Day: July 29, 2004

Canada’s Marketing Magazine has a feature on the growing importance of Public Relations in the marketing mix.

“For the last two years, Diageo Canada has run a successful program around St. Patrick’s Day called the Guinness Party of Canada, a pseudo-political group aimed at turning the Irish festivities into a new national holiday. The effort may make a lot of sense for the purveyor of the Guinness brand, but more than that, it speaks to a growing number of companies that are embracing public relations like never before.”

Just after I finished my last rant on control, I see that Mike Manual points to a story on a similar theme.  Internetnews, in a story on how blogs and RSS can help business, includes a quote from consultant Lisa Poulson:

“PR firms love to control the message, control who says the message, control who has access to who says the message and the timing of the message,” she said. “Blogs upset the applecart in all four ways. But building that credibility and trust are still the basis for that individual relationship.”

Agreed.

The latest issue of the Financial Times’ weekly Creative Business supplement leads with a story on how supermodels such as Claudia Schiffer are attempting to beat the traditional limitations of their profession, i.e. ageism by building their personal brand.

“In reality, however, this shorthand (‘celebrity sells’) is a scribbled montage of press coverage, brand tie-ins and carefully controlled PR. (For this interview, Schiffer’s London PR agency originally asked for – and was immediately refused – copy and headline approval.)”

At least the journalist, Katja Hofmann, included the agency’s clumsy and ridiculous attempt to “manage” the story.  All too often journalists don’t point out this practice. I can’t find the firm in question, so it would be great if she had published their name 🙂

Girls and boys, you don’t build relationships by trying to manipulate, strong arm or bluff people.  Your days are coming to an end, how will you ever adapt to a world where you will have to communicate with people outside the media-sphere on a one-to-one basis?

The illusion of control is eroding. Understand how to communicate with people. That’s communicate not obfuscate.