EXCELLENT post. Thanks very much for bringing this issue to light.

Isn’t it amazing how much leg work goes into not only securing a company mention in a tier-1 book, let alone a cover story featuring the client? The nuances, details, processes, organization, and just general PR best practices are all too often forgotten by the client. It’s up to us to market everything we do, even if it’s the “stuff” that lead us to the end goal that the client sees.

One other extremely time consuming activity that often goes overlooked and taken for granted by the client is press release development.

For example, developing a customer implementation release is never a “clean” process. You and I both have hundreds upon hundreds of examples, so we should know. From initial contact with the client’s customer, to scheduling a background call, to placating the client’s customer about the PR process, to facilitating client edits, to facilitating client’s customer’s edits, to interfacing with client’s customer corp comms, to working with the client on final approvals, to solving a “sticky situation” wit the client’s customer legal dept, to “running it by” the client’s customer for final final approval, to releasing over the wire to…. PITCHING IT TO THE MEDIA!

It’s a long, drawn out process that doesn’t just happen. It takes work. It takes experience. And it takes creativity to obtain the final goal of the client: get the story placed in the media.

-RIch