I make it a point of not naming and shaming, or of moaning about companies who don’t want to play along with my agenda, but I’m going to break this rule for Eurostar. As you may have noted from recent blog posts and articles, I’ve been a massive admirer of Eurostar’s new channel tunnel rail link, its terminus at St Pancras and the opportunity this presents for it in marketing terms. Which is why I wanted to talk to them about it – indeed to sing their praises. So I approached them, asking for a ten minute telephone interview with one of their senior marketers to talk about their marketing, followed by half an hour of their time for a WebTV interview to discuss the development on camera. But they declined both. Actually, the didn’t decline, they just didn’t really bother coming back to me about the opportunity. The PR just let it drop.
Now I understand completely that B2B marketers (our primary readers) are not Eurostar’s primary audience, but almost certainly a large proportion will be business travellers, and that isn’t really the point. Surely the primary point of PR is to present your organisation in the best possible light to all possible audiences, not to be picky and shun certain ones arbitrarily. I made it clear to the press office that this was going to be a positive piece – perhaps if I’d said I was going to criticise them I might have gained more traction. Otherwise a polite “no thanks” or “we’re too busy this week” would have sufficed.
PR and PRs can be fickle at the best of times, but it’s Eurostar’s marketing people that I’m really surprises me. Why wouldn’t they want to tell the wider marketing world about what a good job they’ve been doing? Perhaps they think this would be bragging, but from my perspective it just smacks of laziness and/or arrogance. So congratulations Eurostar – you’ve turned a fan into a critic. It’s the ultimate PR own goal, and surely there’s a lesson in this. As our friends at the Eurovision Song Contest would have said, with a suitably French accent: “Eurostar: nil points.”
Now I understand completely that B2B marketers (our primary readers) are not Eurostar’s primary audience, but almost certainly a large proportion will be business travellers, and that isn’t really the point. Surely the primary point of PR is to present your organisation in the best possible light to all possible audiences, not to be picky and shun certain ones arbitrarily. I made it clear to the press office that this was going to be a positive piece – perhaps if I’d said I was going to criticise them I might have gained more traction. Otherwise a polite “no thanks” or “we’re too busy this week” would have sufficed.
PR and PRs can be fickle at the best of times, but it’s Eurostar’s marketing people that I’m really surprises me. Why wouldn’t they want to tell the wider marketing world about what a good job they’ve been doing? Perhaps they think this would be bragging, but from my perspective it just smacks of laziness and/or arrogance. So congratulations Eurostar – you’ve turned a fan into a critic. It’s the ultimate PR own goal, and surely there’s a lesson in this. As our friends at the Eurovision Song Contest would have said, with a suitably French accent: “Eurostar: nil points.”