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	Embracing Change By Nick Leonard

Change is a difficult challenge for any business or industry to face. Human nature compels us to fear it rather than embrace it, and intransigence is often the result.

It's a strange scenario, therefore, that public relations agencies--who advise their clients regularly on communications strategies for effective change management---have been slow to react when faced with a market-defining shift in their own industry.

Technology, new marketing channels and customer participation have all caused disruptive noise in the market. When combined, they are building rapidly to a crescendo.

But let’s start further back in time. The reason for this fear of change is probably rooted in history — namely the way in which our industry has grown and evolved over the years. PR is now on the agenda for most companies in some shape or form and it has become a crucial element of the overall marketing mix. It’s now increasingly common to find a PR director (or somebody at least with responsibilities for external and internal communications) on the board, and there is a widespread realization that it’s not just what you do that counts — it’s the way that you say it that really makes a difference to morale, strategy deployment and share price.

It wasn’t always this way. PR has had to fight hard for a share of the marketing budget over the years and prove its worth at thehighest level. It has done this by sharpening its elbows, marking out a territory within the mix and showing its distinct and unique value when compared to above-the-line activities.

Just as PR finally enjoys its place in the sun, the dark clouds are beginning to gather. The generally accepted dividing lines that mark out the elements of the marketing mix are blurring rapidly. Added to this, traditionally accepted methods of marketing communication are being displaced by relatively new entrants.

The statistics on marketing spending from Q1 2008 provide a real indicator of this shift. According to the Bellweather report from this period, marketing budgets have fallen for the second consecutive quarter and have been downgraded for the rest of the year. No surprise given the economic uncertainty of the time, but the true story lies beneath the surface.

While we read about the death of traditional advertising and the shift away from direct mail, the biggest budget drop can be found in a category which includes PR and market research. The star performer was the Internet, where spending is increasing in both volume and as a proportion of overall allocation.

So what does this really mean? Maybe nothing — it could be a short-term trend. Or maybe, in a time when banks are facing instability and retail sales are falling, marketers look for a channel that gives them more bang for their buck.

Or maybe, just maybe, we’re seeing the nascent stages of a trend that will change our industry forever.

Basing a huge assumption like this on two quarters of spending would, of course, be foolish to the extreme. But we are doing so in the context of major behavioral changes that are happening right before our eyes. The Internet has been the most disruptive communications technology since the telephone, and there is little doubt that it will go on to take the all-time prize very soon (if it hasn’t already). Added to this, technology is eminently affordable, converging, and entering all areas of our lives. This inevitably changes the ways in which we behave, particularly with regard to our consumption of information.

Consider the facts: we now go online for up-to-the-minute news — if it’s in the papers it’s already a day old. Many of us conduct, expand and control our relationships within the walled gardens of social networks. Blogs have made it simple for anybody with an opinion to tell the world and be heard. And e-mail, instant messaging tools and Internet telephony have replaced letters and fixed-line phones as our favored communications tools. Google gets far more eyeballs than the prime Superbowl advertisement slots could ever hope for (especially if you’ve used Tivo or Sky+ to filter the ads). YouTube is also the most viewed video/TV channel anywhere by a colossal margin.

People use Last.FM to share music and gig preferences; Facebook to get back in touch with old friends; Twitter to keep updated on what’s happening at any given time; and Digg to create their own versions of online news and information sites, tailored to their preferences.

It's not just the way we do these things that has undergone a transition. our approach to information has also changed considerably. The content overload caused by all of the above applications has turned us into a society of "thin slicers" who scan information and hop from source to scource to find what we want. If it's not relevant and compelling, we move on within seconds. We more promiscuous and unforgiving than ever before.

The most important subelements within this shift are inclusion and interaction. Datamonitor estimated that by the end of 2007, 230 million of us belonged to an online social network. Pyramid Research predicts that by 2012, 950 million of us will access these services via mobile devices. And there are currently 113 million blogs tracked by Technorati.

These numbers, however, are already out of date. And when I look back at this article in even a year’s time, I’ll probably be quite embarrassed by how basic and backward it seems in the context of what has happened between now and them.

The reason for this is the sheer speed at which the space is developing. A new blog is created every second, and millions of posts are recorded each day. While this represents stellar growth, there is an even more important (and in many ways frightening) fact: Any one of these posts could be talking about you, your company, your staff, your service or your products.

Herein lies the crux of the problem faced by businesses, marketing departments and agencies alike: Like it or not, we are all having to come to terms with losing control.

While we’ve all become skilled at media and reputation monitoring, “traditional” media now represent a tiny slice of the overall coverage pie. Newspapers, magazines and broadcast channels are all dwarfed in number by blogs and social networking forums, all of which are largely unregulated, subjective, and incredibly knee-jerk in the way they report news and views. Try as we might, we can never monitor them all.

Dell. Apple. Wal-Mart. The UK Government. David Hasselhoff. Steve Jobs. HBO. George W. Bush. All have been damaged by these new communication channels. I’m not singling these out as isolated or particularly severe cases. Show me an organization or high-profile figure that hasn’t faced real, brand-damaging criticism and I’ll show you somebody who hasn’t been looking hard enough. But to focus on the negative is extremely one-dimensional. Barack Obama has not been so successful at raising campaign funds and galvanizing support purely because of his charisma, policies or background. Take a look at his website and see just how social in nature it is, how it draws curious parties in — turning them from interested observers to motivated participants.

