Day: May 27, 2008

PR Round-up…

Devolution of Media

For the uninitiated, Jim Horton is the grandfather (in a nice and not age related way!) of PR blogs, he was the first practitioner publishing content online in a meaningful way, even without RSS :-).  He continues to provide reasoned, in-depth coverage of the industry today, and he’s just published an essay: Devolution of Traditional Media and what it means to PR which takes a look at how changes in the media landscape and the rise of social media may impact PR. Worth a read.

 

Twitter PR

Shel Holtz has a great post, which could have been included in the round-up below, looking at Twitter and how their recent service problems are a great example of why communicators can add value to a business and an entrepreneur.

Unfortunately, most people who make such observations about PR base their views only on what they observe. What they observe is pitching. PR pitches are blatant and, frequently, annoying. (Heck, I work in PR and get frazzled at the staggering number of clueless pitches I receive every day. In a PRWeek article, Wired.com’s senior editor, Dylan Tweney, articulates what a lot of victims of bad pitching feel: “I don’t have the luxury of blacklisting people, because if they have news, it doesn’t matter whether I like them or not, or whether they’ve been good at pitching in the past. I’ll still need to hear about it.")

What’s not visible to most people, however, is the work that occupies most PR practitioners most of the time, and it isn’t pitching or getting ink. The mere fact that pitches are what you see most of the time doesn’t mean that’s the lion’s share of what goes on in most shops. If Loic were to spend a single day with an account team at any well-known agency, he’d probably amend his post.

 

 

Ready for the Digital Savvy?

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb reports on new research from Scarborough Research on the "digitally savvy" – the most high-tech consumers in the US.

 

According to Gary Meo, SVP, Print and Digital Media Services at Scarborough Research, this is an important group to monitor because their shopping patterns could "presage behaviors of consumers across the country."

PR & Social Media.. there is a bigger picture kids… redux

OK so since I pressed "Publish" on my last post on this matter, there’s been some additional commentary I thought was worth following up on.

 

Pull back from the picture

The one-and-only Mr. Scoble weighed in on the matter of "PR Secrets". As with Monsieur Le Meur’s post, Mr. Scoble makes some interesting points, but again these people are talking about PR as if:

a) It’s only concerned with Web 2.0 and the online world – it’s not

b) PR is press relations – it’s not

 

There’s a couple of points I’d call out:

PR now stands for “Professional Relationships.”

No, Robert, PR stands for PUBLIC Relations, it’s about communicating effectively with ALL individuals, groups and communities relevant to a company, group or individual. While I know there’s a lot of kudos for inventing new words, acronyms and terms (think "Jumping the Shark", Smeedia 🙂 , etc.) the real definition of PR is fine thanks.

Robert makes a lot of sense, but again, it’s a partial commentary that ignores much of what PR people do day-in, day-out, albeit there’s some good advice around online communications.

The reality is that PR people are going to have to continue washing and dressing and going out into the real world for some time to come.

 

You don’t need PR at all if you have a great product.

 

Oh my word. Oh my word. <sigh>

 

Some PR advice

image

I found a video commentary from Neville Hobson via Trevor Cook.

 

What’s the issue with "targets"?

Todd Defren has a post related to Mr. La Meur’s point on the use of the term Targets.

My response? Target, target, target, target, target, target, target, target.

PR has always been about relationship building. 

The tools and the nature of how that works may be changing and evolving, but relationships have always been central to great PR.  That ain’t new.

So what if people use the word target?  Does it really matter.  What if we replace targets with Blancmanges? Is that better?

"We’re aiming at a number of blancmanges."

Jeez.

Let’s start calling out some of this stuff folks.  Just because it’s "right-on" doesn’t mean it’s true or meaningful.

Just my two cents.