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Marketing isn’t the only organizational function that had to adapt to meet the demands of empowered stakeholders. Media relations—the founding tenet of public relations (PR) and corporate communications—has experienced a seismic shift as the Internet’s ubiquity permeated every facet of business. The weight traditional media always carried in making or breaking brands and reputations lessened with the emergence of every new digital platform. Likewise, journalism’s romanticized standards, built up by Algonquin Round Table-esque meetings of the minds and immortalized by the investigative, live-the-story styles of the Thompsons, Woodwards, and Wolfes of the profession, are unrecognizable in a time when an opinion and an Internet connection are all it takes to be a reporter.

The new media relations

“Today, after two centuries of institutionalized media, content creation has been democratized,” said Sir Martin Sorrell, group chief executive of WPP. “The voice of ordinary people is increasingly as loud as that of mainstream media. Now everyone has the potential to influence a company’s reputation—whether peer-to-peer, word-of-mouth, or through online comparison and product recommendation sites. Conversation is in. For brands to have influence, they must be talking—not just mindless chatter, but serious information presented in an authentic way.”

We will be looking at media relations in the context of a three-dimensional media landscape governed by impulse above logic, chaos above order. The growing role of digital media in defining corporate brands and reputations initially put many business leaders on the defensive, but many now are finding that they don’t have the choice when it comes to joining the conversation. When the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, it’s step up or step aside. With the corporate communication function at the helm, organizations are modifying their media strategies accordingly. Here we will talk in detail about the new media relations environment that corporate executives now face, as well as the challenges and opportunities that are present in communicating with the media, both as a stakeholder group and as a vehicle for reaching consumer audiences. They also will offer strategies for understanding the nuances of communicating news and information effectively to the “press”—an entity made profoundly nebulous by consumer-generated media, digital platforms, and the emergence of citizen journalists.

Growth of online media

The media’s influence over the successes and failures of companies is not a recent phenomenon; what is recent, however, are the increasing difficulties defining who—and what—the media are. Traditional media—newspapers, magazines, television, radio—have served as a conduit of information between companies and their stakeholders for ages, but these platforms have always acted more as a mouthpiece for corporate news rather than as a channel for two-way communications. Now, blogs, social media outlets, and online communities have empowered anyone to act as a journalist of sorts—hence the term citizen journalism—and to engage various audiences in conversations that have acute effects on the reputations of companies. As online interaction media became more prominent, in fact, the general public’s opinion of the “most essential medium” changed radically; in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the public’s choice of the Internet as the most essential medium has increased by 39%, whereas newspapers and radio decreased by 10% and 53%, respectively. Meanwhile, television held its ground with a mild 8% increase.

Whether out of the spirit of innovation or the fear of being left in the dust, traditional media outlets made the transition online as the public’s consumption habits became more digitally inclined.

Plus, the rise of online news from nontraditional sources in the form of bloggers lends further support to corporations developing a thoughtful approach to their media relations with both traditional and nontraditional media; the 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer (which focuses on influentials) indicated that 86% of Internet users rank reading news as the top activity they engage in online, and social media as a source for corporate information is gaining credibility, especially among younger influentials.

This monumental change in the public’s media consumption habits, coupled with the explosion in relevance of consumer-generated media, affects both businesses and media organizations. For starters, one could argue, as the former president of CBS News did, that “every company is a media company” to some extent because businesses now create content that goes directly to their stakeholders without the filter of traditional media’s editorial standards. The quality-control responsibilities still lie with the corporate communication function in almost all cases, but now these responsibilities have very little to do simply with crafting press releases and sending them out on the newswires. Rather, building relationships with influential media, both online and offline, is the crux of the success or failure of media relations campaigns.

Digitalization of media

As mentioned previously, media relations’ backroom iteration within corporate organizations was based primarily on primitive tactics meant to inspire reporters to give a company positive coverage: writing press releases, coordinating news conferences, planning events, announcing new-product launches, etc. In the days before email communications were ubiquitous, these outreach efforts came in the form of cold calling reporters and mailing or faxing releases, event invitations, or announcements. The girth of a PR professional’s Rolodex was one of the best judgements of success, as was the “thump factor”—that is, the loudness of the thump when the book of press clips mentioning the company hit the desk.

Today, the convergence of old and new media outlets online makes these tactics archaic, if only because they don’t facilitate relationship-building, engaging conservations, or targeted outreach. However, while the media are still a conduit for message dissemination via these channels, they also have become a stakeholder group, setting their own preferences and acting on their own whims.

In fact, many of the most influential media representatives live and work solely in the online space, sparking an argument about whether traditional media have been felled at the hands of the “digerati”.

Excerpt from ‘Digital Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications’ by Paul A. Argenti & Courtney M. Barnes. Reproduced with permission © 2009, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited. Price: Rs 495. Vishwanath_Ghanekar@mcgraw-hill.com