Don't feed the Sharks

The most cutting you can say to an in-house PR or marketer is ‘You’re not on my radar, I never read about you’.

It cuts to the bone.

It bites like a shark.

Well, sharks are unique in wildlife.

They are the only fish without a swim bladder.

A swim bladder is like a little balloon of air inside a fish, which shrinks and enlarges according to the pressure of the water.

That’s why fish can stay exactly where they are in the water without floating up to the surface, or sinking from the bottom.

Sharks don’t have one.

How do they stop themselves from sinking?

A shark has to use its fins like an aeroplane for buoyancy, but essentially it has to keep moving, constantly using energy.

It cannot sleep.

It has to keep constantly swimming, and to fuel this relentless energy expense, it has to keep eating.

If it stopped swimming, it would sink and die.

When you’re a little restaurant, there is a temptation to be the top of peoples’ lips at all times.

Is everybody talking about us?
Are we the place of the moment?
The plat du your?
Are the right people being seen here?

It’s painful sometimes when you look around and see the latest places, top of the lists, mentioned repeatedly in the press, tweeted and instagrammed.












The problem with always trying to be the latest place, today’s place, is that you are always one new opening away from being yesterday’s place.

Where the celebs don’t go to anymore.

Where the paparazzi don’t hang outside anymore.

Where the bloggers don’t bother with anymore.

I can think of at least ten places who paid for super high octane PR and coverage and were THE places to go when they opened.

For six months.

Most have now faded or closed.

As Mick Jagger said, “Who wants yesterday’s news?

The only way to maintain this kind of No.1 profile is to keep paying.

A lot.

You pay the PR company to keep you in the roundups and lists.

You pay the celeb agency to keep sending their people down (and not forgetting paying their bill).

You keep offering the freebies to bloggers and influencers.

You pay for the Facebook ads to keep you in peoples’ feeds.

You’ve become the shark.

It’s shark publicity.

Only with shark publicity you’re not constantly swimming, you’re constantly paying.

And if you stop paying, you sink.

Look at how much you pay, week in week out just to keep on peoples’ radars.

Think about those people, and if their radars are even worth being on.

Whether those fickle radars would jump ship to the next cool place that seduced their radars with more lavish publicity.

How many times did it turn into a happy customer?

Maybe it’s time to look at how much of your expenditure is shark publicity.