Technology Changing Public Relations

New to the working world of public relations, I experienced my first webinar last week. For an hour and a half, six colleagues and I sat around a conference table watching a nationally broadcast webinar intended to give PR companies tips from other pros about the always evolving world of PR.

During this webinar we each followed along with PowerPoint handouts provided by the company putting on the presentation. We saw examples of creative marketing and public relations tactics that were successful when promoting new products in order to get inspiration for promoting our own clients. Some examples of successful marketing included a promotion for the upcoming Batman movie in which an eerie picture of the joker was revealed one pixel at a time by viewers logging in to view the site. Here's the picture.

It is especially eerie in light of recent events (the sudden death of Heath Ledger). Other examples included a CocaCola commercial and the Dove transformation of beauty advertisement.

The Dove ad does a great job of showing how digital enhancement greatly changes the appearance of women in ads. You watch as aa normal woman transforms into a model.

Webinars such as this, are being used worldwide as mini-conferences that unite companies within an industry to share tips and give advice on creative ways to work with clients. At the public relations firm I am interning at, we attend at least one webinar or nationally broadcast phone conference each week, to keep our company connected to the industry and to learn new innovative ways to best showcase our clients. Other major PR companies, such as Edelman, use webinars as a means of communicating to the public about blogs and various communication issues. It is a great way to show us what other companies are doing, what works, what does not and provide creative inspiration for our own unique marketing and PR ideas.

Check out this example of a crisis communications webinar: