"What happens to online PR? Time to move on..."

I went to the latest NMK ‘What happens to Online PR’ debate on Tuesday. In the trendy Shoreditch area numerous new media luminaries gathered to debate the point (paraphrased) ‘that PR has lost its capability to guide its clients through the new media landscape’. Predictably the motion was voted down, as would be expected in a room full of PR people.

But I left feeling the debate hadn’t really been furthered to a huge extent. Last year’s ‘Clients in the wild’ event and various other such meetings I have been to, continue to bring up similar themes and arguments. The industry appears to be going round in circles on the whole ‘new media’ debate.

What can be drawn from this? Firstly that there’s a lot of guff and ‘I know more than you’ talk bandied around where new media is concerned. And secondly, many professionals are ready to or have already moved past the debate and experimentation phase and are ready to properly guide and succeed for clients in this space. James Warren of Webber Shandwick especially and various questions from the floor belied a weariness with the central subject of the debate. As one lady astutely put it “I’ve been doing ‘online PR’ since 1994 when websites were cutting edge, why don’t people just get on with it!”

And that’s what most of us are doing. James Warren, even after a few glasses of wine, managed to convey the argument most astutely with a kind of ‘yeah we’re already doing it’ tone. He also came up with another especially salient point. One area that will continue to grow in importance is facilitating conversations wherever they need to occur between an organisation ant its stakeholders. I’ve long been a proponent of this view that PR should facilitate the company-ousider interface wherever needed. A good example would be highlighting to a company’s technical department that hundreds of angry customers are occupying a previously unknown online forum. If their enquiries are too in-depth to be dealt with by PR, then it’s our job to locate and involve the appropriate company person, help them engage, allaying the problems and create happy customers.

I managed to plump up the final question of the night but unfortunately it was time to move to vote so no discussion was had on the matter. The question, or statement depending on how you look at it, was that:

• Firstly there was only one in-house practitioner at the event. This is obviously partly because of the way that the London consultancy network communicates with each other and the fact it’s our job to stay at the cutting edge of the profession. However, you’d hope a few more in-house interests would have been piqued. It’s clear there is still a lot of education to be done in-house as to what can be done and what actually matters for clients online.
• The second observation, picking up on the event’s theme that there is a ‘race’ to claim the digital communications prize. I ventured that the industry is in danger of confusing the industry as to where they should go for different communication services. Advertising or ‘free advertising’ was an easy split, with digital marketers, ad agencies, digital PR, ‘normal PR’ and SEO companies all offering useful parts of the overall whole, it’s important we communicate exactly who does what, how and why.
  
  

The final point I’d like to make is about capability. There was a feeling from some attendees, and in the initial contrary motion, that somehow PR’s capability to communicate is diminished or falling behind other innovators from other areas of marketing. This is simply not the case and is a massively sweeping statement. Capability and skill sets are the preserve and responsibility of individual consultancies, those that move forward will have continued success; those that don’t will become increasingly irrelevant.

It is up to each and every one of us to understand what can be done, work out how to do it (sometimes internally, sometimes in partnership with specialists) and then inform our clients where and why it is relevant to them.

Other speakers at the event included:

Mike Nutley (Chair) - Editor-in-Chief at New Media Age.

Stuart Bruce - MD and founder of Wolfstar and leading PR blogger.

Antony Mayfield - Head of Social Media at iCrossing with a blog at Open.

Roger Warner, founder and MD of Content and Motion.

Comments

[Leslie]

Terrific post.

I'm with the "“I’ve been doing ‘online PR’ since 1994 when websites were cutting edge, why don’t people just get on with it!" commenter!

I'm all for discussing all sides of an issue, but I agree with your thesis. It's time to move from talk to action.

I just found this "superlist" that contains dozens (if not hundreds) of case studies that demonstrate brands both large and small are having success with social media marketing & PR campaigns:

http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/social-media-examples-superlist-17-lists-and-tons-of-examples/

Enjoy!

[MccarthyIris33]

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