While most companies have been trying to adapt to the new consumer-driven paradigm of Web 2.0, it appears that part of marketing has ignored the chatter altogether. Everyone agrees that even in B2B environments that the customer is going to have a voice. If it doesn’t then it will move on to where one exists. Everybody is looking to place forums and blogs on or alongside their current web offerings. This is all in an effort to generate and try to control the chatter about one’s company.
PR people, by trade, want to tell a good story for everyone to lap up. In order to make that story good, things may be left out or ignored. The trouble is that in order to be successful, the story has to be picked up by news outlets and bloggers. Even if that isn’t the PR person’s intended target, in an effort to control things, they end up there anyway. Most news organizations whether they be broadcast or print, now have a web component. In order to engage viewers and make them return to the site, comments are usually enabled and actively encouraged. This, in turn, leads to bloggers picking up their particular item of interest and reprinting it or summarizing it (sometimes not to a company’s advantage) in an effort to generate traffic.
So, armed with this knowledge, would you send out a press release that hadn’t been gone over with a fine toothed comb to head off comments going into territory you weren’t comfortable with? Apparently not. Large multinational companies routinely send out releases touting big money contracts in an effort to make themselves look successful. These companies then watch with horror as the comments take the release appart for what it is. Tales of the money not going into the local economy or its peoples pockets pile up. Accusations of CEOs feathering their own nests and ruining the rest of the company incite anger. Job reductions and outsourcing usually factor in also. Is this really the reaction a company wants from its PR?
To make matters worse, after receiving the press release any newspaper worth its salt will already be aware of some of these sentiments. (Especially if they just did a story on all of the local residents soon to be out of a job because production is going to Malaysia.) They will send a reporter out for comment, because surely all of this happy, good news, money-making story means something to those soon to be unemployed folks. Sorry, your corporate spokes person has no comment. This is only slightly better than if he said it was only business. It stopped being business for these people because you just made it personal to them.
Guess what? Those people will be the ones to start raining on your parade when those press releases hit. If you don’t think these things can explode or turn around and bite you because you’re in B2B then you haven’t been paying attention. Security is at an all time high for the olympic torch because people are protesting a foriegn government. How far do you think you have to push them to protest a company in their own country, their own home town?
Sure, it might be business only and that’s why it probably doesn’t need to go everywhere. Who’s really interested in this? (Stockholders? Other companies/competitors? They’re not looking in the newspaper for that. Go to general business or business-specific outlets for that.) For that matter, just come clean and explain everything. Then it illustrates that it really is just business and that you’re not trying to blow smoke up someone’s backside. Hiding or leaving elements out just leads to questions, and answers surface in a way that’s out of your control.
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