Ike, got it. Cheers!

Jim, it’s not only that we talk too much, it’s that PR industry hypes too much. They completely proved why PR doesn’t get it with their claims.

Keith, it’s never too late. This discussion will be going on for quite some time.

You’ve summed up what’s wrong with our industry – we talk too much about potential, and don’t deliver.

If PR was entering 3.0 or whatever drivel’s being discussed amongst ourselves…then why aren’t all the ad creatives, the planners, the DM guys and all that putting down their pencils and joining us?

Because we don’t have the work (and therefore the talent) to prove it. We just blog about it instead.

The first graf of my comment was in jest – meant to be a counterpoint. Too many people look at today’s major waves, and don’t step back where the ripples can be seen for what they are.

Or maybe it’s just that they knew what their job was when Big Media was king, and now they don’t know. To listen to them defend the major news media against the upstart bloggers and amateurs with a printing press is, well, strange.

I thought your post was very intelligent.

Jay Rosen

Thanks for your comment.

Once an Architect friend of mine came to speak at a major PR conference and realised that “we’re all talking about the same things, but with different names”.

He was referring to his work as Urban Planner and about the need to engage in conversation and relationships with communities in order to adequate his intervention to people’s needs and we, from PR, were referring to the need to change our conception of publics and deffenetly move away from thinking that audiences (receivers) and publics (much more than just receivers) are the same thing.

You also say the same thing. The most sustainable and important argument to defend a move from PR 1.0 to PR 2.0 and so on is the argument that publics have changed.

And we spend much more time discussing tools rather than discussing the real changes that people have undergone. At http://www.prconversations.com we recently debated much about this issue also in a post titled “New Tools don’t make New PR” (http://www.prconversations.com/?p=181)

Let’s keep the debate rolling.

Thanks,
João

But seriously, loved the comment. I think that while we’re already looking at Service Pack 1 and anticipating the next rev of PR, many people are afraid to upgrade to PR 2.0 in general (sounds like Vista!). They’re on the sidelines waiting for more success stories…which is why the PRWeek issue could have focused on pushing everyone else into the game instead of leaving everyone scratching their heads.

We are no longer stuck at PR 2.0 – we’ve firmly ventured forth into the vast frontier that is PR 2.0.0.1 (RC1).

Of course – that is only for those cutting edge communicators that ever bothered to upgrade to PR 2.0; most are waiting for a stable version to emerge after Service Pack 1.

L.A., thank you. You’re right, PRWeek is more of the Daily Variety of the PR industry and has long since forgotten how to truly help their readers evolve with the rapidly shifting landscape.

Geoff, yes…3.0 doesn’t exist. Again, this article could have swapped the 3.0 with 2.0 and it would have been an incredible issue. In one motion, PRWeek could have helped to legitimize the PR 2.0 set of principles along with garnering support throughout the blogosphere.

Michael, cheers. It’s a shame that PRWeek chose to coin something rather than help the industry embrace social media and (back it up with numbers!) Too bad for them since I already own PR30.com…I just didn’t think I would need to use it for another several years!

KFF, bravo to you! I read your post…good stuff. How crazy that someone walked the issue of PRWeek into your office while you were commenting on the blog. They’re out of touch…and quite frankly, certain PRWeek reporters (who shall go unnamed) have expresses such frustration.

Chris, brilliant. Working on it now…some of that theme is already in this post, but you’re right. You can single out an entire article that talks about how swapping the “3″ with a “2″ could justify the demand for Social Media savvy folks.

Joao, welcome. Thank you for stopping by. Honestly, yes, at the end of the day it is “public” relations. But in the age of social media, “public” sounds dangerously close to “audience” and that implies that one message carries value for all. You nail it when you say that people create the public, but they all come from different backgrounds with a whole different set of channels to reach them. If we’re talking about engaging with people, then you have to peel back the layers to participate in their conversations.

GL

Fist time posting here. Excellent work.

You said
«The evolution of the Web has forced communications professionals to step out from behind the “great wall of PR” to interact with the people formerly known as the audience and the “people” aka influencers aka experts that also reach them.»

This is exactlty the point. As PR practitioner I understand your comment. However, as PR professor I would remind that the reason for PR to be PR is “Publics” + “Relationships”. New tools do give us different possibilities to develop relationships but the centre of the issue will allways be “publics”. (More on this discussion here http://www.prconversations.com/?p=123 )

Strangely, you didn’t mention “publics” but used other words to referr to the people with whom we try to establish and maintain relationships. In the end, they will allways be people, but people inside crowds, masses and publics assume different characteristics. Isn’t this something which we should think about more often, specially when speaking of PR 2.0 / 3.0 and so on?

What are the great differences between “publics” or between the way PR people conceive them in PR 1.0 / 2.0 ?

Obviously I agree with your comments on the lack of consistency of PRWeek on this.
João Duarte
Portugal

Regardless of their true motivations, the bottom line is that the transformation underway is real, and it doesn’t need a convenient numerical moniker to validate it. If anything Brian, I would take their stats and write a post about how this shows that PR 2.0 is here, and restructure your arguments such that the very real change underlying the convenient short hand of the meme is what matters…

I think you should write a separate letter to the editor suggesting clarification on why they chose to move past pr 2.0 and jump to pr 3.0 – their response should make for great reading if nothing else…

It is funny that in the same issue that PR Week talks 3.0 they also have an article about social media as a ‘…key to an agency’s capabilities’…um, d’uh.

PR Week is simply out of touch with the day-to-day within PR.

/kff

Convincing people that our business has just been turned upside once (a.k.a. 2.0) has turned into a dogfight with my competing agency brethren as well as business owners locally in DC. People have a hard time grasping how much new media has changed PR, demanding a new level of transparency and openness. They just don’t get it.

I can’t imagine trying to push PR 3.0 given the reticence to join the current revolution… Further 3.0 does not seem relevant to me. Unless Second Life pulls off a new miracle that is

As a communications professional, and as someone who is engaged in the conversation, not just reading about how to have one, if I spent time reading PR Week to understand more about my craft, my peers and the tools and trends really at play here….um, I think I would be out of work.

-LA

Aside from those in the industry being in the know, many of the clients and consumers of all of our PR efforts are not even ready to accept and/or utilize Web 2.0 and social media… – not everyone has evolved into using, reading and understanding blogging, podcasts and social networking sites. While there has been a lot of buzz about it all, especially over the past few years…it’s not yet a mainstream thought for all PR professionals.