Filed under: Controversial Marketing, How to Blog, Marketing Hubris, PR Hubris, PR Industry, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

I’ve read and reread Michael Arrington’s screed on the state of PR today. No doubt he’s had his full of moronic pitches from overly enthusiastic types pushing this story or that. Many of the pitches will be totally inappropriate for TechCrunch.

If you’re an entrepreneur, he’s got some great basic advice laid out. He also has some dangerous ideas that, once again, show me that some of the people out there who become somewhat successful in a relatively short time have: a tendency to assume that most aspects of marketing are somewhat frivolous and that all one has to do is follow these small steps.

Let’s get right to what he wrote:

So back to practical advice: what do you do if you’re a startup looking for help in getting the word out about your company? First off, don’t hire PR help until the volume of inbound requests by press are simply too much to handle without help. That’s way down the line for most companies.

Until then, take the time to start reading blogs and other publications that cover what you’re doing. Go to an event or two. This should be fun for you, since they’re writing about stuff that you’re spending all your time on. You’ll start to see links to other relevant sites, and before long you’ll fully understand who’s who in the space, get a feel for people’s personalities and passions, etc. Leave a few thoughtful comments. Better yet, start your own blog and link appropriately. And in your leisure time participate in the fascinating conversations occurring on Twitter and FriendFeed.

Suddenly you are no longer just a spectator with an agenda. You are now part of a community. You are a person that gives and takes. Someone who makes the overall network stronger. And I guarantee that after a few weeks of actually participating in the community, you’ll have far better press connections than most of the PR people we deal with daily.

I highlighted that last sentence because it is so stupid. A few weeks? Please. It’s like telling an aspiring actress that all she has to do is go to Hollywood and hang out at a few cool places for a couple of weeks and she’ll have far better connections than most agents.

Other than that, it sounds like great advice. And it is, for the most part. But it’s unrealistic for many. And it consistently spewed out views - seconded by many of the repondees that they’ve got in all under control as far as marketing goes. I’ve seen many a crash and burn from those who take on this mindset. That’s because they don’t think beyond the mindset.

If there’s a shitload of competition out there to break through the noise, then there’s a shitload of competition to break through h noise. Regardless of whom is getting out there amidst the conversations both online and off.

One intrepid PR person, a real fireball by the name of Kel Kelly, came in and told it like it is:

Most of our clients are savvy, Web 2.0-based businesses and they come to us because the “blogosphere only” strategy failed miserably…

…As for having the CEOs do it themselves, I encourage you to get your lips off the crack pipe and step away. Most of my CEOs don’t have time to scratch their ass never mind build and execute a blogosphere strategy or pitch, secure and manage a segment on The Today Show.

Kel is my new best friend. She hit that one out of the park. The problem with Arrington’s point is that applies to so few people. It makes sense, but it often ain’t enough.

I nevertheless think he’s onto something in that entrepreneurs have to be their own evangelists. But I’d say the best thing they could do is enlist the services of a seasoned PR professional that knows the lay of the land…meaning knows the niche industry that the start-up is entering, meaning the key media people and key blogs and bloggers. A sherpa that acts as the initial guide. Press releases aren’t needed. Big pitches aren’t needed. Or at least as much. This type of person should be looked upon at “marketing/PR counsel”, just as an attorney is looked upon as being legal counsel.

Here’s the danger of doing a full fledged DIY strategy:

Time

If you remember, Kel said “Most of my CEOs don’t have time to scratch their ass never mind build and execute a blogosphere strategy or pitch, secure and manage a segment on The Today Show.” Oh, yeah!

So true it’s laughable. Starting and running a business is hard work. It’s a lot of work. It takes boatloads of dedication and time. Getting involved in online conversations and running one’s own blog is hard work. It can be a lot of work, It can take boatloads of dedication and time.

Entrepreneurs are human. I’m going to stereotype, but most of the audience that we’re talking about here are relatively young (under 50). A lot in their thirties. Mostly men. A lot of those have young families. They work 10-15 hour days during the workweek and another 5-8 on a weekend day. When they’re home, they’re going to want to spend time with their spouses and perhaps read their children a bedtime story - that’s if they’re home in time. Spending another 1-3 hours a day reading online mags and blogs is going to be too much. Some can do it. Most can’t.

Better Insight

Timing is everything. A PR person - a good one that is - can see trends coming down the pike. They’ll know editorial calendars. They’ll know when it’s too soon for this or a little late for that. PR people can often get you in the right place at the right time.

