The Social Media “Department” & The Law of Diminishing Returns
Many agencies looking to capitalize on the Social Media wave decided to create specialized groups — an “agency within the agency” — to hone in on this area.
Don’t be fooled.
This Social Media stuff looks like a scary hairy mosh-pit to traditional marketers, so it’s safer, cheaper and easier to devote resources to a “separate” division.
Safer because failure is a less frightening option when confined to a small group. If the “Social Media Department” fails, it can be shut down or re-tooled without impacting the agency’s core business.
Cheaper because these agencies tend to hire one expensive rockstar and surround them with a handful of freshly-graduated (read: cheap) worker bees.
Easier because it is actually quite hard to get up-to-speed and stay current on this fast-moving Web 2.0 stuff, especially when the traditional Media Relations and Client Service work continues to be quite intensive.
Time is money. Training is arduous and expensive. Failure (especially in this economic climate) is scary as hell, especially cuz failures nowadays tend to be more public and more impactful. Betting everything on making the entire agency Social Media savvy is a tough pill to swallow.
But what is safer, cheaper and easier for the agency is rarely in the best interests of the client. In fact when you “bolt on” a specialized group of Social Media rockstars, you do a disservice to the client (short-term) but also to the rest of the agency (long-term).
The Social Media Dept. in this scenario is likely to be in ever-higher demand. But, tasked with serving the needs of ALL of the firm’s clients, their ability to focus and counsel on both fundamental issues (“what’s our social media strategy?”) and little flare-ups (“somebody tweeted about us!”) becomes increasingly diluted. This is an issue of SCALE.
There’s also the question of “where’s the line?” Say a journalist starts tweeting or becomes a freelance blogger. Who now owns the relationship — is it OK that the “traditional” PR pro wants to maintain the relationship, even though the channel supposedly “belongs” to their peers in the Social Media Department? This is an issue of RESPONSIBILITY.
Furthermore, the Social Media Dept. will tend to drink a li’l too much of their own Kool Aid. It’s not long before both clients and their fellow staffers from the “traditional” side of the agency start to question their rationality. To a man with a hammer, every challenge looks like a nail. “Social” is not always the right answer. This is an issue of STRATEGY.
Most egregiously, the agency that takes the time to create and market this specialized unit is looking at it as a standalone profit center. In other words, they’ll often charge extra for Social Media counseling and services. This to me seems like a cynical exploitation of the clients’ fears and doubts re: these new shiny objects. This is an issue of GREED.
Meanwhile as social technologies become a more ever-present part of the media landscape, the PR staff working the mainstream end of the business will find themselves sucked into Social Media in order to do their “traditional” jobs well. This may be mostly tactical work like “following journalists on Twitter,” but, as Social Media infiltrates this workforce from the bottom-up, the heretofore All-Things-Social-Media Dept. will be relegated to increasingly “strategic” discussions: a trendline that eventually requires less staff and more ROI proof, which is threatening both to the fiefdom owner and agency owner, respectively.
An integrated approach is not only increasingly essential but just plain smarter for all concerned. And that is an issue of INTEGRITY.
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Social Media Comments
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RT @DannyWhatmough The Social Media “Department” & The Law of Diminishing Returns – [link to post] >> good article -
RT @AndreaNowack: Agree 100% RT @TDefren: Here’s where I cross the line with some fellow PR agency owners. [link to post] -
RT @LeahWise: The Social Media “Department” & The Law of Diminishing Returns [link to post] (@TDefren via @AndreaNowack) -
Great piece from @TDefren on the “social media dept” – and why this is a bad plan for agencies [link to post] -
RT @martinwaxman @KathyCash Great piece from @TDefren on “social media dept” – and why this is a bad plan for agencies [link to post] -
what a load of rubbish – on social media integration into pr agencies from @tdefren via @jgombita [link to post] -
RT @tdefren The Social Media “Department” & The Law of Diminishing Returns [link to post] -
Agree with Todd social media should be embedded in the DNA of PRs, not a dept. RT @TDefren: [link to post] -
RT @TDefren should have called the post, “Why your agency’s Social Media Dept is doomed to fail?” [link to post] (TRUTH) via@JonClements -
RT @markmellor RT @TDefren: Here’s where I cross the line with some fellow PR agenc[ies] [link to post] < < Everyone needs to do digi PR
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Isn’t interesting that companies that are tasked with delivering the social business strategy face the same issues as the companies paying for them to be implemented. If I were a buyer I would want to see an agency that is eating its own dog food.For us big picture folks this is a fundamental shift of power thru the business ecosystem and has implications in all areas of the business.In almost all the companies that I have worked with it starts with the small group of pirates and they have built some momentum and need help growing it. It will be interesting to see what groups like Dachis and Altimeter go with whole scale Social Business Design.
