public relations malfeasance

In July of this year, Blogger and Yahoo! Employee Russell Beattie published a highly publicized tirade about the tactics PR firms use to insert their promotional press into this untapped domain of publishing. In it, he raged at the PRrazzi: “What are these people thinking? Do they really think the same lies and manipulation they use in the corporate media establishment is going to work on me? Blogging isn’t my ‘job’.” This is for fun. I’m not looking to fill columns or downtime with your crap, I’m looking to provide real information and opinions to my readers, who in turn return the favor and educate me.”

This type of article should make anyone who works in public relations sit up and think hard. As the media trends toward a more democratic process, everywhere from online book review from home at Amazon to the more substantial form of Blogging, customers are getting smarter about spotting PR inserts. .

The most obvious, and intellectually redundant, aspect of public relations is that it is designed specifically to sell products and, as such, initiates a dialogue but does not follow through on it. On the few occasions that he does follow up, the dialogue contains none of the natural reasoning to which ordinary conversation tends, and therefore there is little worthwhile exchange of information, opinions, or ideas.

What PR firms miss by focusing on ‘weblogs’ and self-publishing media platforms is that this new form of media is more like a dinner party setting than a newspaper. Just as no reasonable person would ever think of attending a social function with the sole purpose of selling a product in mind, no public relations firm should seek to disguise comments intended to sell products as “newsworthy swaps” in the most democratic publication online. .

This is in stark contrast to advertising, which has seen encouraging success online with banner ads and Google ads. As the publishing process becomes more user-oriented, the boundaries of ways to promote products will have to be more clearly defined, or organizations will end up doing something worse than not selling any products at all: making sure no one wants to buy them. first.