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Some bloggers are journalists.
And some paid reporters aren't.
 The "Who is a Journalist?" debate came back at the end of 2011 when Montana blogger Crystal Cox lost a Federal Case focusing on an Oregon law that protects journalists from having to reveal sources. Cox had been sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick in regards to stories she wrote about the bankruptcy of Obsidian Finance Group LLC. She relied on anonymous sources.
A federal judge ruled that under Oregon law, she did not qualify as a journalist. This of course, sent the journalistic and blogging communities into a tizzy about definitions (until they figured out that Cox was a bit on the edge and, frankly, not much of a journalist at all). This isn't a new debate, it's been around since bloggers started writing online.
That's the wrong debate. Journalism is a profession, it's a way of thinking. It's never been clearly defined, but you know it when you see it. Kind of like the classic definition of pornography. Can a blogger be a journalist? Sure, if they are doggedly pursuing truth, working sources, checking facts and, as Pulitzer would say, "shining a light into the darkest corners."
By the same token, many paid reporters are no more journalists than typists.
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson is on a speaking tour with his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, talking about what the two of them went through during the debate about going to war in Iraq. I'm not going to rehash the whole story here, but in his talk Wilson made a simple point: journalists didn't do their jobs.
He points out how journalists wrote a narrative about he and his wife that was fed to them by people in power, while ignoring a much more important story about whey the US was entering a war and why the President put words into the State of the Union address that, on the surface, were simply untrue. The question is why? Why did reporters chase the Wilsons while not doing the harder and more "journalistic" work?
Dan Gillmore makes a similar argument in his wonderful book Mediactive, in which he calls the Washington press corps little more than "stenographers" in their coverage leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
I head a wonderful debate on the subject at Social Media Weekend during a discussion about Occupy Wall Street and Press Credentials. The issue here became pretty simple to understand, but complicated to solve. The NYPD issues press credentials so they can provide the right access to the right people. But not every person working full-time for a journalistic organization has them. Also, they take a while to get (one reporter applied for credentials in October and still hasn't been "screened." So when police started to arrest protesters, "journalists" were caught in the roundup. Still, were they journalists or were they participants?
Andrea Courtois over at WBZ TV (@AndreaWBZ on Twitter) told me that she stopped following quite a number of reporters because, she felt, they became too involved in the movement, killing their objectivity.
 Then there is Josh Stearns, who tracked journalist arrests during the Occupy movements. Part of his issue was simply defining which of those arrested were, in fact, journalists. Even on the panel itself some people who worked for journalistic organizations like MSNBC or the Daily News went to the site to check things out during off-hours. In other words, they weren't acting on behalf of their organizations when they started acting like journalists. So, in that moment, what were they?
What does it all mean?
In my opinion the main issue comes down to the inherent tension between journalism's "purpose" and its reward structure. Press freedoms are, in many ways, a necessary offshoot of democracy. The populous can't make intelligent voting decisions unless it has information by which to make those decisions. However, publishing is a business, one that sells advertising and subscriptions. Information has value if people WANT to consume it. Citizen journalists fill some of this gap, but where will we the people get our information on a regular basis? How will we vet what comes in? What information can we trust?
We, as media consumers, prove again and again that we are far more interested in being entertained than informed. We do it every day by clicking on TMZ rather than Global Post. We follow entertainers in striking numbers on Twitter, but leave intelligent, thoughtful people alone.
The fault, dear brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.
Throughout my career companies have asked for coverage. They know what they want to say, they know what they want to promote, they know the sales figures they want to meet. They know they need PR.
They just aren't sure why.
Todd likes to say that the best thing about social media and modern PR is that you can measure everything. Oh, and the worst thing about social media and PR is that you can measure everything.
His point is that you may not be measuring the right thing.
