As a sort-of follow up to Tim’s posts about the nature of the PR business, I thought I’d share this report from AdAge (via Brian Oberkirch and murketing).
AdAge reports:
Ad/marketing-services sectors have rebounded from the ad industry's January 2004 post-recession employment nadir. Advertising/marketing services has added 106,000 jobs since then; marketing consulting accounted for nearly half (48,200) of those gains.
As murketing puts it, ‘In the future, everyone will consult’. Could the data from AdAge be a sign that the marketing industry as a whole is waking up to the fact that our clients don’t just want to get stuff in the papers these days? I suspect this is probably a little over-optimistic — even aside from the fact that there’s going to be mileage in the efficient publicity shop for a good few years to come. After all, there are plenty of market sectors (fashion retail is one which springs to mind) where media coverage is a critical component of short term sales strategy.
Glasshouse Partnership, on the other hand, try to help our clients move beyond this machine-gun approach to selling. As Tim said the other day:
We do corporate marketing. We help design and evolve organisations which meet actual stakeholders needs. We advocate changes that should leverage existing relationship systems as a source of competitive advantage. We try very hard to suggest changes that may actually be deliverable and may actually have an impact. We want strategies that multiply; not divide.
Stakeholder collaboration doesn’t just have to be for the big guys, though. Anyone can set up a wiki or a Skype public chat, open a Flickr group or — if you’re doing things the old fashioned way, get a group of mates down to the pub to talk about some new product ideas.
Getting to know the people who care about what you do is important stuff, and so this sort of dialogue (even though it’s a horrible word) is good. Also, the people who understand how to make dialogue work are the people who’re getting hired these days, it would seem.
1. Tim Kitchin | 25th February 2008 at 10:08 pm
Consultancy growth is perhaps simply a reflection on the dearth of marketing planning perhaps? ‘Simply connect’…as the good man once said…;-)
That said, of course there’s nothing wrong with media coverage - if it engages the people who care about you…
We work very hard at building relationships with media, but hopefully in the right places on the right topics, at the right times. We try not to resort to chat-up lines (except really funny ones).
Continuing the pub analogy, it’s far more rewarding to actually start a scintillating conversation that your stakeholders feel compelled to join in, than to simply join in theirs. That’s the point of thought leadership - not commentary.
Good PRs should aspire to be fielding invitations to make speeches and write by-lines, not writing’ letters to the editor’.
Be commented on; don;t comment.
Maybe at heart that’s the simple lesson of the social economy. He who starts the conversation, often gets to finish it.