A contact is not the relationship

THERE is a familiar moment in the PR business. A client hires an agency for media coverage. The agency makes the introductions, pitches the story, and gets the client into the newspaper. 

Then the client discovers something very useful: the journalist’s contact details.

The agency can suddenly feel like the friend who introduced two people at a party, only to be quietly dropped once the introduction has been made.

I have seen this from both sides of the table, first as a media practitioner and later as a PR practitioner on the receiving end of that call. 

A seasoned practitioner can often sense it from the first meeting.

There is a familiar sweetness in the way a first-time client talks about needing an agency, needing guidance, needing introductions. It is usually genuine. 

But experience teaches you to notice the pattern forming underneath it: once the contact is in hand, the agency becomes optional.

It is a fair instinct on the client’s part. It is also based on a misunderstanding of what media relations actually is.

The contact is not the relationship.

Anyone can have a journalist’s number. The real question is whether that journalist will pay attention to it and take it seriously.

That difference is where years of work live.

It took me more than two decades to learn this properly, working on all three sides of the industry: a media house, where I started as a sub-editor; an agency; and in-house. 

Each side taught me a different part of the same lesson.

A practitioner who has spent years working with newsrooms does not simply collect names. They build credibility.

A journalist learns who sends useful stories, who respects deadlines, who prepares a spokesperson properly and who can be trusted when things go wrong.

Because things do go wrong.

A CEO changes a statement at the last minute. A fact in the release turns out to be wrong. An interview needs to happen within the hour.

These are the moments when a media relationship is actually tested, not the easy ones.

I have sat in those moments more times than I can count on the phone with a newsroom at an hour most people would consider unreasonable, trying to hold a story together before it ran the wrong way.

That is not a skill picked up from a media list.

It is built one difficult night at a time.

Much of this is invisible to clients. They see the published article. 

They do not see the message answered at 10 pm, the call made before sunrise for clarification, the favour returned, or the story declined because it simply was not strong enough.

That is relationship capital.

It takes years to build and can be spent very quickly.

This is not an abstract argument. It shows up in numbers a client can put against what they paid.

When I managed media relations for an e-sports tournament, relationships built over the years resulted in more than 30 media outlets turning up to cover the event, generating RM1.6 million in PR value.

For a recent healthcare event, the same groundwork brought more than 50 media, generating RM2.5 million in PR value.

In both cases, the return on investment, measured against the fee paid, was massive.

That is what relationship capital can become when it is called upon: not just a headline, but a return a client can defend to its own board.

A database tells you who to contact. Experience tells you why, when and how. The relationship determines whether they want to hear from you at all.

When a client bypasses the agency and goes directly to a journalist, the agency usually finds out, often from the journalist themselves, out of courtesy rather than complaint.

There is nothing wrong with speaking to a journalist directly. Agencies do not own journalists.

But a relationship cannot be transferred simply because a contact was handed over.

The media industry, like any industry, remembers behaviour. Irrelevant pitches, poor timing and treating journalists as a distribution list eventually catch up with a person, whether they sit in an agency or not.

More often than expected, the direct approach quietly stalls.

The release goes unpublished. The interview request goes unanswered.

And the agency’s phone rings again:

“Can you help?”

Of course we help.

Good practitioners understand that relationships are built for the difficult days, not the easy ones. Nowhere is this truer than in a crisis, when a client under pressure discovers whether their agency has real standing with the media, or merely a contact list.

I will write about that in my next column: what actually happens behind the scenes when a crisis breaks and a newsroom is waiting for an answer.

For clients, the lesson is simple: do not confuse access with influence.

Being introduced to someone is access. Being trusted by them is influence.

The first can happen in five minutes. The second can take years.

For agencies, the lesson is equally humbling.

We cannot resent a client for going direct if we have never shown value beyond the contact list.

A good agency is not a gateway to journalists. It offers counsel, judgement on what is newsworthy, preparation for difficult questions and, occasionally, the courage to say:

“No. Don’t send that.”

PR was never about sending more information. It is about sending the right information, to the right people, at the right time, in the right way. 

Good PR requires judgement, timing and an understanding of how newsrooms work.

The strongest client-agency relationship is not one of permanent dependence. 

It is one where the client understands why the agency still matters, even after they know the journalist personally. 

The client brings the business and the story. The agency brings strategy, judgement and relationship management. 

The journalist brings editorial independence. And the public ultimately decides whether the message deserves to be believed.

So, the next time a journalist’s contact comes to you through your agency, save it by all means. 

But remember what you have actually received: a contact, not necessarily the relationship.

You can collect a thousand contacts. You can build an impressive media list. But trust is different. It cannot be bought, copied or shortcut. It has to be earned, one relationship at a time.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.