Every industry has its bad apples, the ones who just give the whole profession a black eye. Public relations, for some reason, seems to have more than it’s share. But there is a big difference between unscrupulous villians and simple bad judgement. The recent blunder by Rolex’s PR practitioners is not the former, but the latter.

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Today I was told that an industrial trade publication we had selected to use for a client of ours was not going to run a print edition of their publication. Instead they were offering online ads on their website as well as e-newsletter sponsorship in lieu of print advertising. The ad rep positioned this as great opportunity considering that you could reach 40,000 prospects each month at a fraction of the cost of print. And they could prove these numbers with analytical data that would substantiate his claim (it did). He also went on to state that the future is now for trade publications to go digital as more and more professionals glean their news from the web.

I must say they have an excellent web presence, lots of fresh content, good articles and a clear argument for being positioned as innovators with an electronic only publication. It appears to be working for PC Magazine who just went all digital, why not for them?

 Just one problem- there is currently no advertisers on their site.

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You brand is like a shark – not because it strikes fear into your competitors (though it should) – but because it needs to be in constant motion to stay alive. John Gezema, the chief insights officer of Young & Rubicam Group, coined a term for it: energized differentiation. While Gezema works with consumer companies, you’d better believe that the same core principles of energized differentiation apply to B2B brands.

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