They’ll often know which event are worth checking out and which ones may be a waste of time and money.

They’ll know what makes key editors and bloggers take notice. The entrepreneur won’t. Which brings me to my third point…

Hubris

The reality is that, from what I’ve witnessed, the majority of people behind start ups fall overly in love with their products and/or services that they fail to realize that most other people won’t give a shit. They overvalue the relative worth of what they’ve created. They’ll enter conversations all pumped and they won’t necessarily contribute the way they should. They won’t “listen” that much. They don’t understand that most people aren’t going to listen them as well.

They’ll think that they should be featured in the today’s business section and on tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. A crafty PR person can cut through the hubris and blind enthusiasm and set the record straight.

Just like Kel Kelly did.

5 Comments » Posted on August 15th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Abraham Harrison Staff, Chris Abraham, Jeremy Pepper, PR Back Talk, PR Blogs, PR Ethics, PR Hubris, PR Industry, PR Pitching, PR Tactics

by Jonathan Trenn

I just read to intriguing posts on PR.  One is by Michael Arrington on, of course, TechCrunch.    It would be a great piece except that I disagree with his key point.

Then, as Chris pointed out, The PR Roadblock On the Road to Blissful Blogging.  Jeremy Pepper wrote something really special with Can I Get a Big Cup of STFU Please?

I figured I’d add my two cents here, somewhat separate from the above, but nevertheless related to them.

Why PR is a mess?  Because we’ve - in the haste to make money and keep on top of things - have made it that way.  I’m talking PR firms.  PR firms usually hire a slew of young people.  Often, mostly women these days.  They’re enthusiastic.  They’re inexpensive.  They’re green.  That doesn’t mean that they lack talent.  It means they lack experience, contacts, and, at times knowledge.

But that happens in a lot of professions.

The firm will get a client from a pitch.  The CEO of the client or whomever is/are the key person/people at the client firm don’t really understand PR.  They see it as fluff.  They see young women in these positions and see it as if these people are marketing administrators.  But they want press coverage and think that most publications have people sitting around in rooms waiting around faxed press releases or emails or phone calls and their product/service is so great that the editor will stop the presses to do story.

The client may be in a niche field and the PR firm may be generalists.

To get maximum exposure, the PR firm may end up doing a blast fax/email after also using PRNewswire or BusinessWire.  Then the relatively young people follow up.  They don’t have those relationships yet so they may screw up.

Editors and producers and reporters often will get bombarded.  Now it’s bloggers.  But they should realize that it comes with the territory.  For the most part.  I still read blogs that complain - completely legitimately - that they’ll get hit on for everything.

But part of the problem is that the need for PR may outweigh the number of people who understand certain niches, have the contacts, and are available.  So the need for PR then gets spread to these firms that rely on younger people.

So it can be a mess.  But that doens’t mean it’s always wrong.  What agencies need to do is take their new hires and cultivate them.  Give them some extra cash to meet and grab some grub with reporters.  Don’t just teach them your procedures, teach them how to be professionals.  They represent your company.

A note about Abraham Harrison

Oddly, for a virtual company, there’s little disconnect.  Maybe it’s because we’re social media based.  Dealing with bloggers is like suggesting.  Each attempt is not a life and death situation.  Please, please, please cover my client dear editor.  Doesn’t happen.  That’s hard for a virtual  company to pull off.   And AH has.

1 Comment » Posted on August 15th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Abraham Harrison Staff, Jeremy Pepper, Lowe New York, Lowe Worldwide, POP! PR Jots, PR Ethics, PR Hubris, PR Industry, PR Pitching, PR Tactics, Public Relations, Public Relations Bloggers, Public Relations Blogs, Public Relations Industry, pr

Jeremy Pepper just wrote a blog post entitled Can I can get a big cup of STFU please? that you should read.  The long story short is that  social media is just one part of public relations and that everything really hinges on relationships and connections:

The fact is that social media is ONE part of public relations. A SMALL part, if you are a good PR person or firm. The other parts are traditional media (while it might be shrinking, it still reaches that middle part of the country), analyst relations, events, and more.

PR is about relationships. It’s about relationships so much that Lowe’s went to Abraham Harrison for it’s recent project because of its relationships with people at Lowe and because of their relationships with bloggers. See - it’s about relationships.

It’s also about writing, about talking, about conveying a story. But, without those relationships, there’s nothing there. And, unfortunately, with the industry’s reliance on technology - let’s email, let’s launch a blog, let’s get Twitter, let’s do this and that … well, you’re failing in PR.

