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Remember the tech bust in 2001? How about stagflation back in the 1970's? The WaPo laments that, "Unfortunately, the Fed shows signs of overreacting to these pressures and repeating the great blunder of the 1970s." See The Specter of Stagflation. There's more dismal news in BusinessWeek and the AP.
I believe it's time to hunker down because we're fixin' to go on a wild ride. And I'm certain that what lies ahead will make the bust of aught 1 look like an old ABC After School Special.
Here's my torrid take on the bust:
While the VC money flowed like wine back during the dot com boom, [...] I noticed that the pace of hiring and firing accelerated as the dot coms flailed about in desperate attempts to raise revenue. While the repo man banged on the door to collect the ping pong tables and the Herman Miller Aeron chairs, many a PR professional had Security stand guard over them as they packed their belongings. Then, to paraphrase “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, I saw the best minds of public relations destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the sushi streets of San Francisco at dawn looking for a job. (See Howl.com for a better version.)
Back in 2001, I saw the streets of San Francisco turn into a George Romero film as thousands of howling PR people got pink slipped. I too, was one of the unemployed, the laid-off undead. First, Security came for the PR people. Then the advertising people. Then finally, the remainder of the marketing department.
Here's a prediction: Forget stagflation, now we're in for flackflation. And it's going to smack into the PR industry like a ten ton meteor.
Woe be on to you, those that aren't prepared for what is coming next. Recession, inflation and a dying mainstream media are the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If $100 a barrel oil prices is the fourth guy on horseback, then we will all be bicycling to client meetings. I predict that in less than five years public relations -- as it's practiced now -- will cease to exist. Instead, PR will morph into almost exclusively a social media pure play.
Here's how to recession proof your PR agency with social media.
Hey, PR people, where were you when the mainstream media died? Apparently it happened back in 2004 and few noticed -- except for those of us in the social media space who have been singing "bye-bye Miss American pie" for quite a while now.
Many social media folks
feel that blogs became a real threat to mainstream media during the
2004
presidential race. But now there’s a great new study that
corroborates this called Every Blog Has Its Day.
This study by three different universities analyzes the data collected
during the 2004 blogging surge and guess what? If the findings are
correct, then blogs now have more credibility than all other forms of
media.
To quote from the study:
"The perceived credibility of blogs is significantly higher than the perceived credibility of any other traditional and online media."
That's right, blogs have more credibility than traditional newspapers and online newspapers. Moreover, blogs are now more credible than traditional television news, online television, traditional cable TV news and online cable television news.
The "good old boys drinkin' whiskey and rye" in MSM board rooms haven't yet realized the particular day that they died. But from the lack of intrepid reporting in the lead-up to the Iraq War, to ever-increasing layoffs in the news industry, to this nasty lack of journalistic standards, it's pretty apparent that is not life we're witnessing---just the spasms of rigor mortis. Is it any wonder that corporate advertisers are pulling advertising life support from traditional media and going online? (Growth is nine times traditional ad spending according to this.)
Need more convincing?
Did you catch Marc Andreessen's launch of the New York Times Death Watch? He told Fortune that if he were running the Times he would "Kill the print product immediately and deliver the base line of news online only. 'Take acute pain now in order to avoid years of chronic pain,' he says. "Basic rule of thumb: Be on offense, not on defense." The offense he recommends is immediately bolting social media features onto the Times' online site.
So PR industry, while business sections are laying staff due to lack of revenue, 126 yr-old newspapers are shutting down and the total media workforce is at a 15-yr low, are you on the offensive?
Before we all begin fighting over the last remaining journalist, I'd strongly recommend bolting social media on to your existing programs.
Seriously, how can you say your public relations agency is a full-service firm if you don't offer social media services? My advice: You need to add social media to your service offerings -- now.
Why the urgency?
Check out Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff's post on Why Social Applications Will Thrive In A Recession. Bernoff says companies will cut all forms of marketing this year with the exception of social media because,
"It's cheap. Social applications can be nearly free (think blogs, Ning.com, facebook pages) and even more sophisticated communities are typically $30K to $200K -- a lot cheaper than a significant sized ad [and PR] campaign."
If you'd be interested in holding on to your clients during the down turn, we can create these communities like branded Facebook applications for you for whole lot less than $30K.
Bernoff also wrote a report called "Strategies For Interactive Marketing In A Recession" which you can download for free here.
His executive summary states:
"Many economists now believe we are in, or approaching, an economic recession. In the last recession, online spending cratered along with the rest of the advertising industry. But since interactive marketing programs are now fueled by measurable results, not dot-com madness, we believe that they can thrive in a recession. Social applications in particular, such as communities and social networking sites, are cost-effective and have a measurable impact on prospects' decisions in the consideration stage, which will be important to companies under recessionary pressures. Interactive marketers should stop toe-dipping and invest only in programs that can deliver on measurable metrics."
Is
your agency toe-dipping now in social media while the economists are
gathering enough data to officially announce that we are indeed in a
recession?
Here's more. ADWEEK reported in Social Media to Weather Recession that marketers who are moving "into areas like word of mouth, blogging and social networking will withstand tightened budgets. In contrast, marketers are likely to decrease spending in traditional media and even online vehicles geared to building brand awareness. [...] Perhaps more important, Forrester sees more sophisticated marketers shifting their focus from building awareness to motivating consideration, a middle-of-the-funnel activity social media applications like discussion boards are ideally suited for."
Also check out my post from last March, PR is back, like Dawn of the Dead Part 2, where I wrote about my experiences as an account director in San Francisco during the tech boom and subsequent bust. Back in 2001, like the other 40,000 PR pros in the Bay Area, I was laid off and all of us were applying for the only job available at Netflicks. Since then, I've gone to great lengths to recession proof my business and I can do the same for your firm.
