Last week we had a lovely talk from the dazzling Danny Rogers who is the Editor-in-chief for PR week. Danny the author of, ‘Campaigns that Shook the World: The Evolution of Public Relations‘, talked through his intriguing take on the campaigns which shook the world throughout his presentation based on his book.
In addition to this, he has previous experience working for a PR consultancy, has written for the prestigious Guardian and he’s an award winning journalist. Therefore it was an absolute honour to be his first British university to perform at!
Danny began by describing the two original stereotypes of PR and what it used to be viewed as:
1. The first was the corporate PR; where men dominated and it was all about suits.
2. The second which was the female dominated consumer PR where it was about the parties.
He assured us that thankfully it is just a stereotype and not the reality.
In the early 2000’s, it had become a PR driven age of innovation and investment, and Danny stated that it become a ‘telling over selling’ environment.
By 2004 when Facebook launched, this is the exact moment social media started to become an integral tool for PR and by 2008 when Obama was elected into the white house, his communications had a strong focus on new media.
Danny believed that by 2010 the media paradigm had transformed completely. He gave examples such as Twitter driven news and TripAdvisor, referred to as a ‘me-media platform’. He felt that there is still a growth in PR, but it is now at a much slower rate.
‘Mass movements replace mass marketing.’
Danny then moved on to what makes a successful influencer. He used Thatcher as one example as she was authentic and consistent, despite half the country hating her she was able to stay in power between 1979-1990.
In order to have a good PR campaign Danny had a few tips and observations. His top three were to have a strong sense of purpose, a powerful and consistent narrative, and being able to understand the shifting nature of influence. He used Trump as an example as he was consistent and authentic, had a strong sense of purpose and flanked traditional media. It was something that hadn’t been done before.
For the first time you had a man who attacked the establishment and used the ‘elite conspiracy’ as an excuse, which Danny Rogers feels is how the campaign won.
It was an absolute pleasure having Danny as our guest and for the PR Fraternity executive, we were lucky enough to sit-down and get to know him before the event over coffee!
He was able to give us an insight into the PR industry and individually gave the fraternity advice in the different PR fields each of us were interested in – a real help for budding PR practitioners to-be.
if you missed out then don’t worry – just head over to our PR Fraternity on Facebook for news on our future events!
The PR Fraternity 