Rob Brown, CIPR President Elect, founding chair of the Social Media Panel and managing partner of communications agency Rule 5, was the guest speaker at the CIPR Scotland AGM on 24 March. He shared his insights into the future of digital PR.

2. Lets start by looking at the recent past.

3. 2005

4. Ten years ago…

5. Ten years ago…

6. 2005-2014

7. The last 10 years

8. 2015

9. Digital PR
is Dead

10. I first made this assertion at a talk at
an event called ‘Freshtival’ in 2013

13. 12 views through conventional channel
3420 views via social media
I’d disproved my own argument

14. Published Last Week
(Wiley 2013)

15. “Digital PR is Dead?
That isn’t a chapter that’s a tweet”
ROBIN WILSON
General Manager PR, Social,
Experiences at Spark PHD
Wellington, NZ

16. Forrester:
“CMOs have to
overcome the
divide between
digital marketing
and brand
marketing”
Everything has a
digital aspect
Digital PR is just
PR

17. Social Media is no longer new

18. Some aspects require specialist expertise but that’s true of PR in general
Digital communications shouldn’t be seen as a specialism
Understanding digital channels doesn’t require special expertise
Passed the 50% adoption rate four years ago months ago

19. Television isn’t just on television anymore
Consumers talk back
News breaks via social channels
Circulation figures are in decline
There are fewer newspapers

21. Digital is mainstream
…as of 2011

22. The Telegraph – 2 March 2011

23. Though it’s reach and impact was still a little misunderstood

24. How new is the new communications environment?

26. Tom Standage
Journalist and author
Graduate of Oxford University
Science and technology writer for The Guardian
Business editor at The Economist
Published in:
• Wired
• The New York Times
• The Daily Telegraph
Author of five books, including The Victorian Internet.

27. Tom Standage’s analysis of impact of The Telegraph
Newspaper & telegraph companies established alliances that allowed reporters to send
breaking stories back to the office.
There was speculation that the telegraph would lead to the downfall and of the printed
press.
This reduced the impact of geographic borders.
The development of the telegraph led to a compression of time and space.
The speed at which information reached audiences was dependent on the transport used
to disperse that information.

28. Information overload
If they were to remain successful, merchants had no choice but to adopt the telegraph.
With this came the disadvantage of an overload of information
With the introduction of the telegraph the pace of business interactions greatly increased.
Information from foreign associates was received once or twice a month.
Prior to the telegraph, business had been conducted on a local level.
Businesses began to seek ways to capitalise on the instantaneous flow of information.

29. Sounds quite familiar doesn’t it.

30. If digital is just an evolution and all
communications is now digital
there is little point in using the
word. Digital communications is
just communications.

31. SXSW
Frontier news from the Digital Wild West

32. What I learned
Facebook
native video
shared far
more than
embedded.
Almost
nobody trusts
Facebook
with their
data.
Facebook
keeps data for
only 90 days
Google keeps
it forever yet
more people
trust Google
than
Facebook.
Most talked
about
launches
Meerkat and
Super

35. But…

36. This is now a stable market
Super is
unless
unlikely to
succeed
where
Google+ failed
Twitter moved
to restrict the
impact of
Meerkat within
days

37. The immediate future

38. PR will rediscover
broadcast media

39. The ‘digital’ orthodoxy about television
Eight
million
watched
live on
YouTube
Few TV
channels
carried the
jump
Red Bull
wasn’t just
the
sponsor
TV isn’t
necessary any
more

41. Call the Midwife
had over a million
more viewers than
the jump
Baumgartner’s
audience was
global
A better comparison
with broadcast would
be a global event
Olympics audience
saw 900 million tune
in globally

42. TV can still reach
more people than
online delivery. In
some cases by a
factor of 100+.

43. Data will become more of
a PR commodity

44. Data is
more
available
Surveys
are a bit
old hat
Data is
news
Valuable
PR asset

46. LinkedIn will become a
major player

47. Over 350
million users
The LinkedIn
universe may
only be 600
million
It’s a very
valuable
universe

48. End of Spin

50. The proof is out there…
If you want to know how many people work at an
agency and what the staff turnover is like it’s on
LinkedIn.
If you want to know about their performance over the
last couple of years a free search on Company
Check will give you a pretty good idea.
If your agency tells you your campaign website had
10,000 hits last month, Alexa will tell you if its true

51. One final prediction….
…although its not really about PR

52. Subtitles in foreign
language TV series will
get bigger

53. Prime Minister can you tell us why the
subtitles are so much bigger in the second
series?

54. rob@rule-5.co.uk
@robbrown