PR Squared had an excellent blog posting yesterday entitled Bloggers Pick the Most Notable [PR] Developments for 2006.
The posting references a poll that Dan Greenfield, VP at Earthlink, organized asking various PR bloggers for their take on The Most Important Developments of 2006.
Some of the popular choices in the poll included:
PR 2.0
Social Media Press Releases
Social Media Club
GM's Response to NY Times Columnist Thomas Friedman
YouTube
Viral Videos (Diet Coke and Mentos)
User Generated Content
Customer Engagement
Todd Defren, author of PR Squared, astutely points out how all of this relates to TIME Magazine's declaration that the person of the year in 2006 is "you". As TIME Magazine stated, "You control the media now, and the world will never be the same."
Mr. Defren also had an interesting comment on how 2006 proved that the Social Media Press Releases is quickly replacing the traditional press release: "We are going to reformat a 100-year old document for an emerging era in which consumers wield unprecedented control. By re-architecting the news release, we will place the power to disseminate data and effect reputation directly into the hands of the consumer…”
Oh, how true it is. This is a similar message that HRmarketer.com has been preaching in the HR industry for four years. While we still come across the occasional "the world is flat" marketing or PR dinosaur that "doesn't get it," they are converting fast and we get fewer people looking at us as if we have three eyes.
What all of these "Marketing PR", Web 2.0 and PR 2.0 tactics like social media press releases, blogging, SEO, etc, have in common is that they support the FACT that the traditional media/journalists and anyone else who gets in between the seller and the buyer are becoming less and less significant. The reason is that sellers can now easily and cost-effectively take their message direct to the "buyer.” Suppliers no longer need to rely on a journalist or analysts to place their message in front of the buyer, as Elrond Lawrence points out in his article The Rise of Marketing.
This is and will continue to have a dramatic impact on how HR suppliers spend their marketing and PR dollars. HRmarketer.com just completed a research report that covers the latest trends and best practices for marketing to the human resource and employee benefits marketplace going into 2007. Some of the key findings are the continuing devaluation of print advertisements, printed direct marketing and traditional press reeases. Visit HRmarketer.com in mid-January to get the free report or download lots of other comprehensive marketing reports today on this subject matter.
