Murphy's Law

I just read Morgan McLintic’s post today on Text 100 turning twenty five.

I spent many happy years at Text 100 learning the ropes the way most people in our industry do (or is that did?). I must say that for all the hard work I absolutely loved it. There was a fantastic group of people around the world during my time there. It’s amazing how many alumni you come across wherever you are.

Anyway.  Congratulations to all! Tim, Aedhmar, Georg and all the ex-Texties who sometimes fall onto this blog by mistake.

The World’s Leading posed an interesting question last week:

 

Why is it that there are so few in-house PR people blogging?

 

It’s a good question. More than that, it’s an important question.

Balanced opinions are better opinions

The debate among PR bloggers on the shiny new new thing is interesting, but the really valuable discussion is the intersection of online and traditional PR. This is where the value is, because this is where the online world will impact our practice of Public Relations.

There is an equally valid argument to be made that the fact that the overwhelming majority of PR bloggers are on the agency side of the house, means that we are missing a valuable perspective on how the online world actually impacts Public Relations.

Maybe this is why I’m so grumpy all the time…

As someone who has played the poacher and the gamekeeper, there are as many differences between working in-house and in an agency as there are similarities – the same could be said for the benefits and drawbacks.

I don’t have the answer I’m afraid, however as usual I’m not shy to offer some suggestions…

1. One potential hurdle for in-house practitioners is that they are often the public face of the company and therefore they may feel that there is a risk that anything they blog could be treated as official comment – now of course this could also be beneficial, however a fear that a mistake could be career limiting may be a factor – and it’s one of the reasons I purposely don’t regularly discuss Microsoft on this blog.
2. Blogs provide a great platform for promoting thought leadership.  From an agency perspective I can see why it makes a lot of sense to have your best and brightest sharing their opinions. However, there isn’t the same motivation for many companies where PR is not a core competency. It might be perceived as either a high risk activity or a waste of time.
3. Finally, and this one is a stretch, perhaps on the agency side there is a greater need to look at the changing world, new developments etc., and therefore that lends itself more naturally to getting involved in blogging, where in the in-house role the challenge is different.

Maybe (or probably) it’s none of the above.

What I do know is that in-house practitioners have a fantastic perspective to share on traditional and online Public Relations – and the PR blogosphere is poorer without them.

If you’re working in-house and have a blog let me know.

Update:

I’ve been a little frazzled of late 🙂

Some immediate in-house bloggers include the irrepressible Kevin Dugan, the ever-present Colin McKay, my colleague Thomas Lutz, Dells’ Bernie Charland…..

Jeremiah Owyang spotted a new store on his way to work.  It sits in a row of other shops. 

But this one is a little different.

It’s not selling stationery, sandwiches or coffee.  Nope, it’s selling PR.

The PR Store is a franchise offering small businesses marketing, PR and advertising solutions.

Clever idea. 

I know there will be much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth – but that’s life. 

Although I like the brand, delving into the web site, it’s probably a little simplistic.  The reality is that when you look at their site, it appears that the actual “PR” offered is only one of many menu items from flyers to brochures and logos. It’s Kinkos with a press release!

For example under the category: “Press Releases” (ahem) they detail their PR services:

• Read-All-About-It! Press Releaseâ„¢
• Profile Feature Articleâ„¢
• Informer Press Kitsâ„¢
• MAXimum Impact Article Reprintsâ„¢
• OP-ED It! Editorial Articlesâ„¢

The trademarks are all theirs 🙂

Maybe we’ll see a new career ladder emerge where you start out taking orders at the PR Store and migrate to a large agency over time – the equivalent of starting in a fast food restaurant and working your way to an establishment with a Michelin star 🙂

Fair play to them.

A quick request to the PR community, can we keep the wailing and disgust to a minimum?

Hat tip to Mike Manuel.

Couple of items.

Firstly I’ve found a fifth PR person in Ireland blogging:

• Jenny Kent from Clear Communication in Cork (I think, it doesn’t really say).

Secondly Piaras Kelly has released his first podcast – that would be the first Irish PR podcast 🙂

The latest event in the University of Sunderland’s Delivering the New PR series is taking place at the Marriott Hotel, Regents Park, London from 9.30am on June 5th, 2007.

You can find more information in the online brochure here.

The event will include spots from the series inventor: Philip Young; the podcast legend Neville Hobson; and of course Yorkshire’s finest Stuart Bruce; oh and the PR Leprechaun.

• Drawing on all that’s good about “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”, Luke Armour has pulled together a very funny PR murder mystery.  Worth the download! And no hype or discussion on Web 2.0… brilliant.

 

• While recognizing the folly of relying on statistics, Neville has some compelling evidence on why the integration of the online and offline worlds is the way forward for the vast majority of PR practitioners.

 

• Allan Jenkins points to Ragan Communications MyRagan social network site. It looks good though it entails a lot of work compared to the world’s laziest PR social networking site – which now has 44 members… connected snoozing.

I was watching Ray Ozzie’s keynote at the Microsoft MIX 07 event in Las Vegas this week and one of his opening comments struck a chord:

I’ve been fortunate enough to have survived five major platform shifts over the course of my career, and in each case at the beginning of an era, somebody took that extreme position.  And in each case, when all was said and done, it just never quite seemed to work out that way.  The pendulum certainly did swing, and disruption certainly did occur for those who had their heads in the sand about the capabilities of a new technology, but in each case, as things ultimately settled out, the best solutions were integrated solutions that would bring together the best of one world with the best of the other.

 

I think this is equally valid when it comes to Public Relations. 

We are facing change – and the few who ignore it will suffer – but what will emerge is an integration of our traditional Public Relations tools and techniques married to the best that the online world has to offer.

The most interesting discussion for PR today is not how the Interweb is changing PR.  Rather it is about how we build integrated campaigns that bring together the best of both worlds.

It’s not necessarily a discussion about finding time, budget and resources for Web 2.0. Rather it is a discussion on how we can build one campaign with online and offline elements.

Now that’s an interesting discussion.

There appears to be a growing number of PR people on the InterWeb with ADD.

Rather than just discuss the changes taking place to PR in terms of new tools (e.g. blogs and podcasts) or practices (e.g. conversation) they have to give it a new moniker – normally a number. Why?

Use what works, watch what’s interesting and discard what’s irrelevant.

 

Now I see that PR Week is now pushing PR 3.0….. urrrghhhh.

Sorry I had to take a break there, I could feel the pressure growing in my brain and my chest tightening.

While PR 3.0 is a first, PR 2.0 is now commonplace and in fact the 2.0 crowd are now correcting the 3.0 crowd.

Now if we are going to use version numbers surely we should be doing this on something based on history.

For example:

PR 1.0 – Handing out coins to kids in the slums

PR 1.5 – Ivy Ledbetter Lee/Edward Bernays

PR 2.0 – Press releases

PR 3.0 – Radio

PR 4.0 – Television

PR 4.5 – Tabloid culture

PR 5.0 – The InterWeb

Jebus. 

I’m not clear what the presentation is dealing with 🙂

What does it matter? What matters is our audience, our clients, our people, our tools (online and offline) etc. etc..

The number doesn’t matter, nor does the hype.

I know I post on this subject with boring regularity. This is probably Post 555.1 on the matter – but it’s OK, no one is listening…

Shel has a great post here on why you do need to be careful pitching bloggers, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.  He pulls together some useful resources.

Just remember, while some journalists are bloggers, bloggers aren’t journalists, it is a different ball game.

Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that this lesson has got out to a number of our brethren.

Stuart points to another example of a terribly poor pitch.

On a related note, Shel has another related post regarding the issue of ownership of online advocacy.

This is a great example of why we, as a profession, need to start stepping up regarding online communications.  While I don’t think we should be recommending that 25% of the marketing budget be channelled into a Twitter farm, but I do think we need to ensure we are on point for communications be it online or offline.

Fairly obvious that.

It’s amazing how every time there is a horrendous event, whether it be an act of god or deranged lunatic, some PR person somewhere thinks they’ve spotted the perfect opportunity for their client.

They haven’t.

[John Wagner, The Bad Pitch Blog, Peter Shankman]