Like all sequels this story contains elements of last outing.
I’m the hero, obviously…
The cast of villains is different, however, their actions – while not exactly the same as those that went before – are hauntingly familiar.
Over one month ago I met with a company that appeared to be doing something a bit different, interesting even. At the close of the meeting, I suggested that we had an opening for a contributed article.
This should be music to the ears of any right thinking PR man. It’s free publicity, where you get to write about your favourite subject.
Indeed, the PR man seemed pretty enthusiastic about the offer.
I think I left it a week and then emailed and informed them that I was serious, they really could submit something, but I’d need it by the end of the month.
They were still happy and, having been told the word count, said that they’d be handing the job over to their PR agency.
About a week before deadline, I emailed the agency to see how things were coming along. They asked for more time. Fortunately, I’d built in some slack. The original deadline had been the last Friday of the month, I gave the agency the weekend, plus a day. So Tuesday…..now well over one month after the first meeting and offer of contrib..
>> Hi Finisher: We will definitely have the article to you by Nov. 4th.
>>
>> Thanks again.
>>
Was the response of the agency. A day or two later, the PR emailed again if they could possibly reduce the word count from 1500 to 1000.
….er…so let me get this straight, you’ve had the best part of a month to write 1500 words about your client, and now a few days before the deadline you’re telling me that you can only realistically write 1000 words.
F*ck me, I could write the extra 500 words for them during my lunch hour if they bunged me a tenner. I didn’t say this of course. I said, “well, the word count is 1500 because we need to fill a page, 1000 words won’t fill a page’” – here I compromised – “how about 1250 and maybe you’ve got a nice image or two?” (…the story would genuinely benefit from a nice image or two).
Then….radio and email silence…nothing…..nothing for days…
Hmmm, maybe my insistence upon writing another 250 words over the 500 less than originally agreed word count has stumped him….maybe I was supposed to just say ‘OK send in a thousand words and we’ll whack in a SuDoku to fill the white space….’
On the afternoon of Nov 4th (the new deadline day I’d emailed the agency) – I got this response….
Hi Finisher: The Company’s Director of Marketing (copied on this email) is responsible for sending the final article to you. He understands the deadline is today.
Best regards,
Agency Bad PR
The director of marketing didn’t send me anything.
The morning of the day after deadline day I emailed the director of marketing asking for the feature…
I got nothing….no response…stitched up….now I had a big page to fill….two days after the deadline….
I scrambled around and managed to find something extra to fill the space…the designer laid it out, I proofed it and then signed it off, job done, (over the past week I have coordinated, edited, proofed and signed off 32, 1500 word features from a variety of sources….)
A day after all this, I got an email from the internal marketing guy asking for a further 24 hours to get his piece in…
So, to recap – the original meeting happened 44 days ago. In that time, they’ve been unable to cobble together 1500 words about themselves. That’s 34 words per day guys….
This post comes in at a little over 700 words and it took me about five minutes to write. Surely 44 days is long enough to write a featurette about yourself????
I am now more than slightly sceptical about the prospects of this particular company delivering on their promises of bringing some really high end, expensive and complicated technology projects in on budget or on time.
The Pitch That Cried Wolf
7 years ago
3 comments:
This post comes at a rather timely, err, time for me. I recently went on a grad-school recruiting trip at a well regarded and well known institution (it rhymes with gale) and came away extremely disappointed. From gaffes about start times to parking procedures to a phantom class I spent the better part of an hour looking for, it was a complete disaster.
But can you really judge a school (or a company) by their admissions department (or PR department)? In one sense prospective clients have nothing else to go on, but I've known plenty of companies with fantastic sales/PR and terrible service.
Thoughts?
There are plenty of quantitative and qualitative perameters by which you can judge a firm.
Your grad-school recruiting trip sounds like my entire university life. I left the uni I graduated from (which was and still is among the more highly respected non-Oxbridge establishments in the UK) feeling ripped off at first, then deeply cynical about the point of higher education.
To answer your question in a word. Yes. And ...er no. If your only interaction with a firm is their PR dept, and their PR dept is rubbish, then even though they might have the best tech in the business, they're obviously organisationally dysfunctional since they've failed to grasp the importance of marketing, so they'll probably never sell anything.
You're bang on though, slick marketing if backed up with crap product is no good either.
Like everything in life, it's a question of balance...
If you get a chance to study at the school that rhymes with gale, grab it, because years later on your CV, employers won't know about the gaffes about start times and dodgy parking procedures, all they'll know is the brand. So in this instance, brand is more important than product.
Although, maybe I'm just being cynical!
Good point, that a bad PR department usually indicates a bad operation - if nothing else an operation that doesn't grasp the importance of PR.
As for the brand issue, I just visited a school that rhymes with garvard and loved it. I also plan on visiting the U. of the Windy City (chi-town) and while they don't have the same instantly recognizable brand, they do have a stronger academic reputation. In the end I may have to chose between the brand name with a great education and a better education with a significantly less recognizable brand (in the non-academic world, at least).
Thanks for the advice, and I love the blog!
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