Archive for the ‘Pure PR’ Category

PR DOES WORK. If I look across our marketing mix today it remains strategically important. And of all the vendor – agency relationships, the one with the PR Agency is certainly the most trying and important.

While PR does work, apparently these are the Top 10 Reasons why PR doesn’t work – from over at the PRSite. This is a pretty typical list based on pretty unsophisticated clients.

Here are a couple of other reasons that I’ve seen occur regularly here in the Valley – where the clients can be very sophisticated:

1. When the Agency really invests to grok the client’s business, PR works big time. Lack of understanding by the PR agency of the clients business. The Agency applies the formula that worked – or is working best – to the new clients business rather that truly understanding the client’s business…
2. … which is often a result of very junior staff pretty much doing all the work on accounts that require senior experience (PR Works where the internal and external team mix is right!)…
3. …which means, they fail to grok the client’s audience and tailor the media campaign for that audience…
4. … which is worsened by the client that doesn’t grok their audience, what they read, or what their circle of influence is… PR Works where everyone groks the audience and understands how to communicate effectively with them – and that might mean skipping the media alltogether.
5. Clients don’t manage the relationship with brutal honestly and accountability. And that gets exacerbated by lack of clear and agreed outcomes at the get-go. PR Works when you start with the end in mind and measure progress along the way.
6. Agencies value work done over outcomes delivered… PR Works where the Client is clear about what they value.
7. … but don’t invest to deliver value add in terms of measurement and strategy. If it ain’t on the clock, it ain’t happening. PR Works where the Agency invests in adding value.
8. and the main one… The Agency doesn’t deliver on the implied or direct promist of coverage. This is often a result of Agency selection processes that resemble beauty paradaes. Here the Agency is forced to sell agressively and often sets a bar which they then struggle to get over. This goes back to 6 & 7, in part. PR Works where there has been an effort to look for the right things in a relationship.

Link to The Top 10 Reasons Why PR Doesn’t Work | AlwaysOn

Loving all the spin and swirls of Wag-Ed’s memo on “how to handle Fred” being leaked. What’s most amusing is the two assumptions that all PR Pros are doing this. Really they aren’t. And 6,000 words, don’t worry hacks, Execs generally don’t read anything exceeding 500 words.

All of this stems from Wired’s story on transparency. I also chatted to Fred on the Channel 9 piece. Fred’s a terrific journalist and very, very smart. Frank, like Fred, is also a good guy. I’m surprised anyone feels the need to defend this practice or conveniently bundle it under the guise of transparency.

But while I’m on this track, how about every journalist publish all their notes for all of us to read post publication of a story. Tapes become podcasts. Notes loaded into a blog or Wiki. Sources disclosed. Now we’re talking transparency.

Chris makes a great point:

By the way, as far as I can tell, everything in the memo is accurate. I also think the executives were very well served by the document; they did indeed stick to their message and they got pretty much the story they wanted. This was also, as it happens, the story I wanted–or was it just the story I thought I wanted because I was so effectively spun by Microsoft’s PR machine? The mind reels…

And therein is the rub, when great journalists with good ideas meet willing, prepared participants, terrific stories are generated. I don’t mean prepared in a cynical way – I mean in the sense they know what they are meeting about, what the other person wants from the meeting, what the context is, and what the key facts are. From that perspective, the Wag-Ed memo was good. Long, but good…

Sun is on the hunt… “This key member of Sun’s Executive Communications team will be responsible for researching and identifying emerging market conversations, working across Sun’s Global Communications group to develop discrete proposals, and incubating concepts with members of Sun’s leadership team including the CEO and his direct staff.” They are a great bunch and this would be a terrific gig if you love communications and technology. Give Noel a bell if you are interested.  (noel.hartzell@sun.com)

Alan has an insightful post on the latest Oracle vs. SAP skirmish… Is this just playmaking on Oracle’s part or a legitimate case of corporate espionage? Either way, Alan makes a key point that the court of law is different than the court of public opinion…

For SAP, which cultivates a Boy Scout brand, this presents the ongoing problem of whether and how to respond to yet another Oracle gambit, not simply in the court of law, but in the court of public opinion. If it deigns to play ball, it will hedge its “Rise Above” philosopy (a little different than Oracle’s), stooping to its competitor’s aggressive play-calling as it recalls for the marketplace that, c’mon folks, Oracle’s the dirty one here. Whether it does this directly or through surrogates, the reminder that Oracle is a media-convicted trash-sorting secret-stealer will be run by way of simple Mirrors, plays that expose the truth, or Recasts, plays that spin the truth. But that, of course, will put one SAP foot into a well-laid trap because it will allow Oracle to run its own Mirrors on SAP’s possible new penchant for pinching private data.

In the era of three letter acronyms – many of which have spawned billion dollar industries – it turns out that reputation is a critical motivator for investments in IT, legal and compliance.

One of these acronyms is PCI – the Payment Card Industry Standard. In short, if you are a retailer or merchant processing credit or debit cards, you need to comply or get fined. But the real motivator is loss of reputation. As Michael says:

PCI is good, strong, it has the right ideas and motives, but it doesn’t cost enough to ignore. £500,000 isn’t enough for a big push, or even the big publicity to generate more talk around a big push. The loss of brand reputation absolutely is.

Just look at the TJMax case. The reputational damage is now in the extreme and a major communications issue. I wonder how many communications teams are working with the IT teams on crisis planning related to IT compliance? If not, get going…