Us vs. Them

So…I’m a bit late to air my thoughts about this debate, however, I felt I needed to understand the debate before I made any comments.

Traditional PR agencies vs. Digital Shops, SEO houses and Social Media Agencies—who’s better equipped at utilising new methods of Online PR and leading clients into digital?

A rather tough question to answer and I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to be honest (I’m from the school of digital/search). It’s fair to say that there are valid reasons for selecting both types of agency, but I believe the best option is tactical integration between the two.

Clients now require online marketing that encompasses a variety of skills, disciplines and practices—not to mention integration with other types of marketing and reporting.

SEO is also an ever-changing field as end-to-end projects require strategy and consultancy, which cover the following areas (in no particular order):

- Copywriting
- Usability
- Information Architecture / Accessibility
- Business and market intelligence
- Keyword research
- Technical consulting
- Applying emerging semantic mark-up
- Utilising web analytics
- Understanding and visualising social networks
- Content planning
- Asset optimisation
- Developing social media strategies for the brand
- Online PR to aid SEO and increase WOM influence between key online communities
- Managing, interpreting and visualising large quantities of data

Now it is clear to see that the list above is rather long and it includes online PR as a function to support other aspects of digital marketing and optimisation.

In most cases the nature of online PR generated by a Digital Shop is grassroots online PR, publicity from bloggers and influential people using a variety of self-publishing tools and social networking platforms on the web.

In comparison, traditional PR agencies have always been more proficient with managing media and investor relations, reputation management, crisis management and establishing mainstream media contacts.

It is therefore evident that both schools of thought provide two very different types of PR, and both have gradually evolved in different ways.

Digital shops have been adept at quickly honing their online PR skills to support integrated online marketing, whilst the traditional PR agencies still seem to be behind with integrating their offerings with digital practices such as SEO.

Do traditional PR agencies need to adapt rapidly?

I’m not so sure; to some extent traditional PR practices do affect the aforementioned digital practices—whilst simultaneously delivering value in their own right. I say this because traditional media (newspapers and print publications) are progressively moving from offline to online; the press coverage generated by a traditional PR agency—in mainstream online media— does affect a brand’s community positioning and share of voice within search engines.

It is therefore important for digital shops—as they manage certain aspects of online PR—to collaboratively work with traditional PR agencies in order to align traditional PR practices with new methods of online PR and marketing.

I believe both types of agency have their strengths, and on a case-by-case basis one outfit may be more suitable for a certain brand than the other—this of course depends on the nature of the PR and marketing required to meet a client’s objectives.

The “Us vs. Them” debates seem rather exhaustive to me and I think both sides of the battlefield need to stop worrying about who’s eating who’s lunch and focus on forming agile, multi-agency, and multi-discipline business webs that provide more effective marketing.

So there we are, that was my two pennies worth. I’m not a PR expert by any means so please forgive me if you’re a PR bod and I’ve made you cringe.