The Flack

I plan to stay untethered for the week as my wife, boys and I take in Idaho...sloping it and eating potatoes. (What else could we be doing here?)

I hope to reconstitute by starving the incessant demands of this blog, Twitter, GTalk, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, GMail and my Google RSS Reader.  I will continue to meander around the Net if only to maintain currency. I also will finish Bernoff/Li's Groundswell and Godin's Tribes.

I will remain on-call to my clients who take precedence over my Mitty-esque cyber-existence, at least until the latter starts paying the bills.

Wishing you all peace, prosperity and propitious President Obama tidings for 2009.

Labels: 2009 predictions, family, New Years, Obama, skiing, social media, Sun Valley

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington's observations of how his uber-socially networked friend Robert Scoble parses his time nowadays raises some valid questions about achieving the right the balance of ingredients for growing and monetizing one's personal brand.

Is it through more thoughtful editorial output, a wider (but admittedly thinner) digital footprint, or the attraction of legions of devoted followers?

Arrington asked Scoble to quantify his time tethered to Twitter and FriendFeed, and concluded that Scoble's due for "an intervention." Here's what he learned:

In addition to watching all day, he says he spends at least seven hours a day, seven days a week, actually reading and responding directly on those services. That’s 2,555 hours over the last year. Which is more than a full time job (2,000 hours/year). It is more than 106 full 24 hour days interacting with those services in aggregate. It is an addiction.

And admittedly, these ephemeral channels have taken their toll on the longer-form platform on which Scoble initially built his brand -- his Scobleizer blog:

What is the cost of this addiction? Well, I’ll put his family life aside, that’s his business. But his blog has clearly suffered. He now posts only a few times a week, sometimes sporadically writing multiple posts in a day but often skipping 3-4 days in between. A year ago, Robert wrote multiple posts, every day. I used to read his blog daily, now I visit once a week.

Michael's personal plea to Robert is clearly not intended to disrespect his friend's time management skills. Rather, it forces us to think about how best to go about engaging all that the social graph has to offer. Even Robert admits:

“Some people tell me my thought leadership has declined as I’ve blogged less.”

Personally, I wonder how certain people on Twitter could be so prolific, yet still have time to eek out a living. Is the competition to attract followers driven more by ego than anything else? Can one roll-up and monetize a disparate digital presence for personal profit or the greater good? Arrington notes:

Meanwhile, all this attention from Robert has certainly helped the valuations of Friendfeed and Twitter. How much of that value does Robert receive? Zilch.

Of course, Arrington's influence prompted this post from Scoble in which he rationalizes his online activities, and concludes:

"Why does this all matter? Well, if you are going to do this as a business you’ve got to prove how many readers you have and demonstrate both audience size as well as influence. The other thing that advertisers are asking me for is quantitative data about who is reading me. Some companies now don’t want to reach geeks, for instance. So, they are looking at your social networks to see what kind of audience you’ve attracted. So, what do you think? Do I need a friendfeed intervention? Looking forward to having a good conversation."

Labels: FriendFeed, Michael Arrington, personal branding, Robert Scoble, Scobleizer, social media, social networks, tech crunch, Twitter

Some days this blogger feels like pontificating, while others, he's prone to aggregating. Today is an aggregation day.

Below you will find a smattering of notable end-of-the-year lists and 2009 predictions that should appeal to the media, marketing and social media set.

By no means is it complete. If you know of others, please share.

• Peter Kim "(14 Great Minds Share Their) Social Media Predictions for 2009"
• David Meerman Scott "Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009"
• Marketing Profs “Best Social Media Podcasts”
• The Guardian’s "Top 100 Websites for 2009"
• eMarketer’s "Predictions for 2009"
• Diane Mermigas’s On Media “Keep It Real: Pragmatic Media Predictions For 2009”
• Jon Fine, Business Week, “Media Predictions for 2009”
• ReadWriteWeb “Social Media in 2009: Our Predictions and Desires”
• PR 2.0 (Brian Solis) "Social Media Predictions 2009"
• JD Lasica’s SocialMedia.biz “Top 50 Marketing Blogs to Watch in 2009”
• JD Lasica's SocialMedia.biz "2009 Social Media, Marketing and Tech Conferences"
• Techipedia (Tamar Weinberg) "Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008"
  
