Are you thinking about hiring a PR (public relations) firm to get you known? Today with so much technology available is hiring a public relations even worth it?
Just so you know where I stand on this, PR is dead to me. The entire game of the public relations industry has been morphed and is a dying industry. Because of eight hundred TV channels, thousands of satellite radio channels, and the social media giants of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Meerkat, Periscope, blogging, Blabbing and all of the other social media platforms. It’s not just that most PR firms are lazy and have too many excuses they can simply just not keep up with the attention competition grab.
I have personally given five different firms a year each to produce results for me. Meanwhile, I continued to work the new technologies available to everyone. Each PR firm was excited, hopeful and believed they could give me results.
Each relationship started the same way; we met at my home or out for lunch to get to know one another. I tell them my story, they ask what my ideal target list is and I tell them. They talk grand stories of GMA, Today Show, CNN, MSNBC (no one even watches) and Fox News. I sign a contract and they promise to get with me weekly to see where I am with current news. I pump them with massive amounts of relevant content to start and I can already see the bewildered and overwhelmed look in their eyes. Within two weeks they were already given up on the weekly updates and starting to give me the standard industry excuses, “we pitched them yesterday and it wouldn’t be right to call them again today.”
All the time I am posting videos on YouTube, beating Twitter up like a bully does his little brother and bagging on every other social platform available to me. While the well-connected PR firm that knows so much about PR can’t get me an interview I am making the news rather than making excuses. One person committed to getting known is more important than an entire PR company that has no real commitment. I started creating media ploys, watching the news in order to jump on hot stories. The week Donald Trump was in the news I am doing video, writing articles or blogs and doing stunts to take advantage of the buzz created.
One person committed to getting themselves known is worth more than a 1/2 ass commitment from a PR firm that just wants their monthly check.
I realized that the best PR firm I could ever find is ME. Only I know how to promote myself to the right people, with the right message and at the right level of action to get what I want. And this was all before live streams were even available to me.
When the live streams of Periscope, Meerkat, Blab, Facebook Mentions and the likes became available PR firms just became even more dead to me. I literally have taken over Meerkat as I’m their #1 broadcaster in the entire world with over 380 streams in a period of 120 days. No PR firm could have done that for me because they refuse to embrace technology, still waiting for GMA and the Today Show to call me. Hell, they believe sending an email and leaving a message to the producer of the network that they once had a drink with is pitching their client to the network.
Today I will reach some 4 million people on social media posts, podcasts and live streams. That is bigger than the entire audience of Fox Business and MSNBC would every reach in a ten-minute interview which, by the way, they would never give me that much time.
Notice how Donald Trump commands the media — he is a PR machine, he doesn’t have a PR firm doing his work. Does he have someone fielding calls, yes, but he is the machine.
You want PR? You must become the PR machine, create the story, the news, the excitement and then disseminate your story on every vehicle possible to tell the world your story.
Only you know the full and complete evolving story of you, your company, and your brand. People fail because they fail to be noticed. People hire PR firms to get noticed and then fail again because the PR firm is actually lost in a world that no longer exists. Yesterday’s PR stands for ‘purely ridiculous’ unless you just want to add it to what you are already doing for extra support or to field phone calls.
To all the PR people out there that might object to this message. I challenge you to get me more PR this week than I can get myself. Otherwise, you are dead to me. Results in PR don’t mean you get someone on The Today Show and CNN one time and nothing else for a year — Prove me wrong.
I await your call if you still actually use the phone. 310–777–0255
Grant Cardone
