Category: General

Up2Speed’s Rick Bruner links to an interesting article in the LA Times about how new technologies such as SMS and Instant Messaging are having a significant (and in many cases uncontrollable) affect on movie revenues.

On related matter, in the latest issue of Up2Speed’s I-Blog newsletter, Rick has yet another cut at “PR people”.  Now it’s a pity because Rick has some good solid advice for PR people pitching blogs, but it’s lost in his insulting rash generalizations. 

How about this beauty:

“With the exception of all my friends who are PR people, I have to say most folks in that profession seem to have room temperature IQs, particularly where it comes to leveraging the opportunities of the Internet to advance their mission.”

Now I haven’t been slow to address the perceived tardiness of our profession to adopt blogs into the PR plan, but I think Rick has stepped a little over the mark here.

I take exception to his comments. 

What, only his friends are clever?  Please, spare me.

I was going to respond on the I-Blog list and then decided the better of it.  But here are some thoughts for you on his post:

• With any new media there are going to be slip-ups, particularly a media where there are no formal rules.  Every blogger is different, some like pitches, some don’t. It’s not simple and those bloggers who don’t like PR will publicly chastise PR practitioners who try to brief them – we’ve covered this before.
• There are already a large number of PR people successfully working with blogs, look at Laura Goldberg as just one recent example
• Our profession isn’t exactly leading the charge, but then again what profession is? Marketing? Please.
• Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the single largest blogging mistake, namely the “Purple Cow” episode wasn’t PR-driven, in fact it was marketers or viral marketers to be more precise.
• Blogging is still in its infancy, PR people should be investigating and engaging with bloggers, however, insulting people isn’t going to help anyone

All marketing professions need to get up to speed (‘scuse the pun) on blogging.  A growing number of PR people are doing some great work in the blogosphere, the rest will follow in their own time. I think that time is now, many don’t agree.

By the way, I have to say most folks in that (PR) profession (that I know) seem to have (very high) temperature IQs…

Laura Goldberg of Trylon Communications looks after Public Relations for Business 2.0.  She recently recieved high praise indeed from Poynter.org on how she was pitching them online. It looks like she was putting into practice the same theory she wrote about in her article for the PRSA on blogging.

Kevin Dugan provides some good analysis on the success of her pitch.

Then from proactive blog relations to the benefits of RSS and reading journalist blogs.  Phil Gomes provides a great example of why reading these blogs has immediate benefits for a PR practitioner.

There’s a lot of RSS-related opinions online this week with impacts for the PR profession, but I’ll get to that later.

Talking with some colleagues recently, it struck me that one of the inhibitors to adoption of RSS by PR practitioners is that people are unsure how to get up and running.

As a result I have put together what I hope will be a useful and easy introduction to getting up and running with RSS, from downloading a news aggregator to subscribing to RSS feeds.

If you aren’t already using RSS, why not take five minutes to find out how to get set up.

RSS 101 – Getting up and running

Feedback is very welcome. Now onto the RSS-related content.

Wired has an interesting piece on RSS and its impact, though I’d like to re-iterate that RSS isn’t going to replace e-mail!

Last, but not least, Dan Gillmor discusses the growing popularity of RSS.

“I wish public-relations people would get with the program, too. If they’d only start creating RSS feeds of releases, journalists and the public at large could see the material they want, and the PR industry would be able to stop blasting huge amounts of e-mail to people whose inboxes are already over-cluttered. Of course, there will continue to be a use for e-mail in PR, but the volume could be cut substantially.” 

Now I know many people will not agree with this posting, but hey you can always add your comment to it!

I have a problem with the commonly abused term “Branding”. 

As far as I am convinced a brand is the sum of a person’s experiences with an organization.

You can’t buy a brand, rather a brand is built over time through working with employees, customers, partners and other third parties.

It’s not about nice colors, it’s about good business practice.

Too often I have seen new CEO’s or VPs of marketing arrive and their first port of call is the company’s “brand”. To me it’s simply re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. If your company is broken, no amount of nice design and guidelines is going to save you.

The Internet start-ups all threw millions of dollars at “building a brand” and they proved for once and for all you can’t buy it.

My advice to any company is focus on your business.  I do agree that a company should have a common look and feel across locations, collaterals etc. but if your business is right your brand will follow.

Dave Jung over at B2Blog forwarded a link to a post on Fast Company’s weblog about Palm’s new “brand”. I think Kevin’s right on the money!

Also from G2BGroup a story in the Mercury News on the difficult environment for technology PR. Hey let’s look on the bright side at least it doesn’t have anyone talking about globalization!

“Before, if you could spell PR they wanted to see you,” said George Matthews, a recruiter for Career Consociates. “Now they want people whose r�m�are synonymous with the job description.” That sort of specificity has left a lot of people out of work.

Not unreasonable though is it?

We all know the Internet has created a host of new challenges in terms of how we communicate.  But sometimes we forget that technology that pre-dates the Internet can also cause us problems.

What about Microsoft Word for example?

The G2B Group points to a story in the New Scientist which reveals that an AT&T researcher has been able to take random Microsoft Word documents off the Internet and in a relatively straight forward process uncover deleted information and comments.

Of course that’s the hard way.

There’s a far more sinister mistake people often make in Word documents, which is forgetting to delete “Tracked Comments”.  Instead of removing them, users often just click the option to not show the comments on screen or in the printed document.

The problem is when that document is sent to someone, they can easily re-enable the comments.

Let me give you two examples.

In the past year I recieved a draft contract from a supplier in Microsoft Word document.  I checked the mark-ups – I do this as a matter of course now – and low and behold there were all the comments from people in the supplier’s company, including their negotiation strategy!

