Flack's Revenge

Thomas Friedman had a great column (The Whole World is Watching) in the NY Times yesterday that touched on some related themes I have been discussing in my recent posts about user generated content (UGC) and PR.

According to Friedman, UGC and Web tools have made us all into potential publishers, paparazzi and filmmakers.  The flip side of is that any and all of us can be instantly thrust onto the world’s stage.  Digital fingerprints leave us up there forever.

The conclusion has important implications whether you are in PR, management, customer service – really, any job or station in life.  Since we are all potentially "naked" and up there on stage, and the Web offers easily accessible dossiers courtesy Google,  it is not the minor incidentals that count – what your product looks like today, or how tall you are – because these details can be captured, archived and in some cases easily imitated. 

No, it is how you act that forms a lasting impression, and is harder to imitate.  This can relate to individuals, and how they behave (or not) in public, as well as to a company’s business processes.

Friedman refers to a book that influenced his thinking on this, simply called "How," by Dov Seidman, C.E.O. of  I.R.N., a business ethics company.  According to Friedman,  "Seidman’s simple thesis is that in this transparent world ‘how’ you live your life and ‘how’ you conduct your business now matters more than ever,because so many
people can now see into what you do and tell so many other people about
it on their own without any editor. To win now, he argues, you have to
turn these new conditions to your advantage."

The implications for PR?  Friedman says:"Companies
that get their hows wrong won’t be able to just hire a P.R. firm to
clean up the mess by a taking a couple of reporters to lunch — not
when everyone is a reporter and can talk back and be heard globally."

Which offers a pretty bleak view for the profession, that is if you buy into the mistaken notion that our jobs consist of damage control and schmoozing reporters (see the Fusion blog’s post about PR myths.)

If, on the other hand, you have a more expansive and accurate view of the profession, you will take away a lot from his advice in his closing statement  "whetheryou’re selling cars or newspapers (or just buying one at the
newsstand), get your hows right — how you build trust, how you
collaborate, how you lead and how you say you’re sorry. More people
than ever will know about it when you do — or don’t."

As I discussed in my last post, there is a raucous new dinner guest at the media table and that guest is the consumer (AKA "user").

A fickle and sometimes cranky type, consumers are flexing their muscles and expressing themselves in myriad ways – causing us agency types (ad, PR, digital, whatever; see Blackshaw’s ClikckZ article "Who Owns the Influencer?") – to tie ourselves up in knots as we:
1) realize that life is no longer so simple, safe and secure as we once understood; and
2) bemoan our loss of control over the brand messages – control that just yesterday seemed so firmly in our clutches.

A fiercer and more terrifying breed than the consumer is the consumer influencer.  These people can be of the old school, off line variety – Gladwell’s Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen, or Godin’s Sneezers – the hyper connected and opinionated savants that are knowledgeable, credible, passionate, and outspoken about their product choices.

Add a dash of tech savvy and production values and the figurative network nodes become literal nodes, as these same people realize that they can amplify their reach and influence through the miracles of social media and the new Web.  In short, they can become digital influencers.

So, back to Blackshaw’s question: Who Owns the Influencer?  From my own, PR myopic viewpoint, I’d rather address the question: "What can PR do about users and digital influencers?"

I think the way forward becomes more clear once we understand a few simple rules:

1) It’s a New World, Get Used to it (and that is not necessarily a bad thing)

In  the good old days – meaning less than 10 years ago – audiences that we wanted to connect with were passive readers, viewers and listeners.  Further, to connect with these audiences we needed to first persuade the media that our stories were newsworthy.

Today audiences are online and in everyones’ faces in growing numbers.  They are talking back, telling us exactly how they feel (are we listening?)  They are joining online communities that match their interests, jobs and viewpoints.

The art of PR targeting and media list building has typically been a very top down, broad stroked affair, characterized by the mindset: "go where you think the readers and viewers are, and, when in doubt, high circulation trumps all."

These days it is possible to target with micro precision.

And, guess what: you no longer need the media to carry your message.  Sure, their coverage is still important and can earn precious credibility points.  But it is no longer the only way to communicate with your audiences (on the other hand, communicating directly carries with it a whole new set of risks and responsibilities – in short, a whole new set of rules).

2) There’s a New Influencer in Town

We can also benefit by understanding that digital influencers might not look or act like the influencers of old.  This is the most obvious in the consumer products world, but also applies to B2B products and services.

Sure, it still works wonders to get Gartner’s blessing (if you are in IT) and the vaunted Magic Quadrant ranking.  Yet certain bloggers are growing in importance and should not be ignored, for example if you are in rich media tools, conferencing, and collaboration (Robin Good of MasterNewMedia and Kolabora blogs), publishing and content technologies (John Blossom of ContentBlogger) and mobile technologies (Ajit Jakor’s Open Gardens blog).

In addition to blogging, these people write books, speak at conferences, consult with and advise clients, and in some cases are also at the same time traditional analysts.

