The world is changing, fast, and our clients are facing huge transformations. There is a strong call for change, in the PR industry like everywhere. At a recent conference, our chief strategy officer Pascal Beucler was asked to stimulate a discussion on if the PR industry was ready for this change, the challenges we face and the power shifts we need to address, as an industry, to make it happen.

1. From “Public” to People Relations:
Re-designing the world of PR
for the Conversation Age.
P. Beucler
“Communication Challenges before the Change – Opportunity
2012”, Novi Sad – November 29, 2012

2. The future does not fit
in the mindsets
or containers of the past.

3. The world is changing, fast, and our clients are facing huge transformations.
There is a strong call for change, in our industry like everywhere.

4. Too many PR agencies are still organized
the way they were 10 years ago…
…and deliver the sort of services they used to deliver
before the Social Turmoil started.

5. >
A recent Forrester Research, presented at the Global PR
Summit in Miami last month, says the agency of the future will:
>Think less about channels,
>Develop a holistic approach,
>Integrate channels and services,
>Help drive both brands and corporate reputation.

6. During the Holmes Global PR Summit, Marc Pritchard, Global
Marketing & Brand Building Officer, P&G, invited PR companies to
« take the leadership role the discipline deserves »,
in the Conversation Age.
Are we ready for this challenge?
What are the power shifts we need to address, to make it happen?
This is the debate I’d like to introduce through the following
presentation.

7. 10 Power Shifts
>Ideas: Solidly grounded into insights & foresights
>Data: What we need to extract the value from
>Purpose & People: Helping businesses drive positive change
>Reputation: The tree and the shadow
>Content: Remarkable, liquid and linked
>Emotional connections: Lefty-righty
>Integration: Be holistic
>Diversity: Be truly Global, not just « Globalized »
>Storytelling: Be The Narrator
>Value creation: Moving up the food chain

8. 1. The Power of Ideas

9. Insights-grounded Innovation.
CEOs around the globe say that:
> the key to survival is innovation, «People’s Inside Solutions»
> the key to innovation is to get the best
insights from people

10. The Now & The Next.
• Insights are about ‘now’, while foresights are about ‘next’. You need
both the Now & the Next, to help clients anticipate:
• Insights provide you with the capacity to gain an accurate and deep
understanding of contexts, situations, issues and people’s
expectations.
• Foresights give you the ability to predict what will happen, or be
needed in the future, to help your clients succeed in their business
strategies.
• This is how you help a brand or a company articulate community
engagement and their business need > Connecting the business
context and the conversation dynamics.

11. Are we already there, as a PR industry?
Not yet, obviously.
The Forrester Research shows that clients
give low marks to PR firms, when it comes to
delivering big, strategic ideas, solidly grounded
in insights & foresights.
”Whether on the Consumer PR side,
or on the Corporate one, it’s first of all about
understanding what’s in people’s mind,
where the society goes”.

12. The power of collective intelligence:
the world's most valuable brands use crowdsourcing.

13. Open Innovation at P&G.
“One of the greatest challenges facing companies and
their leadership today is the range and depth of
innovation required to drive both top and bottom line
growth.
How can we deliver one without a trade-off on the other?
For P&G, open innovation has been critical to resolving
this dilemma:
an innovation strategy we call Connect & Develop.”
Dr. Mike Addison, P&G Global Business Development

14. Power to the People.

15. 2. The Power of Data

16. Data Equity.
The value of social data to businesses can’t be expressed by a
single number.
But when companies take the right social data and apply the right
analyses to improve decision-making, they create social data
equity.
Data is the currency of the Information Age.

17. Understanding People.
• Invest in extensive ‘social listening’ capabilities to crack the
sentiment code in real time.
• People are talking, we should be listening.
• People are taking action, we should be commenting,
concluding and then counseling our clients on how best to
respond.
« Whether on transactions, interactions or content creation, data is what's
helping us understand the behaviour of people.” (Jon Iwata, Senior Vice
President, Marketing and Communications, chairman of the IBM Strategy
Team, at the Global PR Summit in Miami).

