Wrong elephant. Different room.

Last night I spoke at NMK's Clients in the Wild event. It was broadly about how PRs can, could and should use social media. Nice event Ian, and a cracking quality crowd. The audience was a who's who of the UK PR blogosphere. I was up alongside Midnight's MD Sarah Ogden and social media agency Nixon McInnes' MD, Will McInnes,  who is on most of the social networks himself. He's done some very cool stuff online. And the moderator was Roger Warner of Squiz and Velocity Partners.

Attendees who've blogged about it already have said how they thought it was a good event, and I'd agree.  Lots of useful banter about metrics, measurement, control and all that. Ian Delaney, having organised the whole thing, has done a super report. Other write-ups have gone up online from Edelman's Simon Collister who was in the audience and chipped in a fair few times on some social media theory, as did his colleague Tim Callington (cool to meet Tim again - I have read his blog for a long time and only realised when we met again yesterday that we'd met before at a Microsoft gig). Alan Patrick asked a few questions on Facebook. Ben Maynard at Harvard made a good point on client counsel. Stephen Waddington at Rainier asked about revenues and profits of social media campaigns, but his colleague Tim Hoang did the blogging. Ged Carroll at Waggener Edstrom has done a great write-up, but sadly I missed catching up with him at the event. Other attendees like Giles Shorthouse at Webitpr and Lloyd Gofton have also blogged about what they thought. And someone from Cake had a fair bit to say too. 

But the after-event buzz in the room and over email today was on how everyone avoided talking about elephant in the room. That elephant being the notion that ad/design/digital agencies are encroaching on PR turf and could potentially steal all our work, flattening our revenues and growth in tech PR. That this is a fundamental shift in what we're doing in our jobs. And that PRs are getting worried.

I'm seeing an entirely different room, and we're the elephants.

We have a massive opportunity to develop the right skills in cutting edge areas such as web 2.0, social media, word of mouth, call it what you will. People that do will be allowed to do develop very cool and applicable work, they'll be fun to work around and very useful to have on campaigns. I know guys like Simon, Stephen, Mikey and James must see what I mean. Now and over the past year or two, not just recent months. Being the elephant in this other room, I'm seeing there are marketing as well as PR plans, budgets and concepts on the table. So the grey are emerges between PR and digital media production. Some of us PRs upskill and learn how its done. But we're working too with people who can't and will never need to write a feature for a magazine or know which journalist to call at a newspaper for placing a story. But they can create digital content, build apps and make virals that are core to new campaigns from the beginning. The kind of stuff that as a whole package I really enjoy and am motivated by.

Comments

[Ian Delaney]

Great comment, Drew. And a few of the commentators from last night are looking forward to nailing that elephant at an NMK event creating a really exciting-sounding 'mexican shootout'. PR vs. digital vs. ad agencies pitching for the same client (fictional but slightly real, in that they really buy stuff) and explaining why they should be the lead agency. Hope you're up for that because I'm really keen to make it happen.

I don't know yet whether we'll be allowed real guns. Am pursuing with legal.

[Stephen Davies]

Good points Drew. And interested to attend the seminar mentioned by Ian above.

It's past 1am and I'm knackered so apologies for this abrupt comment.

A few points:

* My own perception is that tech PR is on the ball with social media more than any other PR sector. I think the remaining PR sectors will face problems as far as digital is concerned.

* Marketers simply have bigger budgets. Bigger budgets equal more scope to be creative, experiment, hire talented developers/designers etc.

* Marketers have been dabbling in digital (online ads, affiliate marketing, SEO, SEM, etc) a lot longer than PR has. Marketers seem a lot more open to try new things also.

* PR is a stagnant industry. The majority of PR professionals still love dirty ink.

Hope you don't think I'm being argumentative for argument's sake, it's just these are some of the issues that I see the industry (that I've come to love in my limited time in it) facing.

[David Brain]

Drew,

I may be hopelessly optimistic, but I really do not see the "push" discipline digital or ad agencies really encroaching on us. My concern is the slow speed with which we are encoraching on them (or their budgets at least). PR is still the only discipline in marketing where we worry about relationship and influence (ie indirect communications). Ad guys (and most digital guys are ad guys with a macbook in my experience) just do not get this. Never have and I hope they never will. The question for us is what the hell are we doing to make it easier for the big budgets to be trusted with us. Twice in the last year for global brands we have come up with online strategy and creative only to have it handed to a global digital agency (who messed it up or watered it down) because we did not have big enough technical skills to do things like integration into marketing CRM databases. We are gonna fix this technical deficit by hook or by crook at Edelman and I hope others try to as well, because it's the PR guys who have the right approach and respect for the conversation and if we don't get it right, I really think no-one will.

[Ben Maynard]

Great points Drew - i quite agree. However, the other issue which was not really raised was the need to educate/cajole/encourage clients to think in a more joined up fashion as well. Fine if you are working with digital entrepreneurs that 'get it' but the majority of clients (tech included) are still stuck in their various marketing silos each with their own turf to defend. So the 'mexican shoot-out' needs to take place internally too.

[Stephen Davies]

Talking to Paull Young last week about a conference he was doing in (I think) Atlanta. The marketing guy who was speaking before was explaining to the attendees how to manipulate Wikipedia. Great.

Youngie said he came on afterwards and shot him down.

[alan p]

It was a very interesting evening - but though I am clearly (in)famous for questioning Facebook Ads and T&C, my real question was earlier re "where's the money - now and in future"

As you said Drew, the industry is disintermediating - but it will re-intermediate along the new value propositions.

The trick is finding out what they are early....

[Tim Callington]

There was a fair amount of pessimism in the room on Tuesday night, which surprised me.

The boundaries are definitely blurring between the different communications disciplines, but our innate ability as PR people to tell stories puts us in the perfect position to take advantage of the digital opportunity.

For many clients it's a frightening opportunity to grasp, but by identifying the communities and niches that matter to a client we can develop programmes that will make a measurable, perceptible difference.

[David R]

Hi Drew - Ben Maynard was filling me in on this event. It sounds like an interesting session. BTW, you have his name down as Tim in your post.

[Drew B]

Stephen: Totally agree with your points. And you've been in the non-tech PR field like I have so you know what their approach to social media can look like.

Ian: No need for guns - just tequila!

Ben: Yes you're right. Often a marketing and a PR stakeholder will be pulling in different directions. Maybe this is one of those disciplines (as in social media) that will unite them? Over tequila of course!

Alan: That's much too long a word for me to have used :-) Will has to take credit for the discussions around disintermediation. I just chipped in now and then to give the reality check!

David Brain: I think we need to build the right teams, right skills and move quickly to get these results.

David R: Changed it over. Meant Ben but think I was subconsciously trying to make everyone in that paragraph a Tim! :-)

[Will McInnes]

Drew, you're right about the wrong elephant. I totally agree. Here's my belated post where I attempt to structure and back up my overall 'argument' - http://blog.willmcinnes.co.uk/blog/2007/11/world-has-chang.html

[Chris Hoskin]

Great post, and I agree 100%.

Ad/design/digital agencies encroaching on PR turf? Nonsense.

I believe the general trend is in favour of marketing 'pull', not marketing 'push'. And in that regard the PR industry is 'institutionally' better positioned.

[Drew B]

Chris good to hear from you again! Adding your blog to my subscriptions sharpish.