The Flack

Do Gen Y'ers Hold the Keys to Social Media?

2009-11-20T14:56:00.010-05:00

I promise. This is my last report for a while from the field of social media dreams.

Today, I had the pleasure of participating in PR Camp New York. The use of the word "camp" in a social media context probably has its origins from the pod(casting) camps made popular when podcasting had what was then considered Twitter status.

Dan Greenfield came in from Atlanta to preside over the confab at the 92Y in Tribeca. And in spite of a surplus of social media gatherings this particular fall season, today's event drew a diverse mix of more than 100 PR peeps and marketers from the agency, non-profit and corporate spheres.

I was woven to Zontee Hou, a Gen Y'er who overseas social media for Lion Brand Yarn, which just won a Groundswell and PR News Platinum Award. Yes, for yarn! Our topic:

"Talking about the 'Y' Generation: Tapping the Social Media Expertise of Young Professionals to Reach Your Audience"

The room broke out into four groups to exchange perspectives, after which the moderators took to the stage to report. I cited a recent RWW post that talked about Gen Y's migration to Twitter: average ages on My Space, 27, Twitter, 31, Facebook, 33, and LinkedIn, 39. One of our group's members said that the average age mattered little compared to the actual time spent in these digital realms. On that measure, Gen Y clearly won out over Gen X and beyond.

I then asked whether simply having a Facebook account really qualifies one for the keys to the social media kingdom. Isn't it less about age and more about being a new media "maven" that determines one's aptitude for carrying this hot potato? Someone in the audience then noted the paucity of Gen Y'ers who preside over today's most popular blogs. Another person said that familiarity with news groups and BBS offer historical perspective that Gen Y'ers don't have.

So why is it that companies and agencies invariably put Gen Y'ers in charge of their social media programs? I suggested (half heartedly) that it's because Gen Y'ers are glad to take the $35k annual salaries budgeted for such positions. Seriously, though, it was agreed that the generation born after 1980 is very conversant with the Internet, and exceptionally passionate about making things happen...yesterday.

So what can Gen Y'ers and their older work colleagues learn from each other? In my breakout group, one 20-something described a session she held for her CEO in which she outlined what Facebook "Fan Pages" could potentially mean to her company's brand. Another person of a more advanced age talked of mounting an internal audit to learn the degree of employee engagement with the social graph. With this data in hand, he then created specific social media guidelines for deployment throughout the enterprise.

In the end, most agreed that Gen Y'ers do appreciate the guidance they receive from their older colleagues, i.e., ROI, brand-building, and guidelines for engagement. One F-H assistant account executive even said that her boss, an account supervisor at the agency, reviews all her client tweets before she tweets them. Now that's cross-generational teamwork!

The PRfect Match

2009-11-18T11:22:00.007-05:00

As one of the 74 percent of Americans who reads "a printed or online newspaper" at least once a week, I couldn't help but notice the full-page ad that broke in the "Money and Investing" section of Friday's Wall Street Journal, and again today.

It was a "house-ad" from Dow Jones that amazingly targets...the PR professional. Yes, the lowly PR professional.

Frankly, I had very mixed feelings about this ad that touted Dow Jones' alleged "new" approach to media targeting. From its news release:

"For communications professionals, the increasingly fragmented media landscape adds to the challenge of quickly finding the right journalist or blogger who will be interested in their story," says Martin Murtland, managing director, Dow Jones Solutions for Communications Professionals. "Dow Jones Media Relations Manager helps media relations professionals build media lists and personalized, highly relevant and more effective pitches based on the stories the journalists or bloggers have actually written or communicated."

On the one hand, the product serves as an unabashed validation of the approach pioneered a year ago by MatchPoint, the PR search application I helped co-develop with eNR Services. It's not every day that one of the world's most prestigious news organizations endorses (or even discusses) a specific approach to media relations.

MatchPoint's (patent-pending) technology identifies relevant journalists based on how closely their cumulative bodies of work match the search query (e.g., keywords, pitch letter or news release). It broke from the entrenched PR Spam-producing approach, which uses vague titles or listed beats as a means to find "the right" reporters.

On the other hand, I was put off by Dow Jones' claim that it is:

"...the only media relations tool that links journalist and blogger contact data with the articles. posts and tweets they're writing today."

So much for truth in advertising. If it's any consolation, I did have chance to take the Dow Jones product for a test drive at the recent PRSA International Conference in San Diego. I approached the booth, and who was there ahead of me smack in the middle of a product demo? None other than Jack O'Dwyer, the entrenched chronicler of all things PR.

Jack asked the booth's proprietor to do a search with the keywords "PR" and "advertising" for newspapers and wires in the New York market. After a few seconds, the results appeared -- all 58,000 of them -- with a sports writer atop the list. Nowhere to be found were The Times's Stuart Elliott or Stephanie Clifford, the NY Post's Holly Sanders Ware, or even The Wall Street Journal's Suzanne Vranica or Emily Steele.

The person who demo'd the product explained that the search needed to be "refined" to elicit more precise results. I'd say take a ten-day free trial of MatchPoint. If you like it, sign on for $75/month for a license covering two computers. (Don't ask about the cost to subscribe to the Dow Jones app.)

Web 2.0 Expo in NY

2009-11-16T16:12:00.009-05:00

I finally had a chance to attend one of O'Reilly Media's Web 2.0 Expos (as opposed to "the more exclusive" Web 2.0 Summit) this morning at New York's Javits Center -->.

I choose to audit the panel called "Real-Time Marketing: Operationalizing the Use of Social Media," which featured SM luminaries Jennifer Zeszut (Scout Labs) who moderated, Peter Kim (Dachis Group), James M. Smith (Disney Online), Randy Ksar (Motorola), Aaron Dignan (Undercurrent), Valeria Maltoni (SunGard Availability Services), and Shiv Singh (Razorfish). Here are some select tweets:

@conversationage (Maltoni): Social media is helping us close the loop between prospecting and nurturing customers

@peterkim: social media is just another on-ramp as part of an integrated campaign. not a be-all, end-all

@jenniferland: if people are complaining about their cable service, this is a perfect op for NetFlix to engage

@jenniferland: [Unlike years past when it was difficult to identify specific customers], Twitter offers "a huge firehose" of feedback

Disney Online's James M. Smith: We have to be careful about marketing to kids. Moms are another story

Motorola's @djksar: Started with podcasts to elicit feedback for its android products

@shivsingh: client Victoria's Secret's FB fan page has 1.8 million fans. No prob finding customers

@shivsingh: Victoria's Secret solicits its FB fans to vote for a visit to their campus

@peterkim: product development: sounds great in theory... a car? no. car accessories. yes.

@PeterKim: if we can't [use SM to] operationalize new product ideas, we have to at least to pretend we're listening

@djksar When taking customer feedback, important to double-back to create evangelists

@Peterkim called the groundswell that succeeded in reviving the TV show "Jericho" 'squeeky wheels' The revival failed.

@conversationage: it's hard to have a personality on Twitter with a logo showing

@shivsingh: Humanizing company shouldn't be the sole objective. Think carefully thru lens of brand, e.g., Disney

Immediately following the panel, I was approached by two reps for Scout Labs, stemming, no doubt, from this tweet:

@peterhimler: Web 2.0 Expo - Host Scout Labs gets plaudits from #opsocial panelists, even though service, in my opinion, not best-in-class

I sheepishly explained that after seeing The New York Times coverage of the company, I asked for and received a demo of the company's conversation mining application. At the time, I thought it fell short in key areas, but then again, it's no secret that true sentiment analysis remains elusive for most companies operating in this space...today. Maybe it's time for a re-visit?

I did find time to talk about the changing agency biz with the always insightful Peter Kim (at left), formerly w/ Forrester, now a managing director at Dachis Group working from Boston. Here's the audio from our talk. (RT: 4:27). I also ran into the inimitable Stowe Boyd and met Nilofer (@nilofer) Merchant (who has a new book "The New How" on the horizon) and O'Reilly's VP, marketing, Christine (@christinew_) Walker.

#PRWeekNext

2009-11-12T15:08:00.007-05:00

Must be the season for PR conferences. Yesterday I attended PRWeek's Next Conference at New York's Waldorf Astoria and was glad to see yet another great turn-out.

This followed our PCNY media event this week, which sold out, the PRSA Int'l Conference, which drew thousands, and the Council of PR Firms' Critical Issues Forum that also played to a full house. Could it be that the economic tides have finally turned as Council president Kathy Cripps suggested yesterday?

