Silicon Valley Watcher - reporting on the business of technology and media

Monday evening I caught up with Sabrina Horn, head of the Horn Group, one of my favorite PR mavens. Ms Horn runs one of oldest and feistiest Silicon Valley/New York boutique PR firms and in 17 years in the business she has survived the many ups and downs of the local and global economy.

Obviously, we talked about the financial crisis and how it might affect the PR industry. Ms Horn's response was typical: "If we are heading into a recession, bring it on. We've been here before and we know what to do."

Earlier in the day she addressed the San Francisco office and talked about the potential effects of the financial crisis. "I think its important to let my people know that we know how to handle these types of situations."

She finished the meeting with three four-letter words: Sell like hell!

Ms Horn lives in New York and her agency spans both coasts, with about 45 people and $10m in revenues. Over the past few years she has diversified the company into web development and graphic design--services that help her clients.And now social media is a key driving force for the company.

"Eventually social media will replace a lot of traditional PR but there will still be room for both," says Ms. Horn. And companies need to understand the best combination for their business. She says some clients want to rush into "social media" without considering what it means and the commitment that has to be made.

Every company is a media company . . .

I've often spoken about how every company is now a media company and needs to master the new media technologies at our disposal, such as RSS, blogging, Twitter, social media, etc. But being a media company requires a commitment, it is not a "campaign" that runs for a few months and finishes--it is a long term commitment and not everyone understands this aspect and what that means.

I love to remind people that these are fascinating times for professional communicators, whether they are media professionals or PR professionals because there is so much change going on. There are still so many questions about the best use of the new media technologies. What are the best formats, the best practices? And we all get to figure out how this all works, we all have a hand in helping to create the future.

It is this aspect of the PR business that excites Ms Horn. "I'm fed up with the animosity that you see between some journalists and the PR industry. If they think we don't do anything of value I challenge them to spend two days in our shoes, sitting in on our meetings and seeing what we do."

No one has taken up Ms. Horn's challenge. I said I would do it, I'd love to know more abut how things are done in the PR world.

I look at the PR industry as a partner to what I do. I would not be able to do my job if it wasn't for people in the PR industry paying attention to what I'm writing and offering top CEOs, and pitching interesting stories. My problem is not the many bad pitches, which seem to anger younger journalists, it is all the great pitches that I don't have time to get around to.

Horn Group is one of the PR companies that I'll be watching as one of the thought leaders in a rapidly changing industry--with or without a recession.

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Please see:

Horn Group Weblog

Sabrina Horn: Horn Group Weblog: A Nickel for Your Thoughts

. . . There is this undertone in a lot of blogs that what PR folks do in this role is largely intelligence-free. It is true that if I had a nickel for every time in my 17 years at Horn Group I interviewed a starry-eyed professional who pronounced they “like working with people” I’d be sitting on a beach somewhere. But I’m not. Here’s the deal: to all those nay-sayers, those folks who are dare-i-say-it, too complacent and comfortable, all those jaded Doubting-Thomases, THOSE DAYS ARE GONE. Call it a call to arms, or an all hands on deck to our colleagues in PR. We need to embrace the changes seeping through our walls. The reality is, many of us have been leading the charge for some time now.

. . . Are we doing PR? Yes, and no. Its just that PR has changed and taken on a much broader role as a communications discipline. In fact, with some clients, there are times when the last thing we actually talk about is PR. Now its more about how we can help our clients be “social”. But that’s the new PR of today, and the Communications business of the future. To discuss the many aspects of this topic further, we’re co-hosting a panel discussion with Girls in Tech, date TBD. I also invite you to take Dee Anna’s challenge and come spend a couple days with us. It's inspiring, it's awesome, and if we don’t surprise and delight, I’ll give you a nickel.

Tuesday I met with the San Francisco office of Shift Communications. There was about 50 of us tightly packed into a conference room on the ninth floor of a downtown office building. (Special shout out to Julie Crabill and Kevin Cheng.)

I do a lot of these lunch sessions during which I talk about my experience as a journalist and how media and PR are changing, and continuing to change. I learn a lot from these sessions and I notice how similar the questions are, whether it is from Microsoft's internal communications teams or from large and small PR agencies.

Afterwards I got a rare chance to sit and catch up with Todd Defren, one of the owners of Shift. Todd has been blogging for about as long as I have, more than 4 years (Social Media and Public Relations Consulting – PR Squared). It's always interesting to speak the same language with other bloggers.

Here are a few snippets from our conversation.

- We think of ourselves more as a talent agency than as a PR firm. We put our people through a lot more training and education than we used to do because just one slip up can reflect badly on the entire agency. For example, look at Chris Anderson's list of PR companies that were on his blacklist, Shift was on that because of a slip up by one person out of 110.

