Several years ago, I was working in the Marketing department of a prestigious law firm. Within a few minutes I realized why there is such contempt for the men and women in law. Simultaneously, every lawyer joke crossed my mind (i.e. “What do you call 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? – A good start.”) and I had to laugh.

One of my duties was updating and editing all the lawyers’ profiles, which should have been an easy endeavor. Somehow this task, which follows a basic template, became the bane of my existence. (Cue the egomaniacle, despicable, over-indulged lawyer phone call) Every day I’d receive several phone calls from our firm’s most distinguished lawyers during which I’d be berated for a misplaced comma. NOTE: not an exaggeration.

It seems odd that such busy and well-versed attorneys had time to spend correcting minute grammatical errors and voice their aggravation. You’d think they had other – more important – things to do…perhaps prepare for a case. However, my co-workers and I were obligated to appease their every request…it felt like working at a Burger King (“Have it your way.”).

As the demands became more frequent, we were all issued a smartphone in order to be tethered to the office at all times to make these inane “corrections”. To be honest, originally I thought the phones were a tasty perk. Eventually, the novelty wore off and I got so fed up with the constant nagging, the phone began to embody pure evil. A recent case study from BlackBerry revealed that employees work roughly six extra hours a week because of the 24/7 connection. Yet nobody had time to enjoy the full capabilities we had at our fingertips.

Years after I left that firm, smartphones became an essential business tool and everyone had some form of these mini computers, which also happened to have phone capabilities. Not much later, high-schoolers and college undergraduates were jumping on the bandwagon and a revolution began.

Mary Meeker, a Morgan Stanley technology analyst, was blown away by the recent influx in demand for smartphone technology. She declares that this all-in-one technology “is ramping faster than any tech cycle I’ve seen in modern times.” The companies that make these business toys are equally excited by the consumer tsunami.

Smartphones are giving the world the opportunity to be connected all the time. The growth of social media and social networks are making the phones more than a traveling e-mail trashcan. Real-time news and communication on a daily basis are just the tip of the iceberg. The phones are becoming so advanced, that in the near future they could replace something as simple as a wallet or something as sophisticated as a car key. Not that their current features aren’t anything short of witchcraft.

So…on one side, the smartphone is the equivalent to being shackled in your office and relinquishing your privacy. On the other, the world is conveniently at your fingertips whenever you want it. Therefore, I leave it up to you to decide whether you’d bring your phone to a deserted island (which had curiously good wi-fi) or whether you would enjoy watching your phone burn slowly in the family fireplace.

Tags: marketing, pr, PR Scoup, public relations, smartphone, social media, technology

This entry was posted on October 26, 2009 at 5:16 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Public Relations Social Media Issues Technology by Gabe Chesman View Comments