Fresh Chat

The fuse is really lit under the Australian PR industry. Does it really understand – or care about – digital communication?

Network PR is one of the few PR agencies in Australia to be actually doing Digital or Online PR (we’ve got four people working in this area) . We recently helped increase the heat when our Online Research Manager Jenni Beattie made some comments lamenting the lack of PR’s at the conference. This was then picked up and commented on by Lee Hopkins.

Jenni and Lee Hopkins got it right.

The annoying thing is that many marketers are looking for digital or online PR – and if Ad Tech is an example they are having trouble finding PR agencies with an online capability.

To be fair some marketers who are using social media tools are being coy. As an example we’ve been the Online PR agency for Paramount Pictures for over twelve months and – while we haven’t drawn too much attention to what we’ve been doing – this Sun Herald article shows that it’s very much at the cutting edge of the industry. We’ve also mentioned some of our work (eg: Transformers and Hot Fuzz) on our website – but all in fairly general terms.

We are currently developing digital or online PR strategies for clients in areas as diverse as travel, food and beverages and lifestyle. It’s unlikely we will announce these ‘wins’ for the competitive reasons (ours and our clients). Perhaps when it suits our client we will simply publish a case study.

There may be more happening than is evident in an industry that has traditionally liked to blow its trumpet at every opportunity – but I fear not!