Silicon Insider: Changing Staffing
Jan. 23 -- The death this month of Fred Hoar, one of the pioneers of high-tech public relations, was a reminder of the pivotal, yet largely forgotten, role that marketing communications — PR, advertising and branding — played in the success of the high-tech revolution.
The contributions of entrepreneurship, venture capital and R&D to the digital age are justly celebrated. But the flacks, copy hacks and marketers are mostly ignored. I suspect this is due in large part to the low regard these professionals are held by journalists, … though (and perhaps because) the average newspaper would be a mimeographed sheet without the combined efforts of these other folks.
More surprising is how many high-tech execs also hold the same low opinion.
I don't share that attitude, probably because I began my own career in public relations. That was almost 30 years ago. In those days the great companies of tech were still groping their way out of the cozy, but narrow, life of selling only to their engineering peers into the wide world of consumer sales. As with the technology, much of the innovation in this new marketing came from Silicon Valley.
Mr. Outside, Mr. Inside, and the Big Corporate Team
Within the Valley, much of this creativity came from a troika of innovators: Regis McKenna at National Semiconductor, then Intel and Apple; Fred Hoar at Fairchild, then Apple; and the Ampex squad, moved en masse to Hewlett-Packard.
Respectively, they were Mr. Outside, Mr. Inside and the Big Corporate Team. The interaction of the three, those that followed in their footsteps, and the corporate marketing executives with whom they worked, established much of the image we now hold of the digital world.
For example, the whole panoply of promotion techniques — press kits, press tours, press conferences, feature stories, etc. — that, for good or ill, dominate new product introductions today, was largely perfected by HP (with some competition from IBM).
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