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.

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