Back in March, when Rich Edleman was tooting the horn that PR was back, I wrote that "when the wheels come off the economy–and the wheels always come off–mere activity won’t sustain an account if that activity doesn’t have a direct and clear impact upon sales. Otherwise, when things go bad, the PR peeps are the first one escorted off the property [by Security]....Is it any wonder that the streets of San Francisco turned into a George Romero film as thousands of howling PR people got pink slipped?"
I've been through a recession before and I saw what it did to our industry. But now there's a new service that can keep us all working.
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Meet Linda, a PR account director for several large companies. One day, one of her clients called her in for a meeting and said his company wanted to delve into social media. "You know," said the client, "we want some of that Web 2.0 stuff. How fast can you launch a campaign?"
Poor Linda had never published her own blog and couldn't even tell the difference between a wiki and forum. But she had read a recent white paper from the Council of PR Firms that said in the next five years, "social media must become part of the way public relations practitioners do business or they will become obsolete." (From "Relating to the Public: The Evolving Role of Public Relations in the Age of Social Media," available as a PDF here.) So fearing obsolescence, Linda and her team jumped in to this brave new world. Their intent was to "join the conversation" but instead it quickly turned into a street brawl.
Writes B.L. Ochman in What Kills a Social Media Campaign:
"Increasingly, Fortune 500 companies like Ford, Wal-Mart, Sony and Dell are embarking on social media marketing campaigns and blundering, big time.
"At best, they wasted a lot of money on ill-conceived campaigns involving blogs, video-sharing sites like YouTube, social networks like MySpace and other new media where users (horrors!) can actually create content.
"At worst, their futile attempts at old-style message control (masquerading as new media) did permanent damage to their brands in the very markets that will determine their future fortunes."
When your client calls you into a meeting and asks you to help move the company in a Web 2.0 direction, don’t panic. Melvin Yuan has put together a PR 2.0 University with a great list of required reading. He’s included all the classics like The Cluetrain Manifesto, Naked Conversations, The Long Tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Wikinomics, plus various articles, ebooks and PDFs.
If your client expects you to have a program in place immediately — before you have time to digest all this course work — well, it might be time to panic if you haven’t been a long-time student of social media in your spare time. And if you’re just beginning to dip your toes into all this Web 2.0 goodness, would you be comfortable putting your client’s reputation on the line while you learn on the job?
My advice: As tempting as new channels like blogs and massively-multiplayer environments may be for marketing, you should make sure you understand the needs, opinions and language of the audience before throwing your messages at them. If you don’t know this new world as well as your Rolodex of reporters, it’s best to hire a consultant.
Our Digital PR Service is a turnkey solution that gives traditional public relations firms the ability to open an online channel of communication with their client's targeted universe of customers, influencers and prospects. With our help, you can effectively communicate messaging without journalists standing between the message and consumers.
Anchored by a business blog, our campaigns use a variety of Web 2.0 and social media tools to create extraordinarily effective marketing strategies. Also, out team will take responsibility for as much, or as little of the online content development and infrastructure as you require.
For more information about our Digital PR Service, click here.
For a free consultation, send me an email or call now at 512-963-4649.
...stop listening to surveys on social media/Web 2.0.
AUSTIN, TX--Business owners, if you need to wait till acceptance rates hit a certain plateau before adopting your own social media strategy, then I promise you you're efforts will be doomed. Fact is, social media is growing so fast and morphing so rapidly, that if you're company takes a "wait till next year" approach, you'll be left behind and never be able to catch up.
Take for example a new survey by Jupiter released this last July that warns retailers away from social media campaigns. eCommerce Times quotes Jupiter's report
"The majority of online shoppers who have used social and community sites while
researching and purchasing do not believe that such sites affected their purchase decisions, and few online shoppers said they spend incrementally more due to their use of social and community sites."
Also quoted is Jupiter's the lead analyst for the report, Patty Freeman Evans, as saying
"Retailer[s] should take a pause from all the hype they've heard about social networking and social media because those sites are not something that's going to immediately drive incremental sales for them."
If you take Jupiter as Gospel and forgo a social media campaign, what will happen to your business if just say consumers begin to flock to social media and your largest competitor has a year's jump on you with their wikis, forums, blogs and user-generated content (UGC)?
While you consider that, here's another study called IT Execs: Social Media Most Trusted Source for Purchasing Decisions to chew on by the good folks at ITtoolbox and PJA Advertising + Marketing. Take these findings from the study into consideration:
What do the purchasing habits of IT geeks mean to you if say you're a maker of premium dog food? (Attention Jim Kelly!) Consider that these geeks owned PCs while you were still banging out forms in triplicate on an electric typewriter. They were online as you bought your first Commodore 64. And now that you're ordering just about everything on Amazon while listening to your iPod, take a moment to consider who was there first. The geeks shall inherit the earth not simply through usurping the popular kids. The ultimate Revenge of the Nerds is that you and your customers grow a little more geekier every day.
Are you going to sit on your hands while your competitors adopt the Tao of the Geek and steal away your market share?
Here's some more findings about UGC that Jordan McCollum culled from a new survey from PR Week and Manning, Selvage & Lee:
Did you catch this figure -- 43.4% of marketers will use UGC in the next year? What percentage of these marketers are retailers, the survey didn't say. My advice is not to wait till next year to find out.
I'd also advise you to stop listening to surveys and start ramping up your social media campaign now.
Need more convincing? Check out Why Your Business Needs a Blog.
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