Will Viral Video Kill the PR Star?

There’s been quite a few articles about people and companies shooting to fame and fortune from viral videos.  And let’s face it, they make great stories, don’t they? A common theme is how the little guy (or gal) triumphed against the odds, battling the heavyweights or convention, or righting wrongs.

It is fun to read how Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model Kate Upton got where she is largely on the basis of her self-promotional efforts that involved viral videos (see this NY Times story); and gripping to learn how a single video turned the world’s attention to Joseph Kony and atrocities in Sudan

I am a big believer in the power of storytelling, but know that it is easy to miss key details and the greater complexity of this world when you boil things down to a simple and neat narrative. For example, some might think that you no longer need to hire costly outside professionals for PR; just shoot videos and simply put them up on YouTube to reach a large audience. After all, how hard could it be, really, to go viral?

The Wall Street Journal article A David and Gilette Story doesn’t say this, but does imply it.  The piece covered the efforts of upstart Dollar Shave Club to take market share from the leaders. Here is an excerpt:

What the start-ups have in their favor is technology. Companies with no marketing budget can command attention with free video and quickly build a following on services like Facebook and Twitter. 

I find it funny that this line of thinking persists, and thought that we have all grown up a bit since the “social media will kill PR” meme of years ago.

A WSJ op ed by Gordon Crovitz made me think of this too, as it refutes the “social media is a subsitute for journalism” meme.  Here’s an excerpt:

Here’s a great topic for news junkies: “Watergate 4.0: How Would the Story Unfold in the Digital Age?” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave their assessment at the annual American Society of News Editors conference this month by referring to how Yale students answer a similar question assigned in an advanced journalism class.

Mr. Woodward said he was shocked by how otherwise savvy students thought technology would have changed everything. “I came as close as I ever have to having an aneurysm,” he said, “because the students wrote that, ‘Oh, you would just use the Internet” and the details of the scandal would be there. The students imagined, as Mr. Woodward put it, “that somehow the Internet was a magic lantern that lit up all events.”

The Internet is not some “magic lantern” that replaces worn shoe leather reporting; nor is it a substitue for a PR program and all the hard work that goes into supporting and building companies, brands, people and organizations over the long haul.

This does not mean that there is no PR value in the spike of attention that you can get from viral videos or other social media channels.  But, as this NY Times article points out, (see News Cycle: From Flash to Fizzle), memories and news cycles are short these days.

I also make this point on the Social Fluency blog today, in the context of shorter shelf lives for corporate crises.