Blogs: PR is far from dead

If there’s one thing guaranteed to get lots of attention and comment from other business bloggers, it’s when someone posts an article that challenges accepted views. Roland Tanglao had done just that on his Streamline blog with a provocative post entitled “PR is dead and blogging killed it.”

It would be easy to say rubbish! and dismiss Roland’s views, as some bloggers have done. For instance, on two key points in Roland’s argument as indicated by the title of his post:

PR is dead & Blogging killed it
– Provocative and perhaps hyperbole and not going to happen overnight but “don’t overestimate the impact of blogging in the short term and underestimate it in the long term”
– Fortunately, good PR people will survive. just like a few good programmers in Canada and the USA wlll survive

While these are simplistic opinions, I think he is making interesting points. And while I certainly don’t agree with the premise that blogging has killed PR, it’s good that the article is provoking debate.

Here’s my short take:

• From the business perspective, blogs are no more than communication tools or channels that complement other tools or channels.
• Blogs present a significant challenge to accepted ways of communicating because they represent change.
• PR departments in general feel threatened by such tools – not only blogs buts also RSS and wikis – because those departments are resistant to change in message control (where the control passes to the audience).

Rather than blogs killing PR, what will happen is that blogs will help PR change, help it evolve. Yes, there will be casualties along the way resulting from resistance or inability to act decisively in the face of inevitable change.

Let’s face it, that’s really what we’re talking about – dealing with inevitable change. As discussed in a recent post on RSS, the only way PR (and marketing) departments will survive is if they can demonstrate their relevance and their ability to support the business needs of the organization in the new participatory environment, represented by tools such as blogs.

As Roland says, fortunately good PR people will survive.

In which case, PR is far from dead.

StreamLine :: PR is dead and blogging killed it – My presentation to Reputations