The 5 D's of PR

PR is like a game of dodgeball (in the movie of the same name). It's all about the 5 D's: Dodge, Dip, Duck, Dive, and Dodge.

I sometimes have to do quite a bit of PR for work, and it's a very interesting experience. You are definitely trying to get a reporter excited about what you're doing, and give them enough info to back it up. That part is no problem; I do that in my normal life anyway.

But you definitely get a lot of questions that either a) you can't answer because you don't know or b) you don't want to answer directly for one reason or another or c) isn't related to what you're talking about.

For example, one time I was asked by a reporter during an interview about Y! Go and oneSearch something to the effect of "So tell me. What is Yahoo!'s acquisition strategy?". Excuse me? You want to know why we bought Flickr or GeoCities? I get that it's interesting, but shouldn't you ask Terry Semel or Jerry Yang? What makes you think that I'm qualified to talk to that, or even want to?

The trick of PR is to somehow get the answer to the question to be about what *you* want to talk about, and to make it be (or feel) related to the question.

How bizarre.

(It makes an enormous difference to have a great PR manager, which I do).

lee