Daljit Bhurji - Digital agency MD

Daljit Bhurji got his first job in PR by answering a job ad in the Media Guardian. That job was with digital agency Hotwire PR, where he had the opportunity to work with a range of internet-based clients during the peak of the dot.com boom, and beyond.

That experience gave Daljit an inside knowledge of the internet sector, and a headstart on the new digital communication platforms and social networking services that have since revolutionised how companies communicate with their stakeholders.

Utilising that knowledge, he co-founded a new agency last year, Diffusion PR, which provides clients with an integrated approach, developing communication strategies where digital and traditional PR work as one.

We spoke to Daljit about his career to date, the creation of Diffusion, and his tips for those who aspire to work in digital PR.

By Unicorn Jobs

How did you first get into PR?

Well, I had childhood dreams of growing up to be a journalist and was lucky enough to pursue those ambitions at university and had a great time editing the Oxford Student newspaper. However, after a lot of soul searching, and then quite a bit of researching into what PR actually involved as a career, I decided I wanted to help create the news rather than just report on it.

After graduating I came across a job advert in the Media Guardian for a brand new agency which was planning to launch that autumn and was looking to hire its first account executive. I applied and was fortunate enough to be invited to a series of interviews down in London. Looking back, the whole process was very clandestine, which seemed extremely odd at the time, but having recently launched a new agency I now understand perfectly why everything had to be kept so under the radar. That agency was Hotwire and I had an amazing seven years there.

What attracted you to the ‘digital media’ side of PR?

Well I started out in PR at the height of the dot.com boom, working with companies and entrepreneurs looking to make billions from the ‘new economy’. The level of hype surrounding many firms then puts the media’s current fascination with all things Twitter in the shade.

Despite the subsequent dot.com bust, the underlying truth that the internet was set to change society fundamentally still held true in my view and I was confident that becoming a PR specialist in online businesses would be a good move in the long-term. Ultimately, it was through working with clients in the internet space that I got to experience first hand how new digital communication channels and emerging social media platforms could start to seriously disrupt the traditional model of public relations.

When and why did you set up Diffusion?

Well, there were many things which inspired the launch of Diffusion, but a key tipping point was the publication in May 2007 of a now famous article by Paul Holmes entitled ‘A Manifesto For The 21st Century Public Relations Firm’. It was a hard-hitting analysis of the opportunities and threats facing the PR industry from stakeholders empowered by online and social media. It struck a powerful chord with both myself and my business partner Ivan Ristic, resonating with the conclusions that we’d come to ourselves.

By looking online, consumers could now find the information they wanted, when they wanted it, from a host of new sources beyond the mainstream media. They could read product reviews written by their peers and publish their own views online and reach an audience of millions. Consumers were demanding a more direct relationship with brands, to be engaged in a conversation rather than just be on the receiving end of one-way interruption-marketing. Where did all this leave a traditional PR agency model built on the premise of being the intermediary between brands and a media, entrusted to broadcast messages out the masses?

Both Ivan and I were confident that the skills which brands needed in a digital world – strategic communication planning in partnership with tactical implementation, the creation of content and conversations, and understanding and managing relationships – were actually core PR skills.

What we felt was needed was a new type of agency built from the ground up on a business model aligned to the realities of this century, not the last. That’s what led us to launch Diffusion in April 2008.

You help brands “strategically utilise Social Media and Search Engine Marketing” – for the uninitiated, what does that mean?

Quite simply, we live in a world where traditional media, social media and search engines exist in a complex, interconnected and symbiotic relationship. As an agency we don’t think you can divorce digital PR from this reality and stick it in a separate agency. At Diffusion we build integrated campaigns which use the best mix of channels to get the job done. Just as believing that traditional media relations is the solution to every communication problem a client faces is a mistake, so is thinking the same of digital. Because of our expertise across traditional media relations, digital and search, we can, from a position of confidence, design campaigns which we believe to be the best solution for the client, rather than the agency.

