Publicity

I just read the latest issue of Wired, and was interested to see that one of the articles in the mag ( a 6 page article no less) revolved around an issue closely related to PR, the field I'm studying and working in.

The article was about Julia Allison, a blogger I had actually never heard of until reading the article in Wired. And yes, I read Wired. I will say though, that the article seemed a little out of place in a magazine whose demographics, undoubtedly, are predominantly male.

Anywho, Julia Allison is pretty much your average non-celebrity, who has used the blog world to create an "image" for herself. I'll leave it up to you to decide if its a good image or a bad image, but after reading the article and then checking out her site (http://www.xojulia.com/) it's obvious that regardless of good or bad, she has definitely taken a niche market and created a spot for herself.

I gotta say, I'm not sure that I would go to the extent to which she's gone to make myself known. It sorta seems like selling your soul for attention, but hey it looks like she's gotten a reality show out of it, so I guess it's working for her.

Point being, the article posed the discussion of whether or not PR and marketing firms are really all that necessary in a tech-savvy environment where you can pretty much market yourself to an extent. It's all gone from a terrible realization that you can now be googled, to utitlizing the web to promote yourself, your product, your company, etc. (On that note, this post is slightly ironic in that when Julia Allison checks her Google Alerts for media hits, which I'm sure she does daily, that this blog will actually come up.)

Just something to think about, I suppose.