My name is Helen Trevorrow and I’ve worked in the public relations industry since 1997. Times flies. I can’t believe that so many years have passed and how much my industry has changed in that time.
We always had email (I’m not that old!) but there were certain sectors that preferred to receive new communication by fax, so you would spend hours faxing through press releases especially to some of the trade titles.
I joined DoubleClick during the first dotcom boom in 2001. It was my job to educate national journalists about online advertising. DoubleClick were a really hot company (they are now part of Google) and at that time had amazing offices in New York City with a basket ball court on the rooftop of a skyscraper. It was amazing. But when I explained to journalists how digital advertising was going to work, how it was going to use cookies to target the individual and serve targeted ads – many intelligent people laughed.
We could not foresee how dramatically the media landscape would change over the next decade. That new inventions in technology would have us communicate in completely new revolutionary ways.
All of the stuff changed. I love it that radio survived, and in such glorious terms. We were told that ‘new media’ would kill off radio and cinema but where there is quality both have remained integral media channels. Regional publishing really took the brunt of advertising bucks going online and a once prosperous industry reduced significantly. I love the way that social media channels have to use traditional news channels to illustrate stories as they break, and I don’t know about you, but my trust is swinging way back towards those traditional media brands for quality sourced stories and news reporting.
We saw the birth of reality TV as a kind of social experiment, and followed marketing budgets heading through those channels.
What has not changed is the core proposition of a solid communications strategy.
There are some basic truths in PR that must underpin any campaign.
There core values are the same. They haven’t changed and though its faster now, more beautifully designed and insta-friendly good communications need to obey the same basic principles.
Get in touch to find out what they are and how you can use them.