Guest Column: Who shouldn't blog in the PR industry?
By Tom Foremski - April 28, 2006
Richard Edelman totally spoiled ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’ for me.
Edelman, well-respected president and CEO of Edelman PR Worldwide, wrote a blog post this last Monday recommending a few ways our industry can work towards improving how we’re portrayed in film and television. He references Jim Carrey’s latest, Fun with Dick and Jane, in which the comic portrays an underdog communications executive that eventually outsmarts everyone and becomes an unlikely hero to the defenseless everyman. I haven’t seen it.
Edelman asks, “How can we build on this new Hollywood persona, the action-hero PR person? Or better yet, how can we offset the negative images of the mealy-mouthed apologist in the Constant Gardner or the cynical opportunist in Thank You for Smoking?”
He then offers four ideas: First, make the process of communications transparent and participatory. Second, move from spokesperson to participant in policymaking.
The third and fourth fit with the second, take the lead on issues that have historically been assigned to other corporate departments, and lastly, help to make change.
While Edelman’s suggestions are accurate, they are not groundbreaking, and certainly not any different than what’s been available for the taking for decades. The best PR people already open up the communications process and help make change, so what’s new here exactly?
Will we change better Hollywood’s (and therefore, America’s) perception of our industry by continuing to further these goals? It’s a long shot. Most likely we’ll have to change the game altogether.
A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting at CNET Networks’ San Francisco offices led by their game-changer chairman and CEO Shelby Bonnie. According to Bonnie, CNET’s business model is to develop content that “speaks to the passions of [their] users in high-interest categories.”
He explained that categories such as gaming, consumer electronics and computer hardware hold mass appeal, but differentiate themselves because of the fanatical base that drives their success. For example, you might download Firefox because it’s a hassle-free alternative to Microsoft, while not realizing it began with the fanatically passionate open-source community.
Nine out of ten PR professionals will tell you that corporate or employee blogging is the closest thing we have to a rally-around-the-flag entity like Firefox. The parts are there, fanatical base, mass appeal, etc.
Public Relations industry didn’t invent blogging, far from it. Blogging is a communications mechanism handed to us by the long tail of the Internet.
We weren’t even the first to recognize its utility as a corporate communications tool. People like Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David Weinberger pointed that out to us.
Nonetheless, senior PR professionals are either (a) the individuals responsible for determining the communications strategies of the world’s largest organizations or (b) the individuals consulting to the world’s most powerful communications executives.
Blogging appeals to PR professionals because it’s the scrawny, get-it-done middle infielder of public relations. It’s a hero’s tail, a voice a reason, nearly altruistic, “corporate communications with mass appeal.” Every starry-eyed PR professional that blogs believes, somewhere inside, that it can make them some kind of champion of business. It’s our Firefox, our feel-good alternative. It’s our Hollywood story. Convince one company to put blogging at the forefront of their communications strategy and you’ve “won one for the Gipper.” It’s as if you removed every single ethically-questionable tactic used by PR professionals and replaced them with a single olive branch.
Strumpette’s Amanda Chapel has enthusiastically embraced blogging. She hasn’t, however, enthusiastically embraced many of the PR professionals that maintain personal blogs. She actually goes out of her way to antagonize them.
In some respects, I share her concern. I believe blogging, as the delicate olive branch of PR, must be handled by the absolute best-of-the-best our industry offers. These are the Tim Dysons, the Richard Edelmans and the Andy Larks.
If we allow this wave of wannabe journalists and self-publishing addicts to control (and ultimately mishandle) what could be our White Album, we will fall … and we’ll fall hard.
“How can we build on this new Hollywood persona, the action-hero PR person? Or better yet, how can we offset the negative images of the mealy-mouthed apologist in the Constant Gardner or the cynical opportunist in Thank You for Smoking?”
We advise our clients to begin to leverage blogging (today) to help them build a core audience of fanatics. Once we learn to handle our Firefox, then it’ll be time to help our clients find their’s.
- - -
Daniel Bernstein works at Bite Communications, a Next Fifteen company whose CEO is Tim Dyson.
By Tom Foremski - April 28, 2006 | Permalink | Category: PR Watch
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Comments (12)
"I believe blogging, as the delicate olive branch of PR, must be handled by the absolute best-of-the-best our industry offers. These are the Tim Dysons, the Richard Edelmans and the Andy Larks."
Wha...?
Posted: April 28, 2006 6:23 PM
Nice plug for your boss, and I am not disputing that the names on your list are great thinkers; however, I think that the Sr. executive isn't always the best-of-the-best to handle blogging campaigns. First, they are busy, and blogging requires "face" time, so you need someone who can pull that off.
I think we need to be three-dimensional as we look to add this strategy to the tactics that we offer clients. I have plenty of clients who I do NOT counsel blogging as a tactic (beyond some monitoring). For others, it makes perfect sense.
By drawing a box around the executive suite, you may lock out the very person that will ensure success in this area. Executive buy-in is critical, but not executive execution.
Posted: April 30, 2006 1:25 PM
I appreciate your calling me on that sentence, but in no way am I suggesting creating an exclusive club of bloggers. Also, Tom changed the headline on this, it was never meant to be a "who should blog"-themed post.
I'm arguing two points here:
1- blogging is PR's killer app
2- because it's so important to the future of our industry, we need to be very careful how we handle it
Kami and Mike, I think your blogs are examples of strong work, I just think not everyone is up to snuff. I want to make sure we focus on the ultimate goal here, which in my opinion is up-leveling PR's role in an organization. I believe blogging is the killer app that can make that happen. It can do what Firefox did for open source - it took a movement into the mainstream that had originally been followed only by a fanatical base. Does that make sense? I'm just saying we need to get the best and the brightest advocating towards this movement.
Posted: April 30, 2006 8:33 PM
Christopher, Rick, Doc, and David are all working on this new cool thing...
...but after reading your article, I've decided not to tell anyone until Tim, Richard, and Andy get it all polished for the rest of us.
Posted: April 30, 2006 9:37 PM
It's true, I did change the headline but that's my prerogative as editor :-) BTW, the original was titled: "Daniel Bernstein Offers an Olive Branch" which doesn't mean much.
I'm trying to publish some new voices and Daniel is one of those voices brave enough to state a point of view and then take any heat. That's what the best bloggers do, they have cojones...
I don't agree with Daniel, I think anybody should be allowed to blog and anyway, you can't stop it. Yes, Thoughtleaders should blog, otherwise how do we know they are Thoughtleaders...?
Posted: May 1, 2006 1:03 AM
By using your logic, Daniel, we can expect the Bite blog to go quiet, quick, and just be written by BT and Clive.
Hope you enjoyed blogging while you did it.
Posted: May 1, 2006 7:40 AM
I think Jeremy Pepper has a better approach to this idea in a post he made April 27:
http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/2006/04/pundits-talk-people-listen.html
"[what is important is] how PR can work in a changing media landscape, not how we can pontificate about the changing landscape. If we fall into that pundit role, it's just like Pogo: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us. We should present case studies, present examples of good and bad practices, and help companies because we understand blogs ... as much as you can. That's why you hire PR firms: to be experts in key areas."
I agree with this approach, versus the golden egg approach you suggest here.
Posted: May 1, 2006 7:52 AM
Ike-
I can see your point ... I clearly put my foot in my mouth here. Here's more of what I was driving at, maybe you can help me refine my argument.
I'm arguing for blogging to emulate open source as a model of quality control by a few individuals. Open source is a true meritocracy, if you're contributions are legit, then they're included. I believe the Linux movement is as important to the open souce community as blogging is to PR. For the first time in our industry's history, fanaticsm about a "killer app" is spreading from the core.
Question is, how do we best handle that? Do we tame the fanaticism by allowing the practice to be governed by an elite few? Do we create a blogging legislature to determine standard rules and practices? Do we let well enough alone and risk losing blogging to an industry willing to step up and create standards?
I think anyone interested in blogging should blog. I don't believe that anyone interested in blogging should have a seat at the table when it comes to defining how blogging should shape the future of PR, but who am I to say who belongs and who doesn't? Thoughts?
The idea: PR finally has its killer app, it's also now developed its fanatical base, major organizations are beginning to develop blogging strategies ... to the end of up-leveling PR in the business ladder, how do we act next to make sure we have a say?
Posted: May 1, 2006 8:40 AM
Daniel, thanks for understanding the spirit of my jape.
I think you are running into a big "does not compute" issue -- you are dividing by zero.
Blogging is very much a meritocracy. Over time, the good tend to attract an audience, and the bad generally attract cobwebs. I think we're running into a logic bomb if we expect some "elite" to designate "the rules" for everyone else. Whose to say that I don't have a better idea for how to blog? There really are a bunch of nobodies out here that add to the sum of human knowledge. I think your Linux example bears me out.
Now, to your Firefox example. The people who built the engine know they can't think of everything. That's why they developed an extensible architecture. Other creatives are slaving away to solve a problem that you won't even know you'll have for a month. That's the distributed genius of social networking applied to open source.
Now, fast forward to the Firefox Flicks contest. Did Firefox turn to the programmers to come up with the best ads? The developers? The money men who do very little real programming? The geeks who write extensions?
Nope. It was users. A bunch of people who up until now had been nobodies. The people who know how to sell the technology as the "killer app" are the evangelistic users. Not their bosses. Not the people who built ginormous blog-traffic before Firefox was ever released.
If your model is built from the ground up, you can't suddenly impose a top-down heirarchy on it. No matter how fast you spin the potter's wheel, you can't make a vase out of water.
Wanna know a secret? Here's how it's all going down:
A couple of bloggers, one you know and one you've never heard of, are going to strike a resonate chord while commenting on this other girl's blog. They'll start linking to each other, and one day they'll have the same great brainstorm while reacting to the same situation. They'll swap some e-mails, and get excited about thinking through some thorny issues -- like how to "regulate and codify the PR blogs."
They'll put out a rudimentary Code of Hammurabi, and a few people will notice it and internalize those principles of good blogging and transparency. A couple of others will link to it and add some ideas, and now we're starting to dilute.
Finally, there will be a big PR embarrassment involving a blog -- big enough to snap someone into action. That someone will scour old posts and comments and come up with a set of rules and principles designed to give PR a better blog-face. And they'll sign a new manifesto.
A bunch of others will rally around the idea, because it's a meritocracy. They'll "vote" to ratify it by writing about it, and posting a special button on their page. And everyone will know what that button means -- a pledge to adhere to a standard of ethics, transparency, and excellence.
New bloggers will get the importance right off the bat, and wonder about the dark days of the wild wild net.
It's all going to build from the ground up.
If you think we're at the stage to make a go, and you want to be that catalyst, then get off your rear and make it happen. Just don't limit yourself to a "chosen elite" to make the rules. Make it a big participatory event -- with three weeks of online voting and discussion. Use well-proven decision techniques to narrow down the ideas to the essentials, and then work with some good people to trim the language to clear, concise, and unmistakable.
Then sit back and enjoy what you've done. With a bunch of nobodies.
Posted: May 1, 2006 4:06 PM
"how do we act next to make sure we have a say?"
How indeed? The problem in your argument is that it presupposes that we can actually control this phenomenon, which is arrogant at best.
A meritocracy (as Ike suggests and I concur) cannot be controlled by a hierarchy. So, we can sit in our ivory towers; whomever is allowed at the table, and make our plans. But who will actually follow this set of "standards"?
The key is getting out and doing something noteworthy that contributes to outcomes, not outputs (in other words, a bunch of tactics that have no meaning to the bottom line).
Blog as a killer app? Maybe. However, I think it is all a function of what leads to the best outcome, or bottom-line result, for the organization. I don't believe the tactics should drive the strategy.
Posted: May 1, 2006 7:46 PM
Ike, amazing post. It sounds like the stuff Wikis are made of ... thoughts?
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