Silly-Cone Valley PR is lacking...
sfgate.com
Killing the Rainmakers
The dying art of high-tech public relations
Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate
Monday, March 29, 1999
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It's similar to the demand for life-jackets on a sinking ship. Not a tough sell. As a result, most high-tech companies with halfway decent products, including those with incredibly inept PR, can usually get their cash registers ringing (We wish!).
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The job of public relations is to whet the appetite, to give a sense of what is possible, and what is coming down the pike. Good PR professionals don't "find a need and fill it." They are the rainmakers. They create the need.
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The bigger danger in all this is what happens when individual high-tech companies suffer some kind of setback or, even worse, if and when the high-tech economy, or the economy in general, begins to falter.
One way high-tech companies will be able to ride out such hard times, when they come, is with effective public relations, with speed and timing, by answering straight questions quickly with straight, confidence-building answers. Right now, it appears that at least some of Silicon Valley's leading high-tech firms might have a very hard time rising to meet that challenge (anyone we know??). |
