Yesterday, in show #2 of the Better Desirable Roasted Communications Café Podcast, Lee Hopkins and I talked about virtual project teams . I believe smart independent communicators, meeting each other in the PR/communication Oort cloud, will soon form temporary, virtual "agencies" to serve clients.
We've seen a bit of this already. Neville Hobson and Fredrik Wackå serve a client together, and Hugh McLeod and David Parmet work together on both English Cut and Stormhoek.
Lee, who describes himself as "one of Australia's leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment," a claim I have chosen not to examine closely, rightly points out an obvious issue, one raised in the old New Yorker cartoon: on the Internet, no one knows you are a dog. Lee notes:
"With an example of the requirement to launch a multi-country PR or marcom campaign, Allan correctly suggests that two consultants in different parts of the world, say, Adelaide and Copenhagen, may well know more about each other and be of more value to a campaign than two senior executives from a global PR company with offices in Sydney and Copenhagen.
"The obvious leap is that should that campaign require (from a European base) an Australian element, a North American element, a Canadian element, inter alia, then the Euro-based PR consultant would be able to tap into the local expertise of people he/she already knows and has built a relationship with, rather than the faceless executives of a global firm.
"However, having slept on the idea, I can see a ‘challenge’.
"Despite the ‘trust’ relationship that might be built up between two online-corresponding consultants, let us not forget that on the internet no one need know that you’re a dog. I can create any persona I like, and if I creatively or schizophrenically hold ‘true’ to that persona, over time I will cement that personality into the hearts and minds of others who repeatedly correspond with me.
"So too with Allan’s virtual global PR team comprising of a free-moving, project-based, fast-evolving and fast-dissolving amalgamation of consultants. Whilst the executives from the global PR firm may not know each other, they do have the ‘trust’ base of being employed by the same company, with hopefully the same values and measures for success, and disciplinary measures for failure."
I don't think any responsible consultant would entrust a client to a colleague who is only an online correspondent. But let's say Lee wanted to hire me to handle some work for him here in Copenhagen -- would we have to meet? Well, no, because much of the PR/communication Oort cloud is connected through past experience, work, personal knowledge, professional credentials. In this case, I could suggest to Lee: a) "A.B." a highly-credentialed IABC colleague, whom we both know, sent me to Berlin to do focus groups and seemed satisfied, b) "C.D.", another highly-credentialed IABC colleague, and I have worked together, on several association tasks c) "E.F.", another IABC leader, might be worth asking.
(Of course, at this point, it can become maddeningly difficult to put the nail in the quicksilver. A.B. and C.D. could truthfully say they've "known" me 13 years... but would have to confess, on cross-examination, that they've been in the same room with me.... probably not more than 18 hours in 13 years. And there are IABC leaders who shudder at the thought of 18 hours in a room with me. But let's leave that, and move on.)
Lee's point, of course, is do your due diligence. I believe that is fairly easy to do in the blogosphere, and more easily than in an international agency, for a couple of reasons. First, I think it's hard, though certainly not impossible, to fake it in the blogosphere. Stru***tte tried, did a pretty good job at the outset, but was outed in less than a week. Second, most of the PR/communication cloud has been around a while. Due diligence is easy enough. Many of the people I read are IABC and PRSA leaders (past and present), award winners (easily checked), or show up at conferences where, in some face time, you get a sense of them.
Frankly, after the PR agency scandals we've been seeing? I'll take that any day over agencies "hopefully with the same values and measures for success, and disciplinary measures for failure."
Technorati Tags: Allan Jenkins, Better Desirable Roasted Communications Cafe, communication ethics, Lee Hopkins, Tag 10, virtual teams
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I've actually never met dave Parmet in the flesh… but I guess you could say we were luckier than most…
…which is why I used you two as an example. I think you can usually get a fairly good sense of colleagues over the blogosphere, if you follow their writing closely. I believe Hobson and Wackå didn't meet until fairly into the engagement.
You coming to Reboot this year? Let's have another beer.
Hugh Who?
But all seriousness aside, in the case of EC, certainly the three of us (Tom, Hugh, me) knowing each other's blogs helped move things forward considerably in the early going.
You're right, Allan. Neville and I started working together before we had met. We have discussed this quite a bit and I think I knew Neville better than I knew most of the people I worked with when I was employed at an agency (100 employees approx.). I had been reading him daily for a year or so, and vice versa.
What interests me even more is how the client accepted it. I had the contact with the client and I was open, saying I think Neville could help us but I have never met him… He trusted me, though, and was willing to include Neville too.
What does this mean generally? No idea, really. But perhaps that virtual agencies will become more and more common, but that they'll be firmly based in strong personal relationships with the client?
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