Reading Peter Hay’s latest post on social media has reminded me how interesting I find it that the PR agency community has taken so long to recognise that social media or digital communication is just another channel and should exist alongside all the other services offered as part of an integrated marketing campaign. 

Still, it's a bit like the king's new clothes.  No-one was prepared to say that for fear of being made to look like a luddite.  I did say this to PR Week when interviewed for a special profile piece some two years ago now when asked if Mi liberty would jump on the social media bandwagon. 

Around this time, my competitors were all announcing new agencies dedicated to the digital art, which seemed a bit daft to me.  I believed then, as I do today, that the PR agency of the future (or today, however you want to see it), is one based on providing a mix of communication tools and that means integrated.  What's key is how you integrate the ingredients to provide the right outcome and when - and that hasn't changed just because we now have new channels to play with. 

Mi liberty is a marketing agency and I'm sure we've got it right.  I'd love to know how much revenue has actually been made out of social media in a campaign, even if I might be the only one saying the King has no clothes on!

There's a lot of chatter about social media changing the landscape of the way we communicate in campaigns.  Certainly, the rules have changed.  So why is it that many companies still rely so heavily on the traditional press release mechanism to get their messages out to the media and other audiences they seek to influence?  For my money, traditional techniques will continue to apply and work alongside the "new" new media tools and will work together for the strongest effect.  What really bugs me is that I see less and less creativity in communicating, especially in business to business PR.  Press releases have changed and become social media releases which means that clever PR's can package up valuable assets to accompany the written news release and the recipients of such can select and use the relevant content according to individual requirements. So, old can become new with a little creativity and digital thinking.
 
I would think that by now, all of the communities who need to be informed and educated are more than a bit fed-up with the blandness of the material they receive.  Has anyone seriously considered how much of this stuff they get every day?  It's a very old story, but it hasn't changed in my view and it needs to.  If communicators began with creative thinking just imagine how much more interesting life would be for everyone, not just the sender and the recipient of information.

http://inconvenientprtruth.com/research/

Dee Gibbs