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This Just In…
What’s top of mind for PR pros in Los Angeles?
February 2, 2010
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What lies ahead for the PR profession in Los Angeles? Practitioners came to the annual “State of the State of PR” event hosted by PRSA’s Los Angeles Chapter at the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Jan. 27 to find out.
The following are highlights from the panelists in the discussion, which was moderated by Frank Mottek, KNX Business Hour host:
Patricia Fregoso-Cox, regional vice president, communications, Time Warner Cable — West Region: “The challenges that we face this year are pretty similar to the challenges we faced last year and that PR practitioners have faced for generation after generation. First and foremost is getting a seat at the strategic tables and the operational tables of the business and aligning our PR tactics and strategies for our clients or organizations.
How we pitch stories, how we deal with multi-platforms is going to continue to be a challenge, especially in what we call traditional media. Social media is an animal all to itself that is not going to go away, and that is certainly an opportunity for all of us.
“A third one is understanding fragmentation of cultures. Taking the time to understand the multiple cultures, especially here in Southern California, and really zeroing in and honing in on those audiences.”
Fred Muir, CEO of Rose & Kindel: “There’s a greater appreciation of what PR people do — the power to reach media and power to reach communities and consumers. Our work force is better trained and more experienced than ever, including our entry-level professionals and the economy is picking up and PR budgets both internally and at agencies should only increase this year.
“On to the challenges. [Before,] a Fortune 500 company would hire [a large agency like] Burson-Marsteller or Edelman to do everything for them. That’s had it and that’s going to continue to die. Clients are more sophisticated and demanding than ever. They’re developing their own teams of consultants. At the same time the business is more brutal. Competition is unbelievable out there. And there are changes in the financial structure of the big firms themselves. They’re under increasing pressure from the global conglomerates that own most of them. The margins are tightening. You may have fewer bidders on those RFPs because they’re expensive and we’re going to start making choices about which ones we’re going to answer and which ones we’re not.
“So what does that all mean? We have to see what we do in a broad context. We need to be creative in how we apply our skills and experience and we need to be flexible and fast.”
Dani Dudeck, vice president, global corporate communications, My Space: “Budgets are tough. The focus on budgets falls to us first where we have less money to spend and have the same things asked of us. Internally with morale, you want to make sure your small team is being taken care of and that’s always a challenge. But with this market comes the opportunity to take risks, to try things out that are a bit cheaper. You may try out social media that are less expensive.”
Josh Gertler, president of Consensus Inc.: “With the evolution of social media and emerging technologies and the decline of traditional media, [there has been] a radical paradigm shift that fundamentally changes the way we do our work. I’ll lay out the challenges.
“One trend is instant gratification. If you want an app on your iPhone, you get it in 30 seconds. We’re used to controlling the message and filtering, but you have got to get it out there quickly.
“Another challenge is information overload. There is so much we have to filter and we have to adapt our information to a series of platforms. You’re creating the same content for 17 different vessels that didn’t exist a year ago. There’s a lot of adaptation. There’s too much information to keep track of. If you’re an agency, you have all your clients’ businesses that you’ve got to keep track of, you’ve got your own business that you’ve got to keep track of.
“The relevancy of public relations has never been greater. What we do is engage people and create relationships. That’s our signature strength, and today, with the paradigm shift we’re talking about, that’s our [opportunity] to seize. We’re living in an influencer society. People are getting information from their peer-to-peer paradigm and people are influencing others radically differently than they used to, and that’s both a challenge and an opportunity.”
Colleen Haggerty, senior vice president, Bank of America: “You’re starting to see our news outlets get into on-site events, but they are really trying to become multimedia in every aspect. So there are more opportunities to penetrate your audiences. With all the consolidation and downsizing, there may be less writers in the newsroom, but their content is running in different cities all over. Suddenly you have a whole different playing field so that’s just a very exciting opportunity that wasn’t around two years ago.”
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