I’ve been reading more than a bit lately about the fear among p.r. and marketing professionals and their clients, many loathe to adopt the use of social media/PR 2.0/New PR (choose your reductive label). Most discussion I’ve seen swirls around the use of blogs and and podcasts, their usefulness or lack thereof, along with myriad explanation for all this temerity - fear of losing control, client fear of wasted time in a niche market with no reach, consumer fear of changing technologies.
So, here’s my take: the apparent “fear” is really part of a normal business process of calculating – sometimes with deliberate care, other times based just on gut instinct — the risk vs. potential return on the $$ and time spent in exploring the benefits of a social media communications campaign. Those calculations made, many p.r. and marketing pros and/or their clients still tend to see social media as something of a crap shoot, ergo my post title of ‘Blog Vegas.’
First of all, imagine the pitch of a small- to mid-sized agency to a small- to mid-sized client: “I want to use the monthly retainer or hourly rate you’re paying me to roll out a blogger relations campaign about your product/message … How do I provide you some metrics that you can take back to your boss or BOD in order to justify what we’re doing? Errrr, we’re not sure yet, but eventually we’ll figure out a way to help you justify the investment.”
Then, consider the growing number of individual and independent PR practitioners, joining the presumably large number of small firms with shallow pockets for which loss of one or two clients usually spells cash-flow crisis. The risk of alienating an existing client with a not-clearly-conceived and immeasurable blogger relations campaign vs. the possible return on investment just doesn’t add up.
Easy, then, for the very deep-pocketed Richard Edelman (and I say this with all due respect – he is a lion of public relations and there is absolutely nothing wrong with deep pockets!) to exhort his fellow practitioners to fully embrace the peer-to-peer digital revolution as the wave of the future. But, for the vast majority of professionals out there, having “skin” in the peer-to-peer communications “game” is a rather more risky proposition than it is for those of ample purse; same goes for the many, many in-house marketing and communications execs who have to justify their expenditures in great detail and who at no little risk to their own position within embark upon a campaign for which there might be no demonstrable metrics showing a return on the investment of $$, time and resources.
Edelman recently raised high the banner of social media in his recent cross-Atlantic skirmish with that other icon, Sir Martin Sorrell of media behemoth WPP. Has anybody not caught this debate yet? It’s certainly worth a read … Sorrell first used the rather tellingly traditional media platforms of the Financial Times, and subsequent panel participation at the FORTUNE Brainstorm Conference in Aspen to rail against business-model destruction by new media practitioners (quoted referring to Craigslist as “socialistic anarchists” … you get the rest). In fairness, it must be said Sorrell did encourage traditional media brands to complement their print and online operations with social media ventures, citing as an example News Corp’s purchase of MySpace.com.
Clearly outraged, at least for purposes of his regular blog, Edelman responded with a hyperbolic posting to his blog, Sir Martin, Tear Down that Wall, chiding Sorrel for trying “to turn back time to a fairyland that he and other advertising executives knew so well,” and declaring flat out: “Here is the reality. The peer-to-peer revolution has happened.”
Comments in response to Edelman’s blog fairly well show he was blogging to the choir, but my only issue here is with verb tense — the peer-to-peer revolution is ongoing and as with most uprisings against established order, winners and losers may not be those who seemed obviously favored or disadvantaged at the outset. The earlier phase of our digital revolution is a case in point — when the shakeout occurred in 2000 and once the dust had settled, first movers were not always left standing and many of those who prudently hesitated at the outset, calculating the risk vs return, eventually emerged to reap the full benefits.
As the New Rules of the New Media that will deconstruct and disintermediate are still being written on the fly (as were and still are those New Rules of the New Economy that have dislocated so much in our time), recent history teaches us that the many media professionals and their clients who are watching and waiting are not necessarily missing their opportunity – not a few are undoubtedly calculating the risk versus return on investment, prudently sizing up the game before deciding when, how and how much to wager when they do step up to the peer-to-peer communications table!
* earlier post from 08/24/06 @ www.mediamindshare.blogspot.com ported to wordpress in 04/07.
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