Are you ever so sure, so freakin' positive of something that when the moment comes to deliver the soundbyte that reveals all, you can't quite get it out?

That's how I've felt lately.

Sterling and I have been meeting a lot of prospective clients (legacy Boston firms: be afraid, be very afraid) these last few weeks. Every client we've met with wants to move beyond traditional PR, if only you could define it in a word. You know, the old "essential selling proposition" applied to PR.

Well, I've learned you can't. And the need for us to do so for prospective clients scares me a little. In years past, it was a truism that PR was unmeasurable, inchoate, fuzzy. Because of that some clients are wary of the old ways (as they should be) and timid about abandoning it in favor of ThinkBrain-style community building. Well, actually not that timid. We're busy. But it's clear that it's still early days for this kind of marketing communications. But that doesn't mean it isn't rich in possibilities, nuance and harmonics.

And that's what I get tongue tied about.

It's nearly impossible to explain to a client who hasn't seen it (yet) the power of a podcast that reaches 100K of the exact customers and thought leaders in that technology space. It seems so small, so diffuse. But in fact, reliance on the power of community is the one thing that can get tongues untied and wagging about new products.

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