An outsider looking in - three big things about PR that I didn't know before
Time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. Three months ago I joined forces with one of the smartest research guys I know, James “JT” Turner, at his growing company delineate. JT doesn’t just know his research, he really knows PR and Comms, so it’s been a rapid journey for me to realise that great PR and Comms research doesn’t just mean popping a few questions on an omnibus survey for that killer stat.
As a relative outsider looking in, here are my major observations of the industry at large:
“Integrated” means different things to different people
Frankly, I still get confused when agencies tell me they’re integrated. To me, a fully integrated agency is one that is capable of taking a brief, dissecting the constituent parts and creating the right campaign assets across earned and paid, social/digital/analogue, to drive the best outcome. It’s able to plan, execute and measure effectively, and understands which levers to pull on the fly. But in practise I’ve seen agencies with a lean towards a certain specialism, with bolt-ons to make them “integrated”. (What’s with the token “digital specialist”? Either do it or don’t do it). I see this as a great opportunity for many agencies out there to follow the likes of VW and P&G and understand that a fully connected proposition is the way the industry needs to move.
PR/Comms often feels like the poor cousin of paid, especially in digital
I’ve seen many a frustrated PR practitioner’s face when I mention the words “attribution modelling”. There’s an innate sense of injustice that the paid guys and gals get too much credit, when a lot of the clever thinking is done in the earned world. I’m neither going to agree nor disagree, but my view is that those that measure best have the strongest arguments. Yes, earned is inherently harder to measure than paid, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to improve measurement to get back to a level playing field.
There’s a disconnect at brand side between the various marketing disciplines
Well, not at the top there isn’t. A CMO knows exactly what their brand’s current and future customers look like, the way they want their brand to be represented to those audiences, and the steps they want to take to get to “what great looks like in our 5 year plan”. The challenge comes when said CMO disseminates that plan into their different marketing services disciplines; each takes the plan, translates into their world, and executes in isolation, often using a range of different agencies with there own methods. Almost all agencies I talked with recently said their dealings are predominantly with the PR/Comms leads at client side; they struggle to get a seat at the CMO table. This is a by-product of the lack of integration and the rise in specialists seen over the past few decades – if you want a seat at the top table, you have to “talk CMO” and see the world through their lens.
If any of the above resonate with you, then you’re not alone... If you’d like to know how delineate is helping agencies overcome some of these challenges, then get in touch!