Archive for the ‘Pure PR’ Category

Paul Holmes is in Delhi this week for the ICCO (International Communications Consultancy Organisation) World Summit, which has brought together some senior public relations people from around the world to discuss “next practices.” His posts are absolutely worth reading. Some of the highlights so far:

• The Disconnect: Peter Verrengia of Fleishman Hillard, talking about evaluation
• From Control to Conversation: Publicis Group PR chairman Lou Capozzi talks about the shift from an age of controlled communication to a new age of conversation… Paul Taaffe of Hill & Knowlton, provides a lively counterpoint. He doesn’t disagree with Lou, but he does question whether any public relations firm — his own included — is ready to step up to the challenge of driving conversations, and doing so in a media neutral way. >> I would also add “client neutral” way.
• A License to Thrill: Harold Burson in his mid 80s is still as spry and engaged as ever… He has interesting things to say about the lack of any institutionalized body of knowledge and therefore of any sense of history, all of which I agree with, but his speech is likely to be remembered for his endorsement of licensing…

Go read and subscribe to The Holmes Report – money well spent.

According to CNet.

In a blog entry on Monday, Schwartz ponders why public companies like his must issue paper-based press releases or stage “anachronistic” telephonic conference calls every time they want to reveal information considered material to their financial performance. (He made a similar plea last year.)

“I would argue that none of those routes are as accessible to the general public as a this blog, or Sun’s web site,” Schwartz wrote.

Link to Sun CEO wants SEC’s blog blessing | News.blog | CNET News.com

Lee Gomes on the use of the word Breakthrough in press releases. There are plenty of other common phrases. Like “leading” – if everyone is leading then who isn’t? A simple and imperfect Google search on ‘press release leading’ resulted in 92,700,999 results…

All companies, but especially those in technology, like few things better than to talk about their “breakthroughs,” those great leaps forward that make products out of the formerly impossible. A search by Factiva Consulting Services found that more than 8,600 press releases have been issued over the years with “breakthrough” in the headline, a majority of them by computer and electronics companies.

Our laziness in crafting news releases isn’t just tiresome, to Lee’s point, it perverts the very language we depend on for our trade.

Source: Portals – WSJ.com

Paul covers the acquisition of Financial Dynamics by management consulting firm FTI last week. He’s beaten me to the punch on several thoughts I had on reading this in the FT:

1. ‘Technical communications’ boutiques and agencies (IR, crisis comms, change management, positioning, etc.) have a natural synergy with large consulting firms.
2. The synergy isn’t just in practice area, it is also in working model.
3. As the larger (McKinsey) and more niche consulting firms look for growth outside traditional services there will be more M&A in this area.
4. There are a large group of agencies of all shapes and sizes that would die a certain death inside a management consulting firm. Culturally they are not a fit and the client has an expectation of them that would not be fulfilled by the working practices of say, a McKinsey.

Here is what Paul had to say in The Holmes Report:

Nevertheless, the possibility that other management consulting or professional service firms might take an interest in public relations consultancies—particularly those at the high value-added end of the business—is intriguing, and many PR agency principals believe their firms have more in common with the consulting business than they do with the advertising business, which traditionally has been the biggest buyer of public relations agencies. Charles Watson, chief executive of FD, says financial PR has more in common with consulting than with the advertising agency businesses and predicted that there could be “other similar transactions to come. There is a growing recognition on the part of the consulting business that reputation and risk management and communications are becoming more important issues for their clients at the CEO level.”