"Who Owns Scoble?"
In this age of Social Media, there are generally two themes comprising the “PR is dead” meme.
The first is, “Blogs allows corporations to speak directly to media and stakeholders: there’s no need for the control (of message or relationship) exerted by a PR middleman.”
The other is, “The work of ‘reputation management’ is increasingly all-about-relationships. Can we outsource an important relationship?”
This post is about the latter. This post asks, tongue-in-cheek, “Who owns Scoble?”
On the face of it, of course, the corporate spokespeople should have a relationship with any-and-all top-tier media, be they “mainstream” or “blogosphere.” In a perfect world, they’d have the time, creativity, connections and sticktoitiveness required to forge these personal links.
In my experience, however, few execs can pull it off. Heck, forget about “creativity” and “connections” – there’s simply too much to do to run a winning company; the “time” and “sticktoitiveness” factors are critical issues.
This is true both in start-ups and in larger companies.
Start-ups require everyone to wear 12 hats, so the PR person is generally frantic. But let’s say she is fully capable of creating and sustaining these all-important relationships on her own. Awesome. But if your start-up is like every other start-up I’ve worked with, this A-player is an Army of One. What happens when she leaves for a better opportunity, as so often happens, taking her relationships with her? Will the CEO or Marketing VP be able to invest nearly as much time in cultivating those so-called “friends” in the mediasphere?
Not likely. More often than not, these execs have spoken just a handful of times with their top-tier media contacts; to reach out directly at this point would ring hollow: the first words out of the journalist/blogger will likely be, “Oh, umm, hi. What happened to ______?” (At which point, having to admit “she left for another opportunity” just calls your company’s own grandiose ambitions into question, eh?)
Larger companies fall into this same fix, of course, but more often than not these corporations have forged “corporate ties” to their top mediasphere contacts: the “loyalty” of the media contact is to the brand, not to any one in-house PR rep. The company is part of the media’s “beat.”
Thus, many large companies decide that it’s easier to outsource the relatively simplistic task of “fielding media inquiries,” since this approach offers the added benefits of a) gaining access to a swath of eager-beaver young creative types (without having to pay their healthcare benefits), and, b) potentially opening the company up to additional media relationships, cultivated over the years by the external firm.
Circling back to the original question: “Is it okay to outsource relationships?” The answer is NO. You can’t hire a third-party to dance with your wife, drink a beer with your best friend or teach your kid how to ride a bike.
But Mr. Scoble (my proxy for any A-lister in the mediasphere; thanks, Robert!) already has enough friends: he is not necessarily looking to forge a “relationship” with you. If your company is doing something cool, Scoble understands that a good PR person can light his path to your door. Happens all the time; it’s part of the system he happily works within.
In fact, just as many journalists & bloggers have relationships, loyalties and/or editorial obligations to certain corporate brands, they often also get a good feel for the various external PR agencies that pitch them, and likewise develop symbiotic relationships with the people at the good firms.
What matters most, in any case, is THE STORY. Whomever has the best relationship with the media contact – whether in-house or agency – really only gets an extra 30 seconds to tell it. If the story sucks, the story doesn’t get written – and the relationship suffers because you’ve wasted their time. Do that enough times as an in-house PR contact and you’ve burned a bridge, for yourself and your company. At least the Agency rep can switch things up and ensure that the ratio of good:bad pitches (across all clients) favors the good, and thus keeps the overall relationship strong.
Because “forging good relationships” with the media is a huge component of a PR agency’s raison d’etre, we make the time to creatively forge and sustain these connections. For every bad pitch that one agency person might send out, a good agency is crafting many more neatly-honed pitches. We take the knowledge gained from these processes (including the cock-ups) to ensure that our clients’ messages come through in ways that are palatable to each of our contacts. Done well, it works well for the client, for the media, and yeah, for us.
One less thing for you to do.
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Comments
"At least the Agency rep can switch things up and ensure that the ratio of good:bad pitches (across all clients) favors the good, and thus keeps the overall relationship strong."
