Dave Taylor responds to my response… well you get it.
Here’s what Dave had to say:
Au contraire. PR as practiced by old-school agencies is long since dead, David. It’s the smart ones at the front of the pack, groups like your own agency, that are reinventing PR to remain relevant in the age of electronic communications. Remember, for every smart PR person who is part of the evolution, there are three that are dinosaurs wondering what happened to all those yummy ferns.
So… a few comments in response…
The agency model that has fleets of 20-somethings banging away at media lists, stalking reporters and emailing 1MB attachments is not going anywhere. In fact it’s the norm in PR. That’s because most companies that engage a PR agency want hits. By most companies I mean the 90% or more of the world’s major corporations who have never heard of blogging and even if they have, they see bloggers as an annoyance at best and a threat at worst.
I know this for a fact because pretty much every agency I’ve worked for works this way. If they could get a client on the Today Show, there’d be dancing in the streets regardless whether the Today Show is an appropriate placement for the client.
Dave, to be perfectly honest, the reason you think this is a dying model is because these agencies don’t know you exist. They’ve never pitched you, or Robert Scoble or Russell Beattie because bloggers are completely irrelevant to them except as a name on a list generated from Bacons.
Will smart agencies, the ones that understand the ways in which the world is changing, win out? Of course.
Companies like Dell, the ones that don’t know or don’t care until it’s too late and one of those annoying little bloggers are impacting their bottom line, are the dinosaurs. Not the agencies that are only responding to what their clients want. Once more clients start demanding more thoughtful approaches, the agencies that Dave thinks are on the way out will be forced to adopt or die.
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PR: Dead or Alive?
Come on, people. How is it that hiding behind keyboards emboldens the absolute statement, along with usual sniff, Well, if you had actually read what I wrote, you’d know how wrong you are.? Huh? Why is that? Ego down, everybody.
But, that’s nothing new Dave and David. Throughout the years, agencies and PR have changed. But, the push has always been with technology PR leading the way with new tech for PR, and it’s still that way. And, guess what, technology PR tools don’t work for publicity, because the media are different audiences.
Look at my interview with Howard Rubenstein. Here is a man that started with phone and delivery for his press release s and old fashioned media relations, and he’s not going anywhere.
The subtext of all these “PR is dead” posts seem to be that blogs are the saviours of PR (or blog consultants are the saviours). I just don’t buy it, as blog are just another tool of communications, not one to replace regular, good ol’ public relations.
Ah, so we are coming to some agreement after all, David. I agree that agencies who aren’t being thoughtful and smart about this new media landscape will be “forced to adopt or die.”