ExecTec - PR Secrets or Not

A disagreement broke out in the blogospher this weekend and at the risk of being accused of standing by and yelling, "Fight, Fight, Fight" I think the whole thing makes for a great ExecTec dinner topic.

So things got started with Brian Solis who is the Principal of FutureWorks, a PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley and also blogs at PR 2.0. wrote a guest post for Techcrunch.com

The post titled PR Secrets for Startups outlines among other things 12 secrets for PR:

#1 Understand You?re Not the Only Story in Town
#2 Pick the Right Person or Team to Lead PR.
#3 Participation is Marketing
#4 Identify The Target Audience For Every Step Of Your Growth
#5 Don?t Launch on Mondays
#6 No Two Bloggers or Journalists are Created Equal
#7 Measure Success, Not Traffic
#8 Customize the News For Each Influencer to Make His Or Her Job Easier
#9 Get a Spokesperson
#10 Your Company Blog is More Powerful Than You May Think
#11 Blogger Relations Extends from the ?A-List? to the Magic Middle
#12 Follow the Conversations and Join In

Now shortly there after Loïc Le Meur of Seesmic called foul with his post PR Secrets, Bull____ in which he outlined 7 "Not Secrets".

#1 Who cares about stories, you can get traction and users if you have a good product
#2 Do not pick a PR person, be the spokesperson of the company
#3 Participation is NOT marketing
#4 There are no "targets" either, we're just people, not an audience!
#5 Who cares about the launch day and date.
#6 Do not see bloggers and journalists as target either, they will ignore you
#7 Do not measure success and traffic from PR

Who is right and who is wrong is still being debated and argued but to be sure the world of PR (one of the older professions) has been going through a bit of a metamorphosis of late. New tools combined with old rules seem to be pushing the envelope and many peoples comfort zones.

Some come out and join us as we explore one of the stickier topics in business and how one can communicate a message to best effect.

As always, there is no better way to meet and connect with other executives then over dinner and conversation. $21 in advance via PayPal or $25 at the event gets you a full dinner, drink and the best networking around.