As I wait for my flight back home in Louisville, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experience in Chicago these past few days.I have had a chance to participate and be a student at Edelman for the 2014 Academic Summit sponsored by Edelman PR, PR Week, and DePaul University and the University of Notre Dame.
The theme for this year’s summit was “Storytelling at the Speed of Now,” so it is appropriate I share my story of my experience at the summit.
To my knowledge, this is the only program and session I have seen taken by an agency to bring forth professors from all over the US as well as internationally. Edelman has created a program to provide professors an opportunity to learn what are the new trends, issues, challenges, and ideas happening in the profession to bring back to their students in the classroom. We were greeted with a warm reception and were always taken care of. Really felt like a professional home to me!
We had over 70 professors and deans come in and learn from the leading public relations professionals at Edelman as well as from clients to share their stories, insights, and best practices from their experiences in the field and what they want to see students be exposed to in the classroom.
I think the main theme from the conference has not only been focused on storytelling at the speed of now, but more along the lines of the bigger theme of where PR needs to go. Richard Edelman gave a great keynote speech the second day of the conference where he stated how “traditional marketing is broken.”
The lessons and takeaways I have taken away from being part of the Edelman Academic Summit has been pretty impressive. Not only are these insights relevant to how I approach my class, but it has reinforced how I am approaching my research agenda in social media, crisis communications, and in public relations:
- Communication marketing needs to be embraced by PR: Richard Edelman’s keynote speech really hit home for me. His insights on some of the guiding trends and issues facing the profession was really inspiring to hear. However, I want to focus on what he told all of us in the summit. As professors, we got to have new talent coming into the PR business and make sure to equip PR pros in conversational in related disciplines. In addition, Richard encouraged professors to push yourselves to embrace new ideas. We need to recruit students who can come into major. Some of the skills necessary for young public relations professionals include: Base level of SEO, community management, content strategy, and analytics, have to understand metrics, ability to educate those that are older in the agency, understand that business metrics matter, also, eneralists are key, but more specialists.
- Think about a strategic marketing engine but execute like a newsroom. Marking based approach to create employee mindshare and a newsroom approach (editor-in-chief, managing editor, project manager, reporters, publishers, etc) to content creation and execution (selling information in order to absorb it). This was highlighted in a great presentation by Stacy MacNeil from HP in her talk on employee communications and storytelling.
- Growing emphasis of the presence of corporate character: It is about building belief a new model for activating corporate character and authentic advocacy to initiate and sustain stakeholder engagement, having a global view of the world, and embrace the social media revolution. As Gary Sheffer of GE stated in his presentation, it’s about focusing on ideas to see if there are better ways to approach our practices plus a relentless drive to invest and build things that matter. So, it’s not just brainstorming and imaging these possibilities – but taking action and doing these initiatives.
- Entering an era of Responsive Marketing for PR: One point I felt David Armano (who has a blog that is a must read for ALL professors and students to read) made a great point here at the summit where we are responsible for being part of the adaptive market place and be prepared to move more towards the engagement in real-time and take advantage of great opportunities for brands and embrace entrepreneurship
- Being innovative and ahead of the curve before competitors: This was present at the conference by some of the leading brands on storytelling from different clients. Whether it was CVS announcing they were no longer going to sell tobacco products to Samsung’s Oscar moment, it was about bringing innovation and the story first to customers before competitors.
- Building the bridge between practice and academics: Whether it was UNICEF, ConAgra Foods, or even Edelman – the welcome and atmosphere over the last few days has been both inspiring and really wonderful. So many professionals want to be part of the conversation and engage with the professors in their classes. Really wonderful to see professionals as well say they would be willing to chat with us some more. Very cool!
While most of these insights are related to agencies and brands, the professors at the summit also were presented with some ideas on what we can do in the classroom and for our students. One quote and message Richard Edelman shared with the group got a lot of cheers from the crowd of public relations professors:
“You should get tenure by writing papers that are based on work in the field,” Richard Edelman.
I absolutely agree. Yes, we can still stay fundamentally grounded in understanding what has been done, what theories have been impactful for the field, and previous studies have shaped the scholarly community.
However, we have to be looking at ways to bridge our research to contribute and help agencies, brands, and corporations with their PR efforts. I have done this with my research work on social media influencers and most recently working on a research partnership in crisis communications and social media with Firestorm Solutions and Hootsuite. It’s about having a hybrid approach and balance for our research agenda where we can tie in both perspectives not only for our field and colleagues, but also for our fellow PR practitioner colleagues and students.
Along with these trends mentioned at the academic summit that are changing the field of PR, as professors, we have to evaluate the system and perception we have in our roles and determine how we are going to move forward as a profession.
2014 Academic Summit (photo credit Edelman PR)
In summary, this has been one of the best learning and professionally driven and impactful events I have been invited to attend. I will be heading back to Louisville with a wealth of knowledge and insights to share with my students, but also a more confident mindset with my research agenda. To my fellow professors in PR – this summit by Edelman is not only a great summit, but a great and engaged community full of insights and stories. This is a must-go to event for any professor. I am forever grateful to Edelman for investing the time and effort to be commitment to this cause and to make this bridge for all of us.
Special thanks to Richard Edelman, Nancy Ruscheinski, and the rest of the Edelman PR Chicago team for making this such a wonderful learning experience. Thank you for inviting me to be part of this experience, being generous hosts, and for sharing your stories with all of us.
If you want to see all of the conversations among the participants at the event, make sure to check out the social media feed and the Storify account on the Edelman site.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
0 Comments