I kicked off a bit of a debate in the office today, which then moved on Twitter (as these things usually do!).
The motion is this:
Has the growth of digital rendered the current PR agency model broken?
PR practitioners, especially in agencies, need to be jacks-of-all-trades – strategic, creative, tactical, client-facing…
I’ve often wondered whether the current model is flawed and whether we should be looking at a set up similar to what you would find in adland, with client facing account people supported by creatives, planners and producers etc.
With PRs increasingly having to deal with multiple specialisms, from SEO and social to traditional media, bloggers and analysts, is it just too much to expect everyone to be proficient in everything? Do they even need to be?
I have no answers as yet, but I’m keen to get a bit of a debate going.
If you had to start an agency from scratch tomorrow, how would you structure it?
What do you think? Do you know PR agencies that have a slightly different model? Does it work? Can we all be specialists in everything in these days of media fragmentation?
I was interested to see this week a live debate by the two candidates for the CIPR presidency. The debate was being trailed by Philip Sheldrake on Twitter and he was also asking for possible questions for the two. I decided to throw my hat into the ring:
I was pleased to see that my question was posed to the two candidates (about 14 minutes in!). The responses were mixed.
Rob Brown, who has written an excellent book on digital PR, gave a good overview of where we are and argued that, while the past has been all about journalist relations, PR faces a new opportunity and needs to reinvent itself. He suggested that we have a fantastic opportunity to get to the heart of what PR actually is and begin to engage directly and build relationships with the public.
Sally Sykes was a little more hesitant in her response and although she acknowledged that ‘this was our moment’, she fell back into the reputation management debate which I don’t really think encompasses the true might of what digital and social means for the PR industry. She did however acknowledge the importance of training, which is another positive sign.
Do we need more than the grassroots?
So my question is: does the industry needs better leadership from the top when it comes to online PR and social media and do we have this at the moment?
I’d argue we don’t.
I feel that a lot of the new thinking out there is coming from the grassroots of the industry (maybe this was always the way?). I see wide-ranging, in-depth arguments about the future of PR on Twitter, Linkedin and on blogs (even in PR Week from time to time!), but I don’t see much of this coming from the industry’s professional bodies.
I should add that I’m not a member of the CIPR and so maybe it’s just that I don’t hear some of the noise they are making because it is internalised. And perhaps this is partly why I’m less interested in membership itself.
I want the CIPR to be going out there are really representing the industry and its members by demonstrating the opportunity that PR has, encouraging change and best practice. We know that social media conferences are always oversubscribed; there’s clearly an appetite out there, but I feel that there is confusion and panic about how the industry can adopt these new techniques. The industry needs leadership here.
I know how these organisations work. In the past I used to work for a professional body and I appreciate that in big organisations like this change takes time and it happens slowly. Maybe this is how it should be; maybe we need a more staid, considered approach from the top? But I see some of the great work that bodies like the IAB do in the digital arena and wonder why PR be the same.
Let’s grasp the opportunity and shout about it
At the end of the day, I’m not trying to bash the CIPR or the other PR trade bodies, I’m just passionate about the opportunity the PR industry has and the changes that are necessary for it to truly grasp this potential.
It’s why I decided to enter into the PR industry in the first place instead of some of the other digital marketing disciplines out there. PR has a powerful argument for owning communication in the digital age. I’m just not sure that, as an industry, we are fully realising this potential yet. Hopefully, if elected, Rob or Sally will take this baton and run with it. As Sally said, this is our moment, we need to take it before it is too late.
I wrote a rather ranty blog post the other day following an opinion piece on NMA suggesting that social media wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
The whole incident got me thinking about the reasons why some people, brands, agencies, marketers etc. find social media so difficult to understand and get to grips with. Afterall, it’s not rocket science and the vast majority of us use it in our personal (and often professional) lives on a daily basis.
I’m more and more convinced that the real reason for misunderstanding social media is that, more often than not, it is approached with an old media/marketing mindset.
Because that is the key challenge for brands. It’s why so many marketing industries have struggled to get to grips with social media. PR runs scared because it diminishes the role of media relations. Advertising is scared because it doesn’t let you buy your way into people’s living rooms. SEO is scared because it is reducing the power of natural search (just ask Google). Direct marketing is scared because it challenges the role of email (and offline).
These however are all worries that can be overcome. PR has a fantastic opportunity to use its traditional skill-set to engage directly with end users. Advertising doesn’t need to worry about a lack of paid-for opportunities on social networks. SEO can add social media into it’s toolbox and influence SERPs in new ways. And even DM or email can link up with social media to reenergize and increase the effectiveness of campaigns.
