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The end of the PR all-rounder?

Writing on his 21st Century Public Relations blog, Senior Ogilvy PR exec, Marcel Goldstein, foresees the end of public relations as a "standalone discipline":

…addressing a company’s public
relations requires all or most of a company’s marketing communications
tools, as they are all being redesigned from one-way mediums to two-way
mediums by the online world.

This future spells the end of public
relations as a standalone discipline, and finally, the arrival of
integrated marketing communications. In the future, the ad agency model
might trump the PR agency model. PR agencies deploy PR specialists on
the front lines with clients, providing a narrow specialist’s view for
addressing a company’s reputation. On the other hand, ad agencies use
account management personnel–marketing generalists–to field client
problems and then bring various specialists to the table.

The move towards more specialisms and dedicated client handling teams is one that has been on the cards for PR agencies for a while, regardless of the new media environment that is emerging.  It is about an industry that is maturing and moving from the wings of the marketing mix to centre stage.

It’s not just narrow specialists which get in the way of truly effective PR, its often trying to have too many too-broad generalists. Too many PR agencies are build on an immature business model, where consultants are expected to be jack-of-all-trade superstars. As well as having an understanding of the tools of their trade and being an expert on a handful industry sectors, an associate director in a lot of agencies will be expected to excel at client management, people development, negotiation, project management and creativity to boot.

In the first five years or so of a career, where people are learning their trade/craft/profession, that’s a very good thing. But it becomes more of a problem the more senior they get, as people naturally often want to specialise in areas that they excel in and that interest them specifically – editorial, digital, planning, whatever.

Good strategic thinkers and business minds in PR agencies right now have an opportunity to shape  the marketing communications industry of tomorrow and put public relations at its heart. Our skills are more suited than advertisers or direct marketers to a world where we acknowledge that we don’t control the medium, where we need to engage in dialogue and create low-cost, high value content that will compete in an attention economy oriented around fragmented, shifting and complex audiences.

 

Mr Goldstein is right, public relations as a distinct discipline may merge with others and fade away. But its best practitioners are perhaps more suited to the emerging social computing-driven, connected media world than any other communications sub-set.

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Antony Mayfield

2 responses to “The end of the PR all-rounder?”

  1. David Phillips Avatar
    David Phillips

    Marcel Goldstein sort of faded thinking makes consultants look so old fashioned.
    In an environment where interactive, networked relationship are formed and reformed in pursuit of the organisation gaining a significant role in its chosen culture, relationship management becomes significant.

    Yes, there are many specialist activities such as semiotics in brand imagery or semantic textual analysis to identify divergent cultures represented by mediated media (Newspapers), and unmediated media (blogs). But this is not rocket science. Neither is owned by ‘Marketing’. One expects a Public Relations consultant to know of such things in some depth and to deploy expert resource as needed.

    This will mean that ‘Marketing Communications’, indeed ‘communications management’ has to come long after the PR consultant has engaged in identifying the need and requirement of relationships for organisations. It is only after the PR consultant has done the work that s/he can call in the relevant marketing people should they be needed.

  2. Marcel Goldstein Avatar
    Marcel Goldstein

    I agree with Antony’s comment that PR pros are more suited to a social computing-driven, connected media world than other communications sub-sets, such as advertising and direct marketing. If those in positions of influence recognize this, then we will be able to finalize our move from the wings to the center of marketing.

    As for David’s comments, I think perhaps that there’s some misunderstanding: he is writing about PR ‘management’ of third-party relationships and I was writing about account management of client relationships. As much as the world around us has changed, as David notes, the organizational structure of PR firms (I have friends and colleagues at a large number of them) as it relates to clients has not changed–yet.

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