The folks at Edelman announced today that they have “Launched Social Business Planning to Help Organizations Create Business Value in a Connected World.”
Amongst the big thinkers, social business is elbowing out social media as the business cause celebre. I even co-wrote a book called The NOW Revolution that is in part devoted to the social business transformation. It’s a very complex issue, but generally the intellectual moorings of social business are:
- Social is inextricably tied to corporate culture and business structure.
- Social is about more than marketing, it impacts every corner of the organization.
- The dividends from being a social organization are just as important internally as they are externally.
I’m all for social business. I believe in it. I chronicle it when I see it. I weigh in on it for my clients on an ad hoc basis. But I don’t provide social business consulting, for two reasons.
First, I don’t think I’m qualified. Despite the fact that I’ve owned five companies and worked with hundreds of brands since 1994, I am not a business management consultant, and do not have the finance and operations credentials (in my estimation) to go there.
Second, I don’t think my clients (many of whom are large companies) want to take complex, transformational, years-to-go-before-we-get-there, this changes everything, reorganize all your people counsel from their social and digital marketing consultant (even a very good one, if I may be so bold).
And that’s the question. Do companies want incredibly serious business advice that impacts the core of their existence from their PR firm?
I know many of the people in the social business practice at Edelman. They uniformly strike me as a smart bunch. But even though they’ve rolled out an “Edelman Consulting” brand as their business advising division, they are still marketers and social scientists at heart. I looked at the Linkedin profiles of the 8 team members listed in Edelman slide deck about social business released alongside their announcement.
Here are the degrees and first jobs of each:
- BS Journalism | MS Communications Management | Staff Writer
- BS Computer Engineering | Management Consultant
- BA Political Science | MAP Political Science | Manager of Research
- BS Advertising | MBA Direct Marketing | VP of Marketing
- BA Business | MS Integrated Marketing Communications | SEO Manager
- BA Political Science | Vice President, Public Affairs
- BA Secondary Education | MA Sociology | Event Manager
Even David Armano – who leads all social/digital globally for Edelman, and is by all accounts a sharp guy – is a graphic designer and creative director by trade and training.
A key point about social business is that it’s not all about marketing but about the entire enterprise (as illustrated on this excerpt from the Edelman slides). If that’s the case, does it makes sense to have a group comprised almost entirely of marketers (and almost entirely devoid of degreed business experts) leading the charge?
If you’re a major corporation that’s convinced you need to make some serious changes to prosper in a rapidly shifting future, do you turn to your PR firm, do you turn to a legacy management consulting firm (Bain, Accenture, McKinsey, Deloitte, et al), or do you turn to one of the new breed of specialist firms (Altimeter, Dachis, et al)?
In Edelman’s case, they have laid a lot of groundwork in the past two years, and have the personnel and the client base to make this work. I think they’ll succeed in re-positioning the firm, and certainly it’s a lot easier to generate project and retainer revenue for your agency when you’re having transformative, long-term conversations with the C-Suite about social business. This move elevates them in the vendor hierarchy.
But what about the other shoe? What happens when second, third, and fourth-tier PR firms, digital agencies, and other flavors of marketing-oriented professional services firm decide that social business is the new ticket to revenue generation and credibility?
Will companies take serious business advice from their agency? Is Edelman the exception that proves the rule, or just the first group to have the unabashed cojones to crash the party?
Are the lines between ad agencies and pr firms really blurred?
I've heard a number of pr folks talk recently about the murky lines social creates between ad shops and pr firms, but to me, it seems pretty crystal clear. Ad agency personal are trained to speak to consumers, whether it be general advertising or direct response. It's about research, billions of dollars in research, human behavior, brand awareness, brand loyalty, competitive advantages, etc. and ultimately finding that unique insight that does much more than sell. It's about connecting with consumers based on that unique insight and then developing creative that inspires someone to consider a brand more than they would have without us. And that's called marketing. So what's social mean to agency folks? It's a crm platform that launches direct response of the 80s into the stratosphere. I don't buy the line that because social media is earned and not paid it earns pr firms rights to carry the social torch. But let's go easy on pr firms for a second. And let's just say the can carry on a consumer conversation on Facebook or tweats on Twitter. We'll give most firms that. But, what about creating provocative like-gates that entice people to like a page. Is that any different from enticing a consumer to pick up the phone, visit a website or make an online purchase? And what about Facebook application design and development? We're talking sophistication beyond any media to hit the planet since the printing press. I mean, we can create campaigns, launch them and engage with consumers all within a few hours of each other. That's marketing bliss! Yes, pr firms are certainly In a bind. Consumers are becoming more influential than any publication on the face of the planet. 500 million folks on Facebook each day folks. So pr firms are ultimately trying to save themselves. But if they are going to serve their client's well and develop a lasting model, they're going to need to build a different kind of recruitment department that knows what to look for in researchers, planners, media and creative talent. But hey, wait a second, isn't that what the core of an ad agency is?
John Perls
Founder
@CrazyMouseMedia
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