- Clients increasingly want coverage by all the bloggers in their sector because they don't know who the most influential bloggers are. It's not enough just to focus on the top 50.

- We are being asked to do a lot more media creation, take a flip video to events, to interview people, etc.

- Social media is the tip of the spear in terms of new business.

- I worry about the changing media landscape and what will happen. The larger media companies will survive in one way or another but I'm not sure about the others.

- --

Please see SVW:

Public Relations is Such a Sensitive Profession . . .

PR is such sensitive profession. Anytime anyone criticizes any aspect of the practice of public relations the industry pays lots of attention along with a lot of mea culpa. If journalists did the same we'd never get any work done.

Jennifer Leggio over at ZDNet has a good account of the latest PR bashing incident: Bloggers vs. PR - the broken record continues to skip

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How to suck up to Chris Anderson in 1000 words or more . . .

Bad PR pitches will continue because:

- many PR firms use juniors to scatter-shoot generic pitches hoping someone will bite.

- the fragmentation of media means there isn't enough time to customize each pitch for each journalist/blogger.

- many PR firms have very small numbers of people with the domain expertise in what their clients do.

Maybe I should publish a white-list of PR people who are doing a great job, pitching excellent story ideas, offering exclusives, arranging interviews with their top CEOs, and generally looking out for me and my product.

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Chris Anderson Sparks Blacklist Debate - We'll Get You A T-Shirt And A Coffee Mug

If you aren't on Chris Anderson's blacklist we can get you on it. For just $75 we will send a press release in your name that has absolutely nothing to do with "Wired" magazine. It is guaranteed to land you at the top of his list or your money back.

Plus, you get a T-Shirt: "I'm on the Wired list how about you?" on the back is your name and several hundred others (only available in black).

And you get a coffee mug with "Chris is steamed" (copyright: Heddi Cundle).

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Chris Anderson's PR Blacklist Backlash - The Long Tail of Bad PR

I'm a huge fan of Mr Anderson, he turned around a sickly magazine and made it into a powerhouse. No question about it, he turned Wired from tired to inspired.

Bad time of the month?

I know the pressures of a monthly magazine, you are going to press, and there are a million details to pay attention to...it is not the best time of the month to deal with useless emails, however... I discussed Mr Anderson's reaction with many people, some PR people, but especially with many veteran journalists. We all receive bad pitches, that's part of our job. We ignore or delete, and then we move on with our day. Not for Mr Anderson, things became personal:

There is no getting off this list. If you're on it and have something appropriate to say to me, use a different email address.

This coming Monday I'll be in Seattle talking to nearly 400 internal Microsoft PR people about the changes in media and how these changes affect the practice of public relations.

On Tuesday I'll be back in San Francisco doing the same with the PR practitioners at Shift Communications, one of my favorite PR firms.

Let me know if you'd like me to come in and chat with your internal corporate PR teams or with your agency teams. It is typically a lunchtime talk and I do one or two per month depending on my availability. I'm happy to share what I come across during this historic change in our respective industries -- and I learn a lot too, from these interactions.

PR is such sensitive profession. Anytime anyone criticizes any aspect of the practice of public relations the industry pays lots of attention along with a lot of mea culpa. If journalists did the same we'd never get any work done.

Jennifer Leggio over at ZDNet has a good account of the latest PR bashing incident: Bloggers vs. PR - the broken record continues to skip | Feeds | ZDNet.com

It seems to me that the PR industry takes on criticism in two ways:

1 - it agrees with the criticism and pledges to do better accompanied by donning of hair shirts and self-flailing blog posts that go on and on for pages.

2 - It dismisses the criticism as massively ill informed and the ravings of an idiot..

It is usually 90 per cent number 1.

Whenever I come across such behavior in a friend I know that something is up, that there is a self-esteem issue at work, maybe, and that there must be something deeper going on. . .

The deeper stuff is that things have changed in the PR industry, and they've changed forever. Yet sometimes things look the same as before. And that can be a confusing time.

Some of my friends in the PR industry get upset with me for saying that things have changed. But my saying that things have changed didn't cause it, I'm just saying what I see.

It is similar to when I became a journalist "blogger" 4 years ago. My friends at the Wall Street Journal, San Jose Mercury News, SF Chronicle, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, AP, etc would sometimes shoot me cold looks as if, as a "blogger," I was responsible for making their lives a misery, because they now have work longer hours, and live under the threat of job cuts, and they can't go home at 5pm every day, anymore.

The trends in media have nothing to do with me, I'm swept up in the dynamics of this industry the same way as everyone else--I'm trying to deal with the disruption.

What I understood four years ago was: the business model for media had changed forever and it wouldn't return to the old ways, and that is the future for PR too.

