Exciting times for communicators
by Ulrich Gartner
When flipping through a free newspaper on the tube in Stockholm yesterday, my attention got caught by a headline reading ‘Emailing will have disappeared by the end of this year’. Kids nowadays think that emails are just for business, and used by ‘old people’. They, instead, use websites, notice boards, and social platforms to communicate with each other.
I shared the story with some colleagues who have teenage children. We had a lively conversation which, at the end, confirmed that email is practically dead with the younger generation.
I felt this situation provided some deep insight into communications: A newspaper (declared dead a hundred times but still alive and kicking) predicting the irrelevance of what just recently was the latest gadget in communication (I was so proud when I got the email function on my mobile phone last year!). The story was so interesting that it created word-of-mouth (I told it to my colleagues), and subsequently drove some buzz around the office.
I believe this is exactly what communicators today have to deal with. You can’t just keep doing the stuff you’ve known so well for many years; but you can’t exclusively run after the latest trends either. After all, you’ll have to play different tunes to make a sound that people will listen to.
When I went home in the evening, I looked around in the underground and saw a lot of the kids, who supposedly think email is old news, reading– guess what: the good old newspaper. Exciting times for communicators, aren’t they? See you in Barcelona.
Ulrich Gartner (Sweden) is Vice President Communications Europe at AB Electrolux, a global leader in home appliances. Electrolux has worked intensively with social media over the past years. Most recently, Gartner’s in-house PR team has been honoured with an IRPA Golden World Award 2007 for the best e-PR campaign.
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Ulrich will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on:
Engage! Making Social Media an Integrated Part of a PR Campaign
Social media, still, are much too often used as a separate, even slightly disconnected communication channel for very specifi c target audiences. This session will show how they can, instead, become a truly integrated element of broader PR campaigns, delivering on a number of objectives ranging from consumer engagement to media coverage. Two case studies will be presented: Electrolux Design Lab, a global competition for design students, and Electrolux Kitchenstage, the world’s fi rst online reality show
in a kitchen. The session will discuss strategies, techniques used, results delivered, and learnings gained, with special emphasis on how traditional PR techniques and the use of social media were integrated in order to create maximum impact.
