RexBlog.com: Rex Hammock’s weblog » 2005 » May

Corporate PR disintermediation real-time case study:
Welcome to
the post press release era* when corporate
communications is “usurped” by those who can carry on conversations;
ripped from the hands of those who draft inverted pyramid corporate
statements filled with
self-congratulatory phrases no one can understand anyway.

Here is our case-study of the morning, in real-time (or you can wait
for some stinkin’ seminar white paper a few months from now).

1. The CEO of Microsoft is quoted by a blogger in a way that appears to
dismiss RSS as being too simple
(deja vu moment, here, as I flash back a decade when a Microsoft CEO
dismissed HTML as being too simple, okay, where was I).

2. The person
drawing a Microsoft paycheck who has the most blogosheric street
cred
responds (with due respect, of course) to the quote attributed to his
boss’s, boss’s (snip some bosses) boss.

3. The
creator/defender of RSS says,
“What tha’…?”

4. The Microsoft street-cred blogger dips into his deep
pockets filled with whuffie and spends
some on behalf of his boss’s, b’s, b’s etc.

5. The creator/defender of RSS says,
“We’ll see…but blogger street cred guy is one cool dude.”

Lesson of the
morning: In the conversational media age, shared values and relationships
trump corporate hierarchy and
complex communication processes.

Update: Rick Segal disagrees and the Robert Scoble disagrees with him. (And creates — see my comments on his post — “The Scoble Law”: When there’s a conversation going on we should try to participate WHEN THE CONVERSATION IS HAPPENING!)

*As
one of the seven readers of this weblog is in the business of press
release distribution, I predict the need for such services will never
go away (as long as publicly traded companies and the SEC
exist).

Time posted: 9:40 am | permalink | categories: All other, blogging | Comments Off