Crispin Porter And The New Agency Model
July 10, 2007
Crispin Porter + Bogusky are getting into the PR biz. Makes sense right? Think of all the money to be scooped up! The new division is headed up by Rob Gould, a former director at big deal PR shop Porter Novelli in Washington, D.C. “It’s convergence,” Gould said. Wait. Stop the press!
You know how everyone is all up in arms about the death of the agency? When we gaze into our crystal ball, what we forsee is a world in which the public relations firm holds the purse strings. They’re going to be the new agencies. Public relations firms are notoriously better at knowing what is going on in culture. They have to keep on top of every piece of media, every outlet and every website. It’s the basic nature of their business. They’re already developing campaigns. They just need to go one step further. As the Forrester report recently told the industry clients feel as though agencies “just don’t get it.”
There was a time when every agency needed to have a new media division. Sadly, the industry slept on the concept and now look where we are! In the case of the deathstars, like Grey, fully bringing your PR team into every pitch of every job might help ya’ out a little bit. Everyone else? If you can handle the weight, seriously start thinking about adding public relations to your roster of services, before the PR companies catch on and render the agencies obsolete.
July 11, 2007 at 8:26 pm
can’t say i disagree with anything you said. buzz marketing has been extended to add buzz management and we all know those lucrative 17 year olds who will spend all their money for the next 50 years (vis-a-vis the ~25 years of spending i have left) are far too “clever” to fall for traditional advertising techniques.
…then again, my appetite for all those homemade videos on youtube has been saturated and perhaps those precocious kid didn’t have anything profound to say afterall.
August 13, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I am not so sure, from inside the PR industry, billing rates and account sizes have been static overall for the past 10 years or so. PR still hasn’t managed to do a convincing job on measurement and research and much of the new digital techniques don’t necessarily have good measurement either.
Digital is important but the measurement (mechanisms to prise open the boards purse)isn’t that straightforward either.
I think that Bain Net Promoters may join the dots in the longer term if backed by appropriate technology.
You are right that everything is going integrated, I am inclined to think that it will be media buying agencies that will be the big winners if they are smart. They hold the bulk of the money, the intelligence and have the relationships at the required level.