Category: Technology PR

I shamefully confess my ignorance of the above practice – however, a further comment (below) from Ian Murphy had me reaching to check that someone hadn’t dropped an acid tab in my coffee – have the lunatics finally taken over the PR asylum?

The premium rate/national rate number scam has been around a few years now.
Luckily it’s been confined to a small number of agencies but a couple of
large agencies are now giving it serious thought. One even said to me the
other day that it was to reduce the amount of time they spent dealing with
journo enquiries and to leave them more time to do the campaign stuff their
clients paid for. You can work out my response.

Well, one at least – I posted a question about the state of PR on the UK Press e-mail list – this was the response from Ian Murphy:

You asked for it.

Ian

Link: ANALYST EQUITY: Why has mainstream PR stopped growing?

Duncan Chapple has posted re: UK PR industry performance in 2006. His post worth repeating here:

The PR industry has stopped growing. The annual PR Consultants
Analysis, which reviews the top 1000 PR consultancies, is an annual
study whose 2006 findings
were also depressing. The 2007 report states that average sales growth
has fallen to zero. Pre-tax margins are remain around 4%.

According to
Christopher Evans, the senior analyst on the Plimsoll report, "the next
six months will be a time for tough decisions and painful measures as
their managers attempt to put them back on a firm financial footing."
PR agencies are often short on financial prudence and use discredited metrics. However, it is PR’s trivial reputationweak brand alignment that undermines it. That also partly explains why many AR managers avoid the PR label.

As regular readers will know, I’m in agreement with Duncan’s analysis. The trends that have been discussed here over the last 18 months aren’t going to go away. A vicious circle of dwindling senior expertise and lack of investment in training (which leads to the situation Charles Arthur and others encounter daily); a seeming inability of PR to be able to measure and demonstrate its business value; an almost pathological contempt for good financial management; I could go on.

So, Duncan’s point – why has mainstream PR stopped growing? Because on the whole PR companies are still offering mainstream PR services – which is now a highly commoditized market. In fact, much of the basic mechanics of PR can easily be carried out by clients themselves.  And more and more are cottoning on to this.
(Imagine: armed with a few subscriptions to some basic PR support services such as Sourcewire, virtually any company can have a basic PR operation ready to roll for a few grand. They simply want to add the relevant expertise to the process (which no  doubt explains the rise in project based PR).

I do believe that clients are very willing to pay for real expertise and experience – but that really is a scarce commodity – hence the rapid rise in senior people going freelance or starting small shops – with no desire to grow to become a 100 person agency in 2 years. Because what’s the point? If your pre-tax margin is 4pc then even with a topline in the millions that represents a paltry return – and where’s the exit?  As ever, there are exceptions, but on the whole, you aren’t going to earn your millions working for a large PR firm. However, I’d suggest that senior PR folk can earn what any normal person would describe as a very healthy living by offering their services in small, highly focussed packages. Add in the sense of control, lifestyle flexibility, closer client relationship, etc, you can see why people are doing it.

Would be good to see some kind of more detail analysis of the freelance/small shop end of the market – I suspect there may be a happier story here than the one Duncan describes….

This has been around for a few months, so apologies if this is all old hat – but I thought it worth highlighting in any case.

Peter Norvig is Google’s Director of Research (which he says is the best job in the world at the best company in the world – more here). By all accounts, he is a clever chap. He is co-author of a best-selling textbook on artificial intelligence. Apparently he once aspired to be a reporter himself but has lately been "appalled” by the shoddiness of the craft.

So appalled that he has posted a lengthy piece of vitriol here about the shortcomings of the journalistic profession today. The whole thing is well worth reading (especially the bit about parrotting and inummeracy in financial reporting). Here are his four key findings:

1. Parroting: The reporter’s job is to do research
     to find the facts.  But too often they seem to parrot back whatever is fed to them by
     press releases, politicians, or other news reports.  My friend Joe C. calls this
     the stenographic approach to reporting.

    

2. Deception: Public figures lie (Marth Stewart, Kenneth Lay), and reporters do not know who
   to trust. Reporters lie, either to advance their career
   (Jayson Blair)
   or to serve the interests of their corporate sponsors. Sometimes the deception
   is self-deception: reporters (and others) believe what they want to believe.

    

3. Innumeracy: Prof. John McCarthy has touted the
     slogan
     He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
     Perhaps the budding reporters with an ability for arithmetic end
     up in other fields (like me),
     but it does seem that reporters repeatedly show they are not
     capable of simple multiplication and division.

    

4. Equal Time: Perhaps influenced by the sports pages,
     reporters tend to see issues as a competition with two
     sides, which must both be covered.  Sometimes this is true, but
     sometimes one side is right and the other is objectively
     wrong.  Reporters should do enough research to determine who is
     right and say so.  They are too easily manipulated by those who have
     no facts on their side, but get equal press time anyways just by
     talking loudly.

