This Week in PR Takes - Week 30

Hi folks,

Happy September! There are a ton of takes and resources below, all of which I highly recommend. For this week’s Take of the Week, I’d like to share an anecdote at a high level from my personal experiences.

I worked with a company this week that announced a new round of venture-funding, and it was an absolute blast. I cannot get into specifics by any stretch, but a reporter made a simple human error. It happens. It happens to all of us. I am sure there are errors in this edition of the newsletter.

It was also a great reminder that journalists are people, and should be treated as such. if I were to make a mistake, I would want to be treated with empathy; and that’s exactly what I did in this scenario. In the end, we achieved the best possible outcome; and more importantly, everyone was the better for it.

So, that’s the take - lead with kindness.

Resource of the Week:
For those in tech PR, Maria Korolov wrote about how to best pitch her

The Rest of the Takes:

PR misc.
- Think the quality of your product/service/company matters when it comes to awards? Shannon says, think again!
- Jen wrote about her experience in crisis comms; a firsthand account of being on the front lines (PR-wise) for hurricane Katrina.
- Carly wrote about how firing a PR team will save money, but there’s real marketing damage at risk with such a strategy.
- Being in communications is like being a gatekeeper, from Stephanie
- How to make non-employees into company spokespeople, from Brandon
- Mauro shared the many faces of PR in the post-click era
- If you want to be a thought leader, don’t share “what” the news is; Dustin writes about the importance of the “why”

Planning
- Ashley’s take reminds me of Jennifer Aniston’s character in “Along Came Polly,” it’s the non-plan, communications plan.
- Followed up by Collen’s take that communications pros should start to plan for 2026.

AI/PR
- Kyle dissected press release wire services and LLMs, note: not all wire services are equal.
- Liz share that a hacker was the person behind a fake journalist???

Measurement
- The 983 Group wrote about how one PR hit yielded an incredible lift in ROI

That’s it for this week’s takes, thanks for reading.

-Brian

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkramer/