior exec, the guy I’ve come to interview, and so impress him).

When these annoying interruptions happen, I always make an elaborate gesture of putting my pen down on the table. When the senior exec speaks, I pick it up again. Even I’m not so rude as to tell you to shut up to yer face!

But more irritating still is when I sense that the meeting’s spectators, sitting at my side, are darting their eyes intermittently towards my notepad to see what I’ve written. Let me say it again: this is DEEPLY UNPLEASANT.

I wish I could say that over-crowed meetings such as these are rare but it seems to be common Bad PR practice. If more people are going to come along than the account manager and the intended interviewee, please have the courtesy to notify the journo in advance. He can then make an informed decision as to whether he wants to have five pairs of eyeballs staring at him when he’s asking a question.

It seems only fair because it’s common courtesy to notify people in advance when someone CAN’T make it to a meeting.

Exclusives for all!

Article placement is an increasingly popular trick in the PR’s stacked deck. In fact I know of at least one firm that does nothing else. At regular intervals they send me unsolicited offers of freebie articles written on behalf of their clients on topics so closely related to the clients’ actual products that, if the topic and the products were people, sexual relations between them would cause a major scandal. And possibly result in a hideous deformity. Which is not a bad way of classifying these articles.

The beauty of these features, none of which have been written at the time the pitch is sent, you’d hope, is that they’re always ‘exclusive’. It’s a funny old word, ‘exclusive’. It’s been so thoroughly flogged by marketing pros for such a long time that it’s almost ceased to hold any meaning. It’s a bit like ‘amazing’ or ‘fantastic’.

The meaning they wish to convey, of course, is that only you—the lucky recipient of this email—is privileged enough to have the opportunity to publish this old flannel. This rather falls down when you realise that every one of your team has received the offer and, in all probability, you could name another twenty hacks who were BCC’d as well.

Technically, perhaps, the PR is right. It’s exclusive in the sense that you’ll be the only one who publishes it, should you accept the offer. But the only way that would make you special would be by proving that you have commissioning skills so pitifully underdeveloped that they’re probably of interest to medical science.

In the past it’s occurred to me that it would be a good idea to orchestrate a kind of bidding war for one of these features, whereby everyone on the mailing list responds simultaneously that, yes, they would like to use that feature on an exclusive basis. It would be interesting to see how the PR would handle it, once the spasm of sweet, blinding ecstasy had subsided, leaving them quivering and red cheeked, like a really good, well, you know.

But ultimately it would be cruel, for it wouldn’t get published as part of the experiment and then they’d be lying all alone in the wet patch feeling even worse than before. So we won’t do it.

Statistically you stand less chance of placing one of these articles than correctly picking out a specific molecule from a golf ball with your eyes closed. And as every school boy knows, it takes roughly the same number of molecules to make up a golf ball as it would take golf balls to make up the Earth.

Admittedly, you could look at the forward features list and time your emails accordingly. But this throws up two problems. First, you’d have to send more than one email, and you couldn’t use the same text for every recipient—which would be MORE WORK. And second, as you’ll see from previous posts, forward features lists hold no more actual information (and far fewer unintentional laughs) than the theories of L Ron Hubbard.

So I think the touting of an unwritten article to someone who hasn’t requested it, and won’t publish it, on a topic that doesn’t suit them at all has value only as a subject for philosophical debate, like the tree falling in the empty forest—itself as hackneyed a concept as the exclusive contributed feature.

Bullshit Bingo #3 - Utilize

The above word is utilized often in tech PR press release land. Once upon a time utilize used to be a useful word. It used to describe the action of using something for a purpose for which it hadn’t been designed. Like utilizing press releases to wipe your arse, for example.

These days, however, utilize just means use.

So while in most cases utilized is not technically being utilized incorrectly, it is still a bullshit bingo word utilized to make the writer look like proper IT person. People think this because it contains more syllables than use so must be more sophisticated and since it also contains a zed it must be more technologically advanced than use.

All it ends up doing is making the writer look like the sort of person who thinks it is cool to wear a mobile phone in a belt mounted hip holster.

Use the word use, it’s shorter and it means the same thing.

Don't stop buying IT. Ever.

We all understand the necessary evil that is the contributed article. For editors it is a way to fill the page without having to pay for it, or having to write it yourself. For PRs it is a way to impress clients. And for clients it is a sophisticated means by which to plant the seed of an idea in readers' minds and watch it germinate into a genuine and insatiable market demand for your product.

Or maybe not. Maybe, instead, it is a chance to throw dignity to the wind and beg at the feet of your customers. We are in a recession after all.

----- Original Message -----
From: xxxxxxxxxx
To: xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:32 AM
Subject: Article available on: The economic downturn and how IT can help

Hi xxxxxxxx

I have a very interesting article which you are free to use which looks at the current economic downturn and the ways in which businesses can use IT in order to resist it.

