A recent phone call to my office prompted me to do some digging for Footings.

The style of the call might be familiar to you if you work for a trade association or membership organisation of any sort, and particularly if you're part of the construction industry. We get these calls about once a month:

"Hi, how are you?! [Gushing enthusiasm from stranger on phone].

"I've been talking to your colleague Jim and he really wanted me to give you a call. We publish a very high quality journal that goes to all the key decision makers in the construction industry and my editor really wants to run a big feature on your Association. What issues are of most concern to you at the moment? Zero carbon agenda? Building Regulations? Health and safety must be a big one.... [Blah, blah]

"Well, we can offer you a full page/two pages/six pages of free editorial.... No cost to your Association, but great coverage in a glossy quarterly that's read by 40,000 senior decision makers - all the top specifiers, housebuilders, RSLs, housing associations, local authorities, major contractors, special sub-contractors, architects, QSs, surveyors, structural, mechanical and civil engineers, government agencies, public utilities, materials manufacturers...." [Blah, blah]

If you're anything like me, major alarm bells are ringing by now.

• I've never heard of this publication before (it has one of those generic titles like UK Construction World, Building National, Property Now etc).
• I've never heard of the publisher either.
• It's claiming a circulation well in excess of what we'd expect, covering pretty much the WHOLE industry and all its diverse disciplines.
• It's not got an ABC certificate of course.
• Oh, and guess what, they want to promote the fact that you're "collaborating" with them on this "exciting feature" to all the Association's members in order to invite them to advertise. They may even want a list of your members in exchange for this "great opportunity".

Welcome to the trade mag version of vanity publishing, and its close cousin 'support advertising' features.

Fed up with these calls and curious about what was going on with this particular rogue publication (which has recently changed its title again), last week I had a really helpful chat with a bone fide publisher who knew the set-up. He explained that these tactics tend to cluster around three types of features:

1. Project features about a particular building project, where the developer writes some blurb about the project and all the companies, contractors and suppliers involved on the project are invited to place advertising saying how pleased they are to be associated with Building X and its developer.
2. Event features about a major exhibition like Interbuild, Ecobuild or a conference, where the event organiser writes the blurb and all the exhibitors are approached to advertise in support.
3. Trade association/membership organisation features, where the Association writes some blurb and all the members are encouraged to advertise in support.

You get the picture.

As a publishing model, it can occasionally work well for all parties, he told me. Sometimes.

BUT there are major dangers:

• If the sales team can't sell enough advertising around the feature, it won't get published at all, so you've wasted your time.
• There is usually very little information about who receives these publications, and readership numbers are not the same as actual copies distributed (assume a standard multiplier of x 4).
• The quality of the content can be shockingly bad.
• The ad sales techniques can get very pushy, which is also bad news if the Association then receives complaints from its members. They may feel obligated or bullied into advertising in a magazine where they would or should not spend their money.
• And there are (allegedly) cases where a publisher has simply taken the advertising revenue, published enough copies of the magazine to give one to each of the advertisers, and pocketed the rest of the cash. Illegal, immoral and pretty much invisible fraud.

I'm afraid our sector has its fair share of these sorts of publishers. If you call me, I'll give you the names of our prime suspects.

So here's the bottom line: No up-to-date ABC certificate, no editorial and certainly no list of our clients' members. Sorry.

Here's another in our quick series trying to debunk a few PR myths and misunderstandings.

This is a true story - a comment I received some time ago from a new client:

"I don't understand. I gave the journalist all the information I could - our brochure, annual report, even a copy of the presentation I gave at that conference last month - and they still got it wrong!"

The moral of the story? Less is more.

Information overload is a sure fire way to confuse (or simply turn off) a busy journalist under deadline. If the reporter has to struggle to find your point of view in a swathe of corporate literature, or sift through a 900-word email to get the facts and simple three-line quote that's needed, then you cannot expect them to write a good article that accurately reflects the facts and your views - or even to write one at all.

It's much better to find out exactly what they need and for you to supply it succinctly, efficiently and professionally.

