Hi Mark,
I don't advocate for one route over the other. In fact, I've had a wonderfully rich career on the agency side of the equation, starting at a small entertainment boutique where I was given the latitude to do it all.
Mr. Kuchera posits that in-house PR pros tend to be more useful to journalists through their deeper knowledge of the products/services they're pushing. He even says that this is especially important in the video gaming industry.
I suppose there's some validity in this for complex or technical products, but the best agency account execs also take the time to gain a thorough understanding of their clients' business.
In terms of agency versus corporate, I have observed that those who've successfully worked in-house tend to be given greater consideration for other in-house opportunities, which, as you noted, are harder to come by.
Interesting that you mention that in-house is the way to go for entry level public relations practitioners, but in my many visits to PRSA/PRSSA conferences and other professional networking events, almost all professionals say that corporations typically want people who have agency experience before they even get to work into the corporate level. Not to say that entry-level corporate jobs don't exist, but they're definately hard to obtain. I've even found it hard to network with public relations people in the gaming industry (which I AM passionate about ... RPG and fighting games, in particular). However, when it comes to networking with public relations people in the culinary industry (which I also have a passion for), it's not hard at all. What would you suggest?
Hey Max,
I too have suggested the idea of "empowering" all employees to serve as ad hoc company ambassadors in the channels where they likely engage anyway. Some news, however, should continue to reside in a more-controlled corp. comms. realm, i.e., material announcements, litigation, crisis work.
The explosion in social nets and media may mandate that ALL the troops be deployed. It's a simple matter of scalability.
Thanks for the comment.
I can only speak for my own experience, but for nearly every one of them, in-house marketing communications is the way to go. But in-house cuts things short. Why not make your entire company your internal marketing communications team? I presented this idea at my company's last board meeting: "Marketing is reputation, and our company is the marketing."
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