[2009 trends] 2009's PR demons

1. Skills shortage: Most certainly not unique to the PR profession, the absence of a talent pool in South Africa is a common complaint across the industry. The redoubtable Viv Gordon has a theory that it's about emigration. Not that we've lost a generation of PR professionals who've recently settled in foreign climes but that the problem was seeded in the first resettlement wave of 1994.

   It's the then generation of white-collar parents who left in the 1990s who were the kind of families who sat around the dinner table and had vigorous debates on current affairs and the evening news. Those bright, well-informed kids who should all be coming into entry-level positions in agencies are starting at entry level positions in San Diego and Sydney.

2. Newsroom shrinkage: The current round of staff cuts in newsrooms nationwide is a 'tsunamic' second swell after the first wave of 'juniorfication' a few years back. For those too young to remember, the transformation in media houses to ensure racial representivity led to an imbalance - a lacuna if you will - of senior editorial skills: copy writing, proofing, subbing, etc. This created a gap which PR firms were well-placed to plug - supplying print ready copy and pictorial material to shore up their lack of internal journalistic resource.

   Now we are seeing the phenomenon again through the advent of budget-related staff cuts. If less journalists are left behind to still produce the same amount of copy and to fill the same amount of pages, it stands to reason that superior and seasoned publicists will be well-positioned to step into the breach to assist media owners to fill their pages.

3. The Dark Side: Where does an unemployed journalist go? To the dark side, of course! The dark side is the colloquial term for the trans-boundary phenomenon when a former journalist joins a PR consultancy.

   We can expect to see several such appointments in the first half of 2009, specifically in those larger PR firms where superior delivery and growth is still hard-wired into their DNA. When God closes a door, he opens a window and the current job-uncertainty troubles in newsrooms across the land may be a blessing for the PR industry.

   In light of the skills shortage mentioned above, talent that can write, has a sense of urgency forged in deadline-driven newsrooms, has an eye for story and a nose for news and has a network of media contacts makes for a dream media liaison candidate.

4. Technology adoption: If Moore's law posits that a processor halves in size every two years, you can extrapolate what the pace of technological innovation is. And how it upends every piece of received wisdom we operate with on how, for instance, a newspaper is produced or indeed, how news is channeled to the public.

   When I came into the PR industry in the 1980s, the PR icons were middle-aged ladies who lunched with editors. That was how PR was practiced - and why the midday trade in elegant restaurants flourished.

   The continuing evolution and adoption of new technologies, combined with all of the factors listed, continues to shake up the salt cellar that's called Best Practice.

5. Social Media: Allied to technological adoption, social media can be singled out for special attention in that it speaks to the heart of the definition of PR - communication with stakeholders - and offers new means to that end.

   It's clear that the top-down approach of a previous generation, where access to one editor untapped the publication of a key story which then "reached" an audience of stakeholders equivalent to that publications circulation and/or readership, has been superceded. With the egalitarian leveling of news production as everyone blogs, twitters and smses themselves to distraction, the top-down shower approach (one nozzle produces many drops of water) has been replaced by the bath overflowing (everything pouring at you simultaneously at a knee-level standard of critical faculty).

   Naturally this phenomenon of citizen journalism creates risk at the reputation management and public affairs level of the communications paradigm. Interestingly, it also gives greater career gravitas to young people starting out in the industry because it's a mode of communication that they are extremely familiar with and can work with. Only the larger agencies with staff complements that cut across the decades will have the right personnel to deliver on the promise of social media.

In closing, I've always maintained that PR is a recession-proof industry. When times are good, clients increase their marketing spend and PR shares in the rising tide that floats all boats. When times are tight and marketing spend gets slashed, many clients look at their reduced budgets and realise that most of the above-the-line disciplines are no longer affordable and, because reach and frequency can no longer be delivered, therefore ineffective.

By the same token, PR costs come off a very low base and it's therefore possible to get PR - effective, results-driven PR - during a recession at a retainer level which an ad agency would not be able to work for.