You’ll often hear PR or marketing agencies talk about how they never take a cookie cutter approach to client work. Which is all fair and good. But what they should also be saying is they won’t deal with bad cookie dough either.

In this age of digital disruption, there seems to be a growing misconception that proliferating owned media channels means that you can rip up the story rule book. It doesn’t. A good story told by a skilled storyteller will work regardless of the channel.

Conversely, turn-off dull and pushy marketing material attempting to pass itself off as engaging content won’t work regardless of the channel. If the crux of the story is boring, it won’t engage your target audience no matter how smart your infographic looks or how slickly your video clip is produced. Channels and the enhancements they offer are meaningless if the source content you’re feeding into the top of the pipe is dull.

The first thing young reporter hopefuls learn at journalism school is the importance of ideas passing the “so-what” test. Everything else flows from that. If the reaction of target audiences is likely to be a raised shoulder shrug rather than raised eyebrows, it’s back to the drawing board.

I firmly believe the same discipline needs to be brought to every piece of PR content – whether it’s a press release or thought leadership piece for media titles, or a blog for your own website or an image for sharing on social media.

Understand your audience, use the channels most likely to reach them and curate your content type accordingly. But never be fooled into believing the curation will mask a boring story, or let the channel get in the way of a good story.