Social media destorying art of the corporate apology

Let’s face it: Social media is wreaking havoc on the art of the corporate apology. At first, brands under siege welcomed the ability to handle crisis communications via a blog post, tweet and Facebook posting.  This enthusiasm was born from decades of train wrecks that occurred when an insincere CEO tried to be sincere for a 2 minute TV appearance and either came off as aloof, uncaring or just plain incompetent. Who could forget BP CEO Tony Hayward during the oil spill on how inconvenient the entire disaster had been, remarking, “I’d like my life back.”

These TV appearances were agonizing for CXOs and their crisis communications teams – requiring 11^th hour media training and preparation. Yet for all of the drawbacks, television and print apologies held one significant advantage relative to the reality corporations must deal with today – it was a one-way conversation. In effect, it was a hit-and-run apology: CEO apologizes, then removes his or her microphone and goes back to business. No yelling, cussing or insults hurled at the executive walking out of the studio.

Fast forward to today, when corporations have embraced social media for the all-important apology. Sure, why not, executives convince themselves. By apologizing via social media they are doing so directly to the affronted without having to deal with pesky interviewers prodding them with questions specifically designed to create a verbal blunder.

Increasingly, however, social media is proving a thorny medium for the corporate apology for a number of reasons:

1)   Picking the right platform for corporate apology – Social media is inherently informal, which can create an impression problem if a brand uses it to apologize for something that consumers or citizens consider of a serious nature. Social media can be used effectively to communicate that an organization regrets a decision, but using it as the only form of communication can be dangerous. Time after time, we’ve seen blow-back from individuals insisting that a Facebook apology was ‘not enough.’ To cover its bases, an organization should use social media as part of, but not the entirety of, a crisis communications plan.

2)   Anticipate the reaction to the apology – If there exists a better example of a shortsighted crisis communications operation than recently occurred with Lowe’s Home Improvement and its attempt to eject itself from the controversy surrounding pulling ads from the program “All-American Muslim” I haven’t seen it. Lowe’s was one of several firms at the center of the storm, but its biggest mistake was turning its Facebook page into a lightning rod for individuals on both sides of the argument to hurl horrific accusations and commentary at one another – and Lowe’s. 28,000 comments (many inflammatory) later, Lowe’s has taken many messages down. It’s admirable in some cases to allow a platform for feedback, but it does not work in all cases and for Lowe’s using Facebook as apology central was a miscalculation.

3)   Consider source of the apology – As part of the same swirl of controversy around “All-American Muslim” Kayak.com, which also pulled its ads, dispatched its CMO to social media to post the apology. While PR and marketing professionals can certainly play a key role in helping an organization develop and execute a crisis communications plan, it is my firm belief that the marketing executive should not be the principal voice for crises of a significant nature. There will be an inherent assumption of spin, and frankly I rarely see a well-received corporate apology that comes from a marketing executive. And I’m not even getting into the CMO insisting that the firm pulled ads not because the show was controversial, but because it was bad (didn’t I see their ad air during episode of “The Playboy Club?”).

4) Consider who is impacted to determine platform – When I worked with a technology company that was beset with technical problems that impacted a portion of the user base, we always struggled with how broadly to communicate the issue. In other words, if we had an outage impacting 10 percent of the customer base, we did not have the means to know exactly which 10 percent lost service or have means to ONLY communicate to these customers. So, the question became — do we take a more reactive approach where we would ensure that if impacted customers reached out we could make sure the had constant updates, or communicate the outage to the entire customer base which could, over time, erode customer confidence in service even for those that were not having problems. This is a long winding path to say that there is a difference between utilizing Twitter and Facebook if a corporate apology is directed towards the customer base. Where do they engage most – Twitter, Facebook, the corporate blog? Also, with Twitter the news can end up more broadly  disseminated than if it is only shared on a Facebook page where only customers are more likely to congregate.

Are PR professionals e-mailing their way to extinction?