Is Norvig himself being guilty of a less than thorough scientific approach ie is he extrapolating from too few data points to support his argument? Then again, if the CNN/Spaceshuttle example above is anything to go by, maybe he is on to something.

This story in today’s Guardian makes for fascinating reading – a real insider’s view – and the kind of feature that justifies buying a paper in the morning….

The short answer to Valleywag’s question appears to be a qualified yes.

Link here.

To keep everyone happy, they appear to suggest that SEO is not the be all and end all for PR 2.0.

"A good PR firm does a lot more than send "story idea for WIRED" emails to freelancers. A publicist can help you hone your message and train you to keep your foot out of your mouth. And despite the growing power of the Long Tail, a single mention in BusinessWeek or Forbes tops a hundred blog posts in Google results  Those articles rarely happen without a flack in the mix. If you can afford it, hire a publicist with proven business press clips on file (you want InfoWorld, not San Jose Metro) to get you started and pitch your launch."

Charles Arthur of The Guardian blogs re: latest schoolboy error from a PR exec here.

Depressing that this kind of thing persists – but it would be interesting to find out from Charles if he is getting more bonehead calls like this than a few years ago.

…now that VNU Europe has been sold to 3i for £215m (Guardian story here – reg required). Having sold The Inquirer to VNU back in January, there is speculation in some quarters that this new acquistion will translate into vested options for Mike – a "life-changing" sum.

Look forward to Mike buying us all a drink 😉

Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute Cited as Criteria for Evaluation

SANTA CLARA, Calif., December 6, 2006 – Hyperion (Nasdaq Global Select:
HYSL), the global leader in Business Performance Management (BPM)
software, today announced that Gartner, Inc. has placed Hyperion in the
leaders quadrant in its "Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites, 2006"1

The recently released report lists Hyperion among a field of 16
vendors. Gartner weighed Hyperion’s completeness of vision and its
ability to execute in determining its position in the Magic Quadrant,
which uses multiple criteria to characterize companies in the leaders,
challengers, visionaries and niche players quadrants.

"Hyperion’s strong brand awareness with CFOs and other senior
executives means it is present in virtually every CPM suite
evaluation," said Godfrey Sullivan, chairman and CEO of Hyperion. "Now
more than ever, Hyperion is devoted to being the management system for
today’s enterprise. As we build on the success of Hyperion System 9
with new applications and capabilities, we will work hard to earn that
market position again and again."

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2006 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused
with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a
marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s
analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that
marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any
vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not
advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the
"Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research
tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner
disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this
research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose.

About Hyperion

Hyperion Solutions Corporation (Nasdaq Global Select: HYSL) is the
global leader in Business Performance Management software. More than
12,000 customers in 90 countries rely on Hyperion both for insight into
current business performance and to drive performance improvement. With
Hyperion software, businesses collect, analyze and share data across
the organization, linking strategies to plans and monitoring execution
against goals. Hyperion integrates financial management applications
with a business intelligence platform into a single management system
for the global enterprise . For more information, contact us .

"Hyperion" and Hyperion’s product names are trademarks of Hyperion.
References to other companies and their products use trademarks owned
by the respective companies and are for reference purpose only.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements in this press release other than statements of historical
fact are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to,
statements concerning the potential success of anticipated product
features, the anticipated product offerings and the potential market
opportunities for business performance management software. Such
statements constitute anticipated outcomes and do not assure results.
Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated by the
forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, including, but
not limited to the company’s ability to retain and attract key
employees, the successful and timely development of new products, the
impact of competitive products and pricing, customer demand, and
technological shifts. For a more detailed discussion of factors that
could affect the company’s performance and cause actual results to
differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking
statements, interested parties should review the company’s filings with
the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Report on Form
10-K filed on September 1, 2006 and the Report on Form 10-Q filed on
November 8, 2006. The company does not undertake an obligation to
update its forward-looking statements to reflect future events or
circumstances.

[1] Gartner Research "Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites, 2006" , Nigel Rayner, 1 December 1, 2006

The World’s Leading blogger threw a party last night – so plenty of sore heads in tech PR land this morning.

Much ale consumed and good to meet other fellow TWL watchers – Justin Hayward from MS&L and  ex-Textie Mark Pinsent to name a few. PR Week’s Sarah Robertson was there too.

Thanks to Steve Mallison-Jones for bankrolling much of the proceedings. And to Jenny Ellis from Spark for bagging some space in the crowded downstairs bar (who says philosophy grads can’t get jobs?)

However – the identity of TWL remains a mystery.