Since the dawn of PR, when fruit sellers managed to position the humble apple as an object of desire in the Bible, companies have been using (unconnected) high profile vehicles to gain media exposure for themselves. The practice is alive and well and nicely illustrated by the news coverage garnered by a technology firm that recently contrasted the performance of the iPhone’s display with that of its rival, Google’s Nexus One.
Organisations engaged in business-to-business activity can learn a lot from this. The established lessons are that: a hook to a topical item can make your product or service newsworthy; technology does not have to be glamorous to be interesting; and a good technology PR adviser can repay his/her fee many times over in results.
What’s new is the effect of Web 2.0. If correctly handled, the pervasiveness of social media can magnify coverage, deliver traffic directly to your web site and improve your search engine optimisation and rankings, simultaneously. And who isn’t interested in that?
