Ask me to name the worst companies in the UK MI industry at handling the Press (go on, I dare you) and I’d give you some of the biggest. Why this should be (and no, I am not going to name them now – ask me at the bar, later) I’m not quite sure, though I do have a sense of what is wrong and, speaking with other hacks in the industry it is revealing how often the same names crop up over and over again. Perhaps the steady de-staffing companies have undergone in recent years is to blame? Perhaps, and I have Neil Golding to thank for this suggestion, it is a reflection of the relative lack of importance the trade affords to consumer magazines in these days of social media? I’m sure there is something in that but it doesn’t explain why we are in a similar state in the trade press, too. This is a malady right across the media. There is no trade/consumer divide.
Music Instrument News is now well into our second month and from the trade’s point of view there has never been a greater diversity (if that’s quite the right word) of opportunities to get your message out to retailers. Has that awoken a sleeping giant? Are we hacks being buried under mountains of press releases? No, we are not.
Back in the consumer sphere, meanwhile, the attitude to free publicity seems to be affecting product reviews, too. For the cost of not very much at all, sending a product for review earns space and attention that is simply unbuyable. And yet those who edit consumer magazines (which, as most readers will be aware, I also do) will tell you, it seems to be getting harder and harder to get review products from some manufacturers and distributors. Again, this is not simply due to any personal lack of charm on my part, as even some of the properly house trained editors out there are reporting the same. And yet, bizarrely, the consumer Press has never been ‘tamer’. Thirty years ago reviewers were a far heartier bunch and it wasn’t unknown for a badly set-up guitar or squealing amp to be despatched with a stinging review from a writer who (quite reasonably) would argue that if products were sent out like that to the Press, in what Godawful condition were they being sent to retailers and the general public?
One amusing sidelight to this state of affairs is the number of times people complain that the press as a whole seems to be dominated by certain names. So let’s name two of them – JHS and Barnes & Mullins. There’s actually a reason why this is. Both companies send out a lot of press releases. They do them professionally, have photographs to hand and they even pick up the phone every now and then to make sure hacks have all the information we need.
And that’s the secret. It’s not witchcraft. It is not due to advertising money, nor even (sadly) bribery or corruption. It’s because a handful of companies use the press as it’s meant to be used and they are the ones who get the lion’s share of the coverage.. I refuse to say ‘simples’. Oh…
It is not, however, a game only the big boys can play. Not many companies can afford someone full time to handle Press and PR but MI journalists come cheap and there are plenty hanging around looking for scraps of freelance PR work which they will do for rates that would get them thrown out of the Press room at PLASA – so why not use them? Of course you are too busy wondering about your 2107 forex buying or how to pay the next VAT bill, to remember to brag about your new line in MIDI kazoos, but if you can hire someone who knows exactly what magazine editors want for what you would usually pay a Romanian car washer, why not do so?
Alternatively, most editors will be only too happy to tell you what they need to run a news story or arrange a review. And if those big companies I alluded to at the start of this article, are really as unconcerned whether they get coverage in the media as it seems, why not take their share for yourself?
I never did give my personal explanation for why some of the industry’s biggest are some of the least communicative. I think it is due to sheer complacency. They think they are too important to fail and that they don’t need to make much of an effort. I have a hunch that quite a few retailer readers will be nodding their heads at this point – and I wouldn’t mind betting we have a pretty similar list of culprits.