Now And Then, Then And Now
Charles Dickens was an author with a mission. Actually, two missions. To write exceptional fiction (which he did) and to get rich (ditto).
In the process, he wrote the most compelling opening line for a master work ever: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”
Which reminds me of the thinking behind this blog: Digital PR. This is a great time to be engaging in digital PR. Why? Because it is still new and open to blank page thinking and so wonderfully complex that it ranges from Forbes.com to My Space. PR people placing “stories” on YouTube? How cool! Or is it? Well, if you want to place a story that drives consumers to buy a brand of almost anything, I hate to admit it, but you want to place it in the New York Times. Yes, dead old traditional media. Second place is held by any network news show, and The Wall Street Journal, USA Today. Relics of the past still more powerful than the coolsters of the current.
So for digital PR, this is the best of times and the worst of times. Maybe Mr. Dickens was writing more than the opening of a great novel. Maybe he was writing a timeless metaphor. As PR professionals, you have to walk a difficult tightrope. Navigate to the digital (there won’t be a print version of the Times in 20 years) at a time when the Times (and the other stalwarts of traditional media) still have enormous influence. So while the pressure to be cool (i.e. digital) is like a tsunami, we have to respect the now and the then and learn how to time the transition.
Change can be intoxicating and exhilarating but it can be stupid if activated for the sake of change.
PR Is Dead: Long Live PR
So what is PR anyway? A way to get a client’s name in the media. A line of print. A talking head. A sound bite? If that’s all it is, let’s give it a decent burial. Flowers and music and all, but a burial nevertheless.
To the old school (and you can be old at 25 as well as 75), PR is a Balkanized process that sits aside from sales and marketing and wins the game every time it manages to land a client in the Sacramento Bee. Whoa, let the champagne flow. Wow, what a PR coup.
Yes, nice work, but does it lead to anything? Like- forgive me for the language-”sales.” Now we’re getting in the thick of it. PR is not a noble pursuit in its own right. PR cannot live in a vacuum. PR can never be viewed as the purist form of advertising. Great PR, inspired PR, the kind that flowers in the desert, the kind that drives Apple, the form that made Norah Jones a sensation in a week-that PR recognizes it is a powerful component of a miltifaceted marketing blitz that has tight connectivity to sales. That moves ipods off the shelves and drives albums up the Billboard charts.
Long live that PR. The kind that builds actionable mechanisms into its hits. That knows the ink means little or nothing without a means of driving the reader to a URL, a phone, a store. The kind that can be measured with the right tools, such as web analytics, and that generates leads and drives sales.
Do I want my firm’s PR team to book me on NPR’s Marketplace to talk about my business philosophy? Sure, that would be nice. Now, raising the bar, do I want to go on the same show to discuss my book and have the host state the URL to purchase the book? How soon can I get there? Last time that happened, the book’s Amazon ranking soared 700 points. That led to book sales and clients and wow, that PR is worth its weight in platinum.