That’s what Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company, called for at last week’s Business Innovation Factory in Rhode Island. And, quite frankly, I agree with him.
The problem is – we’ve all become obsessed with content. Content, in itself, it not true storytelling. As Webber explained, content is not king, context is king.
This notion is truer today than ever, as the information landscape evolves at a rapid pace. Mainstream news organizations are fighting to remain relevant, upstart blogs and social networks are gaining popularity and PR is making the case to be publishers in their own right – bypassing earned media channels all together.
We are all striving to tell stories – but are we making more noise than news?
Stu Miniman of Wikibon summed up Webber’s point of view best, writing, “The real value that is needed is not more people with opinions, but the context to make sense of the news. The challenge is that not only do we need people who can do deep investigative reporting, but also an audience that is willing to consume it and a market that can support it.”
While investigative reporting needs to happen in the media, it is equally important in PR and communications. Not often thought of as a muckraking profession (to put it nicely) the onus is on us dive much deeper and find compelling stories if we are to truly become publishers and effective storytellers. We must search for the context, not just the content.
This idea is reflected in a recent PR Week podcast that Bite’s own Tom Berry discusses in a recent blog post. To put it simply, the PR consultants that will sink are the ones who churn out content purely to get eyeballs. That is storytelling for storytelling’s sake – and that is the kind that Alan Webber is calling for an end to. The PR consultants that will swim will enhance content and make it relevant and incredibly valuable for the audiences it is intended for.
For more on the Business Innovation Factory, check out the BIF6 site, as well as this outstanding blog post from Jimmy Guterman of Harvard Business Review on this very subject. Bite client HP was also in attendance, and delivered an engaging presentation about the future of global innovation.