The Demise of Traditional PR? It’s the Stories, Stupid!
By Kelly Kolhagen
Senior Vice President, MSL Detroit
Eleven years ago, I quit a 21-year career in the newspaper business and joined a former colleague at his upstart PR firm in suburban Detroit. After years of loathing the PR people who called on deadline to pitch Bladder Control Awareness Month or Cling Peach Week, I left journalism because the Internet was about to reinvent how news was gathered and delivered – and financed. None of it was good news for parents like me, looking down the double barrel of orthodontia and college.
Since then, papers have reduced their staffs, slashed pay and benefits or folded entirely. But just as music didn’t die when vinyl LPs and cassettes went away, journalism hasn’t died, either. Far from it. The past six months alone have created enough material to keep tens of thousands of journalists busy. News junkies can still dabble in traditional drugs like the printed New York Times and network TV to digital remedies like Huffington Post and the uber-grassroots Patch, where many ex-newspaper men and women have found refuge.
I believe the same is true for PR. Social media and its shiny apps and tools have tempted many among us to write the obit for so-called “traditional” PR in favor of digital PR, as if you can even separate them anymore. In my view, they’re missing the point. It has always been about the message, not the medium. Or as James Carville might say, it’s the story, stupid.
Eighty percent of this business is about finding great stories and effective ways to tell them. Social media is wonderful tool, but it doesn’t make up for a lousy story or a nonexistent strategy, and it never will.
Remember Ted Williams, the homeless guy with the honey golden voice whose drug and alcohol addiction left him panhandling on the streets? A multimedia producer for the Columbus Dispatch captured a video of him and posted it on YouTube. A million views and a whirlwind of high-profile TV appearances later, Williams was offered more jobs than several men could perform. His was a tale of redemption and second chances – a classic story that has been told since the invention of the printing press. While it took the Internet to spread it across the world, it went viral for the simple reason that it was a modern-day rendition of “Queen for a Day.”
When it comes to word-of-mouth buzz, technology has changed the delivery but not its basic premise. When I was a kid, the butcher who sold rotten liverwurst or put his thumb on the scale faced being outed at the clotheslines, where the homemakers of the neighborhood took no prisoners. Today, moms are working outside the home, and they’re still outing cheaters on blogs, Facebook, twitter, Angie’s List, Kudzu and other digital “clotheslines.”
PR will always be ruled by great stories told to the right people. I find comfort in that because I know today’s killer app and Facebook phenom are tomorrow’s clothesline or evening newspaper or cassette tapes – destined for history’s cutout bin.
- Date: 05.03.2011
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Influencers You Should Know: William McBee at remove the labels
When you think about influencers in the world of tech a few big names most likely spring to mind. But below that tier of huge tech blogs breaking every new story in the world of consumer electronics and gee whiz gadgetry is a layer of bloggers producing in depth, quality content consisting of personalized news, reviews, speculation and opinion.
One such blogger is William McBee, the man behind remove the labels, a valuable influencer in our Multiloguer database and to whom MSL has been pitching for several years. We caught up with William recently and asked him what motivates him and how agencies can better work with him.
Blogworks: You built a laser so it’s no surprise you started blogging. What got you started? I’m assuming you were active online at message boards and the like before the birth of remove the labels?
McBee: The laser came as a project as a kid. My father and my uncle, who just recently retired from IBM after 40 years of working with them, fostered my inner-tinkerer as a kid, which lead to my love of gadgets, computers and technology that continues today. My first time really doing anything on the Internet was the Sony PSX FAQ that was released way back in 1994 via Usenet when I was at the University of Colorado and I’ve been online since.
- Date: 04.08.2011
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Arcade Fire, Video and HTML5
What happens when a band, a director and Google collaborate to create a modern music experience? Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown,” a project by Chris Milk that uses HTML5 and Google Maps to create a music video customized to each viewer’s childhood.
Best viewed in Google Chrome, the site prompts users to enter the address of the home in which they were raised and images of their neighborhood appear in front of them played to the band’s The Suburbs single “We Used to Wait.”
The multi-browser movie ends with the opportunity to draft a letter to your childhood self. To begin the hyper-personal and somewhat creepy experience, visit thewildernessdowntown.com.
- Date: 09.02.2010
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Non-Profits and Literacy AND Digital Marketing, Oh My!
Today is Youth Literacy Day — a celebration of reading, writing, and self-expression, and of all the organizations, professionals, volunteers and teachers who help children learn and love to read. To celebrate this day, 826Michigan, a non-profit organization several of us at MS&L volunteer for, is partnering with its affiliates across the U.S. for a really cool fund-raising effort — www.826on826.org.