Many of our clients focus on a single but very important measurement: website traffic. That is, does a media hit (online or offline) result in website traffic? There are multiple ways to measure this, whether it's looking at referrals, measuring traffic from a geographic location, looking at traffic numbers from a day with coverage versus a similar time period, or including twitter traffic generated by a particular piece of coverage. It can all go into that measurement.
But not every piece of media will drive traffic. For example, we've put clients in the big city publications that used to make clients drool, only to see little or no discernible traffic spike. The reason is simple: some big publications just don't provide links. No links, no traffic. Asking people to take an action (searching on a company name or finding a website) is a barrier to results.
So the question becomes, if a piece of coverage doesn't drive traffic, is it effective?
The answer isn't so simple.
Let's take the work we did for TeraDiode, a laser manufacturer in Littleton, Mass. As part of our outreach Xconomy's Greg Huang wrote a great piece. Thanks to some great writing that piece got "slashdotted."
If you just look at the traffic numbers, SlashDot drove quite a bit of traffic, though it tended to be low quality. Most of the users bounced and few knew anything about the type of lasers TeraDiode is in the business of building.
But that SlashDot hit helped the story get picked up by a number of other publications, like PhysOrg and R&D Magazine. The traffic from those sites had low bounce rates, high pages per visit and resulted in whitepaper downloads. It also caught the eye of a reporter at Jane's Defence Weekly, a primary target. It should be noted that Jane's doesn't include links in its coverage.
So, was SlashDot worth it? Yes, if you measure its broad impact, not just its direct impact.
Of course, most media programs won't have that kind of turnaround. A mention in a broad publication like the Boston Globe or Newsweek may not result in immediate impact. But its ancillary benefits include third-party validation and helping build credibility so you can gain bigger or more relevant coverage.
To get there, you need to plan for the long-run.
So what are the takeaways here?
- Know what you're measuring -- Yes, you can easily measure site visits, but that may not be your only goals. You may also be looking for venture funding or doing some recruiting. You may simply be looking to build awareness. Different hits have different purposes and need to be measured with a different yardstick.
- Have realistic expectations -- A single "hit" in a widely read publication isn't going to bring you thousands of new users. You need to keep your information flowing, both through your own content and by sharing others. Your primary goal is to build an audience, not just gain a short-term bump.
- Know where PR Fits In -- Influencer relations is a part of the traffic-driving puzzle, but if you don't have a way to capture that traffic, then it's like going fishing with a hoop instead of a net. People should come to your site and know what to do next. Don't let them bounce, keep them warm.
- Plan for the long haul -- It's tempting to measure PR on a week-by-week basis, but a program takes time to develop. A hit today in a small online publication may be what you need to move up to the bigger, more impressive and more traffic-driving publications down the road.
- Understand where you belong -- While the Boston Globe may not yield major results for technology companies who want site traffic, I've spoken with consumer-goods companies that say a single piece their made their year. They needed awareness that later turned into sales. It's a very different measure. Another company may find that CMSWire drives the most relevant traffic. Success depends a long list of factors.
Mention "Klout" in a social media conversation and you'll hear groans, frustrations and grumbling.
 But all those folks know their Klout score.
I don't need to rehash how Klout recently changed its algorithm and sent Twitter ablaze with vitriol. You can read a great piece on the impact and find the alternatives here. But what has always been frustrating about Klout is how it tries to apply a number to something rather arbitrary. We've trod this ground before, but it came up again today during an online event called "Relevant Influence - Discovering and Engaging with Influencers for Effective Social Marketing" moderated by Chris Selland of Terametric. Mike Maney, who is an incredibly intelligent marketer, pointed out how he does most of his work by hand. He becomes an influencer, he learns the influencers he needs to know and just talks to them. Sure, there are tools out there to help him do that, but sometimes it comes down to something simple.
Like collecting the top influencers on a given topic at a Mexican restaurant at SXSW, pouring Margaritas and having a conversation.