Public relations agencies have always integrated new disciplines this way. I used to work for Michael Klepper, a former NBC producer who founded the TV division of Burson back in the 60s. He told me in 1968 he could get a pen on the today show because at that time most PR people were former journalists who didn’t understand how to pitch television.
In 1995, I knew guys at Edelman’s technology practice who could get a pen on CNET. At the time, pitching internet media was considered a specialty and most people didn’t do it.
Now, social media is new and agencies are using specialists to increase their understanding of how it works as they integrate the disciplines into everyday activity.
I’ve worked with specialists and they are super-helpful in making sure you don’t accidentally do something stupid. Of course, the account teams need to get up to speed on this but unless you are willing to argue that the whole history of how agencies respond to change has been wrong and hurtful to clients, I don’t see a valid argument.
Not sure I agree with everything in this post. I do however agree that social should very much be considered part of a wider marketing strategy.
Not trying to be combative here, but the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this post was your “Guerillas in the Midst” post from earlier this year. In some way, weren’t you then proposing SHIFT as a “bolt-on” for clients whose agencies weren’t up to speed yet with social media? How would it be handled if a client’s traditional PR firm had a relationship with a journalist but then SHIFT wanted to approach the same journo from a “social” perspective – who owns the relationship?
I’m in full agreement that an integrated approach is best and liked Len Kendall’s comment about social media expertise organically spreading throughout an agency (like a disease, but a good one). However, that takes time. It may be a bit of a stopgap measure for an agency to hire a handful of social media experts/rockstars/gurus so that it has some capabilities and can address client needs in SM while it continues to work on integration.
Todd, with all due respect, while the comments have clarified things for me and moderated the discussion a bit, I think that your post itself is a little heavy handed.
I respect any traditional agency or firm that wants to embrace social media, even if it means a big cultural shift. And a cultural shift like that is going to take time, effort and a core group of people who are deeply passionate about the ethos of social media.
There are a lot of different paths to integration. Starting with a dedicated team can be one of them. I think declaring there’s One True Way, and this isn’t it, without really clearly stating what is the One True Way, is a little bit of a cop-out. And I admire you too much to not point that out.
Kat, Amy (et al.) -
This post is not about how Social Media organically spreads throughout an agency (which to be clear is GOOD, APPROPRIATE and COMMON): rather, it’s about agency leaders who quite purposefully create a distinct Social Media unit for the purpose of upselling for upselling’s sake, and, to mitigate the amount of training/passion required for the rest of the agency to get hip to the scene.
Does that help?
That does clear things up considerably. It just wasn’t clear from the post itself.
Thanks for clarifying a bit more. It’s a matter of intent: If an agency is creating a social media department to merely “check the box” and milk the clients for extra money for services that the agency isn’t truly equipped to provide, that’s certainly no good. Especially if this department is not there to start organically building internal capabilities among the rest of the staff. Eventually social media needs to be everyone’s job, and not just the group of gurus in the department. Agency owners shouldn’t be trying to stave that off by cobbling together a department and charging a premium for it.
There are still of agencies, and in my experience predominately small ones that do bits of social media without having the understanding or strategic overview of what social media marketing is, how to use it and be smart with all the different elements.
The big shift is from push to pull and that means the way the agency manages the relationship with client and gets the client to offer more content also has to shift.
I am always wary of agencies who offer to produce blogs,tweets and other material without referencing the clients USP, differential in the market place.
There are in fact many agencies still building social media “departments.” There are also many agencies that are still trying to ignore social media all together. In order for any agency to be successful, integration must be part of the plan.
Allow everyone in the office to work in social media. Give everyone the opportunity to be that social media “rockstar.” You shouldn’t need an entire department to handle social media for all of your client. To me, that’s just a waste of time and resources when it’s highly likely that your other employees are just as capable as those “experts.”
Tessa Carroll
VBP OutSourcing
http://www.blogs.vbpoutsourcing.com
I think where an agency can, all PRs should understand social media and online PR and divvying up the traditional and online is a mistake. Every campaign needs to embrace both the old and the new and understanding and applying social media and online media strategies, should be as essential as understanding how to pitch journalists was.
Interesting thoughts here, thanks for sharing. I would definitely have to agree with your full integration approach, it seems like most useful strategy to employ.