In the world of PR, positioning, is everything. Mindshare, as Bill Ryan, of Portola Strategies, likes to call it, is equally important. So once a topic, like VoIP get’s mindshare, because the story is appealing to reporters, you begin to see the affected, afflicted and disenfrnchised strike back. They strike back via a strategy called “depositioning” which is designed to shift the story from good, to bad. Call it verbal akido. Use the efforts of the upstart to work against them and position the legacy.
That’s what’s going on. In Dan Lee’s story today in the San Jose Mercury News if you read between the lines, the attempt to deposition Cisco was there. But, in the closing paragraph Lee points out in the quote about the cost savings. That’s the one thing that really isn’t going to exist too long. The legacy carriers have a lot of margin, but they also have higher labor cost. News Factor Network has a similar story. When you see this many on the same theme, you know some PR person is out beating the dead horse in hopes of getting a story about their legacy client as the facts are too similar, unattributed and almost white paper or position paper like in style.
What will be so funny in about 12-18 months, if that long, is the fact that all the RBOC’s will be in the VoIP space. They can’t afford to not be. At that point the PR person will have to reposition what they depositioned, in order to have a position.