Were direct marketers ever meant to turn in to "PR people" (well, not exactly PR people, but rather dialog facilitators)?

Or is this just the direction the market is heading in to?

It's now been two days since the launch of "Unleash", and I have not performed one single direct marketing act yet. Not a single one.

As a direct marketer, always wanting to be in control, I find that hard to swallow, and yet here I am, "facilitating dialogs about the e-book accross the internet", following Robin Good's advice.

The whole point is to spread "the dialog" from the originating point (the publisher) to multiple starting points, where the dialog itself takes a life on its own and is further spread through mulitple online media, completely losing all structure.

Consider Robin's list of 10 marketing (dialog) ideas.

It all started with the interview I did with Robin a few months ago and then finally with the launch of "Unleash" (the originating source).

On the launch day, Robin published his article at MasterNewMedia.org and MarketingStudies.net, both continuing the conversation, with an actual dialog still going on in the forum of the originating article at Corante.

"The message" (Robin's article at Corante) just generated three new starting points for new conversations, all actually based on the launch of "Unleash" (originating point). And the dialog continues ...

Do you get the picture?

It's certainly an interesting experiment, especially from the view of someone who is used to communicating with direct marketing messages (and educational content for relationship management purposes).

But as Dana said, it's only appropriate:

"How fitting that the majority of the marketing messages relating to the newest, and most comprehensive e-book on RSS is likely to be delivered through the very medium which is the topic of the book. I'm talking about the buzz on Rok Hrastnik's new book, Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS."

"Having read an advance copy of the book, I can say that I'm honestly blown away by the thoroughness of Rok's approach the subject, from both a technical and marketing perspective. Rok literally left no resource unchecked and no stone unturned as he put together this seminal resource on RSS. The best thing is that It's a living document - Rok has committed to constant updates that will be available to purchasers."

Anyway, I've counted 27 blog posts about the e-book so far, and some of them have already been collected here.

All 27 are potential starting points for new dialogs. Some will eventually turn in to them, while most will probably "die". Or perhaps not ...

It's hard work, especially when you're working about 10 hours per day on something totally different (and much more down your direct marketing alley).

Come to think of it, direct marketers publishing books and projects should in fact consider hiring a "dialog facilitator" to handle this increasingly important element of the publishing business for them. And no, PR is just not the right word for it.

Perhaps Seth Godin, who might have started all this years ago with Unleash the Ideavirus, might find a better expression ...