To a certain extent, I imagine doing Apple’s PR must be a slightly cushy number. Apple are usually extremely reticent to talk about anything you want to talk about, preferring instead to drone on about what they want to talk about; if you’re writing a feature on almost any subject except what was in the last Apple press release, you’ll usually find it impossible to get a spokesperson out of Apple.
Unfortunately, it’s not like there’s much you can do about it. You can’t exactly hint that most of your Macworld feature will be about Dell as a result, now can you?
So that’s easy PR living, right? No pesky interviews to arrange, just press events aka ‘parties’. Although there’s a large number of people who got into PR to be professional communicators, etc, there’s still a sizeable number who got into PR because they wanted to be party planners but couldn’t pass those tricky entrance exams. Again, I imagine that within the tech PR industry, there’s a group who aspire to work on the Apple account as the zenith of their profession because it’s all the ‘good’ bits of PR without the ‘bad’ bits.
Or at least it would be if it weren’t for the facts the parties will typically be composed of those highly socially skilled, meterosexual fashionistas: tech journalists.
Bite PR is the firm that currently has the Apple account. Wherever two or more tech journalists gather, if those two names are mentioned in the same sentence, you can guarantee the next 15 minutes will be spent relating amusing tales of inefficiency and cluelessness. I’ve already told you about a few of my personal experiences (company four here, here, here, here, here and here) and I’m sure if you search around, you can find tales from other UK journalists. Sorry, Bite. That’s just the way it is.
Worryingly for you guys, Apple appears to be cottoning on to this fact.
Continue reading “It’s sad to see PRs stabbed in the back by their clients”