In doing some research this afternoon on some interesting stuff I will be talking about in a few days, I came across New PR from Crispy News, which is a DIGG like service for the PR Professional. While I have lots to say about how cool it is to take such a great tool and make it available for a specific community to create better contextual filters, I really just wanted you to take a gander yourself (if you don’t already know about it)

Earlier this week I found the big PR Blog list being maintained by Constantin Basturea via a click through link when he added this blog to the list. In just a few minutes I have discovered lots of other really good PR Bloggers such as Stuart Bruce who had this to say in a recent blog entry:

We might have to have different conversations with different people using different channels but that is simply the evolution of our profession. It’s not PR 2.0.
A PR Guru’s Musings - Stuart Bruce: Big PR firm falls for the PR 2.0 hype

I had a bit more to say in the comments on Stuart’s Blog, so please contnue reading over there to get my thoughts on the evolution of PR in the era of social media. (it reads better in context of his post and the other comments there, but the bottom line is that I too hope PR 2.0 does not catch fire, despite how easy it might be to hang our hat on that meme)

Categories: New Media, PR Community, Social Media
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I hope we will have some good news for everyone soon about what is going on here. I have been working behind the scenes on some very exciting plans, but can not talk about them just yet.

A couple of other important news items to share with you briefly:

1. In case you were not on planet earth earlier this week, Microsoft’s face to the Blogosphere, Robert Scoble has left Microsoft to join a Silicon Valley podcast network called Podtech. I heard the news at Vloggercon before the story broke - but out of respect for Rober’ts wishes to hold off on the story until Tuesday, said nothing about it.
2. Just over a week ago Tom Foremski announced plans to work on establishing some standards around a new press release format. My conversations with him around this seemingly played a role in this new development as we have talked about it several times since our podcast. Last night I agreed to help manage this process with him while at the Society for New Communications Research dinner.
3. In the company news front, Google has announced that it will begin to sell Adwords by Dayparts. MediaWeek has some basic coverage and Search Engine Watch had a few more details. Personally, I thought this should have been happening several years ago, but am very happy since it should create higher efficiency in marketing campaigns, but it will also drive the per click prices up for any product/service that gets sold into the working world. If it also drives down the number of wasted clicks, everyone should come out ahead.
4. Bloggercon is sold out, but people are still adding their names, so if you can make it to San Francisco next week, it would be great to see you there.

Well, there is lots more to talk about, but that is all for now. Have a great weekend - it looks like most of the US should be pretty nice outside. While you all are enjoying your Saturday, I will be participating in Rails Day 2006…

Categories: Blogging, New Media, PR Community
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I’m sure like many people, it seems that every time you turn around someone is talking about word-of-mouth, some articles even make it sound like it was just invented a few years ago. But the reality is the WOM has been around, well, since as long as humans could talk. I mean, seriously, is there much difference from one of our very early ancestors saying, “I found some good berries down by the stream?” to people today showing off their latest cell phone?

Studies show that even with the Internet boom a significant percentage of WOM still happens face to face.
One of the areas that grassroots and word-of-mouth communication always played a critical role was in politics. Successful campaigns never forgot the impact that personal communication played when it came to election day. For the past several years, we’ve been applying this same model to marketing campaigns.

And we will be discussing this approach, “From Politics to Potato Chips” with our colleagues and clients at the Clorox Company at the Word of Mouth Basic Training 2 Conference scheduled for June 20-21 in San Francisco. There will more than 60 other speakers presenting case studies and “how to” sessions. We’ve arranged for a special $125 discount code for colleagues and associates.

Here are the details

WORD OF MOUTH BASIC TRAINING 2
June 20-21 — Hilton San Francisco
Register at http://womma.org/wombat2
Use discount code “beyondbloggingsentme” for $125 off

Categories: New Media, Events, Word of Mouth, PR Community
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Funny that Steve Rubel’s post “I Like Companies that say ‘We Suck’” came out when it did - guess the universal consciousness is bubbling up a big world-shifting idea once again. I have been working on a post all week about a similar topic, but I think Steve’s focus on companies admitting their faults does not go far enough. Yes, the tech companies have had a bit of experience with Mea Culpa’s over the years, and this is a requirement for the establishment of trust for an organization’s voice, but the real change that is needed is for companies to embrace all of the truth and their intentions in order to develop real trust within the Commons and amongst its customers. The sort of FUD that Microsoft used to masterfully deploy (and is now being put forth by Google) has no place in the world any longer.

