Stuard MacDonald speaks to Richard Edelman

•  ”What is PR”
  • Its about telling a truthful story.  It shouldn’t be categorized as spin, or the black arts.  That’s malpractice.  The best PR is coming up with a strategy that helps a company do the right thing and convey that story well
• “Why is the PR Rep so bad?”
  • I think its gotten confused with political communications, where certain behaviours are not acceptable in the commercial sphere.  Swiftboating is hardball political tactics — I think its revolting, and I would never advocate in the use of business
• “Given the rise of social media is this the best or worst of times in the PR industry?”
  • I think its the best of times.  PR is classically the tale on the dogster.  Today, we’re at the table, at the inception of the idea, sometimes driving the idea.  PR when best used creates a runway of trust in a stakeholder world.  Communications used to talk to the consumer.  Today we’re talking to NGO’s, to communicators, to regulators — across the whole spectrum.  We’re a broad spectrum vehicle, unlike advertising which is narrow.
• “Isn’t it about trust and credibility?  In a world with narrowing media channels, but this wide public discourse that sometimes descends into flamewars a) how do you make sure that trust continues to live up and down and b) make sure that you clients carry on with that?
  • The vertical axis is top down, controlled messages.  The horizontal axis is spontaneous, its based on dialogue, based on personal experience, and companies forgoing that axis are making a mistake
  • The key thing is getting the co-creation process happen and letting go.
  • Dissonance is ok because it gives you credibility.
  • There is a trade off between credibility and control — which is the different axes.
• On  the Dove Campaign:
  • The most successful thing was the youTube video, and the campaign for real beauty, share their own experiences, and donate funds to a specific cause.
• ” In a 24/7 discussion type world, how do you define success and make money where the definition of success has changed?”
  • To do ad equivalency is something that to me — is not adequate.  It is fallacious.  The power of free media is more powerful than paid media.  Those things are that much more powerful.  We still have to quantify that effect, and that involves, sometimes, survey work before and after.  Especially amongst influencers.
• “There are some who do it right, and there have been some missteps along the way as well … ”
  • Some of you are aware of what happened to Wal-Mart and the RV situation — but we took it as a situation to educate everyone in our company around the standards of the blogosphere, how we should go about providing information and disseminating it.  If not, we’re going to miss this opportunity.  We cannot be seen as going back to spin or artifice.  As long as we properly identify the source of the funds, and the purpose of why we’re doing what we’re doing — you’re entitled to your point of view.
• “In Canada we’re in a different place where we have great potential to influence the political sphere but haven’t yet.   What are the ground rules for someone who has a well visited blog who isn’t a professional journalist?  How do you cover that and make sure you don’t get bitten?”
  • PR folks have to have a higher standard for the content we distribute.  Its a journalist level of quality.  I would re-iterate where you got your source of information and create a credible situation from where people get it.  Example:  we set up lowermanhattan.info — if there’s an adverse environmental study that comes up we come up with that too.  But its a central place where people can set up their opinions.
• Thoughts on blogging for a CEO:
  • Try and persuade the client to allow you to have a brainstorm situation where you exchange ideas and insist a real voice.  I would reject the notion of ghost blogging, its bad practice.
• How do you institutionalize learnings around social media?
  • The line between PR and advertising is blurred.  Both are valid, but they depend on the type of product and whether there is news.  If that’s the case, then PR needs to lead.  If its just about buying impression then advertising ought to lead.
  • We have me2revolution, and rather than distribute the knowledge we would centralize it and disseminate it from there.  We have 8 people full time who listen, and then disseminate from conferences like this.
• Has the rise of PR come about because investigative journalism has declined
  • Total consumption of media is rising and the mix of media is shifting.  I don’t believe that the reason PR is succeeding is because of the drop of investigative journalism because in some cases bloggers have picked up the cudgel.  But its dispersion.  There are — need — of this kind of critical eye on industry.  Its a different set of people doing it, not less.
• “Are people in your industry prepared for the changes that are here?”
  • Some people are and some people aren’t.  Its a harder job in some ways because you have to talk to more people.  In a different way, you cannot be a sales person.  Its almost a relationship that is one of equals.  Of learning and acknowledging and moving away from calling 100 journo’s and calling it a day.  I’d rather have a few quality interactions.
