360DigitalInfluence

During the  July 4th holiday weekend, two stories about Silicon Valley’s PR industry  - one in The New York Times and one on TechCrunch – were published, causing a bit of a stir among PR and social media practitioners, VCs, founders of start-ups and those who follow the PR space.  While both pieces take different, yet cynical perspectives, neither portray the PR industry in most positive light.

The New York Times article features one PR practitioner in particular, who places her success on the sheer number of contacts she has in her rolodex.  The TechCrunch piece says it all in the title – “The Reality of PR: Smile, Dial, Name Drop, Pray.”  The comments on the TechCrunch blog following the piece were mostly cynical toward PR folks and mostly painted all of us in the industry with the same, unfavorable broad brush. continue reading