Forgive my self-indulgent naval gazing, but this week marks my tenth anniversary at Johnson King, and it’s got me thinking about what’s changed and what hasn’t in a decade’s worth of technology PR.
When you bear in mind that my mobile at the time didn’t even have SMS capabilities (and that my days are now dictated by my BlackBerry’s flashing red light), you can see that things have moved on a fair way.
I spent my early days convincing the print media, as well as an emerging number of websites (“they’ll never catch on!’’), to cover my clients’ news and opinions. The phone was the number one way of communicating with journalists and clients alike, a far cry from today’s email and Skype-centred conversations.
While some titles – most notably, Computing, Computer Weekly, Silicon and The Register – have stood the test of time, I also can’t help but reminisce over the huge number of magazines and newspapers that have fallen by the way side over the years. IT Week, Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, Network News, Communications News, Communications Week International and The Business (and they’re just the tip of the iceberg) have all met their maker. Most depressingly, the ever dependable (not to mention chunky) FT IT and FT Telecoms supplements were ditched for a slimmer, online equivalent.
I realise
I’m in danger of sounding like a pensioner trying to convince her grandkids that
it was better to live with rationing and the Blitz than get on the bus full of
today’s school children, so I should point out that it’s not all doom and
gloom. PR’s simply changed, and in many ways, for the better.
With online news sites outnumbering print outlets, the stories needs to keep flowing, so PR tactics have become short, sharp and decisive. The days of slogging over 3,000 word technical articles on a regular basis are thankfully long gone.
However,
perhaps the most interesting shift is in how firms are looking to PRs to
develop digital and social media campaigns, which speak directly to their
audiences and bypass journalists completely.
It would be way off the mark to suggest the media has had its day, but it’s
clear it’s no longer the only kid on the block.
So,
while ten years ago it was all about VC firms dishing out money to potential dotcom
millionaires (who newspapers were happy to profile before they’d even made a
penny); today’s buzz is all about social media. Stay tuned for my 2020 post, but let’s hope
it’s not a retrospective of the late, great Facebook, the modern equivalent of Boo.com.
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