Picture this. It’s Sunday morning. You have no plans. You roll out of bed and grab a cup of coffee. Now… what’s in your other hand? For most of us these days, the answer is “my phone.” But are you scrolling Instagram with that time? Or –- alternatively -– are you reading a magazine?
The usual wisdom when it comes to pitching a conference or webinar session is to offer up someone from your marketing department. I want to give you a counter proposal: find the most technical person in your shop that you can give your talk and try to avoid pitching your CMO at all costs.
Last week’s Techonomy NYC 19 event attracted a small, passionate audience that heard brilliant and inspirational speakers. Amid the topics of IoT, 5G and AI were appearances by social media pioneer Jeremiah Owyang, Bank of America chief operations and technology office Cathy Bessant, and two presidential candidates, Andrew Yang and John Delaney.
Wired EIC Nicholas Thompson steers one of the most venerable brands in publishing. That being the case, Wired tends to be tough to pitch successfully. That’s why PR pros will want to read what Nick had to say to us last week in New York City.
Myth: B2B IT publishers sell advertising to tech vendors. Their media brands employ dozens of reporters and editors who weigh pitches about emerging companies and technologies. The best pitches bring the best coverage. Reality: B2B IT publishers are digital manufacturers, mass-producing behavior that signals buying interest. Here’s what’s really going on.
eWeek (formerly PC Week) is well into its 36th year and never has it been more different. Under the leadership of EIC Chris Preimesberger and QuinStreet top management, eWeek this month pulled back from news and analysis and refocused on helping buyers decide what to buy. PR folks won’t like that.
Lewis DVorkin, the man who transformed Forbes.com, is inventing again. Now an adjunct professor at Cal State Northridge and the CEO of a startup called Newsroom.ai, Lewis has built a content management system — Newsroom Studio — designed specifically for smartphones. Its storytelling capabilities — in the form of tap stories — may amaze you.
Context and emotion aren’t just coming — they’re here. The New York Times has begun classifying its articles by the emotions they generate. Sirius/XM recently launched several new audio channels programmed for listening while partying, barbecuing or working out. The newest clean-slate industry in America, cannabis, sells its products by context and emotion, too.
What makes Techonomy different? Founder and EIC David Kirkpatrick asks himself that every day. When David launched the brand in 2010, few event producers addressed how technology was transforming society. In 2010, President Obama finally got around to sending a Tweet. In 2016, candidate Donald Trump averaged 375 Tweets a month.
TechCrunch Extra Crunch this week posted a pair of articles containing admonishment and advice for tech PR pros. The top portion of the posts does appear for free in regular TechCrunch. The full text is available only to TC EC subscribers. We hereby excerpt (in fair-use fashion) what our readers most need to know.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Registration is now open for the ‘Bloomberg Tech’ F2F event, being held Jun. 4-5 in San Francisco. With the current early-bird discount, a ticket runs $1,500. There is no better way to build relationships with Bloomberg’s notoriously elusive tech reporters.
Well, for now it’s Jim Jordan… but such news illustrates the kind of world we seem to be headed for. Adweek has the details, subscription required.
No “predictions” post will appear on this site. That said, quite a number of subscribers have asked for a Zoom/MS Teams presentation on what 2025 will bring. A conversation is precisely the right tool for the job. After the election — and with AI transforming publishing and life — “2025” is best discussed among peers, not predicted. So if you’d like to have a confidential group exchange on what stands to unfold, and why, and how comms pros can come out on top in spite of it all, drop a line and we shall schedule something.
According to Adweek, Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky were in merger talks for eleven and a half months before the transaction was announced this week. Amazing that it didn’t leak.
Should PR pros stop visiting X, with all its lies and hate? It’s only going to get worse. Or are tidbits from targets too important to walk away from? Click here to watch tech edit vet David Strom and I disagree (at high speed) about this, as one compelling visual after another pops up on your screen. In 2025, SWMS will officially launch “SWMS Sound Thinking,” designed to be “argumentative insight in six minutes or less.” Each segment will explore a timely and controversial topic of interest to tech comms pros. This prototype runs 5:25. Hope you enjoy it — feedback vital and welcome! –Sam
New EIC Jamie Heller has asked her reporters to start going on camera — for the BI TikTok channel — to explain the big, deep-divey story they just published. Other publications do this — especially archival Fortune. BI is now on that too. Game on.