• John Battelle "Predictions 2009"
• Evan Carmichael “2009’s Top 50 Marketing Blogs to Watch in 2009”
• Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land “Best of B2B Search Marketing 2009”
• Folio Magazine “117 Magazine and Media Predictions for 2009”
• Ad Age's 2008 "Digital A-List"
• Conversation Agent "Best Conversations of 2008"
  
• Mashable's 2008 Year in Review: "20 Most Popular Stories"
• Mashable's How to 2008: "How to do Almost Anything with Social Media"
• TechCrunch "Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising)"
  
• Rebecca Lieb, for ClickZ, "Digital Marketing Opportunities in 2009"
• 123 Social Media "Social Media Demographics and Analytics 2008-2009"
  
• feed growth "Top 100 Digital Marketing Ideas for 2009"
• KD Paine's Measurement Standard's "Social Media Index "
  
  
  

Labels: 2009 predictions, best of lists, index, marketing, measurement, media, social media

Few will argue with the innovative communications strategy the Obama campaign's PR consiglieres deployed to catapult him into the presidency. That success bred unanimous accolades, while his opponent's PR shortcomings spurred general derision -- at least from the usual punditry.

One industry colleague recently quipped to me that it wasn't social media and its ability to directly engage the electorate that drove Senator Obama's campaign success. Rather, it was the Senator himself and his riveting message of hope...following seven years of Bush Administration purposeful disengagement from the American people.

Could the charismatic and articulate Senator from Illinois have won the election using traditional communications tactics? We will never know for sure, but we can glean some added insights in reading this New York Times magazine piece on which @GioRodriguez tweeted this morning.

In the profile of Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, we are offered a glimpse into what worked in the campaign, and how the WH incoming communications team will diverge, and surprisingly, borrow from the Bush PR doctrine.

What follows are select passages, the first of which confirm's the campaign's disdain for the traditional media filter:

"The paradox of this scene was that the Obama campaign’s communications strategy was predicated in part on an aggressive indifference to this insider set. The campaign bragged that Obama never even visited with the editorial board of The Washington Post..."

And then we have the continued need and prevalence of message command-and-control:

"Obama’s operatives spoke with a single voice and a precise message and only when they wanted to. They did it with a smile, not complaining — at least not publicly — about how the press was the enemy. And they did it using interactive tools that bred a feeling of real-time connectedness between campaign and voter.

...many reporters and rivals have noted the “Bush-like” tendencies the Obama campaign demonstrated in its ability to control information. The comparison is generally meant as a compliment (albeit a grudging one) by members of the press and expressed enviously by veterans of other campaigns.

Plouffe himself admitted to me that the Obama campaign subscribed to the “Bush model” of communications discipline. Asked if Obama himself spoke of the “Bush model,” Plouffe told me he did."

Of course, by-passing the media filter to directly engage the electorate was a hallmark of the campaign, and may also be for an Obama Administration:

"The campaign highlighted its mastery of new political media that included a vast database of e-mail addresses and an ability to quickly put up Web sites and use blogs, online video and text messaging.

"In the course of the campaign, the Obama team showcased a number of new-media applications designed to project a sense of open-book communications to the public. They promoted the fact that the campaign made major announcements — like Obama’s selection of Biden — by communicating “directly” with voters who provided their e-mail and text addresses.

If Obama was attacked by a rival, the campaign would not just push back by traditional means (arguing their case with reporters) but also by putting up their own Web sites like fightthesmears.com. This allowed the campaign not only to defend itself but also to draw more coverage to how innovative and responsive it was.

Mr. Gibbs acknowledges the need to cultivate traditional journalists. His boss explains what Gibbs adds to the communications equation:

"When he speaks of press relations, Gibbs tends to do so in metaphor. 'Do you build a moat between the two, or do you build a drawbridge?' Gibbs said, the 'two' being the press and presidency. He said he advocates the drawbridge approach.

