In a recent PR Week article (14 February 2008), our resident blogging expert, Drew Benvie, warns that PROs need to be creating online content to stay ahead of the game, as advertising, design and digital agencies encroach on PR turf.

The PR industry's digital and social media sector practitioners have been talking recently of an elephant in the room. That elephant being the notion that advertising, design and digital agencies are encroaching on PR turf and could potentially steal our work, flatten our revenues and take our budgets. 

However, this battle is about much more than who gets what budget. It represents a fundamental shift in the kind of work we are able to do for our clients. There has always been negotiation with our clients and battles with other PR firms and, of course, against other marketing investments. At events I've attended recently and in the subsequent discussions that have played out on soapbox blogs, I have seen fellow professionals acting out of character and a little concerned of this new competitive force in the industry. Rather concerned about the competitive force entering our room.  

But I'm seeing an entirely different room and it is PR professionals that are the elephants. 

Since the web began as an outlet for journalism, our industry has looked to specialise in getting brands covered in that medium, more effectively than the next agency anyway. The web as a medium has bred specialist PR that create tailored campaigns which can also work independently of journalists, such as virally or through word of mouth. And so it follows that in recent years with the advent of the social web and citizen media, PR has evolved further still.  

We have an opportunity to develop the right skills in cutting edge areas of digital communications around web 2.0, social media and word of mouth PR campaigns. Being the elephant in this other room, I'm seeing there are marketing as well as PR plans, budgets, and concepts at play. It’s going to help broaden PR’s horizons and get PR a few more seats at the top table.   

So now the grey area emerges between PR and digital media production. Some of us will upskill and learn how it’s done. Some will buy in that expertise. But we're now seeing PR practitioners who cannot and will never need to write a feature for a magazine or know which journalist to call at a newspaper for placing a story. But they can create digital content, build apps and make virals that are core to PR campaigns from the strategy through to execution. The campaigns that are created will be global and pervasive, not regional or by sector, barely recognisable as PR to the traditionalists.    

The blurred edges between digital media PR and other marketing disciplines will create new levels of healthy competition in our industry and theirs and ensure elephants are rampant in every room.