The same forces that are dramatically changing, and remaking the media industry, will do the same for the PR industry. Yet that change isn't very visible yet, it is masked. This is because PR is making money with traditional services plus making money selling "new media/social media" services, these are boom times for PR. Change only happens when it hurts to do things the old way, that's why the media industry is changing.

It sometimes seems as if the PR industry is Wiley Coyote chasing the Roadrunner--all is well as long as no one looks down and notices the road has gone, and there is nothing there but gravity and a distant canyon floor.

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Please see:

Chris Anderson's PR Blacklist Backlash - The Long Tail of Bad PR

Raining on the PR industry's parade...

Last week the SEC said it will release new guidelines concerning its fair disclosure rules, which seek to ensure that material information by public companies is widely distributed as soon as is released. The SEC said that a company's web site could be an adequate way to distribute information. That means that companies might not require the services of news release distributors such as BusinessWire or PRNewswire.

SEC Likely to Change Fair Disclosure Rules - No Need for Press Releases Through Wire Services?

Some commentators have said that this move will kill the press release and that the "social media" release will now come into its own. But such speculation has nothing to do with the SEC moves, which are focused primarily on distribution channels rather than the format of content, which just needs to be "readable.".

Also, the large newswire services will still have a role in distribution except that companies will now likely have a set of options that allow them to meet the SEC FD rules and avoid potential fines or legal actions.

I discussed this issue in the following podcast with Chris Heuer, Brian Solis and Shel Holtz:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report

The New Media Release Podcast, episode can be downloaded here, heard directly from this page, or subscribed to via the NMRCast feed. Also, the Apple iTunes subscription is now available here or by searching for NMRCast at the Apple iTunes store under “podcasts.” If you subscribe to the FIR “everything” feed, however, this podcast will not be included.

Content summary:The usual suspects: Chris Heuer, Shel Holtz, Tom Foremski, and Brian Solis. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced it will unveil new Reg FD rules that allow the use of blogs and web pages in some circumstances to satisfy regulations for fair disclosure. The group discusses the impact on wire services and the social media news release.

Associated Press is trying to gain control over how others use its content. And it can, because "fair use" has no legal precedent, at least so far.

Does "fair use" protect five words as AP offers or does it cover as much as anyone wants to quote?

Because AP has raised this issue and it has taken legal steps towards defining this issue, we might very soon get a legal precedent on how much content can be quoted by others without violating copyright.

This could become a Pandora's box and one that should have been kept closed.

Consider this: A company releases a news release but it retains the copyright. You can only use the content if you have the approval of the copyright owner.

Support the source: Rave reviews find out why! - Order the The Amazon Kindle Electronic Book Reader!

It is interesting to see more PR firms launching their own blogs. This is good because I've always said that PR firms cannot claim to know anything about new/social media if they aren't using it themselves.

One way to check out if a PR firm understands blogging, etc, is to see if they have a blog of their own. Many don't, or if they do, they post very infrequently, and usually after meetings abut what they will blog about. Yet nearly every PR firm offers a new/social media practice to clients and claims that they understand this medium. This is BS imho.

To separate those that say they know all about blogging, but don't do it, I'm going to take a regular look at PR firms and their blogs or lack of them. Also, I'll be looking to see who blogs in those firms, are they junior or senior?

Here is a new blog from the Technology Practice Group at Ogilvy PR: Tech PR Nibbles. Even though Luca and his team, have been blogging a long time it is not to late to start. Seriously. Don't wait. Because if you are not in it you don't know it. And that's the truth, ask any blogger.

Luca Penati wrote the latest post: » Social Media or Socialized Media?

For the past couple of years I haven’t been in a client meeting or industry event where “social media” isn’t mentioned. Forget “mention”: it has been at the core of the discussion. But in all these conversations, what hasn’t been covered is how traditional media, in particular tech press, is evolving, changing, adapting; and what this means for “traditional” tech PR professionals.

Send me examples of PR blogs in the comments section or via email.

Horn Group is one of my favorite PR agencies because of the high calibre of people that work there. Sabrina Horn, the founder, is one of the savviest PR mavens in the industry, and it is always a pleasure catching up with her as she shuttles between here and New York.

Horn Group has been building up its business by offering web site services of all kinds. It is helping its clients succeed online and offline.

Today is Horn Group's 17th Anniversary. Congratulations and here's to the next 17!

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Here is a quick look at the latest results of Edelman's annual Trust Barometer. It surveys 3,100 "opinion-elites" in 18 countries (400 Americans.)

American's trust in mainstream media jumps an astonishing 36 per cent to 45 per cent from 33 percent in the prior year.