PS: thanks for the shout out, Mr. Jeremy Pepper. Oh, and thank you Lowe for giving us a go.

No Comments » Posted on August 13th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Blog Counter-Messaging, Blog Messaging, Blog Policies, Blog Search, Blog Training, Blog of Personality, Blogger Activation, Blogger Code of Conduct, Blogger Effect, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Ethics, Blogger Gifts, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Blogger Response, Blogger Support, Blogging, Blogging Policies, Blogging Primer, Blogosphere, Blogvertising, Blowback, Brand Advocacy, Brand Promotion, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, CEO Blogs, Chris Abraham, Citizen Generated Media, Citizen Media, Client Service, Controversial Marketing, Conversation, Conversation Marketing, Customer Reviews, Customer Service, Disruption, Edelman, Facebook, Flogging, Flogs, Honesty, How to Blog, Influence, Influencer Identification, Influencers, Influencial Bloggers, Influentials, Inside PR, Integrity, Mainstream Media, Managing Conversation, Marketing, Marketing Blogs, Marketing Conversation, Marketing Ethics, Marketing Hubris, Marketing Industry, Marketing Language, Marketing Psychology, Marketing Strategy, Markets are Conversations, Media Consultancy, Media Virus, Messaging Online, Microblog, Microblogging, Naked Conversations, New Marketing, New Media, New Media Marketing, New Media PR, New Media Strategy, New PR, New Public Relations, New Technology, News Aggregation Strategy, Old Media, Old PR, Online Brand Promotion, Online Branding, Online Collaboration, Online Communications, Online Communities, Online Community Managers, Online Community Outreach, Online Conversation, Online Engagement, Online Evangelism, Online Facilitation, Online Field Marketing, Online Influence, Online Intelligence, Online Marketing, Online Media, Online Messaging, Online Monitoring, Online Outreach, Online PR, Online Participation, Online Pitch, Online Public Relations, Online Strategy, PR Hubris, PR Industry, PR Tactics, Public Relations, Public Relations Industry, Relationship Marketing, Social Graphs, Social Meda, Social Media Index, Social Media Marketing, Social Media PR, Social Network Services, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social Utilities, Tagging, Tags, Traditional Marketing, Traditional Media, Traditional PR, Transparency, Twitter, Twittergram, Viral Marketing, Viral Media, Viral PR, Viral Propagation, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web Applications, YouTube, YouTube Marketing, Youth Market, del.icio.us, marketing tactics

With all the discussion on what social media is, what it’s future will be like, who will control it, I often feel we fail to see the forest for the trees.

I see it as too diverse of a phenomenon to pin down with one easy definition. Its applications go far beyond the neat capsules that can be used to pick a particular department or function that should “own” it. Social media is creating, empowering, and accompanying a paradigm shift in the way we use all media.

Are we fully there yet? Of course not. These are only the early stages, part of an evolutionary process that often comes step by step. But those steps are happening and happening and soon we’ll look back and be amazed how far we’ve traveled. Then before we know it again, we’ll be stepping again and look back again and we’ll be amazed how much we’ve come from that first time we looked back.

Yes, organizations are going to have to harness social media in ways that they can benefit from, to reach ROI. This means trying to create some sort of structure for it without “siloizing” it. Very difficult indeed.

I’ve tried to lay out what I see social media as. Not from a specific definitional standpoint, but from a several miles up point of view.

Interested in your feedback… Read more…

No Comments » Posted on July 30th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Blog Strategy, Blog Training, Blogging, Customer Service, Marketing, Marketing Conversation, Marketing Hubris, Marketing Language, Marketing Psychology, Marketing Strategy, New Marketing, New Media Marketing, New Media PR, New Media Strategy, New PR, New Public Relations, New Radio, New Technology, Old Media, Old PR, Online Advertising, PR Hubris, PR Pitching, Social Media Marketing, Social Media PR, Traditional Marketing, Traditional Media, Traditional PR, YouTube, YouTube Marketing, marketing tactics

I’m in the process of pitching a potential client. From what I see, if this works out, it will be an excellent opportunity. They’re a marketing service provider that offers the traditional services to their client base. The methods they use are still very much needed, they aren’t out of date, and they won’t be out of date any time soon. But in this era of digital marketing, those methodologies clearly aren’t enough. Not when the users of their clients products are more likely to look online for those very products.

