Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

The Sunday Times reports that the Irish Labour party has hired Zack Exley to help them with their online strategy ahead of the upcoming Irish election. Damien Mulley gives more in-depth coverage on the story, pointing out that “Exley worked on the Howard Dean Campaign, the John Kerry Campaign and recently worked for the UK Labour party’s re-election campaign“. Personally speaking, I don’t buy Labour’s move. Damien says:

In the US and the UK they have high Internet and broadband usage so it makes sense to use the net to reach out to large chunks of informed people and have them increase the momentum of your campaign. This was probably why a 3 day conference put together by the folks from Daily Kos was so successful and why the New York Times gave front page coverage to it describing how over 1000 bloggers came together to discuss politics. It also attracted many Presidential wannabes who showed up to suck up to the bloggers.

Right now there’s lots of mainstream coverage of blogs and other social media tools in the press. I believe the majority of people thinking about incorporating these tools into their communications strategy are doing it to get some of that press attention. The Googlejuice as it were, rather than developing a medium to engage an audience.

I’m more inclined to follow the commentary posted on John Naughton’s website. He posts a snippet from the New York Times’ coverage of the Kos convention:

Steve Soto, who writes The Left Coaster blog, said that the Democratic leaders running the campaigns to win the House and Senate “are still treating the blogs and some of the advice from them about message and focus as unwanted solicitations from crazy relatives.”

If I really believed that the Labour party wanted to embrace the Internet in a meaningful fashion, then I’d also believe that Pat Rabitte, the Labour party leader, is always first to comment on political developments in the press with good intentions rather than political opportunism.

I also think it’s a strange move to bring in Exley who must be costing them a pretty penny given that there is a relatively small pool of Irish bloggers, and an even smaller pool that discuss politics. Someone like Damien Mulley or Mick Fealty could have given them as good advice for a fraction of the cost.

Furthermore, as part of an article on Tech PR in Ireland, the Sunday Business Post mentions that Fleishman-Hillard, an Irish PR consultancy, is going to offer the services of one of its international divisions, Next Great Thing, in the country. The SBP says that David Martin will head up the offering here. I’m sure ex-tech journalist, Ciaran Buckley, will contribute in some shape or form given that he has a blog (although it hasn’t been updated since his move into Public Relations).

While it’s great to see the mainstream embrace these new tools, I think there’s a further degree of education to take place before organisations realise the value of online communications. More importantly, we’ve got to get to the point where people ask themselves whether these tools are the correct tool to communicate with the target audience. People like me are only to happy to take your money if you want advice on blogs, etc. A wise man once said though “If you’re selling hammers, every problem looks like a nail.” So be wary of people who say that every company should be blogging.

David Cochrane correctly pointed out in a comment on this site recently:

How we communicate isn’t so much the issue, WHAT we want to communicate is the first starting point, as the PR students will know, identify the audience, and then find the best means (channels) to communicate with them.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, if you don’t have anything interesting to say then don’t bother saying anything at all. Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean that you have suddenly become interesting either. As Patrick Thoburn, co-founder of Matchstick Inc., a Toronto-based firm that specializes in word-of mouth marketing, stated in a recent word-of-mouth marketing article:

A stunt cannot sustain if the product isn’t worth talking about. At the end of the day, people aren’t marketing shills for anything. It has to be a good experience to generate an impression.

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