Anyone considering a career in marketing and PR is going to have to get online savvy – ‘or perish’, according to a recent article in the Guardian newspaper. The article, entitled ‘Ready to set tongues wagging’ and which can be viewed by media guardian subscribers in full at: http://media.guardian.co.uk/ (subscription is free) outlined how the two separate channels of traditional marketing – i.e. getting the products to market, and getting the message to the audience are now blurred and that the big challenge for PR and marcomms professionals is how to deal with that blurring and understand it. In summary, whilst online marketing / PR works on the same principle as traditional offline (managing reputations, defending and promoting brands, changing hearts an d minds and generally understanding and influencing customer behaviour), the tools i.e. how to reach those customers, such as wikis, dark blogs, web 2.0 or SEO PR’s are different. And, rather than ‘targeting’ customers, the new rules of cyberspace see PR’s joining ‘conversations’, and making connections with online audiences. The article closes: “In ten years’ time any graduate without online PR skills won’t have a job.” Watch this space for future editions of Chapple News, where we’ll be highlighting in more detail what these changes are, what they mean and how best to use new technology to reach a wider audience.