Vancouver PR Maven Mat Wilcox Calls it Quits

Lucy Hyslop

| September 8, 2010

Image by: Brian Howell

Mat Wilcox is both a giant in Vancouver's PR industry and a social-media maven. When she shut down her firm citing the new technology, insiders were shocked.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube:  it’s a whole new landscape for public- relations professionals, and steering the  message is increasingly hard. But is social  media really to blame for the death of  Wilcox PR, one of Vancouver’s top agencies? 

Mat Wilcox is a veritable poster child for social media. 

My requests to the corporate-crisis guru for an interview? Real-time replies sent from her workhorse BlackBerry’s Twitter account. The 48-year-old’s thoughts on my questions? Snappily tweeted to her followers, or what she dubs her “3,000-person family.” Even the photo shoot for this story was tweeted, with running commentary and accompanying behind-the-scenes TweetPhotos (“Photog says, ‘We are going with your part.’ I think he meant hair part?”). 

Perhaps the self-styled “rock star” of public relations – whose Wilcox Group, with offices in Vancouver and Toronto, developed a sterling reputation for its handling of a maelstrom of issues, from avian flu to labour disputes to product tampering – believes she was made for social media? “I believe I am!” Wilcox, dressed in a sleek Ports 1961 dress, diamond earrings and high-octane Christian Dior shoes, guffaws, widening her eyes and arms and tilting back her head. “I love it. Out of 15 years of dealing with every type of crisis, the past two years have been the most fascinating of all of them, by far, because of this.” 

More: Mat, in her own words, on why she decided to shut Wilcox PR down

So the news in early June that Wilcox’s multimillion-dollar firm was to close its doors on August 31 because there was no longer a business model for what she did, given “the emergence and influence of social media,” caught the tight-knit public-relations industry off guard. (Wilcox’s much-documented hard-core treatment for life-threatening parotid gland cancer over the past two years did not, she insists, factor in her decision. “I didn’t have some revelation [during that time],” she says, “but it has made me more irreverent.”)  

Her valedictory address came, of course, in the form of a blog entry.  

Although company-to-company comparisons can be fatuous – PR encompasses a smorgasbord of different specialties, from Wilcox’s type of crisis-and-issues management to special events, marketing, public affairs or government relations – viewed as a whole, the industry has been on the rise. Operating revenues across the country grew 13.8 per cent between 2006 and 2008, according to the latest data available from Statistics Canada. Even during the past two years – amid a global recession and the intrusion of social media upon the established communications triangle of PR, advertising and newspapers-magazines-TV – there is anecdotal evidence of solid growth from many B.C. firms. 

“There’s never been a more exciting time to be in the profession,” enthuses Paul Welsh, the 46-year-old general manager of Edelman Vancouver (formerly Karyo Communications Inc.), a Yaletown PR firm that grosses $5 million annually. PR, he sanguinely points out, is now encroaching on the market share of advertising agencies. “Money once spent on advertising is coming to us to create digital programs, and we are not just about public relations anymore; we’re about public engagement,” he adds. “We are moving from what was a silo in the marketing-communications operations of organizations right to a seat with the senior decision-makers.” 

Paul Cubbon, a marketing instructor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business who studies branding and reputation, agrees. PR and social media can be a seamless fit, he says, and once you move on from the traditional PR model as a “one-way megaphone blasting things out” – while still maintaining the old ethos of being proactive – social media can be a great asset. “It allows PR firms to listen much earlier to, and be much more in tune with, the conversations that people are having about your brands all the time,” he says.

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I've been mulling over this

Submitted by Moyra Rodger (not verified) on Thu, 2010-09-30 10:10.

I've been mulling over this article for days and feel conflicted. I know of Mat only by reputation, mostly because of her association with Telus. I wish her well and respect all business owners, women in particular, who have built successful companies in Vancouver. That said, I find it off putting that the article seems to suggest we need to wait for traditional PR types to interpret the new landscape. Many companies have been at digital strategy (not just social media, btw) for years. At Magnify Digital, we've even created a turnkey solution for PR and Ad firms to add digital strategy to their complement of services. That's because I think we need to bring a range of expertise together in order to serve our clients. The lines between PR, marketing, advertising, customer care and basic business operations are blurring. It's time for a collaborative approach.

this article cheapened PR to

Submitted by marina percy (not verified) on Sun, 2010-09-26 23:42.

this article cheapened PR to its lowest degree, thanks to wilcox. now readers think we are all just a bunch of spin doctors. there is so much more to what we do for our clients. many of us have spent decades in this business and care so much about the impact of our work for our clients and for this province. FYI: i frickin hate twitter. i think it is neurotic. No one should be able to Like or Dislike anonymously, or post any comments anonymously, on any veritable news site. Walk your talk!!!!

Loved this feature. Norman

Submitted by sarapereira (not verified) on Fri, 2010-09-03 13:13.

Loved this feature. Norman Stowe hits the nail on the head: 'The upsurge in social media, Stowe advises, should be taken in stride: “You need to use all the tools in the toolbox, and this is just one more tool. There’s lots of great applications for it and lots of value, but if you think you can do this and none of your traditional media work, you’re fooling yourself.” '

Really interesting piece

Submitted by LesliB (not verified) on Fri, 2010-09-03 12:06.

Really interesting piece which focuses very much on the business model for social media. At the end of the day, however, I don't think you need to "bring in social media experts" in order to make this a successful part of your practice - as PR practioners, it's rather our job to become experts in this new tactic in our communications toolbox, and to offer it to our clients when it makes sense to reach the audience and customers they're trying to reach. I bill the same whether I'm advising on traditional news strategy or social media strategy. In this sense, the business hasn't changed one bit - our job has been, and will always be, to recommend the right communications channels to reach the right audience. Period. I also agree with Paul Welsh that public relations - or as I prefer to call it, marketing communications - is now emerging as a core player in the marketing world, as clients discover that the ROI on pro-active communications and issues management can often be much more tangible that traditional advertising, with news stories and Twitter buzz bringing more customers in the door, faster.