Bernaisesource

I am having an existential PR crisis.  Not really, but it is increasingly clear that what PR is now is not what PR was.

A little confusing – well so is the role of a PR professional in the age of new media.  Where does PR end and everything else corporate begin?

It’s a discussion I am increasingly having with my colleagues including EarthLink blogmaster Dave Coustan. 

Dave and I are both speak for the company, but our roles and perspectives are very different.   I report into marketing, and he into the product and value added services group.  He communicates with bloggers and the general public, and I with reporters.  I often speak in message points, and he in a personal, more conversational style.  These are distinctions that have served us both well.

But recently, the boundary between us is blurring, and corporate communications and blogging will be better for it.

Case in point:  When bloggers Steve Rubel and Mike Arrington commented on our new RSS aggregator and social bookmarking site, Dave was on the front line discussing these products as a blogger in advance of any press release or reporter interview.  In fact, we did not issue a press release.  The buzz took place in the blogosphere in a way that reflected a blogger's sensibility.   

Finding PR’s edge – it’s the focus of PR 2.0 and not unique to EarthLink.  I am sure corporate communications departments across the country are facing similar challenges as the definition and role of public relations evolves with social media – perhaps even faster than management realizes.  

We are now talking more often and more directly with more outside stakeholders.  Public relations, customer relations and product management – traditionally under different departments – are fusing together with the understanding that they operate like a Rubic’s cube – move one panel on one side and you impact the other panels on all the other sides.  

Marketing consultant and blogger Brian Oberkirch has a great name for it: edgework. Brands have multiple faces; they mean different things to different people.   We need to change our traditional understanding of brands.  Extending brands to their edge requires some loss of control.  It means using overlapping communications channels to speak to different audiences with voices that will resonate specifically with them.

That corporate communications departments need to factor in all these audiences is not what is new.  What is new is the urgency and immediacy.  Audiences now have public, two-way interactive forums in which to be heard and reckoned with. 

These audiences are ignored or minimized at a company’s peril. Conversations with call center reps are taped and make their way to YouTube and the Today Show.   Ignoring conversations in the blogosphere cost companies like Kryptonite locks millions of dollars.  On the other hand, engaging critics constructively might allow companies to fend off more public stories in the mainstream media.  

To be sure, these changes afford us more opportunities to get our messages out, but also present us with more challenges.   It is not without irony that decentralizing corporate communications also requires more coordination to determine the voice that best resonates with different constituencies.  

No longer is a PR person’s reporter Rolodex the gateway to successful corporate communications.  Instead, that Rolodex is as big as every customer, vendor, partner and competitor who interacts with your company.

Let me get back to you.

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