In the coming days and weeks I will be writing more about how to factor in digital influencers into your PR campaigns and strategies.

Not long ago I was discussing with my friend Lisa Langsdorf  (communications manager for About.com / NY Times and a real PR pro) the challenges of factoring online media into the PR equation, and she brought up an interesting perspective.  I thought it would make an excellent topic for this forum, and am pleased to present Lisa as my first guest blogger and the following post that she wrote:

“As PR executives, we’re often under pressure from clients to
deliver results, quickly. From a client’s perspective, results are one of the
few components of PR that can be measured and attached to a dollar value. The
result is that often times we rush to adopt the next big thing without
thoroughly evaluating how to effectively use it. Whether you are an online personality like Kim Kardashian or have recently started running a business, having an positive online reputation is very important. With the use of the internet, anyone can post a review online or write anything negative if they have bad experiences with a individual or a company. When it comes to business though, it may be worth looking into sites such as https://tribelocal.com/reputation-management-software/, to see how you can effectively manage you online reputation by using software programs. Thanks to technology and the internet, it has never been easier to generate leads online for your business.

The Internet, followed by blogs is a good example of a
platform and a medium that have the potential to work against a PR professional
if not approached strategically. The challenge is that, for the most part, what
you put on the Internet stays on the Internet. And sometimes, things that
aren’t intended to be put on the Internet make it there anyway. 

There are many examples of good corporate and personal
reputations that have been marred by poor use of the Internet by public
relations professionals. Wal-Mart and the company’s fake blog, or flog, is a
good example. It certainly didn’t help Wal-Mart’s reputation as a trusted
company, especially within the investor and media communities. But hiccups
don’t have to be monumental to impact your company’s reputation. Even small
mistakes such as misspellings and typos in an announcement can chip away at
your client’s, and even your, reputation. 

A few months ago a former colleague, who is a freelance
publicist, worked with an agency that had an online document storage software
client in need of some quick coverage. One of the agency’s senior executives
was also actively pitching the client and, in poor taste, pitched a reporter on
why Anna Nicole Smith should have had online document storage. The pitcher went
on to assert that, if Anna had online document storage, some of her posthumous
legal issues would have been quickly and easily resolved. 

I’m not sure how they would have been solved and neither did
the reporter who received the pitch because the full text of the email landed
on a bad pitch blog shortly after. The blog posted the name of the publicist
complete with a diatribe dissecting the pitch. While negative publicity such as
this probably didn’t have enormous impact on the agency or the client, it sure
couldn’t have helped the client / agency relationship and probably ended up
making them both look and feel foolish. The lesson: don’t send out anything
electronically unless you’re 100% comfortable with the possibility that
millions of eyes may see it too. 

A few years ago I started working at a PR agency that
encouraged us to send our online media clients’ articles to bloggers in the hope
that the blogger would mention the article and link back to our client’s site.
Makes sense, right? Well, while it may have benefited the client (and the
agency with some coverage to put on the report), I quickly realized that the
bloggers were assuming that I agreed with the content in the articles.  One of my clients was FOX News. I’m a Democrat, and, to this day, when people Google my name, they gather
from the results that I have some far right leaning tendencies. I often wonder how this will impact future
job offers. This serves as a reminder that publicists need to be as considerate
of their own reputations as they are of those of their clients. 

So why does this happen? Why do we sometimes risk our
reputations, and those of our clients, through poor use of the Internet as a PR
tool, platform and medium? Part of the problem is that it’s too easy. The
results are almost instantaneous—you could potentially start a PR campaign on
the Web in a matter of minutes where, in an off line world, the results are much
slower. 

The speed of the net also leaves a lot of room for
error. If a reporter wants the story yesterday, we may not have enough time to
develop talking points for our clients or to prep them properly. This takes
control of the message from our hands and puts it into the hands of the
reporter. 

PR
professionals aren’t the only offenders online. Some reporters are too. I’ve
come across many an online reporter who, when rushing to file a story, didn’t
check their facts or didn’t grasp the story. This makes our lives much harder
and preparation beforehand even more essential. If the reporter doesn’t make
the correction, misinformation has the potential to linger indefinitely. 

So what are the keys to successful online campaigns? Success
lies in ceasing to look at the Internet as a medium for instant coverage and
instead thinking seriously and strategically about the consequences of every
move we conduct online. It means rethinking every pitch, re-editing every
release and thoroughly outlining messages for our spokespeople. It means
thinking seriously about whether the message we’re sending out today will be
one that positively sustains itself for the long haul. And it means constant
vigilance and attention, and the nurturing of your online reputation, as the
image you would like to convey and what turns up in a Google search about you,
your company, client or brand may be two very different things. Because, while
we had almost a century to perfect print PR, the pace of the Internet and
technology generally leaves us little room for catch up but definitely no room
for error.”

Lisa Langsdorf