Tag Archive for 'advertising'

Increasingly the discussions around marketing and social media move towards which team should “own” the social media toolkit. On the one hand, advertising with its huge budgets and teams of designers and code-monkeys seem to be the right home for online communications. But increasingly there is a call for social media to fall under the relm of the public relations team.

Kristin Maverick has a good post laying out the rational for this point of view, and cautioning (correctly):

But, as social media has changed the way we think, the traditional PR agency will also need to adapt to the new ways of handling these social media requests. While PR may be the right man for the job right now, it’s also important for PR to include others to help get it done. From partnerships with other specialists to new technologies and advancements emerging everyday, the acceptance of all things changing will only help create successful outcomes and ensure social media success.

Link

I’m inclined to agree, both with the notion that social media is part of public relations, and that traditional PR agencies will have to grow and change their ways of doing business to get the job done. I suppose this is one of those challenges for 2009.

Aside from just “getting it,” whatever your definition of “it” might be, PR agencies are going to have to be a lot smarter on the nuts and bolts of how the Web and social media work. For one thing, to look at many agency web sites, one would be excused for believing the industry is trapped in the late 1990s. Too many agencies have flash intros or sites built entirely on Flash. Too many agencies tout their social media starts but don’t have blogs, or even RSS feeds for their client news. And too many agencies are treating social media now like they treated online communications in the 1990s – as something separate from the “real work” of media relations.

Most of all, PR agencies have to drop the habit of viewing each new social media tool as a means to shout their clients’ messages to as many people as they can grab.