An Example:-
Today’s society has witnessed the birth of the “Generation Virtual” population. Unlike past classifications, Generation Virtual are categorised not by age or location, but by the way they conduct ever increasing portions of their life in a virtual environment, be it shopping online, receiving the latest news to their mobiles or social networking. Business has found itself in a sink-or-swim situation where it must take up the race and conduct its affairs in HTML, PHP and JavaScript, or face losing out to more technologically-savvy competitors.
At the consumer-facing end, the Public Relations industry is heading up the revolution. The importance of technology to PR agencies was highlighted this month by industry giant, Webber-Shandwick’s appointment of Simon Collister as their first Head of Digital for Consumer Practice. To survive, agencies are forced to adopt new degrees of dynamism and keep up with the lightning-speed flow of information around the globe. As technically able PR agencies thrive, the next few years should see some drastic changes in the fundamental workings of the industry.
Interactive e-technologies, such as online blogs, mobile-media and social networks are collectively known as web 2.0 and are set to play a key role in PR. Gartner, the leading think-tank and consultancy on the topic of business IT, estimates that by 2010, 60% of fortune 1,000 companies will incorporate some form of social networking into their public relations and marketing strategies in order to directly engage with the growing Generation Virtual population. According to Gartner, such a practice will prove vital. Not only will business be able to respond in a real-time forum, but it will become increasingly possible to predict the direction that consumer desires and opinions will go next.
Financial Times Columnist and Authority Voice on Business IT, Ade McCormark, stresses the importance of online and technical media to business, given present market conditions. “Business has an uncertain future in the current economic climate” McCormack declared during my recent interview with him, “which has lead to an acceleration of online activity in a push to drive costs out.” McCormark predicts that the public relations and marketing industries will find themselves operating increasingly within the virtual arena as business looks for more economically viable ways of getting a message across. “We will see an increase in online media campaigns in the shape of web-based journalism, search-engine optimisation and pay-per-click marketing strategies. Mobile phones also play a major role as more and more people gain access to the internet and to complex forms of media such as video and audio messages.” As McCormack points out, it is not just corporate business which is affected by the phenomenal expansion of the internet and modern technology. “We are beginning to witness changes within the public sector as it adjusts to the growing virtual world by incorporating online portals and media into its strategies”, an occurrence that McCormack entitles “E-Governance”.
However, the expansion of modern technology and the internet is not without its problems. In such a fast-moving, real-time environment of technically-able Generation Virtual users, businesses are finding it more and more difficult to control web content and keep track of what’s said about them. The call is frequently being heard for highly specialised and technically aware Public Relations professionals to assert a client’s desired public image in this volatile and rapidly changing environment.
To some, the virtual arena might appear to spell the end to conventional practice. However, traditional PR may well prove a very strong pillar to business in the current economic climate due to its focus on building solid relationships with clients and understanding their corporate image better than even the client does, regardless of the medium through which the PR agency expresses itself. PR firms which can claim to know their clients and markets inside out may well prove to be more agile and tenacious in a climate which increasingly exhibits lightning-speed news in multidimensional media channels.
Over the next few years, technophobic PR firms will stand in the sidelines and look on as the new breed of virtually savvy agencies steal the show. The most successful, however, will be careful not to neglect their roots which have been planted in solid relationship building and infallible market knowledge.