A Lost Year for PR Agencies?

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Who can keep track of the myriad year-ending media and marketing predictions posts? If you're like me and don't have the time to sift through everything the pundits have prognosticated, here it is in one take:

We have officially entered the age of mobility wherein smartphones and tablets have overtaken desktops and laptops for content consumption and commerce. 

Plus the visual web.  Now let's move on.

Over the past year, I've been keeping tabs on the "strides" PR agencies have made in social media and the analytics/measurement game. Unfortunately, the picture isn't all it's framed out to be. With a few exceptions, I believe that agencies are losing their birthright in the battle to lead in social media communications and measurement. Other "marketing" entities have eaten the PR industry's lunch through their ready embrace and leverage of new digital content strategies and channels.

 Shiv Singh, global head of digital, Pepsico Beverages

The big global firms certainly have invested in departments focused on brand-building and consumer engagement via the primary social channels (mostly prodded by their forward-thinking, marketing and measurement-driven clients at CPG companies).

But I'd opine that the rank and file of those toiling on the agency sie of the PR services equation, including those at the cool-sounding "digital boutiques," continue to offer as their primary deliverable (and measure of success) earned editorial media placements.

One of the most buzzed about "downtown" PR shops even has the term "media relations" baked into its company name. Here's a typical in-house PR job description that reveals just how mired we are as a profession in the publicity-generating paradigm:

Responsibilities:

• Develop PR strategies and manage the execution of product publicity through pre-launch, launch, and post-launch phases.

• Provide counsel to leadership regarding incoming media requests.

• Write and edit press releases, corporate communications, and online materials about [xxx company] products and the company.

• Correspond with the press as a representative of [xxx company], as needed.

• Conduct worldwide press tours, as necessary.

• Conduct efficient interviews of [xxx company's] developers to gather data for written assignments.

• Answer written interview questions about [xxx company] products for domestic and international press.

• Write articles and news blurbs for domestic and international [xxx company] web sites.

I'm hardly one to diminish the value (or evolved art) of generating editorial coverage for a client. Just attend one of our PCNY lunches to know this.  Also, there's no better feeling in our profession than a client hit over The AP wire or on GMA. In fact, the PR industry's steadfast embrace of media relations is probably because many clients continue to define and pay for PR success with an appearance on NBC "Today," a feature in the Wall Street Journal, a hit in TechCrunch, or a photo layout in People magazine.

Via David Armano, Edelman Digital (June 2012)

Still, as consumers take a steady diet of news and information from an increasingly wider stream of sources, e.g., those they follow or have friended on Twitter and Facebook, the talented headline writers at news aggregators like HuffPost, Daily Beast and Buzzfeed, and the more mainstream news orgs like The New York Times, WSJ, Reuters, etc., the tried-and-true "media placement" no longer has the capacity to produce the sustaining inertia on which brands (or memes) are built.

Today's media ecosystem is simply too ephemeral.  Even Pulitzer-destined reporting has relatively short legs.    

What's missing from most agencies is an investment in the skill sets that broaden the PR pros' media horizons to include new earned/paid/owned hybrid schemes that blur the lines between advertising, direct marketing and PR. We now see client messaging amplified as sponsored (i.e., paid) stories not only on Facebook, but on Mashable, The Atlantic, Forbes, Gothamist and countless other "ad-driven" digital media properties.  Pay for placement has taken on a new meaning in the new media paradigm.

Syncapse's Social Analytics Screen Grab

What's more, PR seems to have fallen short in crunching the audience behavioral data to assess whether a marketing/sponsored/native message has produced the desired action. Again, the large "holding company" agencies, plus Edelman, have the sufficient resources to invest in the back-end big data measurement tools to demonstrate client ROI.

However, ask most agency staffers what their clients really want the answer is invariably the same: a story (ie, positive branded message) in the mainstream news media.  Few agencies are looking at measuring paid digital creative's ability to draw eyeballs, clicks, likes and shares.

