VIDEO: Weber Shandwick's Timothy Sutton on 'effort-full' creativity

True to the old adage, change is at the core of any industry. Given the rising importance of digital in communications today, the industry has had to grapple with doing things very differently compared to the past. But Sutton says that how the industry changes will largely be determined by how PR firms manage their reputation in this new environment.

“You have to hang on to the fundamentals,” he says. “You have to ask yourself: what do people think of me?”

Sutton urges PR firms to take off their blinkers and break away from silos and start responding to what clients want. He says it’s time for big ideas that are both creative and strategic and that requires transforming the current business models.

“It’s effort-full, not effort – less,” he says, but PR firms need to comes to grips to what is driving change in the new PR world, and it’s no longer enough “to have the flour, the sugar, and the milk to bake the cake”, but it’s about how firms will put all the ingredients together that will determine their success.