PR and the respect factor

Sally Saville Hodge

Public relations has always been like the Rodney Dangerfield of the communications field. You know: We just don’t get any respect.

Our collective inferiority complex has been self-created, to a significant extent. The tendency by many in the profession to use overstatement and hype as their stock in trade hasn’t helped the cause. And high profile ethical lapses haven’t added any to the practice’s luster. (Remember Ketchum PR’s payment of $240,000 to minority radio broadcaster Armstrong Williams to tout on air and with his peers the No Child Left Behind program?)

That’s on the public side. Generally speaking, PR is low on the totem pole among business professionals as well. Never mind some of the more unfortunate associations that play down PR’s value. The term “free publicity” is emblematic.

I’ve always thought much of it related to how much of a budget PR commands and controls, particularly vis a vis the far weightier purse carried by Marcom and advertising. After all, money equals power, and it’s not unusual to see ad budgets of the big players in the millions of dollars – hundreds of millions, even. On the other hand, a million-dollar PR campaign is considered exceedingly healthy.

The irony is that for all the disrespect, and for whatever reason, it’s PR that really has the power to build a brand. For all of traditional media’s failings (and recent flailings, for that matter), it’s the news coverage that PR helps bring about that carries credibility, not the “they’ll say anything to make you buy” advertising messaging that’s so transparent to the public. And that’s only part of the powerful overall PR package.

We’re hearing more stories these days of some recession-hit businesses cutting their marketing budgets, but diverting more funds into PR programs instead. I don’t know that I’m ready to call it a trend, unfortunately. We just haven’t managed to do the job of convincing our partners in marketing (and higher up the food chain) that we can be more than simply masters of spin.

Or have we, but marketing leadership just can’t bring itself to respond accordingly?

Michael Dunn, Chairman of Prophet (full disclosure: a client since 2001) has just authored a book called The Marketing Accountability Imperative. It’s a heavy read, but a must-read for senior management. But apropos to this conversation, here’s a pullout worth thinking about:

“Our 2007 senior marketer survey showed that B2B companies believe that public relations is the most effective activity for long-term brand building and the third most effective at driving short-term sales (after field sales activities and outbound marketing). No form of advertising came close to PR in its perceived long- or short-term effectiveness. Despite this, B2B marketers spend only about 1 percent of their budget on public relations and over 20 percent on advertising. The effectiveness of PR is also rated higher than advertising among B2C marketers and their contradictory spending relationships are even more pronounced.
…[M]arketers’ behaviors seem somewhat puzzling – they do not believe that the marketing activities that they are spending the most on are the most effective, yet they are unwilling or unable to take the steps necessary to quantify this performance.”

Puzzling, indeed.

Second Life and other Web 2.0 venues: Maybe you can, but should you?

Sally Saville Hodge

Here’s a situation sure to make every PR person cringe. You arrange for your author-client to participate in a book club discussion group with other would-be writers and fans only to have a series of embarrassing mishaps occur at the venue. She sits first on a stool (where the guests can’t see her), is prompted to move to a chair, but instead lands on a lap, and from there goes to the table before finally finding her chair.

Welcome to a new era in book promotion. The Second Life writer’s tour.

Second Life is the virtual world where you create a virtual you in the form of an avatar, and where you can meet up with other like-minded people, casually or formally, and buy and sell everything from virtual dollars to spectacles to real estate. I’m still not quite getting the appeal – my real life is busy enough without mucking it up more with virtual doings. Still, some of the PR and marketing aspects related to it are kind of intriguing.

Like many things under the Web 2.0 banner (haven’t we advanced to Web 3.0 yet?), Second Life, and the different ways to leverage it, remains a work in progress. Gartner has apparently predicted that by 2011, 80 percent of all Americans will have a “Second Life.” And big business, natch, is trying to get a jump on it. IBM, for example, has spent big bucks establishing a virtual island on Second Life. Nokia has hired greeters in Second Life to stand by its virtual kiosks. Dell has a virtual factory there making virtual computers.

The virtual book club guest spot opportunity was one I happened upon, and forwarded to a friend for her Sisters in Crime (SinC) client. The association’s president, Roberta Isleib, was tapped to participate, and she describes her experience more fully than my little recap in a very funny post on her blog.

The club’s organizer has been able to draw some respectable names to the group’s weekly sessions that typically attract 20 to 40 participants: marketer/author Don Peppers. Author Sarah Susanka. Pat Davis, CEO of Passion Parties and an author. Attendance doesn’t make it sound like there’s enough of a return to make it worth a client’s while at this stage, despite the promise of supporting marketing across Second Life’s “vast” social marketing community.

But whether for this sort of endeavor or many of the various opportunities and tactics that are springing up as a result of our Web 2.0 world, you still have to ask: Just because you can, does that mean you should?