Last night was the first ever Grunig lecture at the University of Maryland, and Richard Edelman was the keynote. His presentation is here. What I found to be so uncanny about the speech was his hard hitting start, dismissing conventional mass media advertising approaches and demanding that PR become an engagement model with real influencers, all the way to the family level.
Maybe it really is Halloween. Listening to Edeleman was kind of like watching a post mortem on the Cluetrain Manifesto’s impact. Or maybe like watching a historian dissect a recent, rather bloody revolution (image from Gagglescape).
Now, I am sure Doc Searls et al did not envision the world’s largest private PR agency embracing the impact online has made (“There is no market for messages”), but it goes to show you how far the social web has come. Consider in our new fractured media environment the importance of Twitter in CNN broadcasts. The entire communications business has been turned upside down.
And yes, while many of us have been beating this drum for quite some time, it’s now beyond question. Edelman’s adoption as an ethos marks the true rapid adoption point for the business. Now for communicators it’s about who can adapt quickest and with the best quality.
Edelman went on to discuss how the new influencers impact PR, and how the business needs to move towards an engagement model that embraces a wide, diverse group of stakeholders (See Rich Becker’s discussion of the Edelman firm’s over-reliance on influencers to launch the new Pepsi can). During the question and answer phase, Edelman was quick to say that media relations will not disappear, but that all components — traditional and social — need to be integrated. He also spoke towards a topic near and dear to our hearts here at LComm, the need to embrace social good and incorporate it into business strategy.
All in all, I thought it was a pretty darn good speech, and I am sure the students got a lot from the event. Find below my tweet stream from Edelman’s Grunig Lecture
Thanks for sharing Geoff. I’m looking over Edlemen’s presentation. I like how Edlemen includes the metric of passion to describe the new influencer’s elite position. Very cool. You don’t see that recognized all the time as a metric, probably because it’s qualitative, but I think it’s ever important. PS – Happy Halloween LComm!
Thank you, Alex. Yeah, you know I was surprised and impressed with him. Thanks for the Halloween wishes.