But if you're looking at a number like a Klout score you need to ask yourself "what are you truly measuring?"  Even accepted measurements have flaws. For evidence of that look no further than a great Freakonomics video on Football stats. They point out how seemingly simple metrics like a QB's passing yards never tell the whole story. The video points out that last season, quarterbacks who threw for 300 or more yards a game went 47-49. When you look at those QBs with 400+ passing games, that record drops to 3-11. (I'd like to note here that Joe Namath was the MVP of Superbowl III without throwing a single touchdown pass. He didn't throw any passes in the 4th quarter. Yet the Jets still won.)
I like what Klout is attempting to do: trying to provide everyone with a simple way to measure influence. The problem is, it means different things to different people and has a dozen different contexts.
In other words, "influence" isn't so simple to measure.
 I love working with Wade Roush. Not only is he a great guy, he's a smart, serious and intelligent reporter. The only catch is that he is about 3 feet taller than I am, so I strain my neck looking up while talking to him. I may start bringing a step stool.
Today he offers up some great advice about how pitch him. Other reporters have done this in the past, but Wade's post is among the best I read and actually speaks to issues that are much broader than just him. He echoes much of what we hear from reporters all the time. I recently had conversations with several reporters from all different types of publications who may love the story we're pitching, but simply don't have time to do it. These range from those focusing in regional tech to national consumer. Fewer reporters are churning out more material with fewer resources. This leads to them find ways to limit where to focus.
Wade lays out some of his key questions. Below are his questions with my take right after. Over on his blog you can see his own explanations.
Has this company won the backing of reputable investors? This is really about third-party validation. If you're just someone with an idea that hasn't yet gone through some kind of business gauntlet, then it's hard for a journalist to take you seriously yet.
How truly differentiated is this company’s technology? For entrepreneurs this is often the most difficult to answer. From inside your technology looks different than anything else out there, but when you bring something to a reporter who gets pitched by 20 companies that look and sound just like yours, you need to have messaging in place that answers this question very well. You will stumble with this at first, but be willing to look deep and think about it.
Is this company offering a product or service that our audience would care about? I think this is more about the strategy behind your media and influencer relations program. Are you picking the right media audience? Did you create the right "pitch" for that audience? Are the readers of that publication people you truly need to reach?
Does this company have a team of articulate, charismatic founders or executives? One phrase: media training. Get it. Feel you need it? Contact us.
Does this company have a convincing business model? Oh the business model discussion. I cannot tell you how often I go to a pitch event, listen to the entrepreneur go through the whole pitch only to have the first question be: how are you going to make money? It's become so obvious that people actually laugh when it comes up. It's easier just to acknowledge and answer it up front. Though, as Wade points out: "I’m increasingly irritated by what I call the Twitter Answer: 'We’re focused for now on building a service that 200 million people will use, and later we’ll figure out some way to monetize it.'"
Is this company built to flip? Or simply to get the founders “acqhired” at Google, Facebook, or Twitter? Here in Boston I've seen frothy coverage of companies that I just don't fully understand. I look at their business and their technology and think "that's a not a company, that's an application." I'm not the only one, others seem to have the same opinion. But it's a good thing to think about as an entrepreneur in general. Are we really creating something that can stand alone? One of my favorite examples on the positive side of this question is Runkeeper, which started as an application and has evolved into a platform. Jason Jacobs isn't about creating a company that is born to flip, he created a company that has much more potential than that.
 InkHouse PR hosted a fascinating online discussion on Wednesday about the fate of the embargo. Hosted by Beth Monaghan, it included insights from Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick, Xconomy's Wade Roush, the Boston Globe's Scott Kirsner and USA Today's Jon Swartz.
If I were to sum up the whole discussion in a phrase it would come down to this: size matters. I'll get back to that.
The most interesting tidbit, however, was throw-away line from all four reporters that they don't bother with the press release wires. One reporter said he hadn't looked at BusinessWire or PR Newswire in about seven years. Wade noted that he sometimes uses it for archive purposes.
