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Will the Revolution Not Be Advertised?
June 4th, 2010 | 
Author: 
It may be stating the bleeding obvious, but we all know the media is changing rapidly – every few months, something comes along that fractures the old order more and more. The latest is the iPad, one more thing in a long line of technological advances that are making it easier for brand and public to connect without the need of the old certainties.
So what will shape the future? And who will shape it? The screaming headline in PR Week warning of ad agencies encroaching on PR territory misses the point a little, I feel. A good PR agency is stronger than people think.
“Ad agencies have always been a threat,” a friend in PR admitted the other day. “WPP et al have been buying PR agencies for decades. What matters is contacts, culture, energy, creativity, bullshit and bollocks. And, of course, your last piece of coverage. And that means scum-sucking, news-junky, urban cosmopolite ambidextrous grasshoppers like us.”
He’s right. Ad agencies have always been at the centre – but now the centre cannot hold, and they are looking for new ways to play the game. If ad agencies are attempting to encroach on PR’s turf, it says more about the dire straits that the advertising agencies are in than it does about PR’s fragility.
Whenever I’ve been asked to get involved in a campaign led by an ad agency, it has become abundantly clear that they do not really understand the power of stories or true public engagement.
Ad agencies never really catch the public conversation – they’re too busy letting their account men get the client dependant on them to understand the relationship PR has with media, client and public. In PR, we listen, we tell hard truths when they’re necessary, we break bad news gently. Ad agencies say what the client wants to hear and rarely challenge the client unless they’re fishing for a bigger budget for a TV campaign.
But there are fewer and fewer big budgets as the traditional homes of the advert fracture and disperse like tear-gassed teenagers. Consequently there fewer and fewer places where the ad agencies can force their clients’ agenda on the public in return for the sort of remuneration they have been used to getting.
Ad agencies have always been about control and control does not allow for listening. They do not get that great advertising does not automatically translate into great PR.
This is why they will fail to encroach on PR territory if we stand firm and use our knowledge of the ebb and flow of the news agenda carefully and well, if we remain honest and listen to the client, if we refuse to let desperate ad agencies change our agendas to suit their failing ones.
The ad agencies are dinosaurs, desperately trying to make sense of a rapidly evolving media world. PR agencies – at least the smarter, better ones – have been making a good fist of the required gradual development and evolution over the last seven or eight. Consequently, these PR agencies are the ones who can see, just a little more clearly than most, the shape of things to come.
Posted in Mark My Words | 
Tags: advertising, agency, budget, conversation, failure, future, iPad, news, news agenda, PR, PR Week, revolution, TV, WPP
Thanks for the post Mark. As part of that screaming headlined story, let me agree with some points and provide a perspective.
As Nicola Mendelson, chairman at Karmarama commented in the piece, we don’t believe in the tension between PR and ads.
This is not an ad agency trying to do PR, it’s a PR agency with story telling at its heart.
Our aim is to build campaigns that achieve cultural currency – we want to make things that people talk about, comment on, pass on, share with their friends and are entertained by. Things that journalists want to write about. Sometimes that will be PR, sometimes that will be ads, more often than not it might be a combination of both.
No doubt both agencies will learn a lot from each other as we work together. And no doubt I’ll have to have the “no that ad is not PR worthy” conversation a few times.
This is a new venture of like minded people who want to create great work and believe in the potential of integrated comms, above the line or below the line. As a colleague said recently – whose line is it anyway?
Cheers, wish us luck – Chris McCafferty
Couldn’t agree with you more, Mark. As a former journalist turned PR man, I am amazed at what people think is worth sharing. To me, news only becomes news when what you say or do is worth sharing – does it help me? Does it solve my problems? Will it make me angry, smile or laugh.
Will it make me think or make a difference? Its stuff I want to tell my mates down the pub, my colleagues. Maybe even my Nan. A good PR listens and understands moods.
Of course, an integrated approach makes sense, but all too often integration = other channels pushing the advertising strap line. Advertising is telling. It’s shouting. It interrupts your day and it even gets in the way of a good TV show. I dare say it will get in the way of the World Cup at some point too.
The ever changing world of new technology, digital media and social media has radically shifted the balance of power. Consumer empowerment is the major opportunity – and threat – to any business. Like never before, brands are exposed and only those that can embrace sound, well thought out PR, alongside great customer service (the experience you offer) and show an ability to listen, will lead the way.
We live in a world of reputation management. It’s a currency where what you say, do, feel, even think, will be broadcast in seconds. You can’t buy a reputation. You earn it, and you need to bloomin’ well prove it too. PR, for that reason, has never been in such a stronger position.
Having said all of that, I have one nagging issue. For as long as senior decision makers like the vanity of trying to control what others think about “their” brand – be that on TV, billboards or in newspaper ads – then there will always be a need for the swashbuckling ad men.
Chris, I do wish you luck in your collaboration. Listen and be wise.
Simon
I think it should be advertised but as you see we are democratic in our mouth only but not in our deeds. Thats the problem I think. Anyway, Thanks for sharing.