As 2008 continues to be overshadowed by the fallout from the US subprime market, we see banks tightening lending and consumers tightening their belts. But a market discontinuum is not universally bad news. In this article xxxx Technologies’ xxxxxxx xxxxx argues that companies should hold their nerve and resist slashing IT budgets just yet.

If you would like to see the 1,093 word article with a view to using it please call me on xxxxxx and I will email it over to you.

Kind Regards
xxxxxxxxxxxx

It’s good to talk

Good communications skills are essential in PR, right?

Why, then, do I regularly receive calls and emails often on the same day from different PRs at the same agency asking more or less the same questions?

Questions such as “what are you working on right now?” “can I have a features list?” “will you be attending the forthcoming smartphone exhibition in Earls Court?” “are you interested in meeting my client?” “do you want to come to a roundtable?” all have one answer and can be quickly disseminated among your cohorts.

What’s more, if I’ve called you up asking to speak to one of your clients about something in particular, how about a quick shout out to your colleagues, maybe I can speak to one of your other clients about it too. Or better still, one of your client’s customers – but a word to the wise – DON’T FORCE IT. If you don’t have any other genuinely relevant clients just be happy that I called up and asked to speak with the one I did.

All too often, it seems, PRs do not pay enough attention to internal communications, which is odd because they’re just as important as their external equivalents.

Talk to your colleagues, at the very least set up a centralised database.

The sound of a blank stare

I know what a blank stare sounds like because I heard one this morning, on the telephone. It was from a young lady who was most likely doing work experience at a PR house. Either that or a she was a new recruit who’ll almost certainly not see the other side of the probationary period. My name’s quite easy to pronounce, but she got it very wrong indeed, before asking to see a “synopsis for your volp”.

“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” she said.

And there it was: Almost inaudible, a faint whistle blowing back and forth down the phone line. The sound of a blank stare.

So I asked her to send me an email. We’ll see if she manages.

It’s not really fair to get work experience kids in to do journo ring-rounds. Ask any PR what they hate doing most and they’ll tell you it’s the ring-round, especially the one that – as sure as night follows day – comes in the wake of an emailed press release. It’s the telephonic equivalent of using the toilets on the last night of the Reading Festival when the hoover truck’s broken down. You’ve got to do it, even though it’s really unpleasant. It takes skill, resilience and grim determination, three things that your average 15-year old work experience girl probably doesn’t have.

So here’s what I’m going to do (because this stuff happens a lot). I’m going to get some work experience kids in here, whose sole task will be to answer the phone. Because if you’re going to get some poor child to phone me up who has no understanding of what she’s doing – and ought not to anyway, because the freedom of childhood is sacred and should be eked out for as long as possible – then I’m going to as well. They can talk to each other. Or not.

Blank stares are what teenagers are good at, after all.

A chat with the VP of Product Marketing? No thanks

For busy trade journalists trying to do a half-decent job, speaking to the Vice President of Product Marketing from Widget Company Ltd is about as appealing as root canal surgery. For not-so-busy trade journalists and for those not so dedicated, the appeal is clearly less.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the VP of Product Marketing, in the eco-system of company employees that self-respecting journos would want to speak to, is plankton.

The clues are in the job title: products and marketing.

And while I have come across many VPs and even some SVPs of Product Marketing, I have never run into a straight P of Product Marketing. At least not when it means President. Another reason, I think, for the discerning hack to view this rank of employee with suspicious and scornful eyes. There is absolutely no kudos in being a VP of anything, particularly when everyone from the office cat downwards is called it.

So why (oh why) do so many PR people sully their profession by offering a chat with Roger and Carl (common names among the VP of Product Marketing fraternity) when it’s going to do nobody any good?

It comes back to the bums-on-seats mentality of Bad PR. The more journos ticked off the list for Roger (or Carl) to speak to, the better they think they are doing their jobs and the happier they think their client will be.

“No, we can’t get the CEO to speak to you about the announcement but we have Roger,” chirps the Bad PR. “He is available to speak to you at any time.”

I bet he is, the poor bastard. Not only has his own company given him a wholly unenviable job to do but the Bad PR firm, because Roger is so easy to get hold of, has no qualms about volunteering him for a 5.00 am conference call his time to speak to us London-based hacks. (It is a well-known fact that all VPs of Product Marketing are based in America.)

OK, there are some exceptions when it might just about be acceptable to speak to Carl (or Roger). To do a bit of background research, perhaps, on a genuinely significant product development in the industry. Or maybe because the journo, out of idle curiosity, wants to know what the weather is like on the East (or West) coast at 5.00 am in the morning.

The plain truth is you are more likely to get a sexual thrill from reading annual reports than finding something Roger (or Carl) said worth quoting. This is mainly because VPs of Product Marketing, despite all their overt enthusiasm, are more reticent than Widget Company’s press releases about giving away any information that might be remotely useful.

“I don’t think we can name any customers at this stage, can we?” asks Roger to the half-asleep Bad PR person on the conf. call, drowsy because he/she thinks the job is already done by setting up the ‘interview’ in the first place. “No, not apart from the ones that are already in the public domain,” responds the Bad PR, trying in vain to match the enthusiasm levels of Roger.

I can imagine it must be difficult for PR firms to get hold of top management for interviews at short notice. That I can appreciate. What I don’t appreciate is being offered a chat with Roger or Carl as if they were acceptable replacements. “Ooh, you’ll like Roger,” coos the Bad PR account manager. “He’s been in the industry for a long time and can talk about general trends as well.”

This is a waste of everybody’s time.

The conference call

We know why PRs love conference calls. But then, we know why farts smell and it doesn’t make them any more appealing.

Conference calls, particularly across time zones, are patchy and prone to irritating delays. When they involve multiple speakers with similar accents it becomes practically impossible for the journalist to follow the thread of the conversation, never mind concentrate on what is actually being said.

Often PRs will insist on using a central table microphone/speaker unit thingy which ends up making the interviewee sound like he’s a train station announcer speaking into a toy walkie-talkie with his head in a bucket. Where do PR agencies get these devices? Argos?

We’re tech journalists writing for obscure B2B magazines, your clients might well be fairly senior within their organisation, but practically nobody outside their organisation has heard of them – that’s why they’re speaking to us. So let’s not pretend that they’re the missing team member in the Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Barack Obama bridge club.

We know you want to remain part of the relationship, not so that you can follow things up for your client or the journo, nor protect your client from unnecessarily probing questions. You want to remain part of the relationship to make it look to your client like you’re earning your bread. But if you brief your client properly and give us their number and a time to call ultimately it works waaaaaay better for everyone.

If your client is reluctant with that arrangement give them our number and a time to call. If your client still wants you to hold their hand, I suggest getting your client some much needed media training (I’ll do it for a very reasonable fee...) and informing them that a conference call is the conversational equivalent of a fart at a funeral.

The Bad Pitch Blog: Fast Five Q&A with Adweek’s Digital Editor, Brian Morrissey

This makes for excellent Bad PR reading.

The Bad Pitch Blog: Fast Five Q&A with Adweek’s Digital Editor, Brian Morrissey

Bullshit Bingo #2 - Architect

My wife is an architect. That means she designs and oversees the construction of buildings. Real buildings. What she does not do is work in IT.

In order to call herself an architect she went to university for six years and then completed a further year's professional qualifications. What she did not do was go on a course for three days in Ruislip and come out with an ACME/Microsoft Access certificate.

So it is understandable that my wife gets annoyed when people in IT call themselves 'architects' or when hapless PRs refer to a communications system or a circuit board as an example of 'architecture'. What do they think this is? The fucking Matrix?

Stop calling IT workers architects. Stop calling circuit boards architecture and, most importantly, stop referring to any changes to a circuit board as 'architecting'. Then, hopefully, when my wife is a looking for a new job and searches under 'architects', she'll find some jobs she spent seven years qualifying for rather than some rubbish IT jobs with annual salaries significantly higher than both of us earn in two years.

Bedtime Stories

The last time I needed anything reading to me out loud was when I was three or four and I couldn't read for myself. And that was a long time ago. Three decades, if you must know. So I'm buggered if I'm going to sit on the end of the telephone listening to a bored junior account manager reading in monotone from a piece of paper describing a technology that they clearly don't understand and in which I am almost certainly not interested. Especially on a sunny Friday afternoon when I've only got one hour and 38 minutes left to run on my weekly sentence. One hour and 37 minutes now.

When will these people learn that it takes real skill to read something in such a way as to disguise the fact that you're reading it. Especially when the text is along the lines of the following:

“Have you got a minute to talk about my client? They’re kind of a leading Internet application performance management company. They provide automated intelligent diagnostics for web applications and web site performance problems. They’ve just launched the Performance Analyzer, which provides unparalleled diagnostic insight and for the first time prescribes specific, real-time actions for restoring peak performance in web-deployed environments.”

I don't know what that means, and neither do you. So let's stop messing around. Stick to topics you understand if you're going to phone me up. Otherwise it's disappointing and embarrassing for both of us. Like a night I once spent in a hotel room in Milan. Uggh. Still gives me the shivers. I'd have preferred a bed time story.

One hour and thirty minutes.

Yankee doodle shandy

Today is American independence day, which puts me in mind of an example of chronically bad pr that occured on this day six or seven or eight years ago. I think.

An American PR had just started his career this side of the Atlantic so was obviously keen to make a good impression with the London contacts they had made prior to the transatlantic transfer. So it was no suprise when, on the fourth of July, we were invited out for some Independence Day drinks.

