Amber, thanks for the thoughtful reply. You are so right! Social media is changing a lot of the functions in business – we’ve seen it ourselves with clients, especially in customer service and sales. And I’ll be honest…. I like the changes. I feel social media has made businesses better – you can’t help but get better when at any moment someone can completely trash your brand to, oh, a few thousand friends with just 140 characters!

But the bigger, fundamental business changes, such as price structuring in PR agencies, is something that may never change. People may not think about it, but the traditional PR revenue model puts an extreme amount of pressure on PR executives to cram as much as they can into every hour. And what suffers? Quality.

I hope to see this change and I appreciate people like you bringing to light the issues – and we’ll need to keep doing it over and over and over until we see change.

Change is good!

Thanks so much,
Christine

Savvy post. And I really, really didn’t mean to be bludgeoning PR people as a whole, just the idea of jargon in general (part of why I made sure to lead with the bit about the pitch itself being a pretty good one). That said, I know the PR industry has taken it’s fair share of kicks to the teeth at the hand (foot?) of social media.

But they’re not alone. Customer service is getting bludgeoned. Marketing. Even the executive suite. And the issue at the heart of all of them is what you’ve deftly pointed out – the need for evolution.

It’s cultural, it’s systemic, and it’s not going to be easy to change. I’ve got my own ideas for how to try and move things in the right direction and I’m trying. And I’m grateful for you and firms like yours that understand the true purpose and need behind PR, and don’t get bogged down in process and tradition for the sake of safety. It’s time for us all to get up off our duffs and change the way we’re doing things. Not just PR.

Keep on keepin’ on…

Amber