The Death of PR

When I was learning the ropes, PR packed punch.

It could land big B2B companies among the lead stories on the evening news and the front pages of papers. And―like a great equalizer―could do the same for small B2B companies, too.

Big B2B companies had dedicated PR departments; B2B PR agencies flourished; and solo B2B PR practitioners were legion.

No longer.

Marketers I know and respect agree: PR's dead. David Meerman Scott (his famous 2007 book, anyway) killed it.

Scott encouraged marketers to substitute PR for advertising; become publicists, instead of peddlers; and to accelerate marcom by cutting out the middleman (the traditional media).

We took his advice―and, in the process, killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. When everyone's a publicist, no one is.

It didn't help that, at the same hour, two new threats—shared and owned media—came on the scene, stealing even more thunder from earned (and paid) media.

So, what's next?

Influencer Relations, says B2B marketing consultant Tom Pick.

Influencer Relations' job is to generate earned backlinks to a B2B company's website, improving SEO. The practitioner's duty is to persuade influencers to embed a link in any mention of the company.

"The work of today’s 'PR' pros is really about building relationships with key influencers," Pick says. 

"The people we call 'PR' pros actually spend most of their time communicating with some mix of local, business, financial, and industry media; bloggers; industry and financial analysts; channel and technology partners; industry associations or trade groups; internal staff; universities; and community groups. In short, with influencers."

Blurbs Shoudn't Blather

At the 1907 convention of the American Booksellers Association, a speaker handed out copies of his new book with a fake jacket covered with fulsome praise. He borrowed the layout of a toothpaste ad for the back of the jacket, and gave the model in the ad a name, Belinda Blurb.

Hence the word "blurb" was born.

The blurb is every marketer's mainstay. But too many marketers fail to leverage these sweet-talking charmers.

Instead of keeping them brief, punchy and authentic, they pile them with clichés no real customer would mouth:

We have received a robust product, customized to our specific needs, which meets our requirement and which has received the endorsement of the president. Our team was extremely satisfied with professional interactions, the speed and efficiency with which you provided feedback and a positive response to all our queries. Having spent much time with you reviewing the product as we have progressed with the development, we are convinced that we have incorporated a highly complex concept into a simple, user-friendly application and we cannot think of any issues that have been overlooked or missed. Without a doubt your team has provided us with a comprehensive evaluation tool that has received the full support of everyone who has tested it, so we have no reservation in confirming you. We are certain that we now have a unique performance evaluation tool, specific to our current needs, but with enormous scope for the future as we move forward with our talent management plans. It has been such a pleasure to work with your team on all levels, your patience with our requests has been exemplary, and we thank you for your dedication to our project.

The marketer could have published instead:

You've created a simple, user-friendly performance evaluation tool that leaves nothing out. As a result, you've won the confidence of everyone who's tested it (even our president loves it). Thanks to your team, we're ready to move forward with our talent management plans.

Take it from Belinda: blurbs shouldn't blather.

Make Your Mark

Pear and squash (Charcoal on paper)

I can never accomplish what I want―only what I would
have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.

― Richard Diebenkorn

Drawing classes have taught me something.

A plan means little, unless you make your first mark.

The plan says, "This is about perfection."

The blank sheet says, "This will never work."

The hand says, "This is beyond me."

The brain says, "This is embarrassing."

But as the generals know, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

You will never accomplish what you want; but what you want doesn't matter.

Your first mark matters.

Know Nothings

Every once in a while, crusading nativists have their day. But it's only a day.

In 1854, the “Native Americans,” a political party better known as the "Know Nothings," skyrocketed to national prominence, capturing scores of congressional seats, state legislative seats, and governorships. The party so grabbed headlines that candy, tea and toothpicks named after it suddenly appeared on grocers' shelves.

Party members were doggedly anti-immigrant, begrudging in particular Irishmen, who were streaming into the country by the hundreds of thousands to escape famine. But members denied the fact, claiming they "knew nothing" about the secret anti-Irish rallies they loved to stage.

The officials the Know Nothings put in office hoped to take steps to purify the nation of any influence by the Irish, who they labelled "foreign criminals and paupers." But they accomplished little—except to stir violence. Catholic churches were burned and deadly riots broke out in Baltimore, Louisville and New York (the latter the subject of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York).

Because it was ineffective, the Know Nothing Party's life-span was brief. Within only a year, its members found themselves at odds over slavery; most defected to the newly-formed Republican Party. Their presence in the new party troubled one member, Abraham Lincoln, who wrote to a friend:

"I am not a Know Nothing, that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to that I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty, to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

Your Bad Marketing Content is an Eye-Sore

At a point in The Accidental Life, writer and editor Terry McDonell compares bad marketing content to "joke taxidermy."

When it's bad, it's really bad.

Good content marketers are publishers.

By way of example, consider the blog post "Say 'So Long' to Silos" (from e-learning provider Cornerstone).

The post's author immediately lets readers (HR managers) know she's trustworthy, by acknowledging that, in truth, silos are natural, inevitable outgrowths of any organization. She goes on to list the costs silos impose (low productivity, high turnover, etc.), and offers tips for curbing those costs. She closes promising more tips in a follow-on post.

Good content marketers have learned to be publishers―a necessity in today's digital-first marketplace.

Bad content marketers are joke taxidermists.

Bad content marketers stuff their content with feature-talk, keywords and dubious links, barely departing from old-school advertising.

By way of example, consider the blog post "How to Organize Your Docebo LMS Users for More Targeted Learning" (from e-learning provider Docebo).

Without a beat, the post's author plunges into feature-talk. He tells readers they can build an organizational chart with his company's software, but not how; and devotes the rest of the post to a bulleted list of more features, linking every item to a page on his company's website. He closes by telling readers to "Start your free trial."

Bad content like this isn't only a throwback to interruption marketing; it's an eye-sore.