My Twitter feed search on PR has turned up several tweets regarding this article on Edelman PR that appeared a few days ago. The article from the Chicago Tribrune discusses how the senior members of the esteemed PR firm are being schooled by younger employees in how to use social media tools such as Facebook. The meme I've seen on Twitter in articles like this on Gawker is "are you paying big bucks for senior staff when the work is being done by junior people?" In particular because Edelman positions itself as an agency savvy in the workings of digital media and tools.
I am sure someone at Edelman thought the story in the Chicago Tribune was a good human interest story. Look, here are all these older folks being reversed mentored (they even have a term for it "rotnem" -- mentor spelled backwards, get it?) by young kids. But, it is fairly scary that a large PR firm like Edelman didn't think that this would have the fall-out it had. Today's PR professionals need to be up-to-date and savvy with any and all tools that are going to help their clients meet their objectives.
At LP&P, there are number of seasoned professionals (okay, let's just say some may be over 35) but all are savvy in Facebook, Twitter, blogging, YouTube and just about every other tool there is. And while we do conduct trainings, the senior folks here are just as likely to train a more junior person on a new tool. One way to see if your agency is deeply entrenched in social media is to see if they use the tools. Do they have Twitter handle? Are they active on it? Do they have a Facebook page? Are they blogging? I am happy to answer "yes" to these questions as are our senior staff. Time to ask your agency the same question?
