Also, I don’t think there’s any space here for startups as clients (at least not the bootstrapping kind), I’m thinking more about $20M+ in revenue clients (and of course that would also mean $20M+ in venture for the people that burn that way).

I don’t see the embedded agent dropping in, they are going to be working a full day a week there, showing the clients why this is a good idea. I think it’s pretty easy to prove in a month that you can move the needle by doing this stuff, but the agent has to be more of an employee of the company than somebody who parachutes in.

With more thought I’m thinking that this is still the weakest point, not because they won’t be able to convince the client, but that it requires both political skill, technical knowledge and a desire to travel. I’m thinking even at $200k/agent these would be tough jobs to fill.

See, I don’t see PR and Marketing getting their on their own, I think many are burdened with an inability to innovate an it will take new firms to really get good at this approach (and then they’ll be acquired by the big guys who want to avoid obsolescence.

I’ve also been thinking about this model as starting from scratch with no clients, so the first two years would be evangelization. Maybe there is a different way with an existing agency that has strong relations already built with their clients…

Thanks for the feedback, plenty more to think about…

I think there are some companies who understand where marketing is headed re: content marketing. But those companies are still in the minority.

The reality is that there’s a ton of great, smart startups who don’t have an internal Robert Scoble waiting to be discovered. That’s just not realistic.

You paint this scenario of an Embedded Agent who drops in a day or two a week, ready to shoot great footage that can be used for content marketing. I don’t think that’s realistic. Most companies by virtue of working as a team and building a product, tend to think along the same lines, “Our product is the best thing since sliced bread. We can just talk about how great our product is, and how everyone should be using it.”

Is that the kind of marketing/PR message that is going to work in social media? I don’t think so.

I think A LOT of work still has to go into talking, discussing, and CONVINCING people internally of the content that will be shot those 1 or 2 days a week that you mention. Ultimately someone (a PR/marketing person – or call them whatever you want to) has to guide that conversation, explain that self-promotion doesn’t really work, and advocate for a company to work on content that addresses industry wide problems, issues, and trends – not endless talk about the company’s own products.

So, I see PR/marketing eventually headed in the direction that you do, but I don’t think it’s going to get there as fast as you might.

And, as I’ve outlined, despite what we all know about social media, there remains mountains and mountains of education to do internally. This really requires a DNA change from traditional marketing, and it’s not going to change overnight.

Regardless, I’m excited and interested to see where PR is headed. Personally, I’m not clinging to a certain definition of my role as a PR person. If my job is 50% SEO, 30% social media outreach, and 20% message development, that’s fine by me.

Jeff

Nice work, John– I think the content creation idea is spot on– agencies (I work at SHIFT, as you know, and we certainly have approached this question for a number of clients) are increasingly being asked to perform this function. If they think it’s “bot part of PR” they will die.

I’m not sure about the whole diagram as drawn- smaller agencies may not have (or need) the dedicated specialist departments, and larger agencies might need to extend your 2012 deadline (sheesh, it’s almost 2010? Where did my life go?) to account for how larger companies move slowly.