FUTURES
RESEARCH
9200 – Future Observatory 5 – Media Relations
I had been involved with public relations, in a general sense, since the beginning of my career. I believed, and still do, that PR is the most powerful form of promotion. The problem with it is that there are strict limits to what you can effectively spend -- but up to that limit you should spend every cent.
In PST I had a superb outside PR consultant who managed to get Delrosa mentioned in places you would never consider possible. She even managed to get it on the cookery pages!
By the time I'd got to IBM I had moved into a rather different area of the topic. PR there was a function which was mainly concerned with minimizing exposure, in line with its principle that no publicity is the best publicity! I did, though, work for a while with its corporate relations group who did its limited positive PR. First, as I have described, I was a guest at one of their regular lunches for MPs. More directly, I was accredited as ‘David Mercer, an IBM spokesman’. This was the highest level of clearance. Like the government, IBM had a number of levels. The first was 'it is rumoured that', The second level was 'IBM sources said'. The third level was 'an IBM spokesman said'. The final level, which I achieved, was the named IBM spokesman; that is 'David Mercer an IBM spokesman'. I did a number of interviews for a range of quality newspapers. My greatest achievement, though, was seen as a quarter page of the financial Times; effectively devoted to a biography of me. I hoped I might get some job offers, but none materialised. Even worse, not a single insurance agent contacted me!
I started on the PR trail with a vengeance when I was promoting the Futures Observatory at the end of the Nineties.
In the first instance I got the launch of this reported on television, including BBC Breakfast. I realised after that just what was needed. They were more concerned about the background than about what I had to say. We filmed the material at Greenwich Observatory. As for the comments I was allowed to make, they insisted on using soundbites which were just a few seconds long. After such treatment, and when you next watch television, you realise just how short shrift commentators such as myself are allowed. But there was method in their madness. Never mind the limited amount of information provided, the observatory in the background did reinforce the message; and made it memorable for their audience.
I did a couple of other live programs, including Sky News. In these cases there was less opportunity for my spiel to be cut off in these situations -- but they still only lasted less than five minutes. Even so, one of my colleagues, flying back from the States, actually saw my Sky interview midway over the Atlantic! What counts, at the end of the day, is that something of your message gets out to the millions of people who watch these programmes.
The television programme which got to the widest audience, probably about 8 million, was one run by Lowrie – then one of the up-and-coming interviewers -- about the future. I and Ian Pearson were planted in the audience -- with radio mikes where everyone else had to rely on the hand mike Lowrie held -- and we were the main people interviewed.
Press coverage was also extensive. I got a number of significant quotes -- typically lasting half a column or more -- in the majority of the quality papers. I was even quoted in the Wall Street Journal. There was less coverage by the popular newspapers, the tabloids, but some was obtained.
Indeed, the most fascinating quote came a month after 9/11. Like many people I had been at home when 9/11 occurred. Within a matter of minutes, soon after the first plane hitting and long before the second, the BBC 1 channel had switched to live coverage of what happened. Right in front of our eyes we saw the horror of the planes crashing into the skyscrapers and then the skyscrapers themselves collapsing. It horrified America and changed many things about the way we saw the world. It was also an indication of how media coverage had changed from the day-old reports in the newspapers to current television viewing of the events themselves.
A month later another airliner went down, just after takeoff on from JFK. Again, it was almost instantly on the news -- since it was feared that it was another terrorist attack. I was sitting on the settee at home watching this when the phone rang. It was the Mirror Newspaper newsroom. From somewhere they had plucked my name out of the hat. Soon they were interviewing me, as I and their reporter watched developments on television. He also had the advantage of being able to see the Reuters news reports as they came in. As the events progressed, we discussed - in real time - what was happening. It soon became apparent to us, though not to the rest of the world until much later, that this was just an ordinary aircraft crash. When the Mirror put the story on its front page the next day, halfway through the news item were my quotes. The most fascinating thing about it was how we were able, using modern media techniques, to develop our comments on events as they developed; being – some three thousand miles away - able to see much more than even the on-site commentators were able to see.
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