Trace Cohen
New York
- 32 comments
- 7 likes given
- 14 likes received
President and Co-Founder of @Launch_it - Your newsroom for the world! NYC, Whiskey, Bacon, Cuse.
@foremski How is producing content that is "like journalism" unethical and fraudulent? I agree with everything else you said but definitely not that statement because how many journalists have become PR pros as just an example? Not counting all the very articulate PR pros themselves.
PR pros and community managers produce tons of thoughtful and honest engaging content that is highly ethical and super legit. If you could please elaborate on your point, I'd appreciate it.
Everyone knows that demo day is when a company will be successful or not - so quick to judge without actually covering what any of the companies do. Yes, the Kickstarter for X is annoying and they shouldn't have a bunch of them in one class but it will take years until we know if any of the companies make it so I wish them the best of luck.
The investors are looking for their 100x because that's their business model and not a startups. Lets be honest though, almost no company is doing what they started out doing a year later or after they get funded. I'm sure a few of them will be great lifestyle business, just not the next AirBnb/Dropbox... geez talk about pressure.
As a former PR pro right out of college who focused on tech startups, this is spot on. And it's kind of ironic that for an article written by a PR pro, your headline is misleading like you would expect from a journalist trying to garner more pageviews. You're not calling anyone out by name or using any examples, you just told it like it is and described the weird "paradox" of tech PR, which is fine, just interesting :)
PR is growing and "the media" is being disintermediated so I like to say that we are now in a world of PR/Brand Journalism as you described above.
Since when is tweeting a requirement for being a dean? His job is to run it like a business and hire the right people etc - plus @sree works there and is one of the best with twitter!
Well said, thanks for clarifying it again so everyone gets it.
@ginidietrich It's done and CES already used it at this past show - sending you an update shortly :)
PR is hard because we rely on someone else (media) to do an aspect of our job. If you don't do 2 or 3 though then you shouldn't be in PR, no matter how long it takes you to do it. #4 is fueled a lot by #1 because it is so easy to get lots of emails that are perfect and on the boundary of potentially interested and hit them all at once. Almost everyone is guilty of this at least a few times - especially when your client thinks their news is "worthy" of press.
But this all comes with the territory right? PR pros outnumber journalists/writers 4:1 so while we know you get hundreds of emails a day, it's your job to go through them. On the event PR side, which is really an interesting space, I'm creating a platform to change all of the PR outreach - stay tuned!
Makes sense - send it out early in the day and hope it propagates. Having never used a wire before, do writers/journalists actually "look" through them to find news?
Great title - well managed "issues" will only become public as a case study later on when the facts come out and you can learn from it. I agree with points #2/3 but from personal experience with a client, never encourage anyone to act swiftly to respond to an incident. The example of Sandusky is more a political one initially as if they fired either coach it would have created a situation, which they decided not to do and hopefully sweep it under the rug. Big mistake in hindsight of course.
My advice is to get everyone together, gather ALL the facts, create scenarios and determine the best response if one is actually needed.
PR isn't even close to dead - it's actually growing and expanding it's reach more into digital (social media), content creation (SEO), ads (paid media) and sales.
I think the press release, which as its name states is only for the press, should be worried. But a news release, which is intended to inform your customers and community of your news is still very prevalent and expected. Most PR professionals are great writers (a lot are former journalists) and are capable of writing great stories to engage their audience in truthful and honest discussions. You can call it Content PR, Brand Journalism or as I like to call it, "PR Journalism," but at the end of the day, you have to produce content people want to read and engage with.
CES is still the place were large brands make their major announcements and show-off R&D projects that they've been working on behind the scenes (with no launch date). Having attending the last 6, I have seen the rise and fall of 3D tv's and the emergence of every "i" product imaginable but the one thing that has continued to grow is the presence of startups who can really disrupt.
