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Part I: Forget the Godiva! Gifts for reporters: A nuisance and ethically improper
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Spending company resources on media gifts?
What exactly has public relations become? Certainly seems it's a race to get an editor or producer's attention before your competition, which undoubtedly turns into a gifting war.
Venture to any PR firm on any one day and you'll find an intern expertly gift wrapping a package -- under the watchful eye of an account executive -- to a reporter or producer. Additionally, these assistants will spend days purchasing luxurious gift wrap, tissue paper and packaging these items, oftentimes express messengering them to the recipient' s office in order to arrive in pristine condition. (Little do they know they'll be thrown around in the messenger center for hours or days before making it's way to said person's desk.)
Agencies spend incredible resources, be it time, effort, and their client's money to sweeten the deal with chocolates, flowers and balloon bouquets to journalists in the hopes it will win them good graces and a feature story, but how far is too far when dealing with the media? Do you feel they are compelled to consider your clients' products and services after receiving such a gift? Are you, in reality, alienating reporters when you -- in a reporter's own words -- "bribe" them into reading your release?
Below is a sampling of reporters' opinions, beyond the New York market, in order to convey the attitude of journalists and producers across the board and throughout the nation. Certainly, these editors ask that firms keep from mailing them irrelevant and unsolicited packages. Beyond having to sign, store, and handle the disposal of flowers and gifts, you can see it indisputably hampers productivity, especially in an industry where time and attention is the different between getting a scoop or being left out in the cyber-ether.
So perhaps the next time you consider blowing the budget on candy and trinkets, consider instead the kudos they'll receive from their boss when you pitch a fantastic story relevant to that reporter's beat and market. Creativity, dependability and thought is certainly what will keep reporters coming back for more.
Considering balloons?
“I can honestly say I have never booked a segment based on a freebie,” says Eric Berlin, CBS News’ Weekend Producer. “The segment has to make sense in order for it to make my air and I would rather have a PR person be able to articulate what the segment would be rather than get something in the mail.”
A journalist at a prominent New York daily newspaper added: “Sending a journalist something that has nothing to do with the brand you are selling is usually a waste of your time – and the journalist’s time. Most of the food and silly trinkets gets thrown away, though most of the booze gets kept. But nobody wants to be the journalist with flowers on their desk from someone who is pitching them a story. I do have a regulation bowling pin in my office that the representative for a bowling alley sent me when they opened, but I’ve never assigned a story about the bowling alley or even gone, for that matter. For a long time, the staff here would stockpile most of the swag and then it was sold at auction just before Christmas, with all the proceeds going to a charity in the city.”
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