Comments on infuse - the blog for Influencer Marketing: Evolving PR towards influencers

Hi Duncan. A couple of responses to your comments....

2008-10-02T12:50:00.000+01:00

Hi Duncan. A couple of responses to your comments.

1. I don't use Seth Godin as a source, but as a prompt. I thought my words "Seth reminds me" might have made that clear.

2. I didn’t say that spend on PR is falling. However, since you cite IDC, IDC's figures for PR in the tech sector are thus: In 2007 PR spend was 7.1% of marketing spend. In 2008 IDC expects this to fall to 6.3%.

3. The point of my post isn’t that spend was rising or falling. I haven’t met a marketing director in the past 5 years that thought PR gave his firm a strategy advantage. PR is necessary, they tell me, but it’s not sufficient. So the point is that PR is increasingly commoditised, and so PR firms and technology vendors need to do something different. Targeting influencers is an effective strategy in optimising PR, and other marketing activities.

I can't see any factual basis for your feeling tha...

2008-09-29T12:01:00.000+01:00

I can't see any factual basis for your feeling that PR is falling in importance. Seth's post, which you use as your source, doesn't argue that PR is falling in importance, or suggest any trend at all. He names some brands which didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on launching but which got their PR after launching. What he does argue is that great publicity is a gift, but not something firms should chase.

Spending on public relations has continued to increase in recent years. Spending on public relations in Britain has risen by one third since the year 2000. This might not change, even during recession: During the recession of 1991, spending on public relations increased, while spending on advertising decreased. What we might see is a shift between the proportion of PR staff that are in-house or agency side.