And business magazines came out on top – with 60% of the American respondents are most likely to turn to business magazines as a source of information about a company or business – vs. just 11% for blogs.

Generation gap defined...

Younger Americans (25 to 34 year olds) were "significantly" more likely to consider the following sources of information to be credible, compared with older Americans: Wikipedia, communications issued by companies, company Web sites, TV talk shows, blogs, social networking sites, and video-sharing sites

Fewer Americans under 35 (50%) are getting information about companies from newspapers than in any other country surveyed.

I'll have the full study very soon with more details...

Edelman is the world's largest private public relations company. Here is CEO Richard Edelman with some more findings:

Here is Richard Edelman's blog 6AM:

...as we seem to be heading toward recession, the goal for business should be to maintain their license to operate. This depends on banking trust capital by running a good business, taking on large societal issues in the context of profit making opportunities and presenting the business case in a transparent and convincing manner.

Technorati Tags: edelman, trustbarometer

Wednesday evening I'm at the Computer History Museum for the first annual Silicon Valley PRSA Gala dinner, sponsored by Microsoft and Yahoo and featuring a panel of local journalists.

I'm there as a guest of MSFT sitting with Doug Free, Dan'l Lewin and Michael Celiceo. It's a well attended event and I bump into lots of people (Brian Solis, Lish Woodgate, Matthew Podboy, Lisa Croel, Mimi Harris, Tony Obregon, Elke Heiss, and many more...)

On stage Sam Whitmore is the emcee, and sporting a new and very distinguished salt and pepper beard. Ann Winblad then takes over as an excellent moderator of a panel consisting of some of our top local journalists: Jim Goldman, CNBC; Don Clark, WSJ; Victoria Murphy Barret, Forbes; Rob Hof, Businessweek; Robert Scoble, Podtech and Scobeleizer; and the ubiquitous Kara Swisher, All Things Digital.

Some highlights:

On the subject of Facebook and being reunited with old friends, Jim Goldman says:"There is usually a good reason I lost touch with friends 10, 15 years ago."

Kara Swisher likened Google to "the Pablo Escobar" of the tech world. Not sure what she meant by that. She also said she would like to drive a Hummer through the bicycle parking lot at Google. Not sure what she meant by that either, except maybe expressing a backlash to GOOG and All Things Green (as opposed to Digital:-)

Don Clark said he is very skeptical about Silicon Valley being able to save the world through its green tech efforts.

Victoria Murphy said that enterprise IT is back.

Rob Hof wondered about the effect of a consumer downturn on Silicon Valley.

Robert Scoble said that the large Silicon Valley companies are far less interesting than many startups, such as Zoho. He also said it was surprising that Amazon.com has emerged as a leading infrastructure company and that he is meeting many startups that use Amazon's services and don't own a single server.

- - -

Podtech.net will be posting a video of the event.

Ever since Chris Anderson, the powerful editor-in-chief of Wired magazine's recent momentary lapse in self-composure, in which he publicly blacklisted several hundred PR people for sending him bad pitches, the PR industry has gone into a frenzy of self-flagellation.

Masses of PR bloggers have been writing very long essays and about how Mr Anderson is right, and that the PR sector needs to get its house in order and and eliminate bad PR pitches. It is as if Mr Anderson was the first editor to discover that there are bad PR pitches and brought it to the attention of the world, and now the PR world is going to sort out the problem.

This is BS

Bad PR pitches have been with us since the beginnings of recorded history and will continue to be here. It is what separates the good PR people from the bad ones, and there will always be bad ones.

Bad PR pitches will continue because:

- many PR firms use juniors to scatter-shoot generic pitches hoping someone will bite.

- the fragmentation of media means there isn't enough time to customize each pitch for each journalist/blogger.

- many PR firms have very small numbers of people with the domain expertise in what their clients do.

Pitch perfect problem

Maybe I should publish a whitelist of PR people who are doing a great job, pitching excellent story ideas, offering exclusives, arranging interviews with their top CEOs, and generally looking out for me and my product.

Mr Anderson complained about getting 300 pitches that have nothing to do with Wired magazine. My problem is 300 pitches that are right on target, that demonstrate that the PR people know what I 've been writing about, that are thinking about related stories, and offering top access to their clients.

What happens if your PR pitch is pitch-perfect, it sets exactly the right tone, demonstrates an insight into the subject and the publication, and you still can't get an editor interested in it? That's going to be happening more and more because PR agencies are on a hiring binge while the professional media world is shrinking.

When it comes to media relations, there will be ever larger numbers of PR people, chasing ever smaller numbers of journalists, writing for a dwindling number of publications, which are publishing fewer pages.

Getting media coverage for clients is going to be increasingly more difficult no matter how good the PR pitch.