After arriving, I took my assigned seat at the digital video-themed breakfast table, deftly hosted by Weber Shandwick's VP, Social Media, Chris Vary. Joining us were Vary's LA-based colleague and the agency's EVP for Digital Strategy and Operations Chris Perry, Walmart's director of corporate affairs for the northeast region Steve Restivo, manager of digital communications for Beltway-based Gibraltor Associates James Davis, and several others.

This PR vet asked whether it's worth posting one's video beyond YouTube to which Vary suggested that there are 12 primary video-hosting sites he recommends -- from Vimeo to Veoh. (Vary must like those V words.) Someone then asked about another "v" word -- viral, and specifically what are its ingredients. Perry strongly advised against producing a video with the goal of seeing it go viral. Rather, he suggested, use digital video as a means to fill an informational or utilitarian need.

None of us could figure out whether the party-priming video for the Windows 7 (Tupper-wear like) launch was purposely produced as an exercise in banality. We all acknowledged its million+ views, not to mention the derision it spurred from more than a few influencers in the digital sphere. It simply had an old-school PR-centric VNR feel to it -- not good.

We finally debated whether it made sense for someone from Walmart to avail him or herself on video in the immediate aftermath of last year's Black Friday "stampede" sale in which a store employee was trampled to death. There was a question about whether words alone would be sufficient to satisfactorily quell heightened emotions. It was decided that they wouldn't, and that tangible changes were in order. Those changes are now getting media attention.

I enjoyed the PR Week Next conference in spite of having to break for a lengthy client media interview mid-stream causing me to miss the panel featuring Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs, Columbia Journalism School, Gordon Crovitz, formerly of Dow Jones and today the founder of Journalism Online, and Brian Stelter, media reporter for The New York Times.

What differentiated this gathering from others was the preponderance of PR pros from the corporate side of the industry equation. I did catch the digital discourse with Kelly Groehler, senior manager, corporate public relations, Best Buy Co., Inc., Christi Day, online spokesperson and emerging media specialist, Southwest Airlines, Sarah Molinari, corporate communications manager, The Home Depot, moderated by Jen Houston, SVP, WagEd Studio D.

It prompted me to start a new Twitter list on Listorious featuring Corporate Social Media Influencers. I also ran into my friend and former colleague (twice over) Peter Land who let on about his fresh new gig as SVP, communications, PepsiCo Americas Beverages.

Lisa, Julia, Erica, and Rose - good show! (More here.) Hope to see you at PR Camp in NYC next Friday.

Photo: PR Week executive editor Erica Iacono with Tom Kunz, president and CEO of Century 21 Real Estate LLC (by Peter Himler with Canon PowerShot SX20 IS)

Arianna Preps PR Peeps

2009-11-10T09:02:00.010-05:00

I just returned from the annual PRSA confab in San Diego where thousands gathered to hear what's what in the PR biz.

I would have liked to have lingered another day (SD is such a fab city), but today PCNY held its own confab in NY where 160 PR pros heard producers for GMA, Nightline, The Takeaway, Dr. Oz and Beet.TV share what's what in the broadcast biz.

Back to sunny San Diego. PRSA's powers-that-be had the acuity to invite the namesake of the world's top-ranked blog to address the SRO PR crowd. Ms. Huffington offered her deeply accented (think Eva Gabor), but very clear perspectives on the PR profession (i.e., she recognizes and appreciates our purpose in life) and insights on the changed media landscape and news gathering process.

Here are a smattering of paraphrased quotes from her session for which she was intro'd as "a major player in the new world media" -- @AriannaHuff at #PRSA09:

"...this is an amazing turning point." [for news consumers]"

"...the press release is becoming more and more obsolete...even though we still do it at the huffington post."

"..the more social tools we use (fb, twitter, blogs) the more powerful the resulting action becomes."

"...viral communications is affecting everything you communicate."

"...MSM suffers from ADD, while online media suffers from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)."

She extols virtues of citizen journalists [to the detriment of traditional journalists], citing "Off the Bus" experiment in '08

"...for a story to stand out, it needs drama, eg, the balloon boy (or 'the attic boy')..."

She supported Joe Biden's call to withdraw from Afghanistan, but used the headline "Joe Biden Should Resign" to incite drama.

If she hadn't "framed" the Joe Biden story that way, instead of 1000 visitors, it wouldn't have gotten the kind of mass attention that it did

"...there are a million and a half homeless children in country, what if we constructed a giant balloon?!"

"...in many of the causes you're going to support, touching people's hearts is more impt. than touching their minds"

"...it's a real exciting time to be in PR and journalism professions" it's all about listening now, not just talking."

She offers PR peeps the opportunity to write on HuffPost "because that's how we grow."

"It [the media] is no longer about proprietary content anymore, ubiquity is what matters" [no paid walls]"

Ms. Huffington was then joined by Wendell Potter, the former in-house communications exec for CIGNA who had the courage to expose his former employer -- at great personal and professional risk/expense -- for the misinformation the insurance giant spewed on health care reform. Frankly, in my professional opinion, the industry practice of creating "front groups" (for astroturfing purposes) poses the single greatest reputational risk to the PR profession today. (And between you and me, there isn't a large agency that doesn't do it.)

Here's what @WendellPotter had to say:

He talked about his HMO employer going to great extents to hide funding of front groups [astroturfers]

"I would suggest [to others} to do 'an ethics check," e.g., is your job something you're proud of doing?"

@ariannahuff "...there has to be a moral foundation to capitalism [cites economist Adam Smith]

@wendellpotter "...soon after obama healthcare summit, he [Potter] knew promises of industry support were "disingenuous" and "duplicitous"

"...health insurance industry talking point was "uninsured are uninsured by choice" a devious term he [potter] coined.

"...purposely deceiving people is just done, i.e., front groups. it's accepted by the industry."

"...with decline of msm, we are all now self-selecting, which makes it easier for special interests (teabaggers) to flourish."

@arriannahuff "I think [PR pros] are held in higher esteem than Congress."

@wendellpotter "...younger generations have pretty good "BS filters" [Not sure I agree ph)

He read JFK's "profiles in courage," richard branson's "screw it, just do it" when faced with prospect of never working in corp pr again

Receives standing ovation from PR crowd for his courage to stand up to healthcare insurance biz's deceptions.

To listen to the entire keynote, click here. Excuse the quality. (TRT: 52 mins.)

Later that day, I had the good fortune to preside over a thought-leading panel with the title "The Nexus of PR and Social Media." (Yes, groan, anoooottthhhheeerrrr social media discussion.) Joining me were Top Rank Results' Lee Odden (@leeodden), Fleishman Hillard's Jessica Smith (@jessicaknows), former Sony Electronics corp. comms chief Rick Clancy (@rickclancy) and Converseon's Rob Key (@robkey). Ground cover from the audience was provided by the socially savvy Greg Jarboe and Sally Falkow.

The goal was to examine both the new and the old in an effort to get a fix on what core PR competencies transcend the new world PR order. For example, I rhetorically asked the question: is traditional media relations on its way out? I cited the number of agencies whose clients still sustain them through mainstream media relations ONLY.

This is where Greg Jarboe weighed in with some very sobering stats (for MSM only-focused shops):

"According to The State of News Media for 2009, which is published by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 5,900 full-time newsroom jobs, 11% of the total at America's newspapers, were cut in 2008. By the end of 2009, newsrooms of American daily newspapers may employ 25% fewer people than they did in 2001.
Ad Age estimates that just under 150,000 people worked in magazines in 2008, down from about 170,000 in 2000. And in local television, news staffs, already too small to adequately cover their communities, are being cut at unprecedented rates."

Read his post from Search Engine Watch. I chimed back that media relations is alive and well, and that the media universe is actually exploding when you consider the blogosphere and individual influencers (on Twitter and elsewhere). Greg quickly reminded me that my question pertained to "mainstream media."

We did end up concurring that blogger relations/engagement does not fall under the "social media" banner anyway. It's traditional media relations, albeit with a different breed of media who gerninate their posts from many sources outside the PR realm. What about bloggers being bought? Well that's another subject, also covered by the panel.

Healthcare Histrionics

2009-11-06T09:19:00.020-05:00

Dumb Michelle Bachmann had all her PR theatrics on display this week in DC. Her goal: to rally the right wing lunatic fringe to propagate anti-healthcare reform headlines, and in so doing, keep the cash flowing so she can hold on to her job. Ms. Bachmann is now ranked 8th among insurance industry beneficiaries.

She certainly pulled out all the props, including a copy of the healthcare bill wrapped in some kind of twine, a group Pledge of Allegiance (to which the Congressman who led it forgot the words), and a healthy heaping of political wack-a-dos who today pass for Republican leadership. This included crass conservative shock jock Mark Levin and House Minority Leader John Boehner who mistook the U.S. Constitution for the Declaration of Independence.

