PR 2.0

2006-04-13

Once every few months I meet with James Cooper of AR/PR/MR firm Ascendant, just to chew the fat and see what's happening on the other side of the fence. Inevitably this time, the conversation turned to blogging, in particular "the press release is dead" writings of Tom Forenski. I disagree, for what its worth - but I do understand people like Tom need to present one side of the story. After all, who's going to listen to someone that just says, "here's a new tool, I suppose it'll be useful for some things..."Anyway we covered word of mouth marketing, the influencer community in general, what makes a good European analyst in this context and so on. It was an interesting chat, thanks James, and thanks for your additional remarks by email - I copy them here, and no doubt we'll be looking back on them in a few months:

Hi Jon, I think I found the article you were talking about yesterday. A few initial thoughts:

• It is still a heavily US debate (doubtless it will morph here as well, but the market is smaller and more subjective)
• I think commercial interests will ensure blogging doesn't disrupt PR to a negative level but becomes just another medium as we discussed
• The ‘trust’ factor has to be a big issue here
• I think in Europe for mainstream communications/business it will just be an extension of the chatroom and useful; a few key blogs will emerge that simply become another CW or Silicon.com; the authors will be the equivalent of today’s journalists, or editorial input will be achieved by responding reactive or proactive messages directly

Having said all that I am still new to it J James