With PR people now outnumbering journalists by a ratio of four-to-one, the reliance on earned media engagement as the primary catalyst of conversations is no longer a given. Other modes for building a client's digital footprint must be considered.  (I dare not mention the shorter fuses most reporters have for PR operatives given the daily assault on their email inboxes.)

As for the digital-only research and marketing shops, they've approached client brand-building from the paid end of the marketing spectrum. I wouldn't even consider them in the public relations space, though PR agencies need to pay attention: many digital ad/marketing shops are aggressively hiring to build their earned (and thus more holistic) menu of communications offerings.

Looking head to 2013, the question will be: which flavor of communications agency will more expertly offer what Altimeter's Jeremiah Owyang and Rebecca Lieb define as a "converged media workflow" approach to addressing the client's communications need in our much-changed media landscape.

       Virgin Mobile's Ron Faris with Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti 

I'm personally rooting for my more prosaic brethren in the PR space, but based on my observations, much more work still needs to be done to inculcate rank and file staffers with the knowledge (and budgets) to lever open the other windows and doors into today's influential digital media properties.

Twinkle Twinkle Twitter Star

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J. Paul Vance (AP Photo)

The opening segment of CBS's "60 Minutes" looked at the tragedy in Newtown and noted the fact that early reports, spread initially through social channels and eventually via mainstream media, were false. No, the killer's mother didn't teach at Sandy Hook elementary school, and no, it wasn't Ryan Lanza, but his brother Adam who was the shooter. 

The amount of misinformation wafting from online to offline to general acceptance was so rampant, an exasperated Lieutenant J. Paul Vance of the CT State Police, in his weekend presser, threatened those posting on "social sites" with legal prosecution or arrest. I found that curious as did Matt Williams writing for The Guardian from New York:

"Vance noted that in some cases, people had set up social media accounts purporting to belong to the gunman or other people connected to the case. 'It has been threatening, it has been inaccurate, it has been people posing as other people,' Vance said. Perpetrators 'could be subject to arrest, he added. Twitter has suspended a number fake accounts that were set up in the aftermath of Friday's shooting: @Pray_Newtown has also been suspended, after Twitter users complained that it was posting pictures of victims of other gun massacres."

Morgan Freeman (Stephen Lovekin/FilmMagic)

Today we learn about another Newtown-related hoax that ensnared actor Morgan Freeman and spread quickly on Facebook and Twitter. From Mashable:

"An alleged statement attributed to actor Morgan Freeman in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting that left 20 children and 6 adults dead has been deemed a hoax. The comments -- which went viral this weekend on sites such as Facebook and Twitter -- condemned the 'sensationalist media' for coverage of mass killings, blaming news outlets for making "disturbed people" want to kill themselves in a 'memorable way.'"

It's one thing for a bot to serve up some tasteless search-driven ad, as was the case with Amazon:

Really Amazon!? Really!?! I think your bidding logic is a little flawed and a little creepy. twitter.com/justinschoen/s…
— Justin Schoen (@justinschoen) December 14, 2012

And Google:

Thanks Google for sending out this daily deal for handgun shooting today #insensitive twitter.com/LianaBaker/sta…
— Liana B. Baker (@LianaBaker) December 15, 2012

But, it's entirely a different story for poseurs to create real-sounding identities in social and MSM channels for the purposes of spreading false and malicious information. (Gee, sounds like Karl Rove and the GOP during this last election.) Be that as it may, the First Amendment does grant the freedom to express one's opinion, however heinous that opinion may be.

GigaOm's Mathew Ingram

Twitter and Facebook's terms-of-service also provide some parameters for participation in their ecosystems. I don't know under which law Lt. Vance can prosecute those on FB and Twitter. As GigaOm's astute observer of all things media Mathew Ingram noted in his timely post, "It’s not Twitter — this is just the way the news works now":

"Is social media responsible for these mistakes? Hardly. Most of them were reported by CNN and other traditional news sources as well, and in many cases Twitter users simply repeated them. Should they have verified the information before repeating it, as so many Twitter critics advise users to do? It’s hard to see how they could have done so, even if they wanted to. And to ask people to stop using Twitter or other social media during such an event seems naive at best — for better or worse, social networks are a crucial part of how we communicate now, and how we share both information and our emotional reaction to events like the Newtown shooting."

