mediajunk

I had a lively chat yesterday with the founders of a new PR/Communications company, a client of ours. We discussed PR and the internet, and agreed that few PR companies in Ireland are using the internet to its full potential.

The reasons are understandable. People who are experienced in traditional media often find it difficult to embrace the internet, because they see it as a variant of publishing, rather than a new medium. Advertising and PR practitioners tend to regard a website as a digital version of a glossy print brochure, or (worse!) an opportunity to "wow" people with a moving, clicking, whirring, music-blaring, pop-up advertisement. In short, they use tricks that work in traditional media, to little -- or negative -- effect.

Ironically, as Paul Holmes points out in his Manifesto for the 21st Century Public Relations Firm, PR companies should have been the first to embrace the internet since, right from the outset, "the Internet was in many respects a public relations medium". The model of information dissemination used by PR firms -- a targetted, viral model, dependent on active intermediaries -- was encoded in the internet's DNA.

The Internet was about information and education, not promotion, because it gave people unprecedented control over the messages to which they were exposed.

It was about earning attention rather than demanding it. It was about dialogue rather and conversation rather than monologue. And it was about multiple stakeholder groups rather than customers alone.

When I did Media Studies in college, I was familiar with Marshall McLuhan's epiteth, "The medium Is the message", but I never really grasped it. McLuhan had been writing at a time when a new medium, television, was changing the information-dissemination landscape, but by the time I was studying his words, television had become the dominant channel.

Now his words make sense. If you can show people that you "get" the internet, you are sending out a clear message to your audience. Part of getting the internet, for example, is to understand that transparency rules (and rules tyranically, according to trendspotting); deception is not tolerated.

Says Holmes:

bq.Employees, customers and community members will have access to communications channels almost equal to that of the largest corporations, and any inaccuracy or insincerity will be quickly identified as such and exposed—not only undermining the company’s message but produced the precise opposite result from that intended.

We have already seen examples of this trend, from a blog covertly funded by Wal-Mart to a YouTube video supposedly created by an ordinary citizen but in reality posted by a public relations firm representing Exxon Mobil. In both cases, the fraud was quickly exposed and the companies held up to ridicule and condemnation.

In a crisis, even in a tyranny, there is opportunity. The web offers unprecedented opportunity for PR companies. Want to boost hotel bookings? Forget airbrushed photos; get to the top of Tripadvisor.

Embrace the internet; figure out its rules and play by them. You'll soon see opportunities that couldn't have existed even a few years ago.

Online marketing company Marketleap has produced a thought-provoking report on a shift that, it claims, has occurred during the last year in advertising. The power of television advertising is declining as the power of web marketing rises: “Television is losing its relevancy as the single source of information communication because there are better things to do than just unplug and stare. The television model will begin changing dramatically because there are more cost-effective ways to drive traffic and action to a business without a 30 second TV ad.” Marketleap’s claims are based, in part, on the Nielsen for the autumn TV season, which traditionally brings in the largest viewing figures. “One group in particular is showing stunning declines in watching TV -- the American male aged 18 – 34, down almost 10% from last year.” Males, it seems, are leading the shift away from television and towards computer-mediated forms of communication, that give them more power as users/consumers. In Europe too, it is true that TV is no longer the "mass" medium it once was. Advertisers have to work harder to gain mind-space in this fragmented market. Does this mean advertising will go away? Of course not. Worse, we can expect the distinction between 'regular' content and 'sponsored' content to blur even further – just as we are seeing now in those search engines that merge paid listings with bona-fide ones. The practice is not confined to new media. Advertorials are becoming increasingly common in print and, even in current affairs news, it is hard to tell the spin from the reportage (so much so, in fact, that some are calling for ‘content labelling’ to be introduced in journalism). In the future, it will be difficult to tell what's advertising and what's not, regardless of the medium. The word "advertising" could even fall out of use, not because it won’t exist, but because it will be seamlessly integrated with the rest of the infosphere, making it effectively invisible. This article is brought to you by Heraghty Consulting. ;)

