Just Another 24 Hours

There has been a lot of chatter on blogs and industry podcasts lately (and not so lately) about the value of PR.

It’s a discussion that has been going on for time eternal; PR people will be the first to admit that there are some very poor operators out there who fuel the age old acrimony between journalists and PR.

One of the prompts for this discussion was the Jason Calacanis’ ten point guide How To Get PR For Your Start-up: Fire Your PR Company. The guide was strenuously (over) analysed by Shel Holz and Neville Hobson during FIR #375 which you can download here .

There have been long discussions about the benefit of using the phone over other means of communicating with journalists. Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester provides more of a balanced common sense view here, as well as his observations as a target for PRs directly and as a networker with firms advised by PR agencies.

This post by Dee Barizo continues the theme with a post that begins with the following Tim Ferriss quote:

PR is now Personal Relationships not Public Relations.

Tim Ferriss is the author of a book called the Four Hour Work Week, which I am half way through – still! This must be why I am still working 45 hour weeks. That’s 45, not 4.5!

The focus on personal relationship is not a new thing and it almost sounds counter intuitive to say it but technology is facilitating a new level of personal engagement between PR and their target media, bloggers as well as other influencers.

At the end of the day, there is no right answer to the fire our agency/keep your agency question. Its an over simplification to try and find one.

Every organisation has different needs, different in-house capability and a different agenda. They are different sizes and they operate in different industry sectors.

There is no excuse for any PR to pitch a journalist by any means of communication with an untargetted suggestion or story idea or news items. But the fact that this occurs from time to time does not undermine the legitimacy and value of an entire industry.

The scatter gun meets blunderbuss approach to PR i.e. distribute your singular message as far as wide to as many people as possible is a thing of the past but this is a relatively recent development. The industry is going through a period of transformation for sure.

My view is that the impact of new technology on the industry will drive best practice, as well as a new type of PR. I don’t believe it’s dead, a view held by Dave Taylor. In 2005! he wrote:

But there’s a bit of a dark cloud hanging over true public relations too, because it’s built upon the assumption that the message can be controlled or crafted in the first place. One of the more interesting effects of the rise of bloggers and citizen journalists (and, for that matter, “citizen industry analysts”), is that the message is taking on a life of its own and that it’s more and more frequently getting into the public eye before the company is ready. In a world where messages are born, evolve and disseminate without controls, it does beg the question of what’s left for a public relations professional?

Side note I didn’t realise this post was so old – good post tho!

This is a great post but in my view, there will be plenty left for the PR. I agree with the premise that the audience controls the message but that message (in its original form and in subsequent story telling) must originate and be crafted somewhere still. Is Mr. Taylor heralding the end of all marketing industries? There will absolutely be a role for PRs in terms of advanced monitoring and ‘measurement’ (sentiment over volume), identiying issues and influencers, engaging these influencers and so on.

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