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	Phil's Blogservations Wednesday, June 15, 2005 Posted by philgomes 12:16 AM PR, Advertising, Personalized Media, And Credibility PR, Advertising, Personalized Media, And Credibility From MediaPost by way of Steve Rubel. The public relations industry, not advertising agencies, appears to be taking the lead on the burgeoning marketplace of so-called "personalized media." There's a good reason for this: Properly executed, PR and personalized media hold one thing above all else: credibility. Advertising, arguably, is not so much concerned with credibility as it is raw awareness. I'm not saying this in the pejorative sense. Before you advertising types get your hackles up, let me explain... Remember the "People Do" ad campaign from Chevron? They had these TV ads where you'd see this endangered condor or spotted owl flying towards a power line. Just when you think the bird is going to get fried for sure, it alights on a perch built on the tower supporting the wire — a perch thoughtfully put there by Chevron, of course. Then, the narrator would say something like "Do people really care about preserving rare birds? People do." The picture fades to black and the slogan "People Do" appears under the Chevron logo, centered on your TV screen. Did anyone really buy this? Seriously. Now, imagine if you read the following in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal: Chevron, on the other hand, has been making great strides in improving its record in terms of the company's sensitivity to environmental issues. According to the Association For Responsible Petroleum, an independent nonprofit research concern based in Pahrump, Nev., Chevron is 89% more likely than its nearest three competitors to alter its exploration and drilling plans based on the presence of endangered flora or fauna. If you tell your friend that you admire Chevron's environmental record because of what you heard in their ads, you will be quite rightly laughed out of the room. However, if you say the same thing and quote a reliable journalistic enterprise or, as is increasingly so, a respected blogger, it's a whole different story. Now, please know that I'm certainly not one of those terribly arrogant PR types who takes the view that every bit of journalistic content we consume required or even involved the hand of PR. My point is this, however: PR, solely insofar as the tangible result is concerned, seeks to place the client in the parts of the media content that supply the reasons for which consumers access that content. Credibility is therefore the discipline's stock-in-trade. Achieving this in a truly effective and programmatic fashion requires careful planning backed by experience, research, and creativity. "PR folks are often lawyers in the court of public opinion," as I'm fond of saying. Advertising, as currently conceived and deployed, relies on interruption — those three minutes in between TV show segments, the necessary bandwidth for those banner ads, the pages you must flip before you get to the article you want, etc. Increased credibility isn't likely to result but, in those few seconds before you hit the "mute" button, an impression leading to some measure of awareness might be made. Though it certainly hasn't been immune to slow, awkward, and public fits-and-starts in this regard, PR is the formal communications discipline that is most commensurate with contemporary online media trends. And the reason is clear: They share the same vital currency of credibility. HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.