From PR to Public Engagement

©Edelman, 2009. All rights reserved.

Richard EdelmanNew Media Academic SummitGeorgetown University | Washington, DC | June 10, 2009

From PR to Public Engagement:The Opportunity for the Industry


The Hypothesis: From Push to PullPR’s Opportunity in World of Expression

PR has an enormous opportunity in a world of expression, where authority is dispersed, where trust is created through continuous

conversation and established media brands must share attention with blogs or consumer generated content

Our challenge is to evolve

from pitching to informing

from control to credibility

from one-off stories to continuing conversations

from influencing elites to engaging a new cadre of influencers


Tectonic Plates Shifting

Rise of Activist Government

New shareholder with business

demands

Era of Citizenship

People expect a relationship with

companies/brands

Change in Behavior

From what you want to what you need

New Influencers

Loss of trust in authority figures. Rise of

employees, ‘average’ person, NGOs


A Play in 3 Acts

• Act I: The Media Revolution Accelerates

• Act II: Introducing Public Engagement

• Act III: How Public Engagement Works


Act I: The Media Revolution Accelerates

“The newspaper world is suffering from a huge decline in readership. The magazine world has readers but no advertisers. Only

the broadcasters are making money by charging a premium for fewer viewers!!”

Kyle Pope, Former Executive Editor, Portfolio Magazine


Dispersion of Authority

People visit 114 domains and visit 2500 web pages each month

Newspaper readership is down 30%

In 2008 in US more people rely on the Internet (40%) for news than rely on newspapers (35%)

79% of all adults are online – for an average of 33 hours per week

People will watch 100 million videos on YouTube today

40% of all Americans will end a text message today; 90% of those will be read while billions of emails will be deleted without being opened

One in 10 Americans online are now on Twitter


More Media, Just Different Ones

• More media consumption but different mix

• Simultaneous use of media (TV and web) by 1/3 of people

• Average person now has eight sources of information spending less time on each (Pew study, 2008)

• Deep content, narrow focus; not grazing, niche play

• Digital pennies replacing print ad dollars; likely to be subscription model for web product

.com


Web, Mobile and Videogames take share from TV; Behavior Correlated to Age

N= 752 Observed Days in Spring and Fall 2008. For additional information, please visit www.researchexcellence.comCopyright 2009 The Nielsen Company. Confidential and proprietary.

Share of Daily Minutes Across Screen Media


Impact on Established Media

• 2 Trends in Newspapers: Major city dailies cut back until hyper-local and national/global papers as in UK

• Broadcast loses share to cable

• Magazines winnowed to the top brand in each niche


• Wire services—AP, Bloomberg— expand to fill void

• Stand-alone niche plays such as Business Insider, Politico, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, BreakingViews

Impact on Established Media


Advertising Spend Declines Newspapers; Mag & Radio Hardest Hit

Copyright 2009 The Boston Consulting Group. Confidential and proprietary.


Search is King

90% of all web traffic goes through search

News aggregation is 63% of all searches


Social Media is Now Mainstream

100M active users. Greatest growth is from people age 35-49

Two Thirds of people online now use social networking or blogging

Twitter grew 1,382% in last 12 months; More than 7M US visitors in Feb.

5.5 billion unique video feeds in April; #2 most popular search engine

Wikipedia—120M visitors a month

23% of mobile users in the UK, and 19% in the US visited social network site


Breadth and quality of online videocontinuing to improve

Copyright 2009 The Boston Consulting Group. Confidential and proprietary.


Less control of messageMore sources, unpredictable

flow of information

Implications for PR

Different news

approachContinual filing,

more opinionated, more video and

short form content

Mass is dead

More difficult to aggregate

audiences

Pay for play

Home Depot owns Good Morning America lawn

& garden pieces

Fewer reporters

The pitch and catch

model eroding

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.genyasser.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/ireport.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.genyasser.co.za/page/3/&h=239&w=265&sz=10&hl=en&start=1&usg=__K0PkLSocfByDMaTBfVm3DM0RpHw=&tbnid=lPBiXCqudi-rLM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=112&prev=/images?q=cnn+ireport&hl=en


Act II: Introducing Public Engagement

“It is in the interest of the enterprise to take care of the economic and social environment.

To create value for shareholders but also to create value and wealth for customers,

employees and regions where the companies operate because our company is an

economic and social project.”

Frank Riboud, CEO, Danone


Tenets of Public Engagement• Action and words—What you actually do is central to

the ability to communicate

• Integrated into Search—Rethinking content and outreach based on how people think about, talk about and look for the things they need

• Engage with Influencers of all Stripes—begins by actively listening

• Democratic and Decentralized—digital is social and rewards to those who engage based on community rules

• Inform the Conversation—be quick, informal and never deviate from truth and transparency

• Every Company is a Media Company

• Omnipresent—When people open the door, we must be there


1. Advisor on Policy

• Mutual social responsibility

• Private Sector Diplomacy—Engaging with Constituencies

• What to Do in stakeholder society

• Requires new level of relationship with influencers such as NGOs

• Use of research to discern attitudes of new and established influentials


2. Search: A Necessity for Us

4 Types: Paid, Optimized, Reputational, Social—PR can play in the last three categories

1.Optimized search focuses on key words. • Adapt content to include frequently cited terms—use social media

press releases

2.Reputational search premised on key word phrases high up in press materials with very literal meanings. Not in general use.

