THE PERSPIRATION THAT POWERS INSPIRATION

Whether you’re a sports fan or not, it’s been impossible to ignore the Olympics over the past couple of weeks, and with every medal there’s an inspirational story of hard work, focus and resilience.

Team GB has been more successful than ever before and, regardless of their event, the passion of every athlete has been the same. They are all shining examples of what it takes to achieve great things; as Mo Farah says: “Don’t dream of winning. Train for it.”

We can’t all run 10,000 metres in 27 minutes (I certainly can’t!) but we can all live by that mantra. After 20 years in PR I’ve seen a lot of changes, but one thing remains as true now as it was the first day I picked up the phone to sell in a story to a journalist: you can’t be successful without dogged determination.

As a construction PR agency, we work with a lot of companies that tell us we’ve managed to get results for them that previous agencies haven’t even come close to. Often, we start a relationship with a new client with a discussion about case studies and they tell us that they’ve tried going down that route before but have been unable to secure the necessary approvals. While it’s true that we sometimes come across armour-plated non-disclosure policies, often the reason why approvals haven’t been secured is because the PR professionals involved have not knocked on the right doors…or enough of them.

Similarly, when it comes to placing editorial, an approach involving an email to a journalist and a disappointed shrug when they don’t reply doesn’t equate to skilled campaign delivery. Only by talking to journalists, understanding what they’re looking for and re-pitching ideas can a PR really hope to achieve the profile their client is looking for.

Sometimes we all need a reminder that ideas are more valuable when combined with hard work. In the words of American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison: “Genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration.”