E-Consultancy roundtable: Who owns online PR?
May 23rd, 2008 by Wendy McAuliffe
Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to attend E-Consultancy’s quarterly roundtable event on the topic of Online PR.
I’m told it was the busiest it has ever been - clearly Online PR is a hot subject of discussion at the moment. The room was packed out with marketing and PR managers from a wide range of sectors including finance, technology, travel and publishing etc. In attendance on the agency side were myself, Simon Collister of Edelman, Drew Benvie of Hotwire, and Karl Havard of search agency Propellernet.
At the heart of the two-hour discussion was the burning question: “Who owns Online PR?”. Although we jumped around discussing related subjects such as research and measurement, budget and resouce allocation, to name but a few…the crux of the argument repeatedly came back to how we define Online PR, and ultimately who should own it.
One brand-side attendee summed up many people’s thoughts exactly: “Are you talking about sending out your views to your audiences who happen to be reading it in an online format rather than on paper, or are you talking about SEO? SEO is often treated as a different silo and managed by a different division, who are unaware of what the marketing department is doing. That is where the definition becomes a bit blurred.”
On the PR side, there thankfully seemed to be a conscenus of opinion that what we’re talking about here is PR- whether we’re defining it as offline or online. Online PR is no more than PR in the digital space.
From my perspective, social media is taking us back to the original cornerstone of PR - that being two-way conversation. There is a danger in continuing to segregate ‘Online PR’ as something separate, that should have separate ROI and budgets attached. This will continue to reinforce the problem of Online PR existing as an afterthought or bolt-on to wider marketing and PR efforts.
Surely it’s better than we focus on breaking down these silos, as has happened to a certain extent in the advertising industry, so that we can start to achieve a truly integrated campaign that shares the same objectives and strategy?
One search expert in attendance suggested online has outpaced the traditional PR agencies, with some trying to re-position themselves to grab this online concept, and make sure they portray that they know it. “When actually the digital agencies know the online mediums and don’t know PR, while the PR agencies know PR but don’t necessarily know the online mediums,” he argued.
At Liberate Media we’re taking a collaborative approach, forging partnerships with experts who offer complimentary services, e.g. SEO, but respect our strategic communications skills. By bringing essential new skills in-house, e.g. social media/technology expertise, we have also been able to evolve more quickly into a consultancy set-up to take ownership of online PR.
Tags: e-consultancy, edelman, hotwire, liberate media, online PR, Social media
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Does anyone have to own online PR? Surely whoever does it best will win out!
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
In essence, I agree no one has to own it per say, but with confusion brand-side around what is online PR and where it should sit in the marketing mix etc…there is clearly a case to be made for defining Online PR better.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Very true. It would be interesting to see if it moves chapters on the pages of text books over the next 5 years.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Hi Wendy,
It was good to see you last week. Overall it was a good discussion and we definitely came away with some good key learning points.
We’ve just published the Roundtable Briefing notes here, available as a free download for registered users:
http://tinyurl.com/63rpxr
With regards to ownership of Online PR; because online PR can be seen as a separate part of the overall marketing mix, this makes it difficult to measure its overall success as part of an integrated communications campaign, especially as many campaigns incorporate both online and offline PR activity.
A newer definition of OPR is needed to address the fact that PR is a complex marketing discipline including corporate, public affairs, analyst relations, internal communications etc.