Dennis Rutzou Public Relations
Dennis Rutzou
How do you let people down gently?
May 10th
Just how do you let people down gently, when they have made a phone or email approach or suggestion which is unwelcome or inappropriate?
How do you let someone down gently?
I call a lot of people and occasionally I get a hostile response and I have even encountered someone hanging up the phone in my ear, but although this is unusual I have always noted it in my call diary.
I was reminded of this by a recent situation when I attended a business lunch and the guest speaker posed a Government problem they were having, which was costing them a lot More >
Indulgent Rutzou blog
Mar 22nd
I was talking to a great friend last week. Paul Griffiths is a great guy. He was ABC TV television journalist on the old This Day Tonight and since then in his later occupation I have described him as ‘the master’ when it comes to speech and media training.
When I spoke to Paul, he had been to a funeral that morning and was going to another the next day. We both made the observation that it was depressing to go to funerals and reminded those who attended of their own mortality.
Probably to cheer Paul up, as much as anything, I mentioned More >
If I were a client looking for a PR consultancy, what would I look for?
Feb 16th
Let’s suppose that I am the Marketing Director of a medium to large organisation and I’m looking for a PR consultancy. What are the major boxes I’m looking to tick?
I often mentally place myself in the position of the other person to help understand what they are looking for and as a result try and come up with the answers. In the past I have often done it when I am planning to pitch a story to a journalist, by imagining what the scribe would be looking for.
Choosing the right PR agency
OK, so in my Marketing Director role, I am More >
My Greatest Ever PR Disaster
Dec 8th
I guess that everyone like me who has been in PR for a long, long while has had some triumphs as well as some disasters.
The triumphs are shouted from the skies, while the disasters are buried.
Well, I’m prepared to come out and tell you about my greatest ever disaster.
Forget about the press conferences that four TV crews were going to cover, only to be called away by a factory fire on the way to us, or the time I staged a big press conference in London on the same day that President Kennedy got assassinated.
They all pale into insignificance.
No, there More >
The Frustrations of Public Relations?
Nov 2nd
Like most jobs public relations has more than its share of frustrations, but there is one that hits me quite often that may be different from what you imagine.
My most regular PR frustration comes from when I come across a company that has a great story to tell and not only doesn’t recognise that fact, but has dug a hole for themselves and that’s where they are sitting come what may.
Sometimes the clue about their potential comes from the website, which is usually an absolute mess. Usually very confusing and out of date.
A recent example is a new business lead More >
Do you also have a love/hate relationship with phone calls?
Oct 6th
Usually I love receiving telephone calls, even from someone I’ve never spoken to before. I suppose I am just plain curious and intrigued by what they could be proposing.
I got a call this week from a man I’d never met from Gippsland, Victoria who runs a graphic arts business and came across our listing in a trade directory and felt that our brand of PR could be of great value to one of his major clients, which is a major company with branches all over Australia and internationally. It was a great call and a very good new business lead More >
Is international PR alignment in the interest of the consultancy or the client?
Sep 15th
I’ve posed the question, so I’ll give you the answer (in my opinion). Others may differ.
I recently had a situation where we had the opportunity of discussing how we could introduce a PR program at a local level to support the channel partners of a major international IT company.
What's the best way to maximise local PR efforts internationally?
As we run PR training for small businesses, such as PR Mentor our 12 week training course for those SMBs that want to use the power of PR to advance their business, it seemed like a good fit. We could train their channel partners More >
What is the value of a good idea, particularly if it is pinched?
May 12th
I remember a TV commercial of a few years that showed the back view of a very well muscled dentist (with a bare torso) at his morning mirror with the voice over saying: “Rob is a dentist but we can’t show his face”, and went on to say that more dentists used an OralB toothbrush than any other.
Commercially the ad was outstanding and rewrote market share in the category.
It was based on the creative use of research and was a ground breaking commercial as toothbrushes had not been previously advertised on TV and the per capita use of toothbrushes was More >
