Cutting out the middleman

Help, I’ve been disintermediated!

" Danger, you are in a restricted zone. Please leave this area immediately or face total Disintermediation! You have twenty seconds to comply…!"

Disintermediation – or cutting out the middleman – used to be one of those scary complicated sounding words that a wordy-person could savour, but rarely use in anger or get worried about. Like "prolixious", or lachrymose. The type of words that in the future higher beings with three-dimensional scrabble boards would toss about for sextuple-word bonuses.

Now, however, disintermediation now seems like a real threat for the PR practitioner, as social networks erode part of our once cherished role as a valued go-between with the golden contact list. Our clients need us, because we know the people they need to speak to, and will make the effort to maintain these relationships.

But hold on, have a look at this article from freelance writer Danny Bradbury: http://www.itjournalist.com/?p=13#comments

This article has Danny experimenting with ditching calls to PR agencies or using research tools like Sourcewire, in favour of – eek – contacting the spokesperson directly through LinkedIn. Danny points out how this approach is saving him hours of sifting responses from PRs, and further hours setting up interviews.

Based on years of dealing with Danny, I know that he’s one of the most PR-friendly journalists out there, with a great respect for the profession and its ability to add value. But its clear from his blog that for him the days when PRs get his interviews sorted may be drawing to a close.

Anyone working in PR would have spent thousands of hours on getting interviews set up, and it’s pretty alarming to see a big chunk of the job going the way of the dodos, steam engines and Steve Guttenberg movies.

No one will miss the mind-numbing drudgery of chasing up spokespersons A and B for journalist X, only to have to do it all over again when B’s plane gets stuck in a holding pattern above Heathrow. Compounding the tedium of sorting logistics is the fact that no one values this sort of work. Super-brainy communications consultants being frittered away on no-brainer tasks? We can happily kiss this goodbye.

The real nightmare for us, and for our clients, is losing control. Without some sort of oversight or mediation, a company reduces its ability to maintain a clear, coherent and responsible message to its customers and stakeholders. Much has been made of PR 2.0, the industry’s response to next generation communication tools, but the challenge of staying on message seems to be at the heart of the issue, and ultimately how we ensure that what we do continues to offer our clients real value.

As with modern conflicts, in web 2.0 and social networking there is no front-line, but a shifting and permeable zone where "us" and "them" are intermingled and interchangeable. Similarly, the role of PR is no longer to defend or mediate a border, but to permeate the message (and methodology) of communicating into the hearts and minds of an organisation.