Why PR Has Benefited From The Recession

Clients across technology and consumer PR are both saying that they are all ‘pitching like mad’ and some are ‘winning business hand-over-fist’. Of course, they need staff to service this, and so far, at all levels.

This is all further encouragement for an industry that seems not only to have survived the recession, but even managed to expand during it. In January, The Economist wrote a very good article discussing this.

It kicks off with some great stats:

According to data from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a private-equity firm, spending on public relations in America grew by more than 4% in 2008 and nearly 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion.

The key reasons proposed by The Economist are

1. An increase in corporate demand – to counter a media backlash over undeserved bonuses and government bail-outs


2. PR firms dominate control of word-of-mouth marketing/ social media tools


3. PR is often cheaper than mass advertising campaigns


4. PR’s impact can often be more easily measured


5. Dwindling traditional media = fewer journalists = easier to target

While points 1 and 5 are a little by-the-by I feel, I think the key lies in points 2 to 4, which are all linked. If I was a CEO of a small enterprise right now, I’d certainly want to maintain comms about the state of the company to external audiences and stakeholders, but I’d be looking for someone who could offer real value for money. Someone who could show measured results for the money invested and could use innovative ways and means to communicate with people online – which inevitably costs less. I’ll know that when I buy a toaster, I look online, I read reviews online, maybe even a blog entry or two before buying it. I’d assume all my customers were doing the same with my product.

As this article in the Montreal Gazette suggests, the differentiator for PR has been social media. It quotes a recent survey of 200 plus Canadian small businesses by BizLaunch, a free training service for small businesses.

• 43 per cent of respondents believed PR was their most important marketing tool, followed by social media with 38 per cent and online advertising at 31 per cent


• Only 26 per cent of businesses said offline advertising, such as in newsprint or radio, was their most important tool

So why is PR better placed to take advantage of social media? Very simply, because Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs are essentially about conversation, or ‘word of mouth’, and who better to lead this than a PR person? Sure, as a recent PR Week article by Hotwire/ 33’s Drew Benvie suggests, some are concerned that marketers and designers may have more of the essential technical skills needed to create the digital experience, be that a Facebook application or a viral video. But the message has to come from somewhere, and to make sure that what you are saying in blogs, forums, on Twitter and to the online media all ties in, better have the PR person do that. Drew points out that the creative skills you can hire into an agency or outsource. I totally agree with this. I’d also suggest that designers and marketers can’t ‘hold the conversation’ and achieve the desired effect in the way a PR person can. Advertising and marketing are nearly always a one way street. In the world of ‘Have Your Say’, the customers want to talk about it, and it’s always been the job of PR to influence that conversation.

So the recession has forced PR to be more creative, to cut costs and to offer additional services. As a result, PR has been forced to grab social media with both hands. This has made it more engaging than ever before, added new skills and indeed a higher value to the industry. This had started to happen before the recession, but it was the threat of job losses and budget cuts that really drove the uptake in 2009, producing what many have termed the ‘digital revolution’ of that year. That’s not to say PR owns social media – it feeds into all disciplines, and the most talented ‘social media experts’ as they are often dubbed, are the ones that understand how campaigns can be run across all mediums. But PR delivers the message, and by its nature, it’s the best at promoting what it is doing with social media.