Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I wonder if asking, “what will the future of PR bring?” is the right question. I think a better question might be, “how will communications agencies evolve to handle global relations?” PR, too often, assumes a locality that may become limiting as our worlds flatten and become progressively more digital and virtual.

In the future, virtual online worlds will become opportune spaces for consensus to grow from chaos as people begin to incubate alternative means to govern virtual cohabitation and cooperation. As global relations, politics, economics and marketing continue to address all of our emerging challenges, it will be through online virtual worlds that we all conceive of, design and iterate models that work and shape communications to realize and perpetuate what I am calling virtual world relations. Virtual World Relations (VWR) is a mix of PR, public affairs, marketing and design (interface, 3D, Rich Internet Applications or RIA and Virtual Reality), gaming and government. Seems like odd bedfellows, but these areas will group under PR and draw from one-another.
 
Imagine it is 2014. Virtual Worlds are finally off the ground and are beginning to command more attention. For the first time millions of people are able to easily co-invent, incubate, design and perpetually tweak their version of an online world or neomony (I just made that word up). And with all these virtual worlds, PR will need to help attract people’s attention, spread word, sell ideas, advocate new ways, in a pure digital environment. PR, in this respect will have successfully evolved and a handful of new VWR leaders will be setting the course for marketing, advertising and corporate communications.
 
Those who have fluency in persuading populations to action, who are able to design highly complex messages into easily understood and actionable snippets and who can captivate people’s imaginations will evolve with VWR. Many will not adopt this way and will take a decade to catch up. A lot of energy will be spent verbally distinguishing which world we are talking about, real or virtual and we’ll see a lot of offline real world communications driving people to specific place and times online.  VWR will be tasked with strategies and supporting tactics to sort this out.
 
Online world population will be measured and compared to real offline world population. With the population growth (user participation) in these virtual worlds beginning to grow so rapidly, several de facto policies and governing ideas will be catching peoples’ attention. VWR agencies will conduct studies to justify VWR campaign budgets that will begin to displace traditional PR budgets.
 
Several companies will offer subscriptions to tools people can use to create and interact with others in their virtual universes. Banks in the real world will be used to fund upstarts in the virtual world much as they are today. Global currency markets will slowly stabilize around a unified online currency and VWRs in North Carolina, US will accept payments from a well-funded high school club outside of Jakarta, INDO.
 
VWR’s greatest challenge will be to build distinction and consensus among hundreds of millions of international users about the opportunities and governance of these virtual worlds. VWR’s who have government relations in their bloodstream will take advantage as larger traditional PR companies hastily acquire fluency in politics/diplomacy.
 
Academic intellectuals in the areas of problem-based learning, interdisciplinary studies, economics, IP law, government, psychology, communications/PR, international studies, design and the sciences are in really high demand as everyone blasts into an IP land grab. VWR’s who’ve embraced integrated or interdisciplinary approaches to their work will again find advantage.
 
The question here is not whether or not the world will move toward virtual environments or not. There is clearly too much to gain in this area and once the tools are there, people will move in droves. The question is how fast it will move and whether the PR industry be there to help contextualize these complex environments and make sense of it for vastly diverse populations.

If you work anywhere near the intersection of traditional public relations or media relations and Web or interactive communications, you have to be thinking about how things are changing really fast. Rapid technological changes are forcing these industries to quickly rethink how they provide value to their clients. They have for many years already. Survival of the fittest, right? If creating measurable impact is the key, it is important to think about impact from different perspectives and look at how measurement has lead to what many feel is a near cataclysmic impact on all communications industries.

In college I studied how modern genetics has changed the way folks continue to think about religion. I studied quantum evolution alongside Christianity, Buddhism, Paleontology and Economics. I learned that Quantum evolution is a widely disputed genetic theory, which, in so many words, claims immediate external forces can have a dramatic effect on the otherwise natural evolution of a species or range of beliefs. I recall being asked to imagine and explore the effect of an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier smashing into the Gulf of Mexico and how that might change the earth’s species. I could only surmise that it would change everything much faster than would the natural course of evolution. My first thought back then was how that would really suck.

Part of my job at Capstrat, is to help theorize, anticipate and prepare for how the Internet and online user experiences are profoundly changing the complexion of public relations, specifically regional and national media relations, for our clients. I am specifically interested in how it relates to how “consumer generated media” (mass-amateurization; blogs/wikis/folksonomies/ key word tagging/social networks, et al) is changing/has changed the way reporters/editors relate to their readers and visa versa. And I am interested in how we, as communications professionals, regardless of our medium, need to better measure the impact of our work for our paying clients. (Note to self: Can you believe they pay me to sit around and think about this stuff? Finally, my once-useless interdisciplinary degree from Iowa is being used to fight the forces of average.)

