Sporting Brain

Ed Lee has a really informed post last night around the eventual impact social media might have on the future of PR agencies. As you all know I've struggled with this question myself and I decided to comment to the post and wanted to share it here as well:

As you can see on my blog I've been struggling with the same debate...it's a tough call. As someone who has spent the majority of my career as an internal communications person but is now an agency guy...I'm torn. Ultimately, I do see social media helping to automate much of the tactical work done by agencies, helping to diminish their effectiveness. However, agencies will remain very relevant during the beginning stages (next 5+ years), particularly the agencies who can provide the PR and technical aspects of building a social media program. As this stage ends I'm interested to see how we make agencies relevant, particularly for larger companies. My initial thoughts are that PR agencies must focus more on interactive services, digital communication creation and strategic messaging. One thing I'm sure of; we'll be talking about this and formulating opinions for many years to come.

This is not just an opinion sprouted from the recent negative perception of agencies, this is a topic that I've been talking about with many of my colleagues on both sides of 'the aisle'. PR agencies must begin a monumental shift, today, if they are to be relevant in the future. No longer is it ok to be a media relations shop, perhaps with a dash of social media know-how. We must be able to go into a company and give them strong advice on messaging, brand (more than a logo!), how to deal with competitors, how to better position individual products, build web communities, implement a pitch wiki, and much more. If we rely on our legacy as PR agencies we will become irrelevant. /kff