If more than 5 of the below sound familiar, there’s a good chance you might have forged a career in public relations…
- Your phone recommends articles based on your clients’ sectors – more than once I’ve woken up on a Saturday morning to phone notifications on rumoured interest rate changes, or the best types of carpet fibres for pet owners. What’s even worse is, I actually read them!
- When there’s a company scandal, your first thought is for the PR team – nevermind the customers getting swindled, what about the poor PR person who’s got to try and put together a reasonable holding statement on this mess?!
- You’ve got a bank of knowledge in very niche areas – and you can’t help sharing it with your long-suffering family and friends. I remember being sat outside a sunny pub garden and someone admired the decking. Before I could stop myself I was rambling about the UV stable properties of composite decking over traditional materials.
- You have nightmares about misspelt names in your coverage – or sending that pitch to the wrong person. Oh the relief when you wake up! (and yes I have checked my sent folder just to make sure).
- You find yourself critiquing company statements – “Ooh that’ll get people’s backs up, I wouldn’t have phrased it like that! And, they’ve announced it on a Friday afternoon, they’re obviously hoping people will forget about it by Monday!”
- You’ve still got Google Alerts set up for old clients – like stalking an ex on Facebook, you tell yourself you’ll remove them soon, but ‘soon’ never comes and you find yourself spying on their new coverage at 4pm every day.
- You’ve felt the fear of a broken embargo – it’s a unique feeling and not one I wish upon anyone. You went to the trouble of bolding and underlining your embargo date. You might have even put it in red ‘just to be sure’. But unfortunately it can happen. And even more unfortunately, it always seems to be at the weekend!
- You’ll willingly get out of bed at 7am on a Sunday morning to buy a newspaper – even with a hangover. Just for the thrill of seeing your coverage in print.
- Your brain has a virtual folder with answers for the ‘why aren’t we in this’ question – it doesn’t matter how large your share of coverage is compared to your competitors, or whether the journalist happens to be their sister, we’ve all been asked it and have bullet points stored in the back of brains on how to respond.
- You’ve lost count of the amount of times you’ve had to explain that PR does not stand for press release! I feel my eye start to twitch every time. Why does it bother us so much?!
But we wouldn’t have it any other way, right?!.
