Christensen opens the book with a disturbing story. At the 30^th reunion of his Harvard Business School class, about half of his returning classmates related stories of divorce, alienated kids and personal unhappiness. They had great careers but little fulfillment. Worst of all, one of their classmates, Jeffrey Skilling, CEO of Enron, who had been the hero of the prior reunion, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to jail. He writes of Skilling, “I did not recognize the finance shark depicted in the media. When his career unraveled with his conviction on multiple federal felony charges related to Enron’s financial collapse, it not only shocked me that he had gone wrong, but how spectacularly he had done so.” The author also realizes that his classmates from Oxford University, where he went for his Rhodes Scholarship, were suffering from similar breaches of ethics, including one who played a prominent role in an insider trading ring.

He has several observations that should force all of us to look in the mirror:

1. Proper Resource Allocation — The danger for high-achieving people is that they’ll unconsciously allocate their resources to activities that yield the most immediate, tangible accomplishments. He suggests that it is easier to quantify a promotion, raise or bonus because they can then be used to finance a “better lifestyle” for family, from vacations to cars to expensive houses. This leads to lifestyle demands that “lock in place a personal resource allocation process.”
2. Family Time — Investing time and energy in family relationships “does not offer the same immediate sense of achievement that a fast-track career does.” He notes that you can neglect your relationship with your spouse or children without short-term consequences. But you cