The slow, painful death of a press release in 22 days
An anonymous digital marketer details the bureaucratic hoops a press release has to jump through before it can be released, stale and no longer newsworthy, to the world.
I recently had reason to go through the process of preparing a press release for an Australian company which had been recognised with a major award by one of the world’s most successful technology corporations.
What resulted is the entirely true story of a soul withering and Kafka-esque tale of mega bureaucracy; a story so absurd it’ll make you… I really don’t know. All of my senses have been numbed at this stage. Cringe in acknowledgment of the utter pointlessness of existence, maybe? Or is that just me?
Here goes…
I work for an international NGO and have been through similar processes. I feel you for!
One stage we got a new person on board as senior spokesperson and he used to say to me ‘dont talk to anyone else in the org, just write this release and send out.’
I was thinking the same thing Huon… NGOs / development agencies are without doubt the most complex entity ever to evolve in this universe. I still have nightmares about being asked to do a ‘quick polish’ of reports entitled along the lines of: Empowering Agrarian Households Through Targeted Micro-development and Community Managed Cooperatives Within the Pig Rearing Sector of Such and Such Province. It would take at least 10 meeting to agree on the title alone – but still, I doubt even they would take three weeks!
Is the Tweet still awaiting approval?
Uptopia gold.
Yes I have seen this behaviour several times amongst such beauracratic organisations and disorganised people (they usually go together).
You haven’t got to the part of the story where the agency bills for services, it is never paid and the client asks for it to be re-sent again as they don’t have it, and then you wait another three weeks to find out it still hasn’t been approved and then another two weeks to find out their finance team has not received it so it has disappeared somewhere between the clients desk and finance desk.. and without a manually signed invoice finance cannot process it so you need to send the invoice through to client and it starts all over again. At this point numbness takes over the brain as well as body.
Well done anon, summed it up brilliantly. Reminds me of the time I was on a call with a client, discussing a particular piece of content we’d developed, at the local client’s behest. I will never forget his feedback.
“Look we love the booklet, but global have said we can’t publicly comment. So they were wondering if you wanted to buy it off us.”
Yes, this thing we had spent weeks writing, our client wanted us to pay him for, actually give him money for.
And he didn’t see the irony in that. You wonder sometimes with these big organisations….
Sure. Here’s my bill for the work. Shoot through your price.
Utopia?
22 days. Bloody Luxury! Try sending it to the Minister’s office for approval before release. If it’s something the Minister’s media advisor deems not a priority at the time, usually code for: I’m up to my left nostril in the lastest political media crisis and don’t have time to even look at it, then it can sit in the in-tray for weeks/months.
Then, without any warning whatsoever, the media advisor contacts you and wants the whole thing rewritten to ‘refresh’ the release. Almost as an afterthought at the end of the call, the advisor casually tells you the Minister needs it to be released in one hour. No problem – it’s just a 10 min rewrite. But then you need to get a Subject Matter Expert to ‘validate’ the new quote which supports the angle the Minister’s Media Advisor wants to hype. Then you need to get Head of Division approval, Head of Department, Legal, and Head of Comms sign-off. Then, if the announcement involves a third-Party, it is sent to them for their approval process. Any changes along the way and the whole loop starts again.
Having pulled senior people out of meetings, called others on mobiles for verbal approvals and generally harassed everybody to meet the deadline it’s back with the Minister’s media advisor. ‘Oh thanks for that. But (political) events have overtaken things and it isn’t great timing for the Minister to be making that announcement.
And there the media release sits … until a couple of weeks later the Minister’s Media Advisor calls: That release about (x). Can you update as it’s a bit stale now? Oh, and the Minister wants it released in an hour …
Simple solution. No PR flaks for Ministerial offices. Make the Ministers write their own releases.
In my work for the ‘other team’, I used to love a bit of payback for all the pain pollies and their PR depts put as through to get a simple quote. The simplest tactic would be, along the same lines as your story above, only the poor media officer finally gets back to you with the quote several hours after their supposed knock-off time but just before our deadline … but you accidentally-on-purpose leave it out. “Sorry about that, it must have been cut out for space reasons” ….
This is why my PR career retirement is imminent. So few shits are ever given. But the expectation is a huge steaming pile.
Seriously is ANY PR surprised by this?
Try being the Editor of an custom magazine where every article in a 100-page publication needs to be signed off by five different departments and it’s your job to make sure that the thing meets monthly deadline! The only way I have managed so long is to work with what I call the “DIFAL” system, which stands for “Do It First, Apologise Later”.
Beat this. International mining company commissions triple bottom line report. Commissions experienced external team to prepare report. Team prepares draft. Sends team to mining outpost for five days to clear contents with managers. Thirteen managers get involved. All want their say about their own areas … and those of everyone else. Commissioning PR manager leaves to head up big bank PR section. Clueless underling takes over. The brawls between HO and the outpost bog the whole process down. Costs are mounting. Christmas is upon us. Clueless underling says on December 21 that 40 copies of the final draft are required “immediately” for managers (yes, the company had that many) to mull over in the Christmas-New Year break. Frustration reaches new levels. End January a senior fixer-manager in the company phones with the blunt message: “We don’t have to do this so we’re not going to. Submit your invoice.” How much do you charge for frustration?
