At last night's BIMA dinner I met Jamie Galloway, Head of Digital Media at the Central Office of Information (COI). For anyone, like me, who isn't immersed in the public sector, in simple terms the COI acts as a procurement clearing house and trusted advisor to UK government departments, babysitting them through the process of selecting digital agencies and riding shotgun through the delivery of campaigns.

UK government invests a considerable amount to communicate with citizens online. Jamie's team spends an annual budget that is bigger than our annual turnover. A sum of £25 million was mentioned. I suspect Jamie has the better end of the deal: ie spending it, rather than earning it, sounds like far more fun.

Working your way onto the COI roster is clearly a lucrative gig, so not surprisingly the room was mostly full of digital agencies, with a few scattered PR folk.

The theme of Jamie's speech was The Future for PR in a Digital World. Having just delivered an MA dissertation on this theme, Jamie had a lot of substance to put behind his presentation.

His main contention was that PR has a great future in a digital world. Further, that digital agencies have much to learn from the skills, techniques and capabilities of PR agencies.

Cue, silence in the room and embittered war stories from the floor.

But - albeit silently - I at least was rooting for Jamie.

I didn't take notes, so recalling his general thread and continuing it with my own views, the story goes something like this:

If online is all about 'joining the conversation', then PR professionals have some advantages. They are used to communicating direct to their target audiences and in a real time environment, where reaction time is critical, they are not afraid of spontaneous communication. They speak directly to the CEO (or minister), so enjoy a position from which to directly learn about, and influence, long term strategy. They think about managing reputations through planning long term programs, not simply conducting short term campaigns.

Importantly, they (we) also have - or are developing - new models describing how influence is exerted within a digital environment through a new generation of influentials (many of whom happen to blog), through to building techniques to build customer advocacy and word of mouth. 

Of course its not just one way traffic, digital agencies have a far stronger understanding of technology, tools and infrastructure. Few traditional PR agencies have a credible software capability (none?). While PR agencies may have been empowered by new free platforms, serious clients usually need digital solutions built around their own infrastructure and to very high levels of rigour. 

Also, most digital agencies are better equipped to translate a B2C brief into the language of consumers, although perhaps not in B2B. They are invariably far better visual communicators. Most definitely, digital agencies are far more disciplined - but not necessarily more sophisticated - in terms of measurement and analytics.

Of course, all of the above comes with caveats. A bad PR professional is as useless as a bad digital media professional, and there are plenty of each about.

I guess the moral of the story is that digital media agencies aren't going to own all things digital. So either learn to integrate better, or acquire, or learn the relevant skills and capabilities which PR agencies possess, or you'll find them pitching against you for that online budget.

Of course, another route is simply to find a hybrid agency that is not hung up on being either one thing, nor the other, but possesses and values the skills of each.