You spoke at the World Economic Forum earlier this year. What did you take away from that meeting?
To me, the most incredible thing was the prominence of government relative to the private sector. There were no heroes from the CEO ranks. In prior years it’s been John Chambers of Cisco or [Bill] Gates or Jean-Marie Metier. This year it was [Russian prime minister Vladimir] Putin, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel. It was about what government was going to do to bail out the private sector or be involved in the private sector. That’s a huge change, and the result is everybody is saying Anglo-Saxon capitalism—that unbridled, Reagan-Thatcher stuff—is over and now we’re on to the more European-style mixed economy. I think most people went there concerned and came away not much reassured. In our little circle… the newspaper guys are very concerned because they’re getting digital pennies for print dollars. They haven’t figured out the business model that’s sustainable. And the big advertising categories—cars, retailing, financial services—are all down at the same time and that’s rare.
What does all this uncertainty mean for the PR business?
This is totally different from the recession of ’01 to ’03, where PR was the canary in the coalmine. This time, we are actually, as an industry, doing well. It’s not prosperous out there, but we’re holding our own. There is this secular trend towards PR and digital and away from traditional advertising, so we’re getting monies that have historically gone to advertising.
Is PR becoming a bigger part of your clients’ marketing mix?
In the marketing context, we used to be the tail on the dog—at the very end PR would come in to have the press announce the ad campaign. Now, we are in at the strategy point where we say, ‘You need this tie-in with an NGO, you need this kind of community purpose’. We start earlier and our mandate is larger because I think we’ve moved
What’s brought about these changes?
I think it’s a dispersion of authority. You’ve got bloggers, you’ve got all sorts of voices. You also see a dispersion of audiences—you can’t just get to people on the evening chat shows or entertainment shows. Our job is to go where the people are. I think every company now is a media company, or has the potential to be their own media company. The biggest challenge is companies are used to controlling. At some point, you’ve got to let go, and that’s what companies have to learn.
What did you find most interesting about the results of the latest Edelman Trust Barometer report?
It’s amazing how different Canada is from the U.S. Canada has retained some stability—partly because your economy hasn’t fallen off a cliff and also because you have much better experience with the relationship between government and business. You haven’t had this collapse in trust that the U.S has. The other big thing is the change in sources [of information], the fact that business magazines and analyst reports are [rated] so much higher than everything else. And when you go to the spokespeople, CEOs are at the bottom, government officials are at the bottom, and at the top are academics.
How have recent trends affected what you look for in employees?
On one side, you definitely want these Gen Ys who are digital natives. But at the same time, we’ve [hired] a guy who was on staff at the Wall Street Journal for 20 years and is a seriously good writer, because we are turning out serious content. In a diffused world of authority and sourcing, you’ve got to put your own version out there and you’ve got to let go. It’s about giving people the facts, and that’s where PR does really well.
What about PR’s own reputation? Do consumers perceive PR as trustworthy?
PR is lumped in somehow with hype and spin, with political PR, the Clinton spin room and wag-the-dog and stuff like that. First of all, it’s incredibly flattering, but it’s B.S. Most smart PR people realize that to be prevaricators or spinners is ultimately self-defeating. The truth well told—that’s the way to do it and that’s where we help companies. We’re like coaches, not buffers, buriers and obfuscators, and I think that’s an important distinction.
