The purpose of a PR company should be to provide new updates on the company, connect journos or analyst with company executives, and make it easier for the company to get right info at the right time.
Right now, the PR industry, at least in the tech world, increases the information friction between a company and public. Information between a company and public should flow freely. For this:
1] PR should make it easier to connect with company executives when the information regarding the company is needed.
2] Stop harassing journos interviews and instead provide the right connect when journos want to do a story
3] Stop sending irrelevant information to Journos and analysts. There are thousand things we need to keep track of. Filtering out the noise is already extremely difficult and PR guys make it even more worse. A simple list of which publication/analysts cover/keeps a track of what is a simple solution.
4] Do not spam everyone with everything.
PR and journalists/analysts are co-dependent on each other. Why not make it a happy relationship by just taking a few extra steps (see 3)?
PR should be there when a journalist needs anything but it shouldn’t have to feed news to them. If they have to, journos aren’t doing their job. Or the company you represent isn’t doing great work.
I have noticed companies with an in-house PR are the ones who are doing their job well. Example: Opera, Times Internet, etc. It’s few agencies that are putting the rest of the industry to shame. Note that, this doesn’t mean all agencies are shitbags. Some are good but the bad outweighs the good.
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