COMMENTS
Great article on the changing nature of PR. Given the dramatic changes in the media landscape, the best PR agencies are already embracing the new model that you're writing about.
Those that don't adjust their model will be the first to be cut when the PR clients review their budgets - see also the PR study by Worldwide Partners & Ecco International.
www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i6ab3c00e5c38c17793f19525281b878a#
Perhaps another question we should counter with: Is marketing on its way out? It doesn't matter if you are a from the marketing or PR profession, if an agency continues to push clients' messages out, there are larger problems. From our perspective, we know that we must evolve ... and always continue to evolve. We as PR professionals have always sought ways to create pull. Personally, I have never been as excited about the future of PR, as I am today.
Most of the PR folks I know have transitioned over to web 2.0 and are doing fairly well with it; in fact, most state that they've got more tools in their arsenal than ever before. From my perspective, their USP is in #4 - decision support - nuance, framing, positioning, and analysis of reach.
Excellent article, Brian. We started weighing service provider options for selling and marketing our consulting services months ago. On the one hand, there is the opportunity cost of doing nothing. On the other, there is the financial cost of doing the wrong thing. Every service provider gives you the pros of using their services, but you have to do a lot of time-consuming research on all the other alternatives to get the whole picture. We've tried print, spoken with radio, tv, marketing consultants, and PR, played with online, wondered about an advertising agency being the right way to go, are upgrading our website, and studying online marketing. Your company's articles have been very helpful.
Hi Brian,
Great Stuuf.
I really appreciate your writing style which compresses volumes of Data down to real information contained in an easily digestible "5 Key Point" format.
Powerful material, Current and Actionable.
Keep up the great flow of information
Thanks.
A very good article, although I don't we can say PR is dead, I think we are seeing PR evolving. 15-20 years ago, PR was more about creating the message via incredulous stunts, staged-managed photocalls that would produce a gaggle of photographers, journalists etc, but as the industry has grown and changed to become arbiter of reputation management, we've relied on a solid platform of media relations to convey our various messages.. Today, social media in all its forms, is set to carry this mantle forward and all PR has really done is embrace these new technologies. Those that don't will become unstuck!
Tremendous article. PR is NEVER dead; it just evolves. One of the first great examples of "underground" PR was the Blair Witch Project and the use of the internet to promote that film. (And that was pre-Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Now, it's all about social media, connecting, blogging; the press releases are now an "official formality". Let's go for coffee!
You make some fair points. I think PR is not dead but evolving (as you say) but the modern PR agency can take advantage of the mediums you suggest and still be profitable. Death of traditional PR, birth of online PR perhaps?
Brian,
Thank you for an outside perspective on a traditionally inward-looking industry.
PR is not dead, but there are definitely stubborn, traditional pros/firms that are dying.
Firms and professionals relatively unknown to the old guard, and ignored by the trade media and so-called experts and gurus, are introducing industry-changing philosophies, services and technologies, while the PR aristocracy (both individuals and firms) battle to stay relevant.
We've written about this extensively (and you know my opinion), but the PR industry’s future depends on its ability to adapt, deliver measurable and meaningful results (not press clippings), and develop hybrid professionals who are capable of providing consulting and services across multiple disciplines, including: content marketing, social media, PR, Website development, search marketing and branding.
Thanks for the challenge, and the insight.
@NyxMarketing I think it is the death of "traditional pr" and the birth of the "inbound marketing agency"...
Great post! By curious coincidence, I posted an article with the same title on my blog a couple of weeks ago. It's a slightly different take, but the same idea: that Web 2.0 (I focus on social media) is changing the playing field (let alone moving the goal posts). PR companies that stick to their existing business models will struggle to survive. I'd appreciate any feedback on my thoughts.
Article titled Is PR Dead?
Your answer and the future of PR is here: http://bit.ly/8CQQl
Two of the most beautiful things about technology is that it disrupts and forces change, and even more importantly it forces accountability. I think traditional PR is near dead, but thanks to technology it has the chance to evolve into an even more powerful tool. At the end of the day, it's about creating relevance and accountability for a client. The successful agency of the future must build an arsenal of creative minds and technology minds to make that happen, or indeed they will die.
I do agree that PR is dead in it's traditional form, but what you basically described was a social media marketing firm. I'm not sure if PR agencies want to start staffing their offices with tech savvy, high EQ connectors. Sounds like a huge shift, but I guess that was the point of the post.
Thanks for the insight!
@RyanJLewis -- Actually, I disagree. I don't think I'm describing a social media marketing firm. In fact, I think folks are a little too obsessed with social media -- it is only part of the process. Step 1 -- Remakable Strategy. Step 2 -- Create Remarkable Content and optimize it. Step 3 -- Spread Content In Social Mediasphere. Step 4 -- Measure what is working and double down on high Roi and divest in low ROI.
I think the staffing of PR agencies does need to shift a bit. There needs to be someone in the agency who is a strategy consultant type (i.e. ex-BCG) -- this is new. Most of the people in the firm should measure up well on my DARC criteria:
D -- Digital Native
A -- Analytical
R -- Has "reach"
C -- Content creator
Brian.
This is an excellent article. Thank you.
I wonder though, are we getting to the point of overload with regard to "Social Spreading Services"? Is the public getting tired of the constant pitch via social media sites? I for one hope not but lately I've been wondering.
I'm not sure you entirely understand what PR is. Frankly, most people stuck in the
marketing mindset don't. The value of PR has very little to do with "relationships with a handful of journalists." If anything, the practices of
inbound marketing are much closer to PR practices than marketing ones. It's kind of silly to conjecture about the death of a field you don't really understand. ;-)
Brian, thanks for sharing a more thoughtful post beyond the "PR is dead" line at IMS yesterday. It's a good discussion to have, though I have to argue with your premise on three fronts:
1) Many good public relations leaders and agencies are already doing many of the things you suggest above. Some have been doing them for years. "Media relations" is very visible but it's only part of what most of us do.
2) Social media is helping good public relations people thrive because it's exactly what we've been doing for years via other channels -- identify audiences and influencers, engage them 1:1, create good content, tell good stories, etc. If social media is all about engagement, then PR will continue to thrive because that's what we do.
3) "Inbound" has *always* been part of good public relations. I'm not saying everyone practices good public relations. But most of us know that a core element of our job is to listen well and hold up a mirror to our clients/companies. We read, listen, learn, dialogue, think and adapt every day -- in fact, I'd argue that PR is one of the *most* inbound disciplines that exists.
As I said this morning in my IMS speech, PR isn't dead and advertising isn't dead -- they're evolving. Social media won't kill traditional media -- they'll work together. And inbound marketing doesn't kill outbound marketing -- they'll work together.
Thanks for your insight Tim. I am in absolute agreement with your points. If there's one thing that hasn't changed, it's that marketing and PR professionals still don't really understand what the other field actually
does.
Bang-on! You've hit the issues that my agency partner and I are dealing with right now. Content is king of this new realm. I agree with Guy Kawasaki, BTW, who compares the old model of "top-down" PR push to the new model of "across". One caveat: be very careful of "guaranteeing" that this or that blog post won't require legal vetting. And you might want to download this for free:
www.netvaluebook.com
@sean weigold ferguson I didn't see much in your background to lead me to believe that you have a deep understanding of PR: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ARB1kx8HZB2hZGhkNzZwNmdfMjlmbmpwYzJmbg&hl=en&pli=1
I can say that I have spent real money on PR agencies as a customer and feel like I understand it pretty well.
@Brian
There's a difference between working with PR agencies and understanding the paradigms and literature in the field. I hardly consider myself a
PR expert, but I know enough to acknowledge that "relationships with journalists" is a very small piece of the puzzle.
@Tim Marklein Thanks for your thoughtful response. I regret that I couldn't be at the IMS today to hear your presentation. Sounds like it was good stuff.
Great article, Brian. Web 2.0 and inbound market strategies seem to come out of the woodwork these days. Enough so that one can easily lose sight of one side, or track, while focusing on all of the others that continually pop up.
It's important to remember to have a balanced approach and to have a constant view of the over-arching categories of effort anyone in this business must have. Thanks for a great reminder to keep track of *all* the sides and not just the new shiny ones.
@stevenmhall
Sorry to join the conversation a bit late. Very interesting discussion!
Brian and I have somewhat similar views on this, though there are some differences. If you want to read more about my thoughts, see this article I wrote in August 2008:
The Role of PR Firms in Social Media and Inbound Marketing To me, the answer to the question of "Is PR dead?" is completely dependent on what you mean by PR.
Brian -
Wow, you've clearly hit a nerve with the PR types!
As someone who was trained in the old ways, I actually completely agree with you: traditional PR - particularly for business and tech - is on its way out.
However, I find your insights pretty comforting - because the true value of communications - which is finding and telling your organization's best stories - has never been as important as today.
