Confessions from the City: The corporate PR

When, a few years ago, I was explaining to a date that I was a corporate spin doctor, she replied that in her world — she was a proper doctor — PR stood for “per rectum”.

I was reminded of that this week, when I imagined adopting that method for the insertion of a hot poker into one ghastly client. I am broad-shouldered and can endure most things thrown at me by clients, but rudeness and discourtesy really annoy me.

He is a prominent real-estate investor who appears to the outside world to be charm personified. He is anything but when you are failing to get news of his poxy deal into a national newspaper. “What do you mean she won’t run the story?” he screamed. “She is a friend of mine and owes me a favour. I will call her.”

I was very tempted to tell him that journalists don’t have friends in the business world; they have contacts and, they hope, deep throats, but not friends. Oh, and her editor had said the story was not going in the paper and there was nothing he could say that would change that.

But I didn’t. I let him go off and call her and make a fool of himself. Which he did, thankfully.

But this week did improve. I had two pitches. The hunt for new business is the most interesting part of the job, albeit challenging. Before you enter the fray, you pray for a session that is interactive and becomes a good chat, where you click with the client. What you dread is just gabbling for 45 minutes without any feedback, just stern eyebrows and bored pen-tapping.

One of the pitches went very well, but I lost it. The other was so-so, but I won it. Reading the client’s poker face can be a very tough task.

That said, there are times when you know you’re dead in the water. “Can you speak German?” I was once asked at the end of a pitch by a German, who spoke bad English. “Why is that?” I replied nervously, preparing to proffer my GCSE French accolades. “Because I am the only person in the office who speaks English,” he said. “You will need to speak in German.” We didn’t win it.

I endured another pitch nightmare with a public-sector company. I was shown into some grim room on a tatty estate. The potential clients were sipping taxpayer-funded chamomile tea and weak squash, I was offered nothing.

I began my spiel. Ten minutes in, one of them asked me to hurry up as he had a train to catch in 15 minutes. I stumbled on, only to be stopped again a few minutes later to be asked what I would charge. Once they had found out, they lost interest and I was soon sent on my way. My imaginary hot poker was wielded.