When will brands wake up? (Old skool PR is dead)
I have written on this extensively before and will keep this post short but with all the handbags being swung here I thought it might be an idea to do a simple real world experiment to show why PR isn’t necessary any more for smaller brands.
So its Sunday morning and your head is lifting with that hangover.
Its definitely is, check here to confirm, around 20 new mentions/potential customers every three minutes.
So friends who drink tell me that this Lifeline product works.
In my new position as friend of lifeline I put up the above tweet and right back at me was a customer.
This stuff is really quite simple, facebook page anyone?, imagine how many potential customers are there for lifeline?
This would be three meetings and a month of time wasted in the olde world PR on strategy meetings, brand choices, etc, etc, etc
Clients are there
If you do this stuff and want to succeed find brands that need help, don’t have meetings/events about why we are better, we are 
Whilst I was writing this post another 92 potential customers zoomed by.
Well, what do you think?
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I feel used
You are right though, all you need is a nice small community of hungover people to spread the word. Though for everyone one person to actively gets involved with a facebook/twitter discussion, 10 more might get influenced by said discussion.
Great post Pat. I agree with you but without swinging any handbags I do think that old school PR will always be part of the mix while old school channels are still in existance.
Good post Pat. Even though I’m not a friend of traditional PR I believe that it might be necessary for some brands according to their strategy.
I came across a similar case the other day when I typed into Twitter search “ikea dublin”… I’m not sure how much Ikea invested in trad PR, but the amount of people asking real questions and ready to engage and “pay”, was overwhelming.
I know it sounds like a no-brainer: Clients are there indeed and so are free social media tools
My question is, how flexible or prepared are, at least Irish companies to consider this approach?
Pat
This is an interesting post and you make your point well. The real challenge will be managing reputations on and offline for the forseeable future. That was the main point of my talk on Thursday.
If only it were as simple as online good offline dead!
Conall
Conall
Reputation management is completely out of our control, its in the hands of the users, the web changed that, Should the product stand up, the reputation will automatically follow.
I think this is a natural fear of the large companies and when this leap of faith is taken the game may change for the better.
Reputation Management? We never had control anyway, Conall.
It’s difficult to criticise Lifeline without knowing what internal constraints are there (a few judging by their website)
Embracing online takes management buy in, which can be difficult as online is a naturally youthful space (not always, obviously)
I’d love to help if anyone wants to grab hold of this as a case study and show what can be done for Lifeline
Pat et al. – very interesting discussion about rep mgmt.
In broader terms, the issue as I see it is people confuse the word “management” with “trying to control”. Effective reputation management takes the good, the bad and the ugly – dealing with all pragmatically – taking a bow when credit is deserved and taking swift action when things need to be changed. More enlightened companies (esp in multinational tech) have adopted this more collaborative approach. Companies that still think reputation management is a one-way street – “command and control” – will remain in the 1970s and continue to fail to engage and listen properly, particularly online.
Also, from experience I’ve seen proper reputation management goes beyond PR (which is just a system to help deliver it) and takes account of social responsibility, risk management, public policy and so on.
My two cents!
Best,
Darren.
Pat,
Most marketing is an attempt to end-run around a disillusioned organisation that no longer believes the message the company is pedalling. If your people don’t believe they won’t engage, instead they will “leak” that disillusion and disappointment into the ether. Thats why most companies shit a brick about employees engaging in social media.
Smaller companies tend not to have this problem and therefore are more effective in this emerging space. But the chances that Lifeline can find somebody who isn’t a corporate shill doing online engagement is pretty slim.