Part 1: Becoming "wired" and a company's story

How did you make your leap to the Internet?
In the early 90's we had the first experience of journalists becoming "wired." My first experience was with JP Donlan, editor of Chief Executive magazine, who said, "Don instead of sending over the bio story in the usual way, can you put it on a disk?" We had one 286 machine with a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk and we saved the story on the disk and we sent it by messenger to JP. And he thought he was the coolest editor going, and I thought I was pretty cool, and that was the first so called "wired" experience. 

Then Andy Glueck, who at that time was Business Editor of The New York Daily News asked me to send him something via email and I didn't know what email was. This was in 1991 or 1992. And then more people asked me to send something email and I realized something was going on, and we needed to figure it out. And if we could figure it out, maybe it would be a way for me to compete with the bigger agencies out there.

So I followed the advice I give to clients and I decided to do a study. What we did was call the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism cold. And I was introduced to Steve Ross, who was one of only two people referred to me as knowing anything about journalism and the Internet.

I proposed to Ross that we do a survey to see if indeed journalists were becoming wired and if so, how they were using the Internet. He loved the idea. So in 1992, we funded a survey to find out how connected journalists were to the Internet. For the last seven years now we have conducted the largest survey in the United States on how journalists work online.

What is the mission of Middleberg Euro RSCG?
We're a full service public relations agency and the core of what we do is work with journalists so they write about a client's product or service or website. It's not easy and it's a skill. You've got to know people and you have to know what makes the story. 

Before, we were looking for how to place stories in print publications and now in the 90's, it's the era of the Internet and you have a third medium to deal with. It has its own vocabulary, its own ground rules which are called "netiquette," its own stars and set of standards. It was a very different tool that PR people did not understand or grasp until very recently.

We got into it early because of the survey, where the results showed 16% of all the journalists queried said they were online, and the second year it showed 33%. So by the end of the second year, it was clear to me this was not a flash in the pan and was going to be a way to work with journalists. And in fact, would be a way to work with the younger journalists who were really adapting to this.

We refocused our firm, and shortly after that, as we got more involved, we began to get more and more clients that wanted to incorporate online communications into their traditional public relation programs.

What is the hardest transition for companies who need to go online? For example, the companies who are taking baby steps now and the challenges they face.
A lot of companies have gone through it and more still are going through it. What's happening now is the dot coms, the majority of them, have expired or merged but the traditional companies, what we call "the big fat dumb companies."...

That's really funny, is that what you really call them?
We do, we call them the big fat dumb companies and they are coming online in a big way. And not to pick out any particular companies but they range from General Motors to Sears (these are not clients of Middleberg) to music companies to even tech companies - they are all coming online.

This is where the future is. These guys are coming online with big budgets and they've assigned some of their best and brightest to this area. Because the senior executives at traditional companies still don't get it. They know they need to be involved in it, but they don't get it. They typically appoint younger people, give them the proper funding and commitment and say, "Lead us forth unto the Net."

And those guys go out and look for a different kind of PR firm, one that knows the Net. And that's where our growth has come from.

And how do you lead them?
In the early years, I had to as much inculcate them into the culture of the Internet and the lexicon of the Internet, as I did anything else. But now people come to us really understanding the Net, but they still don't know how to promote themselves online. 

They don't know what newsgroups and list servers are all about, how to fashion a press release for placement online, how you pitch an online web product or service to traditional media.

So all of these things go into our PR program after we do a significant amount of competitive research and what we call image analysis. We use image analysis to see how a particular industry is being treated by the media and how a company can position themselves to the media within a particular vertical category.

What are some things a company can do to be recognized more by the online media?
The first thing we do is look to put a particular company in what we call a "contextualization"; we want a company story, not just to promote a product or service, which more journalists are shying away from. But to say, "What does this mean in the context of my industry? What is it that I'm doing that will have an impact on my industry and is there a larger impact on business in general?" What's the context of the story?

Then we look for particular angles; do they have unique growth, unusual investors and noteworthy, newsworthy technology. Do they have an unusual family relationship? Did the company get started because a CEO became frustrated with his big fat dumb company and decided to go out and get his own financing? We look for what's unusual and what's different.

It's like the human-interest angle of a business story?
Absolutely. And now more and more journalists are saying, "You can't tell me it's bigger, it's newer, it's better or different. You have to demonstrate it." So what are the metrics of success?

So basically it's a company telling its own story and they have to tell a true story because no one believes the hype anymore.
Exactly, and the worst thing you can do now is to lack credibility; if you lack credibility on the Net, you're dead. People can tell right away and you will be flamed out of existence. On the Net if someone has a bad experience it's like going to a bad restaurant, you'll never go back again and you'll tell other people about it too.

That's why public relations is far more effective on the Net than traditional advertising. The traditional advertising agency is dead. They are in real trouble because banner ads are not effective. All you have to do is look at Christmas 1999 to see how the money was flying around. And what did the traditional ad agency do? They said, "Well, let's advertise your Internet programs on television and in newspapers." They picked a traditional media to advertise in and that was a disaster. Public relations focuses not on images, but on content. PR people understand that credibility is critical.

Continued...