My missed lunch with Scoble

Since it's DEMO@15 at the Westin Kierland in Scottsdale, and well, I live in Scottsdale, I tried to set-up a few blogging meetings and interviews.

Trying to set-up an interview with JotSpot to take place after DEMO, and my interview with Chris Shipley - the DEMO maven herself - is in the works.

But, the lunch with Robert Scoble turned into a new axiom for POP! PR - business before blogging. I had a business lunch that came up that morning, so I had to cancel on Robert.

Yep, sacrilege in the blogosphere.

So, we had a discussion while he was being driven to the airport, and I hope to do a follow-up talk if I can convince him that he needs to come back to Scottsdale for PC Forum.

On The Economist article: I asked Robert if there wasn't a little bit of irony, and some English hyperbole, to say that PR is dead ... while they had to go through WaggEd to get the interview with him? Robert did laugh at the irony, but noted that he loves his PR people and firms. Yay!

On Rubel, MicroPersuasion and my post on new MP service: Well, here's a shocker. Robert says he has no idea who Steve Rubel is - okay, it's a joke - but he did disagree with my post, and he had a good argument why separate blogging services are needed for PR firms: corporate America is scared of blogging, and doesn't understand blogging. So a separate division is a good way to get blogging into corporate America. And, I have to agree ... somewhat.

Tying in the two questions, Robert noted that PR is changing, and that the agencies that don't get blogging, or fight it tooth and nail, are doing so at their clients' peril. Scoble had a great example: 10 years ago, all that PR people needed to worry about was reaching out to the Walt Mossbergs of the world. Now, though, since even the media checks out PubSub on major companies, it's the blogger that might have an audience of two that might bring up the next story that's going to be detrimental to your company. If, as a PR person, you aren't tracking the blogosphere, it's inevitable your client is going to get burnt at some point.

So, we agreed on main issues - that PR firms need to embrace and learn about the blogosphere - but disagreed on the finer points if separate business units need to be started. Interesting, though, that this issue also came up during the business lunch: shouldn't PR firms be able to provide strategy, tactics, media expertise - along all disciplines from print to online to blogs?
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