18. « Visualize, communicate, utilize the data ».
The future of data will not be in acquiring more and more of it.
The value to be liberated for Clients is in the storytelling around
data, a wholly creative endeavour.
“The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to
extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to
be a hugely important skill in the next decades... ...Because now we
really do have essentially free and ubiquitous data
So the complimentary scarce factor is the ability to understand
that data and extract value from it”
“I think statisticians are part of it, but it’s just a part. You also want to
be able to visualize the data, communicate the data, and utilize it
effectively”
Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google.

19. 3.The Power of Purpose & People

20. The goal today is to rewire and reconnect
Purpose, Performance & People
through Participation and Collaborative Social Innovation.

21. Purpose Driven Marketing.
In order to thrive in a social network world, companies
need to better express and understand their purpose
and recognize they are both economic and social
engines of their communities and countries.
Areas such as sustainability, community service and
contributions to a greater good will be how Brands will
be increasingly evaluated.
Good business is better business.

22. Sweetness in the mouth, kindness in the heart:
The example of Alpenliebe Perfetti in China.
We’ve created with the brand an integrated year-long
initiative to:
 catalyze a kindness movement
 inspire millions of Chinese youth to appreciate,
share stories about and engage in everyday acts of
kindness.

23. Source: http://acandy.renren.com http://page.renren.com/alpenliebekindness

24. 4. The Power of Reputation.
«Character is like a tree
and reputation like its
shadow.
The shadow is what we
think of it.
The tree is the real thing.»
Abraham Lincoln

25. Building & defending our clients’ reputation.
D. Roman, SVP & CMO Lenovo, talking about brand &
corporate reputation: When people buy a product today, they
buy – or not – the company behind (Miami Summit).
Taking care of the beliefs or opinions that are generally held
about an organization, a brand, a product, is definitely our core
business.
Reputation is our clients’ most valuable asset, which we’re
taking good care of in challenging times..
What’s challenging today is that the frontiers between
mainstream media and social media are blurring, as online
influencers are linking to media stories, while news
organizations are quoting online influencers.

26. Every crisis is global, viral, social.
A good reputation is a solid asset, in case of crisis. It helps a lot,
globally and locally. Of course, no crisis is truly local in this
highly interconnected world, as memes or hashtags can spread
globally in seconds on the social web.
Content Intelligence, Community Management and Contact
Strategies will make the difference, if well mastered, when it
comes to efficiently engage with people and communities, here
and now.
It’s critical to plan and prepare for crisis scenarios,
It’s also important to respond to emergent crisis situations
authentically, without over-reliance on scripted messages and
workflows.

27. « Corporate Character », the next boundary to Corporate Reputation?
“What makes you unique is your beliefs, your values,
your purpose. You need this first.”
Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President, Marketing and
Communications, chairman of the IBM Strategy Team, speaking
on “Corporate Character” at the Miami Global PR Summit).
Iwata: We must become "Chief
Collaboration Officers" and
Curators of Corporate Character.

28. 5. The Power of Content.

29. Social is Content’s best friend.

30. Liquid & Linked.
• « Coca-Cola can no longer rely on 30-second-TV-centric
brand communications…we must instead create the most
compelling content in the world…we have to have fat and
fertile ideas at our core. » (Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global
Advertising Strategy & Creative, Coca-Cola).
• Coke’s Content Marketing 2020: « Liquid & Linked »
• « Liquid »: consistently creating content « so remarkable that it goes
viral and wanders endlessly around the web ».
• « Linked »: ensuring that their content « remains close to the heart of
their underlying business goals. »
• Remarkable content has the power to go viral, and viral
content brings tangible results in terms of social shares,
visibility,

31. 6. The Power of Emotional Connections

32. Reason leads to conclusions.
Emotion leads to action.

33. « Markets consist of human beings,
not demographic sectors »
• « Markets are conversations.Their members communicate in
language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often
shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious,
the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked. »
• « Human communities are based on discourse – on human
speech about human concern »
• « The community of discourse is the market »
• « Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will
die »
>12 years later, the Utopia turned real.
Levine, Locke, Searle & Weinberger
The Cluetrain Manifesto

34. Be Lefty-Righty.
How can brands earn emotional connections to
people through social?
By finding the right ways to connect with them as
they’re connecting with others and the things they’re
passionate about.

