By Chris Parente, Vice President, Strategic Communications Group, Inc. (Published January 10, 2005)

The relentless pace of technological innovation, popularly encapsulated by the term “Moore’s Law”, has changed our lives in numerous and valuable ways. When viewed from the communications perspective however, this constant innovation poses a challenge to communication companies in the tech arena. Many of the exciting technologies of today such as RFID and VOIP are highly technical, and must be fully understood by a communications firm partnering with an IT company. At the same time, the message projected to the targeted audiences can’t focus on the technology, but the improved services and benefits that technology enables.

Maintaining this balance is challenging, but essential for providing the best counsel. You must exhibit enough technical understanding so you can be a trusted member of the communications team, particularly since you’ll often be working in close concert with internal communications staff. But successful communications professionals never lose their “outsider” mentality, the ability to step away from their identification with their client so as to provide a gut-check perspective on how the targeted media and/or customer may view the company’s offering. In other words, don’t allow your IT client to fall in love with their own technology story – it’s the consultant’s job to make sure the targeted audiences fall in love with the benefits that technology enables.

A simple analogy of these differing viewpoints can be found by hitting “View Source” on a basic web page. In the eyes of someone skilled at html, the less source code used by the site the better, because that shows the skill of the web publisher. By contrast, a great deal of extraneous code is a likely sign the web author simply used the “Save as Web Page” option from Microsoft Word, a sloppy shortcut in the eyes of some. But to the viewer of the web page, there is no difference in the end result. A communications professional must protect the client from this sort of viewpoint that divorces the technology from the end result of that technology.

You need to keep the client focused on the end result. But what about the responsibility of the consultant to know the client’s technology? With so many communications shops promising to be all things for all clients, this is a very important question. Without a solid understanding of the technology sector, a communications firm could spend the first few months simply understanding their new client’s business, as opposed to executing on a communication strategy. They would also be unable to detect nuances in competitive offerings that might be used to their client’s advantage.

For example, in the field of secure networking and routers Cisco and Juniper are fierce rivals. When it comes to enabling Voice over IP (VOIP) over those networks, it would seem like Cisco has a huge lead over Juniper based on a cursory examination of the market. But a deeper understanding of VOIP technology would reveal that Cisco uses a proprietary control protocol known as Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP), that many clients may not want to be locked into using. That critical fact, plus Juniper’s alliance with Avaya, a leader in secure Internet Protocol telephony systems, suggests great market and public relations opportunities to a PR partner well grounded in the technology.

Similarly, the use of RFID technology has been touted as a revolution in supply chain management. The biggest piece of evidence used to support this claim has been Wal-Mart’s mandate to have its top 100 suppliers using RFID tags on all their shipments by January 1, 2005. But Wal-Mart didn’t mandate how the suppliers should become RFID compliant, and this fact combined with the suppliers bearing all the costs of the change has resulted in an estimated 70% of them expected to miss the deadline only days away.

There is no doubt RFID is coming, but the timing is very much still uncertain. Without a clear understanding of the market, a communications partner could have gotten swept up in the hype and been unable to effectively support its client.

So, the recipe for success in high-tech communications is:

• Know the technology
• Know the client's market
• Know them both well enough to keep your client honest and focused on the end user benefits, not the technology

Hey, no one said tech PR was easy. Technology has made our lives richer and easier in many ways. But no matter how miraculous or revolutionary it seems, it has never and will never sell itself.

Christopher Parente is vice president at Strategic Communications Group, Inc., a nationally recognized, award-winning public relations firm that provides integrated communications and business development services to help its clients increase sales, profitability, and corporate and product valuation. Contact Chris at cparente@gotostrategic.com or 301-408-4500.

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