It used to be that certain media stereotypes befitted the PR industry. We worked hard to get away from them, talking about being consultants rather than suppliers, bigging up our strategic significance.
Today, the PR person comes in all manner of shapes and sizes. In many ways, we are a symbolic reflection of the diverse, fragmented, rapidly evolving and somewhat nervy media we work with.
We now have these types of PR people, amongst many others:
- Moderately experienced female PR, invariably blonde, lives Fulham, very comfortable with conventional media and tries hard to play lip service to social media
- Young digital pup, of-the-moment trainers, the hair of the commercially innocent, social media slurper but does not read the papers really
- The experienced senior director, a fondness for expensive moisturisers and knows PR is changing, but looks in the mirror each day and really wishes it wasn’t
- The overworked agency stalwart, dabbles with social media, sometimes surprises with digital acumen, but employer does not give them time to really learn the digital ropes so conventional remains the bread and butter
- The extreme digital enthusiast, made a personal vow a year ago to practically abandon conventional PR and bathe in the heady waters of digital, often tweets about pets and weather
You may recognise some or all of these.
Not clones, but better skilled
But in the future, the PR person will become much more of a standard item. Of course agencies will always look for diversity and range of experience when building the right team and the right culture. But the set of skills will become more regular across the team. And those skills will be a good deal more sophisticated, as well as comprehensive.
As Speed people covered at a Social Media Week breakfast this morning, our view is that PRs of the future are going to need to be experts in all corners of the media, and how to use editorial techniques to do commercially-valued things for clients. Social, print, broadcast, all types of media. Animal, vegetable, mineral, as The Bishop of Bath and Wells (pretend) once said in Blackadder.
The PR person of the future will need to be a complete know-it-all. We’ll need to know how the newspapers work (and boy is that changing fast), how social networks evolve and what has greatest influence at any given time, how ripples effects can be created and PR’s role in a rapidly changing marketing mix.
PR and advertising: let’s sort it out
Danny Rogers at PR Week has picked up on the latter point. He has also touched on why PR may need to hire people from beyond PR. My view on that is that is only one part of the picture: too many PR people have simply not been given encouraged (or had the foresight) to learn the skills they will need in the future, which is why some agencies may be thinking broader. The bigger picture is that PR must grow up and work with advertising to establish the mutual value we can create for clients.
Face it: PR must stand up and be counted
But first, we need to upgrade PR. How we gather insight, the ideas that will really work across diverse media, who the right influencers are now and for the long term, and how we can really, honestly, properly, confidently, unashamedly measure impact.
And the answer to the last point is not just about the latest slightly-better-than-previous-versions social media monitoring tools. It is more like what blend of tools will be more effective for each client, and above that how we can truly tell whether audiences have been influenced to act to our benefit, and when they will do so.
Speed’s approach to the skills challenge we now have in PR is bootcamp-like, but we feel the only way to ensure everyone across a PR business has the skills they’ll need for the future and that clients are coming to rely on. We make no apologies for this. We do not see how half measures or half-cock schemes will cut the mustard. We are working to ensure we are the consultancy that really cracks where PR – all of PR – is going amidst a diverse and fast-changing media.
We are not know-it-alls by any means, but – within the confines of public relations, and how the industry is changing – we aspire to be that. If you know what I mean. PR people who are experts across the new, broader remit of PR, rather than those who stick to our traditional knitting or cling to trends.
