This week in PR (22 March newsletter - the media issue)

There are 24 content links in this week’s roundup, but one theme dominates: the media landscape in 2024.

Establishing the theme, Ben Smith interviewed two comms managers working for Google for the PRmoment podcast. They were discussing the complexity of B2B comms that’s now so much more than media relations targeting the trade and technical press. As Laura Wheeler observed:

‘In my view a modern, integrated PR approach is a far cry from the traditional model of simply blasting out press releases. And that’s why it’s so critical to plan well-integrated campaigns.’

Indeed, no company has done more than Google to create the 21st century media landscape in which links to high domain authority websites have been replacing articles in major media as the focus of everyday public relations tactics.

It was in this context that a Chicago-based PR consultant, Gini Dietrich, was encouraged to create a diagram to represent her approach to media in the age of Google. This was in a print book, Spin Sucks, published ten years ago. Her trademarked PESO model has since become widely cited, and was last given a makeover in 2020.

This week Dietrich published her 2024 update. She’s dispensed with some of the detail to leave a clearer diagram giving a top level overview of the paid-earned-shared-owned approach to the media.

‘One of the big changes I wanted to make this year was to reflect a more strategic viewpoint. We still have a version that lists the tactics (with updates to remove the things that have moved on to greener pastures), but the main version shows only what you can expect to achieve with each media type and what to expect when they’re used together.’

Referencing Google’s own guidelines, she writes:

‘The biggest shift is in what happens when you use all four media types together, in a cohesive and integrated program: experience, expertise, authority, and trust, or E-E-A-T.’

Has public relations become an adjunct to a burgeoning search industry? Arguably. And has the blurring of earned and paid media gone even further? Has media relations now become ‘pay to play’ as Dietrich suggests? In the context of further layoffs of journalists she writes: ‘most of our earned media efforts need to include a budget to pay for coverage and backlinks.’

This may feel a step too far in the UK, where an important part of our broadcast media is still publicly-funded and free of advertising. But the squeamish should note that all almost PR is paid-for, in that anything more than a purely volunteer-run function requires resources and we expect to be paid for our efforts and expertise.

Then there are discussions around the news ecosystem. TikTok has had a remarkable rise from a channel for serving up entertainment to one where many people receive news and search for products, but is it about to see a rapid fall at the hands of politicians? Ian Silvera goes behind the scenes to discuss the ownership and political machinations.

‘TikTok is a disruptor – breaking up the monopoly of what is a Western-dominated sector. Social media apps are largely owned and managed by big US Silicon Valley companies. Does backlash against a Chinese competitor just demonstrate that the US cannot cope with a rival with a quality platform that challenges its own niche?’

It’s not just TikTok. Martin Flegg shares his worries about the influence of social media more generally:

‘Social media was supposed to transform society by connecting everyone to everyone and by liberating the availability of information. It was supposed to set us free.....how different the actual outcomes have been and how terrifying could the future become? The 'truth', 'reality' and 'democracy' are literally at stake.’

Meanwhile, Dan Slee reminds us of the rise and rise of ‘dark social’ channel WhatsApp, part of the Meta stable alongside Facebook and Instagram. He notes:

‘WhatsApp is used in the UK by around 80 per cent of people aged between 18 and 64, according to Ofcom. That’s as close as you can get to a universal social app.’

And perhaps that is the point. We had become used to understanding the news media as being those channels controlled by journalists and editors (in which we sought to ‘earn’ a mention) . We had then become familiar with social media being those public social media platforms where people shared their personal updates (and where we hoped for our content to receive shares too).

But media quite literally describes any means of communicating. A conversation is a means of communication, so it’s a media exchange too.

Back to the podcast where we began. Jo Ogunleye and Laura Wheeler both emphasised the richness and complexity of B2B public relations, embracing the media, analysts, influencers, thought leaders and more.

It’s called public relations, not media relations, for a reason.