Once upon a time ad agencies were the kingmakers, the brand custodians, the swaggering Mad Men of image building. The Internet, and its latest manifestation, social media, has changed that. Where ad agencies once lorded over the marketing pie like dad at the Thanksgiving dinner, setting strategy, then deciding how the pie was carved up - some times letting the "other agencies" get the crumbs - now PR firms, interactive agencies and brand houses are using social marketing tools to talk directly to consumers, and taking more of an active role in managing the marketing mix.

Problem is, as became apparent at several sessions at the first Mesh Marketing - a one day meet up today at Circa night club in Toronto, no one can necessarily agree on what even constitutes the pie anymore. Facebook, Twitter and other online communities are still the wild west, and no one is completely certain where all this is going. As one of the panelists noted, while Twitter is the darling of the day, in a decade, marketers may laugh and think about the technology in the same way we look upon the lowly fax today.

One thing became clear in listening to several panelists was that PR is well positioned in the new online social landscape."Brand owners" once created advertising then pushed it out to audiences. Today the brand can no longer be owned, but exists in an ongoing social media conversation whether a company likes or not. In PR we have always had to be keenly focused on the conversation, the dialogue of a brand - largely because our role was communicating a company's story to often skeptical journalists. We're used to asking and answering the tough questions about a brand, and being as transparent as possible about our message or risk having our story ignored. PR agencies, once we master the social media tools, can ply our trade rather effortlessly.

But that's not to say we have any room to become smug as we wield the pie knife. With traditional news organizations faltering due to the same pressures that are changing the marketing agency landscape, PR firms better ensure we remain at the forefront of social media capabilities. If we don't have journalists left to talk to in the future, we better be damned sure we're comfortable helping clients speak directly to consumers online.