“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” - a quote attributed
to Mark Twain but apropos for today’s PR industry.
I’ve seen several pieces of late, written by journalists and bloggers who
appear rushed to sound the death knell over public relations. “New media
and Web 2.0 changed the game,” they say, “and make public relations
obsolete.”
Fact is - public relations expertise is more relevant, more important today
than ever before. Search engine marketing, social network marketing, Web 2.0
applications and the like have all served to increase - not decrease - the
value and demand for high-quality public relations.
Doomsayers don’t get it. They think PR is all about writing a press release
or getting a story in a magazine. Now that print media is in decline, they
say PR is on it’s way out as well. They never understood that press
releases and published artic... (more)
Did you notice? Earlier this month, Google launched a new redesign of its
website and results pages. While I’ve read bits and pieces about technology
changes done to the background, from an “experience” viewpoint, many of
the changes are fairly minor and perhaps indistinguishable untill someone
points them out: the logo is cleaner, small border added between menu links,
bright blue color used throughout etc. Ho hum.
But by far, the most significant change is on the left hand side of the
results. While Google has always had a means to filter your search to include
just video, or ... (more)
IN MY last post, I wrote about the premature sounding of the death knell for
public relations. I’ll go a step further and say that, the need for adept
public relations skills is actually growing and is more critical today than
ever before. In fact, the use of strategic PR has begun to dominate areas
that were once the sole responsibility of completely separate corporate
functions. A clear case in point is employee recruiting.
Once the exclusive domain of the Human Resources department, recruiting has
quickly evolved into a PR/marketing function. Recruitment expert, Jim Durbin
re... (more)
As a PR pro, I am often asked to review and comment on existing websites.
In many cases, a company has just plunked down thousands of dollars on a
website makeover only to find the results disappointing (at best).
No wonder. Websites are often designed and created by HTML or PHP experts,
not marketing pros. The end result is a site with lots of animation, java-run
menus and clickable pages. It may also have a smattering of imbedded SEO code
or even an associated blog. Unfortunately however, coding experts rarely have
the marketing expertise to ensure the site’s success.
With tha... (more)
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The "Big Carl" breaking the rules
I LIKE BREAKING the rules. If done right, it can get you valuable attention,
make you stand out and even give you a huge competitive edge. It can, of
course, also get you into trouble.
With that in mind, I’ve always been drawn to that age-old edict “You must
know the rules before you can break them.” I first heard this pearl of
wisdom as it relates to music theory. The rule says you must play “X” but
you can break the rule and play “Y” instead… if you understand how and
why it works.
Famous broken rules (and I will tie this to market... (more)
Brad Lee Brenner is a master blogger, radio host and founder of Brenner Associates, a public relations / communications firm headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Over the past thirty years, Brad has written hundreds of articles that have been published in trade journals, newspapers and online news sources. His focus of expertise includes technology, the medical industry and communications for the digital age. 
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