They need an article or opinion piece? Fine, that probably means 600-800 words or so and a picture. They need to know what you thought about that Government announcement this morning? That probably means two or three short sentences max in a quick email (or better still, over the phone right now).

By all means put annual reports, brochures, presentations, previous press cuttings and a rich source of additional information onto your website (for example, within your News Centre) and offer links to it. But a parcel of your finest colour brochures will never be a suitable substitute for getting straight to the point.

To many experienced communicators, these 'PR myths' (well, more misunderstandings maybe) probably seem very basic. But I'm often asked these questions, so I guess there is value in just knocking them off, one by one. Here's another frequent query... it cropped up again just yesterday:

"But I said it was off the record! Why have they landed me right in it? And what do you have to say to stop a journalist writing anything?"

'Off the record' must be three of the worst heart-sinking words a journalist ever hears. It's supposed to mean that nothing they are told can then be reported. It's an attempted gagging order that aims to stop a journalist doing their job.

Talking to people on our media training sessions, it's clear that their experience of 'off the record' is just as disastrous. It's not like on the telly. Too often, it's a plea blurted out at the end of a unguarded rant or indiscretion, in the hope that the fast-regretted words will somehow vanish from the journalist's memory and notepad. We all have those 'Oops' moments. But claiming 'off the record' at that point is a waste of time and usually never works.

In fact, it's very rare that 'off the record' ever needs to be used.

If you have important but sensitive background information that a journalist probably should know but that cannot appear in print upon pain of (your) death, there may sometimes be scope to agree a confidential briefing with the journalist if they are someone you already know and trust. You will obviously need their promise to respect that confidentiality before you start spilling the beans...

But if something is so sensitive that it cannot be discussed openly, then it's probably best not to say anything at all. Discretion is the better part of valour and all that.

Your best bet is to find out what the journalist needs to know (and what they know already), and decide on how you want to respond without resorting to the awful "No comment". If you really, really can't comment on something right now, explain that truthfully, find out what you can say as an acceptable holding statement and/or agree a date/time when you can talk more openly.

"If I agree to that interview, I want to check what they're going to print before it goes to press..."

Sorry, but dream on. Most journalists will resist very strongly any attempt by anyone outside their publication to influence or in any way exert editorial control over what they have written.

As one reporter at Property Week told me indignantly a while ago when someone had apparently asked for the chance to check in advance what would be published: "I don't tell them how to do their job! I will not be told how to do mine."

The only journalist I know who ever offers my clients the chance to look at what she's written to ensure the facts are correct is Jan Ambrose, editor of the RICS Building Control Journal. But she is entirely and wonderfully unique!

If you're worried about being misquoted, or that a journalist may have got the wrong end of the stick, then there are better ways of making sure the facts come out as they should.

Demanding to check the copy before it goes to press is just seen as an attempt at censorship, so please don't even ask!

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to take a look at a handful of common myths and misunderstandings among managers new to PR and to media relations in particular.

Today's myth is the perennial question about the link (or not) between PR and advertising.

"We do a load of advertising in Widgets Weekly - we should be getting some free editorial every week too..."

Here's the truth as we see it after 20 years in PR.

Newspaper and magazine editorial teams are usually entirely independent of their advertising colleagues, and insist on keeping it that way. Big advertisers (indeed, any advertisers) are not routinely given preferential treatment when it comes to editorial. It's all about journalistic integrity.

If you want editorial coverage in your main trade journal (or any respectable publication), you have to work for it. That means having a real piece of news or timely, interesting story or point of view to offer. You need to know how best to approach the right media with the right story at the right time and in the right way. You don't have to advertise at all, or spend any money with a publication, in order to get a genuine journalist interested in publishing a genuine story.

There are many monthly and quarterly publications (print and online) in the construction and property sectors that operate in a different way - offering to publish 'free' vanity profiles of trade associations in exchange for members' details, or requesting a 'colour separation' fee for photos. This is a subject I'll return to again another day.

But for now, let me just clear this up in a single sentence: this is not editorial, it's advertising just dressed up a different way (and actually with fewer benefits than real display advertising). Our typical advice to our clients is: Don't go there.