The PR told us the time and the place and we rolled up empty stomached and empty pocketed, in anticipation of a free night of booze and chips. The first surpirse of the night that was there was no sign of his PR colleagues. Fair enough, we weren't bothered. Secondly a lot of his American mates (civilians) were there. Fine. It's his corporate credit card we thought so if he wants to spend it on non-industry friends that's his lookout.

The third and nastiest surprise of the lot arrived shortly after. Hellos and introductions were made and then there was an awkward pause as we waited for our orders to be taken. And we waited. And we waited. And then we realised. Holy shit we have to buy our own drinks. He thinks we are actual friends.

As far as we're concerned this is a line that should very rarely be crossed (a bit like when the characters in Spooks start having relationships with civilians). Not only did we have to buy our own drinks, we had to buy the PR drinks and we had to buy the PR's friend drinks. Gee. Suss.

Needless to say we stayed on the shandies all night, waited for a respectable time (52 minutes) and then left to see our real friends. Seperately. Like British people.

God bless America.

The Daytrip to Nowheresville

Last post I mentioned the likelihood of someone attending a trip to a phone recycling plant in South Wales on a Friday afternoon being quite low. On a similar tip there are plenty of places that a central London-based journo is unlikely to bother going. Heathrow might be a convenient meeting point for your client, but it holds little allure for yours truly. Ditto Reading, ditto Doncaster, in fact ditto just about everywhere outside Zone 1. Unless, of course, it’s a plane ride away to somewhere cool sounding and involves an overnight stay.

Here’s a sorry story about a PR who thought the news was good enough on its own to drum up journalistic interest:

The corporate comms manager at my wife’s organisation thought a piece of positive news being announced at a launch would be good enough to drag journalists away from the comfort of their desks. The misapprehension may have come about due to the fact that the organisation is a charity, so is staffed by peopled that think beyond the boundaries of their own existence. They care deeply about something that most people (including most journalists) don’t even know exists as a problem. They would travel half way around the world for this sort of thing and they’d do it out of their own pocket. Unfortunately, they also assume that other people would feel the same if only they would open their eyes.

The PR sent a press release to trade and the nationals that the charity was launching a new initiative. The press release pretty much ticked all the boxes in terms of being Bad PR. The opening sentence mentioned a vague sounding launch. The next two hundred words described the charity and why it’s important. Then there was about the same amount of space devoted to the initiative itself. The time and location of the launch were tagged on at the end. The location was not a fancy restaurant or a pub, or a zoo, or indeed anywhere that sounded fun, it was a school in the Home Counties.

“What do you think?” I was asked the day before the launch, after the press release had been issued.
“I don’t think anyone will turn up,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Why should they?”
“Because it’s really important …[there followed quite long explanation about the vital work that the charity does] …and so journalists should be interested. It’s a real story.”
“But it says all that on the release.”
“They can meet the CEO and some of the people involved.”
“They don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t care.”

No one went.

In fairness, the missus is not a PR, and she was not involved in the issuance of the release, so none of this is her fault.

First, up at the top of the announcement should have been the words FREE and DAYTRIP. It’s not that we don’t like leaving the office for a jolly, but when we have to make our own arrangements it starts to get tricky. I know it’s not actually tricky to find out where something is, buy a train ticket, get yourself lunch and charge it all back to the firm, but it’s a hassle. Why would a journalist go to all that trouble when he could be sitting down checking his emails and drinking tea?

Second, there should have been mention of some nice lunch and some of the booze.

Third, don’t offer up the CEO, no one cares that he’s the CEO apart from you, him and his wife (even then, it’s debatable whether you or his wife care), bring him along and give him strict instructions to keep the chat light, unless he’s actually asked a searching question.

Fourth, if it is outside London, say you’ll send a cab to their flat and take them to the train station whereupon they will be met by a PR or if you think your jolly is good enough, just tell them to be at the station to meet the PR.

TOP TIP #1. Never set the time of the meet earlier than the journalist would normally be in the office unless you’re taking them somewhere really good. Tell them a PR will shepherd them around and make sure they’re back in London by 4:00, which is too late to go back to the office, but early enough for a quick drink if the day has gone well. If your budget extends, make it an over-nighter.

TOP TIP #2. Any of a daytrip’s perks should probably be emphasised in a light-hearted ring round. Don’t mention the news much during the ring round unless asked about it or unless it is earth shatteringly interesting—and not much is. If you don’t believe me, phone up your grandma or your uncle and tell them about the news and see how long it takes them to get bored out of their mind.

TOP TIP #3. Hassle free daytrips are more important than your news; free lunch and the booze are more important than the news; having a lie-in and getting home early are more important than the news. Bear in mind at all times that it doesn’t matter how important your client thinks the news is, journalists think the most important types of news are the very things you never want them to find out.