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Why Using One Global Approach for CEO Media Interviews Can Fail

While digital communications are making the world smaller and driving some commonality in practices, the world of journalism is anything but unified in cultural habits, preferences and approaches as geography changes.

According to our global partners in the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN), who surveyed more than 200 journalists across Europe and North America, while there may be some common themes, each country’s reporters often have their own unique perspective that can impact the outcome of your CEO’s interviews.

For example, the results of the PRGN survey showed:
• German and Italian journalists consider the CEO’s private life both fair game and an important factor in their story;
• Journalists from the United Kingdom overwhelmingly prefer to interview CEOs by phone rather than a visit to the CEO’s office or a company facility – due to time and budget restraints;
• Swiss reporters focus intently on previous media coverage and third-party opinions when doing pre-interview research – so any previous negative coverage or comments will be more likely to shade the tone and direction of the interview;
• North American reporters are much more likely to review the CEO’s social media profiles when doing pre-interview research; and
• Two out of three Dutch journalists will always allow you to review the article they’ve produced before it is published.

So how does a North American PR executive gain access to the local and cultural insights about journalists in other countries … without the enormous expense of retaining one of the mega-agencies that focus on clients with multi-million-dollar PR budgets?

One way is to work with a firm like Bianchi PR, an active partner in the Public Relations Global Network, “the world’s local agency,” which brings together the local knowledge and media relationships of seasoned PR experts in more than 50 of the world’s key markets. To see all the countries and markets covered by our PRGN partners, visit http://www.bianchipr.com/global-network/.

Editor’s note: Later in 2017, PRGN will conduct this proprietary journalist survey again – expanding it globally to include Asia, Africa and South & Central America, and we will share results and insights in a future issue.