Day: May 27, 2005

PR Miscellany – May 27, 2005

 The Council of PR Firms has released some upbeat research on the state of the industry.

 Andrew Smith looks at the problems around the time honored tradition of time sheet PR, while Tim Dyson suggests some possible alternative approaches, based on value and results.

 Alice Marshall has some useful links if you’re research trade shows.

 Infoworld‘s Matt McAlister wonders aloud about how the effects of RSS may impact online readership.

 Steve Rubel points to a thoughful article by Kevin Maney of USA Today on the current fervour around blogging.

 Rob Fisher over at PR Newswire has an interesting report on a recent forum on the intersection of blogs and journalism with Tony Perkins of AlwaysOn (nee Red Herring), Dan Gillmor and David Whelan of Forbes.

 The Hobson and Holtz Report has released a podcast interview with Mike Wing, VP of Strategic Communications at IBM.

 Meanwhile, Neville Hobson has been recently interviewed by PR Week on the subject of podcasting.

 Speaking of IBM, James Snell (of corporate blog guidelines fame)  was kind enough to get in touch with me to suggest a possible cause of my lost weblog posts.  Which is more than can be said of Radio’s “support” where I have yet to recieve any answers – and you have to pay for this product!  For any other Radio users out there, if you’re running Google software, be careful.

 Phil Gomes takes a refreshingly different take at the recent “alarm:clock-PR agencies are useless” episode. He draws a most amusing analogy between a small company with limited news value desiring outlandish media placements with his own desire for a date with Salma Hayek.

“To the degree that I would have to plan in order to achieve the goal of a date with Ms. Hayek, so too does successfully engaging the business press require significant preparation on the part of any startup or enterprise seeking coverage in those high-profile and highly coveted outlets. For one thing (and there are many gating factors), some folks in the business press won’t even touch a private company unless there has been significant coverage in the scientific, trade, and enthusiast media first. And, yes, engaging those outlets, in turn, requires a very significant amount of planning and preparation as well.”

 Jim Horton, as ever shares some honest thoughts on the daily challenges facing PR people everywhere.  Jim quietly tackles some of the major issues facing PR practitioners and is a recommended read.  Two recent posts to have a look at:
1) Can you save a client from themselves?
2) Web-centric communications [PDF]

 Harry Joiner has an interesting post on PR and the Internet.   He points to a primer [PDF] from Robin Mayhall  (Thanks to Andy Lark for the link)

 Michael O’Connor Clarke brings us his fourth installment of “The Seven Deadly Agency Types” with ‘The Flack of All Trades’.

 Michael also continues his coverage of the large organizations attempting to control the news agenda through their advertising dollars.  I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that a company that makes it’s business flogging disapearing fossil fuels with no alternative in sight should be trying to hold onto out-dated values.

 

So PR is dead? Oh sorry so it's dying? Oh it's changing…

There’s far too much blog-related navel gazing. There’s so much of itthat there’s a chance that the intelligent, passionate people who zealously promote the benefits of blogs may end up sitting forlornly on a little raft in the bay watching the world go past.

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble‘s chapter for their new book Naked Conversations on Survivial of the Publicists has been widely dissected in my absence, so I don’t intend to reproduce the analysis when (as you can see from the links below) there has already been some detailed commentary.

The chapter is a very interesting read, but rather than tackling where the blog sits in the grand PR architecture, it’s more of an evangelical article that uses some interesting case studies.  I think for that reason alone it is a recommended read for all PR practitioners.

The flaw in the thesis however is that it rehashes the age-old criticisms of PR and presents blogs as the answer to all our ills.

The move towards conversations between individuals and organizations has been inevitable for some time now.  Due credit should be given to the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto (now stop groaning) who have probably done more to bring this trend to the mainstream than any other group.  Their work has been supplemented by people like Dan Gillmor and of course the emergence of blogging.

But blogging is not the answer to every question.  It is a useful tool that provides a lot of benefits to those willing to commit the time, energy and resources to it.  But it’s not an end in itself.

Public Relations is changing.  But the breadth of the profession means that those change go far beyond blogs.  Do people really think that:

a) PR is dying
b) PR will only center on blogging

If you do, you need to up your dosage.

These are simplistic arguments.

Communications is a multi-faceted undertaking.  When e-mail became popular, organizations got lazy and started driving all their internal communications on it.  They soon learnt through bitter experience that the fastest, easiest and cheapest option, isn’t necessarily the most effective one. Most organizations have now adopted new technologies alongside their exisiting tools.  Don’t forget that face-to-face communication remains the most effective tool in the communications box.

I have been blogging for three years, I pitch blogs, I read RSS, I publish RSS.  I have adopted these technologies but they are only one element of my job. 

Public Relations is about effective communication with an audience.  Do we really think that a time will come when the only way people get information is from blogs? 

PR is changing because the audience is changing.  Any practitioner who fails to move with their audience is in trouble.  Blogs are an important new tool and is a part of those changes, but beware the doomsayers who believe that the are the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is blogging. As any Douglas Adams fan can tell you it’s actually 42. 

Footnote:

 

..and finally I'd like to thank Tim Berners-Lee without whom…

MarketingSherpa has launched it’s 2005 marketing/PR blog awards survey.

The shortlist for the top PR blogs are:

Two other PR blogs have also been nominated in the imaginitively named: ‘Blogs in other languages’ category, namely:

Vote for your favorite now…