Posts Tagged ‘digital pr’
Has the PR industry reinvented itself post recession?
March 12th, 2010
In September 2008, on the day that the European Commission officially announced that the UK would fall into recession, I wrote a blog post entitled “The role of PR within a recession” offering some predictions on what I thought this would mean for the PR industry. The post sparked a fair amount of debate, and so I thought it would be interesting to follow-up this post now that we’ve come out the other side, to see how close or far off the mark I was.
1. The PR industry will reinvent itself
I made the prediction that “a recession will force PR consultancies to get their houses in order, and evolve or die”. Reading it back that sounds a bit harsh, and thankfully I don’t think too many ended up biting the dust…but a fair few have certainly been born.
I imagined PR agencies would “evolve” by quickly bringing their teams up to speed on social media, to ensure they were reaching both online and offline audiences in their consultancy. However, within the UK market there has been a growing trend for PR agencies to set up separate social media or digital PR consultancies - a few examples would be Hotwire launching 33 Digital, Next Fifteen setting up Project Metal and Fishburn Hedges opening up Brew. The list of internal social media teams at established PR agencies is also continually growing.
Moving forward, I think we will see more consolidation happening within this space as large PR agencies look to snap up smaller, specialist social media agencies, in order to accelerate their social media growth.
2. The profiles of individual PRs will become more important
The trend towards ‘Personalised Relations’ that we were seeing at the end of 2008 has undoubtedly continued. However Twitter has exploded exponentially within the social media PR sector enabling more PR folks to “become their own hubs” in the words of Jeremiah Owyang. Competition for share of voice has become fiercer, making it harder to spot the experienced social media consultants from those who are doing a good job of talking about it.
3. PR will no longer be a beauty parade
I would argue that the definition of ‘beauty’ has evolved within the UK PR industry. Today it is not so much about the company name, but much more about the agency’s online reputation and profile. We are increasingly seeing evidence of brands shortlisting and selecting agencies based on their social media assets, rather than the kudos of going with a big global agency. This is a positive trend that I hope will continue.
4. New business will be won/put to tender in less orthodox ways
From what we are seeing at Liberate Media, and hearing about among our peers, this is definitely becoming the case. There is still some nervousness around selecting a social media PR agency, and brands seem more comfortable meeting with agencies that have been recommended within their network of contacts, than taking the impersonal approach of putting a pitch out to tender. We are encountering the fierce pitch process less and less, and instead being given the change to demonstrate our knowledge and creativity within a less confined manner.
5. CEOs will need to prioritise PR more highly
This final prediction is difficult to assess, as I can only offer personal experience. It would be interesting to hear whether other agencies have found this to be the case.
At Liberate Media we did see CEOs and senior management dedicating more time to PR, and taking greater interest in social media. Our training services in particular were called on increasingly as CEOs wanted to upskill and take a more active role in their social media PR efforts.
** These are just my humble opinions. It would be great to hear back from people who commented on my original post, and others, on their experience of the above predictions.
Reflecting on the digital PR community
January 31st, 2009
This post has come a little later than I had planned, but needs must. On Wednesday night I attended the first P2PR event, organised by Jamie Burke and Lidia Miras Martinez at Brando Social, thanks guys - I really enjoyed meeting you and everyone who attended.
Jamie has already done an excellent round up of the event and if you haven’t joined the P2PR community on Ning I would encourage you to do so as there is some great debate with smart people involved. So what can I add? Well, what struck me at the event was the good level of debate between people that would traditionally be classed as competitors. Now of course we’re not going to share everything, a point that was highlighted by most people that I spoke to, but there was a mutual respect, willingness to share issues candidly and helpful input on potential resolutions. It was refreshing to have that input and feel part of a group of people that really are trying to better their profession and push new boundaries, especially in the current economic climate.
By the way, from my discussions, I think the general consensus on new biz was: lots of opportunity but decisions being postponed, put off, or new hurdles being put in place to jump over, which I agreed with.
So, do I have a point? What I’m trying to say is we know we have a good community, we know smart people are trying to do exciting things in communications, in social media and in PR in general. That’s not a new revelation, but we face a real test in the current financial crisis, and although we’re much better placed to deal with it than many other sectors, it’s a test none the less.
If we can still keep that openness, and will to collaborate in today’s financial environment, which so far all the evidence that I’ve seen confirms we can, we’re not only going to come through these harsh conditions, but we’re going to come through it stronger and better than before, which is a future I’m very much looking forward to.
Liberate Media make it on to the SEO BIGLIST
August 26th, 2008
The guys at Liberate Media always strive to give are community of readers something back in the form of honest and thought provoking commentary, the latest social media news and lots of others features from our writers Wendy McAuliffe, Lloyd Gofton, Tim Greenhalgh and Andy Merchant.
So it was nice to see somebody had recognised are hard work, in the form of the - BIGLIST SEO Blog Reviews 082508
This is what Lee Odden from the online marketing blog had to say:
Liberate Media Blog - This UK based agency blog with Andy Merchant, Tim Greenhalgh and founders Lloyd Gofton and Wendy McAuliffe covers emerging trends, industry observations, social media and digital PR topics.
As part of the list we get a big shiny badge to add to our site:
Thanks for reading the blog so far, we hope you enjoy it.
Watch this space for more exiting posts.