I just can’t stop smiling every time I read a story in PR Week or any PR publication about anything tech, digital or having to do with social media. I really think there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the UK market about what all of those things mean and how engagement has already changed.
Here is one of my latest examples. PR Week (3 April issue, fine shoot me I just got around to reading it) has an article on the UK launch of WIRED. Read it if you can track it down and marvel at the constant press lines, analysis and repetition of how WIRED is going to be ‘more thank just a gadget magazine with women in bikinis’ (according to editor David Rowan). Good lord, who would ask him such a question and who would spin an article about WIRED by essentially comparing it with Stuff?
In one of the subsequent paragraphs an account executive at Say Communications says that WIRED will probably work as a barometer of trends and ‘positions our clients in a desirable peer group of cutting-edge technologists’ Unless they misquoted her that doesn’t even make sense, not to mention that it all sounds like PR fluff and gobbledegook.
To be fair, Bruce McLachlan (head of digital entertainment, Nelson Bostock) makes a very good point when asked about the viability of a tech magazine in the current market where tech news break online. He does stress that depth and quality is key (which I cannot fault on any level).
Yet the questions themselves annoy me no end. To suggest that WIRED is a tech magazine and to compare it with mere gadget or toys-boys magazine simply shows a tragic misunderstanding of the cult of WIRED. While other publications have been ridiculed online over the years and criticized no end WIRED remains trusted, respected and well – loved. Why? That’s the question PR Week should be asking, just in case PRs who pretend they know all about digital might learn something.
Read On:
Wired UK launches on magCulture
Lifting the lid on Wired UK by Simon Waldman on the Guardian