NPR's Andy Carvin

Unfortunately, early news reports invariably are fraught with errors. Couple this with socially engaged amateurs amplifying these raw, unverified accounts and you have a significantly flawed first write of history. There isn't a quick fix for this. Breaking news is almost always cacophonous and confusing. Ingram cites NPR's Andy Carvin as someone who takes time to validate his social sources before amplifying verifiable information via his Twiterstream. But he works for the venerated NPR. Ingram concludes:

"One way to do this is for journalists both pro and amateur to shift their skillset from simply reporting facts to assembling and/or fact-checking them, using the crowd for assistance as Carvin has, and focusing on the kind of approach taken by the BBC’s “user-generated content” desk and other innovative approaches to the process. In the end, we could wind up with not just a new way of building the news, but a dramatically better one."

Also, let's not discount the importance of creating awareness and a healthy skepticism about the veracity of the information that crosses one's social streams. In other words, don't believe everything you read. Consider the source!

New York Tech Meetup Gets Physical

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Steve Case

At Business Insider's recent Ignition conference, reported here, AOL founder and Revolution CEO Steve Case said the following in response to a Henry Blodget question about his investment strategy:

"More than half the economy has NOT been disrupted by the Internet."

Presumably he was talking about innovation in sectors that have been slow to embrace IT and its potential to enhance business processes and prospects, i.e., healthcare, financial services, etc. At the December New York Tech Meetup, several of the presentations reminded me of Steve Case's comments.

Leave it to Jessica and Nate to pull a few surprises for the 800+ live attendees at NYU's Skirball Auditorium and scores more via webstream at New Work City. The first was a live and remote appearance by New York City's digital doyenne Rachel Haot and her supreme boss Mayor Mike, respectively. Here's a (hand-held) video clip:

Mayor Mike's Call to Reinvent Payphones

Rachel and Mr. Mayor (smartly) tapped New York City's premier community of digital natives to source fresh thinking to "reinvent" the 11,000 payphone kiosks that pepper the city's five boroughs.

I actually thought that many had already been converted into wi-fi hotspots, but I guess I was mistaken. Personally, I think that it would be great, and speak volumes about the city, if every phone booth was equipped with VOIP to allow passers-by to make FREE one-minute voice or video calls to family or friends anywhere in the world. Sure, the booths could be equipped with ad-supported, Foursquare-fueled interactive Google Maps, but the free connectivity bridges the old and the new, IMHO.

Luci in Haiti

Moving on, there were other non-traditional surprises that showcased the December New York Tech Meetup. Two in particular caught my eye. The first was called Luci, and it does for those in the world lacking electricity (and light) what charity: water does for those lacking potable water.

Luci provides renewable light via an ingeniously-designed solar-powered, inflatable lantern. Take a look at the lightless voids in this newly released NASA image of Earth at night, and then contemplate the need Luci's creators at MPOWERD aspire to meet:

Earth at Night (via NASA)

I was also taken by a company called littleBits, which is building an opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets - a kind of Legos for the future wired set. The difference of course lies in how, through creative play, users are taught the fundamentals of circuitry.  You mean the Erector Set and that chemistry set no longer are valid teaching toys/tools?

In its mission, littleBits seeks to "create the next generation of problem-solvers, and interventions need to occur early. The time is ripe to create the pipe cleaner and the popsicle stick of the 21st century." What makes it diferent is open source, i.e., "...building a community of contributors who experiment, share online, and learn from each other’s creativity. Its designs are publicly available so that anyone can see and use them."

Other than these presenters bridging the physical world and virtual worlds, NYTM had more than its share of other compelling startups who succeeded in using their five minutes on stage to woo the discerning audience of New York technofiles.  Among those that this attendee especially liked: Glide, a platform for seamlessly accessing one's files that's device and OS agnostic; Punch, a platform, now in beta, that makes app creation easy;  rvl, a tool that let's one "author, present and share beautiful presentations," right in the browser.

