Don’t fear the Ad guys, embrace integration
June 4th, 2010 by Lloyd Gofton
If you’ve seen PR Week this week, you’ve seen the news that the Ad guys are coming, but what does that really mean?
The headline on the front page said it all: Top advertising agencies creep into PR territory as Karmarama has hired Shine Communications’ director Chris McCafferty to set up an integrated PR agency, and Beattie McGuinness Bungay is in the final stages of staffing up its in-house PR agency, BMB PR, not long after Resonate’s co-founder Graham Drew’s moved to sister advertising agency VCCP.
There’s also an interesting PR Week post on the subject from Adam Clyne.
So, does this mean the end for the PR agency, are advertising budgets stretched so far that Ad agencies are looking longingly at the comparatively small budgets awarded to PR agencies? Well no, I don’t think so. You can sleep safe in your bed PR boys and girls, for now…
However, what should be keeping you awake in your comfortable traditional PR world is that the rest of the marketing community is thinking bigger, much bigger. They are thinking integration.
Not just advertising with PR, but digital with PR and advertising, and marketing with digital and PR and advertising. This is far from a new move, and it’s certainly not the first time I’ve been banging on about it on the pages of this blog. The digital world has been going through this integration for some time, but this was just the beginning.
Yes, budgets are shrinking but I don’t think that’s the main force behind this move. Yes, the skills required to do our jobs effectively, whether that’s the job of an advertiser, PR, digital marketer or traditional marketer are coming closer together. And yes, the clients are working this out and developing briefs accordingly that call in a range of skills, but without the need for separate agencies that are expensive to hire and manage.
So, if you thought it was just the ad agencies that are after a slice of the PR market, I think it’s time to wake up, we’re all after a slice of each other’s market, not necessarily because of a strategic objective to take over another sector, but because the consumer doesn’t care where the message comes from. They’ll choose to consume the media the suits them best (and none of the above will cut it alone), the client doesn’t want to complicate agency management, or pay for it, and the bottom line is we should all have a range of skills that reflect the requirements of our clients and more importantly - their clients.
If you feel safe in your PR/Ad/marketing/digital environment enjoy it while it lasts, because like it or not, the move towards integration is coming, not just because of economic pressures, but because it simply makes sense.
Tags: Advertising vs PR, Integration, PR Week