I’ve been tracking a rather telling LinkedIn Group topic thread titled “Telephone follow ups to email press releases” that now exceeds 100 comments. There are some legitimate, albeit ageless, frustrations expressed by PR professionals on the whole telephone/email conundrum.

The thread addresses the fact that reporters, for the most part, state a preference for emails rather than phone calls, but due to the volume of emails received end up responding less frequently. Posters also stress the importance of building relationships with reporters via coffee, lunch, tea and crumpets – all fine recommendations but ones that only go as far as a reporter/editor’s willingness to develop a relationship.

More interesting, and I believe disturbing, are the handful of comments regarding how PR professionals determine what type of client news is deemed significant enough for a follow up call. In fact, one thread poster wrote:

“Bottom line, not every press release is worth that call! It’s crafting the message as best you can, with legal and regulatory in mind, and ultimately knowing what releases are worth the call, and those that aren’t. One other tool I have found helpful, the multi-media press release!”

News flash: If a press release pitch isn’t worth a call it isn’t worth a press release – or a pitch! Basically what this poster is saying is that email-only pitches are fine for non-newsworthy client announcements that the PR professional knows really won’t be interesting but just feels he/she must go through the motions to be accountable when the client asks for outreach efforts, BUT…if there is actual real news then the PR professional will bother to pick up the phone and pitch?

If that is in fact where things are headed PR is etching its own tombstone towards becoming a human version of Vocus – an email blasting machine devoid of strategy, value and ultimately, strong results. This notion of creating tiers of outreach based on the self or client-determined importance of the news exposes an obvious flaw that explains why reporters tune out so many email pitches. You think you are doing reporters a favor by not calling them on lower priority news announcements, but all you are really doing is polluting their inbox with the dregs of ‘news’ and ensuring that any real news that might be emailed will become lost in the clutter.

Let’s be clear, this isn’t a discussion with an easy answer. The fact is that the press release itself is really secondary to the pitch. No one should be pitching a press release – they should be pitching a story for which the press release might be a supporting piece of.  Here are a few ideas:

1)   How about a little (gulp) honesty with clients – We all love the fact that clients are excited about their news, products and services, but understandably not all of them will generate the same external enthusiasm. It is hard for PR professionals to kill press releases because, unfortunately, that remains a component of what we do. But in the bigger picture there are likely other ways to communicate the information that will be more valuable than a press release, and it is up to PR firms to identify those rather than blindly drafting and blasting releases.

2)   Eliminate the two-tier news approach – This notion of a two tiers of newsworthiness is just ridiculous. Something is important enough for a phone call but other news only rises to email level damages the value of what we do and contributes to the eroding value of the PR professional-journalist relationship. Something is news or it isn’t.

3)   Remain proactive but not stubborn – I’m still a big believer in phone calls and in person interaction with journalists. Not as a ‘follow up’ to an email but simply as an effective means to communicate. Email is easy and it is lazy. Takes 2 seconds to send an email and if a reporter bites back than wham, maybe an entire outreach initiative becomes a success. Calling can be tedious and painful, but as many other posters in the LinkedIn thread confirmed, there is a 50/50 chance at best the journalist even saw your email.

The role of PR spin at your Fantasy Football Draft

Here in Washington, DC, the transition from summer to fall is obvious by the thermostat’s overnight drop from 100 to 70, the clogged beltway and kids return to school. Early September is also notable for the flurry of fantasy football drafts taking place across the country.

Whether fantasy team owners realize it or not, PR spin is actively at work leading up to and during your in-person fantasy football draft. I’ve compiled a quick list of 5 PR tactics you are likely to see at on Fantasy Football Draft day.

5) The classic ‘undersell’ – I can’t remember the last draft I participated in where at least one owner gave me the “I am totally unprepared for this draft” shtick before the draft gets underway. This is done for a couple of reasons: first, that owner wants you to believe he will not be a draft day threat so you don’t have to worry about him stealing your sleeper pick; and second it is apparently not cool to admit publicly you spent any time preparing for the draft. Everyone wants to make it seem as if they are rolling into the draft from some hot club with no preparation whatsoever so it is all the more impressive when they take the title.

