1.I, too, love lyrical writing, poetry, storytelling and musical passages. There is a place for that. It should never go away.

What an interesting subject to ponder, though.

I think, though, when it comes to PR and marketing efforts, many people tire of corporate speak. Call the consumer crazy, but many want to feel a human warmness behind what they are spending their money on. It is absolutely ridiculous, I know, to think that companies care about the people who spend money on their products or services. There is a different level of expectations altogether placed on a corporation than on an individual writing prose.

Maybe it has something to do with the one voice vs. the collective voice that you started discussing here. One voice can 'get away' with fiction. In that case, it's creative and imaginative (and I think that it ties into Seth Godin's 'storytelling' theories). The collective voice, though, isn't about creativity. It's often about selling, pressuring, convincing, manipulating, etc. Both the individual voice (perhaps an author?) and the collective voice (a corporation or an organization) want to sell us something - themselves, their book, their product, their service - but there is a difference.

Companies can't be lyrical. I don't know if you saw the documentary, 'The Corporation', but the definition of a corporation is that it is a person. This person doesn't eat, sleep, love, care, hate, cry, feel, etc. This person's sole purpose is to make money. So, like The Cluetrain said in 1999, the real flesh and blood people that work for that corporation need to step forward and, well, give the human feelings to the interactions between companies and the consumer. That's the conversation. The creativity is in the conversation.

So, yes, we are reduced to just one voice, but I don't think it's a bad thing. I believe that right now, with individuals needing more than ever to connect to communities and to belong (as individual competition to 'get ahead' and leave a mark on the world is getting tougher, it becomes more important - but that's a whole other issue), cold, corporate spinning doesn't do the trick. We need the Donna's of the PR world to stick their necks out and address individuals as an individual.

And...I think before it moves the other way again (which it may), it will only move further in this direction.

2.I couldn't agree with you more, Tara. I was just trying to make the point that sometimes writing a news story as a news story (not corporate speak, but the objective third person/inverted pyramid style) makes sense, depending on the audience and what the organization is tyring to do. You'll find no bigger advocate than me for the use of employee blogs, CEO blogs, product and service blogs, and other implementations of the blogging concept as a vehicle for employing an authentic human voice for organizations (which is clear if you've read this blog before). However, I just can't accept that it's the ONLY voice an organization should assume under absolutely EVERY circumstance.

3.(I follow your blog(s) religiously)

I just think that consumers are tuning out the non-human voices (and, arguably, they often tune out the human voices as well - there is just too much out there to absorb).

On the objective third person voice, absolutely. However, no matter how objective a piece is, there is always going to be a personal bias behind it. What angle is the story taking? Why is the story a story at all? In the case of the recent Doocing of blogging nanny Tessy, NY Times writer Olen was allowed to print her side of the story, whereas Tessy's rebuttal was denied - AND in the case of Kryptonite, Donna makes a valid point that the media (and bloggers) chose to report where Kryptonite botched up, but didn't report when they made good. Even in the most objective reports, there is an angle.

4.Well, of course! The notion of objectivity is a subjective one. ;-) My journalism teachers taught us to STRIVE for objectivity in our news reporting, but never suggested we'd actually ever completely achieve it.

Still, a solidly-written news piece shouldn't sound like a converastional blog post, which brings us back to the point that not every word uttered by an organization should wind up sounding like a blog post. Many, maybe even most, but not all. My radar pings whenever I hear anybody suggest that EVERYTHING should be one way or another. We heard with print -- EVERYTHING should be online. But to suggest print has no value (it's portable, you can write on it, it's permanent, it has tangible substance...) is just as absurd as it is to suggest that every message from an organization should be converastional in nature.

5.That's a great comment, Eric; thanks for sharing it. I couldn't agree more about the appropriate use of a more formal release under just the kind of circumstance you presented. I couldn't have come up with a better example.

6.Tara: Thanks for the kudos; always appreciated.

Shel: I couldn't agree with you more. There is a time and place for each of the communication styles we use in business. For example, if a CEO of a big corporation is giving the company's quarterly financial report to shareholders and financial media he probably doesn't want to talk like Steven Tyler. Some may argue that CEOs need to lighten up a little bit, but for anyone who has sat in on one of these quarterly sessions, they know that the shareholders and financial media only want the numbers and facts, nothing else.

On the flip side, if Aerosmith's next album ever sounds like a financial report, run and hide!

Eric gives a fantastic example!

So, yes a press release works in some cases as do blog entries (either the company's own or comments on related blogs) as well as podcasts and even, when you get right down to it, packaging and POP signage. All are effective when used in the right circumstance.

Thanks for opening up this topic, Shel.

7.Cinema is really a diffrent and popular voice.Not only american cinema, cinema relating to whole world become nice topic to interraction.