Survey finds Australia’s senior PR practitioners & their ASX listed companies are ‘digitally unfit’

A PR industry report yesterday reported that a survey of the “big issues” in coporate affairs by PR recruitment company  SaltShein.com.au reported that – “Many of Australia’s most senior corporate affairs practitioners have yet to come to grips with social media, and for most  the jury is still out on whether it is just another channel to be harnessed or a game‐changer”.

The article goes onto say that the survey spoke to those managing corporate communications and investor relations for some of Australia’s largest companies listed on the ASX and that “…many practitioners are “generally unconvinced” that it represents a paradigm shift for modern  reputation and stakeholder management”.

Leaving aside the millions of people on Facebook, Twitter and using other social media platforms and the millions blogging and indeed reading blogs and even the social media reputation management debacles such as #Qantasluxury, which clearly damaged Qantas already shaky reputation, what interested me most about this article was the two outcomes that this survey appeared to indicate.

As  I see it those interviewed are either disillusioned with the current skill and knowledge offerings in the area of digital which they are receiving from their currently engaged advertising companies. Alternatively there are a lot of  advertising exec’s particularily digital strategists in advertising companies out there potentially frustrated by their ASX listed clients who clearly do not get what they have to offer in the area of crisis management, reputation management, marketing and communication with theit target market.

Most impotantly however it appears to illustrate a point from Bonin Bough (when he was Senior Global Director of Digitial + Social Media at PepsiCo):

“Society is becoming 100% digital and most organizations are not 100% digital….there’s a gap, and we have to work relentlessly to close that gap. We’ve looked for a way to describe it, and that’s fitness. You can’t just work out once.”

Which leads me to conclude that from this survey it appears that a lot of our senior corporate communications professionals may be digitially unfit and by consequence the companies they work for may also be digitally unfit.

What do you think of this report?  Would love to hear your thoughts