CorpComms Magazine

The business model of PR is changing. Driven by the bottom-up power of digital and the continued shift to a stakeholder society, this year will witness the emergence of a new model that we, at Edelman, are calling Public Engagement.

Public Engagement is defined as the advancement of shared interests in a world of cross-influence. It is, in essence, a codification of the communications reality today. At its heart lies profound and permanent behavioural change. It blurs the lines between advertising and PR, between media 'old' and 'new'.

Networks have replaced channels; influence has supplanted audience; shared interests are moving us beyond dogma; and multilateral connection is the new dialogue. Corporate reputation and brand marketing are converging at speed; we, the people, have become media in our own right; and everyone - from citizen to corporation - now can participate in the conversation, anywhere and at any moment in time. Opinion is becoming increasingly democratised and media increasingly socialised.

Immediacy is everywhere. We no longer wait more than minutes for our news. Newspapers have become 'Viewspapers'. The old rules of audience don't apply. The conventions of advertising are understandably redundant.

Reform is unlikely to stop here. Tectonic plates continue to shift. Recent Edelman Trust data ranked the interests of employees and customers alongside those of shareholders, while supply chain ethics, directors' pay and responsible governance have become genuine influencing factors in purchasing decisions. Governments are held to account by a digitally active electorate; calls for transparency intensify; and transparency itself is further empowered by the digital world. Citizen politics demand that governments and business act and tell. Storytelling alone is not enough - an evolved (and more responsible) form of communications is the obvious result.

Public Engagement is an articulation of where we stand today. It recognises a new order emerging from continued chaos. It embraces current reality and faces the future, safe in the knowledge that waves of change will inevitably surge again. The agency that sits back and watches the chaos unfold is one that will play no part in the future ecology of communications. And nobody has all the answers.

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