An article in Social Media Insider (Blogger’s Block…) reported on agencies’ adoption of social media (or lack thereof).
The reporter, Cathy Taylor, cited a study from Cymfony that concluded that agencies don’t get it when it comes to social media.
Although the report and her article focused primarily on ad agencies, it would not surprise me if some of the same realities also apply to the world of PR agencies.
The “news” that agencies of all stripes don’t really understand social media wasn’t exactly a shock to Cymfony Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jim Nail, either. “They can talk a good game …. but they don’t walk the walk,” he said. The study, which is the result of 71 phone interviews with marketing people in the U.S., Canada, France and the U.K., found that agencies are still mostly concerned with using social media as a viral blast technique, when, to some extent, the real action is in conversations, good or bad, about a company’s products and services.
I particularly liked this quote in the report from Eric Kintz, a Hewlett-Packard marketing exec and blogger: “I think they [agencies] are somewhat helping. But they need to show how social media has helped them further their own agenda. So if an ad agency comes to me, I’d ask if they have their own page on a social network site? Are they posting videos on YouTube? Do they have their own blog? And how has it helped them in their own business?”
The truth is, if you wanted to while away a few hours looking to see if agency senior executives have Facebook pages (besides the digital shops, that is), or MySpace pages, you’d be pretty frustrated.
Interesting suggestion, does this mean we will see some trash talking soon on PR and ad agency blogs as to who is the most (or least) social media drenched?
Not to defend laziness in the industry, or being behind the curve – both of which I have railed against on this blog.
But let ye who is without 10,000 Facebook friends cast the first stone. We are not the story, the client is, and if clients picked agencies based solely on self promotion and networking, well they just may get very good self-promoters and nothing more.
