Full Frontal PR Report
Lindsay Bellows

I’m sitting in a small café using my friend’s laptop, connected (wirelessly and free) to the host’s airport where I’m able to simultaneously read the newspaper, check my e-mail, exchange an instant message with a friend about dinner plans tonight (theoretically—I actually hate instant messaging), listen to a radio station piping music in from the World Wide Web to my earphones, and write this article.

A more or less new experience for me, it’s a common—even old-school—practice in 2004. Yes, people are on to bigger and better ways of using technology and, more importantly, consuming media.

In fact, the omnipresence of media in its daily-multiplying forms is overwhelming to some. Even, and I will argue especially, to those of us that are involved in media (sounds like a romantic relationship) for a living. A recent study by MediaPost and InsightExpress found that nearly a third of consumers now feel overwhelmed by the volume of media options available to them. The same proportion of the media professionals surveyed (one third) were overwhelmed by the number of media options personally available to them.

How were these sentiments expressed in actual media exposure and use? The study found that media professionals (who are paid for their expertise in the industry!) use the major consumer media—TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and online—less than the average consumer.

Some attribute these findings to inaccurate reporting on the part of the sampled participants—they’re using more than they say they are. Some attribute it to media burnout, however, and I’m compelled to agree. There are two explanations for this burnout and they are being overwhelmed due to the sheer quantity of media, as suggested above, but also by quality of most media that we are exposed to day after day in our monitoring, researching, and pitching.

Media professionals have become jaded. We’ve stopped relying on most forms of media for purposes that everyday consumers still do: getting objective information. We pitched the reporter, and we know how our client became part of the story. Because we go to the media with different expectations, we use it less.

But there’s an advantage to understanding the behind-the-scenes. Rather than be turned off by it, we have to use it.

Some say it’s not possible to read everything. That’s true. Does not mean you can’t try. How can you read more efficiently? Know what you’re looking for and what you need to get out of it. And skim. (Well, never tell the author you skimmed!)

• Who’s the reporter and have you read their work before? What do they like writing about? What compels them?
• Who’s the target audience? Does the writing reflect that?
• Is there are product, expert, or organization included in the article? How was it/were they worked in and what would be possible pitches that were used by a PR professional to make it/them relevant to the piece?
• Does it establish a trend that a client of yours could fit into? Does it?

It’s just purely unacceptable to pitch a publication you don’t know anything about. As media professionals, ones who must really understand consumers, we need to be devouring more media than consumers. The trick is to consume it as differently as you can.

This was inspired by “Study: Media Overload on the Rise” by Joe Mandese, found in the trade magazine Television Week.

Lindsay Bellows is a brilliant—and really fun—account executive in RLM’s New York world headquarters. She studies statistics in her spare time.