Social media talent wars: traditional agencies vs. digital shops
If you believe what the PR blogosphere is saying, there’s an exodus away from classic public relations agencies into ‘cooler’ realms. The finger is being pointed firmly at social media, the dastardly force that’s luring younger practitioners in particular into upstart pure digital shops.
Young, impressionable PR folks are being turned off by the ‘old school’ world of PR. Perhaps the thought of spending formative days compiling activity reports and cutting and pasting media coverage into lengthy Word documents doesn’t have the same ‘zing’.
As someone who started his career nursing paper cuts caused by hours spent combing newspapers and magazines, then cutting out articles before gluing them to A4 sheets and mailing to clients, I can see the appeal.
On face value, the shiny object syndrome seems to be pulling inexperienced yet digitally aware PRs like ‘moths’ to the pure-play digital shops’ ‘flame’. Quite frankly, I get the lure. It seems a chance to play with toys in a digital sandbox. Old school PR ‘distractions’ such as building relationships with journalists, creating press lists, understanding the news cycle, and helping change a company’s image over time seem relegated to annals of history.
Sounds like fun. And don’t get me wrong. The last thing I want to do is start a feud with digital shops. I think they are doing a fine job building things that are helping shape influence. Facebook applications and games, web landing pages, interactive websites and so on are all vital parts of the modern web of influence.
I guess the issue I have is that these places are typically the love-children of good coders and advertisers. Their approach to communication is built around the individual’s (typically consumer’s) experience with the application, site or game (for example). Consumers are taken on a frequently emotional journey through mouse clicks and hyperlinks. Again, nothing wrong with this. My argument is that classic PR touches a different part of the brain. Digital content is part of the mix, but not a strategy in isolation.
In the early days of the Web, they used to say, “Content is king”. Web pages were destinations in their own right, and the success measure was “stickiness”. I feel today, conversation is king. The shiny things act like honey traps, but success is surely the ability to drive influence through conversation, pushing people to destinations and then taking action.
I challenge the notion that the digital shops that feel that they can “do” PR or marketing. I don’t want to overplay the science of public relations, but good practitioners are certainly made and not born. The ability to create a communications strategy that ties in business objectives to tactics and measurable outcomes is core to the PR discipline. Ever since Ivy Lee put together his Declaration of Principles in 1906, PR’s mission to act as a "two-way street" that helps clients listen as well as communicate messages to their publics has been set in stone (gotta love Wikipedia).
Much of this makes me sound like an old fogey, but the shiny things and their owners need to take heed. There’s more to communications (warning - gross generalization follows) than putting up a web site, no matter how sticky the content. The ‘if you build it, they will come’ theory of communications is rarely successful. You only have to look at the virtual tumbleweeds rolling through Second Life to get a sense of what I mean. Some of the attempts to drive influence through ‘social media marketing’ have been laughable.
I’ve written before about the seeding practices that seem to be a substitute for driving authentic conversations. This practice of paying so-called gunners to spam forums and blogs with crude product or service messages is raising the ire of bloggers, forum moderators and community members alike. It seems a rather odd interpretation of public relations, if you ask me.
My advice to those young folks tempted by the digital shops is simple. Spend some time assessing the role of social media and the associated tools as part of the wider communications mix. Understand that a grounding in the fundamentals of communication will always be relevant. Understand also that while social media’s influence will continue to grow, the ability to tell a good story and help shape a conversation are critical elements and should not be overlooked.
At the end of the day, some will go. And that’s OK. But this does remind me of a quote from former New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. A journalist asked for his thoughts on the so-called brain drain of people migrating from New Zealand to neighbouring Australia. Always the diplomat, Muldoon considered, and then responded: “It raises the IQ of both countries”.
Food for thought? I hope so.
Young, impressionable PR folks are being turned off by the ‘old school’ world of PR. Perhaps the thought of spending formative days compiling activity reports and cutting and pasting media coverage into lengthy Word documents doesn’t have the same ‘zing’.
As someone who started his career nursing paper cuts caused by hours spent combing newspapers and magazines, then cutting out articles before gluing them to A4 sheets and mailing to clients, I can see the appeal.
On face value, the shiny object syndrome seems to be pulling inexperienced yet digitally aware PRs like ‘moths’ to the pure-play digital shops’ ‘flame’. Quite frankly, I get the lure. It seems a chance to play with toys in a digital sandbox. Old school PR ‘distractions’ such as building relationships with journalists, creating press lists, understanding the news cycle, and helping change a company’s image over time seem relegated to annals of history.
Sounds like fun. And don’t get me wrong. The last thing I want to do is start a feud with digital shops. I think they are doing a fine job building things that are helping shape influence. Facebook applications and games, web landing pages, interactive websites and so on are all vital parts of the modern web of influence.
I guess the issue I have is that these places are typically the love-children of good coders and advertisers. Their approach to communication is built around the individual’s (typically consumer’s) experience with the application, site or game (for example). Consumers are taken on a frequently emotional journey through mouse clicks and hyperlinks. Again, nothing wrong with this. My argument is that classic PR touches a different part of the brain. Digital content is part of the mix, but not a strategy in isolation.
In the early days of the Web, they used to say, “Content is king”. Web pages were destinations in their own right, and the success measure was “stickiness”. I feel today, conversation is king. The shiny things act like honey traps, but success is surely the ability to drive influence through conversation, pushing people to destinations and then taking action.
I challenge the notion that the digital shops that feel that they can “do” PR or marketing. I don’t want to overplay the science of public relations, but good practitioners are certainly made and not born. The ability to create a communications strategy that ties in business objectives to tactics and measurable outcomes is core to the PR discipline. Ever since Ivy Lee put together his Declaration of Principles in 1906, PR’s mission to act as a "two-way street" that helps clients listen as well as communicate messages to their publics has been set in stone (gotta love Wikipedia).
Much of this makes me sound like an old fogey, but the shiny things and their owners need to take heed. There’s more to communications (warning - gross generalization follows) than putting up a web site, no matter how sticky the content. The ‘if you build it, they will come’ theory of communications is rarely successful. You only have to look at the virtual tumbleweeds rolling through Second Life to get a sense of what I mean. Some of the attempts to drive influence through ‘social media marketing’ have been laughable.
I’ve written before about the seeding practices that seem to be a substitute for driving authentic conversations. This practice of paying so-called gunners to spam forums and blogs with crude product or service messages is raising the ire of bloggers, forum moderators and community members alike. It seems a rather odd interpretation of public relations, if you ask me.
My advice to those young folks tempted by the digital shops is simple. Spend some time assessing the role of social media and the associated tools as part of the wider communications mix. Understand that a grounding in the fundamentals of communication will always be relevant. Understand also that while social media’s influence will continue to grow, the ability to tell a good story and help shape a conversation are critical elements and should not be overlooked.
At the end of the day, some will go. And that’s OK. But this does remind me of a quote from former New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. A journalist asked for his thoughts on the so-called brain drain of people migrating from New Zealand to neighbouring Australia. Always the diplomat, Muldoon considered, and then responded: “It raises the IQ of both countries”.
Food for thought? I hope so.