Is commtech a fad or an enduring truth?

Tina: Mark, let’s talk about something near and dear to both of our hearts:  data-informed communication.  Private equity money is flowing into public relations now in support of communications technology, or “commtech.”  So here’s this month’s question: “ Is commtech a present and enduring truth for public relations or just the latest craze?”

Mark:  Yes.

Tina: Mark, you didn’t answer the question.

Mark: I agree with both of those choices. It’s a present and enduring truth and it’s a fad. Other dualities come into play, too.  Fundamentally, the purpose of technology is to streamline tasks to make them faster, easier and more efficient. Using that definition, commtech is not new.  In fact, it’s been present throughout modern public relations:  consider the printing press, the typewriter and the telephone…all cutting-edge technologies at some point. Over time, as the speed of business – and life – accelerated, technology evolved to keep pace.  In this environment, commtech contributes greatly to data-informed communication. Now, there are many choices for either commtech bundles of service which include journalist databases, media monitoring, release distribution and automated analytics. Other offerings focus on a single element and do it extremely well. Focusing on research applications, it’s very good for study design, deployment and tabulation of structured data but not so good for unstructured data, like focus group responses, open-ended survey questions and media content analysis.