A Phil Hall Op-Ed: The legendary showman PT Barnum is credited with the saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Having run my own New York City-based public relations agency for 10 years, I would amend that remark to read as follows: “There is no such thing as bad publicity, but there is such a thing as bad publicists.”
In fact, I encountered a seriously incompetent publicist a few weeks ago. This person was put in charge of promoting a new autobiography written by an executive at a prominent real estate company. When I learned about this book, I put in a request to interview the executive for this website and to review his autobiography for a national news organization where I am a contributing book critic.
To my complete astonishment, the publicist refused to make the executive available and would not provide me with a review copy of the new book. Why was I turned down? I will never know. The publicist’s response was this: “At this time, we’re going to politely decline the opportunity, but wish you the best in your endeavors.”
I just checked on the depth and scope of the media coverage that this publicist generated for the real estate executive’s book and it is next to nothing – an interview in one real estate-focused website, a couple of excerpts from the book published in another real estate news site, a reprint of the original press release on the book at a third real estate website, and that’s it. The only review of the book published to date was written by me – I wound up buying the book off Amazon in order to review it for my book critic gig, and my write-up was the only major media attention this executive’s book received. (As an aside, the book was very entertaining and I gave it a great review – the author is aware of the review but has refused to thank me for my praise.)
When I was running my public relations agency and would pitch companies to hire me, one problem would constantly arise whenever my pitch was rejected. The companies who turned me down were not rejecting me because they had no faith in my abilities, but because they previously hired other publicists who screwed up the work so badly that they felt publicists could not be trusted. I honestly couldn’t blame them, as I’ve been witness to endless situations where publicists wasted their clients’ money while producing little or no results.
Now, at this point I need to stop and stress there are plenty of great publicists out there – and over the years I’ve happily given recommendations for business owners to connect with these expert professionals. But from my four decades of media experience, I can state the great publicists are in a significant minority within their profession.
This is a big shame because public relations is an extremely important aspect of the marketing toolkit. Perhaps it is more vital today than even, given how the media environment has shifted wildly from the traditional print and broadcast outlets into a plethora of podcasts, YouTube talk shows, Substack pages, and TikTok channels that both the general public and professionals in specific industries use to get their news and shape their opinions.
Don’t think that setting up a website and a couple of social media pages is good enough for spreading the word on your business – if anything, that is the laziest and least effective way to call attention to yourself. In today’s real estate world, being able to partner with a high-quality public relations professional can be a powerful tool for you – provided you have the right publicist working on your behalf.
If you are thinking of working with a publicist – either a standalone representative or a large agency – don’t be afraid to ask the potential publicists as many questions as possible regarding their previous and current work, their billing practices, and how you can measure a return on investment based on their efforts. Also, ask for references from the publicist’s clients on how their work helped expand sales and generate leads.
Ultimately, my advice on working with public relations professionals is this: Proceed with caution – as stated earlier, there are some duds out there. But, by all means, proceed – if you partner with the right publicist, it could be the best investment your business makes this year.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
