In this blog by Lucy Siegel of Bridge Global Strategies, she explains the different approaches to social media taken by Advertising/Marketing vs. Public Relations.

The public relations agency industry in the U.S. has fared better than most marketing/communications disciplines in this recession for two reasons: the surge in importance of social media, and a much greater awareness by top executives of the importance of PR.

In a matter of hours, a few negative comments on Facebook, Twitter or any number of other online sites can spread quickly to a global, Internet-wide audience, as well as to offline media. As result of online and other corporate crises that have crippled companies recently, the work we do in PR, especially in reputation and crisis management, has suddenly become more visible to and valued by CEOs, CMOs and other top managers. So, while companies have cut ad budgets, PR budgets haven’t been so badly affected, and some have actually grown.

A lot has been written about ad agencies working hard to get a piece of the social media pie, and succeeding. But this doesn’t mean that ad agencies are taking PR agencies’ slice of the pie. To better understand the role of advertising and PR in social media, we need to examine the role of each in social media.

We could view social media networks as both opportunities for promotion and as an ongoing challenge to the management of both corporate and product reputations.

The public relations industry is best equipped to take charge of the reputation management aspects of social media, hands down. Advertising professionals are trained to send out messages crafted just the way the marketing department wants them. However, social media networks are another ball of wax. The audience answers back, and sometimes not in a positive way.

Ad agencies aren’t accustomed to two-way dialogue with the audience, nor are they trained to respond without being promotional, which is all-important when communicating in a social media network. This, however, is exactly what PR professionals do well. When we provide journalists with information in a way that communicates carefully crafted messaging, we can’t guarantee they will use the information the way we want, or use it at all. It takes a great deal of skill to present a company’s messages to the media succinctly and persuasively, and then to respond quickly and honestly to journalists’ doubts and criticisms in a way that will serve a company well. This process has prepared us for dealing with people in social media networks.

But now for the promotional potential of social media: promotion is where ad agencies excel, although the PR industry is holding its own in this area, also. The way I see it, ad agencies are using social media as an extension of their traditional creative skills. The Old Spice campaign, for example, consists of a series of video ads that are spread around virally using networks such as Twitter. Ad Week noted in an article this summer that, “The [Old Spice] effort proves that ad agencies can use the social media tools at their disposal to embed their work as deeply in digital culture as their offline ads are seeded in popular culture.” The same article quoted blogger Edward Bocches, Chief Creative Officer at Interpublic Group ad agency Mullen, who said that what’s new is the expectation that the creative teams in ad agencies will come up with new material in response to what is happening online within hours, rather than in the weeks.

Ad agencies may be deploying new tools (i.e., Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) for the delivery of ads and sales promotion, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing a different kind of work than they were doing before. I don’t see ad agencies going after the public dialogue aspects of social media. Public dialogue is the traditional domain of PR agencies, whether the dialogue is online, in traditional media, in speeches, or wherever it takes place. Ad agencies are focusing their social media efforts on promotion, using humor, fun, sexiness, and other such attention-getting devices.

The advertising and public relations industries have never worked well together. What’s really evident to me is that we had better start to do so now, for the sake of our clients. Since we’re playing in the same sandbox and using the same tools, it’s more important than ever for advertising and PR professionals to understand each other’s disciplines better and work in greater harmony.

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