I saw the post, I read the comments, I respect the author. But the PR agency versus stand alone social media agency title seemed, well, kind of like an old topic. To be fair, Todd asked a lot of questions about the blurred lines, and what it really means to the definition of his firm: PR or social media. And one very smart answer from Julie Wright said a communications firm (image: Gumbo by fooey).
For the purpose of this discussion, let’s add the advertising firm, just to get the whole group of competitors in there. Sound like a familiar discussion from, say, about a year ago?
Let’s cut to the chase. What we really have is a new media form that requires convergence from a wide variety of disciplines. Here are some ingredients in this fantastic gumbo:
1) You need PR to garner earned media and serve as an ombudsman between parties.
2) You also need advertising. Yes, you do. Good, snappy calls to action need to be integrated as companions to social media, and brief copy writing skills are critical! The problem with advertising is the lack of authenticity.
3) Which brings us to the social media wonk. The wonk, expert, or personality gets the media form from a networking perspective, but without some sort of relevant professional experience, couldn’t communicate their way out of a box in a real marcom job.
4) The old 1.0 boutique — the interactive agency — is needed. Why, can you the reader design? No, online design is an art in itself and you also need the SEO portion of the formula. We are thrilled to have had Viget design this site and blog.
5) Every gumbo has its spices, and here on the Buzz Bin we give away our recipe secrets. How about some customer services, business developments skills (you know, Networking), a dash of legal to avoid trouble, and finally just some good old fashioned non-business writing.
Communicate!
Welcome to the new era of communications. It’s a virtual jumbalaya of disciplines and you need a little of everything. All of the semantics are the various business owners (like myself) and professionals trying to get their slice of the pie.
It’s all irrelevant because some PR firms like SHIFT will evolve and take a slice. We still get a lot of business from companies that have been burned by PR firms in this regard so I’ll add that SHIFT is not the normal firm. But sooner or later PR firms will integrate.
Ad agencies will get some, and so will interactive firms. And they, too, seem to struggle, more with conversations and communities. At the same time they excel at design, SEO, applications, and social network marketing.
Boutiques like myself or the Social Media Group’s Maggie Fox will become social media stand-alone boutiques. Many of us have a background in journalism, interactive, PR or advertising (For example, I have all three, but mostly PR). But we’ll be specialists, and we’ll always be forced to integrate into larger marketing and communications initiatives. We’ll always be forced to play nice with big PR firms and ad agencies. We may even get swallowed up by them.
And we’ll all fight over the semantics. That’s a conversation that doesn’t really matter to me any more. It is what it is.
You’re the only guy I know who could scramble all these analogies and still make it work.
I *think* that that’s a compliment. ;)
Honored to have inspired this goulash of goodness.
Here’s the thing: not one of those line-blurring things Todd mentions strike me as all that line-blurring.
If you envision yourself as a media relations firm — MEDIA relations — then, yes, your lines are blurred all to hell and back. But as I look at the list again in his post, that sounds a lot like the “more than just media” PR I learned about school, hear about from PRSA, and am finally seeing more and more of in the real world.
No blurring here, folks. It’s focus. Focus on the right thing. Not focus on “getting ink” but putting the focus back on why you cared to get ink in the first place: to reach people.
Very well said…I like how it’s not about one discipline over another, but everyone working together to accomplish a common goal: to communicate with the customer. It’s a virtual jumbalaya! Love it! I agree that everyone has their own parts and commend you for not saying that social media belongs with either PR or advertising folks. It’s not one or the other, but rather a tool used to help the disciplines communicate.
Well done. I enjoyed this post and its realistic look at the world of communication. I am in agreement that social media is “a tool used to help the disciplines communicate.” I still look at it as a channel in the basic Sender – Message – Channel – Receiver formula, but because of the rapidly developing changes in technology, I’ve also come to believe that it is more than simply a channel. Perhaps Geoff’s gumbo is the right analogy.
However, I believe the correct Sienfield snippet would have been of the soup nazi since the post rails against being pidgeon-holed into a one size fits all description of where social media fits into the communication paradigm.
As always, thank you for the thought leadership. I’ve moved on from flacking for Florida real estate, I’m now directing PR and brand communication nationally and internationall for CENTURY 21 REAL ESTATE…downside, no longer based in Sarasota, Florida, but here in Parsippany, NJ…freezing my canoli’s off. Oh well, at least I have access to great pizza and hogies again.
Will you be at Real Estate Connect in NYC in January?
From the Garden State,
Matt Gentile
Todd: Thanks for playing along.
Mike: I agree, it’s just the text book definition of PR, but mos PR practitioners, and even more business executives don’t get that. PR is optimal to own the deck, but can’t get beyond media relations models to do it.
Matt: No dice on that show, but glad to see you are doing well.
Geoff,
What I take from your compelling thoughts is that at the end of the day marketing and communications work best when we integrate the tools to achieve a single objective. Nice work!
Thanks for this very concise summary of an older debate. I recently met with a local agency which boasted a wide range of services including social media and legal services. They dubbed themselves a “Communication Agency.” So the semantic battle goes on.
My fellow on Orkut shared this link and I’m not dissapointed at all that I came here.