Last month, sat in the glossy reception of a well-known consumer mag, I watched as deliveries streamed in for the journos upstairs. Artfully ribboned boxes, towering crates of booze, and bulging wicker hampers darkened the entrance, leaving a trail of stray confetti as the doorman heaved them to one side.
The parcels were addressed to the dwindling number of feature writers and columnists above, whose editorial endorsement can help launch new products into the consumer mainstream. A few looked like they’d been there a while.
Look at the social accounts of many glossy mags and you’ll see that product deliveries are frequent, nestling on an implicit understanding that free stuff equals free coverage.
With more brands getting in on the act, and fewer journalists to impress, the pressure to give these deliveries “added standout” is pushing PRs to even greater lengths (and lows). Ice cream tennis ball, anyone? Sand in a box?
It’s even common for agencies to launch guerrilla style attacks on newsrooms in person, delivering items by hand, often with a d-list celeb in tow for “a bit of theatre”.
And the product drop itself is no longer just a pack of samples. Big brands fork out considerable sums to send preened deliveries for their “love list”. (Further down the chain, it’s a different story – think children’s party bags posted by second class Royal Mail.)
For PR consultants, they create an ethical minefield and a logistical nightmare.
“How many kilos of those foam balls does it take to pad out eighteen boxes of champagne flutes?”
“Will Royal Mail let us post party canons standard delivery?”
Littered with rolls of tape, off cuts of bubble wrap, and a dusting of glitter, the assemblage area looks less like a PR office and more like the King’s Road Paperchase on Christmas Eve.
Behind the scenes, interns wrap, pack and write the accompanying notes, growing progressively more elaborate with the boss’s signature as the afternoon wears on. These are the kind of opportunities that student debt buys you nowadays.
Directors look on with disdain as the practicalities of that idea they shouted out in a brainstorm two months earlier come to fruition.
For the journalists themselves, responses vary from appreciation to annoyance, with plenty of ambivalence in between. Follow-up calls elicit responses that could freeze lava.
But frequently these deliveries work. When done right, forcing the brand under the nose of a journalist achieves results – you can ignore a press release, but it’s difficult to ignore that cluster of helium balloons bobbing next to your desk.
Is it bribery?
As media drops have grown more elaborate, an ethical debate about them has been almost none existent.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) makes a small mention of gifts in their ethics guidelines for PRs and journalists: “Hospitality offered or accepted should not exceed normal courtesy and any offers of gifts should be reported to your manager.”
It’s easy for PRs to hide behind the ambiguity of what “normal courtesy” equates to, leaving journalists themselves to make the call on what is appropriate, but in the long-term isn’t it in a PRs interest not to overstep the line?
As the trend for media gifting continues, it won’t be long before calls for transparency are met and I don’t think that us big, bad PRs will be out of the firing line.
Should that time come, I won’t fight the tide of change, although I will miss that box of chocolates the couriers send us at Christmas.
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