In theory ‘PR’ stands for ‘Public Relations,’ a catch-all term for advice and activity in the area where you or your company interacts with the general public. Usually this is through ‘the media,’ the weapon of choice of most practitioners, the ‘press release.’
I say ‘in theory’ because ‘PR people’ seem to pop up everywhere these days, further blurring the lines – and at the same time royally pissing off execs in the two closely related fields – that once existed between advertising, marketing and editorial.
I’ve done my share of organising functions, product launches and the like, but the area I have specialised in is liaising with the media.
And it started like this.
I was living in Wellington at the time and through an old girlfriend met a guy – Ian Christie – who had not only just bought a Formula Vee, he also – via a mate of a mate – had acquired a fairly serious sponsor, Victory chocolate.
Ian’s mate – bless him – was one of those ‘hundred words a minute’ kind of guys who was either going to make or lose a million dollars before the age of 30. He certainly knew what he was talking about when it came to marketing. Writing a ‘press release’ though? Not so.
Ian being Ian he was just happy having such a guy in his corner, and when he proudly showed me the ‘press release’ old mate had prepared he did so not to solicit my opinion, but to show me how cool it was that he had one…….
Having been on the receiving end of many such ‘press releases’ in my then day job as a cub reporter in Wellington Newspapers’ Supplements department, however, I knew where Ian’s one was heading pretty much straight away – what journos refer to as ‘the great circular file,’ and what everyone else calls a ‘rubbish bin!’
The key difference, you see, between an advertisement and piece of ‘PR’ is that you buy an ad and can say – within reason – pretty much what you like. You also know that as long as you met the booking deadline and pay for the space, your ad will appear where and when your contract chit says it will.
‘PR’ is ‘editorial’ and must pass the same sort of critical tests of ‘newsworthiness’ as a story researched and written by a staff reporter. You might pay the same – in this case to a PR person or company – as you did to create an ad but if the press release is not produced in a format, style and timely fashion expected by the outlet then the sub-editor responsible for filling the page will dig through their (hard copy or electronic file) and find one that is ‘ready to go.’
In theory, editorial is worth way more than an ad because (and those in the ad industry hate people like me saying this) no one watches TV, listens to the radio, checks out a ‘news’ or Facebook/Instagram post, or buys a magazine or newspaper to read the ads. They engage to find out ‘what’s going on in the world.’ And if they see an ad while they are doing so it’s a bonus.
The only problem is you can neither guarantee when your editorial will appear – if anywhere – or how It will be treated once it does.
Back to Ian and his ‘Victory Vee’ though.
To be perfectly honest, all I really did was re-jig the press release, advise of the photo needed to go with it, then get on the phone, but the result was – in a word – spectacular. The launch press release was picked up by all the key local media plus the then Wellington-based Motor-Action newspaper, and wherever we went that season (Manfeild, Bay Park Pukekohe) we not only got ‘buy-in’ from the local media, Griffiths, the company which owned the Victory brand, enjoyed specific regional spikes in sales over the weekend and in the week following of each race meting we attended.
And though the Vee class was popular at the time it was still very much he poor cousin to Formula Pacific and Formula Ford
That I shouldn’t have been surprised how effective my first legitimate motorsport PR campaign was more to do with the fact that I just sort of stumbled into it, than anything else. As I started doing more and more work in the area (particularly when I moved to Auckland) I got to benchmark my work here with colleagues in Australia, the United States and the UK, and meet and work with the likes of the late Ian Gamble and former journo/team owner/PR guru Murray Taylor.
It was Ian, in fact, who put me on to the definitive book on the subject on what I suppose you could call the ‘business’ of motor racing; ‘Sponsorship and the world of motor racing, by Guy Edwards (still selling for $US400 on Amazon.com the last time I looked).
The return ‘home’ after spending much of his working life in the UK, of the late Eoin Young (pictured with Jackie Stewart), also helped put the work I was doing at the time for Scott Dixon, Regan Morgan, James Cressey at al into perspective.
It’s not too big a stretch, in fact, to say that Eoin pretty much invented the modern-day roll of the team motorsport ‘PR” guy; not bad for a young ‘fella who was working in a bank in his home town of Timaru until the late Bruce McLaren turned up in town for a Hillclimb event…………..
McLaren’s achievements as a driver, team owner and motivator of men are well documented (thanks in no small part to the work of Eoin Young). What isn’t – unless like me you know what you are looking for and read between the lines – is the value he placed in communicating to his fellow Kiwis back home when he was racing in Europe and the United States.
Eoin ghost-wrote a weekly column for the Auckland Star (imagine me doing that, say, for Scott Dioxn or Brendon Hartley today!) while Bruce himself would tape regular updates and post the cassettes home for family and friends to listen to together as depicted in the recent movie of his life, McLaren, by Roger Donaldson. This, arguably, was one of the best motorsport ‘PR’ campaigns ever launched, even if – at the time – there was no such thing!
In theory the ‘liaising with the media’ part of PR should have got easier with the advent of social media and – with it – the general freeing up and geeing up of the various traditional mediums as, in the face of drastically falling sales and ad revenues they have been forced to become a little more – how can I put this? – service-oriented!
If anything, however, it has got harder, as budgets are slashed, staff numbers cut again and again and the amount of editorial space available for – say – a story I might pitch on karting or Targa or the F5000 category – now severely limited.
Despite that I have no intention of lifting my foot off the motorsport ‘PR’ throttle. A casual reader mightn’t notice it but behind virtually every ‘motorsport’ story published these days, be it in traditional or new (social) media), there will be a series, team or driver ‘PR’ providing either the core information – who, what, when & where? – for the reporter, or the full report with suitable hi-res photos, for the sub.
In fact if it weren’t for the likes of Ian Hepenstall (Supercars & ITM SuperSprint), Robert Tighe (Hampton Downs), Kate Gordon-Smith (Motorsport NZ and Hayden Paddon), Lindsay Beer (Sth Island Endurance Series and motorsport in Southland), Simon Chapman (D1NZ) and our own Benjamin Carrell (Sth Island Formula Ford championship) I’m not sure there would be ANY local motorsport on TV, in what newspapers (and their allied websites) that survive, and across the various social media channels.
And we simply couldn’t have that, could we?
david abbott
Great read thank you.