Let me introduce our new blog - the voice of STONK Media - a new agency venture I am launching with Andrew Durkin, owner of MUSTARD PR and a PR colleague for many years. STONK Media (web site to be launched in two weeks) is our new media agency focused towards online PR strategy and implementation. I was invited to join Active Conversations via Keith Collins, who we worked closely with during his tenure as marketing director at Xerox Office.
In addition, I run NSPR - a specialist hi-tech PR agency. I broke out of the big agency scene some 15 years ago wanting to chart my own destiny and work with company’s that interest me, both large and small. To that end, it’s worked well and together with Gino Mainolfi, my co-director here, we’ve enjoyed working with a long list of clients that have been great fun and an interesting PR-sell. Past clients have included: Bosch/Blaupunkt, Motorola, Symantec, Tektronix, Open Text, Xerox, Stac Electronics, Babel, Changepoint and Lernout & Hauspie (I have some interesting tales here). Current clients include: D-Link, TIBCO Software, Tideway Systems, Nuance, VASCO, Sentito, Lanode, Priocept and Perforce Software. Our ethos has always remained the same – treat the press community with the same attention as you do your clients and provide a pro-active and creative PR service at a reasonable cost. What’s more, we’ve always enjoyed ourselves.
By way of introduction – I’m 43, have three boys aged 13, 10 and 5, and of course, a beautiful wife. I’ve become hooked on wakeboarding, which is a bit like snowboarding but on water. I’m still trying to convince my boys to have a go but they’ve probably seen their dad fall in enough times to put them off for life! Andrew Durkin is ‘marginally’ younger, an expectant father and fancies himself…as a golfer.
Let’s get on to de-programming PR’s. I listened with interest to Shel Israel’s interview on this and am looking forward to meeting Shel this Saturday, when he visits the UK in research of his next book - Thanks to Keith Collins for establishing contact with Shel and setting this up.
In the last 15 years, I have seen the PR game transformed by the growth of the Internet. Initially, the Internet was harnessed by PR’s as a way of communicating efficiently and swiftly with a growing list of IT journalists. It enabled instant dissemination of information and quick follow-up, with the opportunity to supply supporting photography at the touch of a button. In fact, historically the Internet has been a PR man’s dream. Previously, getting press releases out the door meant stuffing a mountain of envelopes, standing next to a fax machine and programming tons of numbers and a pretty substantial back office requirement. Now issuing a press release can be initiated at the touch of a button.
We’ve also seen the growth of online news sites and now the advent of the blog, which I’m sure causes a headache for many a PR department and undoubtedly many companies who are still trying to get their heads around how to engage with the blogging world. I think Shel’s right - PR’s do need to de-programme and start thinking about how they will advise their clients and, importantly, how they will operate to provide a window into what bloggers are saying about a given client and how they respond.
Our thinking is as follows:
The approach and strategy for each company will be different. Industry leaders have a brand to maintain and I’m sure are now fully aware that they need to monitor blogs to ensure they are listening to their user community and acting on customer feedback. Their traditional PR techniques: providing product news and corporate announcements via press releases, review samples to press and influencers, direct engagement and interviews and show attendance etc. will still be very relevant, but the PR machine does need to de-programme to take account of a new communications channel, in the form of blogs. The strategy and approach will undoubtedly depend on each company’s willingness to engage directly with bloggers.
For smaller companies looking to get exposure and a seat at the table with the big guys in a given industry, the advent of blogging presents an interesting opportunity and there are numerous case studies where blogging has literally put a company in the spotlight overnight. Content will always be ‘king’ and if a company has interesting intellectual capital that would be of use to potential customers, or an individual with an exciting story to tell, blogging could well be the way forward.
With every client we always try and build a picture of the media and the relevant importance of different newspapers, magazines, online news sites and influencers (analysts etc) right from the outset. If you build a pyramid view of the media this provides the PR machine with some focus and enables you to gauge success. It is possible to include the most prominent blog sites in this view, but with the nature of blogs this will be ever changing.
Two colleagues have recently raised the same criticism about blogs as a way of realising information and the lack of editorial regulation. If you rely on the FT, Independent, Guardian or WSJ for news and analysis you have an editorial team in place that you are familiar with and, to a degree, trust. With blogs however there is no editorial team, no check in place. Or is there?
From my standpoint, it’s self-regulating.