While owning up to corporate short comings is a necessary component of trust, I see it more as philosophical shift towards more openess and being ‘real’ than simply admitting that a company sucks at something. No, I am not talking about giving away your client’s upcoming product plans three months before launch so a competitor can do it instead - that would be harmful rather than helpful. I am talking about letting employees and representatives behave like the real humans they are, rather than simply delivering the corporate spin and enforcing the seemingly hard and fast rules that ‘the system’ dictates.

Part of the problem is much bigger than any one company, it is an undercurrent that is sweeping away the industry. I spoke with Ed Keller about this briefly via email before the Beyond Blogging 2006 event last week. In his press release announcing TalkTrack, he referred to “Marketers”. Summarizing my conversation with him, I inquired whether he meant just marketing people or marketing and communications people. From his perspective the use of the term “marketer” was all inclusive of PR, Advertising, Research, Marketing, etc… Merriam Webster agrees with his definition, calling it “an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer” but I see a need to redefine this understanding - to rebrand the marketing profession with not a makeover, but a “MakeReal”.

From my experience, and from the nature of a conversation I joined on Burning Bird with Shelley Powers in April, I have come to see that many people believe that marketing is evil and as such “Marketers” have a bad reputation. I won’t get into all the why’s here, but the main point was that the non-marketer general public sees the smarmy SALES tactics of some companies as marketing and this rubs off on all other aspects of the discipline. In certain parts of Silicon Valley, particularly the Open Source world and among many engineers, this is one of the leading causes of anti-consumerism. But like most anti-establishment rebellion, it is often more about an assertion of personal power and freedom in a world that seeks to impose power hierarchies and use fear of scarcity to control people who are left feeling helpless within a system that favors the rich corporations over the rights of the individual.

Tara Hunt picked up on this conversation with her post entitled “Marketing = Eeeeeeevil!” which contains some other great insights on this subject. While I agree with much of what she says in this regards, I disagree with her push for what she calls “Pinko Marketing“. To me, what she calls Pinko is really just a retelling of the original Cluetrain Manifesto - which she duly credits for much of the inspiration for her idea. The Cluetrain heavily influenced me and was a huge part of my original inspiration for pursuing the development of conversational intelligence software back in 1999 (before everyone but perhaps Intelliseek). While the principles are strong, the use of the term Pinko feels wrong, as does its association with communism.

I believe what we need to be talking about here is “Real Marketing“. As in keeping it real, being real and telling people what is really going on.

It may seem like merely a semantic difference, but there is a more fundamental shift of intention and focus at play here. Real Marketing is about matching products and services with the people who can truly benefit from those products and services. It is not about getting more people to buy something and maximizing market share. It is about getting the right people to purchase a product and helping them to get the most use out of it. It’s not about increasing sales for the purpose of making the numbers, it’s about getting more loyal customers who are obtaining real value from the product. It is about creating maximum efficiency in operations across the board - and that is only achieved by open and honest conversations.

As almost every panelist said at the event last week, we as “Marketers” can’t control the conversation any more - we can, however, participate in the conversation and facilitate certain portions of it. This reminds me of numerous meetings with almost every big client I have had around the issue of enabling open conversations through message boards or open comment systems. They were all ‘afraid’ of what people might say. Afraid that some truth might be exposed in regards to a product short coming, or a design defect, or a bad customer service experience. As I pleaded then, and still plead today - “THEY ARE ALREADY HAVING THESE CONVERSATIONS, AND YOUR VOICE IS NOT BEING HEARD BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T INVITE YOU TO JOIN THEM - THEY DON’T TRUST YOU!”

