I remember staying in a New South Wales country town a few years ago with a friend who was the local GP. When he faced the prospect of going around the street to pick up the Sunday night fish and chips, he asked me to go into the shop as the proprietor always wanted a free consultation about his bad back.
I sometimes feel like that when I am cornered at a social function with the question ‘How do I start a PR program for my business?’
A few years ago the big thing in generating new business leads was networking and experts emerged to tell all of us unsuspecting small business people, how to do it.
If the whole movement had have been started by the printing industry I would have thought it was a very clever promotion as it must have moved millions of business cards.
The song “Everything old is new again” was written by Peter Allen and Carol Bayer Sager and was first released in 1974.
The same sentiment can be applied to many of the functions we perform in public relations today and how we did it in the ancient times when I first came into the game.
There is no doubt that the Internet has revolutionised public relations and what we do today, but when I first started in PR it wasn’t a total desert.
What makes a perfect client for a public relations consultant like me?
Sure I could be serious and trot out the need to set realistic objectives, communicate a message, have a good story to tell, news is news and all that stuff, but I usually take the light-hearted approach and say this:
“My perfect client is a benevolent dictator, who agrees with my point of view and has an unlimited budget”.