mediations

GPRBW2 lives on!

Global PR Blog Week is over ... but Long Live GPRBW! There was so much good stuff posted I think most participants are still trying to assimilate what it really meant, with the proof being the number of comments and threads still being developed. I am naturally interested in the cross-posting between Elizabeth Albrycht's excellent piece, Is Transparency the Key to Improving PR's Reputation and my own contribution, Why ethical PR bloggers can't tell the truth. As Elizabeth says on her CorporatePR site: "We have commented to each other's posts, along with some other people.  I think it is a pretty interesting discussion, and encourage you to go add your two cents." So do I - somewhere in this discussion we might develop some useful perspectives on transparency, advocacy and, most significantly, the ethics of persuasion. 

No such thing as society...?

In my piece for Global PR Blog Week, Are Ethics Good Business? I highlighted research that suggested PR practitioners saw themselves as more ethical than the clients or organisations that employed them

Here's an update based on responses from Blog Week visitors:

No theory. No fluff.

Right at the start of Global PR Blog Week, B.L. Ochman, president of whatsnextonline.com, promised examples and links. No theory. No fluff.

And she delivers. All guns blazing. It's an impressive piece of writing.

New thinking: Global Blog

Here are a few quotes from the Global PR Blog 1.0 week aimed at giving newcomers a flavour of the debate

Trevor Cook: Re-thinking PR
What will blogs do? We have some inclinations but I think it is still far too early to tell with any real clarity and certainty. But we do know that the world of PR will be turned upside down over the next few years as we re-invent ourselves in response to this awe-inspiring new phenomenon.

Blogging is different from other mediums because it collapses the distinction between producer and consumer. Bloggers and blog readers are essentially the same people. Instead of largely passive audiences, complex webs of online communities and conversations are being created.

The whole truth...

Here's an exchange from an interview between Global Blog pioneer Trevor Cook and Microsoft's Robert Scoble:

Cook: The first point in your Corporate weblog manifesto (posted on 23 Feb 2003) says "tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth" - this flies in the face of the general perception of pr, marketing and advertising. How compatible is blogging with these traditional communication disciplines? Will those disciplines have to re-think their 'message control' tactics?

Scoble: I think that denigrates what good marketers, advertisers, and PR professionals do. I don't want to be part of an industry that has to lie to sell its product.

..... consumers now are getting knowledge networks that are unparalleled to learn about products that they are about to purchase. We can look up Consumer Reports latest ratings within minutes of them being posted. Thinking of buying a car or a book? Search Technorati and Feedster to see what people are thinking.

Click here for the full piece

Ethics: Global PR Blog

It's Day Two of Global PR Blog Week and I have added my contribution on Ethics in PR Practice. Visit the Global PR Blog Week site (the level of debate and sheer volume of information up there already is most impressive) to see it in context, but here it is anyway, hopefully as a focus for continuing debate on this site.

Global PR Blog week

Here's an interesting response to Richard's opener. Elizabeth Albrycht, pictured, at Corporate PR argues: "While I agree that blogging is an important tool to be added to the professional communicator's toolkit ... I think there is something happening in the world of communications that is fundamentally DIFFERENT, and that is a change in MINDSET, from command-control to distributed participation, and that this is creating new roles for PR people. That is why I have proposed the Open Source PR Project."

She goes on: "Blogs represent an important tool for this new world: that of creating credibility."

I am not sure I entirely agree but it is certainly worth reading - as is the backlash, which begins here...

Global PR Blog Week 1.0 has begun

Richard Bailey of PR Studies has opened Global PR Blog Week 1.0 with a very useful contribution which gives a historical (if that is the right word for a year or so!) context to blogging, talking to two pioneers, Jim Horton, whose Online Public Relations site began in 1997 not as a weblog, but as a resource for his links and articles, and Tom Murphy, whose excellent PR Opinions site first set me thinking about blogging.

Global PR Blog Week press release

The Global PR Blog Week press release is running on PR Newswire and Yahoo! Business news.

Global Blog update

PR people really should be able get publicity for what they do so it is no surprise that the Global PR Blog Week is making news. Here is a piece from the US PR Week, and from TechDaily; the virtual cuttings file is here.