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- This Week in PR Takes - Week 8
This Week in PR Takes - Week 8
Week 8
Brian Kramer
March 21, 2025
Happy Friday and Happy Spring! Before we jump right into this week’s takes, please don’t forget that readers can always tip me off to a great take via LinkedIn chat or tag me in the post. No promises, but I’ll do my best to include as many as possible.
Let’s jump right into it!
Take of the Week:
This week’s Take of the Week comes from Andrew Petro, who penned some thoughts on how hard it is to get customers to speak with reporters. I am in full agreement that it is incredibly difficult and often takes a ton of approvals and red tape; and it is the “hard” that makes it so great because having an end-user talk about a product or service in earned media is an incredibly valuable asset. However, I disagree that PR people should go directly to our counterparts at said customers in order to fast-track approvals.
Even if they understand the media landscape, there are reasons why some of those approvals exist. For example, going through Sales and Customer Service at a company/client are necessary steps to take because they would know information like if the customer is currently happy with said product or service, if they are up for renewal soon and other account-related topics. It’s crucial to have this information, because otherwise a PR person could go directly to their counterpart, only to have to backtrack their steps.
What do you all think, what are other tips to answering the reporter question, Can I speak to a customer?
The Rest of the Takes:
Aaron Gouveia with an excellent take on all of the work PR people do that never sees the light of day
Sarah Evans, as always, published another great post on press releases. Personally, I love her point about building in time, but not because we’re difficult but because we respect the reporters we’re working with each day
Susan Waweru had some great analogies on PR & Marketing through the lens of dating
Adam Belmont let the GIF do the talking on this take about when we get a response
Shwanika Narayan with some great thoughts on embargoes
Priya Anand had a take about how press releases don’t move the needle
Jen Nycz-Conner posted about a pitch vs. an idea and some really thoughtful questions to consider
I love a good movie reference, and it appears so does Kathryn Goater with her subject line take that maps back to Jerry McGuire
Brandon Watts questions if everything needs to be a press release, and what other channels we should consider instead in this take
While not a PR person nor a PR take, it’s certainly worthwhile to flag David Vellente from The CUBE with his take on analyst relations
That’s it for this week’s takes, thanks for reading.-Brian