TechCrunch UK’s slightly testy thoughts about a Jason Calacanis post led me to read the latter, and I found myself in the curate’s eggy position of violently agreeing and disagreeing with it:

First this:

You don’t need a PR firm, you don’t need an in-house PR person and you don’t need to spend ANY money to get amazing PR. You don’t need to be connected, and you don’t need to be a “name brand.” Today, many bloggers lament how much press folks like Kevin Rose and Robert Scoble get. They say that they get too much attention and that they got this attention too quickly and without earning it.

This is the same argumument that musicians etc should sell music for free and make money on T shirts - its fine if you are a well known “A Lister” but not very practical if you are not. (Or as one wag put it on Twitter, Calacanis’ advice for Tech PR is to be Calacanis )

Then this:

What’s funny about this is that “A-list” ceWebrities like Scoble and Kevin Rose are overnight successes 10 years in the making. Scoble and Rose have been everywhere for a decade. Me? I’ve been everywhere in this business since 1994 when I was 23 years old in New York City trying to get any meeting I could (for those of you who wouldn’t meet with me back then I totally understand–chances are I wouldn’t have met with me back then).

Things that look like an “overnight success” typically are not.

As we showed in our post on typical S curve growth, there is a “below the radar” stage that is usually long and arduous - and you can’t buy your way into it, except for short term “pop” goods. PR helps, but in my experience, in most cases, if the real demand isn’t there, it reverts back to its nascent state as soon as the hypercharging switches off.

Then the TCUK testiness - I think it’s useful to read Mike’s commentary on Jason’s “10 points for PR success” as a useful translation for dealing with the “Out of USA” world.

If I may be so bold, having lived in the US and a few other countries, the issue is that the US, culturally, is acclimatised to - ahem - “putting your best foot forward” 24/7/365. The Rest of World, with some exceptions, finds this somewhat irritating, especially if it is continuous. If there was a “roll your eyes” function on Twitter I think some of the SV “community managers” and digigurus would probably be quite taken aback