Is PR Necessary?
March 14th, 2008 by Robert GustafsonPosted in Marketing |
As Space Shank begins to move forward as a company, Alec and I have to start making decisions that any startup company needs to make. For some guidance, our friends at Script Magazine forwarded us to Mark Cuban’s blog with his rules for startups.
Sticking out among the rules was number 11:
11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.
We have done well for ourselves up to this point doing our own grassroots PR. When we have some news we spread the word amongst our friends around the web and the entertainment industry who have so far been happy to forward on our work. But we are currently being advised by a New Media PR specialist, and at some point she will want to get paid for her PR work (and rightly so).
Alec’s Response to Mark Cuban:
He’s right of course, unless you are too busy doing the things you do that make your business run. then it’s a question of resources. do you think he had PR people working for his business before they sold to Yahoo? You bet he did, because he was too busy running a multi-million dollar company to email bloggers. maybe i’m wrong about that, but my guess is that he would say “do your own PR until you have enough money to hire a PR firm, then, instead, hire your own employee.” maybe that’s a more reasonable path. Then again, our [potential] PR person is not a traditional PR person in this situation. She’s already brought us work — there’s value in exposing us to an audience that we didn’t have access to before…
So there’s always an exception to the rule Mr. Cuban. And here’s hoping we get to the point that Alec describes above (and soon!).
Update from Alec: Cuban’s rules were a response to Jason Calcanis… and I’m a fan of Guy Kawasaki’s DIY PR.
