Strategically Communicating

The communications landscape being re-shaped by digital tools and Web 2.0 seems to be shifting far ahead of our ability as media practitioners to comprehend each new lay of the land.  As the thought pieces on Comic-con marketing and online advertising (“The Future of Advertising Will Be Integrated”) indicate, technology and consumer behavior now constantly play off each other at a dizzying pace, leading to such new-fangled conditions such as “banner blindness,” for example.

In PR, where the correlation of output to result is a bit more slippery, there seems to be a wider gap in perception and knowledge about the value of social and emerging media.  In Wright and Hinson’s study, it’s quite revealing that although the use or intent to use of social media for PR continue to rise, only 43 percent of the organizations actually using them has done any analysis of their efforts. Of these, a majority (61 percent) are simple output measurements as opposed to more insightful outcome analyses.

Is it any wonder that, Twitter, for all its highly touted potentials in media relations, is not being taken up as fast as it should be — at least according to Wilson & Supa’s study —  by journalists and PR practitioners alike? (Although the lack of age-related data on this study dictates caution in interpreting it). It isn’t helping Twitter’s cause that the study also seems to indicate that it probably won’t change the essential, age-old dynamic of wary, sometimes even hostile, engagement in journalist-PR interaction.