Seat at the Table

In the opener of a BusinessWeek article, ”The Phone Companies Don’t Get It,” the journalist tells us how he saw a TV service demo in the house of someone who, although had a connection to AT&T, was not an employee.  It turns out the homeowner was the architect of the service they demoing.  I’m not sure if the headline referred to the industry strategies he covered or the PR team.

Note: I do not know AT&T’s side of the story.  It’s not unusual for a media to slam PR unfairly and that may be the case here.  I would be curious to know more.

That said, this isn’t yet another example of how bad PR professionals taint the industry.  But this may be an example of how senior executives lose respect PR.

A PR professionals job is not simply to make something happen, it’s to advise whether or not it should happen - even if that means delivering bad news (let’s skip this high profile opportunity).  In this case, the journalist seemed to expect, and the PR team needed to deliver, a real customer home.  If they couldn’t deliver, they should have been upfront.  Yes, it may have cost an opportunity, but I imagine that, in retrospect, it’s a small cost compared to the credibility cost due to this article.