Equally, cast an eye over how a European operator like Saga — which sells holidays and financial services to a tightly defined target audience of over 50s — has drawn actual and potential customers into the brand. It has created Saga Zones, a social network (or “Facebook for the Over Fifties”) that delivers value and shared experiences for participants but also keeps them captive in a controlled environment and aligns them with the Saga vision.

Both are successful deployments of technology, applications and creativity that do things that traditional marketing techniques have found extremely difficult to achieve.

I could go on citing examples ad infinitum, but that would just serve to labor the point. The key realization is that new marketing channels can be both positive and negative, and to view them as predominantly one over the other is extremely dangerous. A sword and shield approach is what’s needed.

Added to this, social media, Web 2.0, interactive services — call them what you will — are not islands. Whatever the strategy in this area, it needs to be integrated with marketing, customer service, support, business strategy; in fact, everything an organization does.

The reason for this is based on economic necessity and the changing shape of commerce today.

Businesses used to manufacture things. In the post-industrial era, that was the best way to build a strong, successful business. Then things changed. We realized that others could make things for us at lower costs, and we could exist predominantly to market and sell those goods. Equally, we also understood that we could supply brainpower or expertize to businesses at a premium rate. So this was the service economy, and everything changed once more.

Post-Internet we are seeing another shift, one where we don’t throw marketing messages at people; where we will sell via personal recommendation; where customer service is delivered via dialogue; and where we market with the permission, collaboration and endorsement of our message recipients.

Marketing guru Seth Godin articulates much of this in his work, especially the concept that “Ideas that spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered at an individual.”

That’s why Google puts new applications online before they are finished; why Burger King unleashes a Simpsons-branded viral marketing where you can transform yourself into a character; and why UK ISP PlusNet opens up its user forums to everybody, exposing good and bad feedback to all. These new tactics draw customers in and give them a stake. Whether it’s in defining the ultimate look and feel of a product, immersing themselves into the brand environment, or feeling their voice is heard, they feel included. And then they tell people all about it. They are your best and most credible endorsement if you keep them onside.

To foster positive feeling with audiences takes both commitment and persistence. Ultimately organizations can’t go in halfhearted, or look at “new marketing” in isolation. They have to incorporate and integrate it across the business and actually live a more open and collaborative life.

Which is where we come back to public relations.

A large number of agencies have created or spun off digital brands over the last couple of years, with the aim of capitalizing on this shift. Partly because there is money in it, partly because there is demand, but mainly because “new marketing” sits somewhere between the triumvirate of advertising, PR and Web, requiring disciplines drawn from all of these areas.

So the PR industry has, in a huge landgrab exercise, rushed to enter the space and claim the marketing dollars floating around.

Frankly (and I stand to be corrected), I believe that many of these ventures will fail. And the reason they will fail is because they haven’t been thought through. They are either standalone units with little link to main agency campaigns or are just token gestures with no real strategy or focus.

The agencies that will thrive are those who realize this stuff is part of our job description nowadays. It’s not something to be isolated in, and deployed by, a select group of individuals. It is core to campaigns and needs to be as important a weapon in our armory as media knowledge, strategic thought and writing skills. Everybody from the latest trainee to the CEO needs to understand it.

And this works on the client side too. The in-house professionals who encourage communication and dialogue via the most appropriate channels for their organization (not just the channels they have always used) may feel they are taking a leap of faith, but they will ultimately be rewarded.

The scary part is, as with any new approach, there is a large element of trial and error. But the risks of failing to engage far outweigh those of losing a few small battles at the outset.

Being a recent recruit to Ruder Finn, I was on the job market for a short period, and one of my primary goals was to find an agency with the right approach in this area. Looking longer term, not to do so was tantamount to career suicide. And besides, I’m interested in it. You can probably tell.

Anyway, I was pleased to find that the company had probably the world’s largest interactive practice. But (as you will have guessed from the passage above) that was largely irrelevant. Most importantly, its approach embodied the integrated model outlined, one I bought into and could communicate to clients and prospects with confidence.

I had also come from the tech space, where much of this is taken for granted. Technology companies are generally young in comparison with other organizations— most haven’t been around for ten years (let alone one hundred, like some major corporations). They don’t usually have the ingrained processes and traditions that would make change in this area so daunting for other industries. Equally, they live and breathe innovation. But very few have got the balance right in this area, which shows the size of the task ahead for companies in less advanced markets.

However, try they must, as they are no longer the masters of their own destinies where communications are concerned.

The phrase “caveat emptor,” or “buyer beware,” has been turned on its head. Consumer and customer power has been cranked up to level ten by the Internet, and things will never be the same again. It may seem daunting and make us want to curl up into a ball in self-defence, but that’s the last thing we should be doing. The innovative, progressive and forward-looking business will see this as an opportunity rather than a threat and work toward greater levels of dialogue and openness with key audiences. Yes, it involves change.

Yes, change is scary. But it can also be exciting, energizing and highly rewarding. And besides, we have no choice.

Senior management teams in agencies are now in a very strange position: We are now learning from graduate trainees. We are employing the first generation of people who have grown up using digital tools and place more faith in them than newspapers, TV, politicians or businesses. It may seem a strange position to be in, but it’s time to be openminded: They could well be the most effective indicator of how our industry, and marketing in general, will look in five years.