The big fat pipe is the New PR

In contrasting Old PR versus New PR, Tim Bray makes the point that PR (Old PR, that is) has never been about transparency but, rather, about command and control.

This is the type of PR that many of us are still familiar with. According to Tim:

• Senior management, with a lot of input from marketing people, would work out a company’s message and talking points.
• Internal marketing people, working with PR consultants, would try to burn the message into the retinas of the trade press and analysts.
• The journalists and analysts would do what they do: the whorish segment of the profession regurgitating the company messages to the attention of very few, the independent thinkers producing sometimes-useful analysis of what the companies were really up to.

A bit cynical, perhaps, but I'd agree that it's a pretty good summary of today's sterile approach to much of PR.

The good news is that there are plenty of examples already of change in such sterile ways of communicating - take a look at some of the many companies listed in the corporate blogs list on The New PR Wiki to see what I mean.

You can read Tim's post to see how he explains the New PR. What I especially like are his concluding points:

[...] The days of command-and-control PR are pretty well over. We, the bloggers, are going to go on telling the world what we’re doing for a living and why it matters, and we’re going to do it in our own voices, and we’re going to be simultaneously biased and eccentric and authoritative, because that’s how life is. If our company has a sane strategy and we believe in it, then the world is going to come to understand it.

You, the information professionals, you can aggregate us or repurpose us or debate with us or debunk us. But this big fat pipe with everyone’s voice roaring through it? It’s not closing.

I read Tim's blog because he writes though-provoking stuff. This is no exception - worth your time reading it.

Comments

[Yegor Kuznetsov]

Check out a case study on how Qorvis, one of the U.S. largest PR forms, is using WebSurveyor online survey solutions to finetune clientss' messaging and talking points.

http://www.websurveyor.com/company/websurveyor-customer-profile.asp?c=652

[Nevon]

Yegor, your suggestion might have some credibility if you'd disclosed your connection with Websurveyor.

Otherwise I'd view you as a comment spammer.

[Yegor Kuznetsov]

Neville, point taken! I'm a PR manager with WebSurveyor.