And let's not forget the TV-ready nasty visuals Ms. Bachmann's teabagger followers brought to her party (which didn't seem to bother the Minnesota or Ohio Reps.). These included posters with images of bodies at a Nazi death camp, our President painted in white face a la The Joker, and an assault rifle with the caption "Come and Take it."

Shocking, but sadly effective. One cable outlet called it "a major rally," in spite of the fact that it only drew a couple of thousand people, while The Times paid attention in its paper edition, and on its The Caucus and Prescriptions blogs. Ms. Bachmann's press aide, who quit this week, must be kicking herself.

In a battle of the Republican beauty queen bimbos, we couldn't help but notice the PR tactics of Ms. Bachmann's primary rival for the hearts and minds of America's uninformed. Sarah Palin has a date to speak tonight at a pro-life event in Wisconsin. Instead of embracing the standard GOP theatrical tactics to garner media interest, Ms. Palin has banned all media from the event.

What's more, she also intends to muzzle the audience. CNN's Political Ticker reports:

"But Palin appears to be doing her best to keep a low profile on this trip: no press will be allowed into the Milwaukee auditorium where she will speak and those who have paid the $30 admittance fee are unable to carry in cell phones, cameras, laptops, or recording devices of any kind."

The Bachmann-Palin Overdrive contrasts with two more subdued, but nonetheless effective pro-healthcare reform public appearances this week. The first featured the brilliant Bronx HS of Science grad and first-term Congressman from Florida Alan Grayson. Rep. Grayson did the math and then took to the House floor to read the expected number of people who will die in every Republican Congressional district as a result of no healthcare insurance.

The second had our President make an unannounced stop to the White House briefing room to inform the press that both the AMA and AARP have endorsed the Democrats' healthcare proposal. Some say this upstaged the Bachmann event.

Personally and professionally, I prefer my healthcare histrionics to be fact-based and more reflective of the crisis at hand. On these measures, Mr. Obama and Mr. Grayson clearly prevailed. If only the rest of cable-crazy America felt the same way, not to mention the media that caters to them.

Update (11/9) - Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman weighs in.

The Reading Room

2009-11-04T08:16:00.013-05:00

We were gathered at our bi-monthly Boys' Lunch at Michael's last month when one of "the boys," a very senior media-minded communications executive, looked at me incredulously when I said I actually read Bernoff's Groundswell, Jarvis's What Would Google Do, and Godin's Tribes, among others.

He definitely thought I was either drunk on the Kool-Aid or in need of a new life.

Just as the number of new media confabs have proliferated in recent years so have the number of published works heralding in the new world order. Many pros have forsaken these longer form media, replacing it with the Twitter cooler for keeping abreast of the changing times. Even the RSS-reader crowd has opted for the even more real-time Twitter stream for their news and info.

What you read and whom you follow speak volumes about who you are and what you know. In a New York Times media panel I recently moderated, pre-Twitter Lists, I asked NY-based tech reporter Saul Hansell what he regularly read. His answer -- paidContent, Silicon Alley Insider (now The Business Insider), TechMeme, and a few others -- provided a window into his editorial mindset, but for PR types, some insight into how his story ideas germinate.

Twitter, RSS and random web surfing aside, PR peeps should pay heed when those enmeshed in the new media/marketing space take the time to provide context to today's changed landscape. So I thought I'd compile a smattering of recent book titles worth exploring:

Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li's Groundswell
Jeff Jarvis's What Would Google Do
Ken Auletta's Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
Shel Israel's Twitterville
Chris Brogan and Julian Smith's Trust Agents
The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
David Meerman Scott's New Rules of Marketing & PR
Paul Gillin's The New Influencers
Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge's Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
David Kirkpatrick The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that's Connecting the World (Jan 2010)
Tim O'Reilly and Sara Milstein's The Twitter Book

Jeff Rutherford sent in a handful more including:

Bob Garfield's Chaos Scenario
David Meerman Scott" World Wide Rave
Adam Penenberg's Viral Loop

Enjoy and prosper. (If there are others that merit inclusion, please send along.)

Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com

Follow the Leaders

2009-11-02T08:26:00.013-05:00

What a weekend! No, I'm not referring to the Yankees two-out 9th inning rally that suddenly subdued those Hoagie-eating Philly fans. I'm talking about @ev, @biz and @jack's decision to open up Twitter Lists to more than the chosen few. It literally unleashed the curatorial curiosity in all of us.

I can't recall another more buzzed-about (and time-consuming) software application release, but then again I happen to follow Tweeps who get all a-twitter over such things. Isn't the quick uptake of Twitter Lists driven by the same sensation one feels by sharing his or her music playlists, i.e., Check out these artists I follow. Don't I have good taste?

Still, I wonder, will Twitter Lists go mainstream or stay relegated to the domain of the digital cognoscenti? I mentioned their debut at a small dinner party over the weekend, and eyes glazed over. My wife poked me to change the subject. ("You dweeb!") Oh well. Wrong crowd.

So what do Twitter Lists mean for you, PR peeps? Everything and nothing. If you want to keep abreast of real-time trends (eventually impacting all industries), then it's a God-send to be able to more easily create and follow lists of individuals driving or reporting on these trends. Conversely, if you want to accelerate the PR industry's march into oblivion through the taint of blind or uninformed story-pitching, then ignore Twitter Lists (and Twitter for that matter).

Here are links to a smattering of notable observations and resources regarding Twitter Lists since their universal debut several days ago:

Listorious (@listorious) - How prescient that the company that started Muckrack (journalists on Twitter) and the Shorty Awards would also launch a site that would capture and organize the exploding multitude of lists on Twitter.

Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) is no stranger to the tech and social media trends enveloping our world. He immediately embraced the democratization of Twitter Lists and set about the time-consuming task of curating his own followees. Hey Robert, thanks for doing this. Ever think about taking a break from the social media swirl? There's a world-class golf course right near your home. (Now that would make news: "Scoble Takes a Day Off to Play a Round of Golf")

Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) "I just took a look into creating my first ever Twitter list. I’m listed on over 1500 at this writing, so I figured I’d give it a go. Immediately, I realized what I’m not going to like about them: they will exclude people..."

Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) "Amazing how many Twitter lists have 0 followers. How will they be spread?"

Jeremy Porter (@journalistics) "Twitter Lists for Journalism and PR"

Wall Street Journal Digits Blog - "The Twittering Masses Get Lists"

The New York Times social media editor Jen Preston (@NYT_jenpreston) "We'll soon be launching a landing page w/directory to NYT Twitter lists. Suggestion for a list? Send to twitterlists@nytimes.com

digital media|minute "How Twitter Lists Can Kill Google"

Mashable "Twitter Lists: Only You Can Help Mashable Beat Barack Obama :)"

Mark Drapeau (@cheeky_geeky) on Mediaite "The Emerging Twitter List Arms Race"

PR Newser (@prnewser) "What Twitter Lists Mean for PR"

TheNextWeb.com - "The Brilliance of Twitter Lists and Suggestions for Improvements"

"Twitter Lists In Detail or, 'Yo Dawg, I Heard U Like Lists!'"

Read Write Web - "Ten Twitter Lists You can Grab and Embed Right Now"

The advent of Twitter Lists has its ups and downs for PR pros - mostly ups. I've long advocated for PR peeps to be judicious about whom they choose to follow on Twitter -- to add value and avoid the superfluous. Twitter Lists offers a useful shortcut for finding those worth following, assuming you have faith in others' curatorial capabilities.

This PR pro currently has nine lists he follows, a number that is sure to grow. Still, I tweeted the following over the weekend:

So where's the app that will let me merge (and de-dupe) Twitter lists into one Twitter-Cooler uber-stream?

I suspect that Listorius, however fab it is today, will quickly atomize diminishing its utility

Don't get me wrong. I love Listorious, and frankly, it's the only game in town right now. My advice: take a visit and drill down to find those lists, and the curators thereof, worth a follow. Not unlike Guy Kawasaki's AllTop, it lets you easily keep abreast of what impacts you (and your clients), but in real time.

Restoring Trust

2009-10-30T11:13:00.004-04:00

The Council of PR Firms executive director Kathy Cripps had a twinkle in her eye as she looked out across the expanse of The Yale Club’s Grand Ballroom in New York City yesterday morning. In spite of these recessionary times, the Council’s annual Critical Issues Forum drew a full house and a fair share of industry luminaries, many of whom are featured in this video.

All the big and mid-sized agencies were there, except perhaps for one, to hear the all-star panel featuring General Electric CMO Beth Comstock, PBS “Nightly Business Report co-anchor Susie Gharib, Morgan Stanley’s Jim Wiggins, retired GM corp comms chief Steve Harris and APCO CEO and Council president-elect Margery Kraus.