This part came right out at me. The relationship is the key and without a relationship, a company (not using an agency) will more likely lose opportunities or not have the chance to take them because of it.
Posted by: Dan Schawbel | January 21, 2008 10:25 PM
I think it is tough being a PR agency in this environment. I think journalists and top bloggers are a little PRagencied out. I wonder the number of pings these folks get in any given day. I think journalist/bloggers are getting to the mindset that the world is flattening and that the function of a professional introducer is antiquated -- good ideas should more organically be "rising to the top" is what I suspect they are feeling.
In my mind, I have always thought PR agencies do two things. First, they do the "legwork" of helping write the copy in the release and the legwork of "introducing" it to the masses of journalists with some old fashioned selling. Second, they have some "proprietary relationships" with top journalists and bloggers in industries that overlap with their customer base, so that when something interesting happens, they can get timely access to the right people. What I have been surprised about in my own dealings with PR co's is that there is a lot more of the legwork stuff going on and a lot less of (actually almost none of) the proprietary relationships.
Unfortunately for the PR industry, in today's climate, I think the proprietary relationships are far more important than legwork.
A great PR agency in today's day and age is one that can consistently produce high leverage proprietary relationships for the management of the startup in an almost factory-like manner.
Posted by: Brian Halligan | January 21, 2008 11:55 PM
Nice post. I've been talking to a number of startups recently about a new product idea and it’s clear to me that the rise of new media is changing the tension points in the agency/company relationship (fyi, I'm a startup, marketing guy myself).
I think it's clear to most people that agencies have valuable relationships with A-listers/MSM and they realize that these relationships are difficult to replicate. The challenge is that, given media fragmentation and the rise of new media, outreach needs to be conducted in a more segmented, targeted manner, which involves reaching out to lots more niche bloggers (along with the A-listers and MSM). The question is who should own these relationships and what role should each party play.
I think the social media “sea change” for the PR industry applies as much to client relations as it does to media relations. In order for the agency/company relationship to continue to work, (as opposed to bringing it in-house), I think two things need to occur –
1) the agency should own the relationship with MSM/A-listers (where they have relationships and can provide the most value), while providing lots of strategic, real-time guidance to companies on how to deal with the long/mid-tail (i.e., who to talk to, when/how to get involved, what to say/not say, etc.), and,
2) agencies need to get a LOT more comfortable about sharing information with their clients. Yeah, there are a lot of complexities with this and an agency has a responsibility to protect their relationships, but given this new environment, the agency mindset needs to move away from viewing relationships and outreach as intellectual property that should be guarded/controlled at all costs.
The PR people that I find most trustworthy and that I want to work with are comfortable sharing lots of info about their contacts and outreach because they’re confident in the value of their strategic counsel and their “story-telling” ability.
Posted by: Paul | January 23, 2008 01:05 PM
Solid post and comments. However, I think it goes beyond the singular contact one may have with a particular journalist.
Todd hit it on the head, it's about the STORY not whether you have a "relationship" with this eWEEK reporter or that USA Today columnist (often times I find PR reps equating providing a reporter with the number of employees who work in his client's IT dept for a sidebar in the May 12, 2007 issue as a "relationship"). Besides, in today's media world, we're having to forge new relationships every day given the musical chairs and new pubs launching every day. That's nothing new to us.
Where agencies excel is keeping the pulse of the media - be it MSM, new media, etc. This ultimately leads to more effective media relations and, ah, "ink" for the client. I rarely come across a client exec that can match our media knowledge. But who cares, that's why they partner with us, right?
For example, we know what's happening at CIO and how the Weigh In section has now morphed into the Advice & Opinion page or how the WSJ and NYT have over 80 blogs combined or that the editor who has covered the client several times in the past year in Integrated Solutions is movin' on up and now associate editor at Forbes. Or maybe that the tech beat reporter for the Omaha World-Herald is a bit odd and needs to be pitched a certain way and time of day.
We know these seemingly trivial things that Brian may classify as "legwork," but I call it solid and intelligent processes which ultimately lead to stronger relationships.
Rich
Posted by: Rich Young | January 24, 2008 12:22 AM