So maybe traditional PR is outmoded; but you've helped outline the many reasons why an organization's reputation and its brand awareness will increasingly depend the quality of the communications (inbound-marketing parlance = "content") that it publishes and that social networking proliferates.
So I think the PR types who've always been good at their jobs will continue to thrive if they stay focused on creating compelling, genuine content that highlights their clients' unique differentiators; they just need to do a bit more research to ensure that - when toss it out there - it will pass the straight-face test with by their investors, customers, employees and partners -because that's what'll come out in the blogosphere and social networking sites.
This trend is for the better because it's going to be much harder to preserve the "ivory tower" syndrome in the executive suite.
This kind of thinking and insight is what attracted us to HubSpot in the first place - keep it coming.
Darian
You know, when I was getting my graduate degree in public relations, research was showing how important it was for PR to facilitate a two-way communication between organization and audience. I totally got that and was even told I was "one with the theory."
Then I got out into the real world where PR was not much more than pushing select stories to the media and hiding those more embarrassing stories as much as possible. So much for two-way communication.
So, I think it is so cool (dare I say Karma) that social media has really begun to force organizations to do what research has been saying was the right way to go all along.
Ha! Take that big corporations! Power to the people! :-)
To think that communications will be a practice that will only take place on the internet and in the social realm at that is a bit pretentious. I agree that social media is an integral part of the PR business but assuming that social media has effectively rendered Public Relations and Communications useless is an vast overstatement.
If you think PR equals media relations than I can see why you're playing the FUD card on PR is dead. I actually would argue that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Influence still matters...how and where influence is happening has changed no doubt. But many of the fundamentals about influence have remained the same. This is where claims like PR is dead confuses the real issue. Good PR has been more about strategic communications and less abour "media" relations for years. Channles and tools might have changed but content is still king...and good communications strategy is more important than ever.
I think the article and many of the posters hit the nail on the head.
PR agencies are going to need to adapt (from the traditional) to be
successful (which I'm sure some have done.)
As an aside, I attended the Web Innovator's Group conference the other day and they had a panel on "Bootstrapping PR" which featured Mike Troiano, Scott Kirsner, Wade Roush, Peter Kafka and Bob Brown.
The panelists were asked about PR agencies and how effective they were in getting them to write stories on companies. The panelists overall seemed to not hold PR agencies in the highest regard in getting a story published sighting referrals from people they trust and having
your best brand enthusiast talk to them at an event as the best ways
to catch their eyes. Some even said that they receive many emails
every day from PR agencies that they don't open. And it didn't seem to make sense to them for a small company/entrepreneur to spend the money on this when they could do it themselves more effectively.
Note, however, that they were looking at PR agencies more from a media relations angle than anything else. Here's a great recap of the discussions and reactions to the panel:
http://www.holland-mark.com/blog/2009/09/webinno-panel-pr-bashing-harsh-but-fair/
I would agree with others that PR is evolving but not dead. It used to be a "black box" activity where your success hinged on how much of a PR firm's efforts you could afford to hire.
Now there is so much more than a marketer who is serious about PR can do themselves even from within the firm.
If I were hiring a new PR firm I would look for one who could guide my people, help them leverage opportunities and basically teach us to do it ourselves. I don't think they'd be in danger of working themselves out of a job as the PR world is constantly evolving. If they saw their role as keeping us on top of the latest techniques and best-practices, plus adding other services to fill our "gaps" we'd have a long and beautiful business relationship.
Melissa
This is a great article. I agree with many others on this board when I say that PR will never be truly dead, it is simply evolving and will continue to do so.
Many companies today are only now embracing social media as an inbound marketing method. What is curious to me is why some companies still have their sales and marketing functions integrated, instead of recognizing that marketing needs to be a function that stands alone, in order to be effective.
Perhaps this stems from the fact that many CEOs today come from a fianncial or operations background. Perhaps this will change in the future.
Your sign-up form will not let me sign up for your Free Internet Marketing Kit, because I have no business or website YET-- So I can't fill out the prescribed spaces.
Hi K.W., you can just enter "none."
-- Rick Burnes
Hey Brian,
Great post. As a web development partner for a lot of PR and Ad agencies, we think about this question a lot.
I think rather than a death sentence, PR firms gave actually been given a shot in the arm. Their job had traditionally been to help organizations navigate very unfamiliar waters: the media and publicity. For decades, businesses were on the outside looking in at the media/publicity "black box." Then, as democratizing tools (i.e., google alerts, google, and others you mentioned above) appeared, it appeared that the need for PR firms lessened and the playing field was leveled.