The always provocative and engaging Len Schlesinger, now president of Babson College, and formerly a top business executive and Harvard B School professor, handled moderating duties with his usual aplomb.

In the crowd, I was able to spot Harold Burson, MS&L’s Jim Tsokanos, Lou Capozzi, outgoing Council president and Ketchum CEO Ray Kotcher and his colleague Rob Flaherty, president of Ketchum who doubled as the event’s host, Ralph Katz, Andy Cooper and Anne Green of Cooper Katz, Maureen Lippe of Lippe Taylor, Abby Gouverneur Carr of Bliss PR, Lynn Casey of Padilla Speer Beardsley, F-H’s Nancy Seliger, and too many others to recall.

Of course, my trusty digital audio recorder was battery-challenged so I was only able to get a few choice audio bites from the panel discussion (that I thankfully tweeted). The conversation focused on how to re-build public trust in corporate America and the sorry state of the news media. Here’s a random smattering of paraphrased sentiments:

Jim Wiggins (joking): Perhaps GE should manufacture those mind-erasing devices used in “Men in Black”

Susie Gharib recommended that the audience go see Michael Moore’s latest film if only for the simplistic way in which it shows how we got into this mess in the first place.

Jim Wiggins: We ‘get it’ on the issue of executive compensation. Though it will probably not be enough to satisfy Michael Moore.

Susie Gharib suggested Goldman Sachs take its $20 billion in bonuses and "give it to people who don't have jobs or homes." (which prompted this PR person to interject from the audience "It would be seen as a PR ploy.")

Steve Harris: At GM, we've trained 10,000 people to use social media, and keep another 15,000 in the loop.

Susie Gharib: I agree with public perception of media as being biased. Old style objective journalism is dead...except at PBS

Beth Comstock: At GE, it's a fundamental re-set. We don't see things going back to where they were. One statistic says that jobs won't return until 2017 in this new re-set world.

Following the panel, we broke for lunch during which David Gergen and Len Schlesinger took the stage. I don’t know if it’s his southern and mellifluous cadence, but one could easily understand why Mr. Gergen has served as an advisor to a handful of U.S. Presidents across both sides of the political aisle.

He compared President Obama to newbie President John F. Kennedy, but acknowledged Kennedy’s command presence during the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis as perhaps the single biggest display of executive leadership in this nation’s history. Here are a few (paraphrased) notable quotables from Mr. Gergen:

Were entering a new normal. The old normal is not returning.

Wall Street and the media are two institutions that have the least public confidence (from the JFK School of Government’s annual study)

Business is not off the hook. It's on probation.

…not sub-prime mortgages, but sub-prime leadership (citing Bill George’s explanation of why the bubble burst)

This year at Harvard Biz School. students self-organized to take an oath to serve the public good (70% took it)

Was death of Walter Cronkite the passing of an individual or the passing of an age?

We've taken another notch downward in last 2-3 years with the growing viciousness of what's on the blogosphere

The viciousness of blogosphere has migrated to cable, (eg, Olbermann, O’reilly)

If the pendulum doesn't swing back, we're going to entertain ourselves to death (on the type of news programming we’re seeing)

All in all, the Council should be proud of the timeliness and overall substance of yesterday’s discourse at the Critical Issues Forum. More tweets can be found by Twitter-searching this hashtag: #CIF09.

The Media Bypass

2009-10-26T09:09:00.007-04:00

Ad Age's Mike Bush today visits with a number of PR pros who wax poetic on how their clients bypass the media filter to reach customers directly.

We've covered this for a few years now, but it hasn't gone so far as to dismiss the value of media relations for advancing a client's communications objective.

Bush writes:

"...as the body count of magazines and daily newspapers continues to rise and the once-robust news and feature holes of surviving publications shrink along with reporting staffs, some marketers have given up on the traditional path to media coverage: pitching journalists.some marketers have given up on the traditional path to media coverage: pitching journalists."

Theoretically, perhaps, but in reality the number of pitchable (or should I say "engageable") "media" outlets is actually greater than at any other time in history. It's just that we, as PR pros, need to look beyond the imprimatur of a Newsweek or Fortune to those virtual voices that may exert even greater influence over the specific audience with which we wish to connect.

And it's not an either-or scenario. The creation and dissemination of original (and reporter unfettered) content will continue to grow in importance. PR exec Mark Hass shares his rationale for using YouTube for one of his automotive clients:

"They [the client] still have the usual car-and-driver folks drive and write about their cars, but that's becoming much less important than [it] used to be...You build a channel on YouTube and you get millions of views...And these people are coming from all over, and it's more about their interest in your product, as opposed to the readership and viewership of a particular medium. It's horizontal. If you wanted to reach that many people using traditional media, you would have to pitch and place in dozens of outlets."

Who among us can disagree? Plenty. There remains a vast swath of corporate communicators and their bosses in the C-suite for which a Twitterfeed, company blog, YouTube or Facebook page takes a distant backseat to a prominent piece in Business Week or The Journal or an appearance on "Today" or "Squawk Box."

Believe it or not, even a client's by-line in the world's most popular (and conversation catalyzing) blog Huffington Post isn't viewed by many as having the same value as a piece in The New York Times or the New Yorker. (Though the latter often end up being linked to by the former.) There exist countless (a majority of?) PR firms and pros who remain mired in the notion that the press clip is the end result -- as opposed to the customer, investor, legislative or regulatory action a piece of content or conversation may produce.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for many), this dynamic will persist as long as clients measure and pay their firms for ink and airtime impressions. If you happen to be in San Diego for the PRSA International Conference Nov 7-9, stop by our session late Sunday to hear more about the nexus of PR and social media from some of the best practitioners in the field.

Jackson Intervention

2009-10-22T19:03:00.008-04:00

With Michael Jackson mania poised to start all anew, it's curious to watch how Mr. Jackson, once k.a. "Wacko Jacko," may emerge as a whole new fellow.

Here's a tweet from the west coast editor for The Daily Beast:

KateAurthur Kudos to the Michael Jackson fans mad about the movie whitewashing the "grim truth" for the name of their website: this-is-not-it.com

Apparently, there's so much "the crowd" will take when it comes to spinning the truth. But who's to blame: Ken Sunshine, the Jackson family's hired-hand whose firm orchestrated the fawning media events in the aftermath of Mr. Jackson's demise, or SONY Pictures whose Jackson territory-HQ'd parent company spent $60 million for the rights to the new Jackson docu-pic?

My guess is both. Wasn't it SONY that gave the LA Times an exclusive look at select portions of the new film in exchange for a glowing Jackson tribute this past Sunday? And didn't Mr. Sunshine and company gloss over the singer's death by conjuring every known media asset of the singer's former triumphs, in effect drowning out anything that could be construed as deleterious to his legacy?

Can you blame either? Isn't this how they earn their keep? SONY revives Jackson's moonwalking days to draw boffo box office, while Sunshine earns re-invents Mr. Jackson so he's worth more dead than alive.

It's just that these revisionist tactics, while once sufficient to prevail with mainstream entertainment media scribes and programs, have less of an effect in today's RSS-fueled media democracy. Here's an excerpt from the release posted on the This-Is-Not-It website:

Who We Are : friends and fans of Michael, including some who were with him the last weeks of his life and who have witnessed to many of the events that led to his death. The latter group got so concerned about Michael Jackson’s state that on June 21^st, they decided to stage the first step on an intervention. They wrote him letters asking him to stop the tour if he was not up to it. Michael Jackson received these letters on June 24^th. The second step of the intervention was never to take place.

The New York Times today also weighed in with film director Ken Ortega's glowing words about Mr. Jackson, but also acknowledged the big spin now underway with its headline:

"Revising the Image of Jackson’s Final Days"

Again, I'll be curious to see whether the film's choreographed adulation will yield a citizen backlash, especially now that the statute of limitations has passed for the real truthsayers to emerge without being accused of having poor taste.

Apple's Vaunted PR?

2009-10-20T09:16:00.007-04:00

Boy oh boy. Apple (AAPL) is on a real tear. Boffo earnings and equally boffo rumors including one alleging that Verizon is testing a 4G iPhone (take that AT&T!), keeps that brand in a state of PR nirvana.

As a result, the company's legendary PR department continues to grow in stature. Deservedly? I wonder.

It seems like eons ago when Apple couldn't get any mainstream respect. Does the name Gil Amelio ring a bell? After my former Intel client jumped ship to join Apple's PR team, she invited me to submit a proposal to help extend the company's rabid following beyond those die-hard attendees at the annual Macworld Expos.

