The document discusses the shift from traditional public relations "push" strategies to new "pull" strategies of public engagement. It argues that PR must evolve from pitching to informing, from control to credibility, and from influencing elites to engaging new influencers. It outlines three acts: 1) the accelerating media revolution, 2) introducing public engagement strategies, and 3) how public engagement works in practice through case studies of companies engaging audiences through new media.

1. Richard Edelman New Media Academic Summit Georgetown University | Washington, DC | June 10, 2009 From PR to Public Engagement: The Opportunity for the Industry

2. The Hypothesis: From Push to Pull PR’s Opportunity in World of Expression PR has an enormous opportunity in a world of expression, where authority is dispersed, where trust is created through continuous conversation and established media brands must share attention with blogs or consumer generated content Our challenge is to evolve from pitching to informing from control to credibility from one-off stories to continuing conversations from influencing elites to engaging a new cadre of influencers

3. Tectonic Plates Shifting Rise of Activist Government New shareholder with business demands Era of Citizenship People expect a relationship with companies/brands Change in Behavior From what you want to what you need New Influencers Loss of trust in authority figures. Rise of employees, ‘average’ person, NGOs

6. Dispersion of Authority People visit 114 domains and visit 2500 web pages each month Newspaper readership is down 30% In 2008 in US more people rely on the Internet (40%) for news than rely on newspapers (35%) 79% of all adults are online – for an average of 33 hours per week People will watch 100 million videos on YouTube today 40% of all Americans will end a text message today; 90% of those will be read while billions of emails will be deleted without being opened One in 10 Americans online are now on Twitter

8. Web, Mobile and Videogames take share from TV; Behavior Correlated to Age N= 752 Observed Days in Spring and Fall 2008. For additional information, please visit www.researchexcellence.com Copyright 2009 The Nielsen Company. Confidential and proprietary. Share of Daily Minutes Across Screen Media

11. Advertising Spend Declines Newspapers; Mag & Radio Hardest Hit Copyright 2009 The Boston Consulting Group. Confidential and proprietary.

13. Social Media is Now Mainstream 100M active users. Greatest growth is from people age 35-49 Two Thirds of people online now use social networking or blogging Twitter grew 1,382% in last 12 months; More than 7M US visitors in Feb. 5.5 billion unique video feeds in April; #2 most popular search engine Wikipedia— 120M visitors a month 23% of mobile users in the UK, and 19% in the US visited social network site

14. Breadth and quality of online video continuing to improve Copyright 2009 The Boston Consulting Group. Confidential and proprietary.

15. Implications for PR Less control of message More sources, unpredictable flow of information Different news approach Continual filing, more opinionated, more video and short form content Mass is dead More difficult to aggregate audiences Pay for play Home Depot owns Good Morning America lawn & garden pieces Fewer reporters The pitch and catch model eroding

31. “ Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

32. 10-Year Anniversary Congratulations David Weinberger

33. Questions?