Last night I spotted (via Mumbrella) an article in Australian Anthill, by James Tuckerman, talking about how PR is the last of the marketing disciplines to 'get' online.
It makes some generalisations, but essentially there are some harsh truths in what he says.
Exhibit A - the global PR campaign of the year at Cannes (World's best job), came from a digital agency in Australia. Exhibit B - here in the UK the chapter on online PR in the Internet Advertising Bureau (iab) handbook is similarly penned by a digital - not a PR - agency.
However it's worth looking in a bit more detail at what James says. In particular, James states that from experience (as a magazine publisher), PRs will whoop for joy if they get a small piece of print coverage, but their reaction borders on disappointment if the pick-up is online only.
Now before everyone shouts 'not me!', well yes, not you! You are reading this for starters! But outside an active community of digital and tech specialists, I'd question whether as an industry we've really moved on as much as we should have done.
If a PR had gone to sleep rip van winkle style in 1999 and woken up today, I think that what s/he'd find would be pretty comforting. Overall, as an industry we're still calibrated towards old media, with digital almost being a bolt-on, like a third wheel after print and broadcast.
James says that this is partially driven by clients who want to hold that piece of print in their hands that they can show to their internal clients. However, I'm not sure his solution - building arguments based on numbers, even by doing something as basic as pulling off free stats via Alexa - is the most effective way to bring about change.
Instead, I wonder if we should fight this on two fronts.
First of all, over the past year I've been greeted by comments from in-house marketers that include "Twitter is really SAD!", "I hate bloggers!", "this is all a bit of a game isn't it?" and "this isn't for us, we're not cool" (neither is most of what goes on online).
I wonder whether these reactions demonstrate an instinctive backlash from marketers who (like me) grew up in an old media world and think we're pulling the rug from under their feet.
Like some cymbal bashing evangelist spreading the word about the 'good book', do we go on and on about it too much, without constantly reminding them that it's not a case of either / or, but and / and?
The fact is, most of us who operate in this space by no means take the cartoonish view of old media = RIP. Perhaps we should highlight numbers like this - 88% of newspaper reading time is in print - a bit more.
How useful is the big number anyway?
And on that note, I'm not sure that constantly highlighting the big number (guilty as charged) is that useful anyway.
We can say that nine million people (Comscore, not ABCe stats) look at Guardian online compared to under 400k that look at the print edition, but we first of all have to filter out the 57% that come from abroad, and then there's that reading print vs reading online stat above.
Instead - and I know that this was the focus of the recent measurement camp in London that some of the Cows went to - it's better to talk about engagement and influence first and reach second. So you may or may not remember that print article you read on your way to work, but you will instantly forward on a link to someone if you think it's interesting.
And as James says there are plenty of free tools out there that let you make that point.
To take one example, the next time you get a piece of online coverage, put it through backtweets so you can show your clients what's being said about it and how it's been forwarded around. Result: Pretty much instant (and interesting) feedback that you won't get if using a standard evaluation tool.
James concludes by asking 'why don't PRs and their clients 'get it', we're listening.' I'd argue so are agencies from the other marketing disciplines who are more than happy to pick up the slack.
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