We've been thinking about Ralph Graboswki's post on PR and the CAD space and wanted to share our perspective.

PR firms are about nothing if not control.

Control the message; control the crisis; control what, when and how the CEO says what he or she says.

That is why standard PR firms don't "get" blogs. Blogs are not controllable, influence-able. The only way to penetrate and manage the blogosphere is to enter it. Now think about that a minute…Are PR firms paid to be passionate about a client's idea? Do PR firms in the final analysis really care if their client's product or service succeeds? Does a fitness coach care if his or her client actually ever gets fit? Of course not. There are more fat clients.

And, passion takes energy and skill. PR firms operate on a leveraged business model in which easy but labor intensive tasks are repeated flawlessly by junior people. Blogs are executed by passionate thinkers with a rare skill level when it comes to writing short with an edge.

Sure, a PR agency principal can usually do this… but not for every client; not to a lucrative model. These traditional firms will continue to stay whole, get rich, earn a profit doing what they know how to do, in the way they've always done it… that's because there are a lot of fat clients that never really mean to get lean.

But in the long run these traditionalist agencies and their clients won't survive because the world has changed… it has experienced that so-called 'Detroit moment.' The 80's came, Detroit missed it, and nothing has been the same ever since. Gratefully, these agencies and their clients will die peacefully… in their sleep, certain in their preeminence even though the world has long since passed them by.

What's all this got to do with CAD? Simple: we see blogging and the CAD world as an astonishing opportunity to take risks, exchange ideas and develop community for clients as long as the PR agency doesn't attempt control and isn't paralyzed by the fact that the blogosphere can't be controlled.

As I like to say, 100% of the CAD world is online and seeking to know more, to learn more. But they especially want to hear more directly from the companies that are innovating in the CAD space. A client has to be in the blogosphere, commit to it, work hard at it and persist though the initial obscurity of blogging when nobody is reading it. You have to establish blogging bona fides, and that's another thing traditional PR agencies consider risky.

We're lucky to have such a client, Seemage, with all that commitment and more. Plus, we aren't puzzled by the online world. We welcome it. We're part of it.

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