BOSTON - In the next three to five years, the PR profession will undergo changes more radical than any the industry has experienced in all previous decades of its existence,
according to Larry Weber, CEO of Weber Shandwick Worldwide, the world's second largest PR firm with revenues totaling $335 million. The rewiring of the PR industry will occur
largely in response to a societal shift from text-based to video-based news consumption, particularly on the Web where broadband is quickly catapulting streaming media into the
mainstream.
In a provocative and somewhat bristly keynote address here at the PR NEWS Strategic Online Communications Seminar June 15, Weber predicted a future in which the lines
separating blue blood journalism from corporate communications will become more blurred by a proliferation of online news channels -- many of them corporate-sponsored. The next
generation of PR professionals may well be described as "editorial talent," he said, reminding the audience, "our job is primarily content creation." PR will require more writing
down the road, he said, albeit not for print, but for "scripts that are visually presented [on the Web] in an entertaining and impactful way."
PR's more pronounced role in multimedia content development is the next logical step in the marriage of entertainment and news, Weber said. "We've gone from a situation where
Walter Cronkite appeared on television and read the news to a situation in which Tom Brokaw comes on the air to share his opinion of the news," he observed, hinting that objective
journalism is a thing of the past.
It's only a matter of time before every corporation and nonprofit begins serving up "its own 24-hour [online] television station," with CEOs and corporate communications execs
doubling as news "anchors," Weber hypothesized. And as corporate news operations mature, sites will become more vertically striated, offering customized "channels" for
shareholders, employees, government officials, consumers and other key constituencies. PR practitioners will, to a degree, become the media, although they also will spend more
time packaging downloadable multimedia content for pick-up by traditional news organizations, said Weber, who personally eschews the nightly television news in favor of MSNBC.com
(the quintessential corporate/media partnership).
"GE should have [CEO] Jack Welch [online] today offering sound bites about why the European Union sucks," Weber baited, citing the EU's efforts to squelch GE's bid to buy
Honeywell.
A sprinkling of corporate entities have already made forays into the news business.
Among them: Kaiser Permanente's nonprofit arm, the Kaiser Family Network, which
maintains an exhaustive health policy news site (http://www.kaisernetwork.org);
and Williams Energy Services, whose "Energy News Live" program (http://www.williamsenergy.com) offers
hourly rich media news updates about the energy sector nine times per day (PRN,
June 18).
The Convergence Game
PR practitioners and the news media won't be the only adversaries-turned-bedfellows in the near future, Weber continued. The future will likely yield an emulsification of the
once isolated disciplines of PR, direct marketing, advertising and promotion.
But Weber, whose global agency is a member of the Interpublic Group of Companies and sibling to ad conglomerate McCann-Erickson, among others, dismissed rhetoric about
"integrated communications" as bunk. Instead he cited a movement toward what he calls "interconnected communications" that involve the customer - not the product brand - as the
nucleus of every organizational mission.
"We've all been trying to be the Wal-Mart of marketing communications," he said, alluding to last year's rash of mega-mergers consummated in the name of integrated
communications. But "one-stop shopping" isn't a brand panacea, and isn't what corporations need from their agencies because not every situation calls for equal helpings of each
communications discipline.
Effective branding programs are no longer simply a matter of advertising and PR learning to "play nice" together and share budgets. Corporate clients are growing tired of self-
appointed brand gurus who defend their respective communications disciplines as solutions in and of themselves, Weber said. Which explains why a handful of Fortune 50 clients have
begun bypassing their various agencies, instead challenging parent holding companies such as Interpublic to "figure out which discipline [they] need," he observed. At the moment,
IBM's $50 million to $60 million PR account is up for grabs, and execs inside Big Blue are reportedly debating whether to issue RFPs to specific agencies or to their holding
companies instead, he added.
Old Habits Die Hard
Despite his philosophical musings, Weber couldn't conceal his bias and delivered a few jabs at the advertising industry, which, he argued, continues to rest on the foundation
of a now antiquated mass communications model.
Five years ago, a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal cost $75,000 and reached a circulation of 2.3 million, he observed. Today, the same ad costs $150,000 and puts your
message in front of a smaller audience of 1.7 million. Network television viewers have hit an all time low, he said.
PR, on the other hand, is eliciting "increasing dependence" among corporate senior execs. And where million dollar PR budgets were "a big deal" two years ago, today's biggest
budgets are pushing upwards of $15 million, $20 million and $30 million, Weber waxed optimistically.
"I like to think of the ad industry as the rich grandparents in the business," he said, characterizing the ad biz as a sector that's losing its footing in the communications
food chain.
"Interconnected communications" may be the wave of the future, but Weber remains a loyal PR man at heart.
(Contact: Larry Weber, Weber Shandwick, 617/536-0470)
Interconnected Communications
1) Marriage of entertainment and information.
2) High-end visual presentation.
3) Focus on the constituent.
4) Brand does not equal product.
5) Branding equals relationship with constituent.
6) Complex set of relationship building and influences.
Source: Larry Weber, CEO Weber Shandwick; Keynote address at the PR NEWS
seminar on Strategic Online Communications, June 15, 2001, Boston.