Media is not a linear model

Public relations and advertising are both changing at a rate that the industry has never seen before.  This is a fact, and anyone who cares to dispute it should get out of the game right now before it gets embarassing. 

That said, the early evangelists of these changes, those who trumpet in the era of the blogger, the era of engagement, or the era of whatever change is around the corner can sometimes lose sight of is the fact that these new media are shaping the future, but that doesn’t mean they’re erasing the past.

I’m very much among those early evangelists in both public relations and advertising.  I firmly believe that social media will play a very significant role in the future of PR, and that brands who understand that they need to move away from passively pelting consumers with ads and start getting them actively engaged will benefit the most.  However, reading an article in PRWeek this morning [subs. req.] got me thinking about the fact that as much as we (and I) trash it, traditional advertising and PR efforts still work.

In the article, Julia Hood tells the story of buying Bose headphones based largely on the ad campaign.  This causes her to raise an interesting point:

This led me to something that has been percolating. Is it possible that we all engage in overkill in promoting the impact and influence of user-generated media at the expense of other marketing platforms? At the risk of not having this link picked up by our beloved PR blogger audience, I think we might be.

Radio was displaced by television, theatre was displaced by film, painting was displaced by photography.  Still, these media are not dead – they’re still valid forms of communication and art.  As much as we PR bloggers like to announce that things are dead (how morbid!) many of these things will never die. 

I still use press releases.  I use them differently than I did five years ago, but I still use them.  Likewise, I still pitch major daily newspapers, television reporters and other “old media.”  There’s no denying that the way we’re consuming our media is changing, but we can’t be too quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater, if I may dust off an old chestnut.

The lesson that we can all learn is not about what media we should use or not use, but fundamentally how we should communicate with our publics.  What if we took a lesson from blogging and started treating all of our publics like real people?  

I haven’t seen the ad that caused Julia to buy bose earphones, but I bet that it’s informative, friendly and believable, and not dependent on “Get your Fash’on” style meaningless slogans.  That ad probable spoke to a key insight, probably as she listened to music and crowd noise on the subway, and delivered her informative, to the point content and a way to solve her problems.

Usually, advertising isn’t ineffective because it’s advertising.  Usually, advertising is ineffective because it sucks.  Learn lessons from the new media, and apply it to the old, and you’ll get the best of both worlds.