I remember the days when ad people looked down at PR types. They had the big bucks budgets while the PR people toiled away on the leftovers writing press releases, arranging company events and the like.
Advertising sells! Well, maybe not so much anymore. Even the American Association of Advertising Agencies acknowledges the new power of public relations. At its recent annual meeting, the group rebranded itself the 4A’s, for one reason because so many of their agencies are discovering that PR pays
A story about a company in a prestigious newspaper like The New York Times has always been more valued more than an ad in the same paper – that old third-party endorsement. The shrinking newspaper and magazine landscape is evidence that advertisers are gravitating to other communication channels. And what they are doing is not called advertising. They are reaching out to their customers through direct feeds, webinars, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Increasingly, they want to interact with their customers at company-sponsored events, product samplings, and through community service.
Funny thing. It’s the PR people who are leading the way. They are writing the blogs, articles and opinion pieces. They are the ones creating community relations programs – like they always have – but now these communities are more often than not reached online. These are the company’s primary activities and not just an adjunct to advertising.
Here’s another thought: maybe the terms advertising, public relations, publicity, promotion and direct response should be consigned to the compactor. Those words just don’t seem to work in the new online communities that are forming like runaway amoebas.
How about new terms like collaborators, community builders, prophets, enablers? Or maybe one word that summarizes everything we are: communicators.
Advertising? That’s so 20th century.
Nicely done! I think your last point is it. Differentiating between the practices of public relations and advertising is fast becoming irrelevant. Today – as it has always been – successful companies must communicate with their target audiences, in one way or another.
Another thought that you begin to address: when there were fewer outlets, advertising in its purest form made sense. Agencies knew which papers to target because there were so few. The impact of television ads, in the days of three networks and nothing else was easily measurable.
Today, I think both the PR and ad guys must yield to the communicator.