A look at the communication trends from recent FutureComms2015 event: the psychology of storytelling, the PESO Model, Crisis Communications in the era of social media, the hybrid PR professional

1. BACK TO THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATIONS
by Elaine Cameron, Burson-Marsteller Futurist, EMEA
@FUTUREPersp
The Truth Will Out
As part of my role as Futurist at Burson-Marsteller, I try to attend as many trend and future facing
conferences as possible, in the hope of gleaning some nuggets to share with all of you.
In this light, I recently attended FutureComms15 organised by MyNewsDesk at the Siemens Crystal
Building in London’s Docklands.
The event got off to a rather fiery start with a presentation on The Brand Storytelling Opportunity
for PR by Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Officer of the Content Marketing Institute, who asserted

2. that “we [marketers] are not in the business of truth; we deliver what ought to be the
truth.” Understandably, this caused quite a twitter storm.
Crisis In The Era Of Social Media
Fortunately the session was saved from further polemic by a riveting account given by Chris Webb
who was the Metropolitan Police’s Strategic Communications Lead at the time of the 7/7 London
bombings, 10 years ago. It is quite staggering to think that we have not been through a similar, large
scale incident in the UK since the advent of social and online media.
The emergence of news will be fundamentally altered by this factor and inevitably gives rise to many
difficult questions about command and control. For example, whilst tech and social media
companies played many helpful roles during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon explosions,
there is a question mark over who is ultimately coordinating the emergency response and how these
types of initiatives fit into the official response, victim support, etc.
I strongly encourage you to watch the full presentation here: The Hidden Heroes Of 7/7.
Why Communicators Must Embrace The PESO Model
Next up, a panel debate on the importance of embracing the PESO model. The growth of sponsored
content and native advertising has integrated paid media firmly with earned, owned and shared
media. Brands have little choice but to adapt to this changing environment, fast, and yet there still
seems to be a reluctance to embrace paid as a serious tactic to help amplify PR content. One thing is
clear: it’s crucially important to use this model from the very start to plan where you are going to
push content in each of these areas.
One of the panellists (a woman, but I am not reading anything into that) said that we need to be
honest about what we don’t know, we need to do more ‘how to’ knowledge sharing and drop our
egos and ask for help and then we will definitely be able to embrace this kind of model.

3. It also begged the question of whether there is a need to start hiring people with different skill sets
to have a mix of people working together, or rather whether it’s more important to educate PR
people to understand this aspect better and to know which specialists to call upon when needed.
The full panel debate can be found here.
Sharing Is Caring
It became increasingly obvious during the day, that the PR industry is notoriously bad at openly
sharing knowledge. However, there are some nascent, crowd-sourced communities that you should
definitely check out, namely: #FuturePR Comms2point0 and #PRstack.
Talking of sharing, this presentation from the 2014 event is both amusing and informative about the
evolutionary psychology behind storytelling: Why People Share Stories Online - Stephen Follows
And this video case study (start at minute 4 to avoid the sales pitch) explores how #Chocobatch - a
life size chocolate model of actor Benedict Cumberbatch - went viral, gaining UKTV coverage from
Mashable, Huffington Post and more. And to think it all started with a simple survey.
The Modern Day Communicator
And finally, this video from the FutureComms2014 event is well worth the time invested to get an
overview of the skills needed by the Hybrid PR Pro. I do think it was a bit of an oversight not to have
included Futurist though! What Makes The Modern Communicator – Deirdre Brekenridge
Connect with me on @FUTUREPersp and let’s keep the conversation on the Future of PR moving
forward.