The next NYTM is slated for January 8. Tickets are available on a first come, first served basis ...but you need to first join the group to be alerted.

Of Cookies & Cruises

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Anyone who's ever conducted a Google search has encountered that moment when one, two or seven days later up pops a related product ad in your desktop, laptop or mobile browser's window. These cookie-enabled ads seem to surface on some of the most random sites.

The issue of how online marketers use tracking cookies and one's personal data to deliver "relevant" product pitches is nothing new. The Wall Street Journal's Julia Angwin and her team won the prestigious Loeb Award for her reporting that exposed the sometimes nefarious collusion between digital marketers and the booming data-analytics industry.

It all starts with cookies, those little pieces of code implanted in one's browser's cache after you conduct a search or visit a website. But the tracking technology goes well beyond cookies. A Syracuse University study describes "evercookies" and "fingerprinting browsers" as means to track online behavior, and there are countless other methods for extracting one's personal data and browsing behavior. Then of course there's Facebook.

I personally have come to accept the uncanny appearance of ads in my web browser, sponsored stories on my Facebook wall and promoted tweets in my Twitterstream. That was until I received a call this week from Norwegian Cruise Lines. About four years ago, my wife and I spontaneously decided to take our #3 son on a Caribbean cruise. He had a limited break from school, and NCL happened to have an itinerary that worked.

NCL Pearl

Having led the launch PR for four different cruise ships -- Royal Caribbean's Monarch of the Seas and Majesty of the Seas and The Windstar and Windsong -- I knew a thing or two about what to expect.

This particular NCL cruise fell way short. Maybe it was the hairiest man contest held poolside one day, or the fact that a gold-chained teen wearing a wife-beater shirt tried to pick a fight with my son on the basketball court. 

Whatever the reasons, we wrote off NCL for any future cruising. This didn't stop the cruise line from emailing and calling us every few months. Thankfully, the sales overtures stopped two years ago.  That was until this week.

I had been doing some online research for an RCCL cruise for my Dad for his anniversary. Within a few days of my search, I received two calls from NCL's sales department.

Huh? Could NCL be that much under my skin?  It's one thing to see a contextual ad pop in my browser, but something entirely different to get an offline phone call prompted by my online activity! Does this cruise line track the online behavior of everyone who has ever embarked on one of their cruises? More significantly, I began to wonder how exposed I really am to online marketers, let alone nefarious swindlers?

A visit to the Network Advertising Initiative website revealed that some 82 of its member companies have enabled online behavioral ads for my web browser. Here are a few:

• 24/7 Media
• 33Across
• Accuen Inc.
• Adapt.TV Inc.
• Adara Media
• AdBlade
• AdBrite
• Aconian Media Group
• AddThis (Including XGraph)
• AdMeld Inc.
• AdRoll
• Aggregate Knoweldge Inc.
• Akamai Technologies, Inc.
• AOL Advertising
• AppNexus Inc.
• Audience Science Inc.

And these are just the NAI members listed under the A's!

Fortunately, there are ways to identify and minimize the commercial intrusions in your online life. They include:

• Network Advertising Initiative - Offers an opt-out tool in conjunction with its members for the express purpose of allowing consumers to "opt out" of the behavioral advertising delivered by those members. 

• Lifehacker has a round-up of tools and sites to help you identify and stop those tracking you. 

• AllThingsD's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher offer tips and links on eliminating "tracking cookies." (via Reddit) 

• Firefox (and other browsers) offer add-ons to show who's tracking you. 

• There is also "a nascent movement by privacy advocates to educate Internet users about the spread of their personal data online and to offer tools that allow them to control who sees what. (Via The New York Times)         

There are so many growing dimensions to the digital marketing and online privacy story. It's downright scary, especially when you consider the implications of these sophisticated data analytics tools falling into the hands of less-than-ethical users.