Most PR departments have several staff that tasked with communicating with various stakeholders: media, customers, employees, investors, etc.
At Naked Conversations over the weekend, Shel blogged about what PR must do to recast the press release in light of blogging. Mike D., who is starting a cool new media aggregation product called Newsvine suggested that PR “act as a sort of ombudsman (wikipedia def.) to any issues customers might bring to the table.”
This is a bold and innovative idea.
Can you imagine the media buzz if a company would be so transparent as to assign someone to represent the interests of the consumer?
Blogs are ideally suited for this kind of interaction.
The suggestions and concerns collected (and addressed) could then be taken into account as the organization developed new products and as it formulated its marketing campaign.
Who wants to do it? Would you say that Robert Scoble’s blog is already doing some of that for Microsoft? Certainly, that is what Scoble and Shel Israel did as they wrote their book online, Naked Conversations.
We shall see if any big companies take on this idea. It certainly beats the 1-800 number with the endless loop:
“We'd really like to help you, press 1 to listen to our automated menu. If none of these items addresses your concern, please press # to return to the main menu.”
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I reckon the press release needs rethinkinginthe light of the increasing impact of mobile technologies as well as blogs….
I think an ombudsman is, by definition, someone who relates to the public, but I wouldn’t want to confuse the objective ombudsman with the agenda-toting PR pro.
The credibility of an ombudsman lies in his or her independence from the organization. For example, while Scoble might be performing a great PR function, he is by no means objective about Microsoft.