Don’t underestimate the value of a good PRO

Sports clubs and community groups and organisations often give little thought to the position of Public Relations Officer (PRO). More often than not it’s the last officer’s position filled at the Annual General Meeting – that’s even if it is filled at all.

And that’s a mistake! Well, unless you are in a secret group, club or organisation who don’t ever want to communicate with the public.

For everybody else, it’s time the position began to get some serious thought.

The reality is that most clubs, groups and community organisations at some stage require publicity of one kind or another. Whether that’s for a fund raising activity or other event at the club, they need to get the message out to as many people as possible – and that’s where the PRO comes in.

Amazingly however many groups and organisations are so wrapped up in their own work (often great work it must be admitted) that they assume media outlets should publicise their event without even having been contacted.

And it’s not just in cases like that either. Often community groups and organisations or sports clubs are involved in activities that a media outlet might find interesting enough to seek details on without prompting.

On occasions like that the PRO is more often than not the first point of contact and if they are unavailable or unhelpful then the chances are an opportunity for publicity has been lost.

Media outlets are often criticised by various groups for their lack of coverage of various events or activities, but much of that criticism is unwarranted.

In these days of cutbacks, most media outlets are operating with fewer staff than they’d like and with greater demands on those staff.

They cannot be expected to know about something if they have not been informed, yet many groups assume they should know because everyone in their own particular circle knows.

Similarly if they are given the runaround when they seek information, they are less likely to be inclined to be in a hurry back to give a club or group publicity.

Chasing people and making lots of phone calls might be a worthwhile use of resources when on the hunt for a big news or sports story, but to have to contact a half dozen people to find out about the Christmas bazaar or get a few lines of detail for a match report is not.

In the same vein, well-written press releases – ones that don’t require significant time to edit into something comprehensible – are more likely to be used than poorly constructed ones.

A well-written release will stand a chance of being published as it was sent, and often will serve to whet a reporter’s appetite to delve a little deeper and give a story even greater prominence.

Of course it is an advantage if a PRO has access to technology and can, for instance, send e.mail – but it’s not the key thing.

It’s more important for a PRO to be accessible, to be helpful and have access to information from within their group or organisation so they can pass on that information promptly on request.

At the end of the day what many groups and organisations fail to realise is this – the publicity they get is only as good as their PRO.

Perhaps if they did, a lot more thought would go into the filling of that position at Annual General Meetings.

Contrasting campaigns

There’s a scene in the Monty Python film ‘The Search for the Holy Grail,’ when, faced with a killer rabbit, the Knights of the Round Table respond finally with:  “Run away…run away.”

It’s a line that for some reason came to mind last week in the run up to the children’s referendum.

Faced with trying to get their head around what this all actually meant, the response by many was almost the same – ‘run away, run away.’

The low turn out was nothing to do with the fact that the referendum was held on a Saturday. It was to a large extent due to the fact that many people were confused and unsure – but as many perhaps apathetic.

Voter apathy is something that is always going to happen, and it seemed interesting that the television advertisements in the run-up to the election were more targeted towards tackling that issue, than they were on explaining what this referendum was actually about.

“A lot of people say we have no control… we have the final say on our most important document…it can only be changed if we the people say so…etc”

Those advertisements from the Referendum Commission asked people to discover the facts by reading the booklet delivered to their home or to visit their website.

It’s hard to know how many people actually did that, or indeed sourced any kind of information on what this referendum actually proposed (even though there were plenty of debates and talks on television and radio and articles in the papers). In that regard it’s reasonable to suggest that not all the blame should be apportioned towards the state for failing to educate us.

After all, the adverts we saw were correct. We do have a wonderful right in this country to have a say in any changes to our constitution, something people in countries all over the world who would dearly love to have. With that in mind surely we must bear some responsibility ourselves towards finding out the facts so we can make informed decisions.

And yet, with all that said I cannot quite seem to get my head around the contrast in two campaigns that had been running here recently – that of informing us on a change in our constitution and one to inform us of making sure we have a television signal for the dark nights of winter.

I’m not sure how much money was spent on the campaign to have us switch to Saorview, but I’m sure it was colossal. Indeed I think I even read somewhere that for the money spent, it might have been cheaper just to go out and buy every household in the state a Saorview box.

That sustained campaign on television and radio, in the local press and national press ran for months and months. There were even people employed to go into rural communities and speak to community groups and organisations and inform them of this upcoming change.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not sure whether the same energy or resources were put into the campaign to inform people on the change to our constitution.

It was hardly a surprise then that there were probably more people in Ireland on Saturday night concerned about how voting went in X-factor than they were in how things had gone in the referendum.

Thanks to Saorview,  X-factor was now available in digital High-definition.

And that other thing, sure wasn’t that just about changing our constitution or something…