Revenue Journal®

George Lucas, being interviewed recently by Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal, was pontificating on the difference between circus and art. He said that YouTube is circus - which the movie industry calls "throwing puppies on the freeway," because you just create something and put it up and see what happens. He then said that art, on the other hand, is "where the person contrives the situation and tells a story, and hopefully that story reveals the truth behind the facts."

This comment really caught my attention, because that's exactly what good marketing is supposed to do: reveal the truth behind the facts. And if you think about how George Lucas spins his stories, you realize how far marketing is from the ideal he describes.

I recently interviewed Greg Jarboe, one of the founders of SEO-PR, a company that has established itself as one of the market leaders in the field of search engine optimization using public relations techniques. I've known Greg for many years; back when my husband and I were in Silicon Valley running a high-tech marketing agency in the 80's, Greg was director of communications for the then high-flying Ziff-Davis.

Greg has always been urbane and prophetic, so he's fun to interview. But he's also learned a thing or two about optimized PR. Here's what he had to say.

PR in general:

At the highest level, marketing has changed radically in the last 10 years, and most parts of the marketing mix are aware of it. It seems the PR people became aware of it last. They knew the world changed, but they didn't know how, because they didn't have a good system of measurement. If you're measuring clips, you're measuring outputs, but not outcomes. How many clips do I need to make a sale? That's the real question. Otherwise, you have to resort to "ad equivalency" measurements.

Revenue Journal Readers: If you have a marketing or selling challenge you'd like to see me address in a future post, or you think someone is doing something really lame and you want me to take a look, or you think someone is doing something really great, or you just want to comment on an article, please drop me a line. I'd love to hear from you, and I will respond.