I chatted yesterday with Richard Edelman, a pioneer in online public relations.
Edelman, the CEO of the public relations firm bearing his father's name, was blogging long before most of us, and when I spoke with him in March, 2005 (link here) he was already talking about how the Web was pushing journalists out of their central role in public relations.
(On a sidenote -- it’s interesting to me that in that story from just two years ago, the term "blog" had not yet entered common lexicon. I had to explain in the story that blog was short for Web log, a form of online journal.)
Edelman, speaking at the mesh Web conference in Toronto, told the audience that businesses need to accept that there are now two, equally important lines of communications: the traditional vertical axis, and the new peer-to-peer horizontal axis. He said the horizontal axis requires that companies be willing to give up some of the control over their brands.
"The key thing is to pursuade companies that you have to give up control of the message," he said.
When I asked him about Charles Fremes, the former president of Edelman Canada who died suddenly on May 7, he became visibly choked up. Fremes, he said, served as the firm's chief diplomat, helping to offset the CEO's spontaneity. More than once, Fremes called him up to suggest he should be more cautious with his public comments.
"This one affects me terribly," Edelman told me of Fremes' death. "I try not to be friends with the people I work with because you have to keep your distance, but Charles was really a good friend of mine. It's an exception. He was like my older brother."
