Friday Roundup 5th February 2010

Is PR nothing more than 3rd rate e-mail marketing?

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post in which I opined that "many PR companies seem to treat press releases and media relations as a form of direct marketing – and do it in such a way that even a 3rd rate direct marketing agency would be embarrassed by. Bog standard things like opt-in, unsubscribe, data protection standards, etc, seem to be resolutely ignored by many. How long can this behaviour last?"

Quite a while it would seem. The hoary old chestnut of PR spam reared its ugly head again this week with the launch of Realwire's Inconvenient PR Truth Campaign and the usual hand wringing from the PR fraternity.

Stuart Bruce at Wolfstar probably brought the most sensible perspective to the issue when he re-iterated that "experience and training" are what counts.

It isn't actually hard to determine why the spam PR debate continues to drone on like a cracked record. Clients want more for less; PR firms margins are being squeezed; training goes out the window; less experienced staff are pressured to deliver results with ever meagre resources. Hence the soothing and addictive qualities of the bought-in media database.

Having said that, I still maintain PR firms are failing to learn from their e-marketing marketing counterparts. For example, using a simple e-mail service tool would show whether or not an e-mail as been opened - thus removing the excuse for ringing a journalist to ask "did you get my press release?".

However, the whole PR spam problem may be solved by other means. As Mark Brownlow at E-Mail Marketing Reports recently noted: “For the last few weeks and months, various people close to the process of managing and filtering incoming emails have been warning that “legitimate” senders and sources of bulk email are likely to face more rigorous control. A related development is the intended (and to some extent implemented) move to relying more on how recipients interact with your emails to decide if those emails are worthy of delivery.”

In other words, the ISPs will be looking at how the recipients of your press release emails respond. And if they find that open rates are low they may just not deliver them in the first place.

Perhaps this might finally spur the PR sector to sort itself out – otherwise, somebody else will do it for them.

Best regards, Andrew Bruce Smith and the MarCom Professional team.

Inconvenient PR Truth campaign is plainly inconvenient

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

PR and media response to the Inconvenient PR Truth campaign launched yesterday falls into two camps: broad agreement or a direct challenge, not to the key message of the campaign, but its style.

The irony could not be more delicious. The campaign has utilised a well worn PR tactic, namely powerful content, to get attention. It’s pulled in opinion from across the industry and is now an open platform for discussion.

There have been lots of positive comments. Conversations are taking place on the campaign site itself, blogs, Twitter and an article on the PR Week site. More...

Crowdsourcing the True Meaning of Social Media

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

UK-based PR consultant Adam Vincenzini called upon the Twitterverse to crowdsource the meaning of social media.

Adam's idea was to get 140 'communications characters' to submit their definitions of social media in 140 characters. Great concept!

Within no time Adam received the full complement of responses which he duly posted on his blog The Comms Corner.

Here is a snapshot of some of the definitions submissions:

@DannyBrown Social media is the human engine oil. More...

Sorrell consistent on industry outlook: “less worst but no recovery yet”

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell has spoken out against politicians and business leaders for celebrating economic recovery when the market was “less worst” rather than growing.

Speaking to Bloomberg at the annual World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, he said “you can’t declare victory until you see consistent gains year-to-year.”

Delegates at the PRCA and CorpComms Conference last October received the same message when Sorrell delivered the keynote.

More...

Digital Marketing Metrics and Reporting Shifts

by David H Deans of Digital Lifescapes

eMarketer reports that digital marketing survived the downturn, and marketers worldwide are now bullish about the prospects for growth in 2010, according to the latest market study by the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA).

Their report found that 81 percent of the marketing executives surveyed expected an increase in digital projects in 2010, and one-half will be moving funds from traditional to digital budgets.

More than three-quarters also think the current economy will push more allocations to digital marketing projects. More...

Social Media and How it is Impacting on Public Relations (Part One)

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

This is PART ONE of a guest post by strategic public relations professional and blogger, Craig Pearce (left). His views and news on PR can be found at Public relations and managing reputation: better business and society.

The world’s leading authority on public relations, Professor James Grunig recently said that social media has, “the potential to truly revolutionalise public relations – but only if a paradigm shift in the thinking of many practitioners and scholars takes place.” More...

The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

In 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And last month, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web. I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular networks within the social Web. More...

Corporate comedy

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

Corporate comedy is one of those phrases like "jumbo shrimp," "smart ass," and "party down in Omaha" that seems a bit off. (No offense to shrimps, asses, or those from Omaha). Despite its rarity, comedy can be an extremely powerful corporate marketing tool.

My friend Tim Washer, who is head of social media productions for IBM worldwide, is a comic genius. He pushes his colleagues at IBM on the value of hysterical videos and is in charge of producing them. I sat down with Tim to talk comedy. More...

Media databases promote mechanical networks

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

Stuart Bruce says that the combination of media databases and inexperienced PR executives are the root cause of PR spam. “While I applaud [the inconvenient PR truth] initiative, I’m not totally convinced about either the approach or if it will work. It also fails to mention the elephant in the room – the media database companies.”

Perhaps we can learn from network theory? Media databases are a form of automation that promote mechanical networks. They enable PR executives to distribute press releases to lists of journalists with whom they have no prior relationship. More...