Book Review: ‘Putting the Public Back in Public Relations’

If you’ve spent any time reading the PR bloggers in the past two years, you won’t gain a lot from “Putting the Public Back into Public Relations.” You’ve heard it all before. And while PPBPR could be useful to an audience of late adopters, I still can’t recommend it, even to the novices.

Here’s my rationale.

PPBPR, by Brian Solis and Dierdre Breakenridge, sets out to explain “how social media is (sic) reinventing the aging business of public relations.” It purports to tell us what’s wrong with public relations, and how social media will fix it. But the problems addressed in the book really aren’t with public relations at all.

The “aging PR business” described in PPBPR is a process of one-way marketing communication centered on pitching stories to media gatekeepers. That’s called publicity, and it’s simply one of many tools used (and abused) by marketers, publicists, and PR folks, too.

Read any good books on Public Relations 2.0?

Back in July, I sent this message asking my Twitter community for advice. Here’s one of several re-tweets pleading for input.

The response? Not much. But I want to share what I learned.

The Twitterati suggested just 4 books, and only 2 of those books relate to media relations. One tweep suggested I assign Cluetrain — the first book on “business 2.0.” Cluetrain certainly alludes to the topic of media relations (“Public relations does not relate to the public,” and “Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters,”) but it’s not the right fit for a class focused on strategies and tactics. It’s also a bit insulting to the kind of PR professionals we nurture here at Kent State, as they are neither hucksters nor flacks.

Critical views of social media are far too rare

Mark Shaefer

I don’t know Mark Shaefer, and before today I’d never visited his blog. But I enjoyed the dose of reality he dished out yesterday in this post. Mark says a few things I’ve never had the cajones to say — maybe because I try too hard to fit into the blog party.

Regardless of whether you’re a social-media Kool-Aid guzzler or just someone thinking about how SM fits your PR scheme, you should read “Five Social Media Myths that Must Stop Now.”

A couple of excerpts to whet your appetite:

How I spent my unplugged vacation getting reconnected

Sometime on Thursday, July 30, my watch stopped dead. It was a sign.

I was leaving for a West Coast vacation the following day, and someone was telling me that time would be irrelevant for the next 2 weeks.

Dancing on the beach in Mendocino, CA

Instead of rushing to buy a new battery, I opted to leave my watch and the laptop at home. I also vowed not to go online for 2 weeks, and swore off newspapers, radio broadcasts and television, too. It would be my first long disconnect from things digital since I started this social-media experiment 3 years ago. And it felt right.

OK, I really wanted to tweet my followers a few times, but only to gloat about my situation.

• Sipping Cabernet on Monterey Bay with the love of my life.
• Watching a 6 x 6 bull elk grazing at Gold Bluffs Beach.
• Camping among the redwoods at Elk Prairie.

But that would have been cruel, since most of you were slaving away at your desks, working on a case of carpel tunnel. Besides, I don’t care what you’re doing on vacation. Why should I subject you to mine?

My anxious withdrawal from the digital world never happened. And by the time I hit SFO, I had stepped into 2006, a time before Web 2.0 took over my life. I spent 24 hours a day reconnecting with my bride, and also with the head of my religion, a lady named Mother Nature.

We strolled the redwood groves, sampled the wines in Napa and Sonoma, cycled along Monterey Bay and explored the ruins of Jack London’s dream house in Glen Ellen.

I never felt more connected.

So the next time you’re feeling a little too wired, let me recommend heading for the beach at Mendocino, getting silly drunk and dancing up a storm around a beach fire. No one cares if you get silly in California. It’s sort of expected.