Look beyond traditional media outlets to communicate your message.

One sentence BIG IDEA:

Why is this relevant to marketers?

The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer report found that:

The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust has changed profoundly in the past year—people have shifted their trust to the relationships within their control, most notably their employers. Globally, 75 percent of people trust “my employer” to do what is right, significantly more than NGOs (57 percent), business (56 percent) and media (47percent).
Fifty-eight percent of general population employees say they look to their employer to be a trustworthy source of information about contentious societal issues.

This is important for two reasons:

1) CEOs are no longer expected to take a neutral stance on controversial or societal issues. It can benefit your organization’s public perception to have an active CEO take a strategic stance on a societal issue. However, be prepared for some level of backlash from at least a portion of your target market if you move into controversial territory.

71 percent of employees believe it’s critically important for “my CEO” to respond to challenging times.
More than three-quarters (76 percent) of the general population concur—they say they want CEOs to take the lead on change instead of waiting for government to impose it.

2) As a marketer, you can leverage partner organizations to help communicate to a wider audience. Think outside of just traditional media outlets.

Relevant EXAMPLES:

LoCo Cookers sells turkey fryers. Instead of just going to the media with a message, we suggested that they partner with fire departments across the country to spread a fire safety message about frying turkeys using the fire departments as the channel to get the message across instead of the traditional media.

Challenge for Attendees:

Think about how you can do a joint project (blog post, article, event, white paper, book, speaking presentation, fund raiser, video, etc.) with an organization that is not a traditional media outlet, but that reaches your target market.

Sources:

https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer

Relevant hashtags: #PRtip #PR #publicrelations #mediarelations