If there’s any validity to this competition, that would be the headline at the end. Alas, that’s not going to happen, so we will announce the real winner now.

All other PR bloggers are nibbling at the edges, Richard Edelman is square in the center, week after week, post after post. He deserves recognition for the most important, insightful, useful and consistent blog focusing on public relations.

When Richard started 6 AM four years ago “blog” was still a new term. As the namesake of the world’s largest independent PR firm, he was a visible and vociferous proponent of social media and the “new” PR. He staked his ground early with “Pioneer Thinking” and Edelman flourished because of it. Along the way Edelman made some very public mistakes; they were also taking the biggest risks. Through the mistakes, apologies and corrections, we all learned.

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What is going on with the shellacking of The Flack by Beyond the Hype in the PR Week blog competition? The lopsided results point to several problems with this competition that the PR industry, in its slap-happy embrace of anything that creates PR for PR, is not willing to acknowledge.

There is no criteria for this competition. It is not for the most effective, worthwhile, important or insightful blog. You are asked to vote simply on impulse or prejudice.

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Combat PR

I should have known better than to go mano o mano with a Marine. Frank X. Shaw at Glass House, President of Waggener Edstrom and former Marine public affairs officer, creamed PRBlogNews in the first round of PRWeek blog competition last week, 58% – 42%. Late Thursday afternoon we were knotted at 50/50. An hour or so later The Flack IM’d me to gloat about how badly PRBlogNews was being trounced.  What happened?

These online surveys are suspect.  Any 12 year old can game the results and legitimately Wagg Ed, I am sure, has more than enough computers company wide to click the boss to victory. Or, as “TJA” comments, I did myself a disservice by bashing the competition, even in good fun. Considering the results, perhaps he’s right. But then we wouldn’t be having good fun – we would simply be spinning PR for PR and there’s way too much of that.

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” …. this is feeling a lot like a presidential election where it doesn’t matter who you vote for because the results are pre-programmed.” That’s the comment, among many, that sent us reaching out to the lawyers. 

For two days now friends, clients, and the media have complained to us about the difficulty of voting for PRBlogNews in the PRWeek blog competition. Yesterday at approximately 4:00PM EST PRBlogNews was 50/50 with Glass House and then irregular voting patterns emerged that lead to a surge by Glass House. This coincided with outreach by a Wagg Ed shill that suggested the reported Naked PR practiced there was about to be uncovered.

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The PRWeek blog competition has been a revealing exercise in the PR business examining itself. As if we needed further proof - we are a stilted profession with no sense of humor and no imagination. Basically, that is why, no matter how hard we try, we are unable to grab a measurable piece of the advertising/marketing budget with this newly packaged “social media” hoohah.   

I am sure that Frank X. Shaw at Glass House (my opposition) is a fine and honorable man. His bio says that he was public affairs officer in the Marines, he heads the Microsoft business, and he is president of a PR firm that has grown into a well-known powerhouse. It’s just that his blog posts are flat out boring and typical of an exec who must protect his turf, watch his back, mind what he says, not rile clients, appease the employees and pretend to be insightful and informative. That’s okay, it’s good for the President to have a blog, but let’s call it for what it is.

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