Steve Rubel is a senior guy at Edelman, the world's largest private PR firm. He wrote a post titled: "The Web 2.0 World is Skunk Drunk on Its Own Kool-Aid."

He blames the media and advertising!!!

Well, didn't Edelman and hundreds of PR firms hype and hype Web 2.0 companies and continue to do so???

If Mr Rubel feels this way then ethically, he and his colleagues in PR should tell their Web 2.0 clients they don't have a chance. Oh, wait, he just did! (Now give them their money back....)

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Please see Silicon Valley Watcher:

August 2006 - A plethora of Web 2.0 = Way too many Swiss-army-knife-collaborative-platform-technologies

November 2006 - Web 2.Uh Oh Week in SF - Where are the Users?!

November 2006 - Tired of all the 2.0 hype? Here comes Web 3.0

NEW! - Get SVW on your Mobile Phone!

Technorati Tags: edelman, steverubel

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make the Outcast PR After Hours party Thursday night because I had four back to back meetings and events. But I managed to catch part of it.

I've worked with Outcast for many years so it was good to see familiar faces. And it was also interesting to hear some feedback on my latest posts about the changing economic models for PR, such as my Wiley E Coyote post.

It was quite clear that I had hit a nerve with many of my PR contacts and hopefully they will have the courage to take our discussion online so we can share it with others. Some took my post very personally, as if I were attacking them by name, which I wasn't. I was pointing out clear economic trends, that's all. That's my training as a financial journalist, to follow the flow of money within industry sectors.

The world has changed for both the media and PR industries, except the media sector is a further along in experiencing the painful disruption of those changes. The PR sector will eventually go through similar painful changes. This is not a welcome message when the PR industry is booming, and hiring like crazy.

PR industry parade

The PR industry is happy because revenues continue to climb 9, 10 per cent and more annually. New media technologies offer PR firms new business opportunities, they aren't viewed as a threat. PR firms charge clients for additional services. New media/social media is a very good add-on business in the PR world.

But when clients realize they can meet their PR goals using new media approaches for far lower costs, then why pay for both? They won't. There many that already don't.

This is a trend that will be played out in different ways by different companies but its overall effect will be the same.

Technorati Tags: disruptive technologies

Luca Penati from Ogilvy left aninteresting comment on my Wiley E Coyote post about PR firms running on thin air--http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2007/10/wily_e_coyote_p.php">doing PR-as-usual and not noticing their world has changed drastically. As it has for media.

Luca Penati writes:

<blockquote>I think saying that most PR agencies do not get social media is wrong. Social media is new way to engage in conversations with stakeholders. Some agencies and companies mastered this before others, but the key thing to understand is that it has to be embedded in everything we do, and not seen as a separate discipline.
And engaging in conversations with stakeholders is what we have been doing all along.

We are not the coyote. We are the road runner.</blockquote>

Luca is right, there is some excellent work going on within the PR industry in using the new media technologies to build online communities, and to improve communications between companies and their customers.

Such efforts are very effective if done right. They create tremendous value for clients in many ways.

But there is a massive amount of work still being done around traditional PR. This is an expensive way to reach the same basic goals: improve sales and improve brand perception.

As more companies realize they can get more bang for their buck with new media PR strategies, they will pull more of their money from doing PR the old way. And that's when revenues for PR firms will fall.

And why wouldn't that happen? The new media approaches work tremendously well. And they don't cost as much. I already come across companies that spend tiny sums on conventional PR services and they have been very successful in building their businesses through non-traditional approaches. This is a growing trend. It is not a fad.

I disagree that some PR firms have already mastered the new changes.

We are all at such an early stage in all of this. Technologies such as RSS, CSS, and XML are simple yet incredible powerful media technologies that can be used to publish unique types of media formats, and publish the activities of interactive online communites. RSS should stand for "Relationships Simply Syndicated."

We don't yet know all the things we can create with these technologies, which is great. Because we can all have a hand in creating the future. The changes the PR industry still has yet to go through are similar to the changes that media companies are going through now.

The media business model is being hacked off at the knees or rather the neck.

Established media companies are continuing to lose revenues because of a plethora of new media sites. Those online publishers can offer cheaper advertising, better conversion--plus a ton of free additional metric data compared with traditional advertising. Traditional advertising cannot compete.

Similarly, PR firms will lose revenues because of new media approaches to creating the same basic value: improving sales and improving brand perception.

Yes, Ogilvy is doing some interesting work in new media areas, others are too. I don't have the figures, but I bet that the new media work accounts for a small fraction of overall PR industry revenues.

Not much incentive to change

There isn't much to be gained for PR firms to push new media approaches because it would lower revenues. Except if it is offered as an additional service, which is how it is being sold these days. Much of the PR industry is telling clients to use a dual approach, strap a new media strategy onto a traditional approach.

