Andrew Smith | Wadds' PR Blog

June 14th, 2010 by Wadds

The rise of search marketing (and the failure of PR)

Return on investment is a dirty term in the PR industry. It’s a bit like margin. The industry would rather not go there.

In almost every other area of marketing professionals are able to plan an outcome against a level of investment. And generate a healthy bottom line.

But PR is different we say. It deals with influence in the editorial world and that’s beyond the comprehension of a spreadsheet.

The PR industry’s inability to communicate in the language of the boardroom means that it has failed to gain recognition in all but a limited number of cases.

PR for too long has been a craft and not a business discipline. But that is changing. But the change is far too slow for my liking.

Here’s a cautionary tale for anyone in the PR industry. Andrew Smith has scrutinised NMA’s latest league table of UK search marketing agencies for the third year running.

“[…] search firms continue to generate very respectable profits – certainly compared with the PR sector. And search firms are making no secret of continuing their land grab for PR work. The PR sector must therefore continue to up its game in terms of the quality and value of the digital services it offers,” says Smith.

Search could have been a new revenue stream for advertising (pay per click) or PR driven editorial (organic).

But with a couple of exceptions (Golley Slater and Chime-owned VCCP) according to Smith neither discipline has moved fast enough to capture the market and a new industry has emerged.

Social media is the next battleground. Be warned.

Posted in Business, PR, Social media
Tags: Andrew Smith, NMA, PR, Public relations, Search, SEO
3 Comments »

February 9th, 2010 by Wadds

Lord Lucas withdraws web link copyright amendment to the Digital Economy bill

Further to my blog post early today on the Right2Link campaign thanks to Andrew Smith for an update on Lord Lucas’ proposed amendment (292BA) to the Digital Economy bill seeking the “protection of the right to link to publicly available information on the internet.”

In a debate in the House of Lords last night lasting almost six hours Lord Lucas argued the case for fair usage:

“We ought to take the clear view that the breadth of knowledge on the web should be available to all, and that commercial interests on the web should be confined to relatively small corners of it and not allowed to take over vast swathes of it. In most cases, a search engine taking a small extract of copyright material-what is on a search engine is copyright material-should be regarded as fair usage and a proper part of the way in which the citizen and the copyright holder interact.”

Lord Lucas subsequently withdrew the amendment following a commitment from Lord Davies of Oldham to provide written assurances on behalf of the Government:

“The Government want-and the noble Lord did say how important it was for us to have a definition of what we wanted from the web-web users to continue to be able to use the web freely for legitimate uses, but we do not want to condone or to encourage copyright infringement. Those are the principles which underpin our approach to the web. Once again, I know that I am craving the noble Lord’s indulgence with such a sparse response to some intensive arguments, which he mercifully at this late hour kept to a few well-chosen words. We will write to him on all those amendments and I know very well that if he is less than satisfied with the responses on that very mildly-presented point, we may hear more from him. We will certainly bear that in mind in the letters that we write to him.”