What a tech PR wants for Christmas

Now we are in December I think it is finally acceptable to talk about Christmas.  As per family tradition there have been a number of Christmas lists doing the rounds on email (no surprising presents in the Crawshaw household on December 25th!) but it made me think what would be on my list to improve my working day as a tech PR? So I jumped on the crowdsourcing bandwagon (well I asked my colleagues in the Spark office) and this is what some of us would like in our stockings on Christmas Day.

• A super magnet to attract journalists to press events - the fact is getting journalists to events is difficult these days. Editorial teams are smaller, yet with the growth of online publishing tech journalists are being required to write more stories each day.  As a result they can't afford as much time out the office as they used too.  So while a super magnet would be nice, from experience a better approach is to have an event with compelling content and most importantly customers.  Which leads us onto...
• A pocket watch that hypnotises customers into speaking with the press - customer references are indeed the Holy Grail for PRs and clients alike.  A really good customer story often holds a lot more value than a product one, so anything that can make the process of getting customers to speak to the press as pain-free as possible would be a dream.  Failing, that building a PR requirement into customer contracts is always a good start!
• A good supply of Berocca and/or Nurofen - for many tech PRs December is a time when the old liver can take a bit of a pounding from festive drinks with journalists and clients.  It is always a good way to network and celebrate the year’s successes, but it is always worth having some Berocca and/or Nurofen in your desk drawer for the morning after
• To never be asked for AVE again - OK so this may be more of wish rather than a physical item, but the fact is the media landscape has changed considerably over the last 10 years which has made AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent) pretty much redundant.  Print advertising rates continue to fall in the face of online, so making any historical comparisons is flawed. At the same time today's online advertising metrics make it difficult to easily compare offline and online coverage.  Today the value of PR coverage is increasingly being measured in SEO and OAO terms
• And finally ....A magic one line description that can explain what we do to our friends and family without confusing then - this would save valuable drinking and eating time over the festive period!

I'm sure there are plenty more, so if you have any more to add to the list do let us know!

(Image: Jim Hammer via Flickr Creative Commons)