The PR firms that win will be the ones that kill most of their traditional PR approaches and advocate a new media approach because it is more effective and has a lower cost. That's a hugely disruptive change and it has yet to play out.

It is clear that some PR firms will emerge as Road Runners while others will remain behind as road kill :-)

Technorati Tags: New Rules Communications, Wiley E Coyote PR

Thoughts on Strumpette Amanda Chapel resignation...

I've long warned the PR industry that it is on borrowed time. The media industry is undergoing traumatic changes yet PR is thriving. Media and PR industry fortunes have always followed each other in lock step.

PR today reminds me of the Roadrunner cartoons. The times when Wily E. Coyote is chasing the Road Runner and notices he is running on thin air, at which point he plummets thousands of feet to a distant canyon floor. That's how I envisage the PR industry today--about to plummet from a great height.

Strumpette and Amanda Chapel tried to stir up changes in the PR industry and encourage a new form of PR, by openly discussing ethical issues, and all the unpleasant aspects of knowing how the sausage is made.

But nothing changed despite all the transparency around the process of public relations.

Is this a failure of transparency? Yes. Because nothing changes unless you have to change. And you only have to change when you have to change because things have become fiscally painful. The PR industry is awash with money unlike the media industry, so it doesn't change.

Traditional media is changing rapidly because it can't make money the way it used to make money. That business model is being hacked to pieces.

Advertising is moving rapidly online, and it is moving towards search engine advertising, not journalism.

Selling products and services next to a column of journalism is not as effective as selling next to a search engine query--which magically reveals what you are looking for. This is way more useful to advertisers than revealing what you read.

In the PR world, unlike the media world, the companies are hiring like crazy and still doing business the old fashioned way: press releases, white papers, case studies, media (dwindling) relations, etc, ....

Yes, every PR firm offers "social media" or "new media" services but how many of them practice what they preach in terms of using such technologies to drum up business for themselves? Shockingly few.

It is clear that this old model of PR is going to end. In fact, it has already ended but most PR firms don't know it, just like Wily E Coyote's sudden lack of solid ground...

I keep running across Silicon Valley companies that have spent no money on PR or marketing. Zero dollars.

Slide.com, for example, has managed to attract millions of users for its online apps on Faceback and MySpace for no dollars.

There are many smaller startups who have done the same: zero dollars spent on PR and marketing. They have gotten incredible results from the viral nature of their products, services, and their personal abilities to establish though leadership through blogging and other online engagements.

What happens when venture capitalists start demanding that same type of business strategy from their startups?

Consider this: The whole outsourcing trend to India, Phillipines, etc, was significantly boosted by the VCs and their demands that their startups take advantage of the economic benefits from an outsourcing strategy. As a startup, if you can't show you have a viable outsourcing strategy in your business plan, you won't get funding.

Next: Startups will have to show VCs that they have a viable viral marketing and distribution strategy. That means cutting out about $120k to $200K of annual expenditures for basic traditional PR services for a startup.

And larger companies will be tapping into this same trend. They will be cutting back on traditional PR services and investing in their own viral marketing methods. I already see this about to happen at big companies such as Intel (an SVW sponsor), Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, IBM, and this trend will grow.

Dell, for example, recently hired Andy Lark, one of the top new media strategists in SIlicon Valley, imho. What do you think Dell intends to do with that hire? It won't be marketing-and-PR-as-usual, that's for sure.

No Pain, No Change

Change in the PR industry will happen because the old ways won't be as good, or as cost effective as using new media technologies to publish and engage customers. Traditional PR doesn't provide the same bang for the buck.

It is when the PR industry feels the same pain that mainstream media is feeling right now, a kick in the pants to its core revenues, is when change will happen. But without pain, no change.

Technorati Tags: andylark, mediasphere, social media, strategy

Amanda Chapel, the nom de plume of the managing editor of Strumpette, a site that seeks to change the way PR has been done by exposing many of the inside tricks and ethical issues, has resigned.

Practically speaking, I fought the good fight. I've variously made my points. Together, we've exposed a few frauds and killed countless sacred cows. Together, we've done something PR professor Bill Sledzik describes as "historic." A little hyperbole perhaps but I do know we have made it safer to rail against the hypocrisy in our business.

BUT now I am tired; and now regrettably, I seem to spend all my time revisiting the same battles previously won.

http://strumpette.com/archives/612-STRUMPETTE-EDITOR-CALLS-IT-QUITS.html

Foremski's Take: PR won't change until it has to. Until it feels the economic pain. Media is changing because its economic model is changing and it is painful to stay the same. PR doesn't have the same pain. New media and social media are options, and not considered necessary, along with changing the ethics of the business.