Separately, for our Ziff-Davis Publishing client, we invited local TV reporters to accompany one of our Mac enthusiast magazine editors to a computer superstore to conduct a Pepsi-like challenge. The Mac prevailed on a number of levels. Hence, the PR idea was born: we would propose to Apple that they challenge the Wintel PC juggernaut in cities everywhere. As a veteran of the cola, burger, sneaker and toothpaste wars, I was up for a fight. Bring 'em on!

The proposal went nowhere, though today I smile when I see Apple's "I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" advertising creatives. Maybe it was time to give the Cupertino company another try? I noticed that Apple was about to open a shiny new store (see pic above) in my hometown. I tweeted on it a few times, but thought I could do more.

I dropped a note to the Apple PR person listed on previous store opening releases offering Flatiron's services to help engage local media influentials. No reply. (Not even a thanks, but no thanks.) No biggie. After the store finally opened on Saturday, I checked back to see whether Apple's vaunted PR machine succeeded in gaining any local (eg,. traffic-building) media traction.

I then learned the secret of how Apple PR rolls. The company issued, via PR Newswire, a media advisory inviting "accredited" journalists to call a number in northern CA to gain access to the store one hour before the doors open to the public. PR Newswire?! Could this be the store-opening PR team's main modus operandi? The media coverage spoke for itself:

Nothing from Newsday, The New York Times, News12 L.I., Anton Publications, FioS Channel 1, L.I. bureaus of local broadcast, News 55 L.I.... Not even the local weekly. But then again, this is Apple. One-to-one media engagement? Not necessary. The store will be packed regardless.

Ironically, it is Microsoft that seems to be deploying the Pepsi Challenge: the day before the new Apple store opened, Reuters moved a piece touting Microsoft's first retail store.

Photo: Peter Himler with a Canon PowerShot SX20 IS

Bribing Bloggers

2009-10-16T16:23:00.008-04:00

PR Newser's Joe Ciarallo and AllThingsD's Peter Kafka's eyebrows were respectively raised when a PR (?) rep for the upcoming ad:tech conference attempted to barter for their editorial coverage.

Here's a piece of the proposed offer as outlined in an email:

"ad:tech will provide:

* Twitter announcement of your involvement with ad:tech New York to our 6,800+ followers.
* Your choice of: a free pass to the exhibit hall (valued at $35) or 35% off a full conference pass."

"We ask you provide:

* No less than 3 posts about ad:tech New York on Twitter, Facebook or your blog. Suggested postings: a session you're interested in, why you like ad:tech, the exhibitors that you want to see or technologies that you are interested in learning about. What you share is up to you-it just needs to be posted by November 1."

Yikes! What is the world coming to? Have the lines blurred so much that outright bribery for news coverage is accepted in some circles? I recognize that the IAB has come out forcefully against the new FTC rules for bloggers, but I imagine that many bloggers will find the ad: tech enticement, well, sufficiently enticing to take the bait.

Separately, I noticed a tweet today from a mommy-blogging friend in which she waxes pr-poetic
about Vail Resorts.

"Although my family often braves the perennially icy slopes here in the Northeast, nothing compares to the awesome ski terrain in the Rocky Mountains. Vail Resorts run 5 of the top ski resorts- Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breckinridge, and Heavenly – each of which has come up with winter plans of exciting innovations and celebrations., tantalized at the massive plans for each mountain it appears Colorado will be the place to be this winter."

The post was so PR-positive I had to wonder whether this was a pay-for-play gig or perhaps a ticket to an all-expense paid family ski trip. I then noticed the disclosure at the bottom: I attended a press luncheon at Gramercy Tavern in New York City with the folks from Vail Resorts to learn about all their plans at each resort for the upcoming winter season.
My my, all that adulation in exchange for a free lunch? Well, it was at Gramercy Tavern, Danny Meyer's tony eatery that earned three New York Times stars when last I checked. Still, she could have asked about the (sobering) prices of this season's lift tickets to create some balance. Do the FTC's new blogger rules apply to free lunches?

Update (10/17) - ad:tech's Mike Flynn offers an apology. (Truth is Mike, ad:tech is a fab event whose speakers/topics alone merit blogger/reporter interest/attendance.

Peter, and all,

Please accept our apologies. We recognize we made a foolish error. You can see our full apology at http://www.adtechblog.com/blog/d...tail/apologies/ .

Sincerely,

Mike Flynn,
Event Director, ad:tech North America
mike flynn | Homepage | 10.17.09 - 1:44 pm | #

Sidewiki's PR-ospects

2009-10-14T08:09:00.013-04:00

The digital marketing cognoscenti are nearly unanimous in their advice to newbie clients seeking to manage/advance their brands' online reputations. Listen first! After all, how could a company know where to apply its marketing/PR muscle (and tools of engagement) without knowing what is being said about it?

Listening to (or monitoring) the online conversation is so essential that it has spawned a cottage industry of specialist providers. Among them: Radian6, Converseon, Visible Technologies, Crimson Hexagon, DNA13, Trackur, Scout Labs, and too many others to remember. The price of admission: the ability to capture and organize voluminous amounts of brand or product-specific consumer and news-generated content derived from Twitter, the blogosphere, websites, group discussions, web comments, and even offline news sites, etc.

Many "conversation mining" companies also claim to automate the process of "sentiment analysis," but be wary of this. To date, this holy grail capability remains somewhat rudimentary, i.e., "positive, negative or neutral," given the myriad nuances that define the nature of a conversation. This will change over the next year or two as AI algorithms grow in sophistication.

Today, MediaPost's Laurie Sullivan draws our attention to a new, but potentially significant development for those of us charged with online reputation management. It's Google's Sidewiki toolbar about which Ms. Sullivan writes:

The toolbar, called Sidewiki, which launched in September, provides a venue for venting and posting derogatory comments on virtually any Web site that only those who install the toolbar can read. And although many realize that Google never intended that the toolbar be used for evil, some believe the Mountain View, Calif. company's innovation could create a nightmare for marketers and Web site owners if they choose not to download and install the tool.

Google claims that its own algorithm has a built-in capacity to ferret out non-useful (or destructive?) comments on Sidewiki. A Google spokesperson:

"Rather than ordering entries chronologically, we use a unique algorithm that incorporates various signals about the entries to rank them in terms of usefulness. The signals include language modeling for the text, and information we know about the author, such as the quality of past Sidewiki entries he or she has written.
The community using the tool monitors Sidewiki entries by voting up content that is useful and informative, and voting down irrelevant or unhelpful posts. Similarly, the community can flag any illegal, pornographic or copyrighted content by using the 'Report Abuse' button."

"What Would Google Do" author Jeff Jarvis even took issue with Sidewiki, less for the challenges its secret society of brand detractors might potentially pose to PR pros, and more for putting the conversation his site generates behind a "hedge." On September 23, he posted on BuzzMachine:

"Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it...It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. That sets up Google in channel conflict vs me...It robs my site of much of its value... On a practical level, only people who use the Google Toolbar will see the comments left using it and so it bifurcates the conversation and puts some of it behind a hedge."

Stephen Foley, iCyte CEO (and an Aussie in New York) has taken up the charge to prove that Google may be compromising its "Don't Be Evil" mantra. In a post titled "Sidewiki Gone Mad," he writes:

"I have a nice house. I have spent many years building it. I have a large fence out the front. Up until yesterday no-one could write on my fence, but that has all changed. Now anyone can write anything they like on my front fence...."

Others see the tool as a "next generation TripAdvisor." While it's too soon to predict Sidewiki's uptake, reputation managers (and the mining companies they employ) should pay heed to the perilous potential this tool holds. In other words, sign up and listen.

World Series PR Pitch

2009-10-13T10:29:00.004-04:00

It made perfect sense. Why not glom onto the current national obsession for the national pastime to spark media interest in your company's predictive technologies?

I'm speaking of course about the baseball playoffs, and more specifically about the two teams that will end up in the season-ending best-of-seven.

One enterprising company claims to have analyzed some 40 years of baseball stats to conclude that this year's World Series will be an all-southern California affair. In fact, the quants at Information Builders went so far as to predict the winner. Here's a take from the pitch letter:

"To come up with their prediction, the company analyzed 40 years of baseball statistics from all of the teams that made the playoffs such as winning percentage, runs scored, batting average, total extra base hits, earned run average and fielding percentage. As a result, Information Builders was able to predict The Los Angeles Dodgers will defeat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the 2009 Fall Classic."

As we all know, the quality of the pitch matters little if the batter is inherently predisposed. I mean if I were to receive this, I would probably give it short shrift given my predilection for the prospects of the New York Yankees. In this case, the pitch recipient was Larry Dignan, editor of ZDNet and an avid Philly fan. His take :

"But before pitching someone the PR teams should at least check a locale or two. I’m a tweener between New York and Philly. Do you honestly think I’m going to be hip to a Dodgers World Series win? And can I really take a predictive modeling exercise seriously that left out my Phillies?"

