Are professional public relations practitioners innovators? We aren’t, says Brian Solis:
PR is experiencing some of the greatest innovations and advancements in quite some time due in large part to all things Social Media. But instead of embracing a new and improved commitment for creating and sharing news with people, we’re using the same old marketing ethics and tactics to spam our recipients.
I understand what he’s saying, that as a group PR pros have not embraced change, but it’s an overgeneralization. I agree that many of my colleagues are not keeping up with the changes in technology and in the way customers want and need to interact with us, our organizations and our clients.
And the problem goes further than technology. Or maybe you can lay the problem at the feet of technology. I don’t see many of my colleagues building relationships with journalists, writers, media representatives (and this would include bloggers). They just send out a press release to a generic list and hope someone picks it up. They can’t tell you who works where, which reporter covers their topic, and what the current coverage trends are in their industries.
Sad.
Many of my colleagues have become lazy, disconnected, inneffective. And in today’s one-to-one marketing/communications world, that’s unacceptable (not that it was ever acceptable).
Are we innovators? We can be, but we need to do a better job of showing that.
