I attended an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce luncheon this week. One of the guests on my table was telling me how they had planned a few months ago an important launch with high media attendance expected. The ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘who’ of the launch had all been carefully planned specifically to be convenient to the media.
On the morning of the launch, the death of Michael Jackson was announced in Australia… Unlucky! Very unlucky! Even though the Australian company had a high profile, all journalists cancelled attendance to the launch which just quickly went down the drain. As much as we’d love to promise our clients great media interest, we never know what ‘more important’ news story will suddenly switch all eyes and ears elsewhere.
Fortunately for us, dramatic events don’t happen regularly. Have you ever had an event cancelled or unsuccessful because the media was dragged to some other big story?
Too true, Kim – I remember several years ago when I started as an intern in the PR industry and I was working with a team on the launch of a fairly important medical announcement. As it turned out, the afternoon before it was due to launch, Steve Irwin was killed in that freak stingray accident – consequently, very little coverage!
I think that’s the risk with PR events, launches, stunts, etc these days – unless it really is brilliant there’s no guaranteeing media will turn up to cover it. And I imagine this will continue to be the case going forward as journalists find themselves under even more pressure to produce content and time is at a premium.
When discussing such events with clients, the risk vs return needs to be well and truly analysed.
Thanks for your comment Roger. Your example is so spot on!
I suppose it comes back to managing our clients’ expectations and clearly explaining how the media operate.
Kim and Roge, you both make an important point on the need to manage client expectations when it comes to organising events.
Take for example our involvement in the Sebel Surry Hills launch event. Several key journalists had RSVP’d and assured me that day they would be there. At the end of the night although many journalists did show and the night was a success, a decent number of media tags were still sitting on the table front of house. What had happened between 3pm and 7pm I still don’t know.
What I do know is that you simply can not rely on the media to show up and at the end of the day you can’t drag them to your event either. Which brings us back to managing client expectations. Unfortunately there is no guarentee that the media will show on the day and it is up to the PR agency to make that very clear to their client.
On the other hand, a polite “I’m sorry I won’t be able to attend” from the media before the event would be nice if one is planning not to make it!
I totally agree Kim. It applies even on a local level. I remember when I was working on the Sunshine Coast in QLD and we were launching a local medical centre and the Premier resigned on the same day. What should have been a positive media story about much needed medical facilities for the area got totally ignored. But that’s the way it goes sometimes.