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PRs’ blind spot called the web

I spoke at the automotive industry’s PR group MIPAA on Monday about public relations and social media.

The next slot was Steve Fowler, the group editor for What Car?, the most popular car mag / website in the UK. His message was simple and shocking: “I get 900,000+ visitors a week to whatcar.com and 127,000 readers a month to the website. But people still think that the magazine is much more valuable to be in.”

Really? Well, apparently so.

I’m getting a distressing amount of anecdotal evidence to back up this view of a too many PR professionals having a blind spot called the web.

It’s not rare for me to hear a marketing director bemoan the PR agency’s lack of focus or even awareness of online media. We’re not talking proficiency in interrogating Technorati, or an ability to understand the tribal structures in the Digg community here – just the importance of mainstream media online.

It was useful to remind myself that while I’m wanting to bring people up to speed about the ins and outs of social media, PR practices and strategy have yet to acknowledge online media properly at all.

If you’re reading this you’re more likely to be web-literate anyway, so appreciate I’m preaching to the choir, but many, many PR agencies are in real danger of being side-lined making themselves obsolete by not coming up to speed on web media.

: : Jeff Jarvis has an interesting insight into the Audit Bureau of Circulations trying to bring out a combined offline / online circulation figure for media brands. Steve Fowler will probably welcome that sort of a move – especially if it helps PR teams give a proper priority to online publications.

Antony Mayfield

6 responses to “PRs’ blind spot called the web”

  1. Linda Avatar
    Linda

    Would you agree that there’s often an assumption that the online version of a publication is solely reprinted material from the print version?

    It’s not only PR practitioners that have this ‘blind spot’.

    Websites have extra slots that can be excellent targets for freelance journalists, but my guess would be they receive fewer pitches. And sometimes the pitches they receive are just rehashed versions of something the paper turned down!

  2. rob baker Avatar
    rob baker

    PR professionals do not always give their craft or profession the respect it should deserve.

    Marketers have a hard enough time of it, but PR is worse.

    This is a real opportunity to be more effective and the best will realise it.

  3. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Rob – I agree. And those that don’t take the opportunity will have an increasing difficult life.

    Linda – I would agree that too many PR people don’t understand the nature of web media. What Car? for instance will carry many more reviews of cars on its website than in the magazine. Reviews that more people will have access to than will see the magazine.

  4. Justin Patten Avatar
    Justin Patten

    I think this is a thoughtful post. If an industry is going to be impacted by social media, it is the PR industry, yet it is unsurprising that you are commenting on how poor they are to show interest and be effective. I agree that this is an opportunity for some who “get it.”

  5. Jackie Danicki Avatar
    Jackie Danicki

    The problem is that PR people are used to a world of channels (information shoved down a pipeline) and do not understand the world of networks. Worse, they do not know what they do not know. Related to this is the assumption that those who have been practicing in ‘new media’ will understand the networked world of online, when in fact the ‘new media’ people are just as channel-oriented as PR and old media.

  6. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Jackie – that is very, very true: a lot of people don’t know what they don’t know. The very best PR people though are natural readers of and players in networks: it defines how they see the world and engage with it in campaigns. Your view of PR IS accurate though, for the majority of practitioners – who have what I would call a mechanistic approach to communications, born of an age industrial media.

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