I attended the excellent NMK online PR debate last night and came away with plenty to think about. Other than the Q&A session at which point those posing questions became either; a) guarded or b) salesy (it must’ve felt like a shark tank for the one client that attended), the debate covered a lot of interesting areas.
I wanted to pop my hand up a few times, throw something and shout a few times and storm out a few times – but (to the relief of the people I sat with) I did none of that stuff. So I’ll do most of it here and now.
#1 A ‘one world order’ industry
Antony Mayfield suggested that there’s a race on, and that the type of agency that gets to effective online communications first will write the bible on it and own it. In my view (or IMO, if Vikki Chowney will let me be a digital native – for she is the chief of the natives) this is a ridiculous suggestion. The bible is already being written; every time a client hands a huge small pot of gold the industry takes either a step forwards or a step backwards (I will concede that it’s often a step backwards though). However the point remains, while people use the internet to communicate, the bible is being written. Then rewritten. Then burnt and written again. This isn’t traditional communications, it’s fluid, it moves, it changes, it contradicts, it’s human.
No single type of area of communications will lead; the fact that (for all intents and purposes) two distinct areas of communications sat at that table in Zigfrid Von Underbelly highlights that at least two industries know that something is going on. PR wont just wake up one morning and forget about the internet, and neither will digital (and we’re all screwed when the ad boys learn how to turn wifi on).
#2 The general attitude towards public relations
Many of the issues raised at the NMK debate referred to public relations as media relations. Which it is not. I’ve worked in PR (both in traditional, social focused, in-house and agency) for a while now and I’d estimate that media relations makes up for about 10% of my job. Even then, good media relations isn’t ‘let’s create a database and phone people’ it’s ‘I wonder who I know that might be interested in this’. Media relations is relationships with the media – not relationships with Media Disk. That would be Media Disk Relations.
Last night was a tricky one for PR, because the good PR agencies (I.E. those that were savvy enough to know something was happening and turn up) had to support the bad agencies. Most of the issues that came up were issues with bad PR agencies, not good ones.
The idea that PRO’s aren’t in the perfect situation to take over relationships using the internet is crazy. Crazy I tell you.
#3 Measurement
The final throes of the debate centred around digital’s apparent ‘joker’ card – measurement. There are two issues here; measuring influence and using important metrics.
Influence: Those that claim that they can measure influence are being 50% inaccurate. And that’s a bad stat too. Influence means a mass of different things, (I’ll use the bad example that I gave to Andrew Smith at the bar) there could have been one hundred people telling the CEO of Oracle to give Sun Microsystems a wide berth, each holding a tiny bit of influence over the CEO, but then one person strolls over at lunch and states that he thinks the CEO would be stupid to not buy Sun… Influence isn’t a numbers game, it’s a relationships game and PR is perfectly situated to pull out how those relationships work. That’s exactly why sociologists, politicians and psychologists (gasp, even the great Edward Bernays) tend to make great PRO’s. They understand relationships and social mechanics. Neither of which can be measured by click-throughs or bought on Google AdWords.
Important metrics: There is a single metric that is important. Not inlinks, outlinks, internal links, authority, page rank, click-throughs, alexa. But conversions. To come back to Stuart’s bad bar analogy from the event, marketing might make you more attractive, advertising might bring you more short-term attention, digital might bring more click-throughs and promotion might help spread the word, but public relations keeps peoples interest and ensures that the reputation is managed. I’ll take the point that brands cannot guard their own brand identity, because people create that, but PR can influence that. And almost like magic we’re back to influence and social mechanics again!
I’m terribly aware that I’ve babbled on for too long already, so I’m cutting it short and stopping. I’d really like to hear from Anthony and Roger – I have massive respect for both of them (and the other good guys in digital) and I would hate this post to look like a slight on them – it’s not.
I’d love to hear from Ian (massive thanks have to go to Ian – cheers again), Stuart, Drew, Adam, Kerry, Adam, Vikki, Simon, Tim, Ben and anyone else who I had a chat with on the night.
Also, here’s a sort of summary of who’s covered the debate so far…
Lloyd Gofton talks a good talk and treads the steady tightrope of digital and PR.
Peter Hay gives us the PRWeek edit of events.
Jo-Rosie Haffenden throws down the gauntlet of changing public relations to interactive relations (I wholeheartedly agree, but still stubborn as a mule I’ll say public relations is interactive relations).
Rowan Stanfield talks about the debate from the perspective of digital – and gives a comprehensive overview. As you’d expect, I’m preparing a long winded comment.
Danny Whatmough chirps in – but I’m still mad at him for not making it.
Roger Warner expands on his panel chatter further – again, comment is in the post Roger!