Bigger isn’t always Better – PR Spamming
When I first started out in media relations, I was a walking trial-and-error catastrophe.
I was using the shotgun media approach, pitching my stories to one beat reporter (unsuccessful, hey, I’ll move on to his colleague!) and even sending out releases to those dreaded generic editor@xxxpublication.com addresses for lack of having the time, dedication, and resources to know who to contact for media pitches.
Since then, I’ve gotten better, with more strategic approaches to media relations. Still, from time to time, I’m shaken into cautious wariness by how the rules of media pitching can change quickly if you’re not seasoned enough to be in the trenches.
Seth Godin recently commented on his blog about Wired editor Chris Anderson, who was fed up with all the unsolicited spam he received from PR folks, and went so far as to publish the worst violators on his blog.
Godin wrote: “… PR people who spam bloggers don’t think of themselves as spammers. They’re ‘getting the word out.’ They think they have some sort of obligation/right to announce whatever the client wants.” Sound familiar?
But his best gem was this: “So, the smart PR folks (the successful ones) struggle to make their lists smaller and smaller. The lazy ones just try to make them bigger.”
So lesson learned: build relationships, not lists.
Internal Communications Gaining Credence?
I was reading Lucy Sanderson-Gammon’s excellent article in CW Online recently and think she did a great job in highlighting the long-overdue credibility that internal communications is now gaining.
She writes:” The concept of partnering HR and internal communication certainly has support internationally.”
One expert, Mark Schumann, ABC, managing principal of Towers Perrin in Houston, Texas, goes as far as to say that HR and internal communication should be “joined at the hip. We each invest in each stage of an employee’s relationship with the company,” says Schumann.
“We each invest in the credible actions of leaders, we each invest in employee’s answer to ‘what’s in it for me?’ and we each bring skills, insight and passion to a common goal to recruit, retain and engage employees. Every organization has challenges finding the right talent, keeping the right talent, securing the trust of its people and engaging its people to live up to the ‘brand promise’—and HR and communications are the glue that binds it all together. It’s essential they collaborate.”
While the impact of internal communications is far less sexy than PR and media relations, only true visionaries can see the fine balance of internal and external relations. Sanderson-Gammon’s article also points to a juncture where HR and internal comms meet, which has been debated about – sometimes rather heatedly – in numerous other communication blogs.
The New Order: Generation Y in the Workplace
I was catching up on some reading from Ron Shewchuk’s For Your Approval blog and he had recently conducted an interview with Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. In her book, Trunk shares her insights on Generation Y and the needs (some might say demands) they have in today’s work environment.
She goes on to say “In ten years, only the winners will be around. The losers will be eaten up by the winners, I think. The winners will be companies that were not afraid to show humility in the recruiting process. It’s an employee driven market for the foreseeable future, which turns the recruiting model on it’s head. If companies cannot make that change, they won’t attract enough talent to keep things going.”
My perspective: this is an incoming group of high performers and top producers. They are not going to wait around for paradigm shifts and their definition of change management is chunked into a 3 – 6 month period, tops. It’s akin to being on a constantly moving conveyor belt.
I agree w/Trunk’s assertion that only winners will be left behind. The ineffectuals will be lost in the dust if they can’t demonstrate their value.
And, I don’t think this is a bad thing if what is needed by future communicators is the ability to wear many hats, and have innate abilities to move upwards, downwards, and across.