Obama praises Gibbs’s intuitive sense of 'what is on the minds of the American people,' and his ear for 'how things play' in the media."

Now Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan could hide behind the fact that he was out of the loop. What about Mr. Gibbs?

"'...having a White House press secretary who is also a confidante can be radioactive.' Having an 'open-door chain of command' between their two offices, the former adviser said, can lead to a spokesman feeling pressure to lie to protect the president."

As for the incoming communications hierarchy:

"In the Obama communications operation, Axelrod will continue to oversee the media and message strategy. Emanuel will clearly have a pivotal role. And Pfeiffer, the deputy director of communications, and Ellen Moran, the new White House communications director, will try to offset Gibbs’s well-known allergy to things management-related. Gibbs is prone to being disorganized."

So, can message command-and-control live side-by-side with the promise of transparency?

"In spite of their closed-ranks tendencies, the Obama communications team’s buzzwords of choice are 'transparency' and 'openness.' When you press Obama aides on how they would define “transparency” and “openness,” they often invoke their willingness to make documents public during the campaign. As with the Bush model, Obama’s view of transparency and openness did not include exposing internal discussions."

So the million dollar question: how will the incoming administration utilize the 3-million+ names it has gathered in its database?

"There has been much speculation about how the new administration might deploy the Obama campaign’s massive voter database. People have theorized that it could be a way for the White House to skirt the traditional media 'filter'...

'...The massive list of energized activists is the biggest stick Obama will carry in Washington,' the liberal blogger Ari Melber wrote on The Nation’s Web site. 'It enables direct communication at a remarkable scale. . . . To put it another way, the list dwarfs the audience of all the nightly cable-news shows combined.'"

While direct-to-supporter communications may temper the harsh media spotlight, Mr. Gibbs and company cannot rely on that alone if they expect to prevail in the court of public opinion:

"WHAT IS GENERALLY AGREED UPON is that the traditional media will turn harsher at some point."

No doubt. More links below:

• positively Barack "Robert Gibbs profile"
• Wonkette "Robert Gibbs is Obama's Favorite White Friend"
• Huffington Post (Sam Stein) "Robert Gibbs, Protector of the Obama Message"
• Politico (Shenanigans) "The NYT Robert Gibbs mag piece"
• ObamaGab "Lower that Drawbridge"
• MediaBistro FishBowl DC "We Read Mark Leibovich's 5,000+ Word NYT Piece On Robert Gibbs So You Don't Have To"

I never liked embargoes. Sure, in a different age when there were but a handful of authoritative media in a given industry sector, the ability to work with each of them on an embargoed basis made sense -- or at least was manageable as long as you were upfront about it.

Today, with a myriad media outlets, each pining for the title of first to post, publish or stream, all bets are off. Nowhere is this more true than in the highly competitive tech and gadget sectors.

And nowhere is the frustration over mismanaged PR pitches more evident (and empathizeable) than with the granddaddy of all tech blogs, TechCrunch.

In a much buzzed-about post earlier today titled "Death to the Embargo," TC proprietor Michael Arrington laments:

"A year ago embargo breaks were rare, once-a-month things. Today, nearly every embargo is broken, sometimes by a few minutes, sometimes by half a day or more. We can’t continue to operate under these rules."

So to punish the embargoers who no longer have the capacity (or temerity) to prevent some duty-bound journalist from breaking the false bond of trust the PR person believed he or she had, TC today proclaimed its new policy:

"We've never broken an embargo at TechCrunch. Not once. Today that ends. From now our new policy is to break every embargo. We’ll happily agree to whatever you ask of us, and then we’ll just do whatever we feel like right after that. We may break an embargo by one minute or three days. We’ll choose at random."

Now of course, if it's Apple, Google or Microsoft that seeks Mr. Arrington's attention, he will make exceptions:

"There will be exceptions. We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively, so we know there won’t be any mistakes. There are also a handful - maybe three - people who we trust enough to continue to work with them on general embargoes (if you are a PR person and wondering if you’re on that list, you’re not). But for the vast majority of news we get in our inboxes, we’re just going to fire it off to our readers ad hoc whenever we please. This policy stays in effect until I update this post, which won’t be any time soon."

