- decent writing and content creation
- people genuinely knowledgeable and passionate about a specific industry (and specific areas within that industry)
- real creativity

Clients will always pay for these.

Particularly a combination of the first two with the far harder to find third.

After all, why do creative ad agency’s get hired? In theory, anyone can create a logo or copywrite. It’s because amateurisation has it’s limits.

I forget who it was back in the late 90s – once the web had taken off – wrote: “It’s been said that with an infinite amount of monkeys, typewriters and time, you’ll eventually get the complete works of William Shakespeare. The world wide web has proved that wrong.”

I agree the big agencies are the ones that should be most worried. I think they will need to streamline their team structures and change skills sets. It will no longer enough to have people who are competent writers and good at media sell-ins. The global PR agencies will need account teams full of people who can not only write, but very new media savvy who have at the very least working knowledge and understanding of web design, photoshop editing, SEO, social networking, blogging, podcasting and most multi-media disciplines.

@Richard – yes, that is one of the paradoxes for the larger PR firm – how to continue justifying the fees paid when much (or most of it) is simply to pay for infrastructure costs.

So those paid to do PR have to add value (speed, competence, expertise). I’d worry most about this trend if I were an international consultancy network needing high margins just to support the infrastructure. High margins for work that someone (ie one of my students) can attempt for free?

For example I willingly (without being asked) offered a very big and famous PR agency my list of contacts in another area. I even offered to put them personally in touch with a couple of very good journalist contacts. I then helped them with sorting out some images for them.

Even though I’m a small agency this is something I would not have dreamt of doing a few years ago as ‘press lists’ were know as your secret weapon.

So why would I help a big agency for no money (and I wasn’t angling for a job.) The reason is because my mind set has changed and I now regard other PR people, not as competitors but as part of my community. I know one day I can pull on their knowledge pool for help (well hopefully.)