The capture of Saddam Hussein was a victory in the war -- against old media. That’s according to an opinion piece by Steve Outing in Poynter, an online resource for journalists. “The only way someone in the U.S. might have learned about Saddam first from a print newspaper was if their electricity was out all day yesterday, they had no social contact, and they read the news in Monday's edition,” writes Outing. “What this episode signifies to me is that Internet publishing operations of newspapers are now clearly as critical as the printing presses. On Sunday, those papers' websites were more important.” Perhaps. But most people probably fist learned of Saddam’s capture through radio or television -- as I did, in that order. I first heard about it on the RTE lunchtime radio news bulletin, then switched on Sky News to see the live press conference, where I did, admittedly feel senses of drama and participation when the pictures of Saddam (before and after beard) were revealed. I did happen to be online shortly after, however, on a bulletin board that has nothing particularly to do with news or current affairs, and it was a curious experience to see messages appear titled “Saddam Hussein” as participants learned of the capture. None of this, of course, means that new media are replacing old media. Rather, the internet is changing the function of previously-established forms of communication -- just as television changed the function of radio, movies changed the function of theatre, and so on. After all, this year’s new media are next year’s old media.

Surprised at the lack of media coverage of the Florida update, I sent an email to a journalist with the "Online" supplement of the Guardian.

He decided to print the letter in today's edition of the paper. Here's the text:

*****
Google Overhaul
What has Google done in its latest update of its search algorithms?

I run a weblog called MediaJunk, dealing with trends in new media culture - particularly blogging and search engines. I have been running it for more than a year, but I have never got as much traffic as I have done over the past week.

The spike started when I posted an article about the recent Google Florida update (the Florida name comes from the tradition of naming hurricanes, as this is the effect updates have on search results!). In short, Google has made a major overhaul of its search results in an attempt to cut out spammers, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of sites have been penalised.

It looks to many people as though Google is targeting small businesses and trying to get them to take out AdWords.

I didn't believe Google's overhaul was malicious but I got so many emails that I began to have doubts. So I checked out some of the cases and I think some people may have a right to be annoyed. See particularly this entry. I'm amazed that no major media source has picked up on this yet.

*****

At lunchtime today, the BBC had a report criticising Google's update. It probalby had nothing to do with my letter. But I like to think it did :)

In the decade since the arrival of the internet for home users, the shape of my day has changed dramatically. I now spend at least five, sometimes as many as ten, hours a day online. Conversely, my television viewing has decreased dramatically. Most days I don’t watch TV at all.

I’m quite happy to swap TV for the internet. The quality of television output grows ever poorer (television, more than any other medium, is responsible for the dumbing down of western culture), while time devoted to TV advertising is increasing (at least you can delete spam!).

There are, of course, exceptions. Some HBO dramas – such as the Sopranos and Six Feet Under (well, the first series at least) – are of a higher quality than contemporary movies. And occasionally a television documentary is produced that can stimulate the mind as well as, if not more than, any book.

“The Theory of Everything,” which was recently broadcast on three consecutive Sunday evenings on Britain’s Channel 4, was a neatly packaged, accessible introduction to a complex but fascinating subject – theoretical physics' “superstring” theory.

I had previously read a couple of books on superstring theory and so was looking forward to the three-part series. The fist two episodes built up to a climactic finale: the third and final episode would fill me in on the most recent breakthroughs in the search for a unified theory of physics (around three or four years had passed, after all, since I’d read those books).

Just after the programme started, I got an important phone call from my sister Louise, which couldn’t be put off. After about half an hour, I sat back down in front of the box, when a visitor called -- so I gave up trying to watch the show.

This is another of television's drawbacks: you have to watch emissions during a certain timeslot. Yes, you can record, but that’s hassle. What I want is TV content that, like internet content, I can access at any time, and view at my own leisure. (We don't have TiVo on this side of the Atlantic, BTW.)

Imagine my surprise, then, when it turned out that “The Theory of Everything” was available for viewing on the web – under its original title of “The Elegant Universe” (the programme was created by America’s PBS channel).

Each hour-long programme is divided up into eight chunks. You can’t download any of the clips, “due to rights reasons,” but you can view any or all as a streaming video clip.

Could this be the beginning of a (much-heralded) harmonious relationship between the internet and television? I hope so. As broadband increases, resistance to the merger of the internet and TV will be political (from companies who control television content and advertising), not technical.

Though I won’t mourn the passing of television, I must admit that I don’t know what I’d do if I suddenly found myself without internet access.