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Mat Wilcox Knows Where the Future Lies

Tony Wanless

| September 2, 2010

Image by: Brian Howell

Did social media kill the PR star? The Wilcox closure has sent shockwaves through Vancouver's PR industry.

Mat Wilcox shocked the B.C. corporate world when she decided to close her PR firm. Could it be that she has her eye clearly fixed on the future?

Finally, in the BCBusiness September edition, we hear the answer to one of Vancouver's biggest business mysteries: Why is PR doyenne Mat Wilcox closing her highly regarded shop? The Vancouver Courier – having published two recent articles – seems particularly interested.

Mat has reigned over the city's PR scene for 15 years, parlaying a personal style, a great strategic mind and a knack for knowing all the big business players into a company that specialized in crisis communications. Half the city's PR purveyors have worked for her at one time or other.

The Feature: The Wilcox PR Closure: Did Social Media Kill the PR Star?

But a few weeks ago, Mat suddenly announced that she was killing her firm, laying off her staff, and abandoning her downtown Pender Street digs by the end of the month.

Social media, she said, has changed the PR game forever, and she could no longer play the game as a traditional PR operation.

Of course, this sparked a flurry of questions and speculations about social media, the PR industry, and, as would be expected, Mat herself. One headline of note: "Social Media Killed The PR Star".

I don't know what she's going to say in the article – despite my, ahem, exalted position here (lol), they don't tell me these kind of things. But I can add to the speculation.

I don't believe Mat Wilcox was blindsided by social media at all. She's one of the most active users of social media in town, blasting out Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn messages with abandon to this day. If anything, she's a wholehearted adopter instead of a victim.

But I do think she was right about social media's effect on the traditional PR firm business model. Opening a big and fancy shop, staffing it with a bunch of eager young people hoping to get into the glamorous life of PR, and selling corporate communications services to giant (and deep-pocketed) firms doesn't really make it any more.

The one-stop-shop model of communications is dying. There are too many information outlets today for a single information conduit to work. As a result, and combined with increasing competition, specialization has been creeping into the industry for some time.

Social media increased that competition exponentially. Bubbling up from the street, in a sense, it rapidly became the main information conduit for many people, creating thousands of new shops that purported to hold the magic key to this new communication form.

Corporations are still trying to grapple with what that means. They know they have to get into the game, but everything about social media is against their traditional advertising and PR model.

So what's Mat Wilcox doing?

I think it's quite simple: After 15 years at the top of yesterday's PR heap, she's getting into fighting trim for the world of tomorrow.

Dump the traditional, and expensive business model of old, which was really based on an industrial concept of a factory that delivers services. Instead, use a consultative business model, which, in a knowledge economy, is very much how business will be conducted in future.

Leverage your name, connections and experience to position yourself as a consultant to corporations on your specialization. Become the expert on one thing. Instead of using billable hours and revenue as a tally of success, make a tidy profit by servicing a few clients and keeping your costs way down.

Maybe, like many today, she's just tired of running so hard in the old way, and wants to try something different.

Tags
- wilcox pr,
- tony wanless,
- Mat Wilcox,
- Digital,
- Trends,
- Public Relations,
- Social Media

This is what communication

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2010-09-15 09:14.

This is what communication and adult learning research tells us: We learn • 10% of what we read • 20% of what we hear • 30% of what we see • 50% of what we see and hear • 70% of what we discuss with others • 80% of what we experience personally • 90% of what we teach someone else This is pre-social media research. Which means that the 70% of learning that comes from discussion with others for example, is based on actual face-to-face, in-person "discussion", not twittering, facebook and blogs. It will be interesting to see if these learning parameters change as a result of an analysis of learning in a social media context.....my guess is that face-to-face, in-person communications will continue to be the most powerful, effective, true, meaningful learning experience. Andrew Hume, Andrew Hume and Associates

Even with irrefutable fact

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2010-09-13 17:33.

Even with irrefutable fact pertaining to the thunderous wave of the various social media platforms - I attempted to take a group (mining) of sixty-somethings, screaming and kicking into the surf - and they outright rebelled - even with the full onslaught of verifiable metrics - they pinched their nostrils and hurled. What a stunner for me - rebuffed on the kelp-laiden rocks after four months of building the program that leaned heavily on Twitter. In fact, at one point we had 185 messages going out a day over a seven week period whilst the public entity was trading in excess of 750,000 shares a day...scary I know, but some people, regardless of the numbers supporting the cause - simply refuse to believe. The good news is that there is a new bus every eight minutes...

I think you go it right,

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-09-02 14:55.

I think you go it right, Mat. (And Tony). We are using a social media consultant: www.socialnature.ca to help us get a handle on the new approach to not only PR but also to marketing and promotions. Lucretia Schanfarber

To I Can't Answer There is a

Submitted by Tony Wanless on Thu, 2010-09-02 13:40.

To I Can't Answer There is a misunderstanding here. I didn't say that if you become an expert in one thing, it's to the detriment of everything else. What I said was that the one-stop-shop concept, ie full service is dying because it's too expensive. Clients will now probably outsource various tasks to several firms and employ a consultant to co-ordinate it all. I would think that if Mat wants to become an expert on social media for big companies, she would also bring to the table an understanding of how social media fits into the entire communications grid. Being an expert on something doesn't mean you're not knowledgeable about other things as well. Tony Wanless

I can't answer for why Mat

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-09-02 11:39.

I can't answer for why Mat is closing her shop and what her plans are for the future. I can agree that the traditional model of PR as a silo is a dead end -- but has been for some time. Social media can't be viewed in isolation of good strategic thinking. If the only tool in a consultant's tool belt is now going to be social media instead of media relations, then that's all they will be able to offer to their client. Integrated thinking, strategies for helping clients tell their stories across all medium, has been what we've hung our hats on these past 27 years -- and the last few have been our best ever. We've been able to incorporate the use of social media tools, from creating microsites on Facebook, to online conversation monitoring around issues and crises -- but we do this along with media relations, events, print communications, building digital assets, advertising and the like. At the end of the day, the companies that will survive are those that bring the best ideas to the table and have the capacity to execute against them. You can be one person or 40 -- but strategy will always trump everything else. I think it's a bit much to take the actions of one company and extrapolate that to the entire industry without first surveying the industry to determine if it's a trend or the actions of one person.

This is really

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-09-02 11:00.

This is really great...thanks Tony. What is interesting, is that many of the small up and coming PR firms in Vancouver are already operating on this lean model and it is working! The days of hefty PR retainers are done and progressive firms have ALREADY adapted. No crazy retainers, no fluff and a new way of measuring the impact and business results of communications.