However, it was actually the opposite. These new media (especially social) actually represented a new type of black box to help companies navigate through. Furthermore, these media dovetail nicely with the classic roles of a PR firm: publicity and conversation.
So, the very thing that looked like it could kill of the industry, actually breathed new life (and revenue streams!) into it.
Look forward to hearing others thoughts. Thanks again for this provocative post!
In the words of ESPN's Lee Corso: "Not so fast!"
PR is definitely not dead, nor is it on death's doorstep. I still pitch the media all the time and get results. Not only that, the media still contact me all the time asking for story ideas.
Yes, I spend plenty of time on social media strategy and some of the good ideas Brian has outlined above, but media relations is alive and well and a key part of a smart, comprehensive public relations strategy. See my post on the subject at http://tinyurl.com/yf9xhcq
I also think most PR firms are evolving and if they don't, they will be dead, as you stated. I know we had a PR firm for our company and literally got to site and watch them evolve with our needs as we dove into the social media world. I think it's amazing how much can be done internally for free or relatively cheap compared to the prices paid for great PR just a few years back. I love the article and think it has some great content. I look forward to reading more from you!
PR as we USED to know it may no longer be alive today but as in all things "evolution" is the key.
A company should evaluate SEO/Internet Marketing companies the same way they would any other service business. They should get referrals from satisfied customers. If they want to really put the company through the ringer, ask for a referral from their most satisfied client and least satisfied client.
Provocative title and and very sophisticated article.
Of course, PR is dead if someone thinks of PR as media relations. If people think of PR as "strategic communications" this automatically acknowledges the blurring lines between traditional views of PR and marketing.
Those lines blur more every day. I believe the modern PR firm should and will own the strategy and will be compensated for the value they bring in pushing or challenging client strategic thinking about their business objective, core messages or key market differentiators, appropriate channels, target audiences and customer activation. Of course, measuring activities and results will be a critical piece of the value equation.
Thinking of PR as core communications strategy logically leads to acknowledgement of the importance of inbound marketing and the value of leveraging and maximizing a clients social media platform and strategy.
PR is only dead if you think of it as media relations. PR will never die if you think of it as strategic communications ... it will just continue to evolve.
I think Nick Vehr nailed it in his comments. Public relations is a misnomer that largely didn't exist. It was media relations. Now, the public are being brought into it, and if PR firms can extend their talent for messaging to reach the public directly, then they'll be fine.
My take on whether PR is dead.
Single most clueless post I've read in awhile.
PR has been evolving and adapting along the way. A post like this, on a site trying monetize their own brand & messages, doesn't surprise me at all, though. Hey, you want to sell your book and site. OK.
Sure, you want to declare PR dead - or suggest its demise. It furthers your own interests. But, you weren't the originator of these new strategies and tactics (on this site or in your book) that many people have been implementing long before HubSpot arrived on the scene.
What disappoints me is that I thought HubSpot would be above this circle jerk meme/link phishing sort of post. Hey, I've been wrong before. I was wrong to think that HubSpot wouldn't take the easy (yet fruitless) path. Sorry to see it happening. Truly.
Posts like this come from a common misunderstanding many marketers seem to have about what PR actually is/does. We are not a subset of marketing meant to handle media relations. PR is a management function meant to facilitate two-way communication between an individual or organization and its audience. PR people are, and have been for many years, in the unique position of acting as boundary spanners, those who look internally and externally at needs and strategy and ensure that appropriate communications occur.
Because we have managed this function for many years, it has been easy for PR people to understand, use and for the most part "own" social media. We know communicating with audiences should be a conversation not a lecture, we know there are multiple channels each with their own costs and benefits, we understand how people seek, understand and retain information. We also understand that those that think that social media somehow is replacing marketing or PR are misinformed, social media is, an albeit important set of tools, but just one set in an already very large toolbox.
Many, many PR firms and practitioners have been working for several years already at incorporating social media, understanding the seismic changes that technology has wrought in the industry and advising clients accordingly.
Sure there are still plenty of what I like to dub "old white guys" (which I view as a state of mind rather than set of physical attributes) whose only experience with PR is huge corporations and media relations-heavy work, but there are thousands of us who understand that PR is so much more. Now if we could just get you advertising and marketing folks to understand, life would be much easier.
Brian, a bit late into the conversation, but I was out all day yesterday laying out marketing strategies with a client and found this just today.