In a more public example, Alcatel published a press release in Microsoft Word format on their website which included a range of damaging internal comments. Read more about it here.

So, the AT&T research gives us another reason not to use Word documents in external collaborative projects.  Furthermore, you should never post Word documents online.  Use good ‘ole HTML which doesn’t include all this additional information.

The first thing I do when I get a Word document is to click on “Tools” “Track Changes” and then reveal any changes.  If you have to send a Word document, that should be the last thing you do before you hit send.  Either that or preferably send a Text or HTML document!

The British Broadcasting Corporation is in my humble opinion the uncontested global king of quality broadcasting.

So when I found out they have published their style guide online I jumped to it.

Now allowing for local differences, namely the use of International English (and a section entitled “Americanisms”) it includes a wealth of tips and advice.

Worth the download.

Thanks to the ever wonderful I-PR mailing list for the link.

“One of the things that most exercises our listeners and viewers is our use of words and constructions which we are accused of slavishly copying from the United States.”

To put a smile on your face this Friday, have a read of the brilliant “SCO” version of the Nigerian 419.

Further proof (if it were needed) of the brilliance of the Internet!

Dear reader,

I hope your electricity is on.

It is human nature that when people are interested in a subject it becomes very important to them.  As a result they spend a lot of time thinking about the given subject and as a result they lose perspective.

This is why many bloggers have been going on about how blogs are now mainstream, when in fact, they are still in their infancy.

Any new technology goes through a series of well worn steps before it makes it into the mainstream.  After pioneers and early adopters, products then move into the wider market before finally “laggards” or late adopters take the plunge.

Blogs are a good case in point.  They’ve been adopted by the pioneers for two or three years now, and there are signs they are beginning to move into the wider market.  One sign of this movement has been the migration of politicians into blogging – “hey a place on web I can rant!”

Another sure sign that blogs are becoming accepted is negative press.

The New York Times has a piece questioning is the Internet over and uses blogs as an example. And the Register has a sharp look at the changing face of blogs.

The pioneers don’t like these pieces.

So are blogs mainstream? Not by the patented TM mainstream index they’re not. (e.g. my mother doesn’t have one 🙂 but they are maturing nicely.

I personally love the quote from ex-Presidential candidate, Gary Hart, who is blogging but says he doesn’t read other bloggers:

“If you’re James Joyce,” he said slyly, “you don’t read other authors.”

PR Week has released its 2003 Technology PR Report and it makes for some interesting reading.

The report is headed with doom and gloom.  Reduced sales and cut backs – that’s to be expected, but there are some more interesting angles in the report I’d like to address.

When the big PR firms began to really expand across the globe, when advertising groups started buying up PR firms, suddenly the message was that one global agency is the only way to go.

They tell us it will save costs, bring uniform reporting etc. etc.  In fact everyone should have one.

The quotes from the large agencies in the report underline this inevitable trend. In fact there is not one small agency quoted, not one rebuttal.  It’s accepted as fact that one global agency is the only way to go.

Eh. Excuse me?

I don’t pretend to be with world’s greatest PR practitioner.  I don’t have an intimate working knowledge of every PR sector, however I know quite a bit about global technology PR.  I have worked in both the in-house and the agency side of the fence on a global basis and I have the scars to show it. 

Nothing is that simple.

The success of any PR campaign is dependant on one thing and one thing only – People. This is where the “one global agency is the only way” argument falls down.

Successful global PR using one agency firstly depends on the client’s internal organization chart supporting that structure.

In companies where there is decentralization, you cannot successfully force unified Public Relations on your outposts for a prolonged period. Sure you can put it in place, but if the locals are restless and they have power they will make sure it fails.

Secondly, can these global agencies prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are the best agency with the best people in each local market? Or do you take on their local agency because it’s easier? I know I want my dollars being spent on the best, not the path of least resistance.

Global agencies do (or should) offer savings in terms of systems, uniform billing, knowledge managemet etc. but it’s not free. You are paying for it.

For some companies a global agency works very well, but contrary to what PR globalists will tell you, it is not the only way to do PR.  Furthermore I have yet to see a firm ROI study that evaluated the actual cost-benefit analysis of a global agency versus best of local breed with a client-side management function.

I sympathize with large agencies that want to get synergies from their large global presence.  But when that synergy is at the expese of recognizing that no firm is the leader in every market, when that synergy fails to acknowledge the fundamental importance of good people above everything else, then I shout stop.

I recognize that global agencies do work for many firms, just let’s not pretend it’s for everyone. It’s not. Ask to see their bruises.

This brings me to the next Red Herring (RIP) in the report. Consolidation.

“Oh the technology industry has consolidated we’re going to be left with a few big players.” Mmmm.  I think I heard this before. The last time was 1994 I think when the PC market for software was “dead”.

There is still a host of innovation taking place.  The Internet, wireless, person to person communication and open source is throwing up new opportunities every day.  There are thousands of new start-ups. Where’s the few players?

The nature of technology is change. That’s a reality.  If the market is stagnant where did Google and Salesforce.com to name but two, come from?

I think the point being made here is that there are few big players left.  That is, few large companies who will pay the large retainers for large firms. This is the flaw of excluding the medium and small sectors from an industry study like this.

The technology market is going through a difficult time, it is changing, but it’s not going anywhere for the moment.

One of the other major themes that comes from the report is the importance of PR focussing on the bottom line.  This I completely agree with.  We as a profession can be sometimes blamed for losing sight of the actual impact of our work on the health and success of our clients/employers. ROI is king, measurement is essential.

Now while the report talked about ROI, I was amused that in the same breath it was talking about branding.  I’m not sure branding and ROI are synonymous bedfellows. But let’s not get into that old branding chestnut just now.

I feel much better now.