Morgan McLintic on PR

Why PR firms will win the social media race

The worlds of public relations and advertising are starting to collide. As ad spend increasingly goes online, advertising firms are starting to pitch for social media campaigns. Equally, public relations firms, faced with a decline in the traditional realm of media relations are turning to social media channels to reach their clients’ audiences. As a result, it’s increasingly common to find ad firms, competing directly with PR firms for the same piece of business.

Competition of course is a good thing. And many ad firms were early into digital communications and have made the transition from megaphone to conversation. Those are the ones which will do well. An ad firm already has a number of distinct advantages over PR – they have long thought in terms of campaigns, whereas sadly PR often succumbs to the tactical; they have planning departments who are strong at analyzing the audience; they are used to big budgets which helps with big thinking; they have strong visuals which lend themselves well to the web; and they are often ‘in at the right level’ at the client, where PR’s interface can be lower down.

However, fundamentally public relations firms are better positioned to implement social media programs for the simple fact they understand conversations. PR has always been about relationships with audiences, and so disintermediation to build those relationships directly with a brand’s community poses no paradigm shift. It’s just a natural extension of the core skills of a communicator – simply via new channels.

If you see the Social Web as a conversational and editorial medium rather than a broadcast and advertorial vector then it becomes clear that a PR firm is well placed to guide that program. However, PR firms must make rapid advances in terms of their planning, their visual presentation; their technical skills; and their ‘big picture’ integration. Ad firms have often taken the lead across the promotional mix, but that is now changing.

In fact, the lines between an ad firm and a PR firm are becoming increasingly blurred. Take SEO for instance. Part of that is Search Engine Marketing (or Search Engine Advertising) ie the buying of keywords. That’s ad spend but is integral to a PR program given the amount of content PR produces. Or take Facebook app promotion – that might include some targeted ad spend but be implemented as part of the social media campaign by PR. In fact, the more integrated the campaign, the more indistinguishable the roles, and broader the skillset required.

Since communication is fundamental to the Social Web, PR firms have less far to come than their advertising brethren. But the journey will change us both, and neither can get there without the other, so it will be an exciting ride.

Should we use media embargoes?

An embargo is a mutual agreement between a reporter and a company to withhold the announcement of news until a specific date and time. A useful mechanism, they've been over-used for the wrong purposes and are now falling into some disrepute.

Until I came to the US, I'd never used an embargo. On the day of the news announcement, you'd simply pitch the story to your primary contacts, hoping they'd be available, have time to cover the news and that interview schedules would work out. And this works fine for the vast majority of news announcements today, and is standard in many countries.

The embargo became useful when you wanted to be able to talk to people in advance. This would mean you could speak to more reporters/bloggers and get more news the day of. In turn, the reporters would be able to schedule the interviews better, write a more researched piece and know they'd be first with the news. It was a win-win.

And so, the use of embargoes escalated. For instance, it was a way for print reporters to break news at the same time as blogs - 9.00pm PT being a classic time since that's the time the WSJ refreshes its online content. For PR teams, it meant that you got more coverage through sheer weight of numbers - more time to pitch and hold interviews.

But the system started to break down. The quality of embargoed news started to dilute - an announcement which didn't have much value might get a bit more pop if it was embargoed. And some media outlets broke embargoes to get a jump on their competitors. The temptation is always there for PR departments to embargo weak news and for media outlets to leak strong stories.

This is a recipe for frustration all round. If an embargo is broken, everyone who held to the deadline is rightly annoyed, and some vent that towards the PR firm and client, not to mention the offending outlet. Breaking an embargo is a lose-lose since it's not a given that the breaker gets the links and traffic, and it means the relationship with the agency and company is then damaged. For larger firms, this could be a bigger repercussion than the potential upside of the leak.

Embargoes have also been mishandled with PR representatives sending the embargoed news without getting agreement that the reporter will hold to it beforehand. Some publications have guidelines about how far in advance they can receive such news, and other flatly refuse to honor them, which is fine.

All this said, I do think embargoes can work and are appropriate in certain circumstances:

- if the news is significant and far reaching ie there are lots of potential people who would be interested
- if the announcement is complex ie it needs demonstrating and explaining
- if there are commercial reasons why details can't be shared gradually over time beforehand eg competitive pressure
- if the goal is to get a lot of coverage and the company has the resources to do so

The challenge then becomes who to include and how many outlets to involve. There is a natural tendency to increase the list from the perspective of inclusion (so as not to miss vital people out and end up damaging relationships). Against this, the more included, the greater the risk of the embargo breaking. It's a difficult process to manage, but if done properly (and with some luck) embargoes can be beneficial all round.

CEO as PR firm?

