The PR Hype Cycle

 

If you work in technology, like I do, you may be familiar with the Gartner Hype Cycle. If not, this is what it is -- industry research firm Gartner Group use a graph to try and make sense of the maturity of different applications, tools and technologies in any given market.

Interesting to note that corporate blogging is classified as part of the slope of enlightenment. To me, many companies that would benefit from building a content platform of their own are still undecided as to how to integrate them as part of business communications.

That was for technology. This below here is for PR.

The chart is courtesy of Tom Murphy, a European PR professional I met through blogging and Twitter who currently works at Microsoft. Notice anything interesting about the chart? Tom pulled it together in 2005 -- almost 5 full years ago -- for a post he wrote about pragmatic public relations at the Global PR Blog.

In it, he wrote about the importance of understanding your audience, the still important role of journalists and third party media, the need by PR professionals to embrace technology, being actively aware of changes that affect your audiences, and thinking about conversations.

You'll find the post as relevant today as it was 5 years ago -- down to the poor use of email by individuals and the profession overall. You must understand your audience is even truer because the options to reach people have just gone up, yet the path to connection is not as linear anymore.

Three areas of improvement

While the relative placement on the curve (or cycle) of some of the tools available to help individuals and organizations communicate effectively with their audiences may have shifted slightly, I'd say that overall, we're still looking at productivity being driven by the better known activities on the right.

I see the issue of control as being more driven by neglect and inability to have a conversation strategy, than pure rigidity. Being in the driver seat today means being an active participant and steward of products and services. In fact, this is the single driver of differentiation, still. And yet, not many align resources to operate that way.

• Manage the database is more an imperative in such a fluid environment. That's where the money is -- knowing who does what in a network, how influence moves, the information needs of a company's various stakeholders. Other marketing disciplines have been faster to embrace technology and the database tops the list for usefulness.

• Change how you think about press releases. This is still an effective way of getting the news out. Yet, we still call them "press" releases and not "news" releases. Why? It must be a case of needing internal validation. I know many a person who would have a hard time thinking about company messaging as news.

• Learn how news and information spread online. And make your news and information spreadable. This is not just about packaging it with a share widget. It means rethinking what data points and references are useful to the people you're looking to influence and connect with.

Would love to get your feedback on the hype cycle. I was floored when I saw the date in Tom's post as much of what is there is still relevant today.
_____

Other resources:

4 Reasons Why PR Agencies are Failing in Social Media

100 PR People Worth Following on Twitter

© 2010 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Tim Kastelle]

Interesting post Valeria. I definitely think that the Hype Cycle is a reasonable model of the way that things tend to work. The only addition I'd make is that there are some things that fall off the chart as they go through - not everything ultimately ends up being productive in the end.

I don't PR as well as some other fields, but Tom's chart seems right to me - particularly considering that it was 2005 when he made it. I'd love to see an updated version!

Thanks for sharing it.

[Valeria Maltoni]

I see it as more of a cycle and not all things are applicable at all times. Indeed, I get the sense that you would have loved an interpretation from me. Knowing what I know about the majority of the PR industry, I'd be hard pressed to move too many things around at this stage. Switching to aspirational would negate the scope of the hype...

[Patrick Garmoe]

I think this illustrates why companies need to think about getting attention on and offline as one interconnected web of potential avenues for disseminating information.

I spent 10 years as a traditional newspaper reporter, and much of the past year as a blogger/social media/pr person. Initially I viewed myself as leaving "old media" and helping customers with "new media." The longer I'm in this game, the more I find myself traversing both old and new media to get attention for clients, and your friend's graph illustrates that. Businesses need to view outside marketing efforts/news releases etc. as an effort to get attention, regardless of online or offline.

Our company for example headed up an effort to attract Google to Duluth, MN.

In order to get attention and traction we used traditional media coverage on TV, radio and in newspapers, daily e-mail blasts, Twitter and and a vibrant Facebook group, a YouTube channel with lots of citizen-created content, PR pitches to bloggers, contests in schools, a vibrant website: http://www.googltwinports.com and a door-to-door pledge drive. All avenues were effective, and hit different audiences.

A photo of our mayor jumping into Lake Superior ran on the front page of the New York Times, in part because of a strategic PR effort. It wasn't that our city was somehow a better candidate than the 1,000 or so cities vying for Google Fiber. It's just that using a whole set of channels simply made it look like we were the city to beat.

Ironically, I'm writing about exactly how we put together this campaign at http://www.puredriven.com/blog in case anyone is interested.

Thanks,
Patrick Garmoe

[Patrick Garmoe]

Note, the first link above should be http://www.googletwinports.com

[Tom Murphy]

Valeria: Thanks for the plug :-) It is funny how slowly things change! :-)

Tim: You're right, items can fall off the cycle into oblivion and the other thing of note is that items can move through the cycle at different speeds.

I may think about an updated version :-)

Thanks again
Tom
@tpemurphy

[Andrew Davis]

Valeria,
Nice work on explaining the hype cycle and referencing Tom's PR version. I've been working on a New Media Life Cycle for quite some time. It's meant to track the evolution of any new media channel and is used by marketers and PR execs to determine how much to invest in any new media channel while making sure they know what's coming next.
What do you think?
http://blog.tippingpointlabs.com/2009/02/gartners-hype-cycle-and-tippingpoint-labs-life-cycle-analysis/