PR Bypasses Old Media, New Indies Rise

- Advertisers, broadcasters and publishers beware: Public Relations is increasingly independent and capable of doing for themselves what they used to need traditional media to do for them.The Independent looks at Edelman, the American-owned PR film with 51 offices worldwide, and its recent hires of Richard Sambrook (formerly head of BBC News) as their Chief Content Officer and Stefan Stern (formerly a marquee journalist for Financial Times) as their head of strategy. These hires signify Edelman’s intentions to bring their clients’ material directly to consumers, circumventing the old school methods of feeding traditional media, which Edelman believes to be weakened by distrust and fragmentation (not to mention social networking). Sambrook says “The mantra is that every company has to be a media company in their own right, telling their own stories not just through websites but through branded entertainment, video, iPad and mobile applications.” And achieving this requires careful editorial skills.

by Sophia Savage, posted to Directors, James Cameron, Headliners, Jim Carrey, Independents, Summit, Marketing, Media, Studios, Fox Searchlight on June 3, 2010