By now you’ve read the story about some PR firm called Edelman hiring some blogger call Rubel. Maybe you’ve heard of them; maybe you haven’t. (In case you missed it, what you just read was sarcasm.)
Guess Edelman’s hiring of Steve Rubel backs up the old adage of, If you can’t beat them, join them. But, in the business world, you don’t join them. You buy them.
It definitely has happened in the dot-com world, as well as in the funeral home business, window suppliers, the auto industry and others. (Just a taste of some of the B2B industries my employer has done and does now work in.)
Innovation and new technology rarely come from the big, often hierarchical and bureaucratic companies. Far more often than not, those and other qualities come from individuals and small companies who don’t have the capital and human resource muscle to compete with the big boys. Instead, they do have the creativity, freedom and nimbleness to develop and implement new ways of doing business.
Innovation and creativity are easy ways to set yourself and your company apart from larger and more established companies.
Now, once “bought,” the challenge for the creative-thinking types is to not fall within the traps — lack of flexibility, too much planning and not enough action, etc. — that typically exist within large companies.
Don’t go thinking too much into this post. I’m in NO WAY saying that Phil Gomes, Michael Krempasky, Jeremy Pepper or Rubel have sold out. I don’t know Krempasky, and it does appear that Gomes and Pepper have maintained the independent thinking that made them successes early on and landed them their recent gigs. And, from the PR stuff about Rubel and Edelman, it seems Rubel will have the same freedom.
After all, if new technologies like blogging will truely become part of our culture and life, they won’t take off without the push from the big boys.
And, that’s my point.
– Mike
P.S. UPDATED: Found a Krempasky image.
Technorati tags: blogging, Michael Krempasky, Jeremy Pepper, Phil Gomes, Steve Rubel, Edelman, public relations