I firmly believe that the mass-amateurization of knowledge and thought-leadership is like that aircraft carrier sized asteroid ripping through near space. Traditional PR, in my example, is the Gulf of Mexico. However, it hasn’t yet smashed into us. We can see it ripping through near space on its imminent collision course. And we are paying some attention to those who we feel can shed any light on how it will impact us. Right now, we are all just wondering if it will nail Siberia, the vast Pacific, or as some may believe, it may miss us altogether. I’d bet there are many who mistakenly believe it will miss them. I don’t pity them for very long.

Over the last few months, I have been building an historical-futuristic continuum that extends back far enough for us in this industry to see where it came from and where it is going. This has been my observation as far as how the Internet’s quantum effects have and will impact PR:

Timeline:

2001: Many PR professionals breathe sigh of relief as the great dot com bust allays fears of change. Advertising sees continued declines all around with a miniscule corresponding up-tick in PR industry revenues. For a decade, industries have been slowly blurring the distinction of advertising and PR. The reason: The Web. Those who’d always remained skeptical about age-old measurement efficacy of ads see how the Web changes measurement. The great dot com bust is giving way to a more solid field of online ad impression and click measurement. For most, ad revenues are their only means of survival. Instead of sleeping, the online industry figures out how to sell online advertising value to anyone with an ad budget. PR industry helps counsel their clients’ ad dollars onto the Web—away from more traditional channels. Thus the miniscule up-tick. Everything is trial and error at this point. Thousands of the ad industry’s top brass almost literally traded offices with those in the PR field figuring out what their plan of attack should be. Despite the bust, salaries for those at the top were at an apex. No one really every knew about this.

2002: PR firms start spending more energy on their Web sites but still do their back office media relations the same old way. Reporters and editors of traditional media outlets are still selectively fielding press releases and phone calls from PR people and making editorial decisions about what they believe their readership will enjoy—the way they always had. This is and has been, largely a “publication-centric” model where the newspaper tells you what is interesting. PRNewswire and others have foreseen events to an extent and have business models in place to deal with the forthcoming changes. Smart, right? Well…maybe not. Very few people are blogging at this point. Those that are have little credibility and are seen in the same light as HAM radio operators. Mainstream media claims that blogs will most certainly go the way of the CB radio.

2003: Massive information aggregators (AOL, MSN) are still trying to land grab hoping that search engine traffic will land on their “soil” driving the prices of their online advertising inventories up as more and more people gamble their move to the Web. PR practitioners are still largely writing press releases and phone calling journalists the way they have for decades except more are using email instead of fax and a few begin to dabble with pure online release companies. Media companies begin to see incremental downward shifts in their revenues, blindly point at the Web as culprit and begin laying folks off. 70,000 media-related jobs are lost in 2002 and 2003. At this point everyone finally knows about Google. Really, for the first time, mainstream media sees clearly how embedding advertising, in any form, into Google’s search engine results yields undeniably rich and measurable impact. Thousands of new search-based companies are born. Bust? What bust?

2004: Advertisers start freaking out about where their ad dollars will have the greatest impact and start blindly moving their dollars online. Reporters and editors follow suit making their articles more Web-friendly. This means they are becoming better versed in how to write their articles so Google will pick it up and show prominence. Bloggers are quietly multiplying exponentially and start linking to news stories by something called “tagging.” Tagging is online content’s dna. It is the two or three word summation of a story. More progressive journalists begin tapping top bloggers for content. Readers start moving to the Web because tagging allows them to quench their information thirst with a fraction of the energy—essentially they begin to read blogs. Mass-amateurization collides with media consumption. But let’s face it, for the most part, a vast majority of people still do not understand what is happening. Like stem cell research, many can spell it but have no idea what the hell it means beyond what the president tells us. PR and ad agencies remain among those still in the dark for the most part. The big conglomerates are snatching up search engine optimization shops and online marketers like crazy. Media is still shifting online using Slate.com as their semaphore. Slate.com, incidentally, is not making a profit. WSJ.com, San Jose Mercury News and the New York Times have bought into the paradigm shift but it is clear their business models are predicated mostly on hunches. Google decides to start putting as much literature into their massive and growing indexing machine as humanly possible. Kindergarteners are introduced to the notion of a terabyte. The average person with access to the Web is now performing 15 Google searches on average per day. They begin supplementing their paper-version of news consumption with the online versions. Bloggers and other igniters of information creation and delivery figure out how to compile more information about any topic in one area making it more fun and productive to use the Web to learn more about anything, including up-to-the-minute news. People are raving about the quasi-blog drudgereport.com—still. CNN.com becomes the top online national news source. Chagrin—porn is still raking in billions.

