Navel gazing
Having had a couple of days and now a plane ride to Austin, TX to reflect, it seemed worth it to write an “outsiders” perspective on an event I attended this week, The 2011 PR Week Awards.
Let me start by explaining why I consider myself an outsider. While I am currently employed at a digital communications firm that does PR, I do not and never have worked in PR. I spent 15 years working for advertising agencies in integrated roles and the past 6 months as the VP of Interactive Design at Horn Group. So it was particularly fascinating to see how and what the PR industry celebrated.
I can boil it down to the following:
- It appears that the recession is over. There were over 1,000 attendees to the award show, with some agencies bringing their entire staff. I can’t imagine this was happening in the last two years' economic environment.
- While some of the ideas awarded brought to life the shifting landscape in integrated brand communications, it seemed almost a happy accident for an industry that overall seems to have its head in the sand. The prime example was having an award for best use of social media in the “tactics” section of the evening. Social media is a tactic?
- There seemed to be no acknowledgement of the success or failure of the ideas on the client’s business. I suspect that the judges heavily weighed metrics during the evalution process. But in none of the descriptions of the winning entries did I ever hear the phrase “Increased sales by X%” or “Drove significantly higher traffic to their retail location and website”.
- The best ideas I heard all night were from someone I was lucky to sit next to, the head of PR at Groupon. Their “Live on Groupons for a year” and “Groupspawn” campaigns were brilliant
I am not completely naïve. I understand that these shows are generally largely navel-gazing exercises. But I truly hope that this isn’t reflective of an industry that needs to be rethinking itself in the same fashion as the recording and book-publishing industries have. If not it could be a short way down.
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