A Week of Weak PR
by Paul McGoldrick
The oldest grumble of the technology journalist, about the world of flacks, is how many used to telephone the day after sending a FedEx package to make sure that it arrived… That has been replaced with the telephone call to make sure that an e-mail was received or, less frequently, an e-mail to enquire whether a package had arrived.
Most of the best flacks out there are not employees of the companies they represent, and while there are a few marginal players - mostly at the newish employee level - external agencies wouldn't stay in business if they were not doing their job right: The one major exception to that is an agency who represented a large European analog semiconductor manufacturer for a number of years - and completely fouled it up. It has recently been replaced by a smaller, healthier operation but the account executives seem to be having real trouble getting their client to understand what the US press wants.
During a trip last week, with six calls in one day, only one company had bad internal PR representation - where two weak people replaced one previous longterm employee - and one who had a truly marginal attitude to the press and our needs by removing an external flack and hoping that an agency in the UK can do the job effectively! Two out of six wasn't bad, but neither is it good when one-third of management obviously doesn't recognize what its public face looks like in the direction of its customers: Our readers. On the investor relations side of companies you see very different, and usually very carefully selected, individuals who know the patter and know what the market wants to hear.
But regardless of the quality of the PR folk that have contact with us, they do at least make contact and try to engage us in discussions over their products that might lead to coverage. How many others don't get free pixels (c.f. free ink) with us because we have no clue that they are in our space?
One of those companies came to my attention today today. I was reading stories about the preliminary ruling of the Department of Commerce in favor of Micron in its complaints against Hynix and Samsung - which said that Hynix received 57.37% and Samsung 0.16% net subsidies from the Korean government in their production of DRAM. Certainly in the case of Hynix it was what kept the company in business but now they will be facing 57.37% customs duties on any product it imports - but that won't apply to its Eugene, OR, production even though it has been effectively subsidized as well. Anyway, I was interested in seeing whether Micron were in a gloating mood and checked out their web site. In what is a class act there was absolutely nothing about it in its on-line news, so the company did not rush to demonstrate its glorious victory (in fact its stock price fell today.)
But what was amazing was that on the company's web site there was a complete arena of imaging products - CMOS imagers - which fall smack into the purview of this ZONE. I knew nothing about it, I have never had any contact from Micron or any agency for them.
Surely when you get into a new product arena you scope out the other players in the market and try to route your PR effort into getting the attention of those who might write about you and what you are doing? I would not normally go anywhere near a site like Micron's because I know there is nothing there for me - well, duh!
Are there more companies out there I don't know are in my analogZONE
space? There must be - and, believe me, I am not going to find you so don't
grumble at me for not receiving your FedEx package.