Evolution of Advertising & Public Relations: PR’s Winning
I was going over some old presentations that I’d saved in my “Research” folder, and came across a great diagram that Richard Edelman had used at one point. It was meant to depict the evolution of PR in the Social Media era.
It got me to wondering about the other big recipients of marketing dollars: the advertising guys. How are they evolving? Here’s my take, which is a riff on Mr. Edelman’s original concept:
As you can see, PR is becoming increasingly interpersonal: there is a daily flow of interaction, responsiveness and adaptation going on amongst PR people and their ever-expanding publics. Good PR pros are becoming increasingly open — clear and casual, responsive and transparent.
Meanwhile, the advertising folks are coming to embrace more and more user-generated content, but as PAID media (versus EARNED media), the advertising execs’ ability to flex the corporate message is practically non-existent. They can only move into the “CONTROLLED Collaboration” quadrant of this diagram because ads are, by definition, an official corporate branding exercise.
Yes, the advertising industry will always have an edge in terms of sex appeal, and the future of advertising (particularly in a mobile online world) is still quite exciting. But advertising’s intrinsic, long-term value to the corporate brand is declining in the Social Media era. And the PR industry is the happy beneficiary.
Agree? Disagree? Are you at least glad I’m back from vacation?
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Todd,
Welcome back.
I agree with both what you write and what Mr. Edleman illustrated. PR is growing more collaborative and conversational as those of us in PR embrace social media to communicate. I think we understand that people rebel against the “control” aspect of advertising and seek instead to control the message themselves (since the advent of on-line consumer ratings, citizen journalism, etc.) As a veteran P.R. pro I am grateful for the transparency. Those who lack it will be called on to “be real.”
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rt tDefren The Evolution of PR *versus* the evolution of Advertising. New blog post: [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
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@TDefren RT: The Evolution of PR *versus* the evolution of Advertising. New blog post: [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
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RT @TDefren PR *finally* winning over Advertising after 50+ years competing for budget thx to Social Media.[link to post]
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Quite agree with what you say about PR becoming interpersonal. I see the role of PR increasing in the social conversation(i prefer to use this term over social media). The fact that social conversations are more about conversations now, I don’t see how advertising can fit the space. Traditionally, advertising has been about one way download. It will be a challenge for advertisers to fit the bill of social conversations.
cheers
samraat
Todd,
First, welcome back from vacay, nice to see another insightful post.
I agree that with the advent of Social Media, PR is certainly gaining ground on traditional advertising. Plus, people are always looking for ways to filter out traditional ad messages, which makes the more conversational world of PR and SM much more valuable.
What I worry about is traditional advertising techniques (controlled, not permission based marketing) will take a bite out of SM tools like Twitter and Facebook in the way they did with MySpace (I didn’t want to be friends with Tide Detergent, stop asking). And if these tools are not used within the social norms of the community but rather as megaphones, do they devalue the medium and will users then move to something else (ex: once the big boys get in, does that network lose its effectiveness and cool factor?).
Thanks for another great post.
@ryancmiller
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Right to the chase RT @TDefren: The Evolution of PR *versus* the evolution of Advertising. New blog post: [link to post]
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The “PR versus Advertising” war has been around long before social media, and when the Next Big Thing comes along, there will undoubtedly be folks arguing passionately that the NBT makes PR (or Advertising) the clear winner then too.
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Good news for PR folks – PR is beating advertising: [link to post]
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Is PR winning the evolutionary race against advertising for social media attention?: [link to post]
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