I guess he'll have his cake and eat it too.

Here are some others who've taken a new interest in this familiar PR rant:

• PR 2.0 (Brian Solis) "Tech Crunch Kills the Embargo: Are You to Blame?"
• The Inquisitr "Michael Arrington: Evil Genius"
• Ross Mayfield's Weblog "The End of Embargoes"
• Stage Two Consulting "Why Embargoes Will Survive"
• Pudding Relations "The End of Embargoes?"
• IssTumBul (Adam Isserlis)
• Center Networks (Allen Stern) "The Exclusive, The Embargo and The Arrington"
  
• Twitter Search
  

And finally, David Berlind, writing on his "Tech Radar" blog for Information Week, has weighed in with a thoughtful overview of the merits and pitfalls of the embargo interplay between journalists and PR types..

Labels: blogs, embargoes, journalism, media relations, Michael Arrington, PR, public relations, tech media, TechCrunch

In a recent phone conversation, I strongly urged the proprietor of the new, fast-growing Twitter feed @themediaisdying to change its name.

In my opinion, the name was simply inaccurate. Themediaisexpanding, changing, convulsing are probably more apt descriptions of what's happening in the media ecosystem.

The youthful purveyor of this new service, which sporadically spits out 140-character tweets on journalists' comings and goings (mostly goings), explained in a direct message to me:

"We tested it out and everyone seems to be ok with it - it's more statement than fact - I can't believe the uptake - crazy. Hope u r well."

Sure, dead tree media has slashed jobs at alarming rates, and in fact, one business reporter in Des Moines tweeted her plans to stop following the funereal feed:

"@sbzdega Just unfollowed The Media is Dying got tired of the job loss postings in my industry."

Yet, in spite of the sobering newstweets on which the feed thrives, the growth of citizen journalism and social media, cable TV, and mainstream media's migration to the Web (and mobile), seems to support the notion that the media is anything but "dying." Morphing, for sure, expanding, no doubt, but not dying.

David Carr, in his New York Times "Media Equation" column today, even extolled the value of one of the "dying" news outlets on which @themediaisdying hopes to build its franchise. From the editor of the Chicago Tribune:

“This was an extraordinary week for The Chicago Tribune,” he said. “On Monday, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, and on Tuesday, this huge story broke. There are two messages there. One, that the business model has to be reinvented and two, the importance of doing public service reporting. In the future, we will be doing fewer things and doing them better, and this kind of reporting will be a pillar of what we continue to do.”

Perhaps it's Schadenfreude, but themediaisdying's catchy name caught the attention of The New York Times, which today briefly reported on its rapid success cultivating followers in just several weeks of existence:

"Since then, the stream, maintained at twitter.com/themediaisdying by its founder and seven volunteers from the industry, has garnered more than 3,000 subscribers."

Susan Mernit scratched her head at the "gooey" attention The Times gave this fledgling feed, pointing to more prolific Twitterers with far more followers who as yet remain unheralded:

"Why not write about Chris Brogan, who, with 26,250 followers, seems to be turning into the Jimmy Stewart of the interwebs? Or the super clever Merlin Mann, with 32,000? Or the appealing Veronica Belmont (38,000)?

Of course, none of them are focusing on the crash and burn of the media industry, which @themediaisdying covers extremely well. But the size of their audience ain't the news, honey, not in this world."

If you do wish to follow the machinations of the media industry, here are some additional resources that should sate your appetite:

• Media Bistro's "Revolving Door Newsletter"
• O'Dwyer PR "Media Notes" (subscription)
• Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog "Media Notes"
• Gorkana Alerts (subscription)
• Romenesko
• PR Week "Media News"
• Contacts newsletter (subscription)
• I Want Media
  

Labels: feed, firings, journalism, media jobs, PR, themediaisdying, Twitter

BusinessWeek's John Byrne just posted the names and Twitter handles of 32 of his colleagues. Nice of him, though I wonder what his colleagues think?

