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PR Squared

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The Difference Between Flacks & Spin DoctorsYesterday

I honestly hadn’t heard much hubbub about the August 21 New York Times feature on the year’s biggest PR fiascoes (“In Case of Emergency: What Not to Do”), until I read last week’s editorial in PRWeek, “NYT falls short again in its portrayal of PR” (sub reqd).

(The) article seemed to suggest that the “PR missteps” were what led to the problems at BP, Toyota, and Goldman Sachs, and this is simply a naive way of thinking.

In each of these cases, the true problem was caused by a fundamental business—or safety—issue. Ask any crisis communications or reputation management expert and they will tell you BP could not even think about working on its reputation until it stopped the oil leak.

The two most-frequently used sobriquets to describe PR pros are “spin doctors” and “flacks.”  For all the mainstream media get wrong about their understanding of Public Relations, its remarkable that these two nicknames aptly describe the best and worst of the profession.

It’s true that there a

Which Social Media Marketing Agencies Will Thrive In 5 Years?August 30

From WIRED Magazine’s controversial article, “The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet” came this set of factoids:

The story of industrial revolutions, after all, is a story of battles over control. A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others. It happens every time.

Take railroads. Uniform and open gauge standards helped the industry boom and created an explosion of competitors — in 1920, there were 186 major railroads in the US. But eventually the strongest of them rolled up the others, and today there are just seven — a regulated oligopoly.

Or telephones. The invention of the switchboard was another open standard that allowed networks to interconnect. After telephone patents held by AT&T’s parent company expired in 1894, more than 6,000 independent phone companies sprouted up. But by 1939, AT&T controlled nearly all of the US’s long-distance lines and some four-fifths of its telephones.

Or electricity. In the early 1900s, after the standardization to alternating current distribution, hundreds of small electric utilities were consolidated into huge holding companies. By the late 1920s, the 16 largest of those commanded more than 75 percent of the electricity generated in the US.

Indeed, there has hardly ever been a fortune created without a monopoly o

Marketing Doesn’t ONLY Happen OnlineAugust 26

According to a recent report by the Keller Faye Group, less than 10% of word of mouth conversations happen online.

Think about that for a second. We spend an inordinate amount of time fretting about Social Media Marketing, which is — let’s face it — largely an online phenomenon.  We perform blogger monitoring/outreach, Twitter monitoring/outreach, Facebook and LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers monitoring/outreach … It all feels right.  We can measure the clicks.

Yet according to the research, which dates back to 2006, “online” is NOT where consumers are talking about brands.

90% of all conversations Americans have about products/services and brands taking place offline is a startling statistic.  The important implication for marketers is that brands cannot ignore the offline conversations people are having.  Brands cannot rely solely on online social media marketing to spark conversations.  It’s another opportunity, not the only opportunity.

What does this mean to the modern marketer, who may still be rubbing the Social Media faery dust from their weary eyes?  What makes up the OTHER 90% of the word-of-mouth opportunity?

An Atypical Son Heads to CollegeAugust 25

I know you visit this blog to hear about thoughts & strategies re: Social Media Marketing and Public Relations.  And that’s what you get 99% of the time.  So I hope you’ll forgive me when, 1% of the time, I make this blog personal.

A few years ago I told you about my wife, on the eve of her graduation from nursing school (by the way, if you know anyone hiring nurses in the Bay Area, please let me know).  Today I’d like to take a moment to tell you about our son Luke, who leaves for college this week.

Luke is not perfect.  His room is in a constant state of disrepair.  He couldn’t find a household chore we didn’t point him toward.  He’s been known to take out his teenage angst on the occassional closet door.  His dedication to scholarship has been spotty.  That’s how he is typical.

This post is about how he is not typical.

Last year Luke traveled to Thailand during his summer vacation to serve the poor.  Yes, we pushed him to do some community service, but to his credit he dove in — and upon his return spoke poignantly of the poverty he witnessed.  He was impressed

The Rise of Branded JournalismAugust 24

I recently had lunch with an old colleague who now runs PR at Kaspersky Lab, one of the best-known and fastest-rising anti-virus companies on the planet.

My friend told me a story that should seize the hearts of journalists even as it captures the imagination of corporate marketers; it’s a story about the rise of branded journalism.

Of course, you already know all about “branded entertainment.”  For some groundbreaking examples, look no further than Spherion Staffing’s “The Temp Life” video series or Ikea’s “Easy To Assemble” webisodes starring A- and B-list Hollywood celebs.  (Fast Company recently ran a helpful review of some of the Web’s best examples of branded entertainment.) While branded entertainment can be an expensive, hit-or-miss proposition, Kaspersky Lab has adopted a relatively low-cost, high-value approach that’s better described as “branded journalism.”

Once upon a time, the writers and analysts who covered Kaspersky Lab as it slogged towards victory against the likes of McAfee and Symantec included Dennis Fisher at eWeek, Pa