What's the big idea? Taking ownership of ideas that resonate

In the race to embrace social media and the new digital order, public relations companies are faced with a challenge. Do they create concepts, mechanics, content and communities to glue brands to consumers, or do they focus on the big idea and develop compelling brand platforms that trickle down through all the media touch-points, picking up followers as they go?

You might be able to tell that I'm more about the latter than the former. Social media is without doubt the water cooler of our times and has created billionaires, unique global social memes and become a network of 'I like, you like, we like each other' communities. The questions we ask ourselves every day now as marketing agencies is 'how can we fill our clients' insatiable appetite to be part of this game?'.

The Old Spice man, the anti-FARC demonstrations, the countless 'I want to find a million people who love Campaign Asia' type moments are of course the brand manager's version of Eldorado, but in our quest to sate their appetites for social fame and more 'likes', are we actually racing to the bottom or the top?

Many discussions have been held over many years, for me in different sectors such as advertising, PR and internet, about the rise of PR and the fall of advertising. The ageless question about the 30-second TV commercial dying and the endless chatter about how ad companies can't do social is a huge distraction to my mind. Where public relations needs to be is in the art of mastering public engagement. It needs to be driven by ideas that compel curiosity, making people 'brand treasure hunters' to engender a sense of discovery under the umbrella of a captivating discipline-agnostic idea.

For many years the PR industry has claimed the advertising industry is 'only about the idea', 'doesn't know how to connect with people', and that 'no one trusts bought media'. Today, we see a seismic shift. While some PR companies have enabled digital PR to work and have created powerful social media-enabling campaigns, they have missed the chance to climb the pyramid and eat advertising's dinner. Instead we see a race to the bottom of how when clients clap and ask for a social media idea, some PR campaigns simply jump into a portfolio of tried and tested tactical techniques that may well lift face time on Facebook, but do little to 'own' the top table. We don't own the 'big idea'.

It's interesting to note that the Old Spice campaign was an ad. An ad made for social media. It wasn't a 'compelling social media strategy'; it was a brilliant idea that used social media channels.

JWT's excellent Schick work 'Mow the lawn' was also, surprisingly, just an ad. An ad that enflamed social media networks. What marketing and media press tend to do is take these memes and in a way rebrand them as innovative social media campaigns, when in reality (and this should terrify PR companies) they're just ads that create digital PR; because they are good, simple ideas that amuse, entertain, compel and force word-of-mouth. I don't believe Bob Jeffery (CEO of JWT), says to his team 'I want a social media ad'. He's more likely to say 'just give me a good idea'.

Similarly, take Euro RSCG's 'Water babies' campaign for Evian. It has been lauded as the most watch viral media campaign ever, and rightly so. But what was the strategy? It was to create a great ad that harnessed social media to create noise and loyalty.

I'm not saying that all social media campaigns are ads, but many if not most of the ones most spoken about come from ad agencies, or fall into what we'd classify as an ad-made-for-social-media. I say 'well done' to the ad networks for retaining their creative supremacy of the medium and managing to distribute it brilliantly across the myriad channels.

So what is next for the PR industry? How do we continue to build our salience and ownership of digital and social media? I say stop focusing on the channel and the discipline and focus on the idea. It's a heresy of social media for a brand to force its message on consumers and it rarely works (much like your dad turning up to your 18th birthday party). Think about the distribution mechanic.

Think about the creative capital. We've heard it a thousand times but what is the galvanising idea? Ideas that are compelling, highly creative, relevant and believable will flow into all media channels, with greater credibility, impact and results. A galvanising idea can migrate mediums and markets and can glue marketing together, from the smallest tweet to a Superbowl ad and can exist in any form at any time.

In the race to embrace digital, PR firms run the very real risk of throwing away the invaluable intangible,the power of ideas, in return for showing understanding of the process, planning and delivery mechanic, social networks. Were this to happen, we would soon find ourselves back in the online equivalent of press releases, launch parties and advertorials, while once again, ad agencies continue to produce galvanising ideas that are forced onto our shoulders to merchandise.

This article was originally published in the 26 August 2010 supplement PR Communicated.