While we're at it, PR peeps, here are some other lists of journalists who use Twitter:

• Business Week (courtesy of @johnabyrne)
• UK journalists (courtesy of PRBlogger.com)
• Newspapers that Twitter (courtesy of graphicdesignr)
• Journalists, US & elsewhere (Courtesy of My Creative Team)
  
• Media (courtesy of Social Brand Index)
• Journalists by name only (courtesy of TwitterGroups.com)
• Media on Twitter (wiki)
  

I know one day we're going to look back at this post, and file it alongside the headline: "New Website Launches." It's just that Twitter's use by reporters to crowdsource sources and file instant news dispatches, among other things, will be an afterthought before we know it.

Gladwellian connectors Brian Solis and Stowe Boyd hope to capitalize on the trend by channeling journalists' informational needs via Twitter in a new venture they're aptly calling MicroPR. It's not unlike our friend Peter Shankman's wildly successful HARO in which reporters crowd source PR people for expertise, albeit via email.

Many PR pros fear that journalists' embrace of Twitter may make their long-held roles as expert resources obsolete. I would agree, but only for those practitioners who neglect to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. One last piece of advice: knowing journalists' Twitter handles doesn't give you the right to engage. Follow for a while, then determine whether you have anything of value to add.

Labels: haro, journalists, media relations, microblogging, micropr, PR, shankman, Solis, stowe boyd, tter, Twitter

Did you see the story on the front/home page of today's New York Times in which Brian Stelter reveals how some of the more prolific YouTube feeders can earn six figures in the process?

"All he needed was a $2,000 Canon camera, a $6 piece of fabric for a backdrop and a pair of work lights from Home Depot. Mr. Buckley is an example of the Internet’s democratizing effect on publishing. Sites like YouTube allow anyone with a high-speed connection to find a fan following, simply by posting material and promoting it online...Mr. Buckley said he was earning over $100,000 from YouTube advertisements."

It reminded me of the kitchen table businesses that spawned out of eBay in its nascent stages.

But it's not only consumer-generated video that's proliferating and profiteering online. Virtually every marketing-driven enterprise I know is experimenting with professionally produced digital moving images to draw eyeballs and drive business.

Just this week, my NYTimes.com client bowed a fab new marketing campaign in which a dozen recognizable personalities -- from Cynthia Nixon to Kenneth Cole and Padma Lakshmi (above) to the Giants Defensive Linebacker Justin Tuck (incongruously paired with actress Lynn Redgrave) - wax poetic on what about NYTimes.com gives them a charge. Its definitely worth a visit.

Separately, my old friend Josh Seftel pointed me to a similar online video campaign that he directed for MIT. Called The Human Factor, it too showcased a range of individuals -- not of the celebrity variety -- but equally alluring. The nine featured students talked effusively about their academic and extracurricular endeavors. The link was sent to MIT's donor base, which apparently responded in a big $$$ way.

Labels: Bebe Neuwirth, ben stein, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Eric Ripert, Isaac Mizrahi, John Cameron Mitchell, John Leguizamo, MIT, NYTimes.com, The Human Factor

The socially smart set have jumped all over Josh Bernoff's just-released study that ranked the trust-worthiness of various information sources. His provocatively titled post "People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it" revealed that company blogs scored the lowest on Forrester's version of The Edelman Trust Barometer.

Company blogs earned a paltry 16% ranking of "information sources they trusted the most." By contrast, "Email from people you know" ranked highest with 77%, followed by "Consumer product ratings/reviews" with 60%, and "Portals/search engines" at 50%. Here's a sampling of the groundswell of reactions to the study:

Attention Max

"Here’s how I responded on Josh’s blog: While the data selected to base the report are great for generating a headline, they’re mostly irrelevant. Blogs are a both a communications channel AND a medium. Their value are not proxied well by prompted survey questions among general consumer populations. Their value is defined by the trust developed among engaged niches over time — such as with very specific customer and industry relationships. Here’s an analogy: Do you trust telephones? No. But you may eventually build trust with the people with whom you talk and do business with via the telephone."

