Flack's Revenge

I have written a lot about technology and communications – about technology categories, and the
importance of understanding the nuances of the space you work (and communicate in).

In researching the buzz in a space, there are many excellent tools PR folks use.  Periodicals search engines like Nexis, Factiva, and Meltwater come to mind (I have worked with all of these at various times and each has its merits).

One of the first things I will do is enter the technology category as a search phrase.  Depending on how you structure your search, the results can have press releases from newswire distribution services mixed in.
I have observed that some spaces have a much higher ratio of press releases to actual editorial content.  To me this says there is a lot of bluster in these spaces, but the vendors and their PR teams have not had much luck in convincing the media that the category is worth covering.

So I thought I would introduce the (drum roll please)…. Flack’s Revenge Bluster Index – a handy guide which charts, for a given technology category search, the ratio of news releases over real articles.
A high index means there’s a lot of bluster – much heat but little light.  A lower index might indicate that the media is picking up on a story without lots of PR impetus (it is not often that you run into these under-promoted spaces).

As an example (see chart) I have selected a few terms that were mentioned on sites that claim to track emerging tech trends.  I have structured the searches (done on Factiva, across all publications and news distribution services they track) going back six months and reviewed the results to take care that spurious articles and press releases were not included, and to not count multiple listings of the same press release or article.

So far, unfortunately, a manual exercise, but one that is hopefully interesting and illuminating.  My next step will be to try to provide a user interactive tool that automates the process, using Yahoo Pipes (if it in fact can do this) and publicly available article search tools.

No doubt the approach can be improved.  For example, why not take a look at traditional vs. social media tracking of certain tech categories?  Another significant improvement would be to further refine results so that they just focus on articles and releases where the tech term is the main subject of the story.  Finally, the index as described here is a ratio.  It seems to me it should also be important to chart sheer volumes of articles and press releases – perhaps in a related Noise index.

I would not take the results above too seriously due to lack of rigor in the process.  For what it is worth, they say that there is lots of bluster in the realm of semantic applications (eight press releases featured the term, out of a total of 12 stories).  On the other end of the chart, Prediction Markets featured relatively few press releases (10, out of a total of 101 stories). There is less bluster in this space.

Each space has its own story and there are many related variables.  Less bluster could mean fewer vendors participating in a space that the media apparently thinks is a hot story.  More bluster means that the media is not picking up on it, but this could be for very good reasons: perhaps an ill-conceived technology, or one that really doesn’t resonate for whatever reason.  Or the media could be writing about the technology using a different label for it.

The biggest takeaway, of course, is that PR should be about much more than press releases.  If you are in a space with a high bluster index, it makes sense to first recognize this, explore why it is so, and then take the steps needed to more efficiently get your story out.

I have occasionally blogged about the Bush administration’s questionable policies and Machiavellian PR maneuvering.

So when the first reports came out about Scott McClellan’s book (see White House Insider Writes Scathing Critique of Bush Admin. on CBC),  I have to admit I did enjoy it a bit, hearing that McClellan has validated things which were already pretty established anyway.

According to the article:

In a scathing new book, a Washington insider calls President George W.
Bush to task for selling the war in Iraq with a “political propaganda
campaign…

“I still like and admire President Bush but he and his advisers
confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candour and
honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public
support during a time of war,” McClellan writes.

But in thinking things through a bit further, I have realized that this is nothing to gloat about, or thank McClellan for, and that it spells some interesting questions for PR.

All the President’s Flacks

Scott McClellan always seemed a little lead-footed to me. He generally was a Piñata during press briefings.   He does have his good points, he was less unctuous than Ari Fleischer who preceded him in the role, and less glib with the media than Tony Snow, who followed Scott.  McClellan always sported a kind of dopey sincerity which made him almost endearing, if not entirely believable.

Perhaps it is this sincerity which makes him want to spill his guts now, or perhaps he just wants to sell books.  If he was so opposed to the Bush administration’s questionable policies and communications tactics, why not quit or speak out then?  It really is an untenable position, and reeks of opportunism.

It also poses the larger question about PR’s obligations to clients and employers.  Don’t we have an ethical obligation to keep discussions we have as trusted advisers close to the vest?  It seems there should be a kind of attorney or shrink  privilege (our work does sometimes feel more like psychotherapy).  After all, we are the ultimate insiders.

Some might disagree with the lawyer analogy – lawyers are obligated to defend their clients even if they detest them or believe in their heart of hearts that the client is guilty. Sure, all of us in the PR agency world have had to deal with clients we disliked or believed had ill-conceived products or business plans.  I would like to think there are lines we would not cross – misleading when it comes to war should be one such line.

And to compound this by first enabling it, and then – belatedly – publicly airing your concerns creates a new low.

In Revenge of the Nerds last week I wrote that tech media (albeit online tech media) suddenly seems to be hot again.

So I was amused to see David Brooks NY Times Op Ed on Friday, titled Alpha Geeks.

David Brooks, as you may well know, is a pundit, author, journalist and astute chronicler of sociological trends (he wrote Bobos in Paradise). In the column, he talks about the rise of the geek, including the derivation of the word “nerd,” the difference between geeks and and nerds, and everything else you wanted to know about the topic (and then some).

I include an excerpt below:

The future historians of the nerd ascendancy will likely note that the great empowerment phase began in the 1980s with the rise of Microsoft and the digital economy. Nerds began making large amounts of money and acquired economic credibility, the seedbed of social prestige. The information revolution produced a parade of highly confident nerd moguls — Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and so on.

Among adults, the words “geek” and “nerd” exchanged status positions. A nerd was still socially tainted, but geekdom acquired its own cool counterculture. A geek possessed a certain passion for specialized knowledge, but also a high degree of cultural awareness and poise that a nerd lacked. The jock can shine on the football field, but the geeks can display their supple sensibilities and well-modulated emotions on their Facebook pages, blogs, text messages and Twitter feeds. Now there are armies of designers, researchers, media mavens and other cultural producers with a talent for whimsical self-mockery, arcane social references and late-night analysis.

They can visit eclectic sites like Kottke.org and Cool Hunting, experiment with fonts, admire Stewart Brand and Lawrence Lessig and join social-networking communities with ironical names. They’ve created a new definition of what it means to be cool, a definition that leaves out the talents of the jocks, the M.B.A.-types and the less educated. In “The Laws of Cool,” Alan Liu writes: “Cool is a feeling for information.” When someone has that dexterity, you know it.

Given the shifts happening in the media world, rise of social and online media, and the growing importance of technology in PR, perhaps now is good time for us PR folk (and not just tech PR types) to find our inner geeks.