Mental note - Change and fresh ideas are good

In technology PR it can be easy sometimes to get caught up in established trends and set ways of thinking, especially when particularly hot topics like mobile payments or cloud computing are getting regular coverage in national newspapers. However, it is important to remember that trends are temporary and that today’s headlines are tomorrow’s fish and chip paper (or hamster bedding, whatever you prefer).  Even the most ground-breaking technologies give way to other contenders waiting in line. While it is important to follow the news agenda, we also need to offer fresh ideas and position clients with unique insights into what’s happening around us.

As most of us know, trying to come up with a new angle is especially important when speaking with the media, especially given the average journalist receives hundreds of e-mails a day.  Are you saying anything different than the competition and the other hoi polloi? What is interesting about the story that isn’t common knowledge? What dangers lurk around the corner that could send the average IT manager or CEO running to the hills? Even a mind-numbingly technical story can sometimes have a jewel of innovation hidden amongst the detail.

Keeping a fresh outlook is not just important from a best practice perspective, insights from our daily life can be useful reference points when creating content for clients. Why did retail technology get us excited or frustrated when out grabbing some bread and eggs at the weekend? How satisfied are we with public Wi-Fi coverage and having to choose between 5 million hotspots to read an e-mail? All these ideas have a bearing on how technology markets develop and are important points to keep in mind even when communicating messages to business audiences.

The joy of our work (apart from getting to eat in fancy restaurants, which is a perk) is that the world we respond to is constantly shifting technology and what holds today may not be true tomorrow. As such, we should be open to innovative ways of thinking wherever they come from. At the end of the day this is in all our interests: the pioneer of the next big thing could be one of your clients. I mean, IBM started off making clocks and now make supercomputers. Think about it.