Luke Armour – Digital Marketing and Public Relations Observations, Commentary, Frivolity

Last year a professor pointed out this amazing 10-minute online video entitled “Epic” (Update: I just found out there’s a newer version here.) that I’ve been obsessed with ever since. I’ve been dying to talk to someone about it. To date I’ve found nobody else (other than my class) who has seen it. Our professor showed it to us under the guise that it had been someone’s graduate research project. I’ve been unable to verify. It’s pretty cool. I just find it incredibly fascinating and a little scary. Not scary in the “I see dead people” sense, but scary because I see this consumer-generated content concept, specifically the blogosphere phenomenon, as actually headed in this direction.

Hardcopy newspaper readership is down, online credibility is reasonably questioned (or should be), and – as my colleague Beth points out to me as often as she can – the blogosphere is like a big wheel of “news” that may or may not actually go anywhere. Some blog writers resource other blogs content without actually adding any value. What’s the point? Where’s your opinion? Okay, some would argue that having an opinion isn’t the same as adding value, but at least it’s a start. It shows a little effort.

And how about a little fact checking? Traditional journalists are held to pretty high standards. Shouldn’t people on the ‘net who scream to be taken seriously be held accountable for what they write, as well?

I’m interested in your thoughts on the Epic video. With all the craziness going on with Google right now, I find this conjecture irresistible. Is this something we should fear? Is it something that could happen? What will this mean to PR folks? Where will we send our press releases!? *gasp!* Is 2014 too far a prediction for this to be happening? Let me know, I’m craving to talk about this.

UPDATE: Apparently I’ve missed the boat on this. Neville Hobson blogged about this last June and just posted something today (2/4) about it. What he writes is even creepier than I could have imagined.

Filed under: Future of PR, One to watch, Public Relations | Tagged: Graduate School | 4 Comments »