PR Agencies: The Next Digital Casualty?
Steve Rubel. a self-described “digital marketer,” describes his employer, Edelman, as the “wolrd’s largest indpendent PR firm.” As a Edelman Senior Vice President:
“Steve is charged with helping Edelman (PR) clients identify key insights, trends and emerging digital platforms that can be applied in marketing programs.”
WOW! Sounds like Edelman’s Steve is keen on “disintermediating agencies,” advertising agencies, that is! It is subsequently not surprsing that the Edelman PR evangelist would rally that the most important “news” out of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting is that “digitally savvy” markteters are “disintermediating agencies - even as they all downplay it,” according to Steve’s unique PR about a Booz Allen Hamilton presentation.
While Rubel warns “the risk to agencies has never been greater,” however, Booz Allen Hamilton itself underscores: “the majority of media executives continue to believe that the responsibility for creative functions, communications and media planning, still lie with the agency of record.” The CEO of the IAB, Randall Rothenberg concurs, with Booz Allen Hamilton: ”media executives recognize the critical role that advertising agencies play and will continue to play in the media landscape.”
Rubel ridicules a “wrong” image of media companies “as lumbering dinosaurs lingering toward extinction in a world of infinite content” while nevertheless signaling out one “agency” as a “late” digital bloomer, Group M.
Edelman cheers a prospective agency disintermediation at its own “extinction” peril though. After all, if media companies are ”expanding well beyond traditional advertising sales roles into areas such as campaign development, creative services and consumer insight,” as Christopher Vollmer, Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton, indicates, then they are undoubtedly seeking to expand into other communication areas as well: Public relations, for example, for client and/or their own accounts.
The IAB’s Rothenberg says media companies are providing marketers with “a suite of strategic communications solutions that are far beyond anything we’ve seen before.” PR, of course, is a core component of required “suites” of communications solutions for marketers.
Public relations agencies are as much “at risk” of disintermediation as advertising and media agencies are, from both structural industry trends and macro economic conditions.
The CMO Council’s 2007 “marketing outlook” indicated PR agencies were a 2006 target of choice for Chief Marketing Officers seeking to “instill new disciplines, skills and focus in their own organizations”:
The restructuring went beyond internal resources, as agency turnover was rampant. 64 percent of marketers said they dumped at least one agency last year, and over half plan further agency changes in 2007. Public relations agencies got the ax most often, followed by web design & development and advertising agencies.
Who needs PR agencies? After all, a corporate blog is a direct route to participating in the the world wide Web “conversation.”
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