John Elsasser, editor of The Strategist (PRSA), invited me to join a panel of high-tech pr execs to discuss state of the industry. It was a mix of agency and corporate people. We didn't have the most insightful conversation.... but it was interesting to hear some of the ideas.

The Public Relations Strategist

Moderated by Strategist Contributing Editor Elizabeth Howard, the group addressed technology's impact on the profession, the profession's impact on technology and how PR pros can survive in one of the most volatile economic sectors.

Roundtable Participants

Robert Dowling
Executive Vice President
Director, Technology Practice
Ruder Finn
New York

Burt Wolder
Public Relations
Vice President, Executive Communications
AT&T
(Wolder retired on April 1 as planned after 24 years at AT&T. He's now an executive PR consultant.)

Lisa Vallee-Smith, APR
CEO
Airfoil Public Relations, Inc.
Detroit

Reid Walker
Director - Global Marketing Communications
GE Global eXchange Services
Gaithersburg, Md.
(On May 5, Walker started as vice president of corporate communications for Honeywell's Specialty Materials division, based in Morristown, N.J.)

Aaron Heinrich
Senior Vice President, Global Technology
Manning Selvage & Lee
San Francisco
(In June, Heinrich went to work for Outcast Communications, a high-tech PR agency in San Francisco.)

Stacey Doherty, APR
Vice President, Public Relations
Thinkbig Media
Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Dan Ginsburg
Senior Vice President
Porter Novelli Convergence Group
New York

Elizabeth Howard: What impact has technology had on the PR profession?

Burt Wolder: Some people expected the Internet to change everything, and it didn't. But, [just] because it did not change everything, it would be a mistake to assume that it didn't change anything. There have been some fundamental changes. Internet technology is a great leveler - it wipes out the middle man, allows people to establish new business relationships, enables PR people to move faster and requires the development of different skills.

In terms of what's next, it used to be that a product life cycle was 30 or 40 years long in the United States. Then it moved to about 30 or 40 weeks. Now it's moving even faster. Sales don't just drop off, they disappear. The pace of change is only going to accelerate. The productivity revolution that we've seen so much of in the last six years has only begun.

Robert Dowling: This real-time world that we live in has added great new opportunities for the PR function. However, it has also added an equal number of challenges: We get out information now in real time, so it's much more difficult to control the messages.

Lisa Vallee-Smith: The greatest impact the technology bubble had was making public relations relevant as an above-the-line marketing discipline for the first time in decades. And what was so exciting about it was just being at the table and being able to talk product strategy and market strategy.

Howard: How is the PR profession going to help grow dot-com companies that still exist?

Howard: What advantages did PR firms that handled tech companies have over larger, more established firms? And if you're a tech department within a larger firm, what did that department add to the firm? Let's look at it in terms of what might eventually get us in a position to contribute to corporate strategy.

Dowling: [Newsletter editor] Paul Holmes said something interesting during a presentation he gave to Ruder Finn [earlier this year]. And that was that much of the fallout and the crises - around corporate governance in particular - spoke to an opportunity for PR counselors to come in and take a larger role and a larger seat at that table.

Ironically, that didn't happen, and it certainly hasn't happened in our experience. In fact, PR professionals are often blamed for some of the hype and root causes of some of those corporate governance issues. It's something that Ruder Finn spends a lot of time thinking about - how to position ourselves as an old-line conservative, longtime, independent agency, with something that's new and exciting and that speaks a new language to a new generation.

Wolder: One of the advantages of having the practice inside the agency from the client standpoint is the ability to connect to a new generation of [technology] media.

On the other side, kids count. They're the next generation of consumers. The dynamics of brand loyalty today are dramatically different than they were even five or 10 years ago. So being connected to the next generation of consumers is a fundamental priority for any business that intends to be around six years from now.

Walker: I always say it's about the team and the people you have on your team, whether it's a big agency or a small agency. We've developed such a close rapport with the agency we have now - we have an extranet where we put all the information together - my team and their team, what we're working on every minute of the day. We talk to them on a regular basis.

Howard: How has media relations changed? How has your relationship with the press changed?

Doherty: In the beginning of my career, a press conference was not that unusual. Now it's absolutely unheard of. The sense of urgency, the fact that these people used to have two beats and now they have 10 - they're under tremendous stress.

You have to have an incredible story. You have to think it through. And you have to consider the fact that they want things immediately. They'll send you an e-mail saying, "Answer these three questions and get back to me." You have to be incredibly responsive.

Walker: I've seen a huge change in reporters' focus. Now they are so stretched that we can almost package the story for them and pull together three or four of our customers in, say, retail, or manufacturing or auto that are doing something innovative and new. And then get our CEO, put a roundtable together, get the Computer World editor on the phone, let him moderate it. They will use the story almost completely. It gives them all the data they need.

But the one-on-one contact is so important. We still do regular media tours. We still go to San Francisco, London and New York on a regular basis, and sit down with those guys for 20-30 minutes for coffee. And we've gotten great coverage from every one of those media tours. So I would never give up going to see them, going to talk to them. You never know what kind of story is going to happen from that. That will continue. The online newsrooms and all those other things just give them instant access to the tactical details. They're still going to want to talk to somebody at the business.

Ginsburg: I agree. Technology is helpful, it has sped things up incredibly. However, face-to-face meetings are still our most important interactions with media by far. Sitting down with them, sitting down with a chief strategy officer, a technology officer, or even a CEO, allows them to get a depth of understanding in a quick way that they can't get from looking at a Web site. You can get an interesting story out of the interview, but in many cases, more importantly, you've developed a relationship with that reporter so that there's a long-term understanding of what your business is about, so they can fit you into stories and come to you as a future resource.

Dowling: If you provide the types of case studies, the research, the spokespeople, and you manage to provide that at the right time - following an issue that's breaking; something that is relevant to the media - then you've got the magic combination. But it's difficult to do when your client is saying, "Where's my ink?"

Howard: What are the threats and opportunities for high-tech public relations?

Walker: There's a lot of change in the media industry. Everybody's a publisher with the Internet. But the challenge of trying to reach all those audiences and be effective hasn't become the huge issue I thought it would be - it's an opportunity.

The Internet media is here to stay, and it will grow because the cost [of producing it] is so low. As more broadband hits offices, we will see more video and interactive media opportunities than we ever did before.