So remember about a year and a half ago when Chuck Porter told a friendly crowd that PR had won the communications battle over paid advertising?
You probably don’t. But he was speaking to the global PR Summit in late 2015, telling attendees that “the best buzz is free buzz” because that is true. Everyone likes to get stuff without paying anything for it, even if it involves lots of manpower and work hours like most “earned” media efforts.
Now Faris Yakob agrees in an op-ed that happens to be promoting his own appearance at a trade event. In the Mumbrella (Australia) piece, Yakob argues that everything is already PR whether you admit it or not.
“We have seen a genuine discontinuity in the past couple of years, the last year even — one that requires us to fundamentally rethink our underlying communication assumptions … In a few short years the mediascape completely flipped, from scarcity to abundance.”
In short, he’s arguing that since nearly everyone is a publisher or “maker” now, we have to reconsider how we approach media, without which there would be no advertising.
“Anything and everyone became media, shouting endlessly into the void, millions of words and thoughts screaming for attention, which became suddenly scarce and increasingly valuable.”
He’s getting there, wait for it…
“Simple fragments of language, endlessly repeated, nicknames and soundbites, even when they were demonstrably false, got someone the most powerful job in the world.
The public is now the media and relating to it is the most important job. Welcome to the new paradigm of public relations.”
There we go. True is false, up is down, everything is spin.
But is he saying that every bit of content/information/messaging we receive should be read as an attempt to coerce us or a CTA leading down the digital rabbit hole to a purchase? Isn’t that what people already think of advertising?
And what about the fact that everyone in PR now accepts paid media as part of the equation and that comms firms are hiring agency creatives? Yeah, everything is communications. But the divide between people who make content and people who promote it is deep. Did Casey Neistat teach us nothing??
Anyway, go hear Faris speak in Melbourne next month. Or don’t. Everything will still be PR.