A moment of silence for traditional PR. Seattle entrepreneur and angel investor Andy Sack declares that “PR is dead.” As Sack explains on his blog, “I declared PR (public relations) dead. It’s the past. It’s all about social media now. And social media is a more complex, more fragmented game to play. PR agencies of the past will have a hard time adapting–in my opinion.” Of course, not everyone has been as quick to roll out the hearse. Some of Sack’s readers offered up a spirited defense of traditional PR. In fact, one commenter went so far as to claim that social media is dead.

Social media certainly is not dead, but neither is PR. It’s just evolving. Traditional PR just doesn’t work well in the social media environment, and the more people become involved in social media, the less traditional PR will work.

By the way, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is on Twitter now, @BillGates.

Under the direction of Jim Farly, Group VP at Ford and Connie Fontaine, manager of brand content there, Undercurrent decided to depart from the viral marketing rule book. Bud told me they were not interested in the classic early adopters, the people who act as influencers for the rest of us. Undercurrent wanted to make contact with a very specific group of people, a passionate group of culture creators.

… I think the Fiesta Movement gives us new clarity. It’s a three-step process.

• Engage culturally creative consumers to create content.
• Encourage them to distribute this content on social networks and digital markets in the form of a digital currency.
• Craft this [as] a way that it rebounds to the credit of the brand, turning digital currency (and narrative meaning) into a value for the brand.

Ford’s success comes because it didn’t forget that the “social” in “social media” refers to people, not the electronic pipes that connect them, and that people – online or off – are still people, who still act in normal, human ways.

Dirt is Good: Unilever Marketing Campaign

Knowledge@Wharton takes a look at the future of advertising in the age of social media:

It hasn’t caught on yet in the U.S., but a global ad campaign for Unilever’s army of laundry detergents — sold in Asia as Omo, in France as Skip, and by other names around the planet — hailing that “Dirt is Good,” is considered by experts to be a perfect example of a new path for marketing in the 21^st century.

The marketing push merges memorable images of children splashing in mud with a customer-engaging social message — “every child has a right to play and explore.” Some claim the ad helped push Singapore to increase recess time at its academics-heavy, stress-inducing schools.

The early success of Unilever’s advertising strategy is exactly the type of information that company marketing executives and ad agencies need to discuss as they struggle to develop new ideas to handle the cataclysmic changes in technology and communications — from Tivo to Twitter — that have altered the ways companies interact with customers.

Interesting comment in the story from from Kevin Werbach, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, on the subject of what change the Internet brings to the relationship between brands and consumers: “The Internet is becoming more ubiquitous, more social and also more immediate, and that is upsetting all sorts of business models.”

Common Sense: Anonymous Blogging is a Permalink to America's Past

The Federal Trade Commission has released new regulations will add a layer of difficulty for companies hoping to promote their products, services or point-of-view via blogs and other social media. As the New York Times reports, the FTC…

…said it would revise rules about endorsements and testimonials in advertising that had been in place since 1980. The new regulations are aimed at the rapidly shifting new-media world and how advertisers are using bloggers and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to pitch their wares. The F.T.C. said that beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.

The regulations deserve to face a court challenge on First Amendment grounds, but until they do and are struck down, companies and organizations that want to pitch their products or services via the social media should implement procedures to help bloggers and other social media users to comply with the FTC regs.

It is unclear how the FTC’s new regulations will affect political bloggers, who often accept “free” access to candidates and political events that they are writing about, or companies which are using the social media to promote a point of view or message rather than a commercial product or service, though Mesh Media Strategies is fairly confident that relevant case law would protect such communications from FTC meddling.

Transparency – the apparent intent of the FTC regulations – is a generally good principle for businesses and bloggers to follow, but there are times when it is legitimate for a company to prefer a measure of anonymity in its communications – especially when politics and government are involved. These days, for example, some health care-related businesses might fear the consequences of coming out publicly in opposition to the current administration’s push for centralizing control of health care in the hands of the federal government, yet still wish to try to influence the debate by working through third-party communicators such as independent bloggers. Or conservative Christian home-schoolers afraid of heavy-handed judges and public-school bureaucrats might prefer to write their blog posts regarding home-schooling, politics and such under a pseudonym.

That is – and should remain – their First Amendment right to do so, and such anonymous writing is a tradition older than the United States of America. In January of 1776, the ppolitical pamphlet Common Sense, urging for revolution and independence, was published anonymously. Only later was the identity of the author – Thomas Paine – revealed.

“Twitter gave us an up-to-the-minute ability to take what would normally be a crisis situation and make it just another event,” says Mr. Bianchi. “You can’t do that with a 1-800-number.”

But Twitter isn’t an automatic cure-all for customer service woes.

Entrepreneurs should bear in mind that Twitter is unlikely to be of help in dealing with a problem if it isn’t used regularly otherwise, says Shel Israel, author of “Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods.”

“If you just go to Twitter when you have a crisis, you will have no followers and no credibility,” he says. “The key to using Twitter effectively is to build trust with people who are relevant to your business.”

Steve Fusek, owner of Fusek’s True Value LLC, a hardware store in Indianapolis, now has an employee dedicated to updating the shop’s Twitter profile during business hours. Mr. Fusek says consumers expect to see frequent tweets and swift responses to customer-service inquiries they post.

