Wes Pedersen (4/07):
O'Brien is a good guy. The Washington editor left a couple of months ago.
Be sure to click on the Attention blog posted above. All communicators must recognize the changes that continue to be made in the way everyone -- EVERYone in any business or profession -- will be, or are, communicating now.
Mike Paul, president, MGP & Associates PR (4/08):
Keith will be missed dearly at PRWeek. The magazine's loss however, is the industry's gain as he enters the consulting world! Congrats!
Ron Levy, NAPS Research Director (4/08):
If Keith O'Brien is right, then Martin Sorrell and John Wren are wrong, and so are most leading executives in advertising and PR.
Keith's "Attention" blog on why he's leaving is headed "Why the future of PR lies in Social Media." He says "the time for demographics has passed" and "traditional media focused on reaching consumers still have significant audiences, but organizations can just as easily reach those same consumers through content that is engaging, thoughtful and worthwhile."
Yet Sorrell, Wren, Procter & Gamble and other experts spend billions and billions a year on traditional media--many times more than on social media. Is Keith right and the big spenders wrong? I think the answer is "no" for five reasons--and that traditional media deserve a major role in mass communication programs.
1. QUALITY. It can pay to go where the money is. In the wealthy suburbs, over 100 million Americans have the money and the votes to make or break products and proposals for government action. Thousands of dailies and weeklies in the suburbs are short of staff and hungrier than ever for features that will help readers to protect health and cope with the new realities. I don't know how many of the 100 million one can expect to reach by beaming through social media but don't quit your day job. If you need to reach the affluent, then whether or not you cover social media it makes sense to cover the media you know that suburbanites see.
2. QUANTITY. Go where the masses are. "TV or not TV" is not the question. Nor is the question "whether tis nobler" to do social media rather than TV. The question IS what should you do in advertising and PR so the mass media deliver your message to a mass audience. If you have high blood pressure take blood pressure pills. If you need to reach a mass audience, cover the mass media. If social media also reach some of them, great--it's an optional extra and may do extra benefit for the client. But it could be a mistake to give up blood pressure pills and hope that a health food will "just as easily" (in Keith's words) do the same thing.
Keith calls social media "engaging, thoughtful and worthwhile" but the ass media must also have these qualities or else how come they have so much audience. It can be tempting but dangerous to be snooty. There's an elitist, "above it all" attitude that social media are somehow fine and traditional media are old and crud, but a brand manager may understandably figure to hell with finery and crudity, go deliver my message to the masses!
3. SPEED. Get while the getting is good. "In the long run," an economist observed, "we are all dead." So is a product or message if not given ample visibility in time to do the client some good. For a successful marketing program you need to schedule communications. In a lobbying fight you need coverage NOW, and then MORE coverage so millions of Americans will see how they personally stand to gain or lose and why they should write to their legislator.
4. CREDIBILITY. There's no time to play "Believe It Or Not." People know perfectly well that what we see on TV and newspapers is probably true (we ASSUME it's true)--and that what's online MAY be true or it may be coming from a nut. So if you're making a product claim or explaining a public policy you favor, sure go to the social media especially since this may be a free throw in if you use a distributor like NAPS for sending your release to 10,000 newspapers, but why sacrifice the credibility that traditional media offer the client?
5. VISIBLE RESULTS. They'll believe it when they see it. The client is not a cheapskate if he or she asks "what results do we have," and even religious organizations measure media success with numbers, not just faith.
VMS and TV vendors supply usage reports, as do NAPS and others who'll send your release to newspapers, not to make a big impression but to provide the client with charts and graphs and maps that show how successful the project was.
Social media may be "engaging, thoughtful and worthwhile" as keith says but so are broadcast usage reports and clipping printouts, and the client is not a crude oaf nor lacking sensitivity if he or she sees an impressive results report and says "I love it!"
