Category: quotables

Still clueless after all these years

clueless.jpgSeems the first thesis* of The Cluetrain Manifesto is still relevant, eight years later, as Jeremy Pepper reports in one of a few posts from what appears to be a marketing conference of some sort. But there’s apparently still plenty of clueless marketers out there.

[David] Weinberger [one of the four original Cluetrain authors]: I always see senior people think that they can do the work of marketing, because they do not understand the real value of marketing. There is an uptake of “markets are conversations” and done with enthusiasm, but my blood curdles because marketers have trouble entering the conversation. It’s hard for them to be the bloggers, because it is hard for CEOs and marketers to be bloggers, because they have been trained to talk one way, have an interest in presenting the conversation in one way. Marketers are trying to figure out a way into the conversation, and the first instinct is to talk – they want to bring the conversation in, but it’s going on already on the outside.

* markets are conversations

Quotable: the decline of news

I see a world in which the pursuit of truth in service of the public interest is declining as a cultural value in our society amid this technological tumult; a world where professional journalism, practiced according to widely accepted ethical values, is a rapidly diminishing feature in our expanding news and information systems, as we escape to the Web to experience the latest “new” thing.

I see a world where corporations such as Google and Yahoo continue to enrich themselves with little returning to journalistic enterprises, all this ultimately at the expense of legions of professional reporters across America, now out of work because their employers in “old” media could not afford to pay them.

Happy, happy higher ed flacks

According to this (via FlackLife), all higher ed PR people should be relatively happy.

…Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative negative reactions since they have alternative paths to realize their plans. Specialists, people with stronger attachments to fewer ideas, should be easier to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have stronger,more sustained negative reactions because they have fewer alternative pathways to realize their plans. Generalists should be the upbeat, positive people in the profession while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts. — Karl Weick

In general, I agree. (What did you expect from a happy-go-lucky generalist?) The college and university public relations folks I know tend to be more upbeat and optimistic than, say, graphic designers. But we’re not nearly as chipper as the marketing, alumni relations or development folks.

Then again, a lot of PR people with a writing background (the best kind, in my opinion) are more introverted than the schmoozing marketing, development and alumni relations types, and they may come off as moody or negative. Much of it is a matter of perception, I think.

I’ve been accused of being a pessimist before by my fellow PR people. I prefer to think of it as realism based on experience.