Even Beth seemed surprised at that answer. Of course, this is a long way from saying that the press release is dead. Kirsner, for example, still runs them on his "Read Scott's Email" page (though, obviously just a selection of those he receives) and reporters routinely ask me for them.
In fact, all four reporters noted that Twitter has become their news feed. Something reinforced just a short time later when Shaq announced his retirement on Twitter (with an associated video). Sorry ESPN, Shaq doesn't need your audience.
Twitter being a primary news feed for reporters is, on some level, a "no duh" moment. It is, in fact, pretty awesome and shows the power of Twitter both as a medium unto itself as well as its influence over "mainstream media." While Twitter is certainly not nearly as popular as Facebook, it is certainly influential. But that also leads to a number of concerns:
- Twitter has a high signal-to-noise ratio -- Filtering Twitter to find the good stuff is a major hassle. Personally, I use Twitter lists (both public and private) to select information I want to find. I know that popular stuff rises to the top, but quite often I'll look at an individual's feed and find that I missed something interesting that happened weeks ago. How do reporters filter? What does this mean for their reporting?
- Reporters can easily insulate themselves from information -- They can limit themselves to the people they follow as well as a few search terms. That's not everyone. Also, as mentioned above, Twitter is just a subset of a much larger population. Is it truly representative? In the tech world, maybe, but the broader world?
- Twitter has a "blink and you missed it" issue -- information on Twitter rots very fast. My main feed scrolls by so fast to render it useless.
Still, it's the reality. A while back Bianca Bosker, tech editor at the Huffington Post, told me that she has two monitors on her desk: one is email, web browser and everything she needs for her job; the other runs Tweetdeck all day. Do the math, the power of being in her news feed and therefore winding up in one of her posts will pay off huge dividends in traffic.
As a related note, Kirkpatrick noted that the best way to get on his radar is to send him your RSS feed so he can follow it. He follows a massive number of blogs, but if being in front of the top editor at a top publication is important, then you need to keep your feed filled with information as to show up on his radar.
But what about the embargo? Well, Kirkpatrick loves them noting that it helps level the playing field so he has time to do his own reporting. As a smaller organization this is important to him, allowing him to compete with much larger and more well-funded organizations, like TechCrunch. The other reporters tended to take a much dimmer view of embargoes, Roush won't bother with them at all and Swartz prefers not to deal with them either, but Kirsner admitted that he'd take them if the news was big enough.
Frankly, that came up a few times. If the news is big enough, or the company issuing it is big enough, the "no embargo" policy flies out the window. It was mentioned that even TechCrunch would take an embargo from those companies and simply break it 15 minutes early, just because they can.
So, in this sense, size matters. When the PR team has the power they'll use it (and get their way), when the journalist has the power they'll use it to avoid taking the embargo. The topic of offering exclusives came up as an alternative, but all the reporters were uncomfortable with that, saying it makes them feel as if they're being controlled by the PR machine.
My take on all this remains the same. Most of my clients are smaller and tend to be more concerned about getting coverage than about timing it. So while we would bring news out to reporters and prebrief them, I'd rarely put them under embargo. Of course, sometimes the client wants the assurance, so you do it. But I believe the news must be big enough to warrant it, and that's a judgement call.
So what does this all mean? Well, a few things:
- A news release isn't enough -- You need a content plan to make things work. Yes, a news release can help (and still does drive SEO as well as some coverage from vertical publications) but if your goal is bigger coverage you need more.
- Build relationships -- This goes for all influencers, online and off. Reporters are part of the influence chain.
- Integrate content -- Your blog is your friend. Your Twitter feed is your friend. Use them, build them.
- Finally: if you have real news by all means put it out. Reporters are smart, they know when it's something real and when it isn't.... mostly.
With apologies to Tom Foremski.
