Confessions of a Public Relations Professional

“In short, a PR professional has to be thick-skinned and have a fetish for rude and unprofessional behaviour.”

It’s 10 am and you are getting ready for a meeting you had set up for your client. You call Mr Journalist to confirm everything and he says that he is on his way. You arrive at the venue to brief the client. It’s 11 am and the journalist hasn’t arrived. You call the editor and he tells you that he’s unable to track down his colleague. You do your best to explain this to your client and all you get are rude comments about wasting his precious time.

The reverse also happens. Sometimes, the client bails out on you, citing some urgent customer escalation and you have to deal with a busy journalist who asks you the same questions. You often wonder and ask yourself, ‘What about my time? Can I be responsible for a jerk?’

We work long hours and are expected to be available round the clock, even on holidays, because a crisis or request for information can come in at any time. So, stress levels are high. The PR profession has the dubious distinction of being the eighth most stressful one. Surprisingly, journalists do not figure in this top ten list.

Clients are not saints. They expect to be featured in all the leading publications irrespective of the news they have to share. If you do manage to get them in the news, they are not happy with the placement of their photographs. In rare cases, you have to explain why one person in the company has been featured more than somebody else. In short, a PR professional has to be thick-skinned, have a fetish for rude and unprofessional behaviour, while juggling multiple prima donnas with the finesse of a circus performer.

A typical Indian PR professional has to deal with a small pool of journalists who are jacks of all trades (beats) and masters of none. So you have to fill that gap and provide the content. 

Unfortunately, we are still seen as pesky callers who pester journalists with press releases that flood their inboxes.

As told to Pallavi Polanki

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