Historians love nothing more than to speculate about the exact moment of a major turning point. We all enjoy that. It's probably interesting because we yearn to have been there, safely of course, at the deciding moment, if such a thing even exists.

I witnessed a turning point today that can arguably be identified as a major turning point in the public relations industry. A long-time professional corporate communications person I've known and worked with on and off over many years told me something today that signals a massive shift in the establishment world of same-old, same-old public relations. I can't give you his name, nor will I identify his company. But I can tell you what he said. It practically gave me a heart attack… not out of anxiety. It felt like winning the Lottery.

Paraphrasing it for brevity, he told me his company had disengaged its agency and isn't going to replace them… they don't need an agency; the prevailing thought inside the company is currently that establishment PR firms aren't all that important or useful.

Amen.

I got off the phone and cheered! Why? Because he's right. The establishment agency he had, and the establishment agencies phoning in to pitch the vacancy, are: interchangeable; all wholly and equally focused on media relations; all expensive; all still very much into 'influencing the influencers.'

Take for example, in this region, the biggest and most powerful influencer of influencers on record: The Boston Globe. It's not a newspaper. It's a journal. It has a set of well-known biases. One of those biases is they don't care very much about small companies no matter how powerful are the ideas at work. It's been that way for years. It's one reason why The Boston Globe is hemorrhaging subscribers. And yet, establishment PR firms smile and dial all day long into publications like this while the meter runs. Ka-Ching for them although few sales are made on behalf of the start-up client organization.

There was a time a PR firm was as important as office space or venture capital. Get money, get space, hire a CEO and Marketing VP and get an agency. Today, it's get customers. That means we're in the influence the decision makers era. Can PR firms do that? Nope. Polished words in news releases go nowhere with online communities of people in the know who want the real story and the unvarnished truth.

Mark this date. Today is the day, perhaps, at long last, that establishment PR and its minions of mouthpieces went south. Today is the day perhaps that legitimacy and authenticity were recognized as the new way, the right way, to influence the people who really matter directly.

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