4) The classic ‘misdirect’ – Everyone likes to showoff. Everyone believes they have some ‘sleepers’ that will go from injury-plagued or under-performing to league star. These owners want to demonstrate how clever they are by announcing at the draft who will have a breakout year so that they can go back and say “I told you so.” But, let’s give these owners a little credit: they don’t want to roll out their studs, but instead will announce a few second tier sleepers who most likely aren’t even sleepers at all. “Hey, keep an eye on Percy Harvin this year,” or “watch out for Felix Jones.” By doing so, they protect their top targets but can still take credit if their predictions pan out.

3) The classic ‘draft hex’ – You know this guy at the draft. He’s the guy who, if he appeared on the Jeopardy game show, would claim he knew every answer but was hitting the buzzer 1/8 of a second late. At the draft, this is the guy whose great pick every round was coincidentally taken by the person drafting right in front of him. Then, when the draft is over, he complains “my team should have been with this player and that player, but because that person was gone it ruined my entire draft!”

2) The classic ‘it’s not me, it’s my draft position’ – “Well it is going to be hard to win getting 8th pick again.” Inferring it is impossible to win without first pick is like saying a racer can’t win Indy 500 without the pole position. That doesn’t stop this draft owner from complaining they have that pick every year falling out of the top 4 where all the stud RB reside. Then, when you check their draft history you find out the owner’s picks the past five years have been 2nd, 6th, 10th, 3rd and 5th.

1) The classic ‘I only had one beer and a couple wings’ spiel – This is the owner who, when it comes time to pay up at the end of the night for the food and beer, claims he is a human camel that did not have a single drink for 4 hours and might have nibbled on a couple of chicken wings. If this is truly the case, this owner is far too sober to be in your draft.

Sparks from Vancouver kissing couple extend to PR measurement

The Wall Street Journal ‘Numbers Guy’ Carl Bialik publishes some fantastic breakdowns and critical analysis of numbers and data that impact our lives. Last week, perhaps long overdue, he set his sights on the dollar value of publicity – highlighting the Vancouver couple whose kiss was seen round the world during the NHL Stanley Cup riot. More specifically, he focused on a favorable little PR measurement tool long used in our industry called ‘ad equivalency value.’ The way this works is that if a client appears in a Wall Street Journal article, a PR firm might equate the value of that publicity to the cost of placing an ad in the WSJ. Advertising in premier outlets can costs tens of thousands of dollars, so the ad equivalency value (AEV) certainly makes the PR firm look as if they are earning their keep and operating at a relative bargain to advertising given the assumption that a mention in a news story comes off as more credible to the reader/viewer/listener than a paid ad.

The Australian publicist who now represents the kissing couple and is cited in the article as a proponent of AEV says he assigns a 5x ROI to clients for news coverage, and estimated the smooch was worth 10 million Australian dollars in publicity. My opinion on AEV is much more in tune with David Rockland, global director of the research and measurement group for Ketchum, who hits the nail on the head in the article by saying that not all mentions are created equal as some only make a glancing mention of the client or spokesperson. I’ll take it a step further: If I’ve learned anything from being married to an advertising executive is that when it comes to branding, repetition is key. You can’t run a radio ad twice a month and expect brand traction. You need to pound the brand message home for months before it starts to stick with target audiences. Same goes for ‘publicity.’ A single WSJ mention, followed by weeks of inactivity, still has value but far less than if the publicity campaign was sustained.

Alarming for PR firms relying heavily on AEV is research finding an article mention is not dramatically more effective than an ad. The article cites such research, which like any research should be taken at face value but certainly not ignored. Ronn Torossian, Founder, President and CEO of New York-based 5W Public Relations, followed the WSJ article with his own piece reinforcing his support for AEV and the ‘bargain’ proposition of PR relative to advertising. He went on to reference his firm’s proprietary measurement system and acknowledgement that the PR industry as a whole still lacks universally accepted and viable PR measurement standards – a point I agree with 100 percent.

