Look at how far Marketing & PR has come and consider where we are going

In early 1995, while living in Hong Kong, I received a floppy disk copy of Netscape Navigator version 1.0 and with my dial up connection got onto the Web. Being a collector (my family might say “pack rat”) I saved the disk.

I remember that time well because zero percent of my marketing and PR colleagues were online. At the time, nobody was tracking the number of Internet users, but IDC says it grew to 16 million by December 1995.

A few years later I created my first personal site and soon after started sending search engine optimized press releases for lead generation on behalf of NewsEdge, the company I was employed by at the time. Reaching people when they were looking for what we had to offer was like magic.

Marketing and PR today

IDC says there are over 2 billion Internet users in 2012.

Consider what we can do today with a smartphone such as an iPhone, fewer than two decades after Netscape 1.0. We can instantly reach anyone on the planet by creating real-time content such as video. Amazing.

The future

We're making up the rules now for what the future holds. Imagine the progress over the next decade or two? Incredible.

I'm bullish on marketing and public relations in the years to come. Not only is it easier to reach buyers than at any time in the past, it's also more fun.

Comments

[JosephRatliff]

It is interesting to see how far marketing and PR has come in such a short time (less than 20 years!).

Easier to reach buyers yes, but those same buyers are going to get increasingly sensitive to the quality of content you're reaching them with IMO.

In short, I think that it used to be "flipped"... it used to be more difficult to reach buyers, but because they had that measure of control (harder to be reached)... content quality wasn't quite as important.

Now... they don't have that measure of control, it's easier to reach them... so your content had better make a DARN good first impression, or you'll end up in the pile of digital dust with all the other people who thought "ease of connection" meant "ease of selling."

[Colin Warwick]

All from a humble floppy! So... In the same vein... Fun quiz... Which Internet site began life Jan 17, 2001 with an e-mail reflector message saying:

"Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes."

... Big clue:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010506042824/http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/nupedia-l/2001-January/000684.html

:-)

[Kevin Anselmo]

Interesting piece and I very much agree. In fact, I believe that public relations and communications has a promising future not only for us every day practitioners, but also for any professional in an organization. As we see more and more businesses adopt social business into their respective strategies, it will be imperative that professionals across all of an organization and at different levels and functions have a basic understanding of public relations and communications. This, combined with the fact that personal branding will continue to be important in an individual's career progression, will put more emphasis on communications and public relations education to the masses.

In looking at education reform, Partnership for 21st Century Skills emphasize the 4 Cs: collaboration, critical thinking, communication and creativity. I would argue that these are already required skills for today's public relations and communications professionals. Understanding of social media is a means to further educational and development for any professional.

Personally, I believe that our schools need to teach basic public relations and communications skills as early on as in high school and should be a general education requirement at the college level.

[Jacob Rice]

Yes, marketing in b2b has certainly come a long way from handing out branded floppies. Who can help but be excited for the next big technological change?

As you say, "we're making up the rules" at the moment. One wonders if the next generation of marketers will takes these rules as gospel or try to reinvent the game. Hopefully the latter.

[Kent]

I feel very excited for the future of marketing and PR because one thing is I love to talk to customers (conversation). We will have more tools to communicate with customers! :)