VIDEO: Edelman's Steve Rubel on digital trends and challenges for marketers

In an exclusive interview given to Media, Rubel who recently visited Singapore, said: “I do think having all the right agencies around the table is important. We are not the ones to say that ad agencies are not going to be important, we are not the ones to say interactive agencies won't be important but someone has got to be the ringleader and we are increasingly finding that PR agencies are best suited for that.”

According to Rubel, clients have begun to realise that they need to put someone in charge that knows the whole picture. “Its easier for PR guys to understand the whole picture, including advertising, because advertising guys don’t understand PR.”

The explosion of online, according to Rubel, has allowed agencies to do more things for direct audiences. “We can now do things that are unmediated and that’s tremendous. [Digital] is more content driven which PR professionals know quite well - to create content, shape content and how to tell stories. At the same time it is more out of control. That’s something we have always dealt with. We know how to deal with the uncontrolled spaces.”

Rubel goes on to outline three challenges for marketers in the digital sphere including time, funding and measurement. His advise to marketers is to learn to “become more data driven and DIY". The wealth of tools like Go insights, TouTube insights and Klout amongst others could be used directly by marketers.

Asked how marketers can create a balance between earned, paid and owned media, Rubel said that the media sphere has expanded to include social media.

“There is paid, earned, owned and social. You can lump social with some others but I think there are four spheres including social media. [Marketers] have to look at these together. They can’t think of these as silos. The problem is some of it is managed in silos. So you have to think how your paid media can drive attention to your social media and you have to think how social and earned interact back and forth. What's the play there? How does your earned media drive social awareness? I think the secret in integrating those four together is that they are timed to integrate in a powerful way.