Here’s What The PR Industry Really Needs To Stop Doing And Now

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Peter hook, principal of media and public relations service Hook Communication chats with B&T about how unrealistic expectations and communications plans are trashing the PR industry.

Hook Communications, established by Peter Hook, is a leading PR firm within the tourism, hospitality, property and lifestyle sectors. Hook currently represents Tourism Accommodation Australia, Sunshine Coast Destination Limited and Kakadu Tourism among others.

This Wednesday, Hook will be one of the five PR and communications professionals participating in a PR webinar at 1pm eastern standard time. The webinar PR: Art vs Science? will discuss what in the world a modern PR professional has to do to prove their worth.

He will be joined by Twitter’s Nathan Burman, Red Balloon’s Claire Young, Amazon Web Services’ Peter Witts and Meltwater’s Ambera Cruz as well as the editor-in-chief of B&T David Hovenden.

“The biggest issue I see for the PR industry today is completely unrealistic expectations in many cases caused by public relations people not briefing their clients well enough,” Hook said.

“They create an impression that things can be achieved based on what the client wants, as opposed to understanding how the news cycle works and working within that framework.

“Every PR person, especially if they are a consultant, is going to say ‘yes, they can do this and they can do that’. But in the end there are these unrealistic expectations that are damaging for the industry and damaging for the PR side of things.”

Peter Hook

“Also people are encouraged to create these communication plans, as if the PR people are actually deciding what will be in the news. Yes you can come up with a really great idea- based on good research, surveys and all those kind of things- then you do have a chance of jumping onto the news cycle and influencing it.

“But in most cases our business is all about servicing the needs of our industry. Sometimes if PR people could spend less time doing silly communication plans and more time actually servicing the industry, everybody would be much happier.

“There isn’t enough emphasis on providing efficient, fast and accurate information rather than a grandiose idea of setting the agenda. In most cases PR people are not setting the agendas but they can certainly make ensure their message gets under cost if they supply the right information on time and accurately.”

For more information on this Wednesday’s webinar, click here.

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