Web Strategy by Jeremiah

"While in the back of our minds, we all knew this was true. Corporate blogs, like Jonathan Schwartz Blog and Bob Lutz of GM frequently talk about one thing –they’re companies and their products. In fact, some would argue corporate blogs don’t live up to the dream of naked transparency as we saw from Robert Scoble way back in 2006. Instead, many corporate blogs have become a rehash of press releases written in more of a human tone, yet fail to address the real conversation that’s happening in the marketplace."

Peter Kim In a comment to Josh's post:

"First of all, there's a clear problem in how the question is worded and/or response quality. You can see this in the data - almost a quarter of respondents report they don't trust or are neutral about email from people they know. The intention of the question is clear - so why would this number not be very close to 100%? When I ran the question before, it asked about advertising in the channels. This version requires respondents to respond with their own interpretation - might be editorial, might be ads, who knows? But ultimately, 16% is only indicative of a larger issue. Consumers don't trust company blogs for the same reasons they don't trust corporate advertising (reference: Consumers Love To Hate Advertising). Today's corporate messaging intends to spin, convince, and persuade consumers to buy stuff. Technologies like contact optimization and behavioral targeting only exacerbate the problem, helping marketers to target consumers like a sniper and drill them with a message that has been calculated for potential affinity. And now that consumers can fight back, they are, with technology: DVRs, satellite radio, ad blockers."

blog council

"What’s clear is that while there is a lot of work still to do, corporate blogs do work. The report specifically highlighted some examples of corporate blogs that are trustworthy — Dell, Rubbermaid, and Microsoft (all Blog Council members, by the way) — because they put their customer first and exist to help solve their problems. We completely agree. In fact, every single one of the speakers at BlogWell in September indicated that the purpose of their blogs first and foremost was to listen to their customers and help make their lives better."

AdWeek's Brian Morrissey

"For the last several years, new marketing experts have implored corporations to 'join the conversation,' namely through blogging. One problem: several years into the blogging phenomenon, not many consumers trust their blogs. Newer forms of corporate social media didn't do well, either. Social networking profiles from brands were trusted by just 18 percent of consumers, the second least-trusted information source of the Forrester survey. Forrester concludes that many brands make the mistake of blogging about what they know most about: themselves. Instead, Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff urges companies to focus on customer problems and cater to brand fans. It helps to have a celebrity face, like Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump."

Social Media Influence

"Make no mistake. This is not a plea to give up on blogging. It is a plea to be thoughtful in how and why you blog."

The report is available here for free with registration.

Labels: blog council, Forester, groundswell, Jeremiah Owyang, Josh Bernoff, Max Kalehoff, Peter Kim

Former Clinton White House spokesman Mike McCurry (at right) offers up his remedy for what ails the newspaper business -- collaboration. In a by-lined piece for the RealClearPolitics site, he rightly observes that newspapers, newsweeklies and their ilk simply cannot compete with all-news cable channels and the Internet.

He also came to his collaborative conclusion culling the insights of Microsoft's Chief Counsel for Intellectual Property Strategy Thomas C. Rubin:

"It would be one thing if print editions were being replaced with vibrant and profitable online versions. But as we all know, that is just not happening. Today we are still searching for healthy symbiosis between newspapers and new technology."

Personally, I believe that some newspapers have succeeded in achieving that "healthy symbiosis with new technology." But most, admittedly, have not. Two weeks ago, NYTimes.com debuted Times Extra, which aggregates non-Times content on its vaunted home page, and today, it launched Times Widgets, "a new online platform that gives users the ability to create customized widgets using The Times's more than 10,000 RSS feeds" according to the news release. Cool, forward-thinking stuff and definitely symbiotic.*

McCurry recites Rubin's "Three C's" for achieving this newspaper nirvana: copyright, competition, and collaboration. It is the third "C" that allowed the music industry (record labels and iTunes) and the book (and now magazine) industry (publishers and Google) to overcome the issues inherent in the first two. He asks:

How might this work in the news world? Perhaps Google News and media outlets could collaborate to provide high quality content in exchange for a share of revenue and control of when and how their content is displayed in a search. Or perhaps news organizations could collaborate similarly with news aggregators, such as Google Reader or Bloglines (a division of Ask.com).