By kristin.grages
**Editor's Note - Fresh Ground is pleased to welcome Kristin Grages to our team. In addition to doing great work for our clients, she'll poke her head in here from time to time to talk about influencer relations, among other things.**
 Much has been made of the Twitter following some celebrities have. Millions of people follow Kim Kardashian and Ryan Seacrest, reading daily about their lives and latest projects. Sometimes interesting, sometimes not, their voices are heard by millions.
That voice can be useful. Celebrity (and twitter) can be put to good, productive use; raising money by pumping up (and pimping out) particular causes. Pleas go out daily from celebrities for their latest pet charity, often to the betterment of those organizations.
For the latest celebri-twitter campaign, a number of high profile celebrities (with sky high twitter followings) came up with a new strategy. They'd "kill" themselves on twitter and await resurrection by donation. "X celebrity sacrificed her digital life to help save millions of real lives affected by HIV/AIDS." The goal was to raise $1 million. They hoped to do it in a day. Now, three days later, they haven't even broken $200,000.
So what went wrong? With more than 26 million twitter follwers among then, this should have been easy. That's 26 million impressions of... what exactly? Silence? The problem is, silence isn't a twitter strategy. It's not any kind of public relations strategy. The absence of a conversation does not persuade. So instead of imploring their followers with daily, even hourly reminders to consider a donation, they are silent. And not actually dead, they're continuing lives far more fabulous than the donors they seek could possibly imagine.
The flaw in the strategy is within the medium. Twitter is busy, loud and quick. With your feed continually refreshing, pumping out updates by the second, who notices when you don't hear from someone for a few hours or even days? These celebrities overestimated the value of a day's worth of twitter. But more than that, they overestimated the impact their absence would have on their audience, which seems to be rather small. The conversation moves on, whether you're in it or not. It's up to you to keep up.
 In a recent blog post about social media clout (and of course, Klout), Michelle Manafy discussed the difference between IRL clout and real klout. As a person with true clout, who has been in the content industry for a long time, we wondered: does it really matter if you don't rank as high in the social media world? Does social media influence translate to true influence? Chuck Tanowitz asked these and other questions of Michelle, editorial director for the enterprise group at Information Today, Inc., editor-in-chief for EContent magazine and the co-editor and contributor to the forthcoming book (March 2011) Dancing with Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That's Transforming the Way Business is Done.
Some excerpts of the conversation:
"It's essential [to build our presence up on social media channels].... [I]f you are not visible in a social media context ... you're invisible, and rapidly becoming obsolete despite a wealth of knowledge."
"If you can't be found by search, do you exist? Even if you have the highest quality information, if no one can find it, so what?"
"[Y]ou do have to make yourself [and your content] visible, even if you have assets, knowledge, etc. that you do feel are of high value. If nobody knows about them, their value goes way down [to] near zero."
"I think we are actually seeing the first generation emerge ... in our workforce that believes that transparency is the best way to do business -- that by sharing, we further build our reputation and our knowledge and our clout."
"Most organizations are [still] led by those who were not raised digital -- who were not raised in this richly collaborative, open environment. Younger customers expect a level of openness that [some of the older generation just] cannot imagine."
"If your company were a person, would I friend it?"
"One of my personal mantras is developing business models around interactions, not transactions...."
"[Look at today's web-native businesses,] in which the entire business model, from the ground up, is based on interaction with consumers or potential consumers; where your innovation, your product development, all of these things are done publicly so that your customer relationships and your marketing exists at every stage, in every corner of your business."
 A client called B.S. on me today. I was asked to judge the potential influence of a blogger and twitterer who had posted a detailed response to some claims that my client had made about his company's product. I came back with an answer which was informed not by our usual in-depth analysis, but by a quick scan of Google, Klout, Twinfluence, Technorati, LinkedIn and several other social media tools and networks -- and one which completely missed the boat when it came to that person's actual influence.