I suppose the LA Times sports or technology desks might have been a better place to start, but then again Dignan did finagle a hit out of the pitch.

The FTC Tête-à-Tête on Twitter

2009-10-09T08:30:00.008-04:00

If you've been following the digital discourse set off by the alleged $11,000 fine levied this week by the FTC against some bloggers, then you might enjoy Thursday evening's Twitter exchange between BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis and Mediashift's Mark Glazer (@mediatwit).

In case you've been out of the country, the FTC finally instituted its guidelines designed to ferret out commercial deception in the social spheres. Mathew Ingram managed to tease out the tête-à-tête by twipping off Jeff to Mark's POV on the new rules.

Here's the exchange as it unfolded in 140-character twincrements:

mathewi: @jeffjarvis? RT @mediatwit: I think the FTC rules are good. I doubt they will enforce every tiny thing and any push for transparency is good

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Good, God, Mark, you endorse the FTC rules in a tweet? Shall we discuss govt interference in public speech? The 1st Amendment?

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit And I don't buy the FTC's pr on this: 'Oh, don't worry about us.' What matters is the rules. Successors will enforce.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit But do the FTC rules extend to journalists on papers, magazines? No. So bloggers become 2nd class citizens w/fewer rights.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Of course, transparency is good. But you think govt should define & enforce it just for a) bloggers and b) celebs but not hacks?

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis And what shouldn't be enforced? Are you defending blogger's rights to deceive people with reviews?

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Then use existing fraud laws against anyone who defrauds (including the press). Don't single out bloggers.

mathewi: @jeffjarvis: hey, maybe @mediatwit was compensated by the FTC for that positive tweet -- that would be so meta :-)

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Let's push for transparency in govt first. And business. And journalism. Bloggers are citizens talking.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Government regulation of speech chills speech. It is a 1st Amendment matter. We should be defending speech.

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis Defending the 1st Amendment is one thing. Defending deceptive business practices, false advertisements on blogs is different.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit If I say something nice about BestBuy after speaking there I'm now liable. What's deceptive there? If Pogue does, he's not. Huh?

jeffjarvis: RT @mathewi: @jeffjarvis: hey, maybe @mediatwit was compensated by the FTC for that positive tweet -- that would be so meta :-)

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis What kind of speech will be chilled? Reviews of products on blogs? You really think bloggers will stop reviewing things?

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit See my Post, Mark. It's much more complex than 140 characters.

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis @mathewi The FTC is totally right! [This tweet paid for by the FTC] #joking

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Yes, Mark, they will. They are now in jeopardy. Pogue isn't. Papers should be defending bloggers right. As I'd think you would

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit I was about to say something nice about BestBuy but I am indeed liable. I'm chilled. No deception. Life under govt regulation.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Now say something nice about the LAT, CNET, Conde, NYT, EW, Merc, Nieman and then you must disclose or risk fine.

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis I will concede that disclosure is good, but if the FTC is really going to enforce in every tiny case, there would be a problem.

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis Why can't you say something nice about Best Buy after speaking there? Just disclose. I would want that as your reader.

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis If I write in-depth about PBS, LAT, USC, I do disclose that I work or worked for them. It makes sense to me.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit I do disclose. http://bit.ly/ZuP0x (expand) That is my choice. I don't want it by govt. fiat and under risk of prosecution. Do you? Truly?

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Only in-depth? What about a tweet? You're a media critic and you've been paid by media you write about. I trust you. Govt? No.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit Murdoch wasn't right about Delph, MySpace, LondonPaper.....

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis No, you are right. I like the idea of disclosure, but after

jeffjarvis: RT @mediatwit No, you're right. I like the idea of disclosure, but after looking at the rules, they don't make sense. Doubt they'd be legal

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit bravo, mark. i salute you.

mediatwit: @jeffjarvis I agree that these rules have nothing to do with people who are NOT being paid by companies currently.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit We agree abt PayPerPost et al. I hate them. But the FTC sullies and puts at risk all bloggers - citizens talking - as a result.

jeffjarvis: @mediatwit They should enforce fraud laws. But leave speech unregulated.

mathewi: In case you weren't following the Twitfight between @jeffjarvis and @mediatwit over the new FTC rules, @jeffjarvis won :-)

Growing PR Spheres

2009-10-08T08:59:00.007-04:00

Silicon Valley Watcher's Tom Foremski has made a sport out of scrutinizing the PR profession these last few years (often with good reason).

Yesterday, he raised a provocative question from which one might infer more disrespect for our perennially beleaguered profession:

What are the implications when PR pros, who've built large online followings, use their new digital spheres of influence to advocate for clients?

He cites Todd Defren, Steve Rubel and Brian Solis, with their five figures of followers apiece, as prime examples of practitioners whose authority may exceed that of the very journalists they seek to sway. To his credit, Foremski also takes his reporter colleagues to task for their slow digital uptake (Brian Stelter and David Pogue notwithstanding). He concludes:

"The PR people could post the stories themselves and pitch them to their already large communities and get a far higher readership! But, the problem they face is that this would be a "pay per post" type scenario and they would lose credibility very quickly. Also, having someone else write a story about your client, on a third-party site, where there has been no exchange of money, conveys far higher value to the story. That's the paradox of PR peoples' large, personal media footprint -- they can't use their own access to large numbers of people to promote their clients."

From my perspective, this is exactly what these forward-thinking PR pros and others like Ford's Scott Monty and Comcast's Frank Eliason should be doing: building their digital footprints.

Don't misunderstand me. Pitching story ideas to influential journalists remains a core PR competency, but the atomized media landscape demands other, more scalable (and some believe controllable) means for influencing the conversation. It's what recently prompted 35 prestigious universities to recently band together to create their own digital wire service for science news.

As for whether blogging and tweeting PR pro should be trusted, I raised that question years ago when I asked burgeoning blogger Steve Rubel whether he considered himself a "...PR guy or journalist?

I mean if 35,000 people follow Michelle Malkin, what's so bad about a PR pro taking the reigns over his client or employer's message? And even if PR pros gain meaningful followings, won't the digital court of public opinion ultimately determine his or her credibility (and virality)? If not, then maybe, just maybe, the FTC will intercede.

PR Newser also picked up on Foremski's post.

Image via Fast Company

The Art of the PR Job Hunt

2009-10-06T15:38:00.014-04:00

Last week I was invited to City College of New York to talk about "career paths in social media." I ended up dwelling on career paths in public relations, under which social media most often resides. My co-presenter was the very capable Nadina Guglielmetti (say that three times fast!), who leads Wag-Ed's digital consulting practice in New York.

Given the softness in the PR job market, and the equally incongrous eagerness of the 40 or so students gathered that day, I tried to manage expectations by keeping it real and actionable. Here were several of the pointers:

Listen to the conversation. Seek out those authoritative voices in the PR/media/marketing space and follow their blog posts (and blogrolls), Twitter tweets, and RSS feeds. Who knows. It may just lead to @heatherhuhman with her entry-level PR job and internship postings.

Get physical. Go out and mingle with those in the field at the countless free meet-ups and tweet-ups that occur nightly in New York City. Meet-up.com is a good place to start.

Tool with the tools. If there is a silver lining on the PR job front, it's for those with a modicum of digital and social media know-how. Start a blog; set up Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts; learn how to shoot, edit and upload a video on YouTube; check out Posterous, FourSquare and FriendFeed. Then add this new-found acumen to your resume.

Find your passion. No, PR is not a passion. Music, theatre, sports, business, the environment...these are passions. But know that PR is applicable to all of these areas (and so many more). Build your resume based on your interests/credentials, i.e., that which you're passionate about, then apply for those jobs...via the PR department.

Talking about passions. Did you see the story in today's New York Times about former PR agency chief David Kratz? After departing EuroRSCG, he took to painting. This week he was named president of the New York Academy of Art. Good for you, David. I bet the Academy is pleased with the editorial bi-product of your ascendancy there.

Thanks to David Thompson, Associate Director of Career Counseling and Professional Development, CCNY, for having me to campus. Also, great to see my old H&K colleague Lynne Scott Jackson, or Professor Jackson as she's known on 138th Street.

Press Cred

2009-10-02T08:56:00.007-04:00

I was checking out the speaker line-up for BlogWorld and New Media Expo after hearing all the Twitter chatter for the Oct. 16-17 confab in Las Vegas. It looks like a great event, and I'd certainly love to attend. After all, this blogger's been at it a while, bowing in the spring of '05 "in a Gawker moment."

