External Communications

Silent with Rage – Better Off Just Silent?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , .

‘Fraid this isn’t very timely – been busy doing nothing, d’you see – but the more I sat and thought (as opposed to just sitting, which is what I try and do mostly) I felt this needed a little exploration/explanation – what with all the current hoo-ha over Directors of Communications for political parties (sorry – that’s the ‘phone……….strange…….nobody there).

Anyway, there I was, minding my own business, consuming some media, when I happen across a (what can hardly, really, be called a) story about Damien McBride and the PM (Gordon, not Peter) and the PM’s reaction (Gordon’s, not Peter’s) when McPoison told him about the content of the unfounded smear emails he’d been circulating. He was (that’s the PM, G not P), and I’m paraphrasing, shaking and silent with rage. Might even have been speechless. Beyond angry, anyway, and out the other side.

Well, you’d hope so, really, wouldn’t you. But, and here’s the thing, why did we need to know? And, more to the point, how come the ‘news’ got into the media anyway (‘cos it wasn’t just one story, no, I saw it run across other outlets, when I bothered to look).

So, was it No 10, trying, as part of a rearguard action, to show G (not P) in a favourable light (speechless with anger and rage and probably coated in mortification also)? And therefore distancing himself further from the evil McPoison? Or was it McBride himself, finding it all a bit difficult on the employment front, making an attempt to rehabilitate himself – a bit ot a tw*t, but honest enough to ‘fess up and take the (silent with rage) consequences? Or was it a half dozen of one and six of t’other – collusion between No 10 and McPoison – ‘this’ll help us both, Damian, mate’? (And if so, was it also testing the waters, laying the first good intentions on that road to Damian’s rehabilitation?)

Whatever, it made me suspicious. (But I’m always suspicious.) For what it’s worth, I reckon it’s McBride trying to rehabilitate himself. I mean, no-one would be stupid enough to fan the dying embers of this unhappy episode, running the risk of re-ignition and all the nightmare that would come with it, on the off-chance that it might have some small positive impact on the PM’s (G’s, not P’s) reputation.

Would they?

Coming Over All Jo Moore

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations.

The clouds are gathering, the horsemen are saddling up – the Aporkalypse is nigh!

“The swine ‘flu death toll in Britain has leapt from 17 to 29 since Monday and could hit 65,000 this winter.”

Am I alone in thinking that there may some very good days to bury bad news on the horizon?

(Oh God, I am, aren’t I?)

Whoops! Aporkalypse

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations.

If there was a ever a better example of how news works, then I have yet to see it. It should be a text book for wannabe PRs in their ivory towers of PR learning in such exotic far-flung places as Bournemouth, Southampton and Keele (all of which, I believe, proffer degrees in PR to the spinsters of tomorrow). (Except Keele, which I added to the list because it SHOULD offer a degree in communications.)

So, young Paduan learners, fingers on your clickers and through the magic of internettery, track down the development of the swine ‘flu story since Monday of this week (July 13 2009).  It started with no particular worries – OK so the first two people with no ‘underlying’ health issues has died, tragic, but two of them. After all, 22,000 people a normal year die from ordinary ‘flu. That nice Mr Burnham, the health secretary, promised everyone a shot of vaccine, starting in the next month or so and half the population would be vaccinated by autumn. Fine.

But no. The very next day, the World Health Organisation pops up and says that Mr Burnham may have jumped the gun. No vaccine available until August. No safe vaccine available until two or three months of clinical trial after that. Chief Medical Officer cannot confirm or deny whether estimates of one death per 200 population are near the mark or not – and we all know what that means. Scientists – this is my favourite bit – are ‘surprised’ at how quickly the swine ‘flu virus is spreading.

Then today. GPs have seen a leap of almost 50% in the numbers of people contacting them because they’re feeling a bit piggy – over 40,000 a week. Cherie Blair’s got it – nay, is ‘battling’ it. Still no vaccine. Burnham’s back on the attack saying that he’s right and there will be vaccine. Others saying that there’ll be bo vaccine for the bulk of the population until next year (which will be a bit late).

This is the most amazing vignette of how a story develops and how – in this internet age – quickly things can change, people’s positions can change and (as I’m sure we’ll see) reputations and careers can be made and broken.

Frankly – I’d rather not be a spin doctor in the Depertment of Health at the present moment.

Aporkalypse Now.

Canny Tweeters – Gotta be Rhyming Slang, Right?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

Today, I is mostly loving PR Week.