As long as I’ve been practicing PR clients, colleagues and fellow PR firms have asked me how I handle PR measurement. It is my belief that firms that create their own proprietary measurement systems do so out of fear. Fear that the absence of such a mechanism will result in the client tying PR results to the impact on a client’s revenue, growth and business success. PR firms are petrified of tying measurement in this way, believing that there are too many variables out of the PR firm’s control that would factor into a client’s business performance. A PR firm might secure great coverage, but what if the sales team is ill-prepared to convert the publicity into sales? A viable point? Sure, but I’m not sure how a PR firm can justify its existence if it produces puffed up AEV reports if the client’s sales are declining 20 percent. At the very least all the reports are proving is that the client’s dollars would be better spent elsewhere.

In many of my blog posts I like to include tips and strategies for the PR professional or clients. But for this topic it would be disingenuous. I believe PR measurement is an area that the industry needs to focus far more attention and resources on, but I will not pretend like others do to have some magic formula that proves the value of publicity.

Should reporters expose bad pitches & press releases?

Reporters and editors loath off-target PR pitches polluting their email inbox. Public relations professionals seem to get off seeing others in the industry run through the wringer. So I suppose it is of little surprise that we are seeing more online articles, blogs and twitter posts dedicated to publishing and lambasting “good press releases and pitches gone bad.”

The Bad Pitch Blog was one of the first and for a while really the exclusive vehicle for showcasing the sloppiest, worst PR pitches and press releases. That is changing in a big way. Most recently, I came across an effort by San Diego Magazine, which now has a weekly online installment named “Pitches We Had To Reject This Week.” The current installment was, admittedly, replete with pitches that ignored the magazine’s target audience, press releases about nut butter fanatics traveling to Nepal, and the opportunity to speak with experts on all sorts of topics no one cares about.

So do I have a problem with outing bad pitches and releases? No…up to a point. Reading through the San Diego Magazine entries exposes what I find to be maddening aspects of where we are as an industry right now:

1) Press releases blasted out to hundreds of media outlets with zero regard for whether or not the client’s product, service or “expert” fits the demographics, tone or coverage topics of the publication.

2) Horrific writing. A public relations professional who can’t write is kind of like a baseball player who can’t catch. This isn’t some peripheral weakness, but a glaring open wound that really should prohibit the professional from moving forward professionally barring improvement.

3) Pitching ‘experts’ the wrong way. This sunglasses expert may in fact be just that, but so many pitches simply proclaim their client an ‘expert’ without backing it up in any way. News flash – reporters are pitched on hundreds of experts every week, and few qualify as such. If you are going to pitch an expert back it up with hard data (what makes him/her an expert, a few bullet points of expertise so the reporter can determine if the expert offers the type of insights relevant to their audience, etc.)

That said, reporters and editors that want to out bad pitches and releases should focus their ridicule at the source agency or organization behind them, not the specific individual who sent the email. Why? Because what we’ve seen time and time again when an agency or organization gets outed is that they scapegoat some unwitting intern or low level associate. Of course! What a fantastic way to encourage the next generation of PR professionals than to throw interns under the bus to save face. Sure, maybe an intern physically pushed the send button, but give me a break. They are simply carrying out orders from agency higher-ups. I know few agencies that allow interns to, unsupervised, develop client pitches and releases, determine the target media list, and then distribute without nary a peek from supervisors.

For that reason it upsets me when reporters re-post real names of interns and associates as a part of their ‘outing.’ Rather, they should call out the agency leadership if they feel a need to call out anyone. Interns make mistakes, but if you are to believe the crisis communications shtick from agencies we’d be led to believe that interns make all the mistakes. I know better; reporters and editors should too.

