The Buffalo Blog

Obama, McCain and the battle for online reality

There have been some interesting communication developments in the wake of the first McCain-Obama debate on Friday. According to The Independent, just minutes after the debate had finished, the online spin machines were in full motion.

In the first blow, Obama’s backers released a post-event video focusing on McCain’s speech semantics and his failure to use the words "middle-class" or "working people". McCain’s team countered, again within minutes, by releasing information on the number of times Obama agreed with their man during the debate, perhaps to illustrate a perceived lack of independent opinion.

Petty though these tactics and subjects may be, they illustrate some interesting trends in the development of internet debate as a whole:

• The importance of speed

• The changing control of ‘reality’ as a concept

In PR, speed has always been important but never more so in the ‘information age’. Getting a client’s, whether a political candidate or a food company, word out there as soon as possible can avert disaster and create a multitude of great exposure when done properly.

This leads neatly to the control of ‘reality’. While it may sound a little sensationalist, the reality of the world that is not in our direct experience, has always been controlled by the papers, the television and now the internet. We can’t always know things first hand so we accept them as they are shown to us.

The internet, Google and social bookmarking and tagging has changed the dynamics somewhat. This is where speed and skill in online PR, SEO and the like come into play. Whoever can get their word out quickly and skilfully effectively creates ‘reality’ for the readers. The more this content is looked at, linked to, bookmarked, the higher it is ranked by Google and the more enforced it becomes as the accepted reality.

The scary thing is that it doesn’t matter if it is true or not…

But internet users have access to billions of information sources through which they can build a complete picture don’t they? Well yes, but diligence in information gathering has changed to suit our fast-paced, information-rich world. Users may still look at various sources for their information, as they will have done before the internet, but these have been pre-sorted, clipped, edited and indexed by popularity. And there simple isn’t time to take in every   bit of information.

Internet users are now left with the popular view of the world rather than the actual. And the control of this has shifted to anyone savvy enough to take it.

The point of all this I scaremongering musing is firstly, to take everything with a healthy pinch of salt. And secondly as a note to PROs, both in-house and agency, world to take care in what they put out there. It doesn’t take long for reality to take shape on the web and this has profound implications for us all.

Android - the dawn of open-source mobile

The launch of Google’s Android mobile phone operating system only serves to further enforce where the industry and the business world as a whole is going. The principles expounded in the popular Wikinomics book are playing out before our very eyes in what is a highly exciting time for all those involved in the IT industry.

Open source, in phones, DTP applications, enterprise software and so on, is undoubtedly the future of software provision and it’s the canny companies, the ones that are getting involved now, who will steal a march in their particular industries.

Google’s endorsement of open source has been unwavering and Android only enforces this stance. It will be highly interesting to see how well the platform takes off but one only needs look back a few years for a prediction. Just look at the popularity of the page-editing possibilities on MySpace – people love customisation and will lap up new modifications and tools.

But what does this mean for the rest of the phone industry. Well, there are numerous very nice phones with decent operating systems on the market at the moment but none have the potential of the Android platform to truly change the way the industry thinks, Apple included.

I have often wondered why Apple and Google didn’t pair up to create the iPhone’s operating system. Two companies with a similar creative, innovative and cutting edge ethos could have created something truly beautiful and completely unstoppable. Granted, Apple would have to go somewhere it’s never gone before but the outcome of not exploring this route could be dangerous. As it is Apple’s beautiful though it is, but closed-source, closed device, iPhone will be up against a potentially massive force.

Having said this, it’s never to late to get involved. The beauty of Android is that it can be adapted and modified to suit any new phone. HTC’s privilege being the first phone to launch with Android it a real coup. No matter how good their proprietary systems are, canny companies will be giving Google a call – I wonder if Apple will one of them...    

Quality PR writing

A badly timed press release darkened my desk (should I say inbox these days) this morning as I sat down to my first caffeine hit of the day. The research release for the ‘Writing for Publication Masterclass’ announced: ‘Only 3% of editors say PR articles are "well written", says survey’. Scary stuff indeed and, while the research is obviously self-serving, it should hit home to those who think all coverage is equal in value regardless of content.

Ever feel yourself ticking off coverage quotas, filing another piece of coverage and forgetting about it? Another one in the bag and another win on the PR versus journalist scorecard? If this is you then this release should be even more worrying.

With the continued development of online publications, the growth in ‘fast media’ like blogs and the rapidly shrinking news rooms all over the country, the focus has never been further away from ensuring quality content is posted. Unfortunately, in many cases, the need to break stories and to make sure that publications are the fastest, most up-to-date 24 hr news services around, is coming well ahead of quality assurance.

The pressure to get things up and ‘done and dusted’ is also feeding through to PR and this is where the release should hurt. Many publications try to get a certain amount of contributed articles up each month with a quota that must be filled regardless of quality. So that’s a great thing isn’t it? PRs can reel off any old article and get it printed saving time and money! Likewise being in charge of the corporate blog makes things even easier, as long as we keep getting the right volume of blogs up everything is great! Or is it?

No - this definitely isn’t the way things should be going. Yes you might be able to get something slightly sub-standard printed (much to the editor’s dismay no doubt) but this is of no value whatsoever to clients. If it’s pants no one will read it and your client message will be lost, no argument – this is PR 101 and anyone calling themselves a PRO should know it.

In true PR style I feel I should issue a call to action to in-house and agency PROs alike: Remember the reason behind your coverage. Make it good and make it salient so your client has the best chance of getting some value out of it.