Here we are in the lovely Terrace Ballroom at Syndicate.
Unfortunately, I missed Jeff Jarvis‘ opening session — heard it was great and look forward to reading about it in other blogs.
Came in during the Richard Edelman interview. As many in the blogosphere know, Robert Scoble was unable to come due to his mother’s illness; the assembled group had a moment of silence at the end of the session for the Scoble family and others who may be facing similar life situations.
Eric Norlin conducted the interview instead. Here is the report:
I came in on a round of laughter from all assembled about how every company on the planet is the leading provider of X. No one ever fesses up to being number 2. The conversation then moved to the deconstructed press release. Edelman described the "press release of the future" that has been so often discussed in marketing and PR blogs: info with tags so reporters can use it the way they want. Rather than a standard generic format that is supposed to meet everyone’s needs and possibly meets no one’s. (Comment: I’m not convinced of this yet –while I think it applies to tech and perhaps Fortune 500, I’m not sure all reporters are ready for this new format… yet. More on this later this week.)
They then discussed the new PR dynamic: that a 12 year-old blogger can just as easily break news as the New York Times. Edelman’s take (not unsurprisingly) was that we have to listen to all the voices — not just the usual suspects. Traditional "authority" doesn’t tell the whole tale. The example was the Dove "real women" campaign, which got a great deal of its media traction from exposure in Gawker. The net: it is important to monitor blogs.
Edelman then mentioned briefly a joint project with Technorati to monitor blogs in multiple languages. Pretty sure I heard it would be available publicly as well as to Edelman staff. I’ll dig into this and let you know more in a follow-up. As far as the agency’s current blogging focus, Edelman said a large part of it is persuading clients to show beta products to bloggers. He indicated some success in this area, notably the X-box.
Next topic was Wal-Mart. Nothing new here, repeated the idea that perhaps PR agencies should be more clear with bloggers in the rules of engagement, vis using PR materials verbatim. The gist; credit the source or use your own words.
Edelman on what PR will look like in five years:
- Deconstructed press release
- PR hopefully have a role earlier in a product’s life, not just brought in for the press conference.
- PR more robust role in the corporate suite — Chief Listening (or Learning) Officer
- Does not see PR being disintermediated
- Hopes PR doesn’t have the negative connotations it currently has (spin, flack etc.)
- "I hope PR people have the balls to say what they know." Give good advice based on listening to a wide variety of sources.
On why he blogs. Because "you can’t be an evangelist unless you do it yourself." Cited advice from Linda Stone and David Weinberger. He also claimed to be one of the few PR people who blogs. True enough, if you only consider big agencies, and certainly true in terms of the total numbers employed in PR. He deserves tremendous credit for leading the way as a big agency CEO blogger. But also a bit of a false impression IMO, when you consider that there are 400-plus PR bloggers on Constantin Basturea’s PubSub list.
Plan for the coming year for Edelman and blogging: retraining people, getting the numbers of bloggers up at agency (currently about 30 bloggers and only 15-20 percent of staff in regular touch with bloggers). He is making investments (Technorati project); the teams have to follow. His motto for the year will be: Be tough — with colleagues and himself to get the most out of new media.
Some of the more interesting audience questions were about metrics. How will Edelman gauge success in the blogosphere? One metric will be how many real relationships Edelman people have with bloggers. This will be assessed by survey and listening. Someone else asked if they were modelling network effects. Answer: not enough data yet. (Comment: sounds like they are gathering it though).
His take on the best consumer brand vis blogging: Unilever. He also (unsurprisingly) endorses executive blogging, if the exec has an interesting voice and wants to do it. Doesn’t have to be the CEO. One of the biggest values of the c-level blog is commnication with employees. Let your employees be knowledgable sources about your business.
That’s pretty much it on the Edelman panel. More on the other sessions I attended later. Right now I am in Halley Suitt’s session on the Sins of Syndication, and I want to pay attention 🙂
Seen so far: old pal Sam Whitmore (we go all the way back to 1984 and the inaugural year of PC Week), David Parmet and Mike Manuel.
Other sources: Here is Edelman’s blog entry on the session. David Weinberger transcribes.
Tags: Richard Edelman, Syndicate, Corante, public relations, blogging