The GOOG threat to traditional PR
By Tom Foremski - February 8, 2007
I ran into Andy Lark, earlier this week. Andy used to be corporate comms chief at Sun Microsystems. He now spends most of his time as Chief Marketing Officer at LogLogic, a fast growing enterprise software company.
LogLogic, like many other startups, uses a PR agency to help get its message out to potential customers. Andy told me that he recently noticed that he was starting to spend more money on buying Google adwords than on PR. And when push comes to shove, I know where most cmpanies will put their money. You can pin a ROI on GOOG adwords that you can't with PR
This is a very significant crossover point. It represents one of the many threats to traditional PR. And there are many PR agencies that only understand the old approach, no matter what they say about new/social media.
There is a disconnect in the PR world that is going to hit that industry hard.
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Additional info:
SVW:
Andy Lark agrees...blogging is disrupting PR
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Comments (8)
Eventually all business communication will be required to produce a return on investment.
Posted: February 8, 2007 6:23 PM
Aere you saying that PR needs to get into the online/social world more and understand how it ticks? If you are, I couldn't agree more. To many of my peers still look at me with a blank stare about what a blog is.
What do you think PR can do to better prepare themselves?
Posted: February 8, 2007 7:28 PM
Au contraire, mon frere. The success of Google has nothing to do with PR in my experience. If anything, if companies shift traditional print ad marketing dollars to pay-per-click online ads, there's more budget left over for PR.
It's important to remember that ads and PR are different. One, the advertisement, the consumer views as a marketing spiel. The other the consumer views as an endorsement from a trusted publication. Which would most companies rather have? PR.
Posted: February 8, 2007 8:52 PM
PR can create/establish a core lexicon... which is what Google needs to work effectively. Keywords are only as good as their context and audience. If that hasn't been developed, keywords are fool's errands.
Posted: February 9, 2007 10:01 AM
Duane: I think PR can best prepare itself by using the tools of modern communications and collaboration--that's the best way to understand the new media and the new forms of conversation/communication. But few PR firms have their own blogs, for example. That tells me they don't understand things because they aren't doing them. How can a PR firm go around and tell its clients about the power of blogging, etc if it isn't doing it itself? Or if the in-house bloggers are the most junior people?
And part of communicating in the new world is understanding "discoverability" and how that works in relation to the search engines. And that's about "search enabled communications."
Posted: February 9, 2007 1:27 PM
Mark, Greg and Tim: Yes all corporate activities will become (more) measurable and thus an ROI on more nebulous things like PR will be more measurable. As we can measure more parts of corporate activities we can determine the nebulour PR part through simple subtraction.
In the end, PR is the same as advertising. There is a rule of thumb that a story in newspaper or magazine about a company has three times the value of an advertisement in that same publication.
Marketing and PR are all costs of sales. If I can sell more product by using Google AdWords to reach my customers, and at a lower cost of sales, I will take away money from my PR budget, which is less measurable and thus more vulnerable to cuts.
Posted: February 9, 2007 1:34 PM
Hey Tom
Thanks for the reply. I do agree that not a lot of PR folks are blogging or getting into the social media arean.
A lot of my friends at big agency's say they don't because the company just sticks with the traditional way of doing things, which is almost like writing your own death warrent these days.
Those who don't adpart will just die away I guess.
Posted: February 10, 2007 9:14 AM
I'm not going to disagree with PR practitioners needing to suplement their traditional PR by using new technologies and social media to tell their stories, but it still fundamentally comes down to: "are we telling good stories?"
Cisco has utilized blogs for several years and has recently entered Second Life and we are exploring other social media through our "Human Network" campaign, but it is definitely a journey. We are still learning, but we are trying.
Posted: February 15, 2007 10:21 PM