“You can’t just sign up and leave it. You have to have someone on it,” he says. “If you’re not legitimate, you’ll be found out quickly.”

Social media works best when it enables real conversation, rather than being used to carry canned marketing spin. Transparency is the currency of social media.

There’s lots of talk about the Twitter Effect and how it can make or break a movie. When it came to Bruno & GI Joe – thumbs down! In the case of Inglorious Basterds and District 9 – thumbs up! If Twitter has this effect on improving movie ticket sales, do we even need critics anymore?

The Twitter effect is the latest example of online viral marketing, and just as real as the old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing, but enhanced and magnified by technology. Where in the past a person might have told a few friends and co-workers their positive or negative opinion of a new movie, influencing their friends’ or co-workers’ decision about whether or not to see it, today that same person can tell hundreds, or even thousands, of people instantaneously, via Twitter and other social media tools like blogs, Facebook and MySpace. And they can use other interactive media, such as YouTube, to post videos praising or mocking a new movie – or your new product or service or campaign.

You can’t stop the Twitter Effect, or control it, but you can make it easy for your customers, clients, supporters and fans to use social media to your benefit.

Your challenge as the owner of a business or leader an organization or campaign is to market your services, tell your story and communicate your message to the right audience using the right media formats and the right social media tools. The first step we recommend is to ignore simplistic headlines that declare that certain groups of people do or do not use or consume any certain medium or technology. There are teens who Tweet and adults on MySpace, and senior citizens who use Skype.

More than half (57 percent) said their peers used social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter for self-promotion, narcissism and attention-seeking. And 92 percent said they used MySpace or Facebook regularly. Two-thirds said their generation was more self-promoting, overconfident and attention-seeking than others.

The survey was conducted by Jean Twenge, associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic, but not everyone agrees with its conclusions.

“We all kind of put on our best face when presenting ourselves in social situations, online or offline,” says Nicole Ellison, an assistant professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing who studies social networking. “When good things happen to me, I put that on Facebook, and when bad things happen, I also put it on Facebook. It’s a structure to receive emotional support.”Houston Dougharty, vice president for student affairs at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, says today’s students are altruistic and care about helping others, which doesn’t say “narcissism” to him. “I think there’s a negative connotation to narcissism that I would not want to promote as a description of this generation.” Social networking is “a celebration of individuality and sort of promotion of one’s own personality,” he says.

The best use of social networking – whether it be a blog, or Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or other tools – to promote your personal brand, business or campaign is not based in narcissism, but in reaching out to others, to share your expertise with them and establish a conversation.

Because of their cheap fares and high customer service rankings, both airlines have legions of loyal travelers. Part of that loyalty can also be traced to fresh marketing that tries to put some fun in flying. JetBlue’s tongue-in-cheek ads have urged executives to get off their private jets and fly JetBlue. In Southwest TV ads, CEO Gary Kelly told customers “It’s On” in New York.

Both airlines are on YouTube. Blogs and Twitter are also important parts of their brands.

JetBlue’s social media efforts include a robust Flickr photostream. Southwest’s highly regarded blog, Nuts About Southwest, also links to a Flickr photo gallery. On YouTube, JetBlue is here and Southwest is here – and Southwest has the clear lead over JetBlue in terms of channel views and subscribers on YouTube. If JetBlue has a recently updated blog, it isn’t easy to locate – though the former blog of a former CEO shows up high in the Google results.

You can follow Southwest on Twitter @SouthwestAir, while JetBlue is on Twitter @JetBlue – where its more than 1 million followers is more than double the current number of people following Southwest on Twitter.

Neither airline features their YouTube, Flickr, Twitter or Facebook links on their consumer-facing home pages, though Southwest includes a text link to “our blog” – which does feature its social media efforts. The Southwest blog even links to CEO Gary Kelly’s LinkedIn profile. (Looking at the LinkedIn-created pages for each company. JetBlue’s is better than Southwest’s.

Although JetBlue is trouncing Southwest on Twitter, on balance it is clear Southwest has the edge in understanding and using social media. Whether that translates into winning the Battle of Boston remains to be seen. That Twitter lead is potentially a huge edge for JetBlue.

If Mesh Media was advising Southwest, we’d urge them to focus intently on growing their Twitter following – and using Twitter as a promotional channel to reach fliers in Boston and beyond – and market to them. (One thought: Offer a free round-trip ticket each week to one random Twitter follower, to grow the number of followers rapidly. Then market extensively to Twitter announcements of fare sales, new routes, etc.)  If we were advising JetBlue, we’d urge a more integrated and cohesive approach to its social media – and a blog that belongs to the airline and would continue on past a change in leadership at the top.  A million-plus followers on Twitter is a great ready-made channel for promoting the airline – and a blog can be programmed to automatically “Tweet” on Twitter and Facebook.

Mesh Media’s favorite airline is Southwest – we love the low fares, the good service, the boarding procedures and the attitude. We’ve never had the opportunity to fly JetBlue as they don’t currently serve our hometown, or we might like them too.

One thing I’d like to see Southwest offer – a free iPhone app where a person could check fares and schedules, make reservations, check in and track Rapid Rewards points.

Update 8/17/09: Southwest Airlines responded via Twitter:

@meshstrategies Use mobile.southwest.com save on your homepage as a bookmark!

Done. Looks good. Works like a good iPhone app. Thanks. Another reason why Southwest is our favorite airline.