The era of a no-platform communications agency is over. The era of doing it right has just begun.
Not so long ago, it was accepted - in some old-school way, even honourable - to stay out of the content business and focus on converting earned media; today that model is evolving. And at t+1, we are part of that change.
There are ways to execute this combination ethically and responsibly, and increasingly, ways not to. At t+1 we believe strongly in the former, and aren't afraid to call out the latter. So let's dig into it.
Contributed and partnership content - more pejoratively, pay-to-play - has been around as long as corporations and news wires. In today's environment, every major business publication generates revenue this way, often with very expensive price points that leverage the strength of their audience, brands, and production team. As PR veterans, we've seen obscure industry magazines no one has ever heard of charging tens of thousands of dollars for a simple article and layout. One that offers a client virtually no reach into sophisticated audiences and forces them, not editors, to put in most of the work. Every day this is truer still in the age of AI.
Neither of these is a great option. In fact, paying up for the second is absurd. And the wires, themselves, aren't so far off from it – as they charge more and more on a per diem basis for virtually no work product (or . As one colleague once put it to us, they are for memorialisation.
This is a sector problem, and it is part of the reason why we built t+1 as an editorial platform with attributes reflecting Bloomberg quality, a community model, a targeted reach, and a far more accessible price. Importantly, our members from emerging economies also already understand communications relationships differently than those once-codified-but-loosening elsewhere in the world. We meet this demand in accordance with our mission.
Which leads to the other side of the equation: content manifesting (or replacing) PR advice. Because media ranks are thinning, backlinks and engagement remain crucial, overpromising to clients rampant, and the dynamics governing above, increasingly agencies are getting in on the content itself. By serving their clients (though often themselves, too) with different content sleeves, "self-publishing" via phantom AI-generated reporters on newfangled platforms, deploying bot farms to flood feeds, and other tactics that bend (or worse) PR's typically normative rather than regulated ethics.
At t+1, we know that this is a reaction to an environment; for us, there is no inherent contradiction to (nor indeed nothing particularly new about) advocating for a client, while also offering a platform for them. For a traditional publication, the difference is simply which side of the house - newsroom or commercial - is in play, and the reality is many relationships touch both. With a Chinese wall enforced by the caution that too many paid-for words will sour an outlet's authority and, eventually, attrition its audience.
Can the same now be true for an agency-plus-publisher, whose activities start looking - in no small irony - like a trade magazine? Can a race to the bottom be avoided?
Perhaps. But doing so without transparency - something PR, as an industry, is innately problematic about - is where we draw the line. That is where damage is done, and we're seeing it increasingly pointed up, not only by media but by communications professionals. The litmus test is simple: why? Why are awards or house podcasts or panels being given to their own clients and prospects? Why are their best reporter contacts thinly (if at all) bylined; indeed, are they even human? Why do programmes seem to evolve seemingly, as soon as your business is won? We promised you the Journal; go on our podcast instead.
And besides all of that, it's the execution: does it truly take $200,000 to guarantee inspiration and quality in outcomes? When does a fast and powerful agency, prized for its sleek expertise and charging law-firm hourlies, start feeling more like that obscure, bait-and-switch publication we described earlier?
In this more integrated - done wrong, conflicted - environment, t+1 is committed to directly addressing these issues with guardrails. Our membership ecosystem is clear. Our editorial process, across every vertical, is independent and disciplined; our methodologies published and FirstUp partner content labeled.
For us, if you can't speak to your reasons - to why? - with pride, then you have a problem.