35. Brand Essence and a Model for
Emotive Engagement.
« The fabric, the spirit, the persona, the sheer imagery is
whatever you make it.
So when you think of your brand, what is it that you think
or feel?
If you had to use just one word to describe your brand’s
essence what would it be?
It is this answer that should inspire you to think about how
it relates to a new genre of connected consumers or
Generation-C. »
Brian Solis: Your Brand is more important than you think.

36. 7. The Power of integration.

37. Creatively engaging with People
& Communities.
Clients are expecting a deeper level of integration : they want
global solutions, not partial, « siloed », disciplinary-centric,
answers.
They expect us to provide them with the appropriate accross-the-
board Engagement strategies.
« The industry could be more assertive and aggressive about
staking its claim. There’s so much that the PR industry has to
offer in terms of engagement with consumers in their communities
and making brands part of those conversations », as Marc
Pritchard stated it in Miami.

38. Creative Connected Content.
The future of PR is in the fully holistic solution clients are
expecting today: Content Creation + Communities Engagement
+ Contact Management.
M. Pritchard: Content Creation and Brand Integration is what
PR should mostly contribute to, today (Miami Summit).

39. 8. The Power of Diversity

40. Being truly global, not just
« globalized »
Being truly global, not just « globalized » (with teams of
expatriates sent abroad) is not an option today: you need
to be Indian in India, Chinese in China, Brazilian in Brazil,
to deliver effective strategies and PR programms.
Global clients expect you to be able to operate across
time zones, within different political, economic, and social
systems and with varying media constraints
.

41. Viva La Difference!
Diversity is also essential in terms of Talents’ management:
• Deeper understanding between an organization and its
publics,
• Stronger employee attraction and retention,
• Better performance and increased innovation with diverse
talents,
• Stronger corporate reputation.
> The challenge is: how to ensure that every member of the
staff knows exactly how to contribute to the greater diversity
of the organization every day

42. 9. The power of a good story

43. Don’t underestimate
the power of a good story!
Telling a good story is what’s creating attention, interest,
empathy.
M. Pritchard: Reporters, bloggers, consumers are all looking for
a good story, and that's the message PR need to bring to the C-
Suite (Miami Summit).

44. Chanel has created a public domain
which shares the story of the
company’s history, as well as
the biography of its founder
and namesake, Coco Chanel.
The site is divided into a timeline of the
biography of Coco and a history of the
Chanel company, as well as a video
history of its famous perfume, Chanel
No. 5, entitled ‘For The First Time.’

46. 10.The Power of value creation.

47. Move up the food chain
• We need to move up the food chain and improve our ability to
create inspirational brand experiences: the future of PR is to
become the intimate voice of the people in the boardroom, as
Marc Pritchard suggests it.
• Elevate and liberate innovation across our organizations, to
become our clients’ trusted advisors on a long-term basis.
• People are less likely to listen to what you say but how a company
acts. If they see signs of hype or being misled the social network or
what we call “The People’s Network” will spring into life.

48. From Agency Service Providers
to Value Creation Partners
What clients expect:
• Expert and senior talent on the front line
• Flexibility
• A genuine people focus
• Data and analytics that reveal opportunities and elevate
work
• Fresh and surprising creative ideas
• Creativity applied in the broadest possible sense - across
strategy, data analysis, media, and creative execution

49. Merci.