So welcome to What Drives You - if I could drive us out of the Marriot.
That's a good start.
I’m Karen Tso and this is my new ride for the week.
I’m taking it for a spin along the Croisette for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity -
and bringing along some of the biggest names in advertising, business and entertainment.
As we ask…
Today, I’m taking a trip down memory lane with Edelman President and CEO Richard Edelman.
Edelman has been running the global communications and marketing firm for more than 20 years.
During that time, the company was named ‘PR Agency of the Decade’ by Advertising Age and the Holmes Report.
But first we have to head back to 1952, before Richard Edelman was even born.
That’s when his father, Daniel Edelman, founded the firm.
Richard was born just a few years later and grew up surrounded by entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Throughout my youth he would bring over various characters
such as Orville Redenbacher, the popcorn king. I learned to cook popcorn that way - never burned.
And I got to meet Colonel Harland Sanders.
So I always was hanging around with entrepreneurs and my dad wasn't shy about bringing clients home.
Edelman’s education took him away from the excitement of the big city in his teens.
But returning to join his father’s business was never the original plan.
I went away to prep school when I was 15 to the wilds of New Hampshire. No girls.
No distractions.
No distractions, no civilization a lot of trees.
I went to college in Harvard, and Harvard B school and I was all set to go work in product marketing in Playtex.
My dad had an offer to be acquired by DDB advertising and he didn't really want to sell the company.
He said, “Please come work here for a year, and if you don't like it, you're in an MBA.
You can go somewhere else.” And here I am 40 years later, can you believe?
Together, the pair managed to keep the business in the family,
turning down offers from big advertising holding companies along the way.
So together we really built the agency.
The best thing we did is not to sell out to one of the big advertising holding companies
because we were able to diversify, also hang on during recessions and not make any money.
And invest in the next leg of growth.
That's quite extraordinary because even in good times now,
we've seen acquisition after acquisition by the agencies.
So how have you managed to stay independent?
Just say no.
The money wasn't tempting at some point because I'm sure you've been offered a big paycheck?
No, because you know neither of us care that much about money.
Actually what matters most to us is the work.
We're sort of used to our own bosses, changing our minds
and doing what you do when you’re an entrepreneur, figuring it out.
20 years after joining, Edelman was made President and CEO of the company,
and has continued to build his father’s global vision.
Our business strategy was to build an infrastructure that made us global.
So we're now in 65 cities and we actually believe now that we're plenty global.
Now what we're trying to do is become more, I guess, full service.
So we call ourselves a communications marketing firm, not just a PR firm.
You know when I started it was six million dollars, and we're getting near a billion dollars.
That's quite a progress for a family business.
The PR and media world of tomorrow has left many in the industry with questions
over how to harness technology and data - and Edelman is no exception.
Does technology present a different ball game potentially?
Well there are multiple things happening to our business.
First is the disruption of the media, our traditional channel has been talking to reporters.
There are half as many reporters at local newspapers, etc.
I want to talk about the evolution in terms of targeting stories to journalists.
But now these days you have a different platform you have social media.
Well, I look at the media ecosystem really in four parts.
There's mainstream, there's shared, there's owned and then there's paid.
And there's some overlap like a venn diagram, but the mainstream media is not as you say
necessarily the first place or the first port of call because some stories need to get momentum.
And they need in a sense to be owned by the community.
Edelman’s time at the company has been focused on marketing and reputation management.
He thinks it’s time for brands to take a stand on the issues.
I want brands to take on the issues of the day.
I believe that somehow brand marketing is the new democracy.
Sounds like you’re seeking utopia though, these are brands that are there for commercial purposes.
But I think that brands should be there for commercial purposes
and take advantage of this ethos of the moment.
We do want workers to work the right amount of time and we do want sustainability
and we do also want to have a place for discussion.
It's a partnership, it's not just us selling stuff to you, that it's a more equal kind of relationship.