(Oooh, oooh – and its £3.70 cover price. Why £3.70? Why not £3.50? Or, for the amount of bearing that it actually has on reality, why not £763.27? These are the people after whom ‘Twitter’ was named.)

Which segues me, more smoothly than a freshly-oiled smarmoset, into my subject matter. PR Week and a small ‘news’ story about how Twitter saved the day for Boris Johnson. (For those of you not of a London persuasion, Boris is the rather shambolic chap who spends some of his time as Mayor.)

The first para of this ‘story’ reads “London Mayor Boris Johnson has won plaudits from PR professionals for apparently using Twitter to deal with roasting hot buses last week.” Implication – Boris was replying to tweets about the hot bus situation. Read on, young Paduan learner, and discover that the Mayor was ‘inundated’ by tweets (although how many is not revealed) and then that ‘after a number of days of tweets and  re-tweets’ he went to see his transport adviser and asked him about it. After a number of days? Isn’t Twitter supposed to be about what you’re doing NOW?

Oh, yeah – and then the Mayor’s transport adviser (and I quote) – wait for this – “I immediately fired off a letter to transport for London.” Sent second-class, one can only presume. Yes, the world may be changing, we may be in the digital age, we may be able to IM and Skype, but thanks to the civil service, the time-honoured tradition of ‘firing off a letter’ is still alive and well. Brilliant.

So all in all, Twitter didn’t really save the day for Boris. It was one more medium of communication that alerted him to a situation which it took him a number of days to resolve. Let us reflect on the fact that it took him days to resolve an issue as serious as the heating being switched ‘on’ on London’s buses. How long do we think it would take him to resolve an issue like – ooooh – the pollution of the Thames by an antiquated sewage processing system? (Hint – it’s a couple of years, so far.) Going  back to hot buses, Boris did (finally) respond to the heeted tweeters, but you can bet your bottom that other communications media were used more widely to disseminate the action that was taken.

The story was illustrated – presumably to illustrate how effective Twitter is in saving the day – with some figures for Twitter usage. I’ll repeat them here, for your delight and amazement:

900 tweets per week – Innocent Drinks

100% – Hyatt Concierge’s engagement with followers

738 – people following Asda

226 – number of updates by Boris Johnson

14m – total number of Twitter users

Now is it me, or are these statistics – while on the face of it quite impressive, even compelling – on closer inspection, in one way or another, wholly meaningless? 900 tweets – what about and why? 100% engagement – in what way and to what benefit? 738 followers – Asda’s got more stores than that, hasn’t it?

It gets better. Underneath the Boris story was a small piece with the head “Dell, Innocent and Kodak named as canny tweeters”. I’m not going to bore you with the whole thing – you can do your own clickery and find it should you so wish (or you can go and buy a copy of PR Week for $547.32) – but here’s an excerpt. Dell claims to have made more than $3m (the price of a copy of PR Week) worth of sales since 2007 via its @DellOutlet Twitter stream. That’s $1.5m a year. Loose change. Probably cost them more than that to activate and maintain the Twitter stream.

It’s not really compelling, is it? You know, I think a lot of the chasing around after the social media of the moment and the breathless reportage on how it is changing our lives irrevocably is down to the fact that – deep down – everyone loves science fiction. Everyone wants to be part of a Star Trek world. Which is great.

But to be part of the Star Trek world, it isn’t enough to know what a tweet is and to be able to throw the names of a couple of social networks into conversation. Or even to be part of an MMOG, like W0W or Second Life.

No. You see Star Trek world exists and deals with ddos attacks (which are real) and botnets (which are also real – and huge). Read this – it’s better than William Gibson.

http://thompson.blog.avg.com/2009/07/i-think-i-know-what-the-ddos-was-about.html

Trade Media – Why Does it Feel Neglected?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations.

“Trade publications are becoming sources for major corporate stories in nationals. Which means that the relationships with trade hacks are at least as important as those with their peers on the nationals.”

I had a brief Life on Mars moment when I read this – I felt like I’d been shot and woken up to find myself in 1995, which is the first time that I realised that – yes – the national media tend to trawl the trades for stories. (Certainly the more ‘interesting’ trades anyway – my formative experience was with a transfer from Marketing to the Daily Star – and I know Estates Gazette and Property Week are national fodder, as are The Publican and The Morning Advertiser. I’m not so sure about Building Products Inc Muckshifter and Crane, or Commercial Rabbit.)