Was my research wrong? No. It accurately reflected the person's reach on social networks. But it didn't capture his real reputation. Someone with little social capital online had a lot of social capital in real life, and without a comprehensive insider's perspective that comes with spending years in an industry (as opposed to a couple months), my characterization was challenged by the Big Boss at my client.
The funny thing is that Chuck and I talk about this all the time -- but I was asked to quickly come up with an assessment so I did, without the usual caveats that I usually attach. Don't fall victim to this: social media influence does not reflect real life influence.
The Four Rs of Influence
In identifying and prioritizing reporters, bloggers, editors, analysts, etc., we measure influence through a proprietary mix of four primary factors, what we call The Four Rs:
- Reach. How many people see this person's content, not just directly, but through other influencers and sharing?
- Relevance. How relevant is the person to your organization's community?
- Reputation. What's this person's reputation with your community?
- Receptivity. The counterbalance that affects how much energy we expend to influence any particular influencer: how receptive will this person be to our outreach and key messages?
In my haste, I ignored the broader aspect of reputation when I whipped together my research, probably costing me a few reputation points myself. While I stand by the internal validity of my conclusions, the external validity, taking into consideration the bigger context, brought me a little embarassment when I referred to an apparent industry bigwig as someone of relatively little influence. A lesson learned.
How are you measuring influence broadly, across both online and offline social networks? Don't forget this important lesson when you do!
This week the Mad Men crew got a present just in time for the Christmas episode: Pond's Cold Cream. One of the old characters returned, having just left one of the big agencies in town he showed up at the doorstep of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce holding a chance to win the business of Pond's Cold Cream. In 1964 dollars this was worth about $2 million a year. Not a bad little piece of business.
The story line pits the old-school copywriter, Freddy Rumsen, against Peggy Olson, the young, brash and bright copywriter who also happens to be a woman. While working on the ad the two argue over who should be the spokeswoman for Pond's. Freddy pushes for older actresses, some who have never left Broadway, while Peggy wants someone younger, like Elizabeth Taylor. Freddy also focuses on what Pond's does for your face and how it can help younger women find a husband, while Peggy wants to focus on the act of putting on the cream and how it makes you feel beautiful, not for a man but for yourself.
All very interesting arguments, so how does Pond's look in the cold, harsh reality of 2010? Well, it happens that it more resembles Freddy's vision than Peggy's.
 Pond's is a subsidiary of Unilever, so this is a company that knows a thing or two about marketing. They've obviously positioned Pond's at the over-40 crowd. But one of the first thing that I noticed in looking for Pond's Cold Cream was that it's hard to find on Google. When you Google the brand a link to Drugstore.com comes up first, with the "Pond's Institute" the brand's main site, is buried deep in the selection list, though right above the Unilever brand site for the same product line. So the first thing we here at Fresh Ground would do is get a big jar of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and schmear it on the site.
I've also noticed that the forums seemed to be filled with people saying that they love the product, so why not try to capture that a bit? Sure, continue with the "over 40 celebrity" message, but start to incorporate some testimonials. In fact, start soliciting them a little stronger, both through forums and social sites like Facebook. Keep in mind that Facebook has great growth with people over 40, so it's a perfect venue for this kind of targeted demographic.
Message wise I may take things a bit further and look for mother/daughter combinations, or even grandmother/ mother/ daughter. A big part of the brand is that it has a long history, so why not bring that to the people? Actively look for mothers who helped their daughters discover Pond's Cold Cream and ask for their pictures together, either through a Flickr campaign or on Facebook by tagging images with "Pond's Cold Cream." You can drive that action by offering up something like product (free samples), coupons or even a chance to be featured in an ad in a major publication. This would be a great way to combine the social side of things with the tradition outlets that they're already accessing.
Dove, another Unilever brand, did something similar with its Real Beauty campaign, so it's certainly something that worked before and would work again.