No change because no pain, imho.

[I recently received an email from a reader in reference to my infamous post: "Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!"]

By Harry Zane

I am retired from a career that began in journalism, turned to PR, then to marketing, and finally to consulting. And I agree wholeheartedly with what you said in your column. However, I am astonished that in 2007, PR is still slogging lower and lower into a press-release and press-conference tactical miasma.

I think the media, despite their constant carping about their dislike of press releases, are largely responsible. Many years ago, while working at a major university, I can recall a meeting of journalists and educational PR pros when the biggest complaint was that we PR folks sent out too many press releases. So we cut back, and the first complaints came only weeks later – from reporters, who couldn't understand why we were pitching stories without sending them "press releases."

I recall as well some 25 years ago working at a then major technology firm in Massachusetts when I had to fight endlessly with my peers and executives to keep the self-absorbed, self-unaware nonsense out of press releases. My "reward" was praise from the editor of the biggest industry trade journal. He really liked my releases because, as he said, they were brief and contained "no bullshit."

I took little comfort from his attaboys, however, since he ran unedited the competition's endless column inches of yammering right next to, or well above and ahead of, mine (the longer copy, rather than concise content, better fit his need for lead story layouts), creating the impression to casual readers (most trade journal readers are) that the competition had more to say than my company. Needless to say, this didn't sit well with the puffery-spouting peers and execs I'd just vanquished, either.

The reason, of course, for his actions are entirely explicable. His was a labor-intensive business, and he needed the free copy. Such is the fate of all media today: copy, no matter how untrue, uninformative, or unbecoming the author, trumps solid content.

PR people won't stop creating press releases because PR people, be they consultants, or employees will not stop serving the pleasure of their benighted bosses and clients; most media will continue to take content anywhere they can find it for little or no cost; and reader expectations for something better will continue to spiral downward with the whole sorry mess.

You are obviously a dedicated journalist with healthy amounts of skepticism and ambition. Your idea is sensible, laudable, and intelligent, but I don't see it happening. Ever.

Technorati Tags: die press release, mediasphere, PRWatch

Sabrina Horn, head of Horn Group, Silicon Valley's top independent PR firm, says she has heard too many sales pitches from conference keynoters from large IT vendors--and they are making a mistake.

...you appear almost defensive when you only talk about yourself and your products in these keynotes...

Ms Horn suggests...:

Audiences today really want to hear what you think about the industry and where it's going. What should we be worried about? What are you worried about? Where are our opportunities? What are your ideas? The dirty little secret is, if you did that, we'd probably like you more and want to buy even more from you.

Link to Horn Group Weblog: Get a Clue!

I agree. A CEO makes a keynote speech at large conference and delivers a sales pitch?! What a wasted opportunity.

A sales pitch can be delivered in a video, an advertisement, it shouldn't be delivered in a keynote. I usually skip them because 95 percent of the time they are sales pitches--and I know plenty of other journalists and bloggers that do the same. 

A Keynote Is A Unique Opportunity

At conferences, a cavernous, cathedral-like room is filled with thousands of people in a darkened space happy and willing to be there. It is a perfect setting to deliver an experience, something hard to forget.

Apple is very good at this sort of thing. I remember several MacWorld keynotes from Steve Jobs and guests that were unforgettable. (One of them was when Mohammed Ali was there, just a few feet away from me.)

I have a lot of respect for the PR firm Text 100 because I grew up in this business with Mark Adams, one of the co-founders of the company. I used to work with Mark when Text 100 was just a two man shop.

At the time, in 1981, I was working as a reporter for Computing, the largest weekly trade newspaper. In those days trade print publications were extremely competitive, profitable and employed lots of journalists.

Mark represented Microsoft, which was when Microsoft wasn't yet Microsoft, it wasn't much at all.

Microsoft was trying to establish its MS-DOS, and was up against Digital Research with its much better known CP/M operating system.

That was the battle, and we now know the outcome, but at the time MSFT was the underdog.

It's strange to think of Microsoft as the underdog but that's the way it was and that's what made the story interesting: can plucky Microsoft beat Digital Research?

How many PC makers support MS-DOS versus CP/M? How many applications run on MS-DOS? These were some of the key metrics that we reported on, who has more oems, who has the developer community?

And in those days Digital Research had the upper hand, there were times the future looked bleak for Microsoft...

SOHO Times

Mark and I were both young and just starting our respective professions, both of us discovering how to do what we were supposed to be doing. Those were fun years, living and working in central London.

Computing's offices were in the middle of Soho. The streets of Soho at the time were gritty and urban, but full off some of the best hidden jewel restaurants, bars, clubs, and pubs...

