Forget “Better PR” — The PR Industry Needs Education

You and I must save the PR industry.

PR is in con­stant flux, and our industry must evolve.
Yes, we recently missed our window.

But we can still fix ourselves — via online education.

Here we go:

The Digital Transformation of PR

We Had Our Window (But Missed It)

After the dot-com bubble in 2000 – 2001, the inter­net slowed down. Social media emerged with behemoths like Facebook, foun­ded in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. Their social engin­eer­ing aimed to con­nect people rather than turn them into online buy­ing machines.

For a good num­ber of years, inter­net mon­et­isa­tion pro­gressed slowly. We got to exper­i­ence the Hippie Web (2005 – 2015) revolving around earned and owned media. It was a golden oppor­tun­ity for PR to gain trac­tion in a space dom­in­ated by two-way com­mu­nic­a­tion, rela­tion­ships, and trust circles. ³Silfwer, J. (2012, January 22). The Hippie Web is Dead (2005 – 2015). Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​h​i​p​p​i​e​-​w​eb/

The win­dow of earned-owned suprem­acy was nev­er going to stay open forever. One and a half dec­ades after the dot-com bubble, the Money Web (2015 – present) began to gain momentum. On the inter­net today, everything is mar­ket­ing — except per­haps for Wikipedia and a few remain­ing journ­al­ists not hid­ing behind pay­walls. ⁴Silfwer, J. (2012, September 8). Enter the Money Web (2016 – Present). Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​m​o​n​e​y​-​w​eb/

We had a win­dow. We missed it.

How Marketing Kicked Our PR Ass

Today, SEO (like SEM) is con­sidered a form of mar­ket­ing instead of earned and owned communication.

And the list goes on:

Make no mis­take about it — this is a PR fail­ure of epic pro­por­tions.
Doesn’t the PESO mod­el make it clear­er? ⁵Silfwer, J. (2012, April 13). The Peso Model: Paid, Earned Shared, and Earned Media. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​e​s​o​-​m​o​d​el/

Paid online media has its fair share of chal­lenges, but a pro­found lack of PR know­ledge is caus­ing mar­keters real head­aches. This is no mys­tery: online mar­keters mainly deal with earned and owned media. Still, they derive their way of think­ing from mar­ket­ing perspectives.

Sorry for being blunt: on the inter­net, the paid media mind­set is just tac­tic­al icing on a stra­tegic cake, a wel­come boost when everything else is in work­ing order.

As mar­keters, they know how to push products and ser­vices.
But they lack basic PR knowledge.

Marketers will protest. And then they will cel­eb­rate a 2% con­ver­sion rate without giv­ing the oth­er 98% a single thought.

And it gets worse.

The Generational Disconnect in PR

Organisations are left with impossible choices with many new digit­al indus­tries and spe­cial­isa­tions. What should an organ­isa­tion do?

Having truck­loads of agen­cies adds com­plex­ity and kills ROI. Hiring an army of in-house spe­cial­ists causes bloat — and kills ROI.

The out­come? Marketing depart­ments keep doing what they do best: push­ing mar­ket cam­paigns to sell online and off­line products and ser­vices. Everything else? Everything else is left in a big dirty pile on the com­mu­nic­a­tion department’s door­step. And it’s a mess.

No won­der com­mu­nic­a­tion depart­ments world­wide struggle with digit­al trans­form­a­tion issues: Fresh PR hires from school haven’t been taught the first thing inbound strategies, con­ver­sion tac­tics, or rank­ing factors. When com­mu­nic­a­tion depart­ments look out­side the organ­isa­tion for spe­cial­ists, they find … legions of mar­keters. It’s one big disconnect.

I con­stantly hear young­er pro­fes­sion­als dis­reg­ard seni­or ones because “they don’t under­stand TikTok or Twitch.” Conversely, seni­or pro­fes­sion­als dis­reg­ard young­er ones since “they don’t under­stand the fun­da­ment­als of cor­por­ate communication.”

We’re quickly los­ing know­ledge and prac­tic­al skills at both ends.

Save the PR Industry Now

The PR industry must save itself.
And there’s only one way for­ward — education.

However, tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion is slow and time-con­sum­ing. The dynam­ics of the online media land­scape will have changed many times before PR stu­dents get their hands on a rel­ev­ant text­book. And we can’t expect seni­or pro­fes­sion­als to quit their jobs and return to school for years.

PR does have a bright future still. 

With many AI break­throughs fast approach­ing, the inter­net will reward com­mu­nic­at­ors who can lever­age earned and owned chan­nels to build online audi­ences. If we want to mani­fest change, the edu­ca­tion­al respons­ib­il­ity falls heav­ily on us all. 

Digital PR spe­cial­ists must share what they do, how they do it, and why. Even if that means shar­ing their best secrets for which they typ­ic­ally charge good money.

As for every­one in the PR industry, sup­port the cre­at­ors when great online PR courses start to pop up every­where. Share their work. Invest in your­self.

Mark my words: it must begin now:

PR Resource: The PESO Model

The PESO Model

The PESO mod­el divides the media land­scape into four dif­fer­ent media chan­nel types: 

• Paid chan­nels include advert­ising, spon­sor­ships, ambas­sad­or col­lab­or­a­tions etc.
• Earned chan­nels include news art­icles, influ­en­cer endorse­ments, word-of-mouth etc.
• Shared chan­nels include social media brand posts, accounts, SERP vis­ib­il­ity etc.
• Owned chan­nels include news­let­ters, web­sites, pub­lic­a­tions for intern­al or extern­al use etc.

Don Bartholomew, vice pres­id­ent of digit­al research at Fleishman Hillard, presen­ted a ver­sion of the PESO mod­el in 2010. According to PR blog­ger and PR meas­ure­ment expert Heather Yaxley, this is likely to be the earli­est men­tion of the model:

In 2013, PR blog­ger Gini Dietrich pop­ular­ised the PESO mod­el on her blog, Spin Sucks:

“In June 2013, Gini Dietrich presen­ted the first iter­a­tion of the PESO mod­el you may recog­nise in a blog post: The Four Different Types of Media. It was fol­lowed in August by the post Mobile Marketing: Use the Four Media Types in Promotion, where she talked about integ­rat­ing paid, earned, owned, and shared.”
Source: PRConversations​.com ⁶Yaxley, H. (2020, June 28). Tracing the meas­ure­ment ori­gins of PESO. PRConversations​.com. https://​www​.prcon​ver​sa​tions​.com/​t​r​a​c​i​n​g​-​t​h​e​-​m​e​a​s​u​r​e​m​e​n​t​-​o​r​i​g​i​n​s​-​o​f​-​p​e​so/

Learn more: The PESO Model: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media

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PR Resource: The Electronic Age

From Oral Tribes to 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.

Marshall 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 ⁷Mcluhan, 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. My main ana­lys­is 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

💡 Subscribe and get a free ebook on how to get bet­ter PR ideas.