Last week PR week issued a story entitled "Wider remit for PR professionals in a touch job market". The story is apparently based around what is clearly a release from business analysts Pearlfinders, that suggested two things. Firstly, that the number of senior in-house appointments in Q3 2012 has significantly fallen compared to the same period last year. Secondly, that within that group, the number of communications professionals shifting into CMO or integrated roles has risen by 6% to 8% - giving rise to the headline. So, the market is tough, and roles are becoming more integrated.
Unfortunately, and I have to say this, the figures quoted are laughable. With a tiny and data set of just 57 job moves the sample size is far too small to show any significance. Surely a research firm would know this? Furthermore, 8% of that population would equal 4.56 people. If the increase has been 6%, then last year it was 4.3 people. So if we round those to 5 and 4 people respectively, then 1 more person has taken an integrated role compared to last year. Hardly earth shattering. However, despite the dodgy figures in the article, some respected senior communications figures have shown their appreciation of the suggested trend, including SABMiller Comms Director Catherine May, and Scott Wilson, UK CEO at Cohn & Wolfe - so we can appreciate that the trend outlined is real.
It was back in October 2010 that I first blogged about the PR/Marketing Consolidation, so it's no surprise that, two years on, this process is still being refined. Digital and Social have required the presentation skills and platform understanding of marketeers, married to the sales, message crafting and network growing abilities of PR professionals. What this has produced is not some kind of Chief Comms/Marketing Office, but rather the Head of Content - a trend that has been very noticeable within PR consultancies over the last two years or so - including Metia, Bite and Edelman to name just three. Content Strategy is the new "integrated comms" - and a suggest having a look at the blog posts of Margot Merrill at Hot Design Studio who has run an excellent analytical series on the rise of content.
Indeed, it was Bill Gates who coined the phrase 'Content is King' way back in 1996! A quick read of his article comes across as highly prophetic - which makes the rise of content look like part of a much larger trend, not some kind of market reaction. Indeed, what some people are referring to as web 3.0.
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