THEY PRAY, WE PLAN: STRATEGIC MEDIA SEQUENCING AND WHY IT MATTERS

It’s a dirty little secret within the public relations industry that more than a few well known agencies rarely ever have a plan. What they do have is a media list. A list of every reporter they have ever been in contact with and many that they’ve never interacted with but their database tells them that they might be relevant contacts. What these agencies do to get media attention is to take their client’s latest news release and blast it out to every contact on that list. Then, they sit back and pray they get some interest. In the industry this is known as the spray and pray approach. Believe it or not, this can be effective, but only deceptively so. See, there’s no doubt that a few reporters are likely to respond to this methodology and reply with some interest to a mass email. The client might even get a few articles to publish with their news. The real question, however, is at what cost? What are these agencies leaving on the table? The answer, unfortunately, is...