PR needs to change: My Jerry Maguire mission statement

This post is about three things PR needs to change:

• distribution of messages
• targeting of journalists
• the content as such aka the way PR practitioners consult their clients

Distribution
PR is changing already. Currently, practitioners all over the web are reacting to the changes brought to the industry, adapting to the new technologies, watching, listening, learning.
One result is the Social Media Press Release from Shift and the ensuing Google Group, with podcast. Good. People are working on the technological change, and, positively, also on how the message is being delivered: The Social Media Release from Shift features a serious of bullet points at the beginning, pointing out the news. That way, journalists could actually see, whether a press release contains news (and the PR practitioner cancould realize in time when he doesn’t have news and not get on journalist’s nerves by sending out a nonsensical release).

Targeting
Aside from message delivery mechanism, I think the PR industry needs to take another step back and begin to treat their targets like true consumers. In my perception many PR agencies today literally spam journalists with what they (I come back to this later) think is “information”. Actually, they are often distributing unwanted information, comparable to old-school advertising models.
However, certain advertising is desired as we know, otherwise the Google AdSense model would not be so successful. Dave Winer said recently, the advertising you want to receive is no longer advertising, but information.
The PR industry needs to figure out a way to be THAT exact, so that journalists actually feel informed again, not spammed by irrelevent messages (which e.g. Indeskretion Ehrensache has a million stories about).
How do we achieve that? Ultimately, I am guessing a independent technical solution on the journalists side since there needs to something that they trust.

But what has to come first, what MUST come first is a change on the PR agencies side.

PR consulting
PR practitioners have to embrace consultance in a way that it hurts themselves. Tell clients, “no, that is not newsworthy, that is advertising”, and stand to this advise even if it means that you will loose clients. The clients have to realize that even that this sort of advise is ultimately the better advise. Clients will be perceived better in the media and true relationships can evolve because everybody knows that when you call it means content, not just another design-raffle or open house event. PR practitioners have to realise that their message is one of the often quoted 3000 messages a day so it is important to make it count. To quote Joseph Jaffe, “focus on what matters”.

It also means raising the ethics bar, too. 
Astroturfing as seen with the Al Gore youtube video has to stop and agencies have to commit themselves
to honest communication, practices and consulting.

Just like companies are beginning to understand the Cluetrain concept, communication “experts” have to enter that phase as well. If your focus now is on making the most profit for your customers and yourself, chances are you are not acting in the best interest of your business.

Technorati Tags: pr, astroturfing, shift, newcommunication, relevance