Commentary
Edelman Thinks PR Can Take Over Madison Ave
- by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 6, 2014
Watch out Madison Avenue. The PR industry is after your job. PR giant Edelman has launched a global branding campaign called “Show Up Differently” that, in addition to showcasing the
agency, calls upon the public relations industry to stand up to Madison Avenue. Edelmen CEO Richard Edelman believes a public relations agency can be a brand's lead agency because PR is a 24/7
business. Good luck with that, Dick.
It's a risk both agencies and brands must accept. There's always a chance, after having worked together for a while, that one side will defect to the
other. And that, reportedly, is exactly what happened to long-time agency/client couple TBWA\Media Arts Lab and Apple. TBWA\MAL Group Creative Directors Hector Muelas and Ricardo Viramontes, who have
been with the agency for a year, are taking creative director roles at Apple. Obviously, neither side is commenting but when a gig at Apple presents itself, a shift like this is totally
understandable.
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PR agencies do often have a competence in content marketing as well as the offline (and sometimes online) PR elements. They can also be trained in social media (shared/earned). So, perhaps Richard Edelman has a point.
As we built out the online earned/shared media competence at Didit, we found that many best practices from PR combined with Social Media and SEO best practices to result in a campaign that delivers across all three. One reason we bought a PR firm. ;-)