I have been working on a model of the stages of engagement in a customer relationship since my days of being Chief, eBusiness for the US Mint. While there are many deep things at play here in this model, the most fundamental premise here is that communicating the knowledge a customer needs to move through each stage of the relationship is the key - not advertising and not sales in the traditional sense. In this regards, I do agree with Edelman’s assertions on the potential for Communications Professionals to lead the way in the Social Media future we are just beginning to live today. Communications is conversation, so that is simple enough. I differ with them in that I see important roles for all practicioneers within the “Marketing and Communications Industry”. Advertising still has its place, as does research and an understanding of market segmentation.  What is needed is a more holistic approach that is centered on people.
Real Marketing means the end of empty hyperbole and hype. It is beyond the sales of Word of Mouth Units, the practical equivalent of increasing the volume of the sizzle - it is about increasing the nutritional value of the steak - about getting to the heart of what really matters. It still calls for the proper seasoning to make it tasty to the person consuming it, and we need to listen to whether the person wants that steak pink in the center or well done, but it is not so much about how many people hear that sizzling plate of Fajitas as it travels from the kitchen to the table. It has everything to do with people being able to get near real time information on what is in that dish, how it was prepared and what the people who have tasted it have to say about it. It is about the reputation of the restaurant, the description on the menu, the conversation with the server and the conversation over the shoulder with the person sitting next to you. It is about informed choices - it is about the market of conversation - it is about the market as conversation.

So what to do with this understanding? Blogging is a good place to start because it enables the sort of two-way dialogue that is essential for making Real Marketing work, but we definitely need to go ‘Beyond Blogging’ to make it Real. To really get the most from this however requires a fundamental shift in perspective - perhaps Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements might be a good place to start. Or better still, let’s start a conversation right here and try to get to the bottom of this together…

Categories: Blogging, Conversation, Authenticity, Word of Mouth, PR Community, Real Marketing
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It seems that most everyone came away from the Beyond Blogging 2006 event with something positive to say, though a few of the more seasoned veterans of the Blogosphere were perhaps hoping for a deeper dive into the topic.  Personally, I think it was just what the doctor ordered - a great discussion on the important philosophical shift at the foundation of this new media, a wide ranging discussion on the strategies that work and practical advice for what to go out and do today.

Check out what Bloggers are saying yourself by seeing who is linking to this Blog from Technorati.

The really good news in this is that it seems the event was a catalyst to form a community around this topic for ongoing discussion and the occasional face to face gathering.  We are going to be thinking about how this might look over the next week or two and would love to hear your thoughts on what’s next and what specifically you would like to see.  Personally, it seemed that many people wanted to get away from the panel format and engage in direct conversation with one another.  In my world, this calls for an Unconference - while very, very preliminary discussions have barely begun in this regards, I am hopeful that we will be able to put something together in the near future.

And now a brief, personal pause.

My iBook died on the plane out of DC on Saturday evening, which has caused me all sorts of pains and a real feeling of loss.  In addition to losing all of the photographs I took at the event, there were a couple of Blog posts I had written and not posted, a presentation I was finishing for the NetSquared Conference next week and all sorts of other stuff that I had put together while in DC. Thankfully, I think the podcasts I recorded with Greg and Mitch during the event are stll on the MP3 Recorder, so those should be posted in the next 24-48 hours.

Hopefully, the Genius Bar at Apple will be able to recover most of the data tomorrow, and this pause will be short.  Though I really want and could use a MacBook Pro, I had wanted to wait for another generation of them to get the kinks worked out first.

On a separate, but important note, I wanted to let you know that the comments are being moderated on this Blog, but all legitimate comments are approved, including the non-flattering ones.  I have already had to delete a few inappropriate comments (one blatantly promotional and one patently offensive).  Thankfully Akismet seems to catch all the Splog that comes this way, so not much to do on that front.  I mention this now so that you will know why a comment might not appear very quickly over the next couple of days as I deal with my laptop troubles.  We are discussing having unmoderated comments as the dialogue begins to pick up, but no decisions have been made yet.  If  more people are talking here beyond myself and a few key Fleishman Hillard employees, it may just make more sense to have it open and free flowing.

OK, so it is time for bed now - I have a 7am tee time with my 90 year old grandfather and I am going to need a good night’s rest if I have any hopes of keeping up with him tomorrow morning.  Should be done and at the Apple store before it opens at 10am… 

Categories: Events, PR Community
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