How far PR has come

WARNING:  This is one of those gratuitous, self-promotion posts about the great work everyone has been doing at THP on behalf of our clients.  It does make a general point about our industry, but if you are disgusted by PR firms that talk about themselves, please change the channel.

If late last year anyone told me that we’d be breaking major news for a client primarily through Twitter or that a major recording artist would be re-tweeting our tweets on behalf of a client, I would have gone….”Tweet…wha???”

This week, those events were happening simultaneously and it tells you not only where our business at THP is going but also where I think the business of PR is headed.

For Virginia’s Community Colleges, we hosted an “Evening at Morton’s” (another client, BTW) where they along with other Virginia education heavy hitters announced the expansion of the Virginia Education Wizard from a tool for community colleges to one that will help students from elementary school through college.

Instead of holding a standard news conference and praying the media would show up, we hosted the key players over a steak dinner and broadcast their announcement and conversation over Twitter.  We also shot video, blogged about it and plan on placing this content on other social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Given the fact that we already created a built-in audience for #steakchat (the Evening at Morton’s #hashtag) by previously hosting similar online events, there was considerable built-in buzz and audience.  We also promoted the “special edition #steakchat” on Twitter for a day or so before the dinner.  The event was very successful and if not for a Twitter meltdown during the dinner, the audience and interaction would have been even greater.  The client is interested in a possible series of similar events and we are already conspiring.

From Richmond to the small town of Stephenville, TX, where a crowd of 300 people are listening to the latest lullabys

from singer/songwriter Jewel.  Stephenville, Jewel’s hometown, has been the focus of a program for Richmond-based Carpenter Co.  The “Sleep Better….Dream Bigger” campaign is designed to drive people to www.sleepbetter.org. 

At its core is a blog called “Stephenville Dreams” focusing on the dreams of a small town and whether big dreams are still achievable in the current day.  The blog, written by G.D. Gearino, and its accompanying promotion on Twitter and Facebook has been overwhelmingly successful in driving that site traffic.  It doesn’t hurt when Jewel http://twitter.com/jeweljk) herself, re-tweets blog posts and the web address consistently even though that was not part of her agreement with Carpenter.

These social media tools where married with classic PR tactics like the concert (culminating thank you event) and a 36-interview satellite media tour with Jewel (Jewel has been tweeting between interviews). 

The point of all this (besides flagrant self promotion?)? 

The lines between PR and social media have become so blurred they are like the lines of a major league baseball batter’s box after about the third inning (for non-baseball fans, the batter’s box lines cease to exist).

This is how far PR has come in the new age of social media.  They have become an intergral part of one another.

And again and perhaps selfishly I think that PR firms are in the best position to take full advantage of this brave new world.  I think these recent examples prove my case.  What do you think?