I think the future is really in digital PR. There will be a stage when all information will have become digital. You can take the example of the US. The media model is changing; today everything is being migrated onto the Internet. I think there are enormous opportunities for public relations through this. The question is how to tell the story today, when a picture says a thousand words whereas a video says a million words.
Pam Edstrom, Executive Vice President and Partner of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE), is the principal strategic advisor for the agency’s Innovation Communications work.
Prior to being with Waggener, Edstrom has worked as Public Relations Manager at Tektronix Inc and Microsoft. Her strategic expertise lies in a range of technology industries, from personal computing to semiconductors.
Edstrom was named as one of Top 25 Executives by Computer Reseller News in 1994, and recently recognised as PR Week’s 50 Most Powerful Women in PR and one of its 100 Most Influential PR People of the 20th Century. Upside magazine called her one of the 100 most influential persons in the digital world.
Edstrom holds a Master’s degree in Criminology from Portland State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Theatre from University of Minnesota. She is involved in a variety of political and non-profit projects.
Edstrom, who was in Mumbai to announce WE’s affiliation with Adfactors PR, feels that digital is the way for the PR industry. In conversation with exchange4media’s Supriya Thanawala, she shares how the space in consumer technology, medical healthcare and new forms of energy are some of the vital areas that need to be tapped. Excerpts:
Q. While you are in India, do you plan to source any talent from here? Is there going to be an exchange of talent between WE and Adfactors?
Talent is the most important thing for us. There will definitely be a talent exchange. Most good companies know how to be creative and grow talent, and those are companies that do well.
Q. What was the reason for your visit to India?
Firstly, the most important reason for this visit is the formal announcement on the affiliation between WE and Adfactors. This announcement is for the Adfactors people and also the broader community here. While we are here, we are going to be talking about some specific programmes and outlining how we plan to take these forward. We also plan to discuss mutual opportunities here.
Q. How did the alliance come about?
WE had been looking for a client in India for a while now. We believe that partnership with people who have deep expertise is the way to go. We have spoken to a lot of people here, and finally narrowed down on a couple of companies. The clear leader among all of them was Adfactors. It is about many things: the way they view their clients in the long-term; the chemistry between them.
Q. What are some potential trends that you see in the PR domain? Where do you see your business in terms of the future?
I think the future is really in digital PR. There will be a stage when all information will have become digital. You can take the example of the US. The media model is changing; today everything is being migrated onto the Internet. I think there are enormous opportunities for public relations through this. The question is how to tell the story today, when a picture says a thousand words whereas a video says a million words. There was a time when everyone used to have fixed deadlines. Today things have changed, and it is much more dynamic. We are not tied down; anyone can break a certain story anywhere in the world.
Q. Where do you see market opportunities?
As an affiliation, Adfactors and WE currently see three market opportunities. These are in the spheres of consumer technology, medical healthcare, and new forms of energy -- car engines, cleaner sources of energy, or all types of energies. These are the areas that look promising to us. Innovation is one of the key methods that we are adopting. The affiliation will also help the clientele of Adfactors coming to Europe and the US, and on the other hand, clients of WE will have a better opportunity to understand the Indian market.
One of the areas that have become very important is to focus on the key cities, but it is important to have a presence even in smaller cities. We find that Adfactors is very well placed there as well, which will also be a great advantage. So it won’t include just the big cities like Delhi and Bangalore that we will be dealing with. The kind of experience that Adfactors has -- in terms of knowledge and understanding -- is vast.
Q. Could you talk a little about how you have used the online media in the past?
The classic example was that of the promotion we did for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. For the promotion of IE 7, we invited around 12 bloggers for dinner, who were all extremely interested in knowing about the Microsoft software. We told them about the website from where they could download the new IE 7. Within the next few days, we found that the number of downloads for IE 7 had shot up tremendously. Through these bloggers, a lot of people found out about where to download IE 7 entirely through the Internet itself. We found that bloggers could be a great distribution mechanism. This is one of the ways in which the online medium can be used very effectively. Today, even most of our press releases are online, and all of them have links, as well as videos. They have a lot of information packaged usefully. It is the simple things that we are doing that will have an impact.
Q. Have you used any traditional media besides the Internet?
Sometime ago, we did target the Sunday NY Times for one of our clients. The story where our client was mentioned got huge visibility, since most people access the Sunday NY Times in print, and read it while relaxing with their coffee. Even though the NY Times is a traditional print medium, it had an immense ripple effect -- the story was picked up by other news organisations like CNET and Bloomberg.com as well, offline as well as online.