This post is about:
- Zeal for PR
- A broken model?
- What comes next
Zeal for PR
Good God, in the agency days, the times I had a client obsessed with coverage of one kind or another.
One client -- an Austin-based egomaniac that worked for an investment bank before he ran his own venture-backed company straight into the ground -- needed to be profiled by the Wall Street Journal. His vehicle for doing so? Hiring a COO. Absolutely, that was newsworthy! We told him the pitch would fail. He insisted. We pitched. It failed. We told him. He wanted to fire the firm on the spot. Over e-mail (he was traveling). I told him to e-mail me a number where I could call him. Like the bully he was, he cowered behind the "I don't have time to talk to you," line, then had his assistant fire us a month later.
Another client, one who lived by the "send a news release for absolutely anything" strategy of editor annoyance, got tired of the steady results we were building for him and decided he wanted to be profiled personally in business magazines. He'd started a couple of companies, lost one of them, lived in his car for while, then had a hit. Cashed out, started something new. He drove us to distraction on this before we talked him into a better way to spend our time on his behalf.
In a good, straight-ahead post yesterday, the folks at the PR Squared blog recount the same kind of morass, only this time it was getting Arrington to cover them at TechCrunch. It will take you 15 seconds to read it and it's a great example of what can happen when well-intentioned but over-obsessed clients don't listen to their counsel. And how it can make the firm look bad.
The point: When most people think of PR, they still think of media relations mainly, but what they really want is third-party credibility. Someone in a perceived position of authority with no skin in the game to say "this is good, you should pay attention to it." That's a worthy goal -- and if you have something of true worth, that person will probably say something nice about you. But you cannot chase it too hard, or it backfires.
A broken model?
Arrington writes here about the encounter and the round of recently exchanged apologies with the company in question. The most interesting thing he wrote, I think, is this:
I don’t want companies to spend cycles with PR firms talking about strategies for getting in front of us, and how to deal with not getting a post on TC. I also don’t want entrepreneurs to be afraid to take a shot at me, or for PR firms to be giving clients advice on how to “stay on my good side”. We’re all human, and I’m used to taking shots. Plus, controversy is interesting. When the founder of MothersClick emailed and apologized, I assumed she did that because she felt that it was the right thing to do. My apology back was certainly heartfelt. I don’t want to have to wonder if that apology was drafted by her PR firm and sent to me as a business decision (and I’m assuming that isn’t the case).
Putting journalists up on a pedestal is very old media. Everything about TechCrunch, and most blogs, is about access. Comments are open, for better or worse. My email is on the about page. We have a company submission form. We even hired an analyst who’s primary job is to go through submissions and make sure we don’t miss good companies.
But clearly that’s broken, as evidenced by this encounter. MothersClick is a perfectly good startup that we would normally cover. Lots of other people did, if that means anything. But we missed it, and I’m pretty sure we miss a lot of others, too.
I don't know that the concept is broken, Mike. What you have is a) a very interesting site that speaks with authority, b) thousands of companies vying for your attention, and c) not enough time and capacity to handle it. When you can't deal with the workload and don't cover someone, their zeal can overtake them and attack you.
What this illustrates to me is a new medium that makes everyone feel their way around new methods for getting attention and trying to influence others to their benefit. Arrintgon admits so much as this: "Putting journalists up on a pedestal is very old media. Everything about TechCrunch, and most blogs, is about access." TechCrunch got started because Arrington wanted to write about his interests. When everyone read it, and traffic leaped up, everyone wanted him to make them famous.
Broken model? Not really. Just different. Breaking, maybe. The rules are the same. You have to have a kick-ass company to start with. You have to be able to illustrate an unaddressed market pain. You have to do it competently. If you want to notify the world about what you're up to, do it from a position of strength, respect the people you approach, and do your homework. You do that, you'll get your "coverage," in print, on the net, and on the airwaves.
What comes next
I'm not buying the "journalism is dying" line. It's changing, rapidly, and very obviously. Newspapers will be around a while, but not like they've existed for the past two centuries. Notifying the world about news is easier now -- it's a do-it-yourself job. You don't need the media to spread the word like you did before.
It shows in places like TechCrunch. Arrington as much as says, "Hey, this is a fun thing for me. I do it because I like it. You don't like something I do, take a shot. I'll probably answer you -- we're wide open for this. I'm not even going to do it well all the time." Try getting a line like that from a newspaper reporter.
What I believe is coming, or already here, is that third-party influencers are:
- much more widespread than they were before (actually, they're people interested in niches, but now with the capability to self-publish very easily and cheaply), and
- less formal about what they think and say -- they're setting new, different standards
I need to adapt better to all this. We all do. It's where the industry is moving.
(Disclosure: Arrington is a friend from our overlapping days in the domain name industry.)
By the way, in today's Wall Street Journal, a profile of TechCrunch (you need a subscription, but you should have one anyway).
Finally, I wrote this in all of ten minutes. I welcome input and ideas and thoughts, please.
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Posted by: HamWommaLex | December 23, 2011 at 12:47 AM