Deirdre Breakenridge

I’ve noticed some interesting conversations lately about strategy, execution and accountability. If you are on the strategy side, and advising a brand, are you held accountable for the execution (if it’s not your part)? Is it easier just to advise, then to execute social media? My own personal opinion is that we rise to a higher or maybe I should say a “new” level when we are able to do both.

I’ve been writing books on how public relations has evolved with the advent of the Internet since the late 90′s and as a PR professional, I have launched my fair share of books written by others since the late 80′s. When I compare launch strategies and tactics from 1989 and 1999, to what I’m doing today, it’s enough to make me stop and reflect. Both technology and marketing have become so savvy and one-to-one marketing/PR is the only way to launch a book in The Long Tail.

I’m basing my blog post on the reaction to my last post on “PR of the Past vs. PR 2.0 Today.” I wrote that post to pinpoint the amazing technological differences between today and year’s past and how a PR person’s role has altered (for the better). But, the real discussion (the comments on my blog) focused on how PR people need to evolve as a result of social media communications and how there’s still resistance. As a matter of fact one comment stated, “A lot of PR people don’t even know that PR has evolve[d]…or they don’t want that!”

Even though PR is over 100 years old, I can only comment from experience on the last 20 years. As I walk down memory lane, from my first job at Padilla Spear Burdick & Beardsley (now Padilla Spear) until today, I think PR has grown in a number of ways.