Apologies to Charles Dickens, but it must be said: For those who work in PR, these are the best of times, these are the worst of times.
On the one hand, hardly a week goes by without a public relations belly flop that echoes around the world – be it a tone-deaf tweeted joke about Egypt by the fashion designer Kenneth Cole, or the introduction of a new Starbucks logo that is instantly ridiculed. On the other hand, PR houses are gaining new respect in the marketing world because of their ability to leverage the same technological shift that’s propelling those viral failures: the integration of social media into our lives.
Last month, the industry bible Advertising Age acknowledged the shifting ground when it named Edelman – the largest PR firm on the planet, with an estimated $530-million (U.S.) in revenue last year – one of its Top 10 A-List Agencies. So this week we sat down with the company’s chief executive officer, Richard Edelman, during his stop in Toronto as part of a promotional tour for the company’s annual Trust Barometer survey of consumer and citizen sentiment.
First up, let’s look at some PR failures: Last week, Groupon launched an ad during the Super Bowl that seemed to mock the plight of Tibetans, and then spent five days defending it as an ironic joke before pulling it. But people are complaining about everything, it seems – even a new Gap logo they find underwhelming. Do you have a sense of what’s feeding this odd new level of engagement with brands?
I think people have new expectations of brands. I think that they believe somehow that their voice can be heard. So it’s in part technological empowerment, but it’s also some part a merging of brand and corporate reputation. Maybe they feel they weren’t adequately consulted, or that they weren’t somehow better informed prior, and they’re mad.
Like there should have been a million-person focus group on the new Gap logo?
I don’t know. But people wanted in on the do-we-or-don’t-we/how-do-we/why-do-we? It sort of goes to the whole idea of how you introduce a new product now. When we were doing the launch of Kinect for Xbox, it was very much about getting sort of young blogger-influencer types to try this thing well in advance – a year before launch. And [Microsoft] improved the product, listening to some of the objections. So they did the intro in a very public fashion a year before. I think that’s the sort of ‘new normal.’
Speaking of mad – people are in a sour mood, especially in the U.S., as your Trust Barometer outlines. Not nearly so much in Canada.
Canada’s a pretty high-trusting country relative to the U.S., relative to the U.K., relative to France and Germany. You guys like the harmonious society and the idea of business and government [intertwined]. The Americans don’t buy that.
Americans’ distrust of all four institutions – government, business, NGOs and media – is higher than a year ago. It’s the only country where that’s the case.
I think the skepticism – the idea that you have to hear something three to five times before you believe it – in the U.K., it’s six to 10 times, and if you come in predisposed one way or the other, you’re gonna go with that presumption – I think that’s fascinating, and it gives you [an understanding] of why you should behave.
It’s why Goldman Sachs put out that report – 69 pages on how they do their trading. I’m convinced that they realize now that they don’t have licence to operate without explaining in a very tangible way. It’s like having a corporate social responsibility report that says: This is how much packaging we use, this is how much carbon we’ve used, or whatever. Same idea.
But then Goldman does something like trying to get around trading restrictions through its private sale of Facebook shares, which ends in a major PR face-plant after it’s discovered. So one can argue for transparency, but ultimately there are many companies whose interest is apparently not well served by being transparent.
