Yesterday night, had drinks with Richard Edelman along with Mediaslut, Debbie from Marketing, Brown, Daryl, Bjorn, Justin, Popagandhi and a bunch of new folks I just met including Joe Augustine (the radio Joe), and Jennifer from Stomp.
Edelman was primarily there to listen, and soak, and shared a bit about how bloggers (as media) were gaining importance and that the focus should be pushed more into the long tail than the short head. Interesting stuff, but to add my two cents:
The SHoMNoLT!
From this psuedo-marketer’s point of view, a PR agency isn’t quite equipped to handle the tail and the peer conversations like that. Or at least, it can’t be approached just from a PR point of view. What do I mean by a PR approach?
When you try to identify the Short Head of a Micro Niche of the Long Tail (SHoMNoLT?!?!) and approach them for (unbiased) product tryouts (a la Nokia with several bloggers), you are taking a traditional PR approach. Get your word out. Get your product out. Make noise!
But how many bloggers are you gonna approach? I don’t have as many readers as either popagandhi or mrbrown, or miyagi. But I guess I am the short head of a micro niche of the long tail. Do I get one? Off the top of my head, I know like 10 other bloggers who should get a pitch as well. Hmmm… that’s quite a lot of effort actually.
The BR Agencies
And that brings it beyond the realm of PR. It becomes a marketing game. Talking to influentials. The sneezers. Bloggers in the SHoMNoLT are not the media. Bloggers are people (to quote brown in the dinner). A whole group of people in fact. They have to be marketed to… and yes, with the special care and attention given the journalists as well. Except that bloggers have a greater chance of being evangelists if they like the product. And, in the end, only the product and/or its brand matters.
Which means that PR agencies attempting this are at the mercy of the clients, more so that in the world of press releases. Which means that PR agencies need to become marketing powerhouses, conduits back into the client-side. And good luck finding a client like that!
Of course, people ALSO get confused and mistake media that use blogging (Stomp, The Pitch - sorry Debbie!!!), for the SHoMNoLT that Edelman is apparently after. Media is media, bloggers are bloggers. Similarities are shared of course, but viewpoints are different.
Media need advertising, and (wittingly or not) tend to be more susceptible to message massages. Bloggers are consumers first. They don’t give a damn. If it sucks, it sucks. Of course, some people are more forgiving than others.
Treat these two differently. Be a PR agency to one, and a BR agency (an agency marketing to influentials really) to the other. I’m an influential, a sneezer, an early adopter! Market to me! Give me products to try out! Have a conversation with me! Don’t stick me into a hotel ballroom.. I’ve got work to do during office hours!
The Finale
Yup. That’s the conclusion. Two different segments of bloggers requiring two different approaches. That’s my take. And it’s probably a synthesis of the comments that were going round the table yesterday, so I could have inadvertantly stolen some ideas.
So if you are in a PR/BR agency… please e-mail me and I’ll tell you where to send the products for me to try out. 
technorati tags:PR, Blogosphere, Edelman, Marketing
haha, a very interesting read indeed. i’m actually rather involved with this sorta work, and while i agree that the PR agency should not take up too much of a marketer’s role or even in fact give too much credit to bloggers in the regard of actually selling or evangelizing a product, blogs are amazing tools for creating:
conversation.
the very fact that i can type on this space, create a permalink, recommend it to tomorrow.sg and perhaps get a discussion going shows that finally, in the web2.0 space, we are actually seeing consumers having conversations on multiple tiers.
and that is something PR agencies get interested about. the ends may be about selling and pushing units (leave’em to marketers), but the “means” is what’s changing in our media atmosphere.
p/s. i love john maeda too!
Left by brian on April 20th, 2007
Interesting thoughts Adrian. Not quite sure if its a biased opinion to get “product reviews”
Some people have asked me about the value of the “influencers”? My take is that when an influencer sneezes, not too many people will catch a cold. An online influencer has the same chance of creating “noise” as an ordinary blogger.
Bloggers (and everyone really) have a voracious appetite for information, and a very good at searching out information so they never take a single opinion no matter how influencial. Then you have product targetting issues. Are Mr. Brown’s viewers potential N73 buyers? As brian mentioned, marketing should be left to marketers.
Influential bloggers can create a subconcious awareness factor. But there is a big difference when mr. brown buys a N73 and talks about it vs. given one for a product review.
Is short, anyone on the blogoshere can be a significant influencer. The story, the spin is key. The environmental undercurrents must be just right.
Let me know when you’ll be having similar chat sessions. I’ll be interested to chat.
Left by Harro! on April 20th, 2007
betrayed sevenfold avenged sevenfold avenged sidewinder
Left by sevenfold beast avenged on February 28th, 2008