Richard Edelman, the president/CEO for public relations giant Edelman, recently called upon PR pros to consider a new approach to meet the needs of a more complex world.
He identifies four principles for what he calls "public engagement."
First, he says, PR should drive every company's operating strategy. Second, companies should practice radical transparency with the public. Third, companies should tap into all four platforms for mass communication: mainstream media, hybrid media, social media, and owned media. Fourth, PR should aim to attract and develop talent with a broad range of skills.
I largely agree with all of that. But Edleman has come up short by at least two principles if we want to take the next step from "engaging the public" to "serving the public." This next step is made inevitable by the sea change that is taking place in Corporate America.
Inevitable? Yes, driven by public outrage about Wall Street's participation in the global economic meltdown, and about the roles of Big Business and Big Government in weakening the American middle class. These aren't political arguments; they are observable facts. Within five years, the corporation as we know it will be forced (by law and by circumstance) to become far more responsive to public demands than any MBA-educated executive can begin to imagine.
Thus merely "engaging" the public is too timid for the next generation of public relations. The next phase can be called "Service PR," and will include all four of Edelman's principles, with at least two more:
- Adopt responsiveness as a survival strategy: The companies that respond quickly and effectively to changing public opinion, and that best manage community outrage, will thrive. Those that dismiss, ignore, or attempt to circumvent these factors will die. It's that simple.
- Put the public's interests ahead of the company's: Certainly an anathema in the modern corporation, which is designed by law to act only in its own interests, and to wait for government and the courts to rein in any excesses. But the formation of public policy no longer belongs to the elite. It belongs to the digerati, who can bring their power to bear upon any offending corporation in a matter of seconds.
This is the new reality. Deal with it.