Eureka Park doubled in size this year to over 150 companies and ShowStopper is still as prominent as ever with over a hundred of the "coolest" startups and SMB's at the show. Each company is just trying to make it big, so there will definitely be some winners and losers but from first hand experience from being on the floor and working with some of the companies, this trend will only continue to grow!
I just want good news - long or short! And for everyone who keeps complaining that there is a punctuation or grammar mistake, I would like to see you write a story like this. As long as the points gets across, I can live with it.
I think Pinterest will be just fine - if anything this is just creating more visibility and loyal users for them. I use Facebook and Pinterest for two completely separate things so it wont affect how I use either.
Thanks for the mention of @launch_it. The pinterest look and feel is great way to display a lot of content (pictures/text) in a visually appealing way that allows for easy discovery as you scroll through.
This is great. A press release is for the press, not your consumer! I just launched my new company Launch.it and introduced the concept of a PR Journalist, which is exactly what you're advocating. Write a story that you actually want to share and have people read, that is truthful, honest and not full of jargon. No one knows the product or service better than you, so don't rely on someone else to write the story.
This will at least change the mentality most people have that angels and VC's actually make money, which they obviously dont! It also shows that you really can't pick a winner, no matter how smart you are or how much due diligence you do. And now we have the JOBS act where non "sophisticated" investors can fund companies... I'm just along for the ride!
I look forward to my daily digest to learn about new and cool things.
Our industry is painted in such a poor light all the time because we rely on someone else to make us look good. While media relations aren’t everything we do, it’s what we are known for. Sometimes it does work out the way we want, so the client gets angry and say they wasted all this time and money on PR for nothing. On the other side, we are all calling, emailing and meeting the media at events on behalf of our clients and they obviously become overwhelmed with “news” that they can’t physically or financially cover. They then complain about spam and mass emails to their audience and we have no rebuttal. Our industry is between a rock and a hard place.
Interestingly enough though, the industry continues to grow for a few reasons. The first is that there are so many new companies that need strategic communications and thought leadership to help with media relations. Secondly, the big media that we are always trying to get in is crumbling at our feet. Really smart and talented writers/journalists/columnists are being laid off because their company’s business models are not sustainable anymore. So where do they go? Many of them have joined the PR ranks because of their media background but mostly because of their writing skills. And third, is because social media has created a direct avenue to our customers. We no longer have to rely on someone else to get the story wrong or mess up the facts, we can write the story that we want written about us and begin to take credit for it. In a world of transparency and honest discussions, companies are breaking their own news.
The NYT and other large media outlets are calling us out because they are scared. Scared that we can replace them, so they put down our profession so that we continue to rely on them.
With regard to “regulation,” that is the last thing that I want. It just brings up the questions of who will be apart of it, how do we elect them, how do we enforce certain principles and is it even worth our time? Can you really kick someone out of their profession and will that actually stop them from doing it? The only regulations I care about are my colleagues, clients and their customers. In the highly transparent world that we live in, anyone can call you out for “spin” and I hope that they do so that you never do it again.
@asdupre That's good to hear! Who is teaching your class? I used to work with Branagan and Rotolo early on.
And to clarify (because that's what we do in PR), PR is definitely a form of "business," as I was running a small agency with my dad. Maybe not in the classical sense of course but we I did a lot of strategy work beyond just press releases and media outreach. When you work with tech startups, they need as much business help as they do PR - something you will learn fast when you have your first clients.
I went into PR after graduating Syracuse (GO ORANGE!) even though I studied business but was able to learn everything after 6 months on the job. It was still hard for me to tell people what I did, though most people can't explain what they do, so I usually tell people that "I make other people famous." It's a little crude but if you think about all the "famous" people you know, they have a brand and reputation that they maintain through various things they do and that's what they're known for. It doesn't mean you have to be on the red carpet or on TV, it just means that you're known and liked by the people it matters to.
I had to teach myself social media at 'Cuse so I'm jealous that they have classes now...