Brian, what I think is really dead is not PR itself, rather the tools and tactics that PR professionals have relied upon.
I think that it's not anymore about which PR agencies will survive, but which ones HAVE survived to date. It's been kinds over for the traditionalist as soon as the mediasphere exploded.
Now we need to make sure clients know that too, when they keep asking for a story in the New York Times whether it will move the needle or not. Among all the things we need to focus on, is also client education for some tired old brands.
Noemi Pollack
http://www.pollackblog.com
Hey Brian,
Boy you sure rattled some cages, didn't you? True to form. :) I love it.
This might be an overly simplistic view, but I think PR and its need to evolve are a symptom of the much larger and broader need for *all* communication and outreach functions - from PR to marketing to customer service - to evolve.
The social web has changed the game. Information is more democratized than ever before, and the idea of gatekeepers has to change to something more like stewards and bridge builders. I don't think any of our traditional industries are dead, but their old models are. But that's no different than business evolutions that have emerged and died over the centuries in any other fashion.
It freaks us out a little bit because we know the evolution is happening, we just don't quite feel like we've got our feet under us. I'm paying attention to folks like Brian Solis up there that I think really have a handle on what's changing for better and for worse, and how businesses need to consider how they'll invest in the new era of communications.
Thanks for always, always making people think and converse. Good stuff. (And thanks for the mention, too).
Best,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra
I would like to argue that 'traditional PR' is dead, but that there is a new wave of online PR that is actually gaining momentum as practitioners get more sophisticated and adept at the tools, etc.
good article, but I don't can say PR is dead I think it is only change.
While I agree that PR agencies will need to adapt (and many are), I think this post dismisses the mainstream media and the experience of PR agencies a little to quickly. I recently wrote
a blog post about why PR skills are still applicable in a social media world.
Thomas Friedman's 'The World is Flat' writes extensively about what we (and our kids) will need to stay ahead of the curve. PR is a case in point and the bottom line is that being creative, while keeping the client's needs and the competition's moves constantly on our radar will lend us the competive edge.
PR, just like advertising and marketing, has completely changed these last years. When the world is flat and you can get services from everywhere, for cheaper - the only way to make a difference is either to add the personal touch - or to be constantly on your feet, innovating and creating.
Good article Brian. It's ironic but PR has got a PR problem too. The interesting thing will be to see if they can change from a communication position to having a conversation.
Cheers
Ann
I think PR is a function rather than an industry. PR will find its own expression through the social media network. Social Media is about to transition from its honeymoon period to managing information overload and assisting the online community to get sustained, quality and relevant value from from web 2.0.Where are the futurists and innovators to take this social media enviroment to the next level. There are too many tech heads bring a narrow dialogue about web 2.0 its time for the real communication leaders to stand up and bring some real life thought leadership on harnessing the opportunities of social media
Brian, I agree with you. PRs can still support effectively the news production cycle. But in my opinion they should start to see themselves as direct contributors more than intermediators. In web 2.0 there is not not so much need for intermediation, information can directly flow from the source to the final audience. That's why I believe media should concentrate only on adding value to the process (opinion, analysis, investigation, live coverage) and PRs should have full ownership of their clients' official information creation and distribution process. We at noodls are trying to support this big change in the industry. If anyone is interested, check it out at http://www.noodls.com.
PR is not dead. The PR practitioners who fail to embrace social media and evolving PR tactics are dead. Their old business models are bound to fail.
Hi folks.
Many thanks for your thoughtful comments on the "Is PR Dead?" post. I have gone through them all and have a few thoughts for y'all.
1. I don't think PR is dead. I think PR is in need of (and in some cases) transforming. For the most part, the tools, methods, and knowledge that built great PR firms in the last 20 years will be different from the tools, methods, and knowledge that build the next generation of great PR firms. I believe the PR industry is in a time of great change, just like other industries (i.e. music). The good news is that change brings opportunity and I suspect many of you that commented on the post are the ones at the forefront of that change (i.e. Robert French) and are most likely to benefit from the changes.
