There is, admittedly, a streak of arrogance that runs through Blogenberg at times: my public relations firm knows where PR is going and we’re betting that the market catches up with us. (Read on and hopefully you’ll see we’re really not arrogant – just trying to allow clients to go where today’s communications market can take them.)

A number of businesses and organizations we work with are getting it, making me feel more and more comfortable with the business bet I’ve made. But nobody yet has gotten it like The Hitachi Foundation. We have put together and implemented entire rollouts that rely completely on blogger media relations, e-mail marketing and word of mouth, website placements, and partnerships with allied organizations.

As part of our work for The Hitachi Foundation, we are in the midst of rolling out the State of Corporate Citizenship Survey 2007, the most comprehensive survey of business attitudes and practices when it comes to corporate social responsibility. The linchpin of the rollout is a blog, www.corporatecitizen07.com. Every piece of a comprehensive communications strategy – including traditional media outreach – revolves around this blog. (Check out the contributors list. The heft of this list speaks both to the leadership of The Hitachi Foundation and its partners on the blog, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Net Impact, and the import of the issues at stake.)

So I’ve been asking myself, how do I find more Hitachi Foundations? Is there a divining rod for locating clients that will get excited about “new fangled” communications strategies like blogs, social networking, word of mouth, etc.? Well, I think part of the answer is found in my second question. We don’t need the leadership of the business or organization getting excited about anything (except, perhaps, hiring us). We want them neither giddy about nor scared by new media. We need them to see all of this “new fangled” stuff for what it is: just more tools we can use to reach audiences. (In a future Blogenberg I’ll tell you about a debate I just had during a day of consulting about whether MySpace and Facebook are “safe” communications tools.)

Further, clients need to let us follow the answer to this question wherever it leads us: What are the audiences the client needs to reach and how can we best reach them? And that might be the key to my sought-after divining rod – clients need to be genuinely more interested in identifying and reaching specific target audiences than in showing board members press clippings for press clippings’ sake. Not always easy. But if clients and potential clients want to have an impact then we need them working with us on one overarching task: identify all the ways we can deliver their information or messaging directly to the people who will put that information to use or act on that messaging. And then let us utilize all of those tools.

The package of clips to show the board may or may not come. But impact, that will surely come.

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