We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Steve Rubel, executive VP for Global Strategy and Insights with Edelman. Edelman is a global public relations firm, well known for being on the forefront of technological change. Click here for more info on Steve and Edelman. In these two clips, Steve talks about how the leading public relations firms will adapt to the new media environment, and gives us an example of a successful campaign. As discussed in Steve’s previous videos, the democratisation of media voices has meant that PR firms can no longer rely on traditional media to reach a majority of people. Digital media and social media are reaching increasing numbers of eyes and ears. These new media are inherently more targeted, meaning more precision in that message delivery, with the flipside being a smaller audience share. In order to flourish in this more diverse and noisy environment, PR companies have to coordinate their efforts on multiple fronts. This means that a traditional media advertisement could be reinforced by small, targeted social media programs, which in turn are covered and linked to by articles in the new digital media. This lattice of supporting media efforts leaves the whole stronger than the sum of its parts. Steve refers to this broad based PR effort as “public engagement”, as it aims to come at people from several different angles, and because through its use of social media it invites user feedback. An example of a successful public engagement campaign was GE’s Eco Imagination. This was not a traditional advertising campaign, in that it didn’t particularly feature GE’s products or services. Rather, the campaign sought to position GE’s brand as a green company, more in line with public sentiment. It achieved this through a combination of traditional media advertising, such as billboards and television spots, through digital media promotion such as environment and business blogs, and prolific social media programs across facebook, twitter, tumblr, flickr and YouTube. The varied approaches used in the Eco Imagination campaign reinforced one another, building a fully fleshed out branding where none had existed before. And, of course, at the end of the day this campaign has produced indirect marketing for GE through exposure to the brand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG8BncuUFEg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92_ilPz0kxM
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