2. John Cass gave me a call and was upset that I didn't talk more about my personal experiences with PR that led to my opinions. He was right, so here goes... About 6 months after we started HubSpot, we did a relatively extensive search for the perfect PR firm, interviewed a bunch, and selected the best one we could find. We worked closely with them for a year or so and really pushed them to think outside the box. Despite some minor wins (i.e. one hit in particular with blog.guykawasaki.co in the early days was useful), we decided to stop paying the $10k per month as we didn't think it was anywhere close to worth the money. More recently, for our book, we worked with a book PR firm we met through our publisher. The book has done far better than we ever expected and we got a ton of great PR hits, a few of which we detailed in this blog article: http://tinyurl.com/ybda5xs. Of the noteworthy mentions in the article, none of them came through the PR firm. To the PR firm's defense, they are working on a couple of things that might hit a few weeks from now in Entrepreneur Magazine and Inc Magazine, but wowsa, they are way after our launch and it took a lot of our energy to spin the PR firm up so they could approach these folks. Their process was really traditional (mailed books to news media and pushed them via email/phone with a slant to write something about the book) and it further fueled my question of whether the PR industry was in need of serious change. In addition to these two experiences, I have a lot of friends who work in PR and talk a ton with them about their work.
3. It will be interesting to see how the industry changes over the next five years. As with all industry transformations, the big, established firms are the ones with the most to lose and are the most highly incented to hold onto the past. It is only natural for a partner in a firm that is big and highly successful to want to continue to do things that are putting her kids through college. I suspect some of the established firms will thread the needle and really come out shining. I think there is a great opportunity for net new firms and small firms to build up right now. We at HubSpot have over 1800 customers and they are hungry for the new style of PR that many of you on this thread are already doing, but most in the industry haven't embraced yet. Many of our customers use PR firms and I am often asked to recommend PR firms, so I am hearing from the front lines the way they are thinking about it and it feels like it has changed a lot since we started HubSpot.
Many thanks for reading this. I'd be happy to continue the dialog.
Brian.
Hey Brian,
Great article! I agree with you for the five points which PR can still make efforts on and prevent itself from getting dysfunction in this age. I think the major reason for the big evolving change of PR can be largely attributed to the development of Web 2.0. As we know, Internet has made a lot of changes on information programming and spreading. Hence, technically, PR people are now facing a challenge of adapting themselves to the overwhelming tools of Web 2.0.
Today, PR turns out to be an integrated mechanism to process and create contents in an information-overloaded world. As you pointed out, a good opportunity falls on the usage of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Group, and so forth. However, I think this opportunity accompanies with a challenge━ it will require PR people to get equipped with greater judgment. We saw a lot of companies made big mistakes, lost customer base or fans by misusing social media. Internet is lack of control, it may sometimes backfire. Even though it is trendy to incorporate social media to spread information, social media should not be used blindly. Different types of companies and information need different channels to go public.
Besides, I think it’s also important for PR people to get familiar with new technology. In other words, we at least should embrace inventions that facilitate communication, no matter we like them or not. To learn is better, of course, because every new technology might have a potentiality to be the key to a smash hit. PR people can no longer depend on merely verbal communication; messages should be incorporated with new technology to produce best outcomes.
Above all, as a PR student, I outweigh judgment, creativity, research ability and proficiency in new technology over other elements. I believe these will help PR people make better decisions and conduct more comprehensive analysis on positioning, and accommodate themselves better in this highly competitive Web 2.0 environment.
Hi Brian,
You're right, the system is broken. However, you're also confusing "PR" with "media relations." This is easy to do as the industry itself has created this problem. For years many firms that called themselves "PR" actually did little more than media relations.
We got here because for many years, the primary storytelling channel available WAS the media. We also became enamored with big numbers, so getting clients "hits" that showed numbers like 12 million readers looked great, while creating a grass roots event schedule that attracted 10 or 15 people at a time didn't look nearly as good to our clients. Despite the fact the grass roots campaign may have longer-term benefits and create stronger bonds with prospects and customers.
The issue you pointed to regarding the length of time between when your book came out and the placement of articles in certain publications isn't actually the fault of the media relations team. They're just a piece in a much larger, much more broken system of media. A magazine like Entrepreneur plans and writes its articles months in advance. For your book to be featured in an article around the time of the book launch means that the PR firm must have the information from you (and be employed by you) at least 5 months before you launch. This allows them time to negotiate with the reporter, let the reporter negotiate with the editor, get the article assigned, written and added to the schedule. PR isn't the problem in this system, the magazine is. That's why so many have gone out of business.
The fact is good PR people are storytellers. What we need to do, as an industry, is to combine the inbound marketing tactics that HubSpot promotes with the traditional "influencer relations" that PR has developed over the past couple of decades.
Of course, not every company is as skilled at doing this as the folks at HubSpot. Many need guidance in not only creating a strategy but also in continuing to fill their own content machine. Outsourcing the work lets them get back to doing the work that they want to be doing.