How to Pitch: Motoring Middle East
April 17, 2016 Consumer Magazines
Veteran Gulf motoring journalist Shahzad Sheikh, editor in chief of Motoring Middle East, discusses the website’s audience, how PRs can best work with his online publication and its various multi-media offshoots, and his take on the regional automotive PR industry.
Tell us about Motoring Middle East.
Motoring Middle East is now in its fifth year and reaches a wide audience across the GCC, and beyond. Our audience constitutes a ‘hard-core enthusiast’ base which is highly knowledgeable and engaged, as well as a crucial consumer ‘point-of-purchase’ audience that needs information, advice and guidance when deciding their next automotive purchase. We reach this audience through our website MotoringME.com; a fast-growing YouTube channel; social media, particularly Facebook; a popular weekly radio show on Dubai Eye; and a weekly TV show on GearOne Television.
What are your readers looking for?
Car reviews are greatly sought after, but since we’ve always been strong on serving the car community, they also seek generic industry information and regional and local event info from us. Our social media and radio show both invite and encourage direct contact with our audiences, so we are also regularly called upon to give advice, guidance, information and opinions on automotive products and industry trends.
Tell us about your new TV show on GearOne TV.
The Motoring Middle East show airs every Tuesday at 8pm on GearOne Television, with a repeat showing at 9pm on Wednesdays. It feeds directly off the content we already create for our other media outlets, especially the YouTube channel, and usually consists of car review videos with occasional ‘special features’ such as car launches, events, and even films where we may be undertaking challenges or endeavouring to do something a little different with vehicles. The overall style of the show, and indeed the tone of Motoring Middle East in general, is very much along the lines of infotainment. We like to have fun with our content and believe our audience relates to that and finds the approach appealing.
How do you like to work with PR and brands?
I’ve been asked many times about what makes good PR – is it the press releases, the assets provided, the fancy press trips, the availability of a press fleet, or even the trinkets or gift mementos we’re often given? I guess all of this is important to some extent or another, but to my mind the overriding and most crucial factor of all is quite simply: relationships. Any PR manager can do more benefit for their client - and occasionally save them from negative coverage – by forging and nurturing positive and mutually beneficial direct personal relationships with key media
Plus, good product knowledge, brand understanding and, when it comes to cars in particular, it helps to have a passion and keenness for the subject. In other words, it helps to be a ‘car enthusiast’ because that’s what most car journalists are, and being on the same wavelength would be very beneficial to both PR and content creator alike.
Additionally, the best PRs are those that have consumed, understood and empathised with your media output, hence better comprehending your needs and requirements – and even being able to offer content suggestions and unique opportunities fitting to the media outlet’s target audience.
What’s the best way for a PR to build a relationship with you?
Be nice! Most journalists are over-worked, underpaid and just about always up against it. A little bit of thought, courtesy, respect and attentiveness will go a long way. Don’t be overbearing, don’t give media attitude (that’s a recipe for disaster) and don’t assume that they need you more than you need them. Especially if they have an actual and engaged audience.
Another thing that is very important is being receptive to criticism and not being put-off by negative comments or even reviews. Car journalists are car enthusiasts at heart and, as a rule, we genuinely love cars. We want all cars to be good, and are genuinely disappointed if they’re not - though it’s also fair to say there’s no such thing as an outright bad car anymore.
But at the same time we have to be true to our audience, and being honest and clear about our thoughts and perceptions on products or industry trends is key to us building authoritativeness and credibility. If we fail to highlight obvious issues and our readers become aware of them, it reflects badly on us, and we run the risk of losing that audience. This doesn’t really help the PR either, as they need key media to have a strong and engaged audience, especially if they’ve spent all that time cultivating relationships. So you have to be prepared to take the occasional hit on the chin.
How has regional automotive PR evolved over the years?
Over the past 10 years of dealing with automotive PR in the region (previously as editor of Car Middle East magazine at ITP), I would have to conclude not greatly I’m afraid. To be honest, the level of quality goes up and down, sometimes quite dependent on key personnel. One of the things that PR firms need to be aware of is continuity and consistency – if you find good PR people, keep a tight hold of them, otherwise you end up starting from scratch and potentially losing a lot of ground.
What can PR do better?
One of the biggest issues we face here is the availability and access of cars for review. Compared to other markets (and I’ve worked extensively in the UK previously) not all manufacturers even have cars available, sometimes they only get the cars many months after they’ve been launched in the region by which time the story – and interest - has gone cold. Very few deliver and collect cars (and/or are not aware of simple procedures such as that the cars should be clean, fuelled and with a press kit or spec sheet including prices supplied with the car) – just having to pick up and deliver cars can take up too much time, particularly if the locations are inconvenient.
For a multi-media outlet such as us, we also need the cars for some time in most cases (we have to test the cars, photograph them and video them, all of which takes time) – in other markets cars are made available for a week, here it’s sometimes only a couple of days.
And obviously the cars should be FULLY insured and all eventualities covered (car journalists tend to drive cars harder and further than most), but some only insure their cars third party and/or put high excess liability (this would actually put us off testing their cars altogether – particularly as a smaller media outlet).
Locally produced assets would also be helpful – ie local high quality press photography and B-roll video footage.
I don’t want to be too negative though, as I know a lot of PRs who do great work and are doing their best to improve the service they provide, and overall things are a little better now than they were 10 years ago. But there’s still plenty more room for improvement, as there always is.
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