Is Social Media Killing PR?

That was the name of last night's panel at Horn Group San Francisco. I enjoyed moderating. We did a pretty good job of asking and answering that question. Short answer: no. Here are posts from all three panelists: Jeremiah Owyang, Kara Swisher and Susan Etlinger. Here's the Tweet stream keyed off the event.

A question left unexplored was, can PR as an industry preserve its primacy (and pricing power) in an age where publicity and media relations are worth less, and speaking directly with constituencies is worth more?

For what it's worth, the PR industry needs to reconstitute its collective skill set. Agencies should employ verbal, visual and kinesthetic learners in equal measure. Most are far too word-heavy right now. Pitching "influencers" should be no more than 30 percent of an agency's value proposition. The greatest potential lies in enabling clients to tell their own stories and helping them to measure their impact. If that means senior PR executives should step aside, or go to night school for a marketing degree or MBA, or hire fewer (cheap) kids and more (expensive) 40-somethings, so be it.

PR budgets, traditionally defined, won't be rising anytime soon. When the economy comes back, opportunity will look different. It already does. Look at Federated Media with its "conversational marketing" initiatives. Look at BzzAgent and its WOM initiatives. New elements are emerging. They're not killing PR. But they're casting a shadow. How to step out from it might make for a good follow-up panel.