Put three marketeers in a room, ask them a question and you’re pretty much guaranteed to get three different answers, unless of course your question is this, is the Internet changing everything? The Guardian published its revised ABCs in December and, as in previous months, it does not make for happy reading for the newspaper industry. The Sun has held steady (-0.05 %), the FT, ironically buoyed up by the recession, dropped by less than 1%, but that was the extent of the good news. The quality dailies’ circulations dropped by between 3 and 5%, the red tops by between 4 and 8% and whilst all these statistics could be put down to a harsher trading environment the trend behind them would suggest that this isn’t the cause.

Compare the above circulation figures with the exponential rise in advertising spend online and you begin to get a picture of the shifting environment in which the industry finds itself. It is a shift that asks questions of marketeers and advertisers alike, but more fundamentally it questions the basic business models of most public relations companies and the essence of what it means to operate in PR. Newspaper readers are migrating en masse to a world where the news happens by the minute, not by the day, and where Google trumps Murdoch as the media’s only real gatekeeper.

Perceptions
PR has always been an industry that has struggled for control. However, it has always been an illusion. We have never had control. We have tried to control the actions and re-actions of those we worked with, the access enjoyed by the media and the perceptions of those who read it. It is this desire for control that must be the first casualty of the media shift, an online environment is organic and cannot be controlled by anyone. The traditional PR skill set, an ability to pick out a narrative and understand its relevance, may remain but in a world where the way people consume media has changed so fundamentally, PRs will need to look at their ability to continue delivering measurable results.

It started with search. People no longer open the newspaper and read it inch by inch, they search for what they want to know. The individual news agenda no longer exists because people have on-demand news, thanks to Google.

Public relations has become accustomed to an environment dominated by a relatively small number of competitors, each sharing the spoils of a large client pool and having a relatively small amount of deliverables – things have changed. Companies need to engage with their customer base; this is the age of the two way conversation.
As businesses become more interested in the online world, they become more savvy and their expectations of their PR company skyrocket. We’re witnessing a seismic shift towards total public relations accountability; there is a lot of online buzz around the ‘rise of the individual’, well PR companies are seeing the rise of the client and they need to understand how to react to this new power.

The PR business model used to revolve around knowing senior news gatekeepers; contacts were currency. The incoming tide of communities and citizen journalism has put a stop to that though. The PR currency is now core skills and these skills cover a broader range of areas than ever. A recent online meme was started by a few senior PRs at large PR companies listing the skills that they expect their staff to have. The list was vast and included skills ranging from knowledge of video editing software to an understanding of how a wiki works. Making forward features lists and writing articles may not have disappeared from the PRO’s remit, but they’ve become deprioritised by blogger relations and community management.

The cost of PRs getting this new world order wrong can be great. In the old world a badly targeted or worded release would simply result in no coverage. In the new world a mistaken pitch can result in damage to your brand as bloggers publicly ridicule the pitch.

Adapt
This change will bring about it support and criticism but ultimately PRs will have to adapt or simply lose out on promotion or find themselves out of work. As PR continues to develop and integrate with the online world the skill sets of many PRs will widen.

The evolution has already begun, PR students are now being taught books by Malcolm Gladwell alongside Effective Public Relations and this grass roots adaptation will provide the fuel for the evolution.

The future of public relations is here and it’s being led by early-adopting companies, these companies will provide the framework for the future and open doors that are currently closed. They’ll lead the way and provide reluctant consultancies with case studies of success and best practice, helping to develop the industry in the same way that the media landscape is changing. This is the era of the community, and public relations must be the foundations of that community.

“PR has always been an industry that has struggled for control. However, it has always been an illusion. We have never had control.”