WPP’s chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell has told everyone in PR that we’re fine. We’re firing on all cylinders. He can’t recall a time when PR has been so strong. Why? We’re recession-proof. We’re annoying the advertising industry. As one over-muscled cartoon character once proclaimed: WE HAVE THE POWER…of editorial publicity.

“Something has changed and the reason for the change is online activity, where personal recommendation and personal communication have become more important. And it’s clearly editorial and it’s clearly not advertising based.”

 We’re good aren’t we? Let’s all go to the pub to celebrate. I’ll get my coat.

Sorry? What was that AdAge? A survey of attendees to your Digital Marketing Conference you say? And they said what??

Where should social media lie? Audience poll: 53% in marketing, 5% say in PR, 9% say customer service and 33% say some new division.

But this was just marketeers right? We’re still great…aren’t we?

Well no. Judging by the comments on Adrants, if PR isn’t playing second fiddle to ‘marketing’, it’s picking up bronze behind a ‘new division’ which is yet to emerge.

How did we fall so far behind? Social media is all about communication as is Public Relations. It was ours for the taking but somehow we’ve let it slip through our fingers. Were we all out to lunch, sipping champagne and smoozing? I doubt it. Maybe we’re too afraid of technology. All that typing could break a nail!

Seriously, I’m worried by the number of PRs who don’t just understand this area but who are too afraid to even experiment. I’m not suggesting they should take a multi-million pound client, stick the CEO in front of a camera, hit record and see the response on YouTube. I mean writing (or commenting on) a blog, listening to podcast, watching a webchat. Even a little twittering wouldn’t go amiss. It seems the furthest most PRs have strayed into social media is with a Facebook profile. It’s a start right?

Based on the the social media conferences we attend with speakers from a variety of backgrounds (bloggers, financial institutes and yes PR agencies), it seems there is a theme running throughout which is that PR (agencies and in-house) should be doing…something. We’re not going to tell you what it is but we will point you in the direction of the web and watch you worry. We can’t give too much away because we want to maintain that competitive edge. But we don’t mind throwing stats at you and watching you have a panic attack safe in the knowledge that you should be doing…something.

So who’s role is it to take ownership of this area? Who in PR is going to help educate the industry? The industry bodies clearly need to step in and provide the much needed training. Actually telling PRs how to do it. Seminars such as the CIPR one hosted by Rob Brown, soon to be MD of Staniforth (Full discolsure: I work for the agency) at Manchester University. Social Media is the future of PR but I’m concerned after looking at the CIPR list of upcoming events for 2008. Just five events based around social media planned for the rest of this year. Is that really enough for PR to take ownership?

Tags: advertising, Marketing, PR, public relations

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Blogs, Facebook, General PR, PR, PR agencies, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.