Barry McCallum was a copy taster. It was the first time I heard of this job title, this deliciousness. A proper job. An INTEGRAL job in the newsrooms of old. His role was to come in at 4am and trawl the international news feeds – Reuters, AFP, AP, Sapa, Bloomberg, DFP - and pull key stories for the upcoming 8am diary meeting with a view on what the newspaper’s stance should be and the context for SA.
Diary meetings. Another strange term. Daily newsroom meetings to discuss what stories would be covered, are in progress, would be canned, etc. And who would take the copy taster’s stories and develop them.
And therein lies the two big lessons for anyone in PR:
1. You should be copy tasting
If you know me, you know how I bang on about reading. I don’t care if it’s twitter or TikTok comments, long-form journalism, tabloids or blogs. It teaches you rhythm, style and, yes, spelling. I grew up with parents that made weekly visits to the library a treat and bought us comics.
But here is why copy tasting is maybe one of the most important facets of your job:
You can’t advise on micro level things when you have no macro context.
Global things have local repercussions – I don’t think that could be any clearer after the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine among many many other examples.
If you are positioning your client as a Thought Leader or expert opinion, then global context and global trends are par for the course.
And, most importantly, it is about situational fluency – a very fancy term that essentially means I have one foot in my client’s brand and one foot scanning the horizon …. And that means copy tasting.
You can’t rely on media alerts or monitoring (that usually tells you about your client mentions at the most basic, and maybe about the industry, if you are monitoring competitors). Did you think that a ship stuck in the Suez Canal would affect a book launch for a children’s author? Or that a decision Bill Gates made re a friendship with Epstein may up-end Melinda’s work with women? That is what copy tasting gives you. Read, connect dots, pull links, contextualise for clients.
Know the world out there.
And if you can’t afford subscriptions follow credible people on twitter who share interesting, free links.
“She was never bored because she was never boring.” Zelda Fitgerald.
2. Diary meetings
This is where your pitch comes up for discussion IF you have intrigued the journalist enough. Not your press release. Your pitch. There will be a quick discussion where it will be interrogated: old / new / relevant / newsy / possible lead. If you can’t write a one-paragraph pitch that gives the reporter the hook, the angle, the relevance (or sell the 30-second elevator pitch) then that’s where your press release goes to die.
Right.
On to the pace of modern PR.
One of our promises to clients is agility.
This does not mean speed.
It means Parkour.
It means you are dealing with practioners so skilled, on top of it and NOT working at over-capacity levels that we can Parkour / troubleshoot / simplify the steps to the goal, in real time. That’s agility.
I come across PR practitioners charging the same rates as me that work at 20km/h in a reactive space, adding layers of complexity that do not need to be there.
But I have beaten my drum on this for far too long.
So let’s look at some real life examples from the past week.
Monday 12pm – a global client enquires about capacity and sends brief. By 5pm the team member it was addressed to had not yet responded. Client moved on and briefed someone else that night. Potential loss of earnings? Probably R80K.
Tuesday 3pm – took brief from a new client (that I had delayed by a few weeks because of capacity) and promised them proposal by Thursday, which I sent at 15h18. Client responded with approval 15h38. At 16h08 next client responded with billing details and missing info I had requested. Project launched.
Wednesday 2pm we had a status meeting with a very complex client. My golden rule is that we send minutes / trackers / responses within 24hrs. And that we wait for clients, they never wait on us. We broke our own rule and only got minutes to client on Friday at 11:53pm. When did client respond? Same day at 17:03.
Sunday 15h45 I got an email requesting strategic comms support from a big brand client. I responded Monday 09h15. We met at 14h00. I am off to meet their EXCO this week. Huge project.
What is the lesson here?
This is the pace of modern PR.
Set by clients.
If this is too fast for you, you need to go sit under a tree and have a think.
Because this is about capacity planning. About energy. About taking things on with integrity and accountability and delivering solid work with a clear, strategic, creative head.
If you cannot work at that pace you are either:
Overthinking things.
Not hearing the unsaid things in telecons and meetings (is there a crisis brewing?).
Not being honest about your capacity / skillset / mental headspace (you will be amazed at how many clients will wait for you if you are upfront with them).
Saying yes to the wrong things which saps your pace and energy for the right ones.
I am seeing it, dear friends.
The pace is the pace. The energy is the energy. Agencies are scaling and thriving. And other agencies are battling their way through the same old, same old.
There is a new way, a better way.
And there is enough cake for everyone.
Get present. Get Parkour.
PS. Me: is this too preachy? Kevin: you call it #PRChurch FFS.
PPS. Me: why so many white men featured here? Google search: its what comes up man.