Trevor Rebuts Our PR Chapter

Last week, after we published a chapter entitled Survival of the Publicists, we received a good deal of unfavorable feedback that was split into two camps, one of which argued that we had been too kind to some PR practitioners we had spotlighted favorably in a chapter that wonders if PR as it is currently being practiced may be among the casualties of the blogging revolution.  The other group argued, that despite my 25 years in the field, we were clueless as to what it was all about. Among the latter group was Trevor Cook, a director of the Sydney-based PR firm of Jackson Wells Morris, whom Robert and I thought took an intelligent and constructive approach in trying to dissect our chapter point by point. As a result we will be making some changed to the chapter, including excerpts of Trevor's additional comments which he submitted at our request.  They are printed in full here:

"Blogging and podcastng offer exciting communication opportunities, but they will not completely displace existing media nor will they change the traditional role of public relations.

From a PR point of view, blogging and podcasting are important because they allow practitioners to communicate directly with audiences, free of the mediation, constraints and pitfalls of traditional media.

In fact, many of the aspects of PR that people lament – spin, bland messages and corporate speak – are simply efforts to negotiate the media’s privileged gatekeeper role without getting trampled by journalistic elephants.

The media is driven by the need to create revenue-producing audiences and, unfortunately, the best way to do that is with stories highlighting conflict, scandal, shock and lots of other negative stuff. The desire for big audiences also leads to coverage that lacks depth or nuance.

On the other hand, a positive media story is very valuable to a company because it delivers a third-party endorsement. Even with the decline in confidence in traditional media, this endorsement effect remains significant. Today, bloggers provide some additional opportunities for third-party endorsement.

With blogs and podcasts, PR practitioners can provide information about companies, their products and strategies, directly to anyone interested and we can talk with diverse micro audiences, as well as the bigger ones sought by the media.  Through blogs and podcasts, we can easily and cheaply provide a lot more information on a lot more topics.

Even better, we can now provide our version first, with people commenting afterwards rather than the first version being something that is constructed, and often distorted, by the biases of a particular media outlet.

Hopefully, in the relatively calm spaces of our blogs, we can go on to have genuinely constructive conversations with customers and citizens – something rarely possible in an overwhelmingly negative media environment characterized by brief attention spans.

The current audiences for blogs and podcasts are tiny, compared to TV, radio and print media. What’s more, traditional media is still a lot more accessible and credible to the general population. Unfortunately, bloggers still carry the stigma of their early popularity with teenagers and political ranters.

Blogger credibility and readerships will grow strongly over the next decades, but blogs and podcasts are never going to replace traditional media, which are already adapting to and adopting the new technologies.

Only in rare circumstances, usually in IT, will PR practitioners be able to use exclusive blog & podcast strategies. In the future, all communication strategies will be some mix of old and new media. Those strategies will be richer and more diverse because of the inclusion of blogs and podcasts, but they won’t be essentially different.

PR has always been about ‘accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative’. Companies will not use blogs and podcasts to highlight or perpetuate discussions about negatives. Though they will use them to counter negatives covered on other blogs or in traditional media.

Nevertheless, the enlarged and relaxed spaces provided by the blogosphere will hopefully encourage companies to use more authentic voices and to be less stressed about the ‘untidiness’ that is inevitable when people converse naturally. But freeing-up corporate communications will require long and difficult cultural change processes. It won’t just happen.

For the PR industry, blogs and podcasts not only provide some additional, and often better, ways of communicating they also mean that there will be a lot more communication with a lot more people on a lot more topics. In that environment, far from facing doom, PR is likely to boom."

Comments

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Quite a lot of BS here Trevor.

I've lost a lot of respect for you here. You make contradictory statements.

Thanks for showing your true colors. You don't know very much about blogs or real PR.

Blogs have a tiny audience? Very funny. Not true at all.

Blogs have low credibility? Based on what research?

Blogs are associated with teens and political ranters? By whom? Proof?