2005: Now that bloggers have more access to a greater pool of information surrounding any given topic, main-stream media starts to listen to them. Remember Dan Rather and Rathergate? Thanks to a blog, if you recall. For the first time, subject matter experts begin to outflank national media writers on topics like politics (dailykoz) public relations (steverubel), advertising, sports, media, healthcare, consumer product goods, automobiles, technology, medicine, fur-trapping, mutual funds, porn, cycling, grass seed, gems, furniture and all others imaginable. People with shared interests flock together and over night build their online networked communities and like army ants, take over most topics. Old dogs who don’t like new tricks start to notice where the action is going and begin to move everything online. PR firms for the most part are still sending out the traditional press releases to their hard-fought media allies who still have jobs; while their media allies are spending more of their day reading blogs whose limelight has just flickered on.

2006: Reporters at this point are clearly paying less energy to press releases and traditional PR media relations and start using tagging-based search tools like de.licio.us, technorati.com and others to get to the heartbeat of any given topic they want to read about. While people are still addicted to their local and national media outlets both online and off, the mass of amateurs now has the full attention and credibility it demands. Anyone with a Web connection can find almost anyone anywhere in the world who’s capable of speaking about any topic imaginable. At any given second in the day, anyone can get real-time access to what the top performed searches are on Google and Yahoo inviting us, for the first time ever, into our own bloodstream. Surreal isn’t it? It gets weirder. The notion of a subject matter expert or thought leader is now more democratic. The New York Times is as powerful as Jim next door. The difference still is that more people know about the New York Times--still. Newspapers all over the world stop selling papers and start selling themselves. Both Inc. and Fast Company magazines are sold to the online financial magnate who started Morningstar for pennies on the dollar. PR firms start experimenting with blogs and podcasts both for themselves and their clients. Jeffrey Veen, one of the nation’s top bloggers, sells himself and his flagship product to Google. His product is a blog measurement tool.

2007: Every PR and Media relations player has a team of taggers and social network patrollers to make sure they have their clients’ needs covered on the Web. For the first time ever, we see an “end-user-centric” model replacing the “publication-centric” model in main-stream media. Those that truly understand the chemistry and mechanics of the Web now have a seat at the table. Natural patterns in the English language begin shifting overnight because the way Google and Blog search and measurement tools determine rank and relevance begins to impact how we as human beings communicate. Writing almost begins to take the place of talking. A majority of publications rely on instant surveys and polls to keep their pulse on what the masses want to know or learn. They do this in order to keep their ad inventories low and relevant. There is a serious convergence of Web and video and it is all moving to the small screen. Media outlets are figuring out the extent to which they condense news and all other media onto smaller devices and in smaller increments. Why? For some reason we are home less and with our devices more. Google, OnStar and satellite radio combined with geo-positioning technologies mash up and figure out how to deliver voice-activated tidbits on command. “GoogleOnStar…Wall Street Journal headlines for three minutes and top rated Ethiopian restaurant within 20 miles. Have my husband meet me there in 30 minutes. Oh... and find me a new dry cleaner and schedule a pickup for tomorrow morning at 7:00am. Record Lost, 24 and Da Ali G show and send to my phone asap.” PR and ad agencies concoct a series of embarrassing flops in an opportunistic attempt to seize more revenues and reputation.

2008: Any predictions beyond one year at this busy intersection is pure hubris.

The bottom line is simple. Shifts in all industries at the intersection of PR and the Internet are only as cataclysmic as we make them. Many aren’t prepared for this change. (However, that may be exciting for those morbidly curious types who like to see things end.) Many of the stalwarts fear the change and hope their steadfast adherence to traditional practices will be their salvation. On the other side, many of us are aware and prepared—in fact we’re excited as hell. We welcome the changes. I am lucky that the company I work with has a lot of respect for this change. They find the challenges as opportunities to re-invent and cultivate something new—a springboard keeping us youthful and awake.

As long as we, as PR practitioners, can prove that we understand impact and the ever-shifting importance that new medium mash-ups bring and we are able to measure it effectively, we can continue focusing on executing big ideas regardless of the channel. In this age of extreme sports and work hard, play hard mantras, it is only natural that prototype companies like Capstrat figure out how to go quantum; getting out in front of it and harnessing a cataclysm.