Audible's Black Friday: A Case Study in PR vs. BR

At Jeff Jarvis' suggestion, in this post I am going to take a closer look into the recent blogosphere blow-up over Audible's podcasting efforts. This is a case study that perhaps others can learn from. I am not here to admonish or praise Audible for their efforts. Rather, I want to track down where they went wrong and advise how we can learn from their good moves and their bad ones.

The whole shebang started with an exclusive article that ran in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, November 11. The article talked about Audible's Wordcast service - a tool that will measure podcast listeners for advertisers. The Journal wisely made the piece available on their free site. It was fair and straightforward. More importantly, it set the tone for the press, which took the same tack. So Audible largely won in the eyes of the media - the sole basis for how we used to define PR.

Of course, we no longer live and die by traditional media alone. In the blogosphere it was an entirely different story, as this IceRocket trend graph shows. Many were outraged that all podcasts on Wordcast will have to use the Audible .aa format, as Staci Kramer summarizes. A lot of words flew around between Mitch Ratcliff, Jeff, Dave Winer and others. You can track this for yourself on memeorandum. So if you're keeping score at home, Audible does well in traditional PR (or MR - e.g. media relations) but largely loses in BR (e.g. blogger relations).

In hindsight, Audible and its consultants should have recognized that the proprietary file format would be an issue in a blogosphere culture that thrives on showing love to open standards - RSS, MP3, etc. They also I am sure knew from prior incidents that Dave Winer would not be on their side. What's worse, they didn't care what one of the Founding Fathers of podcasting had to say.

Audible should have anticipated these issues and tried to brief these vital influencers in advance of the announcement, putting them on the same level of importance as the WSJ. They should have been out there talking to influencers like Doc, Dave and others way before the announcement. The goal here would be not only to solicit allies, but to actually get input that will make for a better product. This is exactly what Microsoft did before Gnomedex when they announced their support for RSS in June.

Audible didn't go this route and now they are in a hole with the very early adopters they were trying to court. This is because podcasters - who are very active in the blog world and can be swayed by it - may not want to have anything to do with this program now that the big gorillas in the jungle are against it. So the lesson here is: 1) anticipate the issues, 2) pre-brief the influencers while you're developing your product and 3) put the MSM and the blogosphere on the same playing field.

It's not too late for Audible to turn this around. If they pull together the respective parties and try to reach a solution that will please everyone, they will be back on track. If they don't, then their new service is toast.

UPDATE: Jeff asks me what I think of a consultant jumping in. Jeff, maybe Mitch he was the front man because he's the only one there who's a recognized blogger. I will tackle OSM later this week.

Technorati Tags: Audible

Comments

[sottovoce]

You're kind of dodging the big bullet, aren't you Steve? This was all PR-orchestrated. What do you think of the agency's performance? Do you know their name? The podcast was the least of the issues here from a PR perspective. I am waiting for someone with the courage to stand up and tell the story of how public relations destroyed OSM (or, if it manages to redeem itself from the current "train wreck, how the PR brought them right to the brink of disaster). Out with it. There is a massive story to tell here and one that PR pofessors can savor for generations. Never, ever has there been such a thorough abomination of a PR job, where the exact opposite of the intended goals were achieved and where the client was made to look like a whining, petty, lying BSer, and the product had absolutely nothing to do with all the advance publicity. Come on Steve, let's get serious here.

[Mitch Ratcliffe]

Steve—Interesting analysis, but what is your take on the discussion as compared to your conclusion about Audible's format? If by "recovering" you mean it could change the offering, then the company is listening. If by "recovering" you mean they could change their PR effort, that would be another thing, but my role was not to be the PR interface. Like Dave Winer, I just blog about stuff I help build.

There was no agency involved and my role was as a designer of the service, not to handle PR. It's virtually impossible to brief Dave, as he has announced his dislike for Audible. What is the benefit of treating reactionary critics like the WSJ, exactly?

That said, I chose to blog about it and got exactly what I expected, which was a reactionary response rather than a constructive one from Dave. Jeff, Doc and others engaged in a discussion about it, though, and the takeaway from comments on my blog and various other blogs is that, on the whole, Audible did the right thing to push the market toward measurement.

Of course, when we were designing Wordcast we knew the format would be an issue, but the problem it solves is one that is not solvable with the MP3 format. If the market chooses to work with Audible, then Audible "wins," but if only part of the market does it also wins and others will come along with alternative approaches. What won't happen is continued stagnation and ad rates can start to find the appropriate price based on their auditability or the inability to audit listenership.

