It would be nice to believe that it has already arrived in mainstream practice in the UK.
But, I don't think so.
The tale begins with the 1995 CIPR annual conference in, I think, Warwick when Jon White, Reggie Watts and I expressed opinions about the future of PR. We were sked to look ten year out. Reggie and Jon were about right with CSR and the role of PR in management. I, on the other hand was about five years to ambitious.
The CIPR/PRCA Internet Commission did brilliant work only to be sidelined by the year 2000 internet bubble crash and it was only when the 'Web 2.0' hype began to bite that the PR industry began to look at online PR again.
Now, with to research published by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) showing that 25-34 year olds spend 13.9 hours per week online (up from 13 in 2007), 36% are heavy daily users and almost two thirds are online daily there is considerable incentive for companies to shed Web 1.0 and take part.
Even more compelling is the latest AOP research, released this week which shows business websites emerging as a highly valued and indispensable source of information for business decision makers. The survey, conducted in association with IPSOS Mori, revealed:
* B2B websites are ubiquitous among business decision makers, 97% stated that this is the media most used for work
* 60% ranked business websites as an essential source of information in their work
* 60% consider business websites as providing information that they couldn’t get elsewhere
Of course, there is a lot more similar data showing how important online selling, marketing and opinion forming has become. The evidence is now overwhelming and inside many companies is the uncomfortable feeling that they are now very wrong footed.
But we are not there yet. The demand is building but not compelling.
The focus is on how the economy will survive the 'Festive Season' and then the cold reality of January will make people look much harder at where their future lies and that is when there will be the big change.
I've just come out of a L1 tutorial covering measurement and evaluation. I was encouraged by how many students proposed using online measures to evaluate campaigns - though in the event the practitioners tended still to focus on media coverage.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right. But I don't think that this as much of a concern as it was.
ReplyDeleteSure, the really good Press Relations practitioners will be able to find space as pagination falls off next year.
Others will fail.
A few, will get involved in online activities beyond the 'instant fix' approach to PR.
But there will be others who will come out from under the dead hand of dead tree PR and that will be much more fun.
I think we'll be OK (at least I damn well hope so!). The trend we're seeing is for firms to shift their budgets away from fluffy stuff like trad PR and into more measurable and trackable Online PR activity. Long may that continue - it makes much better commercial sense....
ReplyDeleteFrom the PR folks I talk to on a regular basis (which is by no means a representative sample), the views, understanding, appreciation and adoption of online PR practices vary immensely. I think you'd get very different (possibly even bi-polar) answers to your question from a room full of PR folks - and if they were asked to put a mark on the Gartner Hype Cycle you have created for online PR to illustrate 'where are we now', I think you'd create a very interesting snapshot of perceptions.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Spender, Corporate Communications at Gartner