I gave up alcohol for a year, which meant I couldn’t pursue a time-honoured way of maintaining my relationships with journalists.
It proved tough, and not just the giving up drinking bit. One art of the PR is to navigate between two (sometimes warring) parties – the client and the media – and it can be a fine line to tread. Having meaningful relationships with both sides is important, and the aim is to find a balance between the curiosity of the media and the communication goals of the client.
To the client (in my case investment bankers), journalists are often seen as an unwelcome hazard of the job. They ask awkward questions; they explore topics bankers don’t always want to discuss and they write stories with unexpected angles.
The job of the PR is to prepare bankers for these eventualities – with briefings, rehearsed questions and guidance. There is even a small industry of media coaching specialists to call upon if needed. Let’s not forget, the PR is on the same team as the banker, so a good outcome serves both banker and PR.
But a good outcome can never be guaranteed. The chances can be improved if the PR has a healthy relationship with journalists. They can be improved further if a banker has strong relationships with the media (it happens, but not as often as some bankers think). Unlike a banker, PRs spend a lot of their day speaking with journalists.
Some PRs have to manage a large number of journalist relationships. I always enjoyed this aspect of the job. As an ex-journo myself I have the advantage of knowing what it's like on both sides of the fence.
Lost evenings
I am also a bit old school. Having a few beers with journalists – with no bankers present – is invariably a good way to strengthen relationships. The same is true for hanging out with the media at events like the World Economic Forum in Davos or IMF meetings. I have had more than one lost evening in the Alte Post bar on Davos’ Berglistutz after a senior FT journalist and I established what for a while became an annual informal media event during Davos week.
Once a bond is formed, it takes something unusual to break it. Indeed, some of my greatest friends are journalists that I've met being a PR. But herein lies the rub. No matter how close a relationship, they still have a job to do, as did I. They are professionals and will not shirk from a negative story just because you are their mate.
Dance begins
Experienced PRs can manage this paradox. They recognise situations when relaxed chumminess needs to be shelved temporarily to be replaced by friendly professionalism. And so begins the dance, as journalist and PR shift and shimmy around each other until an outcome is reached that both sides can manage. And by manage, I mean that they can go back to their respective stakeholders and claim some small victory. For PRs, it means they can better influence how an outcome lands internally. “No surprises” is the mantra, so if banker expectations can be managed, it’s a job well done. Even better – suggest the outcome may be worse than you know it will be but tell them you are still negotiating. Win-win.
The dance can be exhilarating. PRs and journos instinctively know when it’s started but how it ends depends largely on how good the relationship is. A journo will give no quarter, except perhaps to listen a little longer to a PR with whom they have a good relationship. And they might give more details of what they plan to write in return for some background colour of a particular event.
This is where trust comes in. If journo and PR trust each other, a manageable outcome is more likely. The best journos never burn their best contacts, and that includes PRs. Therefore a PR might feel more comfortable giving away some additional info with no incriminating fingerprints so that the journo writes an accurate, rounded story. If a negative story is to be written, accuracy is all we PRs ask for.
Trust is the ultimate byproduct of maintaining a good relationship between PR and journos, and it cuts both ways. I have landed delicate stories by engaging first with a journalist I can truly trust. I even remember a former boss leaking a story to a journo he trusted so it wouldn’t break while he was on holiday.
In my year of abstinence, I tried a variety of methods to strengthen my journo relationships. I once invited a banking editor to a morning shave at Truefitt & Hill on St James’s Street in London. It’s a fancy male grooming place and I thought it would be entertaining. It wasn’t. We couldn’t chat because we had hot towels over our faces most of the time. In fact, it was a bit weird and I didn’t do it again. Instead, we go to the pub and watch Arsenal.
Jezz Farr has been a senior communications adviser to major international banks for more than 25 years