The Art of the Piggy Back PR Pitch

We’ve all tried it. At some point in your career as a public relations professional, you’ve tried to piggy back a client pitch on top of a holiday, dramatic news event or some unfortunate occurrence that could have been prevent by your client’s gadget/expertise/flavored gum. Whether it is pushing your client’s CEO as an expert who can comment on a database security breach exposing customer records, some random plastic surgeon as the person the media should talk to regarding Kate Middleton’s rumored ear lift, or, recently, a PR firm that thought the upcoming Mother’s Day holiday would be the perfect opportunity for a pitch on vagina moisturizer. (sadly this is no joke, and sadly, once again, the PR firm blamed an overzealous intern. I’m beginning to suspect that PR firms only hire interns so there is someone to blame when a PR initiative is botched).

At times this can be an effective means to inject clients into the news cycle. But I suspect the majority of the time PR pitches of this nature end up in a proverbial email stack of hundreds of similar attempts at a time when the reporter is really just looking for the quickest, most credible source he/she can find. Here are a few tips for news cycle piggy back pitches to consider:

1) Don’t pitch into the chaos - If you are like me, what happens on the first warm, sunny Spring day is that you head on over to the car wash to get that car looking all spiffy for Spring. Not surprisingly, 200 other people have the same idea. My point is that when it comes to pitching reporters you should not wait to approach them at the exact time when demand for their attention will be at its peak. You will get drowned out. You will get ignored. You will not get their attention.

Instead, anticipate who the reporters are that might be approached during a relevant news event. Connect with them when there is nothing going on in the news cycle. Make yourself familiar to them when demand for their attention is at its lowest, so that when you go back to them when news breaks your name will be a familiar one.

2) Don’t try and “out-expert” everyone - Everyone’s client CEO is the foremost expert on whatever it is they do. Reporters have no way of vetting the genuine experts from imposters so don’t waste email space with this useless posturing. Including a few key bio points in the email is fine, but what you really want to do to whet the reporter’s appetite is tease what your client would say if utilized for an interview. Include 3-4 bullets of points your client would raise, because by doing so the reporter may find one of the bullets unique. There is no need to write a novel about what your expert would say, just tease some unique or contrarian points to whet the reporter’s appetite.

3) Don’t focus solely on elite media – Sure, there are no downsides to sending an email pitch to an NBC Nightly News producer or Wall Street Journal reporter. Worse case scenario is your email is ignored. But limiting your pitch to elite media is self-defeating. The fact is that reporters do look at other articles to see which experts are being quoted and, as a result, assigned credibility. Landing 2-3 hits with mid-tier pubs that may not be getting pounded by pitches can be valuable for showing up in search engine results and often, can lead to other inquiries from reporters – even top tier pubs. I’ve seen it happen. Not to me per se, but to this guy, in Canada. His phone number is unlisted so don’t try and validate it.

4) Be prepared to open a Pandora’s Box with client - I’m all for PR professionals being proactive and creative with press angles. Most of us don’t have the luxury of clients that are dictating the news cycle every week, and we have to find ways to inject clients into the existing news cycle. That said, managed expectations with clients on this type of low probability outreach. If you overpromise and alert clients to all of these news stories, then, logically, clients may start to see competitors quoted all over the place and wonder why they are not included. I say this not to discourage this type of pitching, but to carefully manage client expectations and pick your spots. Don’t go after news events for which the client has a peripheral connection to, focus on those for which your client is really uniquely positioned in a way that others are not.

Rob Pegoraro leaves Wash Post, sales of Microsoft Kin skyrocket

If Vince Vaughn came across Rob Pegoraro’s letter announcing his departure as technology reviewer for the Washington Post, he’d  likely respond by saying “Let’s go make some bad technology buying decisions.”

My first thought after reading that Rob was leaving the Post after 17 years was…frankly shock he’d been at the Post for 17 years. Given Rob’s youthful appearance I have to assume what, he joined the Post right after junior prom? I did not know Rob personally all that well because, to be perfectly honest, I heard he fielded a steady diet of SunRocket customer gripes about the service (take a number on that one buddy) and I was beset with frequent nightmares that his vitriol might be directed at a certain PR guy who, as powerful as he may be, could not keep an IP network from going down. I also have frequent nightmares about being on the Metro yellow line with no idea how to get back home but I digress.