As a nine-year-old format, .aa's not new, but Audible is working to make it available to everyone for the first time. How is that a mistake?

I read every posting you point to and many more. No one was "outraged" that the Wordcast service would require the .aa format, because everyone understands that it's a service hosted by Audible to provide hosting and measurement, not a competitor in the MP3 market. People don't particularly care about the same conditions when you make a call to Google, Amazon.com or EBay's APIs—you get data in their formats and are limited as to what you can do with it—people really dont' seem to be outraged about that. iTunes isn't hurting, either, for that matter and by working with Audible a podcaster is in a position to penetrate the metrics black hole that is iTunes.

What people do seem to be outraged by is the fact someone stood up to Dave and others to correct a number of inaccurate statements about the product that were meant to dismiss it (such as Om Malik's comparison to Fruitcast, which is a very different service that includes no hosting or auditing, only ad insertion).

I absolutely adore the fact this was an "abomination of PR," according to sottovoce, because it wasn't PR. It was just blogging, with all the human friction intact. If anything, it was a case where someone who doesn't spin for a living used the medium to talk straight and sharply to the powers that be in this medium.

The meaning of your suggestion that Audible needs to "recover" is one element I'd like more clarity on, and if you can quantify the "failure" in some way we (that is, this conversation) would be in a position to test the conclusion. I think it's a worthwhile conversation to have.

[Martin McKeay]

One of the things companies are forgetting is that anything they say or do online has the potential to be microscopically inspected by the blogsphere and any weakness or falsehood will almost certainly be found out if enough people look at it. Sony thought they could get away with their DRM rootkit, and for 8 months they were right. But now they're paying the price.

Audible was trying to take their bite out of the podcast pie before it got too big and was hoping no one was watching how they did it. But there's always some one watching in the blogsphere. Isn't that what we're hoping for, to be the first one to out some company? After all, that's how you make a name here.

[david parmet]

Why do you assume the key audience for this announcement was bloggers or podcasters?

From what I can tell - apart from the fact that the whole kerfluffle was very entertaining - the key audience for this announcement was ad agencies and their clients who are thinking of advertising on podcasts but worried about the lack of accountability.

All do respect to Dave and Doc aside, if the ad agency types even know or care who Dave Winer or Doc Searls are... I'd be surprised. They certainly aren't considered vital influencers to that audience.

[Mitch Ratcliffe]

Martin—I think it's silly to say Audible was hoping no one was watching. It went to the Podcast Expo and talked to the press, as well as a number of influential podcasters. I certainly wasn't trying to hide anything in talking about the service.

[Josh Morgan]

I agree that the "Kerfuffle" is much ado about nothing. Audible has a large subscriber base that uses their file format and the "uproar" seems to be coming from people who most likely would not have been customers anyway.

[Jeremy Pepper]

What about the public implications, the greater part of PR? Remember, PR stands for public relations, not press relations and not blogger relations, but public.

Is this how case studies are done by New PR, just half the story, the half you want told?

[Jim]

I agree with david parmet's post. Effective PR must focus on opinion leaders that can impact the targeted audience, whether the opinion leaders are MSM, bloggers, etc. I think this is another example of the tedious blogging-about-blogs phenomena. Isn't it possible that, in this instance, the bloggers were irrelevant? If Audible hooked any advertisers because of the WSJ article, then the PR was effective.

[Robyn]

Mitch, Steve, et al,
While I agree the misstep was large, it probably wasn't a catastrophe.

Yes, the .aa is irritating, because not all mp3 players support it. But, the important thing isn't if it's supported, but if people REALIZE it's supported. Far as I'm concerned, Audible's #1 job right now should be getting more users to understand and love the .aa format. There should be a huge evangelism push right now on that. It's 8 years old? Then why don't I LOVE it by now?

I'm not trying to be rude, Mitch, I am really trying to help. If more people thought it was as supported as mp3, they'd use it.

And, as far as the blogosphere not jumping on board, that's important too, but don't forget the 'offline' world as well. Next year when Vista rolls out the blogosphere's numbers will explode and those new users will not know a darn thing about .aa files. Make the most of those user's ignorance.

I hope it works out for Audible. I posted on it for RSSApplied right when it came back on the Podcast Marketing channel and I knew the outcry against it would be large. However, I love Audible and I appreciate the effort to build something useful.

http://blog.rssapplied.com/public/item/107872