Lloyd: see the response to Christian below. It’s how an agency embraces that matters. I heard lots of talk and good noises on Tuesday, but I didn’t hear many examples of how PR firms were taking action to create different service models.

Christian: ref ‘losing the right to learn’, I’m not suggesting that this right can be denied, but that – by virtue of not ‘get involved and taking a slice of the action’ (as you say) – agencies who don’t step up and start delivering in this area won’t get the necessary experience under their belt to bake some real service offerings. My main point being that startups, digital agencies and risk taking PR firms are the only ones that are currently rolling the dice and soaking up the experience and skills. Bystanders or those paying just lip-service will get left behind. Meantime, I totally agree with you about all the other areas that Social Media touches, and that these things aren’t necessarily the natural habitat of PR services…

Andrew: agreed – more client input would have kept us all in check! We need to hear more from them in these types of debates. Deirdre’s point is spot on in this regard. In many areas there are aspects of Social Media / Online PR that really shouldn’t be done by an external service partner…. And I’d love to hear more on this. Meantime, yup, here’s to the upstarts

Deirdre: You are a sage I agree totally. The structure of the debate meant that it was an agency discussion, but we need more client-side views. But like you say, given the turf there are a whole bunch of areas that agencies ought to leave well alone when it comes to service delivery. What I do see though is the need to consult and enable change in these cases (eg, customer service and support). I’d point to firms like NixonMcInnes in this respect… smart people doing helpful, smart things to help clients behave differently. My business is a little different – we do promotions more than change management in other areas of a client’s business. But, per my original post, if trad PR agencies hadn’t generally painted themselves into a ‘Media’ corner, then there may have been opportunities for them to compete in this consulting role too. (Which would mean them being Public Relations agencies, not Press Relations agencies). If PR really is PR then giving counsel on how a wider business communicates and interacts beyond the Media is a natural. The fact that not many agencies are doing this kind of thing just proves my point. Oh, and let’s do coffee/drinks very soon

Chris: I think you’re views align pretty much with Deirdre’s right? Rather than hang around waiting for support, many smart clients are just doing it for themselves. And why not!!?? This is great to see… but again, it casts a poor light on trad PR if the clients are beating them to it.

Craig: I’d say you either need to find new angles or new clients Seriously – get them to reallocate some trad PR budget for some of your Social stuff… play them off against each other and see which one generates most value. Given that you can measure one and not the other this may get you what you want.

Lance: I agree – lots of soothing talk, but I didn’t feel any real agreement. See my point to Lloyd above. I was asking for evidence of change, not proof of understanding. Didn’t really get it. (The former means action, the latter is just chatter/patter.)

There were a few “clients” there – even if it was just me plus someone from Diageo I never got to talk to – and it struck me that while agencies aren’t about to go away, the functions of media relations and online PR (and social media) are in most cases far better and more efficiently delivered – or at least strategically co-ordinated and part-delivered – in-house, as corporates come to understand and realise the value of these activities.

By the same token someone mentioned last night that probably more than half of the PR industry is in-house (obviously), so why was the motion was posed as: “the PR industry has lost its capability to lead clients in a New Media landscape.“ was lost on me.

The discussion of media relations as distinct from public relations was very telling (Stuart Buce was excellent on this). But the overriding elephant in the room – and you’ve alluded to this – was that the discussion did not address how looking at the full potential of digital media (taken to the next stage of it’s evolution in the social media wave) can affect almost every area of a business – from sales, marketing, advertising and PR to market research, reports, product development, events, business models and more…

That’s where a purely PR focus falls down IMO. Specialism will always be required, but when you’re a specialised external agency, getting the bigger picture of the impact of your activities on your client is almost impossible – or if you think you’re getting it, really you’re not, because either vital parts of the business are being siloed off by the essentially narrow focus of your consultancy, or areas of the business that you didn’t think of or have no relationship with are being impacted by your work (and not being connected with them means that the impact can often be detrimental or at least value-draining / conflicting / duplicating with other agency-relations for the client – but you know that right?).

What I’d like to see is a discussion (perhaps organised by my wonderful successor @iandelaney) on how PR – and other disciplines – can contribute to growing corporate / organisational competencies for a networked world… and that has got to mean putting in-house experts on the podium as well if not at least on the agenda (and I don’t just mean just another “Enterprise 2.0” discussion either, please).

[disclosure – yep, I’m one of those new-breed community managers].

PS. no-one mentioned the biggest recession in living memory; what’s that all about folks??

For example, in a best-case scenario a good OM / SM agency will probably need links through to the support and product development team, as well as the marketing team, because a lot of the time people will use twitter, for example, as a support environment, as well as a news source and site for community interaction. It’s quite a big job if you’re doing it properly , and with budgets stretched, it’s not surprising that many PR agencies aren’t doing it. It needs buy in right from the very top of the organisation, and it’s also not surprising that a lot of companies have seen jobs going for ‘community managers’ to handle a lot of the work, because it’s fundamentally a corporate comms position.

You make a good point on needing ‘direct skills’ – relating directly to your public is very different to talking to a small community of journalists. However, I think your point on ‘losing the right to learn’ is a bit off the mark – I may be being pedantic, but surely it’s more about losing the ability to get in, get involved and taking a slice of the ‘action’. Agencies can always learn about something, but once they’ve done it, they might realise that they’ve just been playing catch up, or have missed the boat. You can’t really take away someone’s ‘right’ or ability to learn.

Very interesting stuff though

But make no mistake, the companies that do it will be the ones to benefit – PR companies and others.