If you want to get a sense of where the PR industry is headed from some of the biggest names in the business you should take a look at the video below. From Shel Holtz, “Ogilvy PR Worldwide produced this video for PRWeek’s “Next” conference, held in mid-November. Leaders of PR agencies talk about the skills of the PR counselor of the future.”
Bonus Link: Here’s a related post I wrote in January 2008 titled: PR Career 3.0 (2015 – ?)
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
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Matt
I think that the point about living social media is especially relevant at the moment. We’re seeing such a huge growth in the different ways of communicating on the net that unless you’re living and breathing within the boundaries of the developments, when you need to catch up there’s going to be a lot of homework!
I find some PRs are daunted by the likes of using Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr as a way of getting their client’s messages across, and I wonder how we can make it easier to keep them in the conversation so that when a CEO asks for a social media strategy, they are not left wanting or relying on the one or two members of the team who are engrossed in it.
That need to always develop and grow and expand your knowledge is of course a vital part of PR, but sometimes it’s not applied to new innovations on the web and i thinkthat it can be a perception of high barriers to entry in so much that everything is moving so fst, how can they catch up?
David Brain
Just me or is that about the least coherent video you have ever seen on the subject? Smart guys and gals made to look dumb by crass editing in my view.
Stephen Waddington
Agree with David. When a legend such as Harold Burson tells you that the industry is at point A and needs to get to point B, and that we need to work out how to get from point A to point B, you know that the video has either been badly edited or dumbed down to the point of making it worthless for anyone in the profession.
These are Gods within the industry. There is so much more we could learn, whereas any PR textbook book will tell you the importance of content, client management, writing skills and that the industry is moving from public relations to personal relations.
John Bell
Okay – here is the context of this video.
I have been writing a series on the skills of the next generation PR Pro which can be found here:
The 13 Skills of the PR pro of the Future>
We created the video for a PR Week event held this past November in NYC called the Next Conference. We held a panel immediately after to discuss…
We asked a collection of people to tell us via video what they felt the skills and expertise of the PR Pro of the Future should be. We expected a mix of fundmentals (“good writing”) and we expected some more provocative new ideas (“they need to be great at SEO”). We got less of the latter than I expected. We held a panel immediately after the video with Bonin Baugh from Pepsi, Christine Cea from Unilever, Kaitlyn Wilkins from Ogilvy and David Demarest from Stanford. We held a lively discussion about more of the granular skills you will see in my post (e.g. what social media skills, etc…).
Even while I feel that the video only tells a small part of what the next gen PR pro should be like, I have the deepest respect for all who appear and participated. If we did Harold Burson – a tremendous man – a disservice through our editting (or posting the video out of the proper context) – then my apologies. This was intended as a conversation starter at the event not some treatise all by itself.
That being said, I am interested in everyone’s views about the next gen PR pro and plan to check out Stephen’s link.
On the Money
Enjoyed your “bonus post” but the YouTube clip could have been better edited … Thanks for the post!