There’s never a good time for this, but try doing it on a Sunday evening on the A1 if you really want the full nightmare experience.

There’s a bit of a parallel with PR. If you use the wrong agency or PR people to talk to specialist journalists you can do serious, potentially permanent damage to your media relations, perhaps without even knowing you’ve done it.

This is especially true in the capital markets, which we at Aspectus PR know well and deal with all the key journalists involved every day. It’s crucial to know the issues, especially when it comes to complex regulation, trading technology or developments in the financial markets. You cannot hope to work with writers and editors in this space unless you do. Equally important is knowing which journalists to pitch with what stories; the demarcation lines are often very subtle.

One of the most common complaints from capital markets writers is being called by ‘PR timewasters’ who simply don’t know their stuff. Their cards get marked and the journalists won’t take their calls or open their emails. The trouble is that it infects the client company’s standing with the capital markets’ media too.

And, a bit like a car after several miles on the wrong fuel, you don’t know the full extent of the damage until some time later.