While watching my favorite snarky-smart newswoman, Rachel Maddow, Miss Apps learned about one of the worlds largest P.R. firms: Burson-Marsteller. BM apparently works with a wide array of people in politics and business to promote their content to the world. According to Maddow, Burson-Marsteller boasts of clientele that includes Blackwater, Union Carbide, The Government of Saudi Arabia, The Gov of Nigeria, Phillip Morris, The Government of Columbia, and (through political association), Hillary Clinton.
Being interested in anyone who is involved in modern message development, Miss Apps was intrigued and thus paid a visit to the website of the big BM. A quote on their page includes some good insights and common sense strategey about the use of Social Media. They state:
Access to new technologies and information is dramatically changing communications, enabling people to consume, create and share information on their own terms, and creating a culture that values individual voices over corporate ones.
Organizations are being forced to re-assess how they connect and converse with their stakeholders. They need to find news ways of talking with, rather than at, their audiences, and to do so in ways that are authentic and credible.
It is good to know the big firms realize a fundamental change is taking place in the way we interact. They acknowledge that people “create and share information on their own terms” and that in order to be successful organizations must learn to talk with instead of talk at their audiences. Miss Apps can only hope that message sinks in with the many world governments and business interests they represent.