This is why PR people drink
The struggle is real.
The moral of the story is that Mega Corporations and big-party politicians are often not worth the effort. I work with small companies and entrepreneurs instead. They are nimble and much more fun to work with. They can be picky too, but they appreciate what you do for them and come back for more. The budget may be less, but you can get them a bigger result.
Care more about the impact you can make on the client and the world than about the money or the supposed prestige attached to mega-corp.
My advice for anyone else in this situation: try the mega-corp press release, but if it gives you a hard time, go to a boutique agency and get a journalist-written story that doesn’t need mega-corp’s approval.
This is the corporate world with legal responsibilities; a mistake can be costly. The PR function needs to have closer ties with the legal department and any others on the approval process, or set up a definitive process that ensures greater efficiency and responsiveness. Don’t forget the media is not the only target audience for the information.
The Department of Defence record I can prove is 19 days on a subject with no security, political, legal or financial connotations, or indeed, controversy of any kind.
The Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) in Afghanistan had held a shura (council meeting), including a meal, with local tribal leaders in Oruzgan Province.
The SOTG public affairs officer (a captain) duly wrote a brief media release on the shura. The SOTG commander was not authorised to release it (why?), nor the senior ADF officer in Uruzgan (colonel), nor the senior ADF officer in Afghanistan (brigadier).
Even the theatre commander in the Middle East (major general) was not authorised to do so, even on such an innocuous topic.
It duly went back to Canberra where it worked its way around the Department of Defence, including up to the Secretary and CDF.
It then went across to the Minister for Defence for final clearance.
The department then released it by email, some 19 days after it was written, but accidentally included the cover sheet showing all the clearance signatories and the dates they had signed off on it. There were some 14 signatures involved.
To cap it all off, they were unaware about the covering sheet, and the security breach involved (names of protected identities in the SOTG), until I pointed it out.
There was absolutely no reason why the SOTG commander (lieutenant colonel) could not have released it in the first place, immediately.
At worst it should have been able to be authorised in the Middle East Theatre of Operations.
The departmental and ministerial limitations involved were, and often remain, nothing short of farcical.
For operational effectiveness reasons, ADF media release authorisation should be delegated to the lowest possible level, generally the unit or formation commander involved. Just like it used to be before 1999.
I bet this was Microsoft.
Ah, The Office of Circumlocution strikes again.
“Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.”
>So few shits are given that a popular toilet paper company goes out of business.
Love it.
I prescribe more gin.
It’s not just large companies – working for a small state based company as a manager, i got sick of waiting for someone to make a decision, any decision would have been helpful!
Seen a lot of this type of decision making over the years. US multi-nationals waste a lot of money on lawyers for decisions that just require basic risk management. Have to say, press releases are a LOT easier to get approved than customer case studies.
Wow! That was quick.
Wasn’t too hard to pick this one.
https://exchange.telstra.com.au/aws-networking-competency/
Ha! Enjoyed this – filled me with incredible Christmas cheer 😉 That’s why I got out of PR in the early 90s and into employee/change communication.
Waaaaaay easier, as I usually just needed 3 people to sign stuff off because Things Had To Go Live: new transformation projects/IT systems/mergers etc, so briefings/presentations/videos couldn’t be delayed for some middle/senior person’s ego
When in doubt, the CEO signs it off. Made it simple… 🙂
Sad, but oh so accurate.
A fine account of what happens in all too many corporations, Government departments and agencies in Australia.
All about control and butt covering.
I receive a lot of these press releases and here’s the REAL heat breaker for your comms team. I skim read it and then bin it.
Some company receiving an award isnt news. It is an advertorial and any good editorial team knows that this stuff never gets published as most readers simply dont care.
So save yourself a lot of grief. Employ a comms person who has actually worked in a newsroom. Someone who actually understands what news is and how an editor thinks. you’ll avoid the wasted 22 days for nothing.
I’ve been on both sides of these situations, and this is pretty soul destroying for the content creator and agency. But here’s a question: as an agency what are you doing to change that equation, to bring insights and strategic alternatives to the table of the senior official comms person so they are able to make the shift with *their* internal quick-setting cement. How are you bringing to the C-suite this story – the degree to which the money they are paying you to prepare aforementioned ‘useless release’ is being flushed down the toilet? Or, as an agency are you happier to take the bad business, bank the payments and then write a cute piece in Mumbrella about it? Kudos for cake-eating and having, methinks. And switching to agency mode, where’s your account manager who is prepared to go side by side with the senior official comms person to the C-suite and say ‘things have changed, and here’s how we can get you a better result’. It’s a good piece, and I will certainly share with others, asking the question – if this is your agency, isn’t it time for a review?
Here at MegaCorp, a company that CARES* (*Trademark pending), we pride ourselves on our ability to rapidly respond to the news cycle. Congratulations to our agile PR team for this fantastically quick response.