What I’ve found is that neither really will excel. Not when they’re business models and large agency thinking get in the way.

If I were to add someone new to the debate, I would say that the stereotype that will do best in social media is a good salesperson that read Dale Carnegie’s book “How to win friends and influence people.” Those are your relationship builders. Those are your good studies of human behavior. Those are your people that really will win people over and get something going in social media. There are a few of them still left in the agencies. But a lot of them have fled and started their own smaller agencies. Look for them to “own” social media long before the stereotypical PR or Ad person figures it out.

(sorry if this didn’t measure up to correct AP style, PR folks. It is just a comment on a blog.)

What most people don’t realize is that 80% of all news articles are PR based. Your question is very naive. Advertising will never replace PR. in fact the opposite is true.

Some of my most RT’d and commented-on posts touch on the same “Advertising vs. PR” concept.

Always fun.

And, Tom Foremski nails it when he says “…advertising and PR budgets are not growing but the amount of work that needs to be done by each side is growing. That’s why the one, is eyeing the budget of the other…”

What is happening is that advertising and PR budgets are not growing but the amount of work that needs to be done by each side is growing. That’s why the one, is eyeing the budget of the other… Good luck.

There are two areas in which advertising will not be able to supplant PR, in my opinion. One is “real” news (as opposed to the routinely issued mundane press releases most PR firms consider their bread and butter), and the other is professional reviews from trusted authorities.

When I want to learn about a product, I trust independent reviews. Further, while I am cool with friend referrals/WOM, and think the wisdom of the crowds are, well, neat, I don’t think either replace the value of a trusted reviewer. Incidentally, I “get” that there are reviewers on the take and many of them are woefully unfamiliar with the stuff they review, but to me that’s just an accepted data point.

Having worked with/on all sides of the fence with and as a journalist, copywriter, and public relations professional, I’ve meet an relatively equal number of good storytellers from each field.

Unfortunately, there are far too few in each field; around the top 5 percent in public relations, top 7 percent in journalism, and top 10 percent in advertising.

I think it’s because most of people employed as writers aren’t very good writers or, for those who aren’t bad, they tent to become overly focused on a singular style, which is why copywriters sometimes struggle with a news release and public relations professionals sometimes struggle with anything that is remotely creative (journalists too, for that matter).

It seems to me the future will require more cross discipline training for writers in particular, which is why I advise public relations students to take poetry classes too. (I also tell copywriters to take some journalism classes.) Most never will. At the moment, they seem content with the current eroding structure.

From a macro view, I think my main point continues to be that they need each other.

Sure, I could probably prattle on about how journalists/public relations need a good story to tell whereas copywriters are comfortable making one up, but that starts to sound like it’s own post. Maybe next week.

Best,
Rich

Brand journalism is the creation of videos, blog posts, photos, charts, graphs, essays, ebooks, and other information that deliver value to your marketplace. Brand Journalism is not a product pitch. It is not an advertorial. It is not an egotistical spewing of gobbledygook-laden, stock-photo enhanced corporate drivel.