Still, it's a bit surprising that a show called BlogWorld retains its vitality in an age where Twitter, Facebook and the ascendant Friendfeed, Posterous and FourSquare increasingly dominate the digital discourse. In fact, some prognosticators have thrown cold water on blogging as a viable or minimally, monetizable medium.

The most popular blogs -- from HuffPost to TechCrunch to Glam -- have already morphed into the mainstream (albeit with their own journalistic sensibility) -- while the solo blogging acts may one day evolve into personal "lifestreams."

But, back to BlogWorld. My buddies over at Shift Communications are handling press inquiries and credentials for the show. For them, I have one question: why would one need to credential any journalists when there are hundreds if not thousands already registered? Here are the posted requirements to grab a cred:

Complimentary Editorial Media badges will only be issued to reporters who are directly covering the show in an editorial capacity for a recognized business or technology news source. Topics must directly relate to coverage of the show, Internet trends, blogging, podcasting, new media, social media networking or online marketing and communications trends. Editorial topics in other industries (politics, sports, leisure, social, etc.) qualify the individual as a traditional show attendee, not as press.

I'm wondering what constitutes "a recognized business or technology source." As a blogger who follows the media and communications industries with a reasonable dose of technology, would I even qualify? Or does the phraseology imply that "complimentary editorial media" badges are for the mainstream only?

The question of whom to credential and who not has always been a murky decision even in an era when we didn't have a myriad media with which to contend. For example, we used to limit event photo credentials to only those on assignment from a "recognized" media organization. No photo agencies or shooters-on-spec need apply. Today that policy is untenable considering the reach of Getty and Corbis. Shift further qualifies the qualifications:

Note that editorial credentials will be issued to individuals who are covering industries of blogging, podcasting or new media. Indirect relationships will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis for coverage and credential availability.

So, with all the equivocation, the credentialing policy still provides some wiggle room, and rightly so. I'd just hate to learn that the blogger sitting next to me grabbed a press cred, while I was rejected.

Update (10/3) Rick Calvert, founder and head of Blogworld and New Media Expo, weighs in:

"At those events and at BlogWorld & New Media Expo we have to be especially thorough in determining who gets a press pass. No matter where we draw the line it will always be a subjective one. One mans press is another mans blogger looking for a freebie.... So we ask lots of questions. We are looking for media outlets that cover the business of media both old and new. We have turned down traditional media applicants because we have determined they want to come to the show to learn about new media. Not cover the event."

More of his remarks in comments below.

Friedman vs. Frydman

2009-09-30T16:29:00.004-04:00

I'm torn. Two of my close friends, both in the PR biz, are currently embroiled in an epic PR battle on the streets of Jane in New York City.

Nancy Friedman runs one of the top travel and upscale destination PR shops in the biz. While Ken Frydman and his business partner Richard Schwartz have built a great local PR and PA practice after cutting their teeth in the halls of power in city government and elsewhere.

The two adversaries also happen to be close personal friends themselves.

Mr. Frydman is using the MSM and a blog or two to accentuate a community's displeasure with the nightly crowds drawn to a trendy hotel in the mostly residential West Village neighborhood. The proprietors of The Jane Hotel are said to prefer a negotiated truce with their local, vocal antagonists, while the latter group simply wishes to shutter the hot spot altogether.

I have personal memories of this neighborhood when it first started morphing away from the rough and tumble trade. My old buddy Jeff Ross, Conan O'Brien's long-time producer, shared an apartment at 24 Jane Street back in the day. I digress.

The local vocals in this fight had pinned their fate on a rather substantial New York Times Sunday real estate story, until it was learned that the author of the piece appeared to have a pony in the race. The story was killed.

My favorite line: when asked whether it made sense to hire a P.R. company, the head of the Greenwich Village Block Association, who's sitting on the sidelines for this one, responded:

“Why do you ask that question? Is there a down side to hiring P.R.?”

I also liked PR Newser's take in which Jason asked Ms. Friedman for a clarification on her assertion that positive comments in support of the hot spot are being removed from some community blogs:

"Positive blog posts about the Jane are getting taken down on some of the sites and blogs who are supported by the neighbors. I thought blogs were about dialogue and not just one-sided."

We'll see who prevails in this one. Again, I can't take sides, but it's certainly interesting to watch these PR pros, with distinctly different styles, do battle.

Small and Big Screens...

2009-09-27T16:57:00.004-04:00

I had the good fortune to attend the thought-provoking "Future of Media" panel, hosted by MediaPost and sponsored by AOL and others, in New York City last week as part of Advertising Week.

Featured (from left to right) were: Mark Cuban (HD Net, Dallas Mavs), Vivien Schiller (NPR), Bob Garfield (Ad Age, NPR), Martha Stewart, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Susan Whiting (Nielsen), Rob Norman (WPP's Group M), Judy McGrath (MTV Networks), publishing legend Milton Glaser, and moderator Chris Anderson of Wired.

The conversation, held at The Times Center, touched upon many of the issues with which nearly everyone in the content production and distribution space are grappling today: the monetization of online content, the role of social networks in the media mix, analytics, the blurred lines (for some) between church and state (advertising and editorial), and what's next.

Here are some of the notable quotables that caught my attention:

Chris Anderson: "I also have to confess that I have a problem with the title of this panel....Using words like media are probably limiting us in our search for business models, and the path forward."

Vivien Schiller "What the [NPR] stations need to do...is to become increasingly relevant to their local market. They need to increasingly provide information in the public interest to their communities, particularly as local newspapers, many of them are suffering or folding, and in doing so they become so relevant that they cannot be disrupted."

Judy McGrath "If you have some creative excellence and a brand, it's a great fertile time to try to figure out how to connect with consumers...and hopefully how to monetize your content. It's exciting."

Martha Stewart "It [merchandising] is important to our customers. They want to satisfy their dreams. They want to become become doers once they learn how to be dreamers. By reading the content, they then become the doers."

Reid Hoffman "A business model is not just something you slap on top of content production -- the whole thing from how it's discovered, distributed and produced. Those ecosystems are changing. So it's a question of how do you re-architect the ecosystem. And that's the thing I think would be most interesting, but also the most perilous."

Chris Anderson "In the media industry, I'm stunned by how controversial Free [my book] is because it is, of course, the foundation of traditional media. Radio is free to air. Television is free to air. Our publications are subsidized 90 or more percent by the advertisers that are virtual free. And yet free is considered heretical by many, including by Mark Cuban."

Mark Cuban "Certainly free as a form of sampling is very valid. Giving someone a taste of it then upgrade it, has been used by drug dealers for years and years. The internet is becoming stale. Fifteen years in, it's old news...some of the conversations we're having here, I close my eyes, it's 1998. Streaming media...Wow! Who thought of that idea?"

What's next? Did anybody watch the Cowboys-Giants game where the Giants won in the last second? What was the #1 thing that was talked about the entire game? The screen! You can't take your eyes off of it. It's digital. It's seven stories high, 70 yards long, and it weighs more than a 747. And it cost $40 million dollars. I look at it and I said, it cost $40 million dollars today. What's it gonna cost in five years? What's it gonna cost in ten years? If it's a medium that you just can't take you eyes off of. And it's what everybody wants to talk about...what kind of opportunities does that create? And is that medium gonna be free? Everybody since 1976 have said 'smaller, cheaper, faster.' Now we're transitioning to a world where it's 'bigger, better, and, cheaper." And now, it's going in the opposite direction. Can't see U2?

Would you pay 20 bucks to go watch it on a seven-story high screen with the most amazing sound system with all your friends? The rules are changing. Everybody 's so focused on the Internet as a solution for everything, they're missing all the good stuff....I'm talking about a platform. I think they're going to be new platforms, that are real time, event-driven that could be connected to much bigger platforms that will ingrain a more social experience...digitally-enabled platforms that can be anywhere that will enable a better social experience. But we're not looking for them. We're still looking to say how can I get a better search to my iphone or my laptop or my PC to watch TV on my PC. That's so last century.

Susan Whiting "That idea of 'best screen possible' enabled by content...it still matters. The entertainment and information content still matters. No matter how fragmented we get, we see that every day."

Bob Garfield "The fundamental problem is fragmentation and ad avoidance and the glut of supply is going to...is already churning out to destroy the critical mass...produced by quality content. Craig's List has eviscerated the newspaper industry. The DVR and the Internet are destroying broadcast. Broadcast is in huge, huge trouble...Two of the top four broadcast networks are talking about becoming cable outlets -- CBS and NBC -- which is swell, because cable has much better prospects than broadcast in exactly the way that it is way better to have multiple sclerosis than Lou Gehrig's disease."

