Nils Leonard says #PR should be scared…
Nils Leonard says PR should be scared and, predictably, half the communications industry has spent the week reposting the quote in the hope of catching some reflected glory. Which is rather wonderful because the entire episode demonstrates exactly where we are. A good advertising man throws a hand grenade into the discourse, everybody rushes towards the bang and convinces themselves they are debating the future of communications when in reality they are simply participating in another attention event.
The truth is, I don’t think PR should be scared of advertising. The bigger story is that everybody in communications should be worried about the environment they’ve helped create.
For most of my career, information was scarce, and attention was plentiful. The challenge was persuading a handful of editors and producers that your story deserved oxygen. Today, there are no gatekeepers. The gates have been blown off their hinges, and everybody has mistaken the absence of barriers for the presence of opportunity.
What followed was celebrated as democratisation. What we actually got was an endless global shouting match in which every company became a media company, every executive became a thought leader, and every passing thought arrived wrapped in the language of disruption. LinkedIn has become a vast digital convention of visionaries wandering around in search of a vision.
The irony is that communications professionals spend much of their lives promising clients they can cut through the noise while simultaneously manufacturing a sizeable proportion of it. The creative comms industry has become a little like a tinnitus clinic run by heavy metal drummers
After forty years of watching publicity evolve from long lunches to stunts to influencer culture, I find myself reaching an unfashionable conclusion. The future does not belong to those who create the most content. The machines might already be winning that race. It belongs to those with the judgement to recognise what matters and the confidence to say it clearly. In an age of artificial everything, being human may become a competitive advantage.
In a world where everyone can publish, the rarest skill is no longer communication. It has something worth communicating in the first place. Although, given I’ve just written 700 words to make that point, I may also be part of the problem.
Uncommon Creative Studio PRmoment PRWeek UK
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