Ravenous: A Food Blog | Bridging the Gap

About a week ago, I attended a Food Blogger and PR Summit, hosted by Sarah Canet from Spoon PR and Tim Hayward, food writer for the Guardian and the Guardian’s food blog, Word of Mouth. I met Tim a few weeks earlier when I started following his blog and Twitter page, and we met up for a coffee so I could pick his ‘foodie brain.’ As I am a “Food PR” and he is a food blogger (as well as a paid journalist), we got to talking about the way bloggers view PRs – usually as manipulative, unnecessary and as a nuisance in the way of what they’re trying to achieve.

We also talked about the general feeling PRs have toward bloggers, and although I view them as new media and as influential writers, Tim told me that many PRs don’t value bloggers in this way because they are not journalists who work for a printed publication. It was evident to me after this conversation, and obviously to Tim and Sarah it had been for a while, that food PRs and food bloggers just don’t get each other.

After meeting Tim, I was really looking forward to the BPRSummit, an event that would put all the issues we have with each other on the table and get to the ‘nitty gritty’ of the food blogger/PR drama.

I have to admit, I attended the event just to see what problems people were having, because I was a bit naive to the whole thing and wasn’t experiencing any real problems.

In the last few months of meeting and working with bloggers, I found that the relationship worked quite well. Sometimes I was ignored by a blogger but this was no different to being ignored by a paid journalist (which unfortunately is just part of the deal), and other times the blogger gave me (and therefore my client) the attention I felt we both deserved.

Boy, was I in for a surprise. The summit was an eye-opener to the real problems bloggers have with PRs and vice versa.

Here are the main issues I took away from the event:

• Bloggers think they are entitled to respect and attention from the food industry because they are passionate about food and have the power to write about it. Equally, PRs think they are entitled to getting their clients involved in the world of food blogs simply because they represent quality brands/chefs/restaurants.
• Bloggers also think they don’t need PRs and that they are there to manipulate them and their opinions – and PRs think bloggers need them in a big way, and they’re just not sure how to get the attention they’re used to from trained journalists.

And here’s what I think about the heated debate:

Food PR at work

Although bloggers may not be ‘trained journalists,’ I recognise that they are still very influential and are a great representation of the average customer my clients would appeal to. I also recognise that it is my job to explain this to my clients and to make them see the value of online communications and the phenomenon that is known as the ‘blogosphere.’ And as I spend a good part of my job persuading my clients that bloggers are legitimate and well-respected, I can only hope that the food bloggers will appreciate this and simply take the information I give them as that – a bit of a pointer in the right direction, a hint, if you will, about my client’s food or drink, access to my client and any other background info I can provide and that’s it – from there, the bloggers make the call on if they like, love or hate it. It’s the same with journalists – once I do my job, give them the information and explain who/what my client is and why they should care, I am risking negative coverage, but hoping for a great review.

I think Anthony Silverbrow, a food blogger who was also on the discussion panel at the BPRSummit, said it best on his blog: “Working with PRs is not eating with the enemy. It is, when working with good PRs, getting good information and access.”

And on top of providing information and access, because I love food and what my clients offer, I hope that my passion and enthusiasm is evident to bloggers and journalists alike, and is the fuel to the fire of a great relationship. I think maybe sometimes this enthusiasm for food is what the PRs are lacking, which could be why they aren’t getting through to the bloggers.

After the summit and the opinions that came from bloggers and PRs in the days following, I got to thinking about writing a food blog myself – I have exactly what it takes to write a food blog (I love food, full stop) and I am really hoping to bridge the gap between the bloggers and the PRs to show them that we’re all in this together.

A food blog, with a small side of PR:

On my food blog, I plan to write about London restaurants, products from the shelves that I try, the differences in the way Americans and Brits eat, healthy ways to eat (food bloggers, I can hear the moans! It will only be sometimes that I write about nutrition and hope I will be able to make it interesting and write about it in a way that keeps you salivating for more!) food news, the foods I find while travelling and sometimes just my daily excitement by things like the Super Duper Health and Humous Salad from Pret (doesn’t take much).

Other than that, my hope is that by writing this food blog as someone who works in food PR but also genuinely loves food, I will show the bloggers and the PRs out there that the relationship can work if we all understand that we’re just trying to share with the world the great food, drink and restaurants out there. Yes, some of us are getting paid to write about food, to tell bloggers and journalists about our clients and to PR them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love it as much as the bloggers who write about it in their spare time.

And at the very least, we should be taking advantage of the many opportunities to enjoy a great meal together!

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