Milton Glaser "The combination of words that most terrifies me is 'targeted consumers.' Poor darlings. In the old days when we started New York magazine, we would not permit a salesperson to enter the editorial part of the building...I suspect that that is no longer the case...What strikes me as being most significant is not so much the emergence of new platforms, new media, new technology as much as how does it affect the nature of the message itself that people are receiving and what are the consequences. Are these targeted consumers really benefiting in the deepest way from the content?"

Martha Stewart "We've been watching very carefully the destruction of church and state that exists between advertisers and edit. Increasingly we find that there' a major breakdown... There is definitely a change going on. Is that because the consumer wants to see a product next to a page talking about that product. The Internet certainly does that constantly. We are dealing with it. We are taking very close notice of it and we want to not only serve our readers and our viewers and our Internet users in the best way possible, but we also want to make money and get advertisers to welcome our good content."

Bob Garfield "There's a big difference between relevance and corruption...you describe the magazine world as a kind of cathedral and I think historically it's been more like a brothel...and now it's becoming like Plato's Retreat."

Vivien Schiller "I think in this conversation that we are substantially underestimating the intelligence both of the audience to smell a rat, and the intelligence of the people who run [legitimate] news organizations...Integrity is the fundamental of the business model."

Rob Norman "One of the marvelous things that has happened...with the rise of social media in particular is the ability for the bad and the rotten and the underperforming to be teased out and actually raise the standards of corporate behavior and raise the standard of product development and relevance. ...the checks and balances of the democracy of the dissemination of information. is one of the things that my clients have discovered...is that social media helps their good news travel fast and helps their bad news travel much faster than that."

Click here to listen to the whole conversation (TRT: 85 minutes), and please excuse the audio quality.

Photos: Peter Himler (Canon PowerShot SX20 IS)

Monday, Monday

2009-09-23T19:12:00.007-04:00

Maybe it was a Monday. Who can remember? But here I was sitting quietly in my cubicle some two-and-a-half years into my first job in PR. I worked for a small, but highly influential entertainment boutique in midtown Manhattan.

That morning, I answered the office door and in walked a lanky guy with a mustache who asked to see my boss. I escorted him back to Bobby's office, and returned to my cube.

About 15 minutes later, Bobby called me in and introduced me to John Phillips...yes, that John Phillips. Apparently, Mr. Phillips was in desperate straits. A jail cell seemed a lot closer than California Dreamin' at this stage of his life. He was busted for cocaine possession and on the verge of going before a judge who would decide his fate.

He explained that he and his daughter Mackenzie have been active in a rather progressive drug treatment program out of Fair Oaks Hospital in New Jersey. If my memory serves me well, it was Dr. Mark Gold and his novel use of the drug Clonidine to ween addicts off of cocaine on whose wagon the Phillips hitched.

Apparently, John was a model patient who took a leadership role in the program. He hoped this positive "positioning" would weigh heavily on the judge's fateful decision.

My boss asked if I could help garner some media attention for John's "work" with Dr. Gold...on a pro bono basis. I accepted the assignment (as if I had a choice). Still, it was a pretty good story, as I soon learned. People magazine quickly committed to a cover, followed by appearances on "The Today Show" and elsewhere. Dr. Gold was an integral part of the interviews, and thus benefited professionally as well.

When Phillips finally went to court, the judge cited his good work at Fair Oaks and gave him a suspended sentence. Phillips called me to say he owes it all to me. Had I known what a twisted soul he really was, I would have thought twice about helping him. In fact, based on his daughter's revelations to Oprah today, both of them were apparently in on the ruse.

Future of Media

2009-09-22T07:34:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, I expect to learn the future of media. The day begins with Media Magazine's Future of Media Forum or "It's Not What it Used to Be."

At The Times Center in NYC, Wired's Chris Anderson will take these and other media movers and shakers through their paces: Mark Cuban, Martha Stewart, NPR's Vivien Schiller, Ad Age, NPR's and Chaos Scenario's (see above video) Bob Garfield, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, and MTV's Judy McGrath.

Later that day, yours truly will take another group of equally astute, yet non-executive media mavens through their paces. They include HuffPost's media editor Danny Shea, Mediaite's (and Shea's predecessor) Rachel Sklar, The New York Times's prolific TV/media reporter Brian Stelter, PaidContent's man in New York David Kaplan, and Henry Blodget's #2 who edits the increasingly influential The Business Insider (fka Silicon Alley Insider) Nich Carlson.

So if you had your druthers and could extract anything there is to know about the future of media, and maybe by extension the future of the PR biz, where would you start? I've begun to formulate my questions. Please chime in with others.

Is charging for content the right remedy for decimated bottom lines at MSM companies?
Will the blogosphere eventually usurp the established news organizations in authority?
In the age of Twitter, will the PR professional decline in value as a trusted news source?
Can the long-standing PR model of "earned" media through pitching (I mean "engaging") journalists survive in an age when consumers increasingly derive their news and info from the friends?
Won't there always be a segment of the population that takes its news from TV and newspapers?
Was President Obama's five-show interview-fest effective in advancing his healthcare agenda?
Will online ad revenue ever be able to fully cover the expense of producing a quality news product? Or does something else have to give?

Watch this space for coverage and hopefully, some audio takes, from Wednesday's media confabs.

Higher Ed Muscles In

2009-09-17T09:03:00.008-04:00

Start with Yahoo and Google, and go from there. This seems to be the recipe cooked up by 35 of the nation's most prestigious universities in an effort to re-exert their influence over the science news that percolates in the public domain.

Specifically, the MercNews reports, these universities have banded together to form and sustain a web site and "wire service" called Futurity.org.

The plan was mostly necessitated by the drastically reduced news hole and number of mainstream beat reporters covering science news.

"Whereas 20 years ago nearly 150 U.S. newspapers had a science section, today fewer than 20 do, and those are often dominated by health and lifestyle coverage. Reporters covering medicine, space and environmental issues have taken buyouts or been laid off across the nation. In December, for example, CNN eliminated its entire science and technology team. In February The Boston Globe closed its science section, an action the Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle had taken several years earlier."

In a recent post, this blogger noted that ProfNet, the original crowd-sourced service for journalists to quickly identify experts, started with a closed universe from academia. The thinking then, and thinking now, presupposes that universities provide journalists with a greater degree of editorial "reliability," versus, I suppose, those charlatans from private industry. Still, skepticism abounds:

"Any information is better than no information," said Charlie Petit, a former science reporter at U.S. News & World Report and the San Francisco Chronicle. "The quality of research university news releases is quite high. They are rather reliable," he added. "But they are completely absent any skepticism or investigative side."

Cristine Russell, a former Washington Post science reporter who is president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, weighs in:

"This can be a really good source of information for students and others who are looking for information. But it does not replace the independent news media."

Personally, I think Futurity is a very smart and timely move that may not win a ringing endorsement from a Darwinian depleted species of traditional science reporters, but has the ability to bring credible science news and research directly to the public. And what's wrong with that?

Prez Presses the Press

2009-09-16T14:05:00.009-04:00

If you're an A-list newsmaker, you can pretty much call the shots over where, when, and how you take your media interviews.

And today, there are few bigger newsmakers than the leader of the free world (unless you count celebrity-du-jour Lady Gaga (or that "skank with a brain.") But I won't go there.

The Wall Street Journal (and others) today report on President Obama's media blitz slated for this coming weekend in which he has no fewer than five network appearances on the docket, including Letterman on Monday.

In her piece, "TV Blitz Will Test Obama's Star Power," WSJ reporter Elizabeth Williamson writes:

"The president's heavy media schedule raises questions about whether his ubiquitous presence will dilute his effectiveness as a pitchman."

To which former former Clinton Press Secretary Joe Lockhart paints a do-or-die dilemma:

"I don't dismiss this idea that if at some point you fire your best weapon and it doesn't work, what do you do next? But you come to the point in a debate where you're not worried about the next battle."

The President intends to four-wall the Sunday talk shows, something few mortal newsmakers can do. I'll never forget the angst involved in organizing the first U.S. TV interviews for HSH Prince Albert and Princess Stephanie on both GMA and Today, arch rivals. We finally negotiated to have GMA go live and Today pre-tape, or was it vice-versa? No matter.

As for the Journal's POV, my feeling is that if you have a powerful communicator with a compelling message, there is little reason not to deploy him far and wide. In fact President Obama's relative absence from the media sphere this summer, likely fueled the need to play catch-up today. Also, this weekend's not the first time our President pressed the press with his presence.

Still, White House Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest is not worried about the prospect of a diluted message:

"The president accepted invitations to appear on these programs to talk about his health plan. These programs reach a variety of audiences because we're confident that the more the American people understand about the president's plans for health-insurance reforms, the more likely they are to support it."

And, of course, we all know about the importance of being earnest, especially for a PR pro.