Digital-First is the Way

Digital-first is the way.

I can see it now. It was nev­er about how PR and mar­ket­ing should add digit­al media to their tool­box.

It was nev­er about what role the new digit­al land­scape was sup­posed to play in PR and marketing.

It was always going to be the oth­er way around:

How can PR and mar­ket­ing stay rel­ev­ant in a digit­al-first world?

Here we go:

“Enjoy It While It Lasts”

I’ve worked in vari­ous dis­cip­lines of pub­lic rela­tions. When I decided to double down on digit­al strategy, many seni­or advisers in the tra­di­tion­al PR and mar­ket­ing industry tried to con­vince me that I’d bet­ter set my mind on a tem­por­ary hype.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” they said.

Most tra­di­tion­al PR and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als did­n’t think digit­al media would dis­ap­pear. However, they thought the hype would die own and digit­al media would be like any oth­er media type.

One highly respec­ted seni­or PR pro­fes­sion­al came up to me at an event. He was a little bit drunk, but he wanted to inform me that everything would soon be back to nor­mal again. He told me he was impressed by my ideas on digit­al PR but that I should be care­ful not to “burn any bridges.”

“This digit­al media hype won’t last forever,” he said.

A few years later, his renowned tra­di­tion­al PR agency, once a power­house and a career tar­get for many pro­fes­sion­als, is gone. I haven’t heard from him since. And the digit­al trans­form­a­tion has only just begun.

Traditional PR Ain’t Coming Back

Digital media is like noth­ing we’ve ever seen before. As soon as you stumble upon some­thing new, yet anoth­er end­less abyss of poten­tial know­ledge and skill sets opens up under your feet.

Not even the print­ing press meas­ures up. Our cur­rent digit­al trans­form­a­tion is on par with the indus­tri­al revolu­tion. And it shows no signs of slow­ing down.

But more import­antly for many tra­di­tion­al PR and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als — the old ways won’t be mak­ing a comeback.

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The Electronic Age

Human cul­ture is often described based on our access to pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gies (i.e. Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age). 

According to Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School of Communication Theory, a bet­ter ana­lys­is would be to view soci­et­al devel­op­ment based on the prom­in­ence of emer­ging com­mu­nic­a­tions technologies.

McLuhan sug­gests divid­ing human civil­isa­tion into four epochs:

• Oral Tribe Culture. Handwriting marks the begin­ning of the end of the Oral Tribe Culture. The Oral Tribe Culture per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Manuscript Culture. Printing marks the begin­ning of the end of the Manuscript Culture. The Manuscript Culture per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Gutenberg Galaxy. Electricity marks the begin­ning of the end of the Gutenberg Galaxy. The Gutenberg Galaxy per­sists but without its former prominence.
• Electronic Age. Today, we reside in the Electronic Age. Possibly, we haven’t exper­i­enced the begin­ning of this age’s decline yet.

“The Gutenberg Galaxy is a land­mark book that intro­duced the concept of the glob­al vil­lage and estab­lished Marshall McLuhan as the ori­gin­al ‘media guru’, with more than 200,000 cop­ies in print.”
Source: Modern Language Review ¹McLuhan, M. (1963). The Gutenberg galaxy: the mak­ing of typo­graph­ic man. Modern Language Review, 58, 542. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​2​3​0​7​/​3​7​1​9​923

As a PR pro­fes­sion­al and lin­guist, I sub­scribe to the concept of the Electronic Age. The point is that soci­ety is unlikely to revert to the Gutenberg Galaxy.

Thus, digit­al-first is the way for pub­lic rela­tions, too.

Read also: Digital-First is the Way

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Perception Management is Digital

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Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management

No one is basing their atti­tudes and beha­viours on real­ity; we’re basing them on our per­cep­tions of real­ity.

Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974) pro­posed that our per­cep­tions of real­ity dif­fer from the actu­al real­ity. The real­ity is too vast and too com­plex for any­one to pro­cess. ²Lippmann, Walter. 1960. Public Opinion (1922). New York: Macmillan.

• One who effect­ively man­ages the per­cep­tions of pub­lics acts as a mor­al legis­lat­or, cap­able of shap­ing atti­tudes and beha­viours accord­ing to the cat­egor­ic­al imperative.