This came from an article which had the subhead ‘Why do trade journalists feel neglected?’ The thrust seemd to be that the national media is a) much more important and b) easier to deal with because it doesn’t know its stuff quite so well as the trade, which study one particular sector in depth. Thus, comms professionals take the ‘easier’ national option and try to (sometimes) cut out the trade guy. And when the trade guy scores a scoop, and a national follows it up, the comms professional uses the journo’s ‘trade status’ to rubbish what’s been written. I can see how that would be a bummer.

Anyway, once I’d got over the shock of the revelation that nationals trawl trades for stories – no, hold on, I’m still feeling a bit weak – no, that’s better – and that it’s a good idea to build relationships with the trades – deep breaths – I thought about it a bit and came to the conclusion that – as in life – it just ain’t that simple.

It’s not about trades vs nationals. Being a trade journalist does not make you a specific type of person and being a national jorunalist does not make you another. In the same way that being a comms professional does not make a stereotype either.

There are good trade journalists and bad ones, good nationals and bad ones, good communicators (no sniggering at the back, readership minor!) and bad ‘uns. Each relationship, each modus operandi is different. For both communicator and journalist, the value of each others’ contribution has to be evaluated and it probably changes on a case-by-case basis.

Sometimes, the story’s not about a trade audience and that’s why a national is a better vehicle (at first, at least). Sometimes the audience is exactly that which is served by the trade. (It’s a clever comms pro, by the way, who can put a story to the trade and be assured that it will be picked up by a national – that seems to happen on a more luck-based basis.) Sometimes you won’t touch the trade with a bargepole, because it’s impossible to get fair treatment from the journalist – and not always because the journalist is a bad ‘un – no, it could be down to your CEO being rude to him/her at an industry event. There are a raft of so-called ‘trades’ that are – as the article I quoted at the beginning of this rightly said – wholly based on attracting advertising revenue. (And if you work for one of those and you’re reading this, stop it. Yes, stop it. Stop working for the magazine and stop reading this.)

The situation is very complex and the good comms professional treats every media outlet – trade or consumer – on a case-by-case basis, using judgement based on strategy, need, experience and relationships. OK, sometimes we’re dictated to by our paymasters, but mostly, we make the judgements ourselves. And, yes, we do understand the nature of the beast – that trade journos end up on the nationals (and sometimes, as comms professionals in later life).

So, the answer to the question ‘why do trade journalists feel neglected?’ I doubt they do. And if they do, it’s more than likely because they haven’t built the relationship with their sector comms people. Or it could be because the publication they’re working for is genuinely pants. If so – time to find somewhere else to ply your trade.

From my own experience, I doubt any of the staffers on Estates Gazette, Property Week, The Grocer, The Publican, The Morning Advertiser,  Marketing, Marketing  Week, Caterer and Hotelkeeper, actually feel neglected. Au contraire, I think they feel valued, quite important in their sector and delighted at the career on the nationals that beckons should they so wish.

In Search of the Perfect Client…………

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Internal Communications, Public Relations.

Here’s a thorny one. I stumbled across an iteration of this debate recently and made a mental note – after all, isn’t it something that all of us who ply our trade in this vale of tears that we call Corporate Communications have discussed at one time or another – and thought that sooner or later I’d do a desultory post on the topic, see if anyone cared to contribute, see if it threw up anything new.

In conversation with a colleague this week, however, we chewed over this topic and – lo and behold – there was something new (new for me, anyway) that really started me thinking and made this post that much more urgent. Again – as with most of my posts – I’m not offering solutions, just issues, so if you’re looking for some sort of deus ex machina here, then I’d find something better to do right now.

Let’s start with the Perfect Client debate. To make it crystal clear, let’s define ‘client’ as someone (or something) that uses your communications skills and rewards you for them – could be internal, or external. I think (and I’m generalising here, I know, yadayadayada) that most of us have our opinions on what would make the perfect client, and I’d wager a small amount on those opinions being fairly much of a muchness.

Thanks to the wonders of t’interweb, it is – of course – the job of a matter of moments to find out what – exactly – people think the characteristics of the perfect client are and, in a totally unscientific and probably criminally devil-may-care manner, I can exclusively reveal that the two defining characteristics of the perfect client are:

(Wait for it.)

Understanding and Money (budget and bills).

