19th Aug 2016 by Leanne Bryan

10 Yetis Insight Blog - How To Spot The PR Promises You Should NEVER Listen To

PR agencies often have a bad rep for over promising and under delivering, and a hefty promise up front is likely to circle right back round to bite you in the bum. Here at Yeti towers, we believe that honesty is the best policy – and it’s the one that works in the long run, but it isn’t always the most popular.


The ugly truth of the matter is that clients often approach us when they have either worked with other agencies and been let down by this approach, or they are being courted by a bunch of competitors who are all eager to win their affections in any way they can; leading to starry eyes and, more often than not, a future of disappointment.


First up, PR is great. It can be the difference between a make or break of a new start up, a massive hit of a product, the eyes and ears of the country, or even world, on you and your business.


It can be. It isn’t always. Sometimes projects don’t work out, sometimes news agendas don’t go in your favour, sometimes a competitor puts out exactly the same (or, dare we say it, an even better) story just as you send yours. The world of PR is an unpredictable one; you need to have energy and persistence, and you need to review what you’re doing all the time and keep ploughing away at it. There’s no one formula to suit all and success is never, ever guaranteed. Never. Seriously.


Here’s a few of the most common things we hear from companies who have been built up just to be let down and messed around, buttercup. Watch out for these, because they’re normally fronted with warm smiles and a distinct lack of sweaty palms, so they could be the only warning signs you’ll get that something’s not quite right in this pitch…


1.We can get you a link on the BBC


This is an impossible task. The BBC are hard task masters – they aren’t going to link. In fact, we’ll go as far as to give our guarantee that anyone who says this won’t get one. It takes an inordinate amount of effort, timing and tailoring to get covered by the BBC, but a link? Are you kidding me?

None of us at Yeti towers have ever achieved this and we are old-hat at this game. It’s a no-go. Promising links, especially in the modern day when publications are clamping down faster than you can say ‘SEO’, is a big red flag.


2.This campaign will generate 50,393,495,239,395,393 pieces of coverage


Trade secret: nobody knows how much coverage a campaign will generate. That’s not what companies want to hear; hell, it’s not what we want to hear! We’d far rather have a certainty of what we’ll score as soon as we sit down to start planning, but unfortunately we aren’t PR Mystic Megs so we just have to work as hard as we can and cross our fingers.

What we do have is an idea of the kind of things that fare well. If agencies have good relationships, like we do, they will know the journalists and the kind of things they like and tend to run. So we can say that in our experience we think it will work, it has the components to do well, it’s the kind of thing the Metro, or the Mail, or the Huffpo, tend to run. But that’s it, that’s your lot. The rest is left to chance – and ring rounds.


3.Give us a week and you’ll be number one on Google


SEO is a dark and mysterious beast. There are basic, fundamental principles that campaigns can adhere to but the rules change all the time. Guaranteeing a top spot is exceptionally brave and optimistic; guaranteeing the number one, or two or three for that matter, is kinda crazy. Unless you have an eye watering budget, that sort of promise is just setting yourself up for a fall.


4.AVE is gospel


Comparing PR to advertising is one those hugely outdated concepts that makes those in the know cringe. Yes, it’s going to look massively favourable, and this means people are still going to use it to try and wow their clients – but it’s just not a real comparison. Firstly, it normally uses rate card values which everyone in the know fully expects to be majorly inflated, and PR is clearly a thousand times better than advertising in terms of the power to communicate with an engaged audience. We don’t need to blow our own horn against advertising, it’s a different horse for a different course, so don’t believe anyone who says AVE is the be-all and end-all.


5.You’ll see an immediate return on investment


PR is used most effectively as a long-term strategy, so if someone says that you’re going to see sales flying up by midday on Day 1 then you need to have a long hard think about whether they can really deliver that. PR complements other activity, it builds awareness and reaches out to your demographic; but it isn’t a sales activity and it never will be.


6.You’ll be on the front page


We can’t guarantee placement; news is often shifted, bumped or even cut altogether, right down to the last minute. We would love to promise you the first page, our dream is to get you there, but it’s never a guarantee.


7.We know everything there is to know about PR


This is normally uttered by the kind of people who use so many buzzwords and so much jargon that nobody knows which way is up, probably themselves included. Never trust someone who says they know everything about the PR industry, because there’s no way that can be true. The industry changes all the time – just in the last few years the SEO turnaround has had a huge effect. There’s always more to learn and if they think they know it all already, your campaigns will get very stale very quickly.

Get the Know How

Get the latest thought leading industry comment and information from our “no sales” newsletter.

Want to work with us?

hello@10yetis.co.uk