Back in the day, my football team won, it always snowed at Christmas, the news was serious and PRs used fax machines to send out press releases.
For some, even these new fangled fax machines were too much. So PRs employed teams of admins to do the work while they wined and dined clients.
Of course, ‘back in the day’ was and is a myth. The world is always changing and, in communications terms, this change comes fast.
In ten years, the Internet, email, mobiles, 24 hour news cycles, social media and community management have become the dominant forces of communications.
And for marketeers passionate about communicating, these new developments bring new opportunities to learn, communicate and engage with audiences.
But, according to the Business Leaders in Communications Study (BLCS), almost one in ten senior communicators at FTSE and leading not for profit organisations DON’T see social media as a key challenge.
So I asked, at the BLCS launch, do people say this because social media is just a bubble, is it through ignorance or due to complacency?
The reaction – from reactionaries -was amazing.
‘A flash in the pan.’ ‘Not used by the shop floor.’ ‘A waste of time.’ All phrases used to rubbish social media.
Yet, as agency bosses from Grayling, Hotwire and Speed, senior comms people from BBC, BP and GlaxoSmithKline – even John Lewis’ Charlie Mayfield – responded, social media is here to stay and those who don’t embrace it fully will be left behind.
In fact, David Bickerton from BP admitted his organisation was left reeling from the social media impact of recent events. And, he added, as a result the company was now ensuring ALL staff have a role to play in the reputation management of the company on social media.
Now, given this is a blog, I don’t expect the dinosaurs who hope social media will pass them by will actually read this.
But if you work for a communications dinosaur, I’d urge you to uncover them and shop them to your chief exec.
And if you’re on a PR degree and a lecturer displays fossil like tendencies, report them to the PRCA.
There is no excuse. Social media training courses proliferate and using social media should be as commonplace as watching the news to communicators.
But, left unchecked, these dinosaurs are dangerous. And the mistakes they make might just destroy the organisation you work for.
And, further, your communications leader shouldn’t just be embracing new communications channels, they should also be looking to the future.
A more campaigning communications style, true 24 hour Comms teams, fresh diverse talent, PR Apprenticeships and further interactivity with audiences.
Bring all those things on!
Thanks to VMA Group and Black Letter PR for inviting me to last night’s lively discussion.
Ramblings Of A PR 
A public sector MCIPR
25/01/2012
Nice article and food for thought – I think it is bizarre that people are pretending that social media will go away and leave them alone: the march towards digital, increased broadband reach and speed, mobile devices and tablets mean that the way we consume media and indeed conduct our lives is changing, like it or not.
But I do think that among the twitterati in particular, of which I am a participant, there is a bit of navel gazing when it comes to social media campaigns – mainly in that they are very quick to point to failures – the common adolescent-style phrase is ‘socalmediaFAIL’ but when it comes to social media evaluation and business objectives, all but the very best start looking at their feet and muttering about ‘unquantifiables’.
Recently I saw another ‘SocialmediaFAIL’ example whereby VW had started a new year’s campaign on what they’d like to see in 2012. Around a 1,000 people left derogatory remarks – fueled by a pressure group. The main criticism that VW had sat on its hands and not responded, but the fact was that thousands of VW followers had responded as brand advocates. I can see how this could have turned nasty, spiraled out of control and sped into the 10s of thousands and some companies have fallen foul of social media pressure.
However despite this ‘FAIL’ VW continues to sell many hundreds of thousands of cars every quarter and each and everyone of those people (or at least the vast majority) become brand advocates themselves at the same time as spending their money with VW.
If I was a VW exec, yes, I would be thinking ‘can I do things better with social media?’ but I would also be thinking that my bottom line is how many cars I sell and what their quality is – my global objectives and reputation and ultimately my finances.
1,000 negative comments on social media is not even a scratch, let alone a ‘FAIL’ when you sell more than 1,000 cars every week in one part of the UK.
Social media without a shadow of a doubt should be mainstreamed into every communicator’s DNA – but social media advocates should not be allowed to shirk on their evaluation and organisational value and if they are start telling you social media is a panacea to solve all issues – they may well be the dinosaurs.
Madeleine Kavanagh
25/01/2012
I was at yesterday’s BLCS2012 event and was astounded, not only at the member of the communications fraternity who was most obviously in denial about the need for comms professionals to get to grips with social media, but also at the number of people who appeared to deny that anyone claiming to be a social media expert needed different skills and actual hands-on experience to be credible. We didn’t actually have the vote in the end but I heard “it’s just another comms channel” muttered more than once.
This perception seems to me to be so far off the pace it’s incredible.
Traditional comms channels are primarily a broadcast mechanism and, usually, centralised, controlled, ordered and predictable.
Social media is the exact opposite which is why it is so scary for many of us …. and also so thrilling.
Editor
26/01/2012
That social media is increasingly important to us as coms props and to our employers is, I believe, beyond doubt. That said, we do need to do a much better job of explaining ‘why’ it’s so important. There’s still too much “if you don’t get it, you’re obviously an (old) idiot – next question please” from those that claim to understand it. Social media, for all the hype, is still very immature and so too is the general understanding of it as a serious business communications tool.
David Phillips
27/01/2012
This says to me that the PR institutions have to explain why their members are in such dire denial.
What is the investment they intend to put behind digital auditing of members, their own people and activities and remedial activity?
What is the extent of their audit of courses they run and which are run by universities and other do not include online PR (from how to write a press release and tweet to financial PR – remembering that the Stock Exchange is using social media to research influences on the market).
Many book published by and recommended by these institutions (PRCA, CIPR, IABC, etc) do not include relevant online content. They need to be replaced…NOW.
How soon will it be that all executive and non executive directors of quoted and unquoted companies over £10 million turnover will get educated by the CIPR/PRCA?
If PRCA/CIPR can’t do this they are equally irrelevant.
Hugh Anderson
27/01/2012
‘Digital Darwinism’ as Brian Solis calls it is definitely upon us and there is no reversing it. I do agree with the point in relation to doing a much better job of firstly explaining and educating people as to why it is important, and secondly, providing simple means of measuring it (a challenge to make it simple, I know) in order to establish and justify the value of it. Timely, as I blogged today about the value of blogger outreach and how it actually creates a virtuous circle of influence via social media.