Posts Tagged ‘Social media’
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.
March 3rd, 2010
As you may have seen, the team at Altimeter Group have been holding a series of social media-focused webinars titled:
1. Understand Your Customers’ Social behaviours
2. Developing A Social Strategy
3. Social Strategy: Getting Your Company Ready (Taking place April 14th)
The second Webinar, focused on social strategy, took place last week, and the slideshow deck is available below.
For anyone interested in social media and communicating in a social environment this is a must read. The Altimeter Group has carried on the excellent work of the likes of Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang, as well as many others, who have been offering their insight on the area going back to their days at Forrester Research and earlier.
You may be thinking; ‘oh no not another social media presentation’, but as you will see by the content, it makes sense to take notice of these suggestions. Why? Well, not only because you’ll probably see these points repeated in many agency presentations in the future, but because they make sense, and aren’t focused on one particular sales pitch, other than the obvious consultancy sell.
The first point that grabbed me is a point we’ve been making to clients for many years; social media isn’t about the technology, it’s about the conversation. The technology is merely a conduit for the conversation, and to be fair a conversation starter, but too many people are hung up on this technology or that service, without fully grasping the nature of social communications.
I won’t go on, as the slides will tell their own story, but if you’re looking for a presentation that gives you a full overview of the issues that you need to consider when developing a social media strategy, this should go to the top of your list.
March 2nd, 2010
The Liberate Media team have put a Social Media quiz together for you to enjoy between meetings or when ever you get some free time. The quiz consists of a whole load of social media questions, well 50 to be exact. Some questions are challenging, others you will answer easily.
Once you’ve completed the quiz, add your score to the comments section, and the winner will be crowned the ‘BIG Social Media Quiz expert’, which is much more meaningful than being a social media expert!
To pass you have to score 70% or more, and no cheating!
Enjoy.
The Liberate Media BIG Social Media Quiz
Social Media case study examples
February 22nd, 2010
Here are some some of the more recent social media case studies that I have found useful in the last few weeks, as a belated 2009 review.
Here are some some of the more recent social media case studies that I have found useful in the last few weeks, as a belated 2009 review.While reading these case studies, one trend seemed to stick out in particular, related to the way in which they are presented. More often than not the case studies are visually-based and shared via via slideshare or YouTube with a small supporting blog post. This of course makes total sense as it gives the community another insight to your product and services, and because these destinations often rank highly in searches.
Social Media Case Study Round-Up from e Marketer (more recent)
30 UK Social Media case studies from the Spotlight Ideas blog.
Toyota_GB_iCrossing_case_study.pdf (application/pdf Object)
February 19th, 2010
At Liberate Media, just as at any other agency, we are regularly invited to pitch/meet/propose on a number of campaigns, and each year a percentage of those campaigns will be what we all unaffectionately refer to as ‘time wasters’, or perhaps if we were looking at it as a more sinister act, the thieves who invite you to pitch simply to hear your patter and steal your ideas. We’ve all been on the wrong end of this approach, no matter what business you are in, and sympathy certainly isn’t the purpose of this post.
So why bring it up? Well, as part of a business planning session we did at the beginning of the month I looked into 2009 new business successes/failures as a learning exercise, and I was pretty flabbergasted by the results and the amount of work we had put in with little or no return over the year. To be clear, by return I don’t mean purely winning the campaign or getting paid, I mean no result what so ever. Either the client mysteriously went quiet, said the budget had disappeared, the campaign was never awarded to anyone, or the real killer; we win and it never goes ahead.
Okay, last year was pretty terrible in terms of the economy, so the budget excuse maybe valid, but the opposite is also true, with little or no budget why would you call a pitch/meeting if you weren’t 100%. That makes me suspicious.
I haven’t quite come to the conclusion that 2009 was a back stabbing fest with companies turning agencies over for their ideas, but from our experience there was certainly more of these unexplained losses than usual.
‘You should have been more aware’ I hear you say, ‘the ones that are out to steal ideas are easy to spot’, and to some extent or other I agree. I used to pride myself in spotting the odd chancer who’s just looking for ideas, having been involved in PR pitching for coming up to 12 years I’ve seen quite a few examples, but either my radar is on the blink or last year was an exceptional year.
So, looking back at the outcomes of some of these pitches, many of which were with big brands, I see a whole host of outcomes, such as; ‘we’ve decided we’re not quite ready’, ‘one of our directors is on board but the other isn’t', ‘budget has gone/been pushed back’, ‘campaign has been put on hold or stopped’, the list goes on.
In fact doing a rough calculation of the campaigns in question, and looking at those that I know have gone ahead, only 10% that we were not successful in went to another agency, or went ahead in some guise. That means 90% are either still waiting or have fallen into the ‘unknown category’.
So what are we to do? I’m not considering the whole ‘charging for pitching/ideas’ argument that pops up every now and again, but would like to establish why the surge last year? Yes we can chalk a certain amount up to the economy, we have to take a fair hit for not spotting the time wasters, but that still leaves a good percentage with a motive as yet unknown. Am I being unkind in suggesting they did this deliberately, or is it something deeper?
Is there a part of this ‘unknown’ that felt, or were told, that social media/digital PR is something they needed to be involved in as part of their 2009 remit? And when they understood the situation, or when they realised the scale of the opportunity, discovered that they hadn’t budgeted or resourced sufficiently? Could it also be that some people needed to just investigate this area and bring in agencies to talk it through, well if discussion is the focus, fair enough, but please don’t hide behind the promise of a campaign if you want to talk. Education is part of what we all have to do, and most of us are happy to do it, but not to be duped into doing it.
So what has this review exercise taught me? Well, thinking practically, this tale should not just be one of woe, we’ve also had the great fortune to meet some brilliant new clients during 2009, many of which were won in an open and often quick process which has fostered a great relationship that has continued to this day. I hope that if the education barrier was an issue that we’ll see less of these problems in 2010 or at least more openness in discussing the problems.
Please let me know if you have any insight or experiences that you would like to share in this area, as i think there is more to be explained.