Personal digital assistants (or PDAs) and Web-enabled phones are so hip that some PR professionals are having them surgically attached to their bodies. Okay, we exaggerate
slightly, but the gadgets are becoming indispensable for communicating with clients, especially when souped up with instant-messaging (or what's known as 'IM.') For example, a few
months back, a publicist with San Francisco-based PR firm the Horn Group was barreling down the freeway with a client to meet a reporter. Naturally, the reporter called the Horn
Group's main office to change the rendezvous point (interviews are never that easy). The publicist's cell number was not immediately available, so someone back at HQ dished off an
instant message to the publicist's PDA. The fast action, says company president Sabrina Horn, helped the publicist choose the quickest route and get there on-time, saving the
client the embarrassment of being late (even though it would've been the journalist's fault. But hey, we're not perfect...)
Be wary, however, that there's a down side to IM. It can be a woeful distraction. "People need to have some instant-messaging etiquette," Horn says. "You know it's a problem
when you're on a conference call and someone messages you that she just bought a new dress." Use it, she suggests, only when you absolutely, positively, have to communicate with
someone on the fly.
(Sabrina Horn, 415/905-4000)