That being said, there were several aspects of conversations I’ve had with potential clients that have showed me why online marketing has yet to receive the respect that it deserves. Budget allotments, questions about handling things internally, executive level buy-in, a determined need to find specific, immediate ROI.   While I realize that the whole concept of online is still emerging, I nevertheless find this somewhat amazing. Most people today have integrated the internet into their lives, and have done so for many years. In fact, most of us use it for communication, or entertainment for research. But, still, there’s that initial resistance in many people in business.  It’s not only a reluctance to not only endeavor into this no longer new arena, but to also to take the very steps to learn about it.

So I’ve put together a few reasons why I think this is the case. Each may serve as an “objection” that will need to be overcome. Whether on a one-to-one level upon pitching a potential client. Or on an industry-wide basis.

Lack of Vision

When companies can’t see beyond their basic core services, when they don’t understand - or worse, when they don’t take the time to understand industry trends, they show an alarming lack of vision. And it’s a lack of vision that could kill their business. It goes back to that “where should we be in five years?” question. They don’t understand that they have to answer it constantly.

I’ve seen decision makers in some fields effectively make choices to not learn anything new. And it’s not just because they lack an understanding that they need to change, but they never display the curiosity to learn. The very curiosity that acts as the impetus in creating a vision that will create change.

I’ve noticed this in the political arena. In between elections, I’d be attending conferences that would discuss the use of the internet in political campaigns. They’d be attended by mostly relatively young people, all of whom were politically sharp and internet savvy. Come election time, they wouldn’t get a seat at the table.  The more seasoned members would praise them as being “upcomers” and they’d describe themselves to being “out of the loop” when it comes to “all this technology stuff”, but they’d always make sure that these young people they’re supposedly impressed with be kept in the back room with a microscopic budget and no say in any formulation of strategy.

The Disconnect 

The mentality seems to be, at best, that the upcoming changes (if they’re aware of them) don’t apply to them. Somehow they feel as if they’re separate from the rest of the business world.

The mentality is “Sure I do the majority of my business correspondence via email, and I just bought a book on Amazon for my brother-in-law, and my co-worker’s now engaged to a guy she met on Match.com, and I’m planning a vacation by looking at Hotels.com, and I have to check my bank account status today online, and I’m gonna read that story in the Post that my friend forwarded to me, and I should donate online today to Obama/McCain, and ooh, here’s an Evite to go to thank event by the river, and I’ve got to update and add some photos to my Facebook page, and I should read that restaurant review online, and I’ll just go to the client website to get information, and that was an inspirations quote I was emailed today, and then there was that hilarious video on YouTube, and here at work, I need to place an order through that online catalog, and I want to check out the site for that vet that I need to take Scruffy to, and I should order a film from Netflix.”

Then they think, “But I don’t see how the internet affects my business.  It’s not tangible to what I do.”
Lack of Priority

If one thinks in terms of traditional methods, then one is going to make traditional decisions.  If online is the constant afterthought, the add-on at the end, the low priority, then it’s never going to move up.  Again, if decision makers don’t take a step back to learn and see the entire picture, then it will never happen.  Or when it finally does happen, we get…

We Can Do It Ourselves

There’s a trend in business to day to bring in every aspect of markeing communications in house. That’s quite common here in the DC area with all of the associations and tech companies. Many of these organizations turn to the “folks in IT” to create the new site that to replace the old one sorely needs an update. This is the extension of the trend of having one’s nephew create something on his spare time and then put it up on the web. The result is often marginal improvements that add nothing to the brand or user experience. And by not examining beyond the confines of the offiice walls, they never see “what’s out there”.

An extra degree of separation

I don’t know if that’s the right term for all of what I’ll explain, but I see a lot of the traditional ad agencies and PR firms - the ones that are the first ones many potential clients go to - know so little about the fundamentals of online marketing - let alone the specialty of social media - that they muck up many marketing efforts.  Flash on homepages of websites, making them slow to download and invisible to search engines.  Things like that.  Blogs that post puff pieces and reworked press releases.

The problem is that those ad agencies and PR firms have the ear of the client, first and foremost. The marketing company hasn’t taken the time to learn new strategies, technologies, and methodologie while the client doesn’t know enough about to tell the difference.  The marketing company blocks new concepts from being brought up out of their own ignorance and territorialism.  The client says, fine, you guys are the experts.

The online folks are often then one degree of separation beyond this.  All too often the ear we have is that of the marketing company who may see us as a threat.

Soon, I’ll talk about what many in the online arena do wrong.

Guess, I’m just frustrated.  In a bad mood.

No Comments » Posted on July 28th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

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