Old world PR tactics live on

Robert Scoble’s rants about Google’s recent PR tactics were echoed by Rob Hof of BusinessWeek yesterday.  It seems that, when announcing Google Apps, Google ignored bloggers in favor of pre-briefing a handful of traditional media such as The New York Times and InformationWeek.  Even ZDnet’s Dan Farber didn’t get a look-in.  Rob Hof rightly points out the irony of the situation: “that the world’s most prominent Internet company–one that’s specifically trying to get us all to do our work online instead of on the desktop–chose to brief mostly print publications.” 

It’s not the first example I’ve heard of new media companies resorting to old world tactics.  The Web 2.0 Conference - due to take place in San Francisco in November – offers attendance by invitation only, and is already turning away journalists that it considers to be second tier.  Not very participatory is it?  I thought Web 2.0 was about sharing, not restricting?

And that’s what I object to – the hypocrisy of it all.  As a PR person, I know that there will be times when you need to control a message, and times when you will offer exclusives so that you can get that big splash.  BUT if you’re going to preach to the world about participation, free and open dialogs between companies and customers, sharing, etc, you really had better practise what you preach.

Technorati Tags: Google, Scoble, PR, Web 2.0