As The Age confirms TiVo’s arrival in Australia in a digital alliance with the Seven Network (“welcome to the digital age, Seven” said the already there, Foxtel cheekily), there must be sweaty palms in the Comms business; sweaty palms in Adville (Cripes, what if the jig is up?) and sweaty, cash-expectant palms in PRland (Grunig was right about 2-way comms!!).
TiVo and iQ essentially allow consumers to ignore/skip over ads. So how many times is PR gonna get the chance to be the lead MarComms discipline? Every time, it seems to get outflanked by marketing, advertising, brand experience and e-DM agencies who take it in turns to discover/proclaim that stakeholder engagement/relations is the future. It is. But it’s already PR territory, if we can hold onto it.