PRSA 2008 Lessons: Control vs. Credibility

Remarks: For chapters 3&4 and 5&6, I linked two things and had one post here (http://gct681.blogspot.com/2008/09/oldanip40-freedmanp-67-customer-service.html), and another post about short thoughts on amazon daily
(http://gct681.blogspot.com/2008/09/short-thoughts-on-amazon-daily.html). To complement, I would like to share one thing on lessons from the PRSA conference 2008 in Detroit.


First of all, I would like to share my Youtube videos taken at the PRSA 2008 confenrece. Each short intro starts with Korean language, but, the whole interview in English. So, wait for seconds:)

Interview with ipressroom Chairman
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=QjnnwsPorZc

Interview with the author of PR 2.0
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3kLRn5SSs

Radian 6 Service - Interview
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=kgzkcBbiszc

Among these, ipressroom Chairman's interview was notable to me.
1/ Control vs. Credibility: Traditional PR was about "message control" in a sense, but, not any more. However, still, "old mind" tries to control their messages in communicating with consumers. Good example is corporate website. They only shows "good news" not "bad news." Advanced companies, like Southwest and Dell transparently communicate both good and bad news and respond to them. If a company tries to increase control, then, credibility goes down, according to Eric Schwartzman, the Chairman.

2/ Corporate Media: Now, any company can have media, not just New York Times or Wall Street Journal, due to social media technology, like blog. Right now, if you look at corporate website, say press room, it becomes "tomb of press releases" simply storing press releases. However, companies start to leverage their website as an interesting media, such as New York Times. One example to do that is UCLA news room site (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/default.aspx), using not jus written contents, but, videos, sounds, etc. Traditional PR people rely on "other media" but, moving forward, they will have to create their own contents, and media to actively and directly communicate with audiences.