I woke up in a philosophical frame of mind this morning. You have been warned....
Lately it seems like there's not a day ... or an hour ... that goes by without some pundit (whether a journalist, a PR person or a self-described new media guru) declaring that the new social media world marks the beginning of the end times for the PR industry. There's no masking the glee with which some journalists deliver this supposed insight or the fear that it conjures up for many PR people. But just as the historian Francis Fukuyama famously and, as it turns out, incorrectly predicted that the collapse of the old Soviet Union was so earth-shattering that it signified "the end of history," reports of social media causing the demise of PR are greatly exaggerated.
So right about now you're probably asking yourself "who the he(ck) is Francis Fukuyama and what does any of this have to do with PR?" Good question. Back in the late 1980's, Fukuyama, a renowned historian and political scientist, wrote that the collapse of the world's largest and most aggressive totalitarian dictatorship meant that humanity had finally shrugged off its past and would inexorably and collectively move towards liberal democracy. This was so profound a change in the world order, he believed, that we could no longer draw lessons from what occurred in the past (hence, the "end of history"). Turns out, however, that he was wrong. The sad reality is that as long as groups and individuals crave power and influence and as long as societies prefer order to chaos, some form of totalitarianism or authoritarianism is going to exist. Ultimately, Fukuyama simply mistook a change at the margins with a revolutionary transformation.
Errr, OK, so again ... relevance to PR is ... what? Simple. A lot of people are talking about social media in the same way that Fukuyama talked about the end of the Soviet Union: like it's the end of history. And they're making the same mistake that Fukuyama did, confusing a change at the margins with a revolutionary transformation. Social media is certainly changing the practice of PR, but PR itself remains as necessary as ever. Why? Because at the end of the day, companies still need to develop a good message about what they do, find the best people to spread the message and use the most effective and efficient tools to reach them. It is thus and always has been. Once upon a time mainstream media was the best (and only) way to spread a message and the best tools to reach them were the press release and the pitch. These days blogs, wikis, social networks and user-generated content sites are surpassing the importance of traditional media while Twitter, FriendFeed and other other mediums are being used to pitch.
Just as in the past when companies worked with PR firms because they lacked the skills, expertise or resources to master and use the tools of PR on their own, they still need help today. While it's fashionable to talk about the democratizing effects of new media, it's a huge (and growing) job staying on top of all the blogs, forums and social networks out there. For a lot of companies, it's simply beyond their means. (Pop quiz for those of you in the PR biz, how many of your clients knew what Twitter was before you told them? How many still don't know... ya, I thought so...)
Sure, there are going to be firms that don't get the memo, agencies that think a press release is just fine for getting the news out, PR professionals who fail to live where their new audience lives, and they probably won't survive. But one of the reasons this business is interesting is that it adopts and adapts to technology, constantly reinventing itself. Social media is not the end of history. It's just the latest chapter.
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