PR Agencies only exist to push weak stories

During a recent interview with Photographer Conor Healy Pictures Editor of Metro - Herald Alan Caulfield said "the reason PR companies exist is to try to get coverage for things that wouldn’t normally make it into a paper on their own merits, and for cheaper than an advert would cost".


It's disappointing to read such misrepresentation of PR from a member of the media,  our industry partners. A good PR's job is to work with clients to create inticing campaigns, identify newsworthy stories, utilise tools online and offline to help promote solid businesses and products, gain press coverage by building a knowledge of what members of the media are interested in and pitching well- presented, factual stories and communicating this through images.

Working with journalists to bring to their attention stories that may be of interest for possible use in their particular subject area. That's a PR's job - well, in the traditional sense. Social media has of course opened up a whole new world where buyers can be communicated with directly, but that's for another day.

Although he did make an accurate observation of some of the more lazy PR photo calls "I can tell you some common clichés in PR photos though: a subject or model posing with food and pretending to eat it; posing with two open laptops formed into a ‘tunnel’ and looking through them; posing inside a giant picture frame; ‘the minister and the model’; everybody in the photo jumping in the air at the same time".  Yes, cringe indeed.

Alan should spend an hour in a reputatable PR agency and see the work that's carried out. It's a lot more then banging out multiple generic press releases and getting photos of girls in bikinis.