I remember attending an New Media Knowledge debate a few years ago about this very issue. At the time, reputations were just starting to be built, and destroyed, on blogs, review sites, message boards and on Twitter. In light of this, the theory went, a search ranking might plausibly have been described as a reputation index, and the obvious question that raised was whether the PR industry moved fast enough to cope?

 

The fight was understandably one-sided. Back then I actually worked in public relations, and I’ll admit that those arguing for our corner were a little defensive on this issue – and were to be found passionately stating that they knew what was occurring within the industry. Personally, I wasn’t so sure, but remember saying that PR could still be in a good position as customers start to expect more from brands, which would in turn lead to a dynamic based on building relationships. It was a return to true ‘public’ relations, in an ideal world.

 

Now, there seems to have been a slight shift in terms of approaching this issue. There’s of course still a sense of confusion from some corners, but there’s also now a more reasoned acceptance that both sides are able to work together.

 

Simple as it may sound, the acceptance that search and public relations skill sets are actually quite similar, provides a new sense of calm. Yes, their respective approaches are often radically different, but there’s a lot that each party can learn from the other.

 

This approach is something Sony Ericsson’s Ben Padley was adamant about at Reputation Online’s last event on this topic. He pointed to strong leadership from a client, with clear direction as to which agency is responsible for what, as a core part of the success of the manufacturer’s success online. When an agency knows that its budget is safe, and that the responsibility for various parts of the marketing mix are accounted for, there’s no room for second-guessing or the need to undermine those you have to work with on a daily basis.

 

Sure, technicalities are a hurdle, but the notion of working together (shock horror) on a campaign is crucial to success when you mix any marketing disciplines together.

Why should PR and search be different? Why should it be a case of losing budget when you can actually present a stronger offering to a client by partnering up? A smaller piece of a pie is better than none at all.

 

Yet it’s still early days. I’m talking more about the strategy of search and PR, but still not seeing that many people step forward with case studies. Sure, PRs might be starting to think about integrating search into their strategies by suggesting which company they’d partner up with to tick that box for a client. But that’s about it. Any agency doing anything more advanced than that is way ahead of the curve.

 

I’ve no doubt this will change over the next year though, and for those agencies with their heads screwed on properly, we’ll start to see search becoming just as important as any other aspect of a communications strategy.