Relatively calm spaces of our blogs? Boy, you sure don't travel around the blogosphere much. I've been in, and seen, very heated debates, wild accusations, bloody battles, mental violence, not "calm".

Yet another blog basher with wishful thinking and no evidence.

I have a serious problem with hyperbole, whether in PR or advertising or blog promotion.

It troubles me to hear Trevor say "corporations will not use blogs and podcasts to highlight or perpetuate discussions about negatives."

This attitude Trevor describes is cowardly and self-serving corporate BS.

I love how Garden Way Mfg. Associates, makers of Troy-Bilt, demanded that we direct mail copywriters EMPHASIZE the negatives about their products.

That's right. Emphasize the Negative.

It creates credibility.

You say things like "This attachment for your tiller won't clear deep snow or large areas of snow. You'll need a regular single-duty snowblower for that. But for light to medium snowfall on small to medium driveways and other areas, it will do a decent job. Not as fast as a conventional snowblower, but not shabby either."

Customers ate this up. They loved how we told both negative and positive.

To emphasize the positive, sure. We all do this. If we didn't we'd be pretty lonely, unmarried, no friends, no job, nothing.

But if you totally hide, disguise, or distract people from the negative, then they find out later, they hate you and badmouth you like crazy.

Blogs are forcing corporations and individuals to come to terms with honesty and candid disclosure, transparency, etc.

Many CEOs who do not blog, and will not blog, are the liars, incompetents, lazies, good-for-nothings who impede progress and flee from ethical behavior.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Bob]

I appreciate Trevor's comments. He offers a tempered approach to both PR and blogging. They serve different purposes in business, including commoditized education. They both appear to offer forms of persuasion, one for pay, the other for "communication," or probably more accurately, for gossiping, a powerful market influencer. Way to go, Trevor!

[Martin Chorich]

The bottom line is that blogs are becoming another arrow in the corp comm quiver. There is nothing moral or immoral about this. A good blog will share the same traits as good PR, web content or ad copy. Honest, engaging and aware that whatever it says, it must stand up to criticism, skepticism and simple "prove it" mental resistance of readers.

One thing I think remains unexplored are blogs as internal or Extranet communications vehicles with employees, salesforces, sales channels, defined communities (customers, developers, users, etc.) supply chain partners, etc. For example, blogging would be an incredibly effective way for a sales EVP to keep the troops up to date on what's going on at headquarters, news from the field, customers say the darndest things, competitive cut and thrust, etc.

I also think there is a role for ghost writing in commercial blogging. Few executives "write good" or have the time to research and keep content fresh. Added help could run from simple research support, to idea generation to full-on ghosting on behalf of an author-of-record. Blogging purists may swoon at this idea, but welcome to the real world.

I'd be happy to discuss this further in this forum, off line, or as arranged by our seconds on the field of honor. :-)

[shel]

Martin,

I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree with your contention. If blogs become just another arrow in the quivver, they will wilt. Blogs are not just another channel into which corp comm can cram the same crap they put everywhere else. The blogs will lose their authenticity, and in so doing, they will lose their effectiveness.

[Jozef Imrich]

Shel and Robert

In case you missed this thoughtful entry on SearchView:

Blogging: The Future of Corporate PR

[Jozef Imrich]

In case you have not come across these items yet ...

The Changing Landscape of Corporate Blogging

Wall Street Journal features, Blogging Becomes A Corporate Job which provides a general overview of how several companies, including Microsoft and Stonefield Stonyfield Farm Inc., are diversifying their marketing and corporate communications with the addition of talented bloggers to their workforce.
A small but growing number of businesses are hiring people to write blogs, otherwise known as Web logs, or frequently updated online journals. Companies are looking for candidates who can write in a conversational style about timely topics that would appeal to customers, clients and potential recruits.
Digital 'Handshake'?

Also related posting: People who underestimate weblogs, comments on the explosion in the number of blogs, as well as on the recent Pew Internet blog report, which apparently only included 40 sources as the basis of its sample survey.