Evolution has taught us that only the strong survive, but that the surviving strong category is rarely homogenous.
On Earth we have mammals, reptiles, amphibians etc. and within those groups we have thousands of sub-groups. As the saying goes there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I think you get my drift…
Last month I railed against the PR Week survey which more or less came to the conclusion that everyone must use one global PR agency.
It’s never that simple.
I have noticed recently that we are increasingly jumping to one or the other end of the spectrum. Rather than understanding diversity we are rushing to apply a one size fits all solution to a diverse, complicated problem.
Jeneane Sessum has taken up the argument from the opposite end of the “one global PR agency” argument.
In her post “Bye Bye Big PR” she believes that in fact big PR firms are heading for a similar fate as the dinosaurs.
“Even the largest of companies are growing tired of BigPR staffing projects with fresh-out-of-college, inexperienced, lower-level people (that is the only category of PR flacks large agencies can afford to keep only partially billable, you see), yet charging as if they were staffing the project with brain surgeons–or attorneys.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I think Jeneane makes many valid points and I agree with many of them – I just don’t buy this all or nothing argument.
There’s no question that many of the PR pros who’ve been cast out of the agency business in this harsh economic period, will make a lot of money consulting directly with clients. But is this the end of Big PR companies?
No. Not in my opinion.
I can’t see large organizations like Microsoft (who have huge internal PR resources anyway) recruiting 1,200 individual consultants. And while many firms will buy the “independent networks” idea, just as many won’t.
Big PR companies, small PR companies, mid-size PR companies, independent consultants, networked independent consultants, specialist PR firms, regional PR firms, global PR firms, all these entities will co-exist. There will be changes, but no extinction – in my opinion.
Anyhow, I’ve added Jeneane’s blog to the blogroll and you should definitely have a read of it.
PS: Jeneane also has a rant at a site purported to be a internal Ketchum weblog promoting it’s internal Kudos awards. Don’t bother clicking on it, they’ve deleted the content.
A source of mine pointed me at it last week and it looked like a series of harmless inter-office posts to me – I didn’t link it here becuase it would be meaningless to you.
Jeneane calls it the “first official Ketchum blog”, which it clearly wasn’t. There was no branding and no mention of Ketchum on it.
She continues that:
“The fact that the first official Blog Ketchum has launched on blogspot serves as a back-patting interoffice circle jerk (sorry for the mixed metaphor–I thought it might give you all something to ponder as you drift off to sleep)–masquerading as a hip controversial PR Real World episode–is laughable.”
I think she’s being a little harsh with Ketchum (her former employer), after all I didn’t see any marketing around the blog. Maybe it wasn’t for external consumption. Mistakes happen. It certainly wasn’t viral marketing.
Murphy's Law 