The PR/Marketing Consolidation

Since the second quarter of 2010, there has been a noticeable increase in the demand for marketing skills in the PR industry, specifically digital marketing. Rather than only looking for PR people who have had strong experience in social media, blogger relations and SEO of press releases, agencies are now looking for people who have experience of managing the creative process – helping to devise new websites, come up with ideas for mobile applications and creative online video campaigns. These people generally come from an advertising or branding background and know how to project manage third parties, bringing a creative idea to fruition.

Some agencies have gone the extra step of creating an in-house centre of excellence, or even an internal supplier, who also have their own P&Ls and clients on a purely digital basis, but can supply these skills as needed to the parent agency’s PR campaigns. These internal shops have the skills, and the developers, to create the websites and applications themselves.

In their recent new book, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams (who coined the term ‘wikinomics’ with their first book in 2006) produce some highly astonishing figures:

• YouTube releases up to 2 billion videos per day
• Twitter hosts 750 tweets per second
• 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook every month
• Internet traffic is growing 40% per year
• Increasingly, appliances are logging on to the internet
• Since 2000, 72 US newspapers have folded
• Newspaper circulation in the US has fallen by 25%

It seems that, in this brave new world into which we are all plugged, it’s not enough for many PR companies to simply deliver the message. They also need to create the method of delivery, as these budgets are simply too good to miss. But, as Tapscott and Williams point out, the internet offers all kinds of businesses the opportunity, not only to reinvent themselves from a brand perspective, but also to reinvent the way they do business and collaborate.


What we are seeing in the marketing sector are different disciplines collaborating better than ever before, and inevitably leading to consolidation.

Self styled social media anthropologist, communications strategist and lead blogger for NewCommBiz.com, Tac Anderson, accurately predicted this trend last year and in June was quick to point out some of the brands (like NBC News) following suit, merging their PR, Promotions and Marketing departments.

The quote from Lauren Kapp, most recently VP NBC News Communications, now heading up the unit, is one of the most apt I’ve heard recently

“We work so closely together, but as the industry changes and the media landscape evolves, we just found ourselves working more closely, and it make sense to have us more cohesive…We’re always looking for ways to do things better.”

Winter Job Search: Worth A Punt?

There’s a common perception that it’s a bad time to be job hunting around this time of year, with firms winding up their budgets for Christmas and doubly so when you factor in concern over the economic recovery. This was certainly the case last year as the economy was only just emerging from the recession. But this year, we believe there’s everything to play for if you’re trying to bag a new role for the New Year.

The recruitment market overall is still in a volatile period. According to a recent article in City AM, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG are warning of a ‘double-dip in the jobs market’ on the back of their survey released at the very beginning of October. Their gloomy outlook will have been generally supported by the huge cuts announced in last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review, at least in terms of public sector recruitment.

On the other hand, the three largest listed recruitment firms Robert Walters, Hays and Michael Page remained ‘cautiously optimistic in their trading updates last week, pointing to the slow but steady recovery in business conditions’. Indeed, the main reason for the City AM article was that the perceived precarious position of recruitment naturally posed the question – ‘Are these recruiters worth spread betting on in the current climate?’

The two main comments from analysts were:

“Many firms are likely to try to meet any increase in business through making greater use of the workers they have already, and they will be reluctant to take on any more staff unless they are really convinced that sustained improvement in their business is probable.”

Howard Archer, chief UK & European economist at IHS Global Insight

and:

“Recruitment tends to thrive on confidence – when you get confidence, people are more willing to change jobs and that churn is good for staffing companies.”

Ian Jermin, senior analyst at Merchant Securities

This all sounds very interesting in the overall recruitment market. But what about PR recruitment in particular?

The PR Perspective

Looking at PR and Communications recruitment in particular, there is a generally supported view, as noted on this blog before, that PR has survived well as an industry in this new age of conversation and public relations has benefited from the boom in social media.

At PVR, we have seen quite a lot of activity at the start of the quarter with a fresh round of PR agencies winning new business themselves. The key trends have been:

• An attempt to hang on to prized staff – reflected noticeably in some agencies signing up account managers to three months’, and senior account executives on two months’ notice – something certainly troublesome for recruiters and prospective employers


• Already over-stretched consultancies are hiring to service new business


• This is driven, in part, by consultancies diversifying into sectors that are more profitable, and hiring new skills to allow this

So should I be looking?

Addressing Ian Jermin’s comments, it seems to be the case that there is a renewed activity from PR candidates regarding job hunting. There are three key motivators here:

• In some cases, candidates are overstretched in their positions and are looking for more realistic working again


• Some candidates know that their skills set is highly marketable at the moment, as is the case with digital and social media for example, and feel it’s a shrewd move now to make a transition to an agency eager for those skills


• In many cases, candidates know that the market will be uncertain for a while yet. So rather than making the best of what they have now, they are cautiously looking at maybe one or two opportunities at a time, and simply keeping a toe in the market, waiting for the right job to surface. ‘I’m not actively looking, but…’

Is this confidence? No, but it’s the savvy way to hedge your bets

Winter Blues?

There is a degree of seasonality in the recruitment market around this time, mainly reflective of December’s pre-Christmas excitement and January’s post-Christmas excess. Hiring traditionally dies off at the beginning of December and picks up again at the beginning of February.

This year, however, tradition is out the window. Pitches are being signed off and business won, the need for staff is acute in these cases and consultancies are desperate to get staff in place before the New Year. This suggests that the window of slow progess over Christmas will be tighter than ever this year and, rather than being a bad time to look, this could be the prime opportunity, especially if there is a chance of market stagnation in 2011.