With the inauguration just a few days away, everyone seems to be anxiously awaiting President-elect Obama's economic stimulus package. Clearly, something broad and bold is needed. Not to just get the economy going again, but to restore people's confidence. In uncertain times its easy to fall into the "let's just wait it out and see what happens mode" of operating. People and companies become so frozen and unsure of what the future will bring that they decide doing nothing, or even worse, re-trenching is the best thing to do.
The business of strategic communications is certainly not immune to this. We've all heard or experienced cut backs in activities and budgets. Certainly, communications can't operate in a vacuum and must participate in the belt tightening. Lately I've seen too many instances where the steps taken may look good on the balance sheet today, but tomorrow may inflict damage that is long term and hard to recover from.
The problem as I see it is that companies are cutting back on the strategic communications just when the field is going through the most dramatic changes in its history. The channel through which most communications has been funneled -- the media -- is going through a gut-wrenching transition. I believe that we will always have a media channel, but nobody can predict what that will look like. The only thing that is certain is that things will continue to evolve. Now it is truly about public relations, not media relations. We all must become publishers of content, creators of relationships and facilitators of conversations with all our external and internal constituencies. This means investing in new approaches and using new tools, most importantly being brave enough to experiment and not be afraid to fail.
Hoping that the recession will end sooner rather than later and assuming that we'll see a return to the old ways is a recipe for failure. Each of us must be the engine behind our own PR stimulus program. Those who take the chance to embrace this challenge and the opportunity to do things differently will not just be the survivors, but the winners when we come out the other side of this recession.