I’m not one to overstate or understate the importance of a singular event but suffice to say Rob’s departure – and the reasons for the departure outlined in his letter – paint a unfavorable picture of where technology and gadget reviews are heading. Where they appear to be heading is away from objective, unfailingly blunt analysis of consumer technology products and services to biased, self-serving and crowdsourced reviews that will likely lead to a great deal of uninformed consumer buying decisions of poor products (I’m looking at you Microsoft Kin).

This trend is not the fault of The Washington Post of course. Instead, it is a product I believe of well chronicled manipulation of search engine rankings by content farms such as Associated Content and eHow that empower anyone with web access to post their opinions about products – or get prodded by companies to hock their products – and manipulate search engine rankings so that consumers looking for objective analysis instead get anything but.

Let me be clear, customer product reviews are important. The problem is that honest, informed reviews are not the ones that most people end up reading. Want to buy an iPhone app? Sure, check the customer reviews at the Apple iTunes store and you will see hundreds of glowing reviews. How many of those are actually legitimate? Who knows, as multiple reports have surfaced of both app developers and their PR firms manipulating the reviews for their benefit.

The telltale sign of a good tech reviewer is one that strikes a little bit of fear into a PR person or company seeking to have a product reviewed. They fear that, god forbid, Rob might actually tell readers what works and doesn’t work, rather than regurgitating a marketing slick or being satisfied by a superficial review. I was never afraid, that’s absurd. But a friend of mine was very afraid, kind of pathetic actually.

I’m not sure how Rob’s departure will impact my life but on an unrelated note I just bought a Fusion Garage JooJoo Tablet on eBay for $900.

Why the press release will never die

There has been a lot of chatter recently regarding the press release, whether it is dead, should die or live forever. Don’t worry PR professionals, the press release will never die, and this brief Xtranormal video explains why.

Why organic farming is cool and PR people are nuts

Have you heard the latest yarn? How many public relations firms can make organic farming seem like the coolest thing since silly bands? The answer: zero, because, according to this New York Times small business blogger/restauranteur, while “…It would be crazy to categorize all public relations people as crazy, let’s just say that P.R. people drive me crazy.”

My first reaction after reading this blog post last week by Bruce Buschel in the “You’re The Boss” New York Times blog (which is a good blog with contributors discussing real-life experiences about the art of running a small business) was to crumple up the newspaper and throw it in the trash. Then I remembered that I was viewing the article online because no one reads newspapers anymore and spent the remainder of the day trying to tape my hard drive back together.

For the two of you that read my blog (thanks Mom and mailman guy whose name escapes me), you will know that I’m no sunshine pumper for the PR industry. I think that, like any industry, it has its share of talented professionals and good firms and puh-lenty of unimpressive bottom-feeders that deliver very little value to clients. But reading this blog post,  in which Mr. Buschel, owner of Southfork Kitchen in Bridgehampton, NY attempts to provide a cautionary tale of what happened when he used a PR firm (two actually) to promote his sustainable seafood with local products restaurant, crystallized how little the PR industry is understood by clients.

You can read the blog post, but I’ll give you the highlights:

• Restauranteur is approached by PR firm promising major press coverage for the restaurant launch
• Many meetings are held and media angles developed for pitching
• Client is convinced his product and concept is unique and newsworthy, and buys into the grandiose promises made by PR firm.
  
• Launch gets closer, results nowhere to be found and client sacks PR firm
• Client hires another PR person (who sounds more like a publicist but it’s not as if the client really understands the difference anyway), who seems to do a decent job but offers critical post-mortem of how client handled family and friends dry-run and client sacks this guy too.
• Client decides that PR is a waste of money and he can just tweet his way to success

Plenty of blame to go around here, but I do want to point to a sentence the blogger wrote in his blog, which states: “What I have finally come to understand is that P.R. people are paid to twist reality into pretzels and convince you that they are fine croissants. At some point, they actually believe their own concoctions.” So apparently, what the PR firms did was twist the reality (this amazing story about sustainable seafood and organic farming) into a story that was not interesting to the press. I would argue that the client’s “reality” was in fact the pretzel – the restaurant owner wanted major buzz and attention for a restaurant that had not even opened yet, hadn’t served a meal or received a single plaudit. In other words, he wanted hype for a product that did not exist yet, or to equate it to technology PR, buzz for vaporware that hadn’t proven a darn thing yet.

