Q&A: Edelman's Matthew Harrington on PR in the digital era

Campaign Asia-Pacific sat down with Harrington as he visited Singapore to present a keynote address on public engagement at the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts’ Public Communications Conference. 

How has digital impacted PR companies?

From a PR perspective, digital is the centre of everything we are doing right now. When you look at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, they are driving conversations among people. PR is naturally about conversations and individuals. The digital universe has made that easier.

Do you think PR companies should take the lead in digital? Why?

Yes. Digital firms don’t understand stakeholders and the end consumers. PR companies have the experience of working with and speaking to consumers. Some digital programmes or campaigns are incredibly clever, but they don’t speak to their audience. Brands don’t get their messages through. What we try to do is to connect consumers, create an emotion and prompt an action. I think that’s different from a lot of digital firms.

We are working more closely with CMOs and brand teams than we ever had before. CMOs are trying to make sense of this world of complexity. We integrate the approach into a four-leaf clover—traditional, hybrid, social and owned media—to develop and execute a campaign with a meaningful outcome.

Does the traditional PR toolbox lend the profession to leading the way in digital?

A lot of consumer-products clients look at us for full, entire communication strategy. We are establishing how we are able to brand from the perspective of communication, and the right channel to execute. Our media planning now is more sophisticated and lined up with traditional brand marketers’ expectation.

Over the past few years, we have transferred public relations into a new age of public engagement, which is listening to what consumers say and having a two-way conversation and dialogue. Digital is incredibly exciting for business opportunities, because you are able to innovate more quickly, but also knowing your innovation already has an audience base.

Is a crisis the real test of a brand when it comes to social media?

It’s a real test if a company doesn’t have any social media platform. The test is that they have to build it while being able to manage a crisis, establish audience in the throes of crisis. So, the worst case is to build your social media presence during a crisis. The best companies, that have active social-media channels, can leverage during a crisis.

You miss out on opportunities if you only look at how many ‘Likes’ you have on Facebook, because that’s not demonstrating a real engagement and commitment to consumers. Brands that are doing well are those creating ongoing, compelling content that involves active engagement action on the part of consumers.

The big shift of PR these days is to look for action, behaviour change and development of a relationship between brands and individuals. For example, rather than just a posting site, Facebook would be more valuable when a brand actually asks a question, listens to the conversation and takes some action reports back.  

Public engagement trends affect business, what does drive public trust in organisations?

This trend is prompting us to think about the world of public engagement. We see brands, organisations and governments are doing a better job of listening and from that listening, changing polices.

Companies and brands should be transparent about who they are and what their objectives are. Transparence is far more than just exposure, which is the baseline what’s expected, but being transparent about their business practices and policies, and willing to change based on what you hear from their stakeholders.

How do companies balance the need for risk mitigation along with the mandate for direct, frequent and transparent engagement with their stakeholders?

It’s a big change of mindset. Companies typically try to be reactive on crisis and think that success is minimising crisis by keeping it as contained as possible. That’s probably not the way to do it any longer. The crisis management these days is to manage a risk culture as opposed to risk avoidance. Companies plan and develop procedures, ideally, to create opportunities out of the crisis. The best companies do a much better, proactive job of risk engagement in crisis management.

What’s the biggest opportunity in digital communication in Asia?

Mobile is definitely one of the biggest opportunities. Asia-Pacific is significantly ahead of the rest of the world in mobile. South Korea has very innovative brands and programmes using advanced technology to deliver a product message that’s proving to enable consumers to fall in love deeply with the brands. Singapore, with average 1.5 phones per resident, is the country that clearly gets mobile.

That’s important going forward, whether to use mobile to live an online life, or to be your electronic wallet. This is everything we need. Asia is leading the way for the world in this respect.