Advertising vs PR
“I believe advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.” – Russell Simmons
Ouch.
I usually always advise my small business clients to try the earned media (PR) route before succumbing to an advertising budget. It’s more effort, but it can also yield greater results. The best use of time and money would be integrating both the PR and advertising campaigns so they’re in sync with each other. That would be a better investment, in my opinion. Save the advertising for when PR can’t or won’t be an option.
Internal Communications Gaining Credence?
I was reading Lucy Sanderson-Gammon’s excellent article in CW Online recently and think she did a great job in highlighting the long-overdue credibility that internal communications is now gaining.
She writes:” The concept of partnering HR and internal communication certainly has support internationally.”
One expert, Mark Schumann, ABC, managing principal of Towers Perrin in Houston, Texas, goes as far as to say that HR and internal communication should be “joined at the hip. We each invest in each stage of an employee’s relationship with the company,” says Schumann.
“We each invest in the credible actions of leaders, we each invest in employee’s answer to ‘what’s in it for me?’ and we each bring skills, insight and passion to a common goal to recruit, retain and engage employees. Every organization has challenges finding the right talent, keeping the right talent, securing the trust of its people and engaging its people to live up to the ‘brand promise’—and HR and communications are the glue that binds it all together. It’s essential they collaborate.”
While the impact of internal communications is far less sexy than PR and media relations, only true visionaries can see the fine balance of internal and external relations. Sanderson-Gammon’s article also points to a juncture where HR and internal comms meet, which has been debated about – sometimes rather heatedly – in numerous other communication blogs.
The New Order: Generation Y in the Workplace
I was catching up on some reading from Ron Shewchuk’s For Your Approval blog and he had recently conducted an interview with Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. In her book, Trunk shares her insights on Generation Y and the needs (some might say demands) they have in today’s work environment.
She goes on to say “In ten years, only the winners will be around. The losers will be eaten up by the winners, I think. The winners will be companies that were not afraid to show humility in the recruiting process. It’s an employee driven market for the foreseeable future, which turns the recruiting model on it’s head. If companies cannot make that change, they won’t attract enough talent to keep things going.”
My perspective: this is an incoming group of high performers and top producers. They are not going to wait around for paradigm shifts and their definition of change management is chunked into a 3 – 6 month period, tops. It’s akin to being on a constantly moving conveyor belt.
I agree w/Trunk’s assertion that only winners will be left behind. The ineffectuals will be lost in the dust if they can’t demonstrate their value.
And, I don’t think this is a bad thing if what is needed by future communicators is the ability to wear many hats, and have innate abilities to move upwards, downwards, and across.