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (4/08):
One more try: Ron, no need to put down a good man with his own map. And who said those two big moguls were always right because they are big? Heard of the American auto industry?
Ron Levy, NAPS Research Director (4/09):
REPLY TO JOE HONICK: I'm not putting down a good man; I'm showing the fallacies in his idea that most people in PR are wrong to emphasize traditional media.
Sorrell and Wren got huge--and are getting more huge--the only way it can be done in PR. You can't do it by having offices in covenient locations, nor with a clever slogan, nor by marrying the boss's daughter. They got big by having the courage and judgment to spend whatever was necessary to hire the world's best people, by training them as Sorrell especially does and by backing them up loyally as Omnicom did when a senior California exec was accused by a low-level client weasel--an accusation no one of us could prove false--and the firm took the heat and paid to fight thre charge so that today the exec is at liberty despite a multi-million dollar political assault by publicity-loving prosecutors.
Then the PR oligarchs USED their superstars to deliver results, repeatedly,that brand managers and corporate executives often had no idea were possible. Kentucky Fried Chicken didn't get there by having diffrerent chickens from everyone else; it got there thanks to Dan Edelman and the people he hired and the back-up he gave them and the brilliant work they did. WPP and Omnicom have many similar stories to tell.
The huge PR firms are also big because of something they do that clients often don't. Among the 1,000 vendors, the top PR firms like many independents know how to listen to the pitches and pick the best suppliers. It's important because if you pick badly you can not only get less but get screwed.
Then, importantly, the big PR firms unfailingly LET their vendors do quality work instead of telling them how to do it. Each of the two biggest conglomerates has over $1 billion in billings, the other two biggies have combined another billion, and Edelman which is like a conglomerate has half a billion.
All this money is EARNED and paid by very savvy accounts. The auto companies, on the other hand, let success go to their heads and be wasted. They often hired based on social contacts and even religion. They often selected suppliers who were the most ego-gratifying, and they arrogantly required suppliers to "do this our way" although the suppliers often knew better ways. It had to end. I'm sorry as hell it ended but you need to recruit greagt people as Google and Microsoft do based on genius or close PLUS dedication to results.
IBM usaed to have a special deisgnation for geniuses who could come and go when they wanted, wear and say what they wanted and sometimes work on what they wanted. That'sw what it akes--people power--and that's why WPP and Omnicom made it to where they are (and are still making it) while others shrivel and vanish.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (4/09):
Ron, could you please summarize? Thanks.
Wes Pedersen (4/09):
Keith O'Brien has seen the light. Let it shine on you. (Again, I urge you to write a book. I do not always agree with you, but you believe so strongly in what you say, that you do it for the benefit of those who still belive big is better. Big, of course, is not better these days, because big is not being read by big audiences now. And big is not sustainable by anyone's count; the bodies of great U.S. newspapers are testimony to that.
Veep (4/09):
Ron, your heroes Wren and Sorrell got huge by acquiring agencies. Neither of them worked a big account in their lives and wouldn't know the first thing to do. They measure success by the monetary value of accounts, the net number of clients and the profit margins. They could care less about the quality of the work. I worked at an Interpublic firm. Have you?
You put these guys on a pedestal why? You work at Naps, and I'm sure your company gets some nice fees from the big agencies -- likely your biggest clients. So I guess it's no suprise you're defending their business tactics, which have turned many, if not all of the large agencies into homogenized dens that churn out different versions of the same ideas and call it strategic counseling.
I'm not trying to sound like a jerk here, I just wonder if you thought it all through.
Ron Levy (4/09):
The summary Joe requests is this: the successful get that way by producing successful results, and the hugely successful by producing hugely successful results, sometimes PR results that are breathtaking.
Veep asks if I've ever worked for an Interpublic agency. Yes, Interpublic helped put my daughters through college, buy me homes in New York and Puerto Rico, allow me to enjoy the best hotels and restaurants all over the world and--hugely important--enjoy the satisfaction of doing great work for people who understood what I was doing and loved it. Money is good but so is love. Also wine--some sent wine.
