Philips, are you people CRAZY?!
I cannot believe the stupidity by Philips PR people. Unbelievable. Just.. beyond belief. It is one thing to blatantly offer to bribe people, but to continue to insist that you are in the right is an amusing demonstration of complete incompetence and stupidity.
Of course the jokes at Campaign ME spared no chance to parade them all over their magazine. GMR were a bit more conservative in their approach and completely avoided to mention their name. I guess GMR is still hoping to see some ad revenue from them. Well, the Dubai Media Observer is happy to declare that no one is interested in reading this, let alone advertise. So, DMO will say whatever it pleases.
A more appropriate system is a long-termish one. Do not offer people tickets to the World Cup in Germany. Instead, see who actually gave you the most coverage.. and reward them. Word will spread quickly. Now, next time there is an event, do the same. What do we have here? A pattern. Journalists will know what to expect if they do good. That's how you deal with journalists. You don't insult them. Just because they are cheap and hardly competent, doesn't mean you should point it out to their face.
Of course the jokes at Campaign ME spared no chance to parade them all over their magazine. GMR were a bit more conservative in their approach and completely avoided to mention their name. I guess GMR is still hoping to see some ad revenue from them. Well, the Dubai Media Observer is happy to declare that no one is interested in reading this, let alone advertise. So, DMO will say whatever it pleases.
A more appropriate system is a long-termish one. Do not offer people tickets to the World Cup in Germany. Instead, see who actually gave you the most coverage.. and reward them. Word will spread quickly. Now, next time there is an event, do the same. What do we have here? A pattern. Journalists will know what to expect if they do good. That's how you deal with journalists. You don't insult them. Just because they are cheap and hardly competent, doesn't mean you should point it out to their face.
posted by Dubai Media Observer at 11:40 AM
4 Comments:
I partly blame the atmosphere of blatant advertorial for Philips fiasco: my guess is that the PR people were naive as much as anything.
There are competitions similar to this that are sort of OK - for example, the Business Software Alliance runs one for articles/journalistic works about piracy. But the issue is raising awarenss of piracy, not raising awareness of the glory of the BSA.
All Philips had to do was to link the prize to one of their many cause-related issues, they - like many multinationals - do a hell of a lot of CSR, for whatever motive. So "bribe" the journalists to plug one of these causes and they could have got away with it. The blatancy smacks of naivete rather than corruption.
Well, I was trying to think of a just-as-evil plan but not so blatant. There are many ways of doing things differently.
I would certainly fire the PR Manager at Philips for being a complete idiot.
'Just because they are cheap and hardly competent, doesn't mean you should point it out to their face' is the right way to put it.
For most publications, ad revenue and not circulation is the main source of income. So they are hesitant to make companies who advertise upset Real-estate companies giving away Mont Blanc pens and mobile phones has become a norm in this part of the world. Most of the PR agencies recommend it too and if there are no give aways, they fail to turn up for press conferences.
But anyways Phillips took it too far with this offer. I heard they have backed off and issued an apology?
I (am a journo here) have had dealings with the Philips PR person before when she was working at Euro RSCG in PR and she was godawful. She fully expected that I would write an article about one of her clients and give the copy to her so she could make sure the client approved. When I laughed at that request and explained the concept of journalism, she said 'then you can't have the story.' I said, 'OK. Not only will I kill this story, but we'll never write about your client again.' Incredible. I cannot believe she somehow landed at Philips. When I received the World Cup Philips press release and saw her name on it, I simply crumpled it up and tossed it into the bin.
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