PR pros’ hottest takes on hiring, press releases, measurement and more

I took to LinkedIn to ask PR pros for their most controversial, counter-intuitive and downright spicy takes on the industry.

And y’all delievered.

Nearly 300 professionals shared their thoughts on the state of the industry, from who makes for the best hires to whether or not press releases still matter.

So many people responded, we can’t fit it into one article. So enjoy these hot takes and come back for part two.

Hiring

Mike Petchenik is a media consultant.

This will piss off veteran PR folks who never worked as journalists:

Ex-journalists make for the best PR pros.

Linda Zebian is head of comms at Muck Rack.

If you want to hire the best talent, hire from an agency.

Caitlin Haskins is vice president, AI, big data & cloud, at 10Fold Communications.

PR needs less people who got into the work because they “like people” or “building relationships” and more people with data and analytics skills that can reverse engineer what reporters, publications, and buyers want to know.

Jocelyn Disque is vice president at Touchdown PR.

Asking for years of experience in strictly one vertical makes you miss out on high quality PR pros who will bring creativity and unique perspectives

Measurement

Scott Moody is director of communications strategy at The Variable.

You should never use “increase brand awareness” as a goal or objective if you’re not willing to invest in actually measuring brand awareness.

Leslie Campisi is co-founder of Beginners.

The PR industry’s self-obsession with metrics that “prove our value” has done much, much more harm than good.

 Alvaro Bendrell is director of digital communications at Enel North America.

PR only works if the organization is willing to play the long game and your goals go beyond sales.

Adam Cormier is principal at JAC Comm.

Share of voice is one of the most useless metrics, and most comms teams “game” the system anyway. Stop trying.

Marcus Hardy is director at Intrepid.

Most of the metrics we use — by choice or by obligation — are completely hollow mirages. We over-index on quantitative to try to mime digital marketing because the entire world has been trained to think “🗿 BIG NUMBER GOOD 🗿” is at the heart of all professional and personal achievement. Meanwhile, we criminally underutilize qualitative, even if we know better.

Jennifer Hawton is public relations manager at PEMCO.

Public relations is measurable.

I often hear people say it isn’t and that usually comes down to one of three reasons:
1) They don’t know how to measure.
2) The lower numbers compared to social media/ads/lead-gen make them nervous.
3) The lack of direct causation makes measurement seem undoable.

Allie Clouse is account manager at Pierce Public Relations.

Reporting inflated metrics (self-reported media reach, email analytics warped by spam filters and unexplained website traffic) undermines your ROI conversations.

Press releases

Shannon Gierhart is a fractional CMO.

Most press releases are actively harmful to most companies’ communications efforts. They’re written in an artificial, jargon-heavy style that no human would ever use naturally, they force communications into a rigid format that serves no real purpose, and they signal to journalists “this is boring corporate news you can ignore.”

Teresa DeJohn is head of marketing & PR at Locus Fermentation Solutions.

Newswires are a waste of money. So many times, companies think they have to spend thousands to send a PR out on the wire because it’s what’s always been done. Then they get excited about the number of impressions and big-name news outlets listed. In reality, while there are some small SEO benefits, wire placements basically have no value, and the so called “placements” basically don’t exist. The only way to get true publicity is through personalized pitching.

Anna Rice is a public relations and communications consultant.

The press release is getting a second wind now that AI is trained on publicly available text. Because your press release content will be used to inform responses from chatbots, easy-to-understand and straightforward language will become more important than ever.

John Perilli is senior vice president at Prosek Partners.

Press releases are awesome.

Clay Kuntz is associate vice president at FINN Partners.

That press release is probably a blog post

Media relations

Jeanne Meyer is interim chief strategy officer at DiGennaro Communications.

“No comment” is a terrible way to say no comment.

Andrew Petro is account director at Matter Communications.

Relationships don’t carry the weight they used to. If the story isn’t relevant or newsworthy, no amount of rapport will change that. A strong pitch beats a strong relationship every time.

Whitney Wells is senior vice president at Hotwire Global.

Just because your messaging worked to land $100M in funding, it doesn’t mean it’s right for media.

Andrew Graham is founder and head of strategy at Bread & Law.

Why would you ever want to talk to a journalist?

Karl Oczkowski is founder and principal at  KJ FOSTER.

Spray and pray isn’t dead.

Yes, most of the time, it’s a bad approach, especially in isolation. But, if you have a large media list of engaged/relevant journalists, and you’re going out with something big, do targeted, bespoke outreach to select media and then spray and pray the rest of your list. Not something to do regularly, but something worth considering for the occasional, marquee release or announcement.

Heather Sliwinski is founder and principal at Changemaker Communications.

Friday is the best day for pitching.

Natalie Kozma is account director at Codeword.

Stop chasing the news cycle so much. Too many PR strategies rely on “newsjacking” and reacting to the trending topic of the day. The tactic certainly deserves a place in your strategy, but can go off the rails really quick when you don’t have any filter guiding which moments to jack– and will lead to jack sh*t by way of results that move the needle.

Akeem Anderson is senior vice president and head of digital at H/Advisors Abernathy.

Too many PR professionals don’t know what news is, making most proactive pitches too vapid, inconsequential or boring to consider.

Heather Pocorobba is corporate communications manager at Cvent.

Press coverage is rarely the most impactful way to get your message across.