Published: Jul 11, 2006
Last Updated: Dec 3, 2017

Heck of a post by Mark Glaser today on messaging overkill by PR folks. Excerpt:

PR people want executives at the company to stay "on message," always expressing the official company line. A good journalist, however, does not want to write a story full of canned comments spoon-fed by PR people...

When asking YouTube about the popularity of World Cup videos on the site, B&C received a quote from YouTube senior director of marketing Julie Supan that was very similar to quotes given to me at MediaShift for a Q&A with YouTube CEO Chad Hurley...

What Supan said: "Users of YouTube have been documenting their firsthand accounts of world events ever since we started the service."

What Hurley said: "Users of YouTube have been documenting their first-hand accounts of world events ever since we started the service."...

Be it the World Cup or the war in Iraq, simply plug in your global event, and presto! -- you've got a YouTube quote.

We're sure Mark's post left the PR folks at YouTube a little red-faced -- but, to be honest, it made our cheeks a tad pinkish as well.

We have to admit it: As much as we try to be a Web 2.0 hipster in our practice, we're as guilty as the flackiest flacks in the business of this little crime.

Why, you ask?

Well, let's see: We've been doing this for 15 years, and we've seen ruthless consistency in messaging work time and time again. It works so well, it's hard to turn away from it -- even a little.

Mark's post really goes to a central fact about PR -- that in many ways it's the oil-meets-water nexus between journalism and advertising. Ultimately, it benefits companies and, we believe, benefits journalists, too. But it can be a little messy.

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About the Author

Scott Baradell
Scott Baradell
Trust expert Scott Baradell is CEO and founder of Idea Grove. Idea Grove helps its clients secure trust at scale through its unique Grow With TRUST approach. Scott is an established authority on trust and editor of the online publication Trust Signals, as well as author of the upcoming book Trust Signals: Brand Building in a Post-Truth World. Idea Grove celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2020, earning honors including the 2020 Pegasus Award for Small Agency of the Year, being named a Top 200 B2B service provider by Clutch, and ranking in the top 25 tech agencies in the U.S. by O'Dwyer's. Scott has an Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) from the Public Relations Society of America and speaks on PR and marketing topics at industry events nationwide.

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