#PRDebate Start Again

On the one hand, I am obviously and unashamedly biased. I run a network for the digital industry. I believe that digital people are the cleverest, most capable, most focused and honest that the media industry has to offer.

On the other, crikey, there are an awful lot of digital folk working in PR nowadays. And digital outfits that ‘do’ PR. And journalists who’ve crossed over to both, for that matter.

So I am less biased than you might imagine.

Last night’s NMK event – What Happens to Online PR? – covered a lot of bases. What exactly is PR; what is Online; and what is needed for the industry to gain some leadership in the online space?

The room was heavily dominated by people at the forefront of reinventing PR. People who are already moving well beyond press relations into the guardianship of reputation and the formation of real relationships – both in digital and analogue. Or is that backwards in time? Panellist Stuart Bruce maintained that PR was never about the press, and always about looking after and promoting reputations and establishing and growing relationships.

There is, as everyone knows, a land-grab going on. Everyone in the marcomms space, from designers to planners, is on their toes (unless they’re rubbish) to find a reason to suggest that it is they who should lead in digital. The people who gain a credible early lead will probably be able to maintain that, and the people who don’t will wither away.

For pure digital agencies, their case is clear: we grew up in this space; we know and understand it best; we’re the geeks that you used to call the back-room boys (and girls). But now things have changed. Now online isn’t something separate, it’s everything. If you want the best skills and insight in everything, then call us.

On the PR side the case is clear but muddied by 100 years of history and culture. At its purest, Public Relations is about reputation management and relationship management. It’s about the strategy behind communications policies as much as executing those policies.

At the execution level, it’s about crafting, creating and sustaining stories which will work with those relationships and bolster or protect that reputation.

At its not so pure, PR is about coverage and column inches; it’s about billing on AEV; it’s about hitting the front page of the FT; it’s about whacking out a press release every 2 minutes about anything that you can loosely associate with a client (I received about 10 budget-related press releases today, most of which were totally spurious).

As everyone who works in media knows, sadly, you get ten times as much contact from the bad end of the scale than you do from the shining knights. That’s how spam works: if the conversion rate is 0.000001%, then you send 1,000,000 emails. If it’s lower, you simply send more.

As both sides of the panel last night agreed, this is not sustainable. Maintaining relationships and building reputation depends on adding value, not taking it away. There are agencies that I (and presumably a lot of other journalists) have blacklisted – and they will never be able to recover from that.

So, the way forward for PR agencies: stay still, integrate, specialise or outsource?

Stay still: you die. And you deserve to. You shouldn’t be on this blog. Go away.

Lots of agencies are integrating. Bringing in digital media people, or hiring PR graduates with that inclination: bunch them together and call them the digital team; maybe bringing in a heavy-hitter who’s well-known in the pure digital space; maybe even buying out a digital agency to call their own. (You know I could name and shame here, but I won’t). Problem: 80% of your agency has no clue what the hell you do. They won’t be able to sell, explain or justify your projects to clients. You’ll be working 24/7 to stay still.

Or specialise. Become an online PR agency. Lots of geeks; lots of analytics; project managers. This has been a good model for the last couple of years. The problem? The people who hold the purse strings don’t trust you johnny-come-latelies with your flip-flops and skateboards one bit. Especially when it comes to reputation. A bunch of internet guys? Are you having me on? Sure you can do my website, but corporate reputation? Yeah, riiight.

Or outsource. You do your bit on strategy and then outsource the bits you haven’t got the skillz for to the best pure digital players available. This agency for your SEO, that one for your design and the other for your social strategy. There’s lots of danger here, too. Your outsourced agencies are also your competitors. Because they all want your lunch money. Also, you’ve increased your costs massively in most cases. You’ve also got a whole bunch of communication issues to resolve – not easy ones, either, because everyone in marcomms has an ego the size of a planet.

So not any of those things, really.

Start again. No, really.

Start again.

Integration, specialisation and outsourcing aren’t going to work as plausible business models in the long term. I think we all know that. You need an agency that is Digital and PR. An agency focused on relationships and reputation, but wholly grounded in today’s arena of communications. Then you win.

I’m not an entrepreneur, I’m a hack, but I hear all the arguments, all the time; I hear all the stories, every day. A lot of you have already started again. The rest of you will not survive except through brute force and a lot of that will involve layoffs.

Start again.

[I'll create a post on NMK collating discussion so far, but in the meantime:

Steven Waddington published before the debate but agrees "real threat is not the contraction of the industry but the army of new digital agencies that is capitalising on the disruption in the market"

Gerel Orgil offers the two-minute version - very useful indeed - I'd forgotten half of what she recorded.

Roger Warner great summary and a real call to learning and education - you risk losing the opportunity to learn! "the threat to a traditional PR agency isn’t just in losing a slice of Online business, it’s in losing the right to learn about it."

Lloyd Gofton says the winning agencies will have the right blend of skills.

Jo-Rosie Haffenden condemns "an industry which is not as excited as it should be about change".

Danny Whatmough didn't turn up but favours a media mix: "no one group will dominate and that there will be plenty of new tricks to learn and plenty for everyone to practice".

Jed Hallam promised to help with the hats and coats, didn't, but instead offers a great post on "influence and social mechanics".

Peter Hay crikey - old media loves us too.]

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