PR getting a clue

I’ve just ducked down to my room on the 8th floor of the Hyatt Regency Vancouver to get some money to buy drink tickets at the welcoming cocktail party at the IA Summit.
Ran into David Weinberger, who’s been refining the plenary keynote he’ll be giving to kick off the official proceedings tomorrow. We talked about some of the emerging themes in his current book project (called Everything is Miscellaneous and eagerly awaited in this corner) and he mentioned that he’s noticed recently that marketing and particularly PR folks seems (finally) ready to board the Cluetrain.
“If blogging were to change PR,” he said (quotation approximate), “that would be big.”
“Let’s hope that PR doesn’t change blogging, though,” I said.
“It already has, to some extent” he kinda replied.
“We wouldn’t want blogs to become the silencer on the gun of PR,” I said, gesturing with my hands as if screwing a silencer onto a gun, something I would have no idea how to do in real life, but I’ve seen a lot of movies with Nazis and gangsters in them.
“That’s a great image,” he said. “You should blog it.”
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2 responses to “PR getting a clue”

  1. cecil vortex Avatar
    cecil vortex

    a poet friend of mine this week was lamenting the way that the higher-profile poetry blogs have started turning into poetry PR blogs. They’re sort of like the art-pellet in the blog-silencer of the PR-gun.
    -Cecil

  2. gillo Avatar
    gillo

    I’m on the skeptics side. As I wrote in this post, PR firms are already on a clear path to enter and exploit the blogging community for their (and their clients’) own interests.
    These groups are not stupid, and examples such as the pro-Wal Mart blogs show that their strategy is paying. What can be done? I think long time bloggers need to do their best (as some of them are already doing) to advocate the issue in the community, so that red flags will be raised every time one of these situations will occur.
    It’s a very important subject, and PR groups are moving very quietly and swiftly. A good test to see if eventually the blogging community will show its hivemind potential.