The research on per­cep­tion man­age­ment is focused on how organ­isa­tions can cre­ate a desired repu­ta­tion:

“The OPM [Organizational Perception Management] field focuses on the range of activ­it­ies that help organ­isa­tions estab­lish and/​or main­tain a desired repu­ta­tion (Staw et al., 1983). More spe­cific­ally, OPM research has primar­ily focused on two inter­re­lated factors: (1) the tim­ing and goals of per­cep­tion man­age­ment activ­it­ies and (2) spe­cif­ic per­cep­tion man­age­ment tac­tics (Elsbach, 2006).”
Source: Organization Development Journal ³Hargis, M. & Watt, John. (2010). Organizational per­cep­tion man­age­ment: A frame­work to over­come crisis events. Organization Development Journal. 28. 73 – 87. … Continue read­ing

Today, our per­cep­tions are heav­ily influ­enced by news media and influ­en­cers, algorithms, and social graphs. Therefore, per­cep­tion man­age­ment is more crit­ic­al than ever before.

“We are all cap­tives of the pic­ture in our head — our belief that the world we have exper­i­enced is the world that really exists.”
— Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974)

Learn more: Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management

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Inbound: A New Frontier for PR

As PR and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als, we must rethink how we approach audi­ences. Because they’re going to be the ones doing most of the approaching. 

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Inbound vs Outbound

The inbound mind­set is a fun­da­ment­al shift in the PR- and mar­ket­ing industry.

Historically, many PR- and mar­ket­ing depart­ments have argued:

“Why should we spend our PR- and mar­ket­ing budgets on ‘already acquired’ audiences?”

The truth is — it’s the oth­er way around.

Instead of “spam­ming” non-exist­ing audi­ences, pub­lic rela­tions and mar­ket­ing can do much more with exist­ing online pub­lics. ⁴Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

If your Inbound Shift PR Strategy is good, you might not need to pri­or­it­ise out­bound PR strategies — because your inbound audi­ence will attract out­bound publics.

Drawing a line between those who know you and those who don’t know you is noth­ing new:

• Push Marketing
• Cold Leads
• Traditional Marketing
• External Comms
• Pull Marketing
• Hot Leads
• Permission Marketing
• Internal Comms

This inbound shift is just the online equivalent:

• Outbound Comms
• Inbound Comms

Learn more: The Inbound Shift PR Strategy: Beauty From Within

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Digital-First is the Future of PR

Digital media will be the prime mover of people’s per­cep­tions for a long time. It has become our num­ber-one source for inform­a­tion, group form­a­tion, and dialogue. 

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The Digital Transformation of PR

The biggest chal­lenge in mod­ern pub­lic rela­tions is the con­stantly chan­ging media land­scape. With the pro­lif­er­a­tion of social media, the rise of fake news, and the decline of tra­di­tion­al journ­al­ism, it can be dif­fi­cult for organ­isa­tions to con­trol the spread of inform­a­tion and pro­tect their reputations. 

When Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge pub­lished Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR in 2009, it pro­posed how PR should embrace the digit­al-first media land­scape and elev­ate our pro­fes­sion to new heights. ⁵Solis, B. & D. Breakenridge (2009, February 1). Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR. Amazon​.com: Books. … Continue read­ing

Public rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als must be stra­tegic and pro­act­ive in their approach and must be able to adapt to new tech­no­lo­gies and plat­forms to com­mu­nic­ate with their pub­lics effectively. 

“The authors argue that earli­er paradigms are mostly inad­equate in address­ing the needs of a 21^st Century in which com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­logy is cre­at­ing rap­id glob­al­iz­a­tion while it is dan­ger­ously exacer­bat­ing the ten­sions of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. Through a crit­ic­al dis­cus­sion of pri­or assump­tions and paradigms in pub­lic rela­tions schol­ar­ship, the authors under­line the need for pub­lic rela­tions to revital­ize and bring its body of know­ledge into the 21^st Century. The authors pos­it and dis­cuss how the com­munity-build­ing the­ory ori­gin­ally espoused by Kruckeberg and Starck (1988) and mod­i­fied in sub­sequent schol­ar­ship can provide a viable depar­ture point toward devel­op­ing new approaches to research about and prac­tice of pub­lic rela­tions that can take into account the dynam­ic envir­on­ment wrought by changes in com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­logy.”
Source: Public Relations Review ⁶Valentini, C., Kruckeberg, D., & Starck, K. (2012). Public rela­tions and com­munity: A per­sist­ent cov­en­ant. Public Relations Review, 38(5), 873 – 879. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​p​u​b​r​e​v​.​2​0​1​2​.​0​6​.​001

The biggest chal­lenge in PR is ensur­ing that our pro­fes­sion keeps up with new com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­logy and stays valu­able and rel­ev­ant as a busi­ness function.

Learn more: PR Must Adapt (Or Die)

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So, what does this mean?

It means that digit­al com­mu­nic­a­tion is not a fad.
It means that we must adapt — or perish.