Jason Calacanis has posted some helpful tips for CEOs of startups about how to maximize PR. Oddly he feels these negate the need for a PR firm. Most of them involve dedicated networking, building personal relationships and, of course, having a newsworthy company to start with.

Many CEOs may struggle to find the time to do this themselves, even if they have the acumen and desire. The CEO-as-brand type of leader is probably in the minority. They make the PR team's job much easier, but most are too humble, team-oriented or focused on building their business to execute this approach themselves, despite the benefits.

If a CEO has an understanding of the media, can describe their company clearly and without hyperbole, and has the time to prioritize this on a consistent basis, then it will certainly be a good asset for any PR program. I wouldn't suggest it be the sole approach, and any effort should be in line with a broader strategy in terms of message, outreach and follow-up. Every team needs to work in concert, even if that team involves the company CEO.

On a related note, I tire a little of the PR (and PR firm) is dead / broken / irrelevant meme. I know it gets a lot of comments (since we read the sites) and wider debate (since PR folk tend to blog), but it's a bit dated. Yes, the low barriers to entry to PR and lack of professional license mean the quality of some practitioners is lacking and they spam reporters and bloggers. But issuing press releases is not the totality of PR. PR does not stand for press release (though i've heard it innumerable times). And not all PR firms are the same.

My recommendation for startups looking to appoint a PR firm is simply to look at the commercial track record of that firm over the last 3-5 years. If they are doing well compared to their peers and growing consistently, then you can deduce they are delivering value. You may feel they are the 'best of a bad bunch', and well, I'm humble enough to admit we've all got room for improvement. But so have the accountancy and law firms I've worked with.

I don't take the criticism personally, and perhaps shouldn't give it airtime, but I'd hate for people to take advice not to appoint professional counsel at face value. If you think PR is bad now handled by firms who do it day in and day out, wait until you see those who go solo. I wouldn't fancy defending myself in the court of the media (see the fates of Arthur Andersen, WMD, Michael Jackson et al), when the firm's reputation is at stake.

agency, PR, PR, Public relations

PR is dead (again)

PR died again today. At best it's broken and at worst irrelevant.

So do tech firms need public relations?
Surely the best technology will rise to the top and gain the attention of key bloggers and the press. Well, yes cream does float (and so does sh*t), but the vast majority of technology is by definition somewhere in the middle. It competes in a crowded space, with narrowly defensible differentiators. Under those conditions, the firm which proactively promotes itself should out-execute its peers.

It's not a strategy to hope that your mousetrap is so good that people will beat a path to your door. Let's hope for that, but let's plan for the opposite. History is littered with better tech which was out-marketed - Palm wasn't a patch on Psion for instance.

So yes, firms do need PR.

Do you need a PR firm though?
You don't need to hire a PR firm, just as you don't need attorneys, accountants, brokers, recruitment firms, lease agents, ad firms, or web design shops. To a greater or lesser degree of success, you can do all these yourself. But it will cost you time and your mistakes will cost you money.

No doubt reporters would much rather talk directly to the CEO of a company than a PR representative. Quite apart from the flattery, they get right to the source of the vision, strategy and planning, which they can directly quote. But the fact is that the CEO needs to do what only he or she alone can do. And while there are times that PR is the most urgent priority, that's not always the case and the CEO must focus elsewhere.

It's best to have some dedicated PR resource. There are many reasons to keep that resource in-house for certain types of firms and at certain stages. And many to outsource to a specialist agency for others. Most firms have a hybrid which works well.

Is PR broken?
Yes - but it has been broken for a long time. My friend Dennis Howlett taught me many of the things which PR firms do wrong in the mid-nineties: not reading the publication; not understanding the reporter's beat; not having a firm grasp of the technology; not having a good story; not following up etc. These things have nothing to do with blogging or new technology.

Fact is, and I'll whisper this, some PR people just aren't that good. And, I'm afraid even good ones make mistakes (yes horrific huh?). And, others frankly are just busy sometimes.

Sure, the technical changes in communications can compound those mistakes and make them more public. And yes, we're all learning how to use each new channel, and write new forms of more and best practice. But there are still low barriers to entry for PR, so there are still poor practitioners out there.

There are also poor reporters and bloggers who fail to understand technologies, miss deadlines, break agreed embargoes, keep review kit, steal ideas, change post timestamps etc. There are low barriers to entry here too - it's just part of the game and in a fair world the best ones survive, and the worst close during a recession. Winter kills a lot of bugs.

Does the debate help?
No-one likes criticism and we can all do better. Some PR folk are thin-skinned and self-important, so get their knickers in a bunch about it. I personally don't think that blogging the problems is the best approach, but if all you have is a hammer, it's the easiest one. And perhaps it's better to say something rather than be silent. I can empathize with the frustrations.