Yes, that’s understanding of what corporate communications/public relations is, the funding for proper communications programmes and the willingness/ability to pay invoices on time (this last for the agency audience).  I would imagine that this differs not a jot from the opinions/expectations that you already had, but, lest you think I’m making it up, here, in a cut’n’paste stylee, are some of the comments I canvassed:

  • I feel that a good PR client is one that is open to new ideas.
  •  A good client has to be willing to listen to the counsel they’re paying for.
  •  A good PR client is someone who pays their bills and allows you to handle ALL their communication (advertising, social networks, etc.).
  • A good PR client comes with no pre-conceived notions of what PR is like and how you should do it, and comes with a budget significant enough to let you do things at the right scale.
  • A good PR client is the one who knows that they need you.
  • A good PR client is one with a clear set of goals, and a willingness to listen to and consider the PR professional.
  •  A good client sees you as part of the team, is truthful with you, listens to your counsel closely, pays promptly, allows you to understand internal dynamics and recognizes your contributions.
  •  A good PR client has a broad definition of what PR is, and is becoming.
  •  A good PR client knows what needs to be accomplished and has an open mind on how to get there, is receptive to advice, knows good advice from bad advice and isn’t afraid to be decisive and direct. Great PR clients add their own value to the process with a great strategic mind in his or her own right.
  •  A good PR client acknowledges that they need help and expertise that is outside their skill set, respects the benefits of PR, is aware that PR is an integral part of managing their reputation/brand and is open to new ideas and flexibility in achieving results.
  • A good client is one who a) knows what PR is and b) understands the value it delivers. From these two things stem willingness to listen, willingness to act on advice, willingness to share information and to trust and willingness to pay the invoices in a timely manner.
  • Don’t presume that simply because a client has the title ‘Director of Corporate Affairs’ or ‘Head of Public Relations’ that they fulfil the two criteria.

OK. So far, so groovy. So what’s new here? What’s the thing that we should be thinking about?

The bottom line is that this debate questions the whole model of communications as an industry and the whole raison d’etre of what we do. Forget budget and forget the ability/proclivity to pay bills on time. What happens if you have a client, internal or external, who doesn’t understand?

Do you attempt some sort of education process – in the knowledge that you might not succeed and, therefore, your lifespan and earning potential is limited by how long you can keep things going before it blows up in your face (which it will, guaranteed, if the understanding is not there). Or do you duck the issue and – if you’re senior and well-connected enough – blind your cr*p client with science and tales of what high-profile people are doing or saying? Or do you cut your losses and run – far, far away?

In my travels, discussions and personal experience, I’ve come across many and varied cases where our profession and its practitioners have been burnt by clients who simply didn’t understand and, all too often, didn’t want to. (This – in part – goes back to the general perception of our industry – see previous posts.) In many of those cases, the practitioner (agency or in-house) stuck with it, simply because the business was there and was paying for the advice that was, on the whole, being ignored. Arguably, in all of the cases, the practitioner should have walked away.

This is the issue. As an industry, we’re reliant on our clients – internal and external – and we’re seen as lapdogs. Or ‘tame’ advisors. Many comms practitioners perpetuate this myth, flattering and cajoling and – in reality – delivering nothing, at great expense. The question is whether our industry would be better served if we evaluated clients in the way they evaluate us and those who cannot, or won’t, understand the basic principles of corporate reputation should be cut loose – blacklisted perhaps.

Perhaps, if we made good and professional communications only available to those who passed an industry standard ‘client test’ , then our services would be valued more highly. And then we’d not have to worry about being paid.

The Social Media Engagement Continuum – Apparently

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, External Communications, Social Media.
An attempt to make sense of something that isn't actually happening?

An attempt to make sense of something that isn't actually happening?

Here’s an attempt to describe and segment the social media ‘journey of discovery’ (if you will). Clearly, a great deal of thought has gone into it and, when I happened upon it, I could not but be impressed by the sheer quantity of commentary (from people with idents like @bigweevil and @hellbelly) on the diagram and accompanying explanation. There are enormous amounts of people out there who think this work is very important. Unfortunately, I suspect it’s because, in creating categories of social media user, it gives them an identity and legitimises the hours they spend staring at their screens and engaging in exchanges with other like-minded souls.

You see, there aren’t really enormous amounts of people out there. Millions, yes (of users of social media) but in the great scheme of things, that’s not very many. And we also know (for a fact, folks) that 90% of Tweets are generated by 10% of Twitterers. The point being that of those millions of users of social media, a good whack aren’t actually using it at all. They signed up because it was fashionable, couldn’t figure it out or got bored with the spamphish, and just drifted away.