With mounting pressure on school systems and parents, 826 writing centers help bridge the gap for students and families by providing free, one-on-one attention and writing help to all young people ages 6 through 18.
826 chapters are asking everyone to donate $8.26 on 8/26 to support youth literacy in their city. They’ve developed a multi-pronged online strategy to get people mobilized. Here are all the ways they’ve set up for folks to donate:
- Donate via SMS with a mobile device – users can text “WRITE” to 20222 to make a one-time donation of $10 on August 26th.
- PayPal integration at 826on826.org that lets users donate $8.26
- Facebook Donation Application – download the app and enter your cell number to dontate $8.26
826 National is also using Facebook and Twitter channels across all regional 826 operations to get the word out. Participants can like or follow 826Michigan on:
Check out the campaign today and donate if you can. This is a great example of how regional and national non-profits are using social media to secure donations and spread the word about a cause.
To learn more about 826 National and its chapters across the US, click here.
- Date: 08.26.2010
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A Search Engine that Saves the Rain Forest
Is it possible for a new search engine to stand out against giant Google? Ecosia, founded a few months ago, is attempting just that by marketing itself as a green search engine. Ecosia servers run on green electricity and 80 percent of the search engine’s income will be donated to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Yahoo and Bing are providing Ecosia with search results and sponsored links. On average, each search on Ecosia saves 21.5 square feet of rain forest. The WWF said in a press release that the average Internet user could protect about 21,500 square feet of rain forest every year by using Ecosia, which is about the size of an ice hockey rink.
- Date: 08.25.2010
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Not So Fast …
Earlier this week, we discussed JetBlue’s silence in the wake of the Steven Slater incident. Turns out maybe there was more of a social-media method behind the company’s measured response. Charlie Kondek, MS&L Digital’s director of new media relations, takes a closer look.
There’s a great piece on Bulldog Reporter by JetBlue’s Director of Corporate Communications, Jenny Dervin, on how the company is navigating its recent crisis. Last week, one of JetBlue’s flight attendants fulfilled every working stiff’s fantasy of telling off his customers and walking off the job site – in this case, grabbing a beer and sliding down the airplane chute! Dervin nicely recaps both the praise and criticisms of JetBlue’s PR response and reveals the company’s strategy before ending with a request from feedback from the corp comm community at large.
Applause for Dervin and Bulldog Reporter, and I’d add this is required reading for anyone in our industry. Weightier minds than mine with more experience than I have in crisis PR would better serve this topic but my one quibble with JetBlue’s performance so far is that they should have moved quicker, something Dervin admits. Crisis 101 for social media teaches us that since news is real time companies should issue a statement immediately, even if it’s only a statement that says they can reveal nothing pending an investigation and that a more detailed statement is forthcoming. Maybe another lesson is that since air travel is an industry fraught with emotions the company should have had a faster response time in place – although who could have predicted this?
I gotta admit, grabbing the beer was a nice touch.
- Date: 08.19.2010
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When a Social Media Leader Goes Silent
JetBlue Airlines has a reputation for customer service, transparency and a social media savvy.
So when JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater made his dramatic exit from a company plane this week – taking to the intercom and berating passengers before deploying the emergency-exit slide and deplaning with a Heineken in his hand – the airline found itself in an unusual position.
Advertising Age looked at JetBlue’s curiously quiet response to the story.
While the Internets are ablaze with the story, JetBlue has remained almost entirely silent. There’s no mention of the incident on the company’s Facebook page and only a vague reference to it on the JetBlue corporate blog. Meanwhile, the only tweets it’s issued about it are of the “no comment” variety.
“One of the difficulties they are facing is they have to reconcile the contradiction between the public’s expectations that they are going to get the full story from JetBlue immediately, especially based on JetBlue’s history,” said Jonathan Bellinger, VP-social media strategy at Omnicom Group’s Ketchum said.
It should be interesting to see how JetBlue reacts to the story over time.
- Date: 08.16.2010
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HTML5: “You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.”
HTML5 is undoubtedly a hot topic in web development these days and, fueled by Steve Jobs’ anti-Flash comments, the trend toward building “HTML5″ sites and applications has caught the attention of clients and marketers alike. However, many of these non-technical people don’t have a clear picture of what HTML5 actually is.
HTML5 is being thrown about as a buzzword to include all kinds of emerging open web technologies. Things like CSS3, geolocation, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), Web APIs and even mobile are being grouped in under the umbrella of HTML5. Even Apple’s own HTML5 gallery, designed to show off their browser’s support for HTML5, famously did little to clarify the situation (only two of their seven demos actually show off HTML5 features). This is definitely not the first time the web development industry has had a potentially inaccurate name slapped on new technology. Just like back in the dark ages (way back around 2004) “AJAX” was the term on everyone’s lips. It originally stood for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, and was basically a method for web applications to retrieve data from the server and update the page without a complete page refresh, but it was inaccurately applied to everything from simple JavaScript animations to glossy button graphics. Despite the confusion, the demand for “AJAX-y” sites enabled programmers to innovate and perfect techniques that have shaped modern web development.
