Does PR need more creative or data driven geeks?

Last week PRmoment held a “Does PR need More Geeks?” event in partnership with Mynewsdesk. It was a fun evening and we heard some excellent debates.

Speakers included Mark Borkowski, Matt Neale from Golin Harris, Adam Cranfield from Mynewsdesk and Alex Aiken, Government director of communications. PRmoment’s Ben Smith chaired the event.

Some thoughts from some of the speakers are included in this short video:

Does PR need more geeks? from PRmoment on Vimeo.

The background to the debate is that skill sets in PR have changed significantly in the last 3/4 years. The increased importance of content and data has meant that there has been a premium on more technical skills within the sector.

During the discussions it became apparent very quickly that PR does need more geeks – but the centre of the argument was whether the sector needs more data driven geeks or whether we need more creative geeks.

Golin Harris’s Matt Neale was very much of the view that to continue to thrive in an increasingly competitive environment, PR must be at the cutting edge of creativity. Alex Aitken’s counter argument was that within communications, creativity is important but it’s not actually the be-all and the end all of the strategy. It is numbers and the data that will drive successful campaigns.

Alex's point was that Government communications is often about changing people’s behaviour, and it doesn't always require uber-creative campaigns to do this.

Mark Borkowski also gave an interesting comparison of how storytelling and the media has evolved in structure but not necessarily in the way stories are told.

He compared Miley Cyrus’ recent photo with that of Marilyn Monroe. See below:


 

Our thanks go to our event partner Mynewsdesk and be sure to look out for further events on the #mynewsnight hashtag in the New Year.