Thus, it is slightly presumptuous, and every so slightly pointless, to divide the world into types of social media user, according to where they are on their social media journey. I would suggest that the majority of people are firmly in category one and, actually, don’t really give a hoot about moving along the scale.

The lie is further given to this when you look at the Immersed category, which contains people who are utilising four or five different social media for work and enjoyment. Shoot me down if you like, but I would guess that the amount of people who are a) aware of four or five social media and b) capable of using them could probably be easily entertained in a small garden shed.

The other thing that this hierarchy fails to incorporate or acknowledge is the companies/brands/organisations that are desperately attempting to harness social media for their own ends – doing so not because they are interested in what social media does per se, but because they are interested in selling more stuff in whatever way possible. It also fails to take into account the natural lifespan of a social network (Friends Reunited, anyone? Bebo?).

No matter how many users (and actually, the more users, the more likely it is to happen) and how careful, diligent and well-behaved they are, a network has a cycle. It will evolve, mature, become decadent and wither – a succesful network will attract the many-too-many, those at point one in the hierarchy, who don’t care about it, don’t want to progress within it or any other social medium and will, sooner or later, kill it off.

PR is a Young Person’s Game – Discuss

Posted on by in External Communications, Public Relations.

Lovely weather we’ve been having.  So I’m standing in someone’s garden, partaking of a couple of scoops of splendidly crisp and refreshing white wine, sun going down, smell of sausages all over London, shooting the breeze with a director of an award-winning agency, swapping war stories, and he says ‘PR – it’s a young person’s game.’

Now – in fairness – it was a throwaway line, uttered on the back of a conversational riff in which we’d both been bemoaning the speed at which time flies, and its inevitable effect on one, personally – however, it’s not the first time I’ve heard it. And, if I can generalise, (and I can, because it’s my blog), it’s not untrue – take a random cross-section of agencies and in-house departments across the country and PR is, indeed, a young person’s game. Or, at least, that’s the perception.

(Of course, this begs the question – where do all the old PR people go? I mean those who don’t end up as Director of Corporate Affairs for a FTSE 100/250 company, or an enormous multi-national, or Chairman and Chief Executive of a PR agency holding company, or sitting splendidly in the House of Lords, or running the country on behalf of an unelected Prime Minister. Where do they go? I’d love to know, because I guess I’ll be going there soon.)

I, of course, ever the contrarian, laughed and said of course it isn’t – my argument being that in communications (as in all things) there is simply no substitute for experience. No matter how energetic and fluffy a 24-year-old may be, they will never have the maturity, judgement and experience to enable them to make the strategic communications decisions (there are always exceptions, I know, but generally speaking). To imply that they do is to imply that the whole business of corporate communications is basic, simple and easily learnt. To imply that they do is to devalue everything that we, as communicators, stand for and everything that we do.

Unfortunately, the myth is being perpetuated all over the shop:

1) Sorry, but like it or not, from the outside, PR is seen as fluffy and excitable. So what do we as an industry do? We give our clients fluffy and excitable twenty-somethings, just to reinforce their prejudices. Great.

2) Agency pitches. Agency turns up – and don’t tell me they don’t, I lose count of the amount of times it has happened to me – with ‘the team’. Like Russian dolls. Senior bod, less senior bod, middle-ranking bod, junior bod. And you know, every time, that when it comes to who you’ll be dealing with, it’ll be junior bod – who’s twenty-something. Great.

3) Creativity. Every client likes creativity. Young people are creative. Unleash the twenty-somethings! Actually, they’re not any more creative than a forty-something – they just haven’t learnt the definition of ‘stupid’ and ‘unworkable’ yet. Great.

4) Social Media. It’s the new thing! Got to have some social media! Must have a presence on FaceTube and YouBook! Get a twenty-something, so we can be down with the kids. Actually (see point 3, above) the other thing about youth isn’t that they haven’t learnt anything about budgetary control or ROI either. Great.

My point is that ‘PR is a young person’s game’ and the industry’s unwitting collusion in the shibboleth is yet another barrier to communications taking its seat at the top table. If the profession is seen that way, then obviously it is not taken seriously, not accorded gravitas, because it hasn’t grown up.

A parallel is the attitude of every single one of the (handful of) CEOs that I have either run media programmes for, or know those who have. They have no respect for the newswires and the press when those media field the latest crop of twenty-something correspondents, no matter how bright and well-informed those corrs are (and sadly, in my experience, they aren’t). There’s no gravitas, no experience, no maturity and the big boys who run businesses simply cannot be bothered. They suffer it, but not gladly.

