Stephen Waddington on ‘Death of the media database?’

Posted by Stephen Waddington
on 1st April 2010
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ripIn a future where reputation is governed by the strength of your network, what is the role of a media database? Databases break a basic rule of network theory by providing individuals with a shortcut into the network.

What then is the future for the media intelligence industry? Firms such as Cision and Gorkana have built sizable businesses by providing PR execs with databases to build media lists to push out press announcements.

The flaw in this model was apparent long before the arrival of social media. Media databases are a crude instrument in the hands of an unskilled PR exec enabling PR fodder to be sprayed out to hundreds of contacts at the push of a button. Adding another 100 names to circulation lists on the off chance that a release might stick is trivial.

But with journalist in-boxes crammed with press releases the craft of media relations – networking in a fairly raw form – is more important than ever. PR execs can still create cut through by establishing strong media relationships.

The solution lies in training for the PR industry but the parallel challenge for database companies is that they have no control over how customers use their product. When asked to provide the size of a typical distribution list the media database firms I contacted were all reluctant to provide a figure.

The Inconvenient PR Truth campaign called for an opt-in mechanism for journalists as a means of eliminating PR spam. Unless the media intelligence companies take a proactive approach to tackling how firms use their data PR spam will continue to get worse until journalists cease to use email.

What’s going to happen if media intelligence companies increasingly extend their database reach to the social web and include bloggers or Twitter users?

It’s a rhetorical question.

Stephen Waddington (@wadds) is the managing director of multi-sector PR agency Speed.

Recent comments

  • Media databases aim to say "Hey PR person, you need to find media peeps with an interest in X, who influence others in respect to X; here you go."

    This predicates that all those with influence in X work in traditional media (or quasi-traditional media aka high profile bloggers). But with the incremental cost of pushing out a message so low, and W and Y being so close to X, as we can all see surely, the message gets sent to those with interest in W and Y too, often to their annoyance, whilst missing new influence mechanisms altogether.

    But influence is now visibly more complex. Indeed, 'twas always so, but it was impossible to visualise and tease out then. Now it's not impossible, just difficult.

    The PR industry has been distracted, indeed hypnotised, by tools and services designed to identify the influencers based on influencer-centric approaches. This is wrong. As always, an influencer is only such upon exerting actual influence. We have no choice as a profession but to adopt an influence-centric approach.

    I had the pleasure of presenting on this very topic at Social Media Bootcamp 2010 on 31st March 2010, and once the presentation was up on slideshare.net, it became their most tweeted document and their most discussed on facebook. So that's nice. Love to know what you think.

    http://www.marcomprofessional....

  • Excellent post, and equally excellent response from Alex. These are important issues that media database providers can't just ignore by saying 'we have no control over how our product is used'. We may not have total control, but we do have influence - both in the way our systems are designed and in the education we provide to users.

    You may be interested to hear that in the last few weeks we actually withdrew access to FeaturesExec from a recent client because we felt they were abusing the distribution side of the service. An extreme course of action in an extreme case, but it shows we take this issue seriously.

    The whole reason our FeaturesExec service exists is because as a journalist I felt technology could be better used improve communication between journalists and the PR community. I will never consider that objective achieved, there will always be ways to evolve and make it easier for both PR professionals and journalists to do their jobs.

  • cisionmiller

    Alex is absolutely right to highlight the value of education - that's something to which Cision is equally committed - but there is also an imperative to develop the database technology, and the strategies that drive it, in the right way. And the right way, both ethically and commercially, means creating systems that reward both communicators and journalists.

    We've been working on this problem for some time (http://gettingink.typepad.com/..., and the first fruits can be seen both in our CisionPoint software, and "in the wild" on sites like www.journalisttweets.com. In both cases, media monitoring and analysis integrated with the media database equals, (in the hands of a skilled PR, natch) a deeper understanding of individual journalists and their place in the media network.

    As the analysis and integration become more automated, smarter, so what was a “media database” becomes a network map that reflects the real-time status of its “nodes”.

  • Steve, you’re absolutely right, Gorkana is a “crude instrument in the hands of an unskilled PR exec”. That’s why we’re so keen to help develop the professionals in our sector. Gorkana is a huge timesaver for the more experienced practitioner, allowing them to spend more time to research what a journalist is interested in and providing advice to their clients.

    Your recent interview* with Gorkana Consumer Director, Celina Maguire, highlighted some of the ways in which we try to support the PR industry with better journalist targeting, including our rolling programme of breakfast briefings where PRs can hear first-hand from senior journalists what they will or won’t cover, and how they prefer to be contacted.

    Gorkana is run by former PRs and journalists so getting PRs to engage with journalists in an intelligent way is at the centre of everything we do, but from a technical stand point, there’s more to achieve to stem abuse. Many of the journalists tell us that what we do helps them maintain their networks too, so we’re adding value to both sides of the equation. Watch this space, as we’ve got some really exciting ideas in the pipeline. In the meantime we’re not planning to put journalists in the dark just yet.

    * Gorkana: Borkowski crack comment spotlights serious issue of PR spam - http://www.speedcommunications...

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