Anxious. Confused. Perplexed. These are some of the terms I’d use to describe the response at the Council of Public Relations Firms 2006 Critical Issues Forum (I’d link to this but it’s only a PDF and I can’t find any reviews of the event or photos on the Council Web site). The session was called Achieving Engagement in a Post Mass Media World and featured some great speakers and ideas, and some not so great.
I think the (dark) star emerging from the session was B.L. Ochman, social media strategist and publisher of whatsnextblog.com. She shook things up and slapped PR firms upside the head. O’Dwyer’s, in an article called PR Urged to Make Cyberspace Comeback reported that Ochman, “rapped PR for losing Web development responsibilities to advertising and marketing types during the past decade.” This is true, unfortunately. She also suggested at lunch that none of the PR firms represented were doing anything in social networking. That’s wrong. Text 100 were in the room and are already embedded in Second Life, and Fleishman-Hillard has had incredible success helping clients like Cingular and Ernst & Young (Facebook membership required) find creative ways to connect with members of various social networks. Her broad generalization was off-base and incorrect.
Our Digital group is incredibly diversified. We have incredible thinkers in realms like social networking, virtual world (metaverse) marketing, blogging, podcasts, wikis, online reputation management and measurement, not to mention some of the most talented interactive designers, interface and application developers, and content producers. Our digital team has been around since the mid to late 1990s and many of us have been in the digital and interactive space much longer than that. I remember fondly back to the days of IABC Hyperspace (a virtual chapter of members of the International Association of Business Communicators) on Compuserve. Now that’s going back! The same excitement among digitally savvy communication professionals is here today as it was back in 1990. I’d argue even more so. It’s sparked the evolution of new industry players, like crayon, and is resulting in incredible innovation and enthusiasm among established industry players.
Anyway, as someone that’s been doing this work in large agency environs for years, I felt like I needed to speak out. There are PR people that do incredibly innovative work in the digital space.
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