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Eating their words: Reviews can sometimes be hard to swallow
In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King provides a five-page commentary on the final instalment in the Harry Potter series and the reviews that accompanied the book’s release. His thesis hinges on the belief that reviewers missed the mark right out of the gate, through no fault of their own.
“In their hurry to churn out column inches, and thus remain members of good standing in the Church of What’s Happening Now, very few of the Potter reviewers have said anything worth remembering. .. When you have only four days to read a 750-page book, then write an 1,100-word review on it, how much time do you have to really enjoy the book? To think about the book? Jo Rowling set out a sumptuous seven-course meal, carefully prepared, beautifully cooked, and lovingly served out. The kids and adults who fell in love with the series savored every mouthful, from the appetizer (Sorcerer’s Stone) to the dessert (the gorgeous epilogue of Deathly Hallows). Most reviewers, on the other hand, bolted everything down, then obligingly puked it back up half-digested on the book pages of their respective newspapers.”
This got me thinking: how often do we, in PR, push for release-date reviews and then face disappointing results upon appearance? Time constraints, limited product availability and competitive considerations often keep products out of reviewers’ hands until the last possible minute, which results in—as Mr. King so eloquently described—half-digested reviews. Even worse than the hastily gobbled and spewed reviews are the regrettable ones. It is disheartening to speak with a reviewer after a negative review runs only to discover that if he or she had filed the next day the outcome would have been much different.
With many products—whether they’re videogames, online applications, gadgets, software or bestselling books—the first try shouldn’t necessarily be the definitive consideration. Thank goodness for blogging reviewers who keep the meal going after their initial taste.
Kristy Pryma
I thought media badges were yellow
If you work on either side of the media/PR fence, take a few minutes to check out this interesting video from DefCon show held last week in Vegas. A reporter (from NBC Dateline according to this story on ZDNet blog) went undercover at the conference to catch people on hidden camera admitting to criminal behavior. According to someone I spoke to who was in attendance at the show, there was quite a crowd that chased the reporter out of the conference after her identity was revealed.
It just goes to show you: Better bring your "A" game if you are going undercover at a conference which bills itself as the largest underground hacking conference in the world. Those guys know all the tricks.
stakeholder networking
Email overloadus, document versionitis, date conflictus, call log invisibilitus – these are challenges that all companies and communication departments can relate to. How many policies and guidelines have you implemented to help manage the flow of information in your organization to keep everyone on the same page?
The boom of sites like Facebook and Windows Live Space has demonstrated that even teenagers understand the importance of keeping relationship information in a centralized location. So why do communications departments try to piece media databases, monitoring and measurement tools, distribution services, CRM together? High Road client dna13 has an interesting perspective on something they call stakeholder networking, the business world’s version of social networking.
Natalie Sauve
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