I’ve often used the car dealer example as a way of explaining the changes brought about by social media. Do you remember what it was like to go with your Mom and Dad to a car dealer, circa 1975? Do you remember Dad clutching a worn copy of Consumer Reports? Do you remember the wheeling and dealing and offers of undercoating? Do you remember waiting six to eight weeks for delivery?
No more. Now you can go on the Web and right from your local dealer’s web site you can see what they have on the lot and how much it will cost you to drive off in your very own new gas-guzzler. You can even find out how much that dream car cost the dealer. And if you can find a better deal, your local guy might even match it.
The point is that the power relationship between car dealers and car buyers has reversed. Only a decade ago, the dealers held all the cards – they knew the price and you didn’t. Now we have access to all the information we need to make an informed decision.
Now the problem with this analogy is I never thought of it from the perspective of the car dealers. And until recently I never realized that I am a car dealer – of sorts. We PR folks have acted like car dealers for years, often treating our clients like clueless newbs who think we have some secret power to create media opportunites for them. LIke the mythical roledex that can get us the front page of Businessweek with only one phone call.
The problem is our clients are just as smart as we are and many of them are way ahead of us in using Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools. So they have access to the same journalists on Twitter that we do. They can subscribe to the same media email lists we do. And they know (hopefully) almost as much as we do.
So what can we offer them when they can subscribe to the Help A Reporter Out list just as easily as we can?
