We were privileged to have on campus Mr. Robert Holdheim, Edelman CEO – Middle East, Africa, South Asia CEO, along with the Ms. Ipshita Sen, Head of Operations & Employee Engagement and Mr. Pankaj Suri, India HR head.
Edelman is the world’s largest independently owned public relations firm with revenues of over $734 million annually and a 5000 strong employee base. Edelman India’s operations consists of 400 people in offices across 11 cities including Mumbai and Hyderabad, and their current client base includes the likes of Unilever, Starbucks, Microsoft, Pfizer, HP, Johnson &Johnson and nearly every other big brand that you can think of.
Three things that haven’t changed
a. Time and attention is still finite
Information overload is all consuming. Our time and attention is limited and has become an even more valuable commodity.
b. We love a good story
Good stories are both easy to tell and easy to remember. The order of the day is to create compelling content that is memorable.
c. Content is king
PR is no longer only about press releases. PR is now about creation and dissemination of content.
Robert ended by giving an example of the bleeding edge of communication – the Creative Newsroom. A prime example of this is the Oreo “You can still dunk in the dark” Tweet (Link: https://twitter.com/Oreo/status/298246571718483968) during the 2014 Superbowl during the famous power out at half time. At at time when advertisers pay $3-5 mil per ad, Oreo stole the entire Superbowl with this one tweet for absolutely free.
—
Kavir Kaycee
Class of 2015
