The case of the missing credit

We all know the deal.  Journalists aren’t always interested in your cause.  Some are far more interested in the celebrity, so you hammer out a compromise.  They get access to the celebrity and you get an agreed plug for an area of your work.

A typical example would be Sam Fox.  She is a big supporter of Scope and as such went to support the charity at BGC’s charity day (see The biggest celebfest of the year!).  The Guardian asked for an interview and, having been asked by the charity, she agreed.

For Sam it was something she was doing for the charity, not because she particularly wanted to do an interview for the Guardian. A deal had been struck that they would mention that Sam was supporting Scope at BGC.

Fantastic, everyone wins.  The article came out on Saturday and you can read it here.  There’s a prize for anyone who can spot the reference to the charity – it’s alright I’m not being generous, there isn’t one.

One of the most frustrating parts of working with celebrities is that no matter how hard you work, how well you cross the T’s and dot the I’s, the moment the interview has happened you have, in most cases, lost control.  For whatever reason someone, probably a sub-editor, has cut the credit.

As so many communications folk will tell you this happens more often than you’d like.  It’s certainly happened to me.  A journalist may promise the earth but even they don’t control their work.  What appears in the media is ultimately down to subs and editors.

Is there a solution? In reality, no.  You could go back to the journalist and complain but that won’t change the article.  You could try and guilt trip them into doing something else for you but there’s no guarantee.  The fact is PR is not an exact science.  There are no guarantees.  A piece which was timed to promote an event may not get run until it’s too late.  Even worse you go through all that and then there’s a real news story which means it gets dropped altogether.

So next time something like this happens around your project don’t blame the celebrity manager or media person who set it up.  Just be glad you don’t have a job where you can spend hours working on something with no positive outcome at the end – and remember that the celebrity manager is the one who has to explain to the celebrity why the credit didn’t appear………and if they’re really unlucky, as a friend of mine was, the celebrity manager may also be getting it in the ear from the celeb's own publicist.