Do communications professionals who bring experience from across the spectrum provide valuable experience or are agencies and brands better off hiring an area specialist? Do generalists have an identity crisis or does the PR industry need to update its perceptions? I asked my network for their thoughts.
I met with an industry peer recently. While we were chatting, we discovered we had pretty much the same career path; we’d started out in a ‘traditional’ comms agency setting before diversifying into digital with the advent of social media more than a decade ago.
Much of our recent work has involved a combination the two disciplines – as it should. We both have our different strengths – hers is branding and corporate comms, and mine is more content copywriting and SEO, as I have a background in trade journalism. Yet as freelancers, we both often encounter the same challenges with the way some in our industry defined us: as either one thing or the other.
When discussing potential roles with PR agencies, in particular, we found that many we encounter has an “either/or” attitude, rather than seeing cross-channel experience as absolutely vital in comms in 2018. Feedback would be as polarised as:
“We thought you were too digital.”
“We thought you were too PR.”
When you’ve held associate director and head of communications roles or been a global VP of digital working with household names either response is disappointing if not surprising.
Specialist generalists
PR consultant Kerry Sheehan describes herself as a “specialist generalist”, having majored in various fields, including healthcare and pharma, business-to-consumer (B2C) and artificial intelligence (AI). Like me, she also has a background in journalism. Sheehan believes generalists need to make it our business to know about everyone else’s.
“It’s about the need, these days, for PR and communications professionals regardless of their chosen sector/industry to be competent at all disciplines and to also have the awareness and knowledge of the latest trends in areas such as data, analytics, artificial intelligence, including the growing use of voice (assistants),” she tells me. “I also think it’s important for all PR/communications professionals to have a thorough understanding of business – HR, finance, legal and competition analysis – to ensure what we are offering off is a truly strategic function/view.”
Sheehan adds that she expects some entry-level candidates to be asked for a grounding/interest in more than just one aspect of PR and for more senior roles to have the full understanding of the machine/offering and add strings to their bows.
Start out as specialists then branch out
Tom Conway-Gordon’s career has taken him from London agencies to the Middle East. His clients have included automotive, consumer tech, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), corporate, healthcare, charities and more. Conway-Gordon says that while his experience makes him a generalist now, the knowledge he built up in his foundation as a young specialist will forever be invaluable.
“I’ve long believed that a strong PR consultant knows ‘more’ about a client’s industry than they do, so that they may offer the insight, creativity and viewpoints that would help the client’s business stand out and succeed,” he explains.
Conway-Gordon believes that all PR careers should be specialised to begin with so consultants can learn the tools of the trade in a focused way.
“Once that specialist foundation has been laid, there comes the opportunity to work in more varied and general industries and sectors,” he tells me.
The pros and cons of generalism
For me, it’s absolutely essential at a senior level that PR professionals “get it” and can piece together the whole picture. They fill in the gaps that a pure-play specialist may not have even considered, such as how to structure a content and PR strategy to focus on search intent and link building beyond the standard coverage.
For the generalist, the challenge arises when they are asked to deep-dive into a particular skill of which they may have a working knowledge, if not dedicated expertise.
A specialist brings that deep-dive, intimate knowledge of a subject built up around their day-to-day experience in that field. This could be a specialism by sector (e.g. B2B tech PR), by channel (social media) or by discipline (PR, paid media, influencer relations etc.).
The challenge in turn for the specialist may, therefore, be that they fail to see the wider communications picture and potentially miss opportunities.
“I do believe we need an appreciation of the entire PR/communications machine from all angles and perspectives,” Sheehan adds. “With the social media and technology spectrum continually widening and with new advances coming at us constantly, including artificial intelligence never being far off our radar, we are seeing disciplines merging, boundaries blurring and expectations widening from potential employers.”
Over the length of a career, I imagine many PR pros become generalists purely due to the type of accounts and tactics they encounter. I believe that the more senior a professional gets, then a broad understanding of topics and communications roles – be that in-house, agency, cross-sector, digital – the more valuable that generalist is as an all-round strategist.
Are you a generalist or specialist? What do you think? Please leave comments below or engage on Twitter.