H+K 'wrangling' business away from digital agencies with social-PR offering

The launch is part of the firm’s "continual innovative development strategy to bolster its thought leadership platform for its digital practice".

Clients usually go to PR agencies for traditional communications and digital agencies for social media marketing, said Ivy Soonthornsima, co-president of Hill+Knowlton Strategies China.

Content-wise, however, digital agencies are weaker compared to PR agencies. "Development of content that is 'campaignable' across all channels is a competitive advantage we have," she said.

H+K's 'Social PR Lab' is aimed at advising clients, such as Barilla (pasta maker) and SanDisk (manufacturer of flash memory chips and cards), on how to create a "directional PR conversation" through the most relevant channels in the Chinese media landscape.

Those relevant channels are Tencent WeChat and Sina Weibo in particular. Over the last year, brands have been trying to acquire as much media space as possible through these two social channels, she said.

Soonthornsima said this "methodology of social PR" is not new, but now formalised with a three-step process, even though she claimed the thinking behind it has been existent in the agency before today.

The process is 'Discover, Create and Connect': which is, one, to provide a complete understanding of the social media environment; two, finesse a creative direction; and ultimately transmit brand messages in a way that is not biased to new technologies.

"It ensures all strategic formulations are from a point of view that sees digital and traditional media as one layer—the ‘social’ layer of communication," she said. "Because traditional and digital platforms are no longer working as silo units. We are experiencing a convergence between on[line] and offline spaces".