Scoble vs. Apple

Scoble’s Mac crashed, Scoble rants — par for the course. (Earlier this year he had it out for me, too, but cooler heads prevailed.) But he did bring up a lot of interesting points, some sound, some not.

Robert, as someone in the media who works with Apple (just as I work with dozens, if not hundreds of other companies), here’s some of what you’ve got wrong (and right):

[At dinner with a bunch of "smart" entrepreneurs] “I tried to turn on my video camera. They all instantly shut up and said ‘no video.’” - You’re damn right they did! They’re smart, and they’re entrepreneurs. What person with a startup would want to go on a tear against a major company they might one day partner with, be acquired by, lose employees to, etc.? No smart businessperson — especially someone out on their own — would go on camera trashing Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc., unless they wanted to make headlines that might reflect poorly on them later. I doubt it’s as much to do with the cachet as you think.

If you want to hear people (trash) talk, talk to tech journos, whose jobs it is to be honest and on the record about tech companies. Let me put this another way: don’t be surprised all the time when people don’t want to go on camera for the ScobleShow, not everyone wants their every conversation and criticism preserved as public record.

“Apple has an ARMY of people who are anonymous who will come and call you every name in the book. I know.” - Oh yes, they definitely do, and they say the same to me. Although there are also tons of people on the other side of the camp who call me an Apple fanboy, so it’s good times. It’s the whole Mac vs. PC thing, and it’s so tiring. Besides, exactly what did you think was going to happen when you ranted about Apple? Bill Gates would send you flowers?

“The common thing about most of these comments is that it’s MY FAULT that my Apple machine is having trouble. See, on my Windows machine I’m willing to accept this.” - Wait, huh? You’re willing to lower your standards of what’s an acceptable user experience just because it’s Microsoft? No, no, man. You’ve got it the wrong way. Every company and product should be held to the same standards of quality. I don’t really care what they chose their hardware ecosystem to be like, crashy is crashy, good is good, smart is smart. But that’s besides the point. The point is all computers have failures, and you shouldn’t be angrier or more disappointed when it’s either your Mac or your PC. More…

PR people: you’re not blocked, but do your homework

Chris Anderson rants about the woeful life of being the editor of a large publication who receives an endless torrent of spammy-smelling PR email from “lazy flacks” — all stuff about which I’ve zero knowledge. (Actually, I’m sure that’s probably where the comparisons end between our jobs — but who knows.) He then leapfrogs the next few traditional steps (namely, hitting the delete key, hitting the unsubscribe link, quickly replying to these people, or even having his assistant call their bosses) and openly publishes the names and email addresses of hundreds of PR people for spammers to have their way with. Um, okay. Chris, it’s not the same.

Let’s cut to the chase: yes, unfortunately most PR people don’t do their homework. They get their target’s email address (from that target’s site, Google, a media list like Bacon’s, or wherever else) and add X editor to whatever blast they’re cooking up because — as you probably know — many of these “flacks” are paid (extra) for results (read: stories in the media about their company / client). Yes, the resulting PR spam is ridiculously irritating and, when ignored, often leads to embarrassingly clueless and time-wasting followup calls.

But these people aren’t out to make our lives harder, and many of them are just doing what they can with what’s become a severely broken system between media relations and the media. For all our communications tools PR often reminds editors more of telemarketing than valued outreach. Can these firms and companies do a better job at targeting the most relevant publications (and editors therein)? No doubt, so in that sense Chris’s post is founded in the right reasons. PR people simply need to do a cursory amount of relationship-building to know who to get in touch with instead of just spamming the top of the food chain in the hopes of a trickled-down story. But I’m still not sure how lofty disinterest and spoon-feeding spam databases is the correct response to a broken system.

(For reference, this is the same problem faced by editors of publications large and small. Personally, I’ve dealt with it for years with some combination of ignoring / deleting, replying with a template, verbally rejecting calls, or in some cases telling the completely misguided ones only to call / email back when they actually grok Engadget and have something directly relevant to our coverage. Ask around, I’m not shy about doing this — it’s better for both parties, so far as I can tell. I even wrote a post about it.)

PR strategists interested in making real changes about this whole process should feel free to get in touch to discuss further. And don’t you dare add my personal email address to any lists! (Joking. But not really.)