The PR War: Part 3 (The Manifesto)

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By: Matt Clark and Mallory Dash

That’s right: we’re double-teaming this one.  (Matt: Oh, yeeah) (Mal: You’re fine… no double-teaming here…at all)

We would like to welcome you all to PR World War 3.  I (Matt) call it WW3 because this seems to be the third major attack on the PR industry since I entered the game.  (Mal: You are so not cool).  Lets go over how we got here.

The History
The first major online attack started with Chris Anderson.  Seemed a little uncalled for, but it brought an industry problem of blast pitching to the mainstream.

Recently, it started with Scoble.  He didn’t do anything crazy, just mentioned that he found an amazing product without the help of a PR firm.  I know PR firms must KILL Scoble with irrelevant pitches.  But one of my colleagues has a great working relationship with him.  So he does use them, and does work well with them.

Then something crazy happened, Steve Rubel turned on his people and sold us out.  (Matt: No not really, that just seems more dramatic. Mal: I hate you)  Rubel called PR people out for irrelevant blast pitches to bloggers.  (Matt: I can’t say I blame him here.  I have been calling my peers flacks for a long-time, just not in public).

Next, Michael Arrington, one never scared to take aim at flacks, stepped in.  Arrington took Ruble’s post as justification for bloggers to blast PR pros.

Then the industry had some back-up from Marshall Kirkpatrick, Mark Hopkins and Todd Defren and Todd’s client HubSpot.  Hopkins made a case against the press release.  No- the press release is not dead.  It’s alive and needed.  I can name outlets I send press releases to who cut and paste it as a post.  And when I don’t send out company updates, I get about 30 emails wondering what happened.

The Blab
There are a lot of problems in the PR industry at the moment.  A lot of this has to do with new media and learning how to adjust to the social graph.  The industry is way too young to settle on the “right” tactics and strategies.  But it also seems that the most influential people on the Web are the early adopters of new social media tools.  So they are the ones who learn the best practices first, and don’t have the tolerance for the rest of the industry to catch up.

I can understand their pain.  Pitches just turn to spam for them and PR pros turn to spammers.  It makes sense.  But there is no reason to attack.  It’s a two-way road.  There are a lot of bad PR flacks out there, but perhaps they just don’t know any better.  Large firms don’t seem to be training their young guns well enough yet.

But there are a lot of bad journalists out there as well. Let’s be honest.  The media is not the most credible industry in the world anymore.  I can name 15 publications that are pay for play.  Some journalists are just looking to write controversy to get page views and will slam a company for no reason. Many journalists write only 8-10 word sound bite quotes and don’t do their homework.  (Matt: Quick justification here, I had this same convo with Oskar Garcia of the AP and a few of the top poker bloggers at the WSOP)

That’s why we companies need PR, not to be media hounds, but to be strategic communicators that protect their client’s investment.  Public Relations is not about MEDIA HITS.  People who believe in pitch and ditch need to find a new job. You’re ruining our industry (Matt: *cough 5W*) (Mal: oh-ho SNAP!).

Brian Block posted a great comment on PR-Squared:

I take it this refers to PR firms working with 2.0+ clients. Because not everyone gets their news online. How about media training? How about civic engagement? How about investor relations? Are all your customers online?

The Conclusion
Matt:  This is the same as what Anderson did.  It obviously didn’t have a long term effect then, and it probably won’t now.  We need a new solution.  I suggest a peace meeting with PR pros, journalists and bloggers.  We need to work out an industry standard.

Mallory: And we’ll all sing kumbaya while we’re at it, eh? Listen. We’ve been talking about how PR needs to get smarter. But it seems like the only people that DO it are the ones that care about social media in the first place- those who read the key PR/marketing/tech blogs, follow the influencers on Twitter, and really try their hardest to send relevant pitches. I’m beginning to get frustrated with the industry myself- if you don’t get it, don’t waste your time. But really- if you’re reading this, you probably already do.