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The beleaguered press release has a new form,maybe…

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Today Todd Defren and the Shift team announced their social media press release format. Using of course their new format 🙂 I’ll add my well-done to the chorus with some but’s:

– I still wish we weren ‘t so focused on the press release… in whatever form … and instead worried more about news value.Worthless announcements will still be worthless, even in a new format. The root problem isn’t the format of the press release, however odd. It is the use of the press release for stupid stuff (edited — the first version of this post used stronger language).

– The press release is just a document. The real work is in the conversation with reporters. Call it the pitch, call it whatever you want. Our job is to tell interesting stories that other people want to repeat, whether in a newspaper or  a blog.

–  I am still concerned that this need/drive for a new announcement format is driven by the tech sector. There are boatloads of folks in other sectors (media and clients alike) who just are not as net savvy… yet. We need to remember them, and continue to talk to them in whatever language makes sense.

It’s all about stories. Tell good ones.

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Technorati-Edelman joint project: It’s a good thing!

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Information may want to be free, but most often it isn’t. There is a cost to just about everything. In this exciting new media world, we tend to forget this. In particular we tend to forget that many (most?) of  the companies providing the goods and services that power the new world are for-profit endeavors.

Such as Technorati, which experienced a little PR blogger backlash today after the details of its joint project with Edelman were revealed. Folks were concerned about Technorati having such close ties with a PR agency. What would that mean for all the rest? Will the blogosphere be damaged somehow by this deal? To which I say, respectfully: Come on, folks.

It’s a business deal. I highly doubt whether anyone is in anyone’s pocket, now or ever. Each participant had a good business reason for doing the deal, both benefit, and lucky for the blogosphere, so do we.

Let’s start with the Edelman. This is one of a series of smart business moves by Richard Edelman. He is establishing his agency as the premier PR agency for social media. Doesn’t really matter yet whether they’ve delivered anything yet or that there was a flap over Wal-Mart or even whether there is a real competitive advantage in the short 6-8 month period that they’ll have an exclusive over the new localized stuff. The perception is that the agency has made a commitment to blogging and is willing to do what it takes. And it’s not just lip service or having a blog or recruiting well-known bloggers. With this deal, they’ve made an actual investment in the blogosphere. And that is one smart PR move.

Whatever competitive advantage this exclusive period gives them depends on their execution. And quite frankly I don’t think it really matters. Six-eight months is nothing. The real competitive advantage is owning the position of  "the" social media PR agency. Big company clients who want to look into "this stuff" will know where to go. Eventually, the agency will have to deliver on the perception, but from his speech at Syndicate last week, sounds to me like Richard Edelman is ready for the challenge. Is that hard for PR agencies to swallow? Probably. Bad for the blogosphere? No, because it seems we will get the localized Technorati far faster in this scenario.

Now to Technorati. I may be over-simplifying, but it just seems like a smart business move. After all, Technorati is a for-profit business, not a public service. Good for them that they’ve made the service so central to our blogging experience — at least if we speak English or Japanese. But… Technorati has a business problem — it needs to deliver  localized versions of its service FAST or risk losing first-mover advantage. However the deal materialized and whatever the terms, having a customer to fund the development makes everything a lot easier for Dave Sifry and team.

From what I’ve read, it also sounds to me like Edelman’s interest is in the monitoring of global blog conversation. I may be naive, but I didn’t get the sense that Edelman was involved IN the development, simply funding it and reaping the initial benefits. I wouldn’t call that a Technorati sell-out. I call it a business deal.

Technorati may be the most well known RSS search engine but it is by no means the only one. If some of the nefarious deeds speculated upon elsewhere did happen, it wouldn’t take long for the crime to be discovered.

I’m sure both companies weighed the potential blogstorm of their announcement, and determined that the benefits outweighed the negatives. The good news for us is that no matter how much Edelman and Technorati benefit (and no question, they will), in the end, we all benefit, because we will have these localized Technorati services next year. And that is indeed a very good thing.

Disclosures: None. I have absolutely no inside information. This is just my opinion.

Update: Andy Lark has a good post, updated with some additional info from Steve Rubel. 

Update 2: Stowe Boyd makes some good points.

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More detail on Technorati initiatives announced at Syndicate

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Technorati and Edelman — this is the joint project Richard Edelman mentioned in his keynote. Technorati is accelerating development of fully localized versions of its service in Chinese, Korean, German, Italian and French, available to public in early 2007. Edelman will have access to the localized services during development.

Technorati and Paramount Classics — this is the project Dave Sifry mentioned in the Tuesday session. Technorati will be providing the blog conversation about selected films, and Paramount will be including the conversation on the film’s website. First film is the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

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More Syndicate coverage: Syndicate and me. Syndicate and marketers.

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Home stretch. Before I get to the Wed. afternoon sessions, a word about why I attended Syndicate.

To start with, I was  personally interested in the topics, especially podcasting. So when Corante issued the call to its blogger partners to attend Syndicate and blog the event, I jumped on it. As a small business, I can afford the trip to NY or the conference registration, but not both. Covering the event was a win-win. I covered my trip, but didn’t have to pay for registration. I’m very grateful to Corante and IDG for the opportunity.

In return, I am taking the commitment to blog the event very seriously. I didn’t miss many sessions and hope that my marketing and PR colleagues are enjoying the reports. Given comments about how few marketing and PR folk (versus tech) attended the show,  I’m glad someone with the marketing perspective is writing up the event in detail. Why? 

Because change is a slow process. Marketers and PR folk who haven’t yet made the leap into the blogosphere may be thinking hard about it, but still reluctant. For whatever reason. They aren’t going to attend a conference about syndication, ’cause it just doesn’t seem relevant  in their day to day jobs. Probably isn’t. Even if they are blogging or podcasting, the conference definitely has the feel of a tech (versus marketing or business) oriented event. Cause it kind of is…

But… many of the topics that were discussed are relevant to the  issues on the marketing and communications plate. I hope that my blog entries about it may spark someone — to try something new, attend the next conference, start their own conference, push hard at their industry associations, maybe even just to finally start their own blog.

So, if client work willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll get the rest of my summaries up by the weekend.

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Live from New York… it’s Syndicate

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Here we are in the lovely Terrace Ballroom at Syndicate.

Unfortunately, I missed Jeff Jarvis‘ opening session — heard it was great and look forward to reading about it in other blogs.

Came in during the Richard Edelman interview. As many in the blogosphere know, Robert Scoble was unable to come due to his mother’s illness; the assembled group had a moment of silence at the end of the session for the Scoble family and others who may be facing similar life situations.

Eric Norlin conducted the interview instead. Here is the report:

I came in on a round of laughter from all assembled about how every company on the planet is the leading provider of X. No one ever fesses up to being number 2. The conversation then moved to the deconstructed press release. Edelman described the "press release of the future" that has been so often discussed in marketing and PR blogs: info with tags so reporters can use it the way they want. Rather than a standard generic format that is supposed to meet everyone’s needs and possibly meets no one’s. (Comment: I’m not convinced of this yet –while I think it applies to tech and perhaps Fortune 500, I’m not sure all reporters are ready for this new format… yet.  More on this later this week.)

They then discussed the new PR dynamic: that a 12 year-old blogger can just as easily break news as the New York Times. Edelman’s take (not unsurprisingly) was that we have to listen to all the voices — not just the usual suspects. Traditional "authority" doesn’t tell the whole tale. The example was the Dove "real women" campaign, which got a great deal of its media traction from exposure in Gawker. The net: it is important to monitor blogs.

Edelman then mentioned briefly a joint project with Technorati to monitor blogs in multiple languages. Pretty sure I heard it would be available publicly as well as to Edelman staff. I’ll dig into this and let you know more in a follow-up. As far as the agency’s current blogging focus, Edelman said a large part of it is persuading clients to show beta products to bloggers. He indicated some success in this area, notably the X-box.

Next topic was Wal-Mart. Nothing new here, repeated the idea that perhaps PR agencies should be more clear with bloggers in the rules of engagement, vis using PR materials verbatim. The gist; credit the source or use your own words.

Edelman on what PR will look like in five years:

  • Deconstructed press release
  • PR hopefully have a role earlier in a product’s life, not just brought in for the press conference.
  • PR more robust role in the corporate suite — Chief Listening (or Learning) Officer
  • Does not see PR being disintermediated
  • Hopes PR doesn’t have the negative connotations it currently has (spin, flack etc.)
  • "I hope PR people have the balls to say what they know." Give good advice based on listening to a wide variety of sources.

On why he blogs. Because "you can’t be an evangelist unless you do it yourself." Cited advice from Linda Stone and David Weinberger. He also claimed to be one of the few PR people who blogs. True enough, if you only consider big agencies, and certainly true in terms of the total numbers employed in PR. He deserves tremendous credit for leading the way as a big agency CEO blogger. But also a bit of a false impression IMO, when you consider that there are 400-plus PR bloggers on Constantin Basturea’s PubSub list.

Plan for the coming year for Edelman and blogging: retraining people, getting the numbers of bloggers up at agency (currently about 30 bloggers and only 15-20 percent of staff in regular touch with bloggers). He is making investments (Technorati project); the teams have to follow. His motto for the year will be: Be tough — with colleagues and himself to get the most out of new media.

Some of the more interesting audience questions were about metrics. How will Edelman gauge success in the blogosphere? One metric will be how many real relationships Edelman people have with bloggers. This will be assessed by survey and listening. Someone else asked if they were modelling network effects. Answer: not enough data yet. (Comment: sounds like they are gathering it though).

His take on the best consumer brand vis blogging: Unilever. He also (unsurprisingly) endorses executive blogging, if the exec has an interesting voice and wants to do it. Doesn’t have to be the CEO. One of the biggest values of the c-level blog is commnication with employees. Let your employees be knowledgable sources about your business.

That’s pretty much it on the Edelman panel. More on the other sessions I attended later. Right now I am in Halley Suitt’s session on the Sins of Syndication, and I want to pay attention 🙂

Seen so far: old pal Sam Whitmore (we go all the way back to 1984 and the inaugural year of PC Week), David Parmet and Mike Manuel.

Other sources: Here is Edelman’s blog entry on the session. David Weinberger transcribes.

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