PRWeek visited Boston for a roundtable discussion on digital PR. Here’s video featuring some of that conversation, with remarks summarized below.
Bonin Bough, Executive VP of Social, Interactive and Emerging Media at Weber Shamwick
2008 will see us moving closer to integrated programs. We need to see companies put a greater percentage of marketing budgets into digital media to see how it moves the needle on product sales. Sees more companies testing social media internally to learn what works and what doesn’t.
Paula Drum, Vice President of Marketing for Digital Solutions for H&R Block
Customer engagement is an important trend for digital marketing in 2008. The 1-on-1 interaction with customers is the big difference between digital media and mass media. H&R Block used podcasts to deliver tax advice in an easily consumable method. About 30 podcasts were distributed through the company’s online community and iTunes.
Julie Atherton, Director, Hill & Knowlton Digital
Digital media are gaining traction for crisis and issues management, a long-time strength for H&K. Sees video sharing through sites like YouTube as an engagement point for communicating to various stakeholder groups.
Erin Byrne, Global Chief Digital Strategist, Burston-Marsteller
The biggest challenge for digital media is helping companies understand digital touches all areas within marketing and communications program. Sees a shift from conversation to collaboration as an emerging trend in 2008.
Kevin Kempskie, Senior Manager of Technology, Thought Leadership, Public Relations and Social Media at EMC
EMC is experimenting with lots of digital media, with varied success. Social media press
releases had mixed results on wire services, but news media seem to appreciate the aggregation of digital content in a single place. Marketing departments like social media press releases, too, because it gives added life to digital content. EMC has used YouTube for PR when launching new products. Also
experimenting with Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook/MySpace. Worked with outside agency to use Facebook to build a community press, analysts and
pundits interested in EMC.