This Is the Future of Public Relations?

Jay: Hey guys, it’s Jay. Hope you are doing great. Coming to you live from the Atlanta Airport flight delay on my way to Miami. Apparently a tornado in the area, so not taking off for a little bit. So, I was supposed to do this episode of Jay Today later from the hotel, but I am going to do it right now from the Delta Club here in Atlanta.
Lots of interesting news recently, but one thing that really caught my attention, and maybe yours as well was the fact that our friends at Crayola recently, I guess just a few days ago decided to kill off the color Dandelion a.k.a. yellow. Now, what’s interesting about that is not the fact that they retired a color, it’s one of the greatest gambits in the world, you create awareness and buzz by taking something away. It’s sort of the Beanie Babies strategy.
But what’s fascinating about this is how they announced it.
So, historically somebody takes a color away, or Baskin Robbins changes ice cream, or Dunkin Donuts’ new donut, or KFC has the next crazy thing, they would do that with some sort of a media release. Well, Crayola didn’t do that. How did they announce it? Right here on Facebook Live. They got a little meeting together, they got a podium, I think that it was raining, so they were in a tent, and they just turned on their camera the way I’m doing right now and that was the announcement.
Facebook Live was the press release.
Last time I checked, which was Friday, they had a 150,000, 150,000 viewers of that live stream. Now would they have 150,000 readers of a press release? I don’t think they would.
Just a few months ago, maybe I would say it was nine months ago now, another version of public relations using Facebook Live when Southwest had a big issue, they used Facebook Live in a crisis management scenario. They didn’t send out a press release about the crisis when their computers went down. They also used Facebook Live, turned on the camera, put their Chief Operating Officer on the camera right here on Facebook Live and talked directly to their customers.
So, if Facebook is going to continue to have this kind of impact and this kind of reach, and I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t, if you are in Public Relations, or you want to be in Public Relations, like my daughter (I’m talking to you Annika!), you need to very much begin to master all things live video, because instead of talking to the media, and hoping that the media writes your story appropriately, you’re going to be able to tell your story yourself.
If you want to be in public relations, you need to master live video. —@jaybaer Click To Tweet
Now, social media and the web has always promised that, has always promised that you can get your news out there without having to worry about gatekeepers, but now with the prevalence and the ease of live video, especially on Facebook, that day has truly, has truly arrived. So look, if you’re a PR firm, if you are a communications professional, if you are a student in Public Relations, I implore you to figure out Facebook Live and all live streaming ASAP, because the future is rolling downhill, and it’s happening very, very quickly.
Would love to know what you think about this trend in the comments below. I’ll be back tomorrow maybe the next day with another episode of Jay Today. I got one cooking in my head right now.
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