To say ‘PR is a young person’s game’ and to prove it by fielding young people (often on their own, with little guidance) is simply to erode any respect that communications may have built up and to confine it to the (at best) ‘necessary evil’ and at worst ‘fluffy bunny’ bins.

Don’t get me wrong, corporate communications needs its graduates and new starters – the industry needs to invest in its younger practitioners – training, on the job mentoring and tutoring, real-life opportunity. But we shouldn’t just be unleashing them on clients and expecting  the results to be favourable – either for the client or for the less-than-experienced consultant.

The industry needs a bit more grey hair at all levels. PR – it’s an old person’s game.

Like bowls.

LinkedIn – Networking in Isolation?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media.

Is it just me, or is LinkedIn doing a bit of a a Twitter?

To my mind, one of the most useful functions of LinkedIn is the ability to ask questions and receive answers from a fairly wide pool of people, with a fairly broad range of experience. This is, as far as I can see, the whole ‘social media – an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations’ thing actually in action, actually working.

Only it’s not.

In the last couple of days, I’ve asked a couple of questions, and I’ve answered a couple of questions. What I tend to do – and forgive me, this is all based on personal experience, an ‘opinion piece’, if you will – is read the other answers to the question and see if I can add anything further, or enter into debate with the other answerers. Because I’m actually interested, I will then re-visit the question later, to see if anyone has posted anything else, that might add to my thinking.

Unfortunately, others don’t seem to have the same MO. I read the answers to one question and everyone – but everyone – was saying the same thing (OK, maybe there was only one answer) – but without referencing any of the other answers. I checked the threads for a couple more questions. More of the same. It appears that very few people are engaging in ‘meaningful conversations’ or entering into debate – in fact they’re not actually listening to others at all.

This could be the first signs of the Twitterisation of LinkedIn – where it gradually morphs into a place for people to state their points of view, communicate their feelings or their whereabouts, shout their messages – without actually taking into account what others are saying.

Millions of people engaged in one-sided communication, networking in isolation and kidding themselves that they’ve cracked the whole social media conundrum.

Back to Basics With The Twitter Pitch

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media.

I was delighted – if still slightly dumbfounded – to read that there are now experts who (for a small consideration, obviously) will teach you how to condense your messages (press releases, mostly) to make them suitable for distribution via Twitter. I suppose there’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t also Twitterise pitch documents and contract tenders either, on that basis.

I’ve seen it referred to as the Twitter Pitch – you’ve your limited amount of words, and you have to get the essence of your message across in that number of words. Ideally, within those 140 words, you should introduce, illustrate and conclude. Brilliant. In essence, it’s the same as what used to be called the elevator pitch and is now the escalator pitch (shorter and more public), only it’s even shorter and (potentially) even more public.

This is a great thing and, for me, so far, the best and most useful thing to come out of the whole social media whirlwind. Thinking about the Twitter pitch will (should) get people thinking about brevity, about being concise, frugal with words, about the essence of communication.

I was always told that a media announcement should be no more than three paragraphs – tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them what you’re telling them, tell them what you’ve told them – and I lose count of the amount of times I’ve heard media trainers tell people how many media releases an average journalist gets a day, and that your story has to be in the first para, or you’re lost.  Why then, do so-called communications professionals still issue three or more page releases? Check PRNewswire if you don’t believe me.

The Twitter Pitch is not new. The Twitter Pitch is really just the equivalent of the first para of a well-crafted media release. Short, informative, to-the-point. Make them want to know more. The advent of email as a comms tool (yes, I can remember a time without it) (1583, small castle, Transylvania) also demanded a return to the less-is-more school, and while it’s physically possible to use more than 140 words in an email – is it advisable if you’re emailing a journalist?

What the Twitter Pitch will do, if we’re lucky, and if Twitter doesn’t suddenly curl up and evaporate (is it me, or is Twitter already becoming a hotbed of spam and phish – the sort of decadence that must, surely, presage the end) is prompt the learning or re-learning of a basic communications skill – taking complex messages and turning them into something simple that everyone can understand.

I have to say that, until recently, I thought this was something that was second-nature to anyone in communications. The rise of the Twitter Pitch consultant proves me wrong. And isn’t it scary that it’s taken something as hollow and transitory as Twitter to make us realise that our basic skills are lacking.