• What about corporate responsibility?
  • Corporate responsibility is one reason why business has risen in the “trust barometer”.  Its more true in the developing world than in the developed.  It seems like the motive force behind change.  The caveat is that it will take on the big issues and therefore it has to be transparent about its motive, but also within — the first line communications come from employees.  THe paradox of transparency:  we always kept things to ourselves until we wanted to launch something.  Today we need to make the case publicly and early.  Make some concessions if you need to early and then proceed.
• In light of what happened with Wal-Mart what changes did you institute with respect to your employees?
  • I had an interesting discussion about this with Mat Ingram.  We are an organization with a 2700 people.  The tendency is to say only a few people should be doing social media.  I reject that.  Everyone should be doing it.  We need to be having standards, and we need to train.  We have a 24/7 hotline.  I want everyone getting trained.  I’d rather be in front getting a few arrows.
• What happens when you  lose control of the conversation?
  • I think Chevy Tahoe benefited from not stifling the conversation.  You have to let the humour run its course and be seen as having tolerance for having dissent and discussion.  But you do have to think ahead.  Maybe there would be problems — should we really do that?  When you’re in the soup, let the soup cool off before you put your finger in it.
• What about hitting hard metrics?
  • The virtuous circle for our business is to charge more — pay your people better and make them do these number of interactions.  The horizontal axis is ours to participate in
• What happens if news isn’t correct?
  • The race to be first is a race that is part of human instinct.  We all want to be first.  The greatest temptation for pR folks is to put out stuff that is inaccurate, wrong and so on.  If in either the blogosphere or the media you must be aggressive in putting up corrections, and not be afraid about challenging things.
• Can you share your successes with CEO’s and blogging?
  • we’ve had modest successes to be honest.  Its a time issue, its a skills issue, and its a risk issue.  They perceive it to be something that’s scary.  The CEO of Pitney Bowes, however, is going to be blogging about health issues.  He’s going to start this week or next.  Its a thin space, however.  I’m not sure if things are going to change over time.  I can only tell you as a blogger myself its incredibly gratifying.  9000 people read me a week.  Its a great pulpit for anti-tobacco campaign — heck, its kind of fun to pay people $500 for quitting smoking.  It re-inforces the notion of crowdsourcing.
• What do you recommend towards clients regarding participating in a conversation when it may not be their gig?
  • I think that the example of Robert Scoble is an instructive one.  Here’s a mid-level person in R&D who built an incredible following because he was viewed as more credible as the boss.  Scoble went after his employer because they were going after some anti-gay legislation.  Balmer eventually changed his ways as well.  They’re having vox populi.  Isn’t that great?  Let the mid-levels talk.
• At what point did you recognize than this was just more than another bubble?  That this was the direction you were going to take Edelman
  • In 2004 it occurred to me that if we’re living in a world of continuous partial attention how are we going to play in this world.  We have shrinking mainstream media — we have thousands of messages a day.  Howe are we going to play in this?  I started blogging and I decided we needed to have this crew of afficionados like Steve Rubel and we needed to push our clients in this direction.  MySpace is a client and it became this momentum-thing.  I think we’ve distinguished ourselves and we’ve gotten some slams to the chops — but we shoot more goals than we let in.
• Where does spin play in PR these days?
  • The word spin has no place in our company.  It originates in political PR, and its the single thing that is most undermining to our business and our industry.  This came out of the Clinton spin patrol where it became a badge of honor to be a spin-meister.  I don’t want to be a spin meister. I want to be a connector.  An idea source.  A spin source?  No.
• How is the competition in the social media space?
  • One of the benefits of being an independent firm is that there are no boundaries to what we do.  We don’t pretend to be in the print media.
• Three Things that People Here should go and do
  • Make your stories visual — we’re good at words, but we need to be good at pictures.
  • Don’t be defeated by set back — if you’re playing hard, you’ll fall down a few times.
  • Don’t let clients to define your box — all clients struggle with the conditions they find themselves with.  The message should be platform neutral.
  • The power is with us and that’s the thing.