Fending for the front line

There are a couple of things in the world guaranteed to set my blood pressure skyrocketing. They include, but are not limited to, minibus taxis turning right across my turning lane from the adjoining lane, housewives doing 57-point turns in their four-by-fours because they bought a status car that they don`t actually know how to drive, people who insist on talking on their cellphones in the movies and, lately, the idiots that have been phoning me under the guise of extracting a piece of information for the PR agency for which they work.

These kippies are either badly briefed, stupid, or don`t speak too much English. A perfect example is the woman who phoned me on Thursday last week while I was on a tight deadline. She wanted to know what the final date for editorial submissions for the June issue of Brainstorm magazine was. After telling her that we don`t publish press releases and that she should rather send through a brief, which we could follow up if we were interested, I informed her that the deadline was Friday.

"Friday?" she confirmed.

"Friday," I agreed, with finality.

Then, on Friday morning, my phone rang again, and a frighteningly familiar voice asked me when the final date for editorial submissions for the June issue of Brainstorm was. I opened my mouth to repeat my lines from the day before, but the familiarity of the voice struck a chord in me and instead I asked, "didn`t you call me yesterday?"

"Yes," she replied brightly.

"OK, didn`t I give you this information then?" I asked.

"You did," she said, with an edge of irritation to her voice. "But you told me the deadline was Friday."

PR companies are increasingly making use of low-level employees to interface with the press.

Georgina Guedes, Editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

"Well it is," I said, trying to suppress a similar edge of ire.

"But Brainstorm comes out monthly," she said, as though explaining calculus to a pre-school student.

Realisation dawned slowly. I explained to her that the deadline isn`t every Friday, it was THIS particular Friday.

She thanked me and went away.

Now while this misunderstanding wasn`t exactly monumental, and she hadn`t been that unpleasant about things, it is symptomatic of a growing problem. PR companies are increasingly making use of low-level employees to interface with the press. The press then translate these shaky interchanges to the public, all of which boils down to a downfall in the reputation that these companies are supposed to be upholding on behalf of their clients.

It`s a bizarre hierarchy. A managing director or CEO sees the need for her company to work at its public image, so she hires an internal communications manager. This person, aware that the company has been receiving a bit of bad press lately, commissions a PR agency to give the corporate image a bit of an overhaul. The owner of the PR agency commissions one of her agents to do the work. This agent, either too overworked or arrogant to do the dog-work, brusquely sends off "the new girl" to call a list of people for her.

The result? An irritated tirade at the offices of ITWeb Brainstorm about the wallies at Van Idiotstein and Fink, or whichever company it happened to be that day. The knock-on result? A suspicion of any release that originates from that agency, as its employees have already proved they are unlikely to be able to discern which end of a pencil should point downwards. The final result? The companies contracted to that PR agency experience absolutely no improvement in public image.

Since people on the front line are one of the most vital aspects of creating the first impression of a dazzling public image, how is it that the very people who are supposed to be safeguarding this ideal have not grasped this basic concept?