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PRs are ‘the smartest person in the room’ at cross-agency briefings argues n2n boss

Verco: 'PR people

Verco: ‘We employ people with ATAR north of 95’

The PR industry has not lost the social media race, claims Jamie Verco, the head of social at n2n Communications and Fuel Communications, arguing the PR person “is the smartest person in the room” when it comes to collaborating with other agencies to solve a client’s problem.

Speaking at the Creating the Future of PR event, presented by Ross Dawson’s Advanced Human Technologies Group, Verco argued PR is the best placed discipline to tackle social media.

“The race is definitely not lost. PR is extremely strong in social, we are one of the strongest agencies in social,” he said.

“We’re the smartest people in the room.  In the last decade the average ATAR [Australian Tertiary Admission Rank] score for a person that we employ would be north of 95.

“When we’re sitting in a cross-agency room we’ve got some pretty smart people that can contribute to the conversation.

“The other thing is we have good rates. We have the intelligence, the creativity and we bring strong solutions to those problems.”

Edelman’s Michelle Hutton told Mumbrella in August the industry “lost the social media race”.

Verco was also confident the PR industry is “well placed to engage around” native advertising.

“It is primarily around content that works for the publisher and works for the audience and we need to move much quicker into developing this kind of work for our clients,” he said.

Trewin:

Trewin: ‘We employ a different type of communications person to create branded content’

However, Telstra’s general manager of retail and media communications Matt Trewin is not confident the PR industry has the necessary skillset.

“The ability to create compelling branded content that would be interesting to consume and share hasn’t typically been a skill the average communications person has had,” he said.

“We have found more people have to either learn to be able to do that or increasingly from a corporate perspective we are employing a different type of communications person to be able to create that content for us.”

Trewin said Telstra looks to people with a background in TV or journalism to employ to create branded content for their own platforms.

Miranda Ward

Mumbrella is presenting the Festival of Branded Content and Branded Entertainment on November 5. For more information on the program and how to book tickets click on the banner below.

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