« Facebook Metrics Businesses Have Been Longing For | Main | More Small Businesses Using Social Media to Level the Playing Field »
February 03, 2010
Kondek Speaks
By Charlie Kondek
Director, New Media Relations
I was absolutely thrilled to be profiled at Bulldog Reporter. I got to sound off on a lot of things dear to me, not just our business but the future of our industry. For example:
Q: What do you make of the whole "who owns digital" debate?
"Owning digital" is probably the wrong way to put it. I'd say in general PR should own social media and advertising should own online advertising and content creation. But, of course, these distinctions are blurring. Honestly, while the lines between PR and advertising are fuzzy, operationally there are still some very big distinctions between the disciplines that make the separations reasonable and determine that PR, in fact, should own digital. PR is the discipline of participation in media, and that's exactly what digital or social media is—participation-based. Advertising is the discipline of disruptive media—and I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all; the best advertising is a welcome disruption. But in general, these demarcations are pretty fair; advertising builds the cool site, PR extends it into social media.
Those hard, fast lines are really malleable, though. Some ad agencies do great "outreach" into social media and some PR firms (like my own) build great content. Expect this to be a constant adjustment in the years to come. In the short term, it's clear the best brands get their agencies working together for the best possible mix.
Posted by staff at February 3, 2010 03:45 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.blogworks.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/798
