I first heard "advertising is a tax on the unremarkable" on a podcast (The Beancast - well worth adding to your list). It's a slight variation on quote attributed to Robert Stephens who founded Geek Squad.
The context was a conversation about design killing marketing, inspired by a Fast Company interview with a former Ikea's design chief.
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I've been talking to a lot of people about influence recently. In may ways, influencer marketing today reminds me of social media marketing 10 years ago. There's certainly a number of companies breaking new ground and doing interesting work - but many are still exploring the landscape and making tentative first steps.
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During a recent job interview, a senior PR person asked me an interesting question: "What have you learned about our industry from your job search?"
This got me thinking. In the past few months, I’ve had more than thirty interviews with senior PR folks and recruiters. While the agencies I’ve spoken to have ranged from the biggest companies in our industry to disruptive start-up firms, one recurring theme struck me: the challenge of selling genuinely integrated services to large clients.
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Spin. Smoke and mirrors. Propaganda. Fake news. My chosen industry, public relations, is dogged by derogatory terms. To most people, PR is used to twist the truth. The mainstream media usually only mention ‘PR’ alongside words such as ‘fiasco’ or ‘crisis’.
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I’d recommend creating some kind of long-form publishing platform (your own blog, publishing long-form on LinkedIn, or a company or public news site). This content ‘home’ will help you show depth beyond social updates, and will be a place for more specific discussions about your content.
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PR is about storytelling and you want to show prospective employers that you can tell your story in a compelling fashion. That said, recognize that many recruiters and hiring managers will use software to assess your resumes. So don’t put it in a pizza box.
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I attended an AMA session last week on artificial intelligence and marketing run by Mike Moran (Google him, well worth it). The presentation opened my eyes to the gap between AI's promise and agency application.
There's so much being done by gut feel today and while PR will always be a mixture of art and science, with AI developments, the science is getting a lot more interesting.
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