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Senior communications professionals are only slowly coming to terms with a rapidly changing media environment.

Greater demands on less resources, using some entirely new communications channels, mean that, for some, a radical rethink of traditional patterns of thought is required. This is something we have seen at close quarters, not just in relation to our own clients but in our own business.

Fortunately for us, our focus has always been more on strategic  and reputational communications, strong on content creation and the use of all available channels, than on classic media relations-based PR.

But this new world order, intensified by the surprisingly sudden emergence of social networking and new and basically indiscriminate mass-communication tools like Twitter, might mean that some in-house professionals and old school agencies will now be at sea.

If professionals cannot adjust to, or buy-in, the skills to exploit these phenomena, they will get a soaking and then be hung out to dry, both by their more experienced digital publics and by those competitors who are already setting the pace.

PRWeek’s 2009 Survey of Communications Directors showed some interesting trends in in-house communications. More than two thirds have seen their annual budgets cut in the last year, with a third of Communications Directors reporting budget cuts of over 20%.

The fascinating thing is where those cuts are being applied – two thirds have cut paper based content production; half have slashed conferences and events; and two in five have cut their PR agency budget. Two thirds have also cut their own in-house headcount

Those categories are identified as being ripe for even further cuts as “nice to haves” hit the cutting room floor in favour of “need to haves” in a recessionary environment where weakening revenue competes with the need to invest in new tools.

Also telling are the critical issues that they are addressing. Two thirds are desperately trying to ensure a consistent brand message in a world of overlapping social networks that do not believe in the hard sell of corporate messaging and have the means to debunk them at a stroke.

One clever viral video – as John McCain found when Paris Hilton decided to counter his criticism of her with an energy policy of her own – can unravel all the good work of the most skilled of traditional advisers.

William Shatner’s devastating reading of Palin’s ‘work’ on the prime time Conan O’Brien show stateside would have been irritating a decade ago – now it gets a cult following and can be accessed day or night anywhere in the world.

Not surprisingly then, over half of Communications Directors are trying to execute an effective digital strategy (and are probably struggling) and half again are claiming that their prime concern is the maintenance of public trust. The two aims are already in tension.

The most pressing issues facing them as functional heads are doing more with less people, demonstrating how PR supports the business, and a lack of time to contribute strategically. In other words, they are so busy doing that they have no time for thinking.

They are trapped. They are pushed from pillar to post by a demand that the world that they know well should deliver more coverage and clearer messaging at cheaper cost just as a new world dawns that offers better and cheaper delivery if only they knew how to work it.

Old communications hands may say “so what’s new about that”?  What is new is the almost manic speed with which things are changing.  The shift from pen and ink to printing is, in fact, the nearest analogy. Even News International is troubled!

The ever increasing pace at which PR and communications will have to move away from the traditional printed channels means a profound loss of direct control over the corporate message.  Yet our professional class has sold itself to its employers as a class in control of its public.

What is also undoubtedly true, as ever, is that “Content Is King”. Distribution is so free and easy and can reach anywhere in the world that the quality and integrity of the material that goes on or in the new channels becomes more critical than ever. Serious slip-ups are humiliations.

The art is to channel material through to individuals who will make a quick link to information that makes them linger and then connect with operational people able to solve a problem. Instead of just promoting brand value, communications become implicated in direct sales!

This means not just a strategy for using the digital media but a strategy and programme for creating continuous high quality content that is going to feed a beast with an insatiable appetite. Each content production now has to be as big as the distribution system that it enters.

If you would like to discuss the issues that this new world order in media is creating for your communications, contact Roger White on rwhite@pendrywhite.com