The strategy part of all this is crucial because campaigns need to be designed from the start to work across different channels and platforms. The most woeful digital work you see is when an agency is tasked with bolting on digital elements to, say, an existing TV advertising campaign or product launch which has clearly been designed to appeal to traditional media. As an agency that’s not what we are about, and over the past year and a half we’ve been able to deliver some amazing integrated campaigns for brands in the consumer, media, mobile and charity space.

Has the PR industry been quick enough to embrace the potential of social media?

I think since we launched last April the penny has finally dropped about the importance of digital to the PR industry. We have seen a spate of new “me too” digitally focussed agencies launching, and more traditional agencies desperately playing catch-up by hiring so called ‘Heads Of Digital’ or creating online divisions. These are all steps in the right direction, but my personal belief is that digital know-how needs to suffuse through an agency at every level, not just exist in a basement silo.

What new skills are needed to communicate in the social media domain, and what traditional PR skills remain important?

More than ever PR practitioners need to be all-rounders, and I would caution against new people entering the industry and only being trained up as ‘digital PR’ specialists. The principles behind good media relations and expert knowledge of the news agenda are crucial skills required in designing campaigns and helping to shape how you implement campaigns on a day-to-day basis. As I said before, the work you do for a client in the traditional media space will impact on their reputation online and vice versa, so the best PR consultants will know from sustained first hand experience about the intricacies of each and how they fit together.

Social media seems to be quite faddy – new platforms come along all the time, falling in and out of fashion – would you agree with this statement, and if so, how do you cope with that as a social media PR expert?

I think we all need to adapt to a media landscape which is no longer going to be dominated by ancient, all-powerful media monoliths, whether in print, broadcast or online. The pace of media fragmentation is only going to increase and we need to come to terms with audiences which will be both fanatical and fickle in equal measure.

Using that as a criticism of social media vs. traditional media is to miss the point. It will be the role of PR agencies to help brands to influence and engage with audiences wherever they are, and yes that will mean having to constantly adapt your approach as new platforms emerge and new ways for people to communicate capture the popular imagination.

It also means that meticulous media planning is going to need to become much more central to the discipline of PR. You will no longer be able to just rattle off a list of reporters working on the nationals and hope to win a pitch. All these changes are no doubt going to make our jobs more difficult, but it’s also what’s going to make PR a very exciting place to be in the decades ahead.

Do you think there is enough diversity in PR?

The challenge for the PR industry – and specifically our industry bodies the CIPR and PRCA – is to work much harder at articulating the professionalism of our industry. The impact of PR in shaping the strategy and commercial success of businesses and organisations is at least as great as management consultancies, but as a sector we are still not held in the same esteem as the McKinseys or Interbrands of this world. It’s only by stressing the intellectual, creative and emotional rigour required of the PR profession that we will be able to appeal to a much broader set of graduates and attract more members from communities where PR lacks the cultural kudos of a career in medicine, the law or financial services.

You’re a well known PR blogger, are there any other PR bloggers you’d recommend we check out?

I think a ‘very infrequent blogger’ would be a more accurate description! There are some great PR bloggers out there – Stephen Waddington and Stuart Bruce are my particular favourites – but there is a nice list over on my blog. However, many PR bloggers are far more vocal on Twitter these days so I would recommend signing up and following them if you haven’t already.

What tips would you have for anyone setting up their own PR blog?

I think today blogs are great if you want to set out in detail your ‘personal brand’ and/or position yourself as a ‘thought-leader’. If you simply want to connect to your peers and potential employers there are quicker and simpler ways of doing this through existing platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. The key thing is to be clear about what you’re trying to achieve and what you can say or offer to a debate that no else can.

And finally, what tips would you have for any young person considering a career in PR?

Three things: persevere, pick a sector where you have a genuine passion and demonstrate that you understand how PR as a discipline has evolved.

Daljit on the web

Diffusion’s website
Daljit’s blog