I’m not going to hammer the restauranteur too much. I respect anyone pursuing a venture near and dear to their heart. And it does look like the original PR firm overpromised without setting realistic expectations for the client, and tried a kitchen sink approach to generating buzz. But I will reiterate a few points for the PR agency that I feel strongly about:

PR Firms

• Set realistic expectations right off the bat – PR professionals are often hesitant to burst a client’s bubble. While this may please the client in initial meetings and maybe even win a new client, it will bite you in the rear down the line.
• A launch plan should not end with the launch – So many times a PR firm executes a successful launch for a product, service or business, but spent little time or effort building a plan to sustain that momentum. The initial launch “spike” certainly looks great on paper, but in the long run will not lead to long-term client success.
• Share the kool-aid - The PR firm and client can have internal meetings for weeks and weeks in full agreement on how successful a launch is going to be, but if they are the only ones drinking the kool-aid, it may be too late before finding out that the story isn’t as sweet to the media. Don’t wait until a week before launch to test out all the developed media pitches, and instead canvass early and often to ensure the results will match expectations.

Are PR, Marketing and Ad Agencies Ruining Google?

And, of equal relevance, should we feel guilty? I do, but that’s mostly because I’m a Jewish male and can end up guilt-ridden if Subway discontinues a sub flavor I never ordered. Anyone who has turned to Google to find out how to unclog a drain or uninstall programs on your Mac will most likely find first page results littered with keyword-optimized articles from content sites such as eHow or Associated Content.

For those looking for authoritative content on topics of interest, these keyword-optimized ad, marketing and PR articles are kind of like aging Hollywood celebrities who look great from about a block away but up close are a mess. These articles start out seemingly useful, but quickly devolve into a cesspool of generic, useless, incomplete or even blatantly inaccurate information. Worse yet, the articles are often unreadable because they have not been written for humans, but for search engines like Google to pick up.

The sources for these articles vary. Certainly many are just written by folks with expertise in these areas, or by folks who like to write. But let’s face it: many of the articles originate from marketing, advertising and PR firms seeking to improve Google Search rankings related to client services, products and expertise. Have a client that sells antivirus software? Write a bunch of keyword-heavy articles on tips to keep viruses off your computer.

All of this can be great for driving traffic to client websites, but not so great for finding relevant search results on Google. As GigaOM neatly summarizes, the drumbeat of technology and web voices calling out this situation – and for change – grows louder. Vivek Wadhwa, director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University, is one such voice, recently noting in a TechCrunch blog post that Google has “become a jungle: a tropical paradise for spammers and marketers.”

None of this is lost on Google, which likely will see growing pressure from sites such as Facebook (pulling ad dollars) and Quora (a great Q&A site that turns to human experts rather than algorithms to provide answers and content). But to return to my initial point of how much of this low-quality content landing in search engine results can be traced back to advertising, marketing and PR firms. There is no denying this occurs, though how much is really attributable to PR firms remains hard to determine. I do think, as an industry, there is an obligation to at least acknowledge that the more this tactic is used of producing quick, low-quality, algorithm-rich content, the more its value to both producers and consumers of this content erodes.

Google may pursue its own strategy attacking this issue. From my perspective, the PR industry has steps it can take as well to disassociate high quality content it produces from the unending SEO-focused garbage content, including focusing more on the quality of the content destination. Rather than rely on the content farms that may rank high on Google now but could eventually be given the cold shoulder by the search engine, put more efforts in creating a high-quality content destination. Whether its a corporate blog or standalone site, authority will rise and risk will be mitigated to assume complete control of the content repository.