There was a fairly lengthy piece in the NY Times yesterday about evolving PR practices: Spinning the Web: PR in Silicon Valley. It specifically focused on how tech PR is changing, framing the topic by taking a look at Silicon Valley companies and players.
I thought the article did a pretty good job of summarizing some of the forces that are changing in the profession, and of documenting evolving PR practices. For example, it describes the growing importance of social networking connections and Twitter and positions traditional tools such as press releases and press tours as perhaps passe’. According to the article:
Gone are the days when snaring attention for start-ups in the Valley
meant mentions in print and on television, or even spotlights on
technology Web sites and blogs. Now P.R. gurus court influential voices
on the social Web to endorse new companies, Web sites or gadgets — a
transformation that analysts and practitioners say is likely to
permanently change the role of P.R. in the business world, and
particularly in Silicon Valley.
The article was ironic on a number of levels; first it describes newspaper circulation as “old metrics” and said these are sometimes viewed as less important than “the number of followers a pundit has on Twitter.” I am not disagreeing, just saying that this is funny seeing this in the pages of the NY Times. At the same time, the article is generating buzz in its own right, and I am wondering how many of the people mentioned within do not value the coverage.
Although it does nail some of the changes taking place in the profession, in my opinion, by focusing on Brooke Hammerling (one hyper connected gal) as being emblematic of these changes, it still feeds into the cliche’ of the PR person as a fixer and implies that relationships are the only thing that counts.
Her extensive network amongst the tech elite would seem to be of great value if you are raising money, or are otherwise trying to forge connections in the tech world but I wonder how much the average corp tech buyer (or tech consumer) really cares about these tech influencers.
The article described the launch of a new consumer tech Web service and explained the logic behind end-running the tech blogs:
“Why shouldn’t we avoid them?
They’re cynical,” [Roger McNamee} says, also noting his concern that Wordnik would
probably appeal more to wordsmiths than followers of tech blogs.
“That’s where I would be most uncomfortable. They don’t know the
difference between ‘they’re’ and ‘there.’ ”
As Brian Solis said in his post on the article
As the New York Times article leads you to believe, everything in PR focuses on the launch
in his piece on the article, Scoble had this to say about the “right reason” for eschewing tech blogs in the launch that was described:
Because people who will use your product don’t read those tech blogs and they don’t read the influentials who read those sites.
