Challenges of Implementing New PR in Large Organizations

First off, let me say I am a huge fan of David Meerman Scott. His book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR is canon to me, and I think everyone attempting to market or promote a brand/product/service online should read it. That said, I’m not 100% in agreement with David’s recent blog post, Top 10 ideas for Century 21 Real Estate to implement The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

Overall, I think it falls into the same pitfalls many folks attempting to implement David’s “New Rules” are likely to run into. Primarily, moving budget out of expensive brand advertising and into PR is much easier said than done, especially when the Director/VP/Whatever of PR is effectively seen within the organization as trying to “steal” budget from the Director/VP/Whatever of Advertising, who may be a peer or even supervisor.

Further, generating content is the lynchpin of implementing many of David’s strategies and tactics, both in general and on this top 10 list, for obvious reasons. While grabbing some of the advertising budget to build a staff to generate content may make perfect sense to those of us who understand the intricacies of modern SEO and even to a PR director, it just isn’t that obvious to people brought up in traditional advertising and marketing.

One of the greatest challenges we face in implementing many of David’s tactics in the real world is convincing those who control the pursestrings that allocating resources towards content generation is a valuable investment in the future of their brand.