« Katrina, London Bombing and Tsunami--This Round To the Old Media | Main | Implications of Reputation--How Intangibles Drive Performance and Strategic Advantage »
September 12, 2005
The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends
One of the songs in the musical OKLAHOMA (I know I am showing my age) starts with Aunt Eller Murphy, doyenne of the community, grabbing a farmer and a cowboy who are insulting each other. She tells them to get along for the good of all, leading to a square dance in which cowboys dance with the farmers' daughters and vice versa.
I feel the same way about bloggers and PR people (BTW, I'm both: http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog). Whether citizen journalist, simple story-teller, local experts, public diarists, gossip or wise-cracker, most bloggers are truth seekers and disseminators of information. PR folks worth their salt are also keenly interested in the honest communication of ideas and information on behalf of their clients.
Companies are waking up to the harsh reality that they cannot control their communications to multiple stakeholders. A company just has to take a look at the blogoshere to see that its customers are now clearly and firmly in charge of the conversation. So, companies need to establish relationships, based on mutual respect, continuous dialogue and transparency. PR people are an important bridge to between companies, media and customers. We embrace the new world of immediacy, credibility and horizontal peer-to-peer communications.
I saddens me to see postings like the one by Jeremy Zawodny (http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004930.html) in which he suggests a blanket ban on emails from tech PR firms. I realize this might be a natural reaction to the surfeit of emails sent out by my PR colleagues who believe that bloggers are just like journalists who will simply bin any unwanted materials. In fact this "cover the waterfront" approach (or No Media Left Behind) is infuriating because it takes up time and competes for bloggers' attention.
But there is a bigger issue at hand. Many bloggers do not trust PR people because they believe we are spinners who are being paid to obfuscate or cover up. This trust gap can only be overcome by transparency on purpose and funding source, and by PR people being willing to acknowledge client shortcomings as well as promoting the attributes in continuing conversations instead of packaged press releases.
Edelman is trying to find useful and transparent ways for PR people to engage with the blogosphere on behalf of its clients. We believe that you are the voice of the consumers in co-creation of products, the spirit of the employees who seek a role in the betterment of their companies, the citizen journalists who break news about the products they use (as well as on more important topics, as shown in the horrifying and sad events of the past couple of weeks.)
That is why Edelman and Technorati are cooperating on a survey of bloggers to be emailed out at the end of next week. We are going to ask bloggers how we can get the relationship right, how PR companies can help them rather than annoy them, how we can improve the conversation, how we can earn their trust. We will post the findings on the Edelman Web site on October 6 and to email results to all those who participated in the survey. We will also share the data with those in the PR business. Our goal is simple--we want to create a best practice approach that will help the cowman and the farmer to be friends.
I would appreciate your feedback on this approach, hopefully before Friday. I will post the proposed questionnaire tomorrow. What would you do differently? I am all ears (literally according to my kids) :).
Posted by Edelman at September 12, 2005 11:54 AM
Comments
It's also about good, targeted pitches. If you remember the Russell Beattie SNAFU, what happened was a PR blogger sent him a pitch that wasn't a fit for his blog, and then when Beattie replied/responded for more information, he got no response.
It's things like that that hurt PR. The so-called New PR should take a page from Old PR and learn about your target, and respond. It's really as simple as that sometimes.
In a proposal and pitch, I noted to the potential client that blogs are important, but it's more important to actually target the right blogs and bloggers.
And, transparency. That's another hot topic that I can go on about for hours... but too many bloggers aren't transparent enough about their relationships and clients.
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper at September 14, 2005 2:21 PM
Jeremy I think we will need to move beyond pitching To listening and relationships We cannot assume bloggers are like reporters who will toss extraneous pitches
Anyway we are all pushing this revolution thanks for writing
Posted by: Richard Edelman at September 15, 2005 12:12 PM
Regarding Jeremy's Pitch and Propsal idea, isn't the Blogosphere more about conversation than one-way communication? How can this conversation be refelected with PR practitioners without it being considered an "interview" or citing the pratitioner as a spokesperson?
These ideas are definately something that are new to me and I am interested in how the community works them out.
Posted by: Robert Taylor at September 17, 2005 7:13 AM
Richard
It strikes me that pure objectivity is the highest hurdle for PR people to overcome. As soon as a pr person or company becomes professionally connected with a project, they become partisan. Of course, they can add value to an initiative by, inter-alia, reflecting consumer/public concerns and opinion but once a fee is involved, the ability of the pr person to be objective and open about acknowledging issues is fatally compromised. So the gap is one of credibility and I'm looking forward to seeing your research design to see how you can tease that out. Peter
Posted by: Peter Robbins at September 21, 2005 7:24 AM
Robert - blogs are a conversation, but just like at a cocktail party, you have to realize who you are talking to, and if they even care. Why would I start talking about baby products to an engineer with no kids and no interest? I wouldn't - but you will see tech blogs pitched on baby products because of a slight tech tie-in.
As for being cited as the lead, that's up to each blogger. When I am pitched for my blog on a story, I don't necessarily say "I was pitched this" or "I went out and requested this interview" - does it really add to the conversation?
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper at September 21, 2005 11:36 AM
JP the usual strong commentary
Our Technorati survey goes out end of this week
Thanks for your support on the blog
We need to know
Posted by: Richard Edelman at September 22, 2005 3:58 PM
Peter,
I think PR folks cannot be objective--they can and should be client advocates Having said that, we should aim for journalist level quality in our content We should use third parties with true expertise as our reference points We should also offer opportunities for co-creation--that is consumer feedback on a given proposition, with the client learning from the commentary Note that GM management actually reads posts from the Fast Lane blog on quality issues Thanks for writing
Posted by: Richard Edelman at September 23, 2005 9:07 AM
Richard,
You mentioned "We should also offer opportunities for co-creation--that is consumer feedback on a given proposition, with the client learning from the commentary Note that GM management actually reads posts from the Fast Lane blog on quality issues," in your discussion with Peter.
I think that blogs really are an opportunity for companies to build better products. In some ways I think that blogging will really put the marketing concept into effect for many companies in the same way that paid search marketing has for ROI marketing.
Though I think that companies have to be prepared for the reaction to using blogs. I've chatted with a few GM customers and they were not happy with GM's lack of response to their comment posts.
I think you are right on the nail with this survey. Thanks
John
Posted by: john cass at October 13, 2005 4:43 PM
John
Interesting that GM PR guy Gary Grates told me that GM exec committee looks at feedback from Fast Lane on product quality and service
This is the opportunity for companies to allow consumers an early view of product then show responsiveness to feedback A giant focus group but one with real clout!
Thanks for reading my blog
Posted by: Richard Edelman at October 14, 2005 11:13 AM