Business

For the longest time I used to think that PR agencies didn't get social media. "Give me impressions!" was the public relations mantra because it meant that they could easily transfer their knowledge of publication circulation multipliers into the emerging field called "social media". Screw the long tail, screw review web sites, screw message boards and all of the other "unimportant" groups online because "they don't have reach". "We want to take on the ad agencies head on!" was the PR agency rallying cry, and even though most ad agencies are going down the wrong route, and no matter how many decks you presented to them that this gimmick marketing was the wrong approach, they continued to push to ignore the long tail, ignore communities and ignore what actually drives sales. What's come full circle is that the coveted social media reach play online that ad agencies have been great at have one thing in common: they don't work.