Raining on the PR industry's parade...

Hey Tom, I think this is an interesting discussion, yet IMHO a couple of your conclusions indicate a potential misunderstanding of how the PR business works and the value it offers clients.

Irregardless of whether a company is yielding great results from their new media efforts, it won't subtract from PR industry revenues as long as PR pros deliver incremental value in excess of their fees. Smart business people will always invest a dollar in a marketing tool if they know they can receive a 2-3-4-10x return on that dollar. The challenge for my fellow PR pros out there is to provide extreme value for our clients' PR dollars. If we can't do that, we don't deserve to continue as an industry.

And contrary to what you might think, the advent of new media tools such as blogs, podcasts, UG videos, social networks, etc only serve to INCREASE the available valuable publicity opportunities for a company. And when there are valuable publicity opportunities to be had, smart companies demand smart experts who know how to fully exploit those opportunities. That's where talented PR practicioners comes into play.

Elsewhere, you mentioned you've met several young companies who've had great success without doing traditional PR. That's great, but it proves little. Britney Spears proved she can drive with a baby in her lap, but it doesn't make her a smart driver. :)

Imagine how much more successful some of these startups you mentioned might have been with better PR? Imagine if they had more exposure to more customers early on? It might have dramatically amplified their viral growth later on.

It's probably also worth noting that not all great companies and great products are viral in nature.

PR is a catalyst for business success. It can't compensate for poor products, or for markets that don't exist. But if a company truly offers a breakthrough solution to a big problem, why not shout it from the highest rooftops?

If a company doesn't integrate smart PR DNA into their business, they'll always operate at a competitive disadvantage to those that do.

The biggest threat facing the PR industry is not new media. I think new media represents the biggest single potential new revenue opportunity for the industry in 20 years.

The biggest threat facing the PR industry is the PR industry itself. Our profession's own all-too-common bad practices are our biggest risks - practices like bait-and-switch account staffing, retainer billing (offers little transparency or accountability), inconsistent value creation, and inconsistent application of best practices.

A secondary threat to our business is the general lack of understanding among many entrepreneurs about PR in general - what it is, how you can use it, and how to manage it.

In Silicon Valley, it can be hard to tell difference between fog and rain. For the trends you are talking about, it looks to me to more like fog.

I think that you would be hard presssed to find people in the PR industry that would disagree with your basic prposition that the fortunes of PR firms are tightly aligned to the media, and that PR firms must adjust continually adjust to the changes in the media insustry to deliver value to our clients or risk facing irrelevancy.

How and when that change will take place is not so clear. But it would also be a mistake to interepet continuance of traditional PR as willful ignorance of the changes in our industry.

Reports of the death of traditional media are premature: Traditional media can still deliver. One of our most tech savvy clients (who has his own blog) pointed out that his company gets significantly more leads when an article is included in the printed version of their leading trade publication than when it is only included in the online version (as many as 60 leads from one article!). BTW. the client is in the enterprise networking space, where their customers are also extremely web savvy.

Also, it would be a mistake to assume that traditional media will not find a way to adapt to avoid irrlevancy. The success of TV did not kill radio. To survive, radio changed with the times and became something different.

Will traditional media do the same? It is clear that it will change. It is not clear how successful it will be. But it would be a mistake deny the possibility.

One size doesn't fit all: The fact that old media is strong in the enterprise networking market should not be interpreted to mean that it is strong in all markets or that it will continue that way into the future. Similarly, the fact that a start up with a Facebook application succeeds only with viral marketing or coverge from a Blog does not mean that traditional PR is dead.

What's next: The fog will eventually clear. We are now in a transition phase, where PR firms are running both traditional and new media programs. This is not because we are looking to add a new revenue stream. But it is because our clients' customers are using both media.

As PR professionals,we need to be very mindful of the trends that Tom is seeing in the marketplace. We need to be prepared for the greater incorporation of new media and the likelihood that it could come much sooner than expected. At our firm, we have created an internal blog that focuses on new media and how to best use it.

But for now, you are also going to see traditional PR for as long as it continues to deliver results for clients. But continuance of traditional PR is not the same as willful ignorance of the changes in our industry.