All that being said, Dove is a sponsor of Mad Men, so I wonder if featuring Pond's in the script was part of the deal. If so, good move marketing folks at Pond's! Though, judging by the fact that someone started a Twitter account called PondsColdCream that appears to be a Mad Men thing, not belonging to Pond's, I'm going to guess that the folks at Unilever haven't yet figured out social media for this brand.
 I love Mad Men. I love it for its 60s style, for its writing, character development and what it says about us today. The fact is, all period dramas (and futuristic science fiction) say more about who we are today than they do about the people they pretend to portray. In a way Mad Men lets us look back at our 1960s selves and say "aren't we better?" We don't smoke like that, we don't drink like that, we wear seatbelts when we ride in the car, we don't let our kids play with plastic, male bosses don't call their female colleagues "honey" etc.
The fourth season of Mad Men opened up with an episode named "Public Relations," which, being a PR guy, got me listening pretty closely. The last time I heard PR mentioned on Mad Men, lead-character Don Draper was deriding the profession by saying that PR guys think they can change the conversation, but they can't. Only advertising can change the conversation.
But in this episode "changing the conversation" is just what PR is expected to do. We open on Don Draper in the middle of an interview being asked by an Ad Age reporter "Who is Don Draper," a question that Ad Age has already said doesn't fairly portray who they were at the time (or are today). Yet, in the PR world this is a pretty basic question and one that can take up hours of pounding out to get right. We often open messaging sessions by asking "what does your company do?" and then spend the next 3 hours trying to answer that question. Seems so simple, yet, it can be much more nuanced.
Don blows the question.
A few scenes later they get the article and a Roger Sterling comments "this was supposed to be an advertisement for the firm." Wait, and ad? If they wanted an ad wouldn't they have bought one? Why an article when they wanted an ad?
Ah, we have a misunderstanding of what PR can do and what it does.
Still, PR does play a role. In a side-plot a few characters stage a PR stunt that gets the client in the Daily News, an ultimately successful gambit as far as driving sales. Yet, one laments "we can't charge them for this."
Oh really? Sure you can, but you're not a PR firm, you're playing in waters you don't understand.
The episode ends with Don in another interview, ostensibly having learned his lesson and now creating a much more interesting fact-based story. He is, in large part, using PR to change the conversation about himself and his firm.
All that said, people today still don't fully understand what PR does and what role it plays in a business. The one thing the leadership at Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce never did was hire a PR firm. Why? Well, in a bit of fiction they just called up the Wall Street Journal and the reporter jumped.
What could a PR firm have done for the firm?
- Set the message: Very simply put an outside firm would have helped define what this company is, who it wants to target and what key messages it needed to get across.
- Position: Just a slight variation on the messaging, but during the episode you heard one of the sales executives trying to fit the new firm into the landscape of ad agencies around New York. A PR firm could help clarify this so they could speak to it in sales meetings.
- Tell the story: In the course of the show we hear a bit about a controversial TV ad campaign for floor wax that Draper had created. I'm sure the Ad Age of 1964 would have loved a story that told the origin of that ad, what it tried to convey and its results.
- Hit the media: Even in 1964 the Journal and Ad Age weren't the only two games in town. Not only were there the major daily papers, but there was also the evening newscasts as well as magazines and trade publications. I'm sure Supermarket News would have loved to know the results of a ham-selling campaign.
Yet, still today people don't fully understand what PR does. Not only in the context of needing a firm to help get the message out, but even in crafting what that message is. I recently watched as a group for which I do pro-bono work let an interview happen without my knowledge. The resulting article was of little help. It's not that the article is terrible, but it's just not as positive as it could have been. Just as the article about Don Draper wasn't terrible, but it wasn't nearly as useful to the firm as they needed.
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The "Who is a Journalist?" debate came back at the end of 2011 when Montana blogger Crystal Cox lost a Federal Case focusing on an Oregon law that protects journalists from having to reveal sources. Cox had been sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick in regards to stories she wrote about the bankruptcy of Obsidian Finance Group LLC. She relied on anonymous sources.
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