Social media is just another channel and whether your background is earned or paid media, there are opportunities. But the old techniques and tactics just won’t work. We all need to adapt and learn new ways of using this new channel.
Often however, to get the most out of social media, it needs to be integrated with other marketing forms. This isn’t a new approach. Very few brands do PR or advertising in isolation. Marketing departments exist to ensure that all marketing activity across all channels is unified an integrated to a certain extent (or at least they should). And social media is no different.
So, investing in social media is important and requires new skills and approaches. But, just because of this, don’t silo it, integrate it into the rest of your marketing activities to get the best returns.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the online PR debate organised by NMK last night, but I’ve been following the fallout today on Twitter and entering into the fray myself, as well as catching up on theblogposts that are now starting to trickle through.
It looks like it was a good event (as Ian’s always are) that tossed around some interesting arguments.
For me though, I get slightly annoyed by the need to define everything. Often we go out of our way to define something which then loses its meaning or is interpreted in a different way. It’s all just semantics really.
And the jargon of new media certainly falls into this space. It is why PR is so synonymous with media relations and journalism. Why SEO and social media seemingly also exist (or feel they need to exist) within their own spheres.
I’m not saying that specialisms aren’t important but that rather than PR v. SEO v. digital etc., we should be looking at the wider, bigger picture. I’m sure this is how many of our (as agencies) clients see things; the bottom line is everything for them. [And I note that it was pretty agency-weighted last night]
This is what we are attempting to do more and more at Wildfire. We are seeing the blurring of disciplines and are also identifying areas where the traditioanl media aspect of PR is dying very quickly. Our venture into new realms isn’t driven by shiny new toys and networks, but by an attempt to get results for our clients and influence the publics they are attempting to reach.
Now to me, this feels very much like a definition of PR. But, I am aware that it is equally true of other disciplines, e.g. advertising, as this Ad Age article demonstrates.
One thing underlines all these tactics though, and that is establishing a message and conveying this to an audience – and this is something that PR professionals are usually very well placed to do. The conveying might be through traditional media, it might be through engagement or conversation on social networks or it might involve search engines and advertising.
As a PR (and marketing) professional (caveat: who is and has been immersed in digital and social media), I am excited and thrilled by the opportunity the internet and digital affords us practionners and our clients or businesses.It’s refreshing to be able to knock out the middle man, to ‘go direct’.
And in order to achieve this effectively, the more tools we have in our tool box, the more options we have and the more potential we can achieve.
The future is bright. It might not be PR as we know it. It might not be called PR. It might even be called social media and be carried out by ‘social media experts’
But my bet is that no one group will dominate and that there will be plenty of new tricks to learn and plenty for everyone to practice.
Rummaging through my feedreader tonight, I came across a number of interesting little nuggets all of which could justify their own post, but unfortunately, due to time pressures, that is never going to happen! So here they are all mixed in together. Enjoy.
What’s in a (SEO friendly) name?
A great little story from the Telegraph centering on a French town called Eu which has decided to change its name because it is unable to get enough Google-juice to ramp up its ailing tourist industry. Its not an easy process though. If ratified during a town referendum it will take five years to become legitimate. That is certainly a long-term SEO strategy!
iMP
Via Graham Jones, I came across this interesting study looking at how MPs are using the Internet. According to the report (which I haven’t read in full), 92% of MPs use email, 83% of MPs have a personal website, 23% of MPs use social networking and only 11% of MPs blog. As Graham suggests, these numbers are quite scary in some cases, but they possibly explain why the Digital Britain Report was so disappointing!
Twitter to the rescue
Channel 4 today sourced an interview with a eyewitness of the Amsterdam plane crash via Twitter (via Journalism.co.uk). Presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy made the connection via a tweet asking Jonathan Nip to “direct message me a number to ring you on please?”. Twitter saves the day again (at least for Channel 4!).
Joanna and the Birmingham Post ‘Get It’
I’ve given newspapers quite a tough ride in the past as I still don’t think many of them are making much of an effort to really transform themselves for the digital age. However, one journalist that really ‘gets it’ is the Birmingham Post’s Joanna Geary (soon to become web development editor at the Times). She has published a great slideshow demonstrating the work she has done at the BP over the last few years:
At a time when so much advertising fails to excite (perhaps due to the growth of online viral videos?), Cadbury’s eyebrow ad is, for me, one of the best in a long time. Its great to learn that they are now running an online event to maximise its success. JiveBrow09 will be run in conjunction with MSN and will encourage people to record and share their own versions of the ad. Safe to say, I wont be one of them – but a great idea nonetheless!
Finally my post on the Wildfire blog earlier this week on the Ryanair blogging fiasco has been driving huge amounts of traffic all week. You might like to read the update that I’ve posted tonight.