• Prioritize media outreach on basis of who helps on search—eg. TechCrunch better than WSJ.com behind wall

3.Social search depends on content and relationships. There are more searches being conducted inside social networks such as Twitter.

• Engages embassies inside social networks that discuss mutual benefit

90% of all web traffic goes through search;

News aggregation is 63% of all searches


3. Mobilizing the Influentials and Amplifiers -Democratic and Decentralized

• Involve those with connection to company/brand including employees, shareholders, retirees, customers, suppliers, communities

• Help people come together in social network with opportunity for consumer generated content and feedback

• Influencers are thought starters—work to start conversation

• Amplifiers can be bloggers, mainstream media who continue discussion

• Key role of analytics – popularity does not equate to influence

Robert Scoble, Scobleizer

Ashton Kutcher, world’s most popular twitterer, but not the most influential


4. Inform the Conversation

• Go to all those who can have credible voices based on passion (frequency of posts or number of links), or expertise (eg. employees)

• Go where the people are (their blogs, Facebook, Twitter), don’t expect them to come to you-post on their blogs

• Create utility such as Recipe app for iPhone app or recycling widget and offer valuable insight


5. Every Company Is a Media Company

• Depth of content and objective tone on subjects in company’s sweet spot

— J&J Baby Center, P&G homemadesimple.com, British Airways Metrotwin.com

• Enable access to content that user can repurpose: make them co-creators; then easy to share and update. Use iconic symbols

— Frog in Rainforestsos.org, video from Prince of Wales

• Make available on range of platforms-all three devices (cell, pc, tv), using best process such as RSS feed, video on demand

• Can also win through curating – aggregate the best conversations around given product categories

• The future: Don’t just build destination sites to attract to attract users; export social features to all sites as members take social media identities with them as they visit all web sites


6. We Must be Present Everywhere

• Person needs to see or hear something five times in different places from range of spokespeople before believing it

• No longer are stories broken exclusively in mainstream media, then amplified;

— Eg. Domino’s pizza crisis

• Adapt message and style to forum

— Collaboration on Facebook

— Entertaining or compelling on YouTube

— Customer service and tips on TwitterSource: Edelman 2009 Trust Barometer


7. Democratic and Decentralized

• Facilitate re-purposing of Content

• Be an aggressor of discussion

• Post the good and bad

• Enable the “Vox Populi”


The Public Engagement Toolkit

• Viral Video• Micro-blogs• Employee/CEO blog• MSM interviews• Influencer

Roundtable

• Podcasts• Search mktg• Widgets• CEO Speeches

• Video contests• Social nets• Sponsored content

with third parties• Town Halls

• Ideastorms• Wikipedia• Issue Aggregator• Pilot Programs• Coalition • Development

Communication Collaboration

Open

Controlled

Open Collaboration

Open Communication

ControlledCommunication

ControlledCollaboration


Act III: How Public Engagement Works

“What you’re doing speaks so loud, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson


Changing Consumer’s BehaviorsShell FuelSave Driver Challenge

• Inspire one million drivers to save fuel

• Show drivers how 10 tips can help them save more than 10% in fuel consumption

• Drivers go to their country-specific Shell web site and complete a training module

• 100,000 fuel voucher incentives for drivers who successfully complete the training

• Within the first week – 100,000 drivers were fuel-savers!


Increase SalesWonderbra Viral

• Online community engagement with viral film— “Science of Sexy”—created by Dita Von Teese as the focal point

• Surround audience with photos on Flickr, teaser video, microsite and discussion forums

• No. 1 video on YouTube in UK at launch (Sept ‘08)

• 100,000+ photo views on Flickr; 24,000+ impressions on Twitter; 700+ blog posts/conversations on social networks; 100+ stories in offline media

• Entire Wonderbra line sold out of retail stores before launch

The Science of Sexy by Dita—The full Wonderbra Film


• Shared conversations/experiences around “issue” of “swampy man zone” on Facebook and introduced the Detailer as a solution

• Used Facebook in two ways:

— Product giveaways based on posts to the Wall

— Facebook engagement ads

• 337% increase in Axe fans in 7 weeks

— Continued 8% growth per week

• Approx. 20,000 new fans; 80,000 page views; and 40,000 video views

• 1,800 wall posts

• 120,000+ engagements beyond clicks

• ADD SALES

Driving Product Trial among 18-24 malesAXE Detailer goes Facebook


Go Where People Are - Utility on the Move: Butterball 2008

Cellufun mobile game generated 40,000,000 page views to playing the Cellufun mobile game

Mobile texting provided “turkey tips” to 370,000 moms to access Butterball information anytime, anywhere

Hosted web chats and 50 Mommy bloggers

Partnered with Bravo’s top-rated reality “Top Chef” put Butterball Turkey’s as the show’s star

Media: Achieved more than 1 billion media impressions with segments including “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” “Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” New York Times, and USA Today


“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


10-Year Anniversary Congratulations David Weinberger

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