So, while some developers argue that we need to clarify the difference between the hype and the technology, maybe the misuse of “HTML5″ as an industry buzzword isn’t a bad thing after all. Ultimately, what could be an annoyance to developers could end up being the saving grace of the open web. Seattle area web developer, Jeff Croft, sums it up perfectly: “But who cares? Ultimately, the coining of “AJAX,” and it’s (mis)use got us into building a lot of awesome things that are useful to regular people. Today, “HTML5″ is doing the same thing. That’s something to be stoked, not upset, about.”
- Date: 08.12.2010
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The Birth of the Fail Whale
Mashable recently published an interview with Yiying Lu, the graphic artist responsible for the image now known as Twitter’s infamous “Fail Whale.” Lu created the illustration, named “Lifting a Dreamer,” as a greeting to her friends across the ocean and posted it to iStockphoto.
Developers at Twitter found the stock image and decided to use it on their 404 page. The Twitter team thought it was a fitting depiction of their efforts to solve scalability issues, replacing their former 404 image – an LOLcat.
Unfortunately, the Fail Whale has become an image of frustration for many, which was never Lu’s intention.
“I hate the name Fail Whale,” she said. “Really, I do hate it … I’m like, ‘It’s not a Fail Whale, it’s like, originally, just a message for my friends far away and it has absolutely nothing to do with failure.’ ”
- Date: 08.03.2010
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The Future of PR is Here
Recently, I was involved in examining resumes and interviewing for two internship positions here at MSL Digital and I’m struck by how accomplished the applicants are in professional social media work. Our embarrassment of applicant riches is in part explained by the nature of the economy and job market here in southeast Michigan; I think a lot more people are looking for work, even internships, than might be otherwise. But I think it also indicates that the PR professional of the future, one with well rounded experiences in content creation, community management and other skills, has arrived. Honestly, I wanted to hire them all.
I’ve been involved in the hiring and management of interns and AE-level positions before and I see a definite trend occurring. Here’s what I think the well rounded PR professional should have these days when it comes to social media, recognizing that not all candidates for entry level positions will have had a chance to try their hand in all areas, and here’s where I’m seeing the most experience on the applicants I’m reviewing. If you can use this as a checklist for your own skills or the skills of those you should be hiring, I’ll have contributed something valuable indeed – after all, I think the nature of our work on the digital side of PR and communications is evolving so rapidly that no one has had a chance to nail down what comprises the “compleat” professional.
1) Personal social media use. This one’s a given. Used to be that when we’d ask applicants about their experience in social media they’d always disregard their personal use of it as irrelevant. Not so these days. It’s more common to hear that applicants are personal consumers of blogs and blogging, Facebook, Twitter and others.
2) Content creation. Often, this is where applicants shine. They’ve been taught to write and sometimes produce video and graphics in school and have had a chance to produce materials either as students or young professionals. News and feature writing at college papers (print and online), email newsletters, blogging (professionally or as a hobby) are in evidence on the resumes I’m seeing.
3) Community management. Another area where entry-level applicants seem to have the most experience. I’ve noticed that often, daily management of Facebook and Twitter pages are seen by some companies as a junior function. I sometimes feel companies go, “I don’t get our Facebook page or see much value in it – give it to the intern.” A lot of the entry-level applicants I’m seeing have babysat and sometimes driven the strategy for these platforms.
4) Client training and policy development. A good opportunity for professionals at this level to grow is in the development of documentation for clients on what social media is and how it can be used. To be sure, at firms like ours the POV paper or official social media policy is a document involving the highest level of skill, authority and collaboration. But I’m seeing a lot of applicants that had to determine what some aspect of social media was and write up a memo for their supervisor or client and provide training in its use.
5) Outreach. This is a skill usually missing in the applicants I see. Maybe it’s that few firms seem to do influencer outreach aka social media relations the way we here at MSL Digital do, but very few people I interview have “pitched bloggers” and other influencers to any great degree. Now, I’m a big believer in training, coaching and mentoring and believe anyone can be taught, but when I’m looking for someone to contribute to our pitch teams I’m usually more drawn to someone from a traditional media relations background, someone that loves to pitch (and many PR people, ahem, do not love to pitch). We’ve had a lot of success adapting traditional practitioners of this craft to social media.
- Date: 08.02.2010
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