Gee, what a surprise. Clueless Adam Brown of clueless Ketchum Public Relations has ignited a problem for Global PR Week2.
An excerpt from Global PR Week editor Mark Rose’s email to Brown, cc’d to the event’s participants:
2. Global PR Blog Week 2.0 is about sharing intelligence and
experience with an audience of peers. It is not structured to provide optimum publicity for Ketchum’s offerings.
I don’t think you get it. … We come from many perspectives but we all agree that the new PR needs to be less hype,less manipulation, more transparency, with a strong basis in “conversations.” Everybody else involved in my piece responded within 24 hours and I didn’t get the double talk and runaround.
Clueless Ketchum PR Ignites Global PR Week Controversy
BL Ochman | September 21, 2005 | Permanent Link | Comments (9) | TrackBack (
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Ah, B.L., there you go pulling punches again;)
BL,
While I usually steer clear of responding to posts that define me as “clueless,” I did want to take this opportunity to respond.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate in Mark’s GlobalPRBlogWeek 2.0 podcast recording today. It would have likely been an interesting and engaging discussion. Mark is certainly a valued member of the PR blogosphere, and the other roundtable guests – Jim Horton, Rob Key and Richard Edelman are folks I respect a good deal.
Mark’s comments, which you posted above, are right on the money. PR should be about less hype and manipulation and more about engaging dialogue – or conversations. And I think that PR blogging should strive for those same attributes.
I look at PR blogging in two ways: One is a focus on conversations inside of the PR blogosphere. You, Constantin, Mark, Stowe, Neville, Jeremy, Shel and others have certainly shared your thoughts on our performance there. Do I agree with all of them? No. Are some of them merited? Yes. Are there some good constructive criticisms in there? Absolutely.
But the other side of PR blogging is one that I personally think is just as important – perhaps even more important. It’s an outward focus on how we as PR professionals communicate with our clients’ audiences online – be them consumers, media professionals, b2b customers or others. We all have a lot to learn – and share – here.
Over the coming weeks and months, I hope we’ll have more online conversations about both. And I fully expect there to be criticism mixed in with hopefully engaging conversation, insight and learnings.
– Adam Brown
Adam: Even though it took you a couple of days, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my post.
Here’s a clue: your response is an old school PR statement from hell.
PRese simply won’t fly in the blogosphere or anywhere else anymore.
Nobody listens to that kind of rhetoric anymore. Wake up.
What did Adam Brown actually say? Is that English? In coming weeks and months blah blah blah …? They are so bad at their own PR that you wonder what clients pay them for.
He said absolutely nothing, in 267 words.
My favorite one is “learnings.”
If I read one person ask and answer his own questions, I’m going to be sick. It’s a tired device; scrap it. And what are ‘learnings’. Maybe it’s my Alabama upbringing but I never heard of the plural version of that word.
There was no reason for that email to be sent to the whole email list. I read it, shrugged my shoulders, and moved on.
What really needs to happen for next year’s event – if there is one – is to really open it up to all PR practitioners, including ones from the large agencies. Why should there be interviews with the large agencies? Invite them to blog, invite them to podcast, invite them to participate.
Blogging isn’t owned by the individual practitioner, but by anyone that is blogging in PR.
If there’s a PR Blog Week 3, the only people who should be able to participate are those who can provide case studies of their client work as blog consultants.
Otherwise, there’s an awful lot of hot air and theory, like this year. Not that there weren’t some good articles, because there were. But they certainly weren’t the majority.
Ouch. But, you know my POV on blog consultants- heck, it was my article.