Pentagon Ramping Up PR Offensive, But Will Still Be Behind
This story showed up on AP last night (thank you, Katie Green). Essentially, the Pentagon is taking more of a campaign approach to its communications, including correcting mis-information and using on-line channels.
I find this report interesting for two reasons: First, I am really surprised this is a new approach for the Pentagon. What have they been doing?
Second, AP cites a memo in which Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, says new teams of people will “develop messages” for the 24-hour news cycle and “correct the record.” 24-hours news cycle? Ms. Smith should be thinking .05 second news cycle! There is a blog created every half second, and I’m betting a bunch of them are created just to share points of view on Iraq. In short, Ms. Smith is going to be way behind the blogosphere.
The Pentagon needs a system like we’ve developed for Dell and some of our highest profile clients. At its heart is a 24/7 monitoring and rapid response system. The challenge will be the technology — there is no great solution out there to help them with this. We are beta testing one now, but it’s only available Q2 07.
2 Responses to “Pentagon Ramping Up PR Offensive, But Will Still Be Behind”
1 Wilson 31 October 2006 @ 12:04 pm
>>What have they been doing?
Nothing. I met a military communications director at a measurement conference in 2005. He noted that the current layer of military top brass are from our dad’s generation and generally divorced from and shunning new media.
2 Katie G 31 October 2006 @ 12:13 pm
E: for Effort
F: for Faulty effort
I commend the effort, but I dont see the ease of a ‘Rapid Response’ program in the Fed Govt, especially with military topics. Approvals don’t come easy around there… plenty of ‘No Comment’(s)
The article also mentions that they would not provide the exact number of people to be hired, but its safe to say that it will require many more than they expect for the job to be done well.
Other areas of humor:
“It also was unclear where the funding would come from, considering the Defense Department is struggling to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…”
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