By YUE Wei, published March 2012 edition of Asian Business Leaders
“For the 27 years that we’ve been in China, our job remains the same: to listen to our clients and their target audiences, get clients’ information to these target audiences, and create powerful and trustworthy relationships between them,” said Chris Deri to summarize the role of Burson-Marsteller in China.
Chris Deri stressed this was true before the emergence of Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, and even mobile phones.
As early as 4-5 years ago, Burson-Marsteller observed the industry’s shift towards social media, and started to treat it as a very special phenomenon changing the way people get and share information in their social and professional lives. Last year, Burson-Marsteller re-launched its integrated Digital and Social Media Influencer Practice (D/BM) to make sure the company is thinking about digital and customers’ needs in the most up-to-date way possible. Burson-Marsteller takes a very strong integrated approach towards D/BM, which sits at the center of the company, working across all offices, practice areas and largest customers.
In addition, Burson-Marsteller has built proprietary tools and software to listen and identify true key influencers online in real time.
Chris Deri pointed out that a big change in modern companies, from a communications point-of-view, is that companies cannot survive if they take a one-way communications approach.
The brand must engage in the conversation rather than solely deliver their own corporate messages. They will fail if they try to control the conversation.
PR companies play an instrumental role in building trust and credibility in the conversation. Specifically, Burson-Marsteller is committed to creating the right content for its clients, putting this content into the conversations, managing online communities and making sure that clients are up-to-date on the latest conversations.
(translated)