Once the three C's are on place, a fourth "C" can manifest:

"Content" -- quality content, to be precise. When copyright owners' control is preserved, competition is sufficient, and collaborative solutions are the goal, the quality of available content will be dramatically improved."

Talking about quality content, NPR sat down with The Times's Bill Keller to gauge his outlook on his newspaper's prospects:

"Good journalism does not come cheap. And, therefore, you're not going to find a lot of blogs or nonprofit Web sites that are going to build a Baghdad bureau." He also noted that "there's a real shortage of the kind of information that I would call quality journalism."

Regarding the Obama campaign's direct-to-constituency communications:

Keller noted how the Obama campaign excelled at using online social-networking tools for fund-raising and building support. But, he said, "again, that's something that works to mobilize your base. You need more than your base to govern. And even your most devoted admirers don't want to rely just on you for word of what the government's up to, and what it means."

If you have six minutes, definitely take a listen.


* Full disclosure: this PR pro does some work for NYTimes.com.

Labels: Bill Keller, collaboration, journalism, Microsoft, Mike McCurry, New York Times, newspapers, Real Clear Politics, Thomas C. Rubin, Times widgets

So I'm back from a three-day jaunt to Moscow where I gave a talk to a group of Russian marketing and communications executives on media, social media and PR trends in the U.S.

This was my second visit there in six months, and yes, the traffic was still horrendous, the cars remained caked in mud, and the only meter the lawless taxi drivers followed was how much they could stick it to you. Oh, the subways were still pristine and efficient.

In preparing for this presentation, I tapped my old colleague Paul Cohen, now an SVP at Ketchum, to get his take on the Russian media landscape. Paul's become somewhat of an expert on that country, shuttling back and forth every month or so. His description of how the different news mediums operate, i.e., state-owned versus independent, was most helpful.

For example, I was surprised to learn that the state doesn't regulate Internet content as does China, a fact that bodes well for the prospects of social marketers. The same can't be said about state-owned TV news, i.e., hotels carry CNN, but private homes do not. I also learned that President Medvedev recently experimented with vlogging and that Gazprom, the state-owned oil company, just spent $15 million to purchase RuTube, the fledgling Russian version of you-know-what.

I was asked by my hosts, the Russian Association of Corporate Media (AKMR), to include an overview of custom publishing, so I sought advice from Lori Rosen who heads the Custom Publishing Council. As it turns out, Ms. Rosen's counterparts from the APA in the UK, Patrick Fuller and Julia Hutchison, had the subject well in-hand, as did Galina Unstiniova, the custom publishing director for Russia's Sanoma Magazines. Patrick, by the way, spent the better part of his career at Haymarket, PR Week's parent.

Anyway, to make a long blog post shorter, my presentation focused on the migration from command-and-control to bottom-up communications and the vagaries therein. Keeping with the custom publishing theme, I stressed the content creation aspects of the social media ecosystem, using video examples from candidate Obama, Nike (Kobe Bryant leaping over an Aston Martin), and the disgruntled, but enterprising Comcast subscriber who made a cable repairman sleeping on his couch a YouTube star.

I also showed Rubbermaid's presence on Facebook, the U.S. Navy for Moms online community, a smattering of corporate blogs, e.g., Chevron, GM and Walmart, conversation mining with Dell on Twitter, SEO/SEM, and the recent example of how AIG engaged Daily Kos to set the record straight. I have no idea how any of this was translated from English to Russian, but the post-preso (paraphrased) questions were fairly astute:

• How can one trust bloggers? Do they have the same journalistic standards as MSM?
• Isn't it potentially dangerous to disseminate content in a state-controlled society?
• How should companies deal with online detractors?
• As an auto industry executive, how can I use social media to build sales?
  

I won't use this tableau to try to answer these questions, but I was encouraged that they were even asked. Perhaps custom publishing will now take on meaning beyond glossy images in dead tree media. I sure hope so.

Labels: APA, custom publishing, journalism, media, Moiscow, PR, public relations, Russia, social media