Why WE Should Be Doing Public Relations For Car Brands

2022 has finally arrived and the last 20 months has been difficult for many individuals and also business owners. Well understood. Now it is time to look at what should be done in our automotive industry to better understand what is needed in public relations.

There are a number of well run PR agencies who understand the car business and advice their clients accordingly and then there are others who just smile and nod to every silly and useless request presented by their clients just to keep their retainer running monthly.

We want to look at changing that because we have lost our patience with the ‘lame’ public relations individuals.

Here are 13 reasons why WE should be handling the public relations for car brands in Malaysia.

1. We will NOT send out global press releases two to three days after the media have searched, read and published them (from the car manufacturers global website).
2. We will strongly advice clients NOT to ban media who have written the truth about fledging after sales and quality issues which have already circulated on social media by unhappy owners.
3. We will show clients how to interact with the media and not lie to them. Malaysian media are NOT stupid like some voters.
4. We will NOT ‘push’ our interns to hassle the media to get boring baseless press releases to be published just to make up numbers.
5. We will update the media database every year to make sure only relevant media persons are contacted and connected.
6. We will ensure ‘issues’ with the media is communicated swiftly to your management and advice on proper methods to rectify unwanted situations without using expensive legal direction.
7. We will share localised content ideas to ensure the media understand better what will get them better traffic and YOU, better exposure. Not just rely on what the global office is sharing all the time.
8. We will have experienced motoring and business writers engaging with the media to ensure your message is understood clearly. There is no point in sharing dry ‘cut and paste’ news releases every month just to cover retainer costs.
9. We will ‘teach’ your junior internal PR staff how to handle the difficult media and how to put ‘irrelevant’ media in their place. The media is NOT always right.
10. We will advice on the ‘right’ way to conduct interviews and provide the right channels to ‘air’ these interviews.
11. We will ensure your senior management have friendly and cordial relations with the appropriate media persons and not just everyone in the media office.
12. We will make sure our interns are NOT wasting your time with useless information and waste of time projects just to make ourselves relevant for a monthly retainer.
13. We will make sure that ‘gifts’ sent to the media for festive celebrations are tasteful and are worth the trouble of the delivery persons’ time and effort. Sending your old stock merchandise by courier is not appreciated. Sending food about to expire by a delivery person is not appreciated. Sending a ‘special gift’ does not mean we will publish your badly written and lying press release.

For the public relations practitioners reading this, this is some FREE advice for you to digest if you have been doing it wrong all this time.

For the rest who have done a great job in the past years, please keep it up and we salute your effort. Thank you for making our job easier.