PR will lose Social Media to Advertising Due to Sex

Okay, not necessarily sex - but advertising does know how to make mundane things sexy.

And, at times, social media can be mundane. And, advertising (and marketing) understands how to sex-up the mundane.

So, after putting together this post, mulling it over in my mind since, I've come to some conclusions. Since YouTube. But, the clients eat up those numbers because they expect that from advertising, and, well, advertising knows how to sell itself. Unlike PR. Oh, and that cost includes nothing on outreach - it's just production. Take a minute and think of all the bad campaigns that advertising has done in social media ... but dayum, it's slick!!

And, well, look at the past. The Web sites should have been a PR vehicle - it's communications - but we lost it to marketing. Why? Because Web sites became a vehicle for selling - only. Messaging and communications rate, at best, a distance second (after)thought.

How many corporate sites make sense, and tell the story of the company? Barely any. Why? It's because PR ignored the power of the Web early on. Now, all that marketing / advertising has to chime in with is that they already execute on the Web with the corporate site ... and they will win that sales war (and still have crappy execution, as a whole).

In social media, advertising has that Midas touch, except it turns almost everything to shit. Plus that seat at the C-suite table helps them out ... while we're stuck in the lobby, pacing like hired help.

What can PR do to win - because at the end of the day, we need to win or social media will be ruined (and we'll be blamed).

Here's my bullet-pointed plan to save PR, have a statue put up for me in New York, and be remembered like David Parmet, Constantin Basturea in NYC, Teresa Valdez Klein in Seattle, Neville Hobson, Allan Jenkins. And, go read local bar in Chicago ... think of social networks and communities as a local bar. Would you walk in there, no intro and no relationships, and start spouting off like Marshall Kirkpatrick

• It's about PR - sorry, social media is part of the PR mix, but a new look at it. If you are being lead by an interactive group, best of luck. You're being led by a team that does not understand the principles of public relations, or, well, client relationships.
  
  
  • In an agency-setting for social media, your clients are both the internal teams and the clients themselves, and it is about messaging.
  
  
  
  • If you cannot push back - and, well, interactive teams seem just to be able to build a Web page or two - then you are doing a disservice to the client and the agency.
  
  
  • Then again, interactive should be ordered around by a PR / social media team to build what needs to be built: Facebook apps, widgets, a micro-site ... whatever is needed for the real campaign work.
  • REAL social media teams need to be in the pitch - not a bullshit page or two in a presentation, but a seat at the table during the pitch and AFTER the pitch.
    
    
    • None of this "there's no money" when programs are sold in, and then the money is kept for one team only.
    
    
    • No half-assed sell-ins to clients, since the pitch teams just know buzz words and do not understand it.
    • Do not force the staff into blogging (or Facebooking or SecondLifing...)
      
      
      • I too often see junior staff jump into blogging not for the purity of it (thanks Jeremiah for calling me a purist at Forrester Consumer Forum) but because they see dollar signs and promotions. Those are just Clavens - they are going to be sniffed out as fakers and posers, and not really part of the community.
      
      
      • I often meet senior staff that go into blogging because they think they need to be there ... but have no real interest in being part of the conversation, but were told by higher-ups that they needed to "get it."
      
      
      • On the flip side, if there are not a few people that are engaged, you stil are a bunch of posers. No, you cannot force people to be involved, but they have to want to be involved. I do this stuff because I like to blog, I like technology - heck, I
        • Social media is not media relations - it is about PR (Listen. Like Talib Kweli says - listen, for some reason no one listens anymore. For some reason, PR has forgotten how to listen. If we listen, we'll learn our clients want from us, and we'll learn from both junior and senior staff.
          Large agencies are still standing, and there are people in most of them that get social media as a new skill set. It is not a replacement to other skills - but a complementary skill that is needed. Unfortunately, there are skills that are just as ignored in PR right now ... such as the simple ability of phone pitching, or writing, or providing counsel and handling a crisis. These are all skills that a good PR person should have, and include social media in there now (as the line is becoming blurred with traditional media and influence). It's why I never wanted to be characterized as a blog specialist: I'm a PR generalist that has a wide array of different skill-sets.
          
          The reality is that it does not matter if PR, advertising and social media are all marketing communications - what matters is who is going to get control of social media, and make it right for clients and the agencies. In my view, it should be public relations because social media is very public and socially oriented. You cannot just pop in there and try to be part of the community, to never return again.
          
          If you want to know which agencies are doing it well, well, there are a lot of them. Voce, MS&L and others ... and there are agencies that are talking about getting it, but it's a talk and no real walk.
          
          Will social media stay with PR, or is it going to be another marketing communications discipline? I do not know - I just know that there are some things that social media needs to have for it to be transparent, honest and community-oriented. If PR jumped the gun a little earlier, there wouldn't be these specialized social media practices popping up, and we would have the advantage on advertising and marketing.

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