From Text To Next

Text 100 grew up quickly and became part of Next Fifteen Communications Group, with 800 staff and a publicly traded company. It includes well known PR firms: Bite PR, August One, and Outcast Communications. Plus it has a stake in the innovative tech policy PR firm 463 Communications.

Tim Dyson the chief executive of Next Fifteen, would sometime reminds me of the time when he used to pitch press releases to me when I was working at Computing...(!) 

I'd like to congratulate Text 100 on its 25th Anniversary.

And I want to interview Tim and ask him his plans for the next 25...

_ _ _

Additional Info:

Tom Lewis and Mark Adams met in 1980 at Interco Business Consultants, a London PR agency. By early 1981, they were discussing the business principles for starting a new agency and, in June of that year, left Interco to form Text 100, the first company in what has now become Next Fifteen Communications. The company commenced trading in July 1981 and was legally registered on August 13th, 1981, the same day the IBM PC debuted in the United States.

http://www.nextfifteen.com/about.html

...

Next Fifteen is a holding company for a number of leading PR businesses. From its start-up origins in 1981 Next Fifteen concentrated on organic growth, building up over 30 operations all over the world from the ground up.

Next Fifteen Communications

...

Text 100 Public Relations a PR Consultancy

...

Next Fifteen Communications Group plc

SYMBOL:
NFC.L

YEAR FOUNDED:
1981

# OF EMPLOYEES:
800

CORPORATE ADDRESS:
5 Albion Court
Galena Road
London W6 0QT
United Kingdom

OFFICERS/BOARD MEMBERS:
Will Whitehorn - Chairman
Tim Dyson - Chief Executive Officer
David Dewhurst ACA - Finance Director
Tom Lewis - Non-Excecutive Director
Brendan Magee - Non-Excecutive Director
Ian Taylor - Non-Excecutive Director
Mark Sanford - Company Secretary

MANAGEMENT TEAM:
Next Fifteen Communication’s senior management team comprises: Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100; Sarah Howe, Managing Director of AUGUST.ONE; Clive Armitage, CEO of Bite; Grant Currie, Managing Director of Inferno, Caryn Marooney and Margit Wennmachers, founders of OutCast; Hugh Birley, Chief Executive of Lexis.

VISION STATEMENT:
Next Fifteen Communications believes public relations will become the principal form of consulting used by all marketing departments around the world. By offering a complete range of PR services through a portfolio of PR businesses, Next Fifteen Communications aims to be one of the world's leading public relations groups. Next Fifteen Communications will retain a core specialization in technology-related businesses, as it firmly believes this market will drive best practice both for consumer and business-to-business marketing.

I was asked this question by one of my readers in Russia. Is it the large PR agencies or the smaller boutique agencies that are best at using digital communications and social media?

My reply was that while some of the agencies have pockets of knowledge and experience within them, generally, none of them, large or small, are using digital communications and social media well, or even reasonably well.

Yet they will all tell you, and their clients, that they have an experienced practice in new/social media.

If a PR company is not using social media to effectively promote and market itself--then how can it do it for its clients? It can't.

Show me a PR agency that has bloggers amongst its top execs and also across levels within its organization. And is using podcasting and vidcasting to represent itself.

Show me a PR agency that does that, and you will have shown me a PR agency that "gets" social media and digital communications.

There is no "generational gap" in understanding these things, there is an "experiential gap."

The only way you can know how to use these digital communications effectively is by doing. It is not something that you can read about and then do it.

(PS: There are a couple of smaller agencies that get it but they are very rare.)

It is Day 20 and still no word from Paul Abrahams, the head of European operations for PR powerhouse Waggener Edstrom, following his public announcement that he doesn't "get blogs."

Mr Abrahams slammed the BlogoSphere in an article for PR Week in the UK, and then took off for a long vacation.

I wrote about whether it was a smart move for one of the PR industry's top executives to admit to such a blind spot. After all, PR agencies are busy creating "new media practices" to show off to clients that they really, really, do understand blogs and blogging. Apparently not all of them do and I respect Mr Abrahams' honesty.

From PR Week (Subscription required.)

Blogs: Smokey and the Bandit Part 4?

Paul Abrahams - 31 Aug 2006

Is blogging the 21st-century equivalent of citizen band radio, the personal radio technology that became so popular in the late 1970s that it was included in a Coronation Street plotline and spawned a generation of bad Burt Reynolds 'Good Ol' Boy' movies?

Source: Microsoft's PR agency admits it doesn't "get" blogs!

Just a couple of hours after I wrote my post, his colleague, Frank Shaw, one of the earliest PR bloggers, did the right thing and jumped right into the discussion by posting comments and posts to try to quell any negative publicity.

Mr Shaw did this while in the middle of mov