The facts will tell you that PR is not dead or even dying. The industry is growing at double digits and firms are continuing to hire new staff to handle the new clients which approach them. The power of the media is increasing, so firms need resources as both a sword and shield to compensate. There are some seismic changes going through the PR industry as there are in media and advertising. But those changes are not happening as fast as we all might think (or like). It was only in the last year that more than half US households got broadband for instance!

As the blog networks move closer to journalistic norms and look to replace the traditional media, they are learning how to cooperate with the public relations departments of the companies they want to write about. And vice versa -witness the embargo debate for instance. These are industries with a symbiotic relationship. For the most part it's a collaborative and fruitful one, but of course there are pent-up frustrations on both sides. To an extent these periodic outbursts are cathartic, so let's hope it makes us all improve our game.

PR, Public relations, media

I see dead people

Lots of them. In this new mag I just learned about - Obit. A magazine choc full of well, obits. It's actually very good. For instance, I just learned this about Colma, south of San Francisco.

People come to Colma mainly to be buried. On San Francisco’s south flank, sharing a fog bank, Colma has 17 cemeteries to San Francisco’s none. Long ago San Francisco booted out the cemeteries and moved most of the graves to this little necropolis.

Colma calls itself a necropolis (“city of the dead” in Greek) despite its 1,500 live residents. It is commonly listed as the country’s only necropolis, incorporated in 1924 to protect the cemeteries that now occupy 73 percent of Colma’s 2.2 square miles.

The necropolis business started with the California Gold Rush in 1849. As people rushed in, so did disease and death, and San Francisco’s 26 cemeteries were mostly filled in the late 1880s. Soon state law forbade backyard burials, or internment anywhere except in an established cemetery. By 1900, land already was too valuable for low-revenue uses like graves, so the noose tightened on San Francisco cemeteries and burials were banned...

You can also go shopping in Colma. I think the necropolis might be more interesting...

Wired editor blocks PR people, outs them

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired vents about 'PR spam' in a recent post. It's a common theme and I guess we all reach a point where enough is enough. In fact, who can't sympathize with this sentiment, regardless of your profession?

So fair warning: I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I'm interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that's why my email address is public).

I only want those kind of emails too. He then publishes a list of offending email addresses. PR pros probably scanned down the list and like me were relieved not to find themselves or their agency on it. But we knew our firms could have been - or why the relief? Why even look?

The fact is that PR and media do have a symbiotic relationship. And all relationships wax and wane. Email is a useful tool and sometimes people are lazy, short on time or even just learning. So mistakes are made. And there's a list of people who perhaps made them this month.

Their reward will be to get some spam and some more headhunting pitches. And Chris Anderson gets to vent some steam. Perhaps that system works. Or perhaps the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

Personally I think these things reach a balance - you reap what you sow. Some PR consultants send broad based emails because it works for them (or else they wouldn't right?). Occasionally they get flamed. Some reporters are more sensitive to unsolicited mail (or calls even) than others and so get fewer pitches. Occasionally they miss the big stories. The majority fall in the middle - working hard to build relationships, accommodating others' working styles and understanding their pressures.

Blackberry's Facebook app

As if Crackberry isn't addictive enough...

Technorati Tags: Blackberry, Facebook

If you can't beat 'em

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San Francisco Chronicle on the move?

I heard on the radio this morning that Hearst is thinking of selling The Chron's offices on Mission and Fifth. The area has seen a lot of development recently (mainly with the Bloomingdale's opening) so real estate prices are rising, despite the crunch. Must be tempting to move to a cheaper location but it's a shame to see newspapers move out of town a la Fleet Street in London.

Channel hopping

We got a glimpse of how television could be last night. Detective series, CSI: NY broadcast an edition where the criminal was tracked in 3D virtual world, Second Life. About 30% of the program was shot in machinima by The Electric Sheep Company (another client). But the crime hasn't been solved. It continues in Second Life where viewers can now become crime scene investigators themselves. The characters we saw in the program are identical to the ones in the virtual world - down to the pixel, since they were used to shoot the program. It's a great way of extending the CSI experience.

What amazed me though was the level of interaction while the program aired. Of course, we were in-world, trying out Electric Sheep's new OnRez Viewer (which is very slick - love the back button), chatting and IMing with each other. At the same time, the email was flying and AIM popping. There was also a discussion in real time on Twitter and several friends' Facebook statuses declaring they were glued too.

Television isn't normally a communal experience. Too many channels and TIVO mean there's rarely a synchronized time we all watch the same thing (in fact usually only sports). More importantly, there's no channel to interact through. Last night's CSI reversed that in many ways. There were too many channels of communication, but only one thing to watch.

Fans of The Office (US edition) will be pleased to see Second Life appears in that tonight too.

Technorati Tags: CSI: NY, machinima, OnRez, Second Life, The Electric Sheep Company