WPP and Omnicom agencies gave us even more work, along with Publicis and Edelman. Ketchum, when I was starting out and didn't have money to take them to lunch but needed to interview them away from the office, took ME to eat.
Burson-Marsteller, when an exceptionally difficult (and wrong) woman at the huge Fiberglass account was finding fault with my proposals, told me not to worry but to propose what would pull best and B-M would sell it. They did.
Edelman must have paid me out of their own pocket because clients don't pay that rapidly but Edelman knew I needed the money and when their checks cleared I'd buy food.
Years later when I had too much food and 32 account execs, one of Edelman's most senior executives, for a favorite client of his, didn't call for an account exec to come over but came all the way up to the office himself so he could explain things to my editor-writers.
There are many more such stories because PR was built by result-producers--people who'd wake up at night not thinking about their rsumes but about client needs and opportunities.
Veep asks why I put these guys on a pedestal but I don't. They've been out on pedestals by experts who gave their trust and literally billions a year. It must be well worth it unless the clients are crazy because clients keep giving billions a year to the pedestal-sitters and their armies from which spectactular achievers will rise to their own pedastals.
I know these people and believe me, it isn't luck.
Wes Pedersen (4/13):
Ron, JWT, nee J. Walter Thompson, now part of the pr/advertising conglomerate headed by Sir Martin Sorrel, is closing its Chicago shop. So Sorrel, whom you champion, is seeing his empire narrowing down. He's a victim of the acquisition era where big was always associated with better. Waht's your thinking on the latest?
Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (4/10):
Whatever. Most social media still remind me of those Tamagotchi Connection electronic pets that were all the rage among kids a few years ago and still sold at Amazon. Cute and cuddly in their own synthetic way, but not the real thing. They even have a "Friends" list.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (4/13):
Excuse me, but does anyone remember this story is about a bright young man deciding to make a change in his career
Amused observer (4/13):
Whomever is interested in knowing what O'Brien actually wrote should read it for themselves -- Ron Levy truly misrepresents Keith's sentiments.
For one thing, read the quote in JOD's story -- people no longer SOLELY use top down media, they also create their own. As in, Mr. Levy, it's not either/or, it's an evolving combination. Methinks Mr. Levy's almost hysterical defense of "old" media and tradtiional PR agencies is protesting too much -- in order to attack O'Brien, he has to create straw man.
O'Brien's comments were quite thoughtful and thought provoking. For instance: "Additionally, we know that influence and reach is not strictly a numbers game. It’s not enough to count impressions and call it a day. The true value for organizational outreach is in finding the right community linchpins and working with them to disseminate the appropriate message." That's about as classic, traditional grassroots as you can get, Ron.
And in terms of media, he's not ranting about killing off traditional media, he's just saying there are more media channels today than ever and good communicators will consider all of them as part of a media strategy. And could we all remember that media is NOT all there is to PR??
In fact, the discipline of public relations involves many more strategies and techniques, and there are hugely successful campaigns where public media channels aren't even used. So quit obsessing.
The humor in all of this, of course, is that undoubtedly O'Brien took the new job because it's more exciting, better pay, he's burned out doing a weekly publication with declining ad revenues and smaller news hole (I mean PR Week's content is thin, not all that well-written and formulaic -- the same old trend stories, the same old panel discussions where the only thing that changes is the city, etc.) But like a true "PR guy" O'Brien tries to dress up a typical job change with the rhetoric of a higher calling.
And predictably, Ron Levy writes 52,000 words defending something that wasn't attacked, and calls attention to the fact that without traditional media, he'd be doing a job change and trying to dress it up with rhetoric, too.
Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (4/14):
This "Gone With the Wind" stuff should not finally conclude without wishing this young a Mazeltov in his new calling, something I really thought would have occurred at the beginning. |