PR 2.0 - How Social Media Is Changing PR

Back when I was a recent college graduate freshly armed with my degree, I got my first job working in marketing communications. At that point, PR was fairly standard: press kits, press releases, press packs with glossy product brochures, and even trade show booth items were fairly standard. Launching a new product had a set scheme for marketing that most companies followed.

In the crowded space that exists today, however, the old methods of marketing are missing the edge that can help a fledgling company break out of the pack. I'll be honest; I skim over press releases now with a jaded eye, since most of them do little to build excitement for a new idea. Web 2.0 technologies, however, are being used more frequently to give a boost to the traditional marketing methods, and originality seems to prove effective.

The Qumana blog noticed this new method as well, pointing out that a YouTube video, which was itself a mash-up of traditional computer graphics and Google Earth images, gained a decent amount of press for ForestEthics' campaign against West Fraser Timber's logging practices. That kind of press is something that would have taken weeks, if not months, to build slowly by careful placement of press releases and press kits, repeated phone calls, and a fair amount of money spent. This type of mash-up can be created much more quickly due to the availability of technology like Google Earth, and by using a service like YouTube combined with an email campaign, information can be disseminated at a much faster rate.

The perfect example of this new marketing technique was used for the launch of American actor/comedian Will Ferrell's new site, FunnyorDie.com. Ferrell's site, which is like a niche YouTube designed for sharing comedy videos, received over 3 million hits it's first week thanks to a two-minute video written by Ferrell and his writing partner Adam McKay called The Landlord (language NSFW). The video, featuring McKay's two-year-old daughter Pearl, went viral, attracting users to the site. (If I had a dollar for every time I found a link in my inbox, I could have at least afforded a nice dinner for two.) FunnyorDie.com has some unique features, such as a voting system similar to Digg that lets users bury videos that just aren't that funny, but a press release touting the site's functions and features would never have gotten the instant audience that the video did.

The key factor for companies looking for this type of marketing success is going to be keeping it fresh. Any viral video is going to have imitators almost immediately, and other businesses will try to duplicate the same success in as similar fashion as they can. Keeping prospective audiences from 2.0 marketing burnout is going to require just as much creativity as coming up with these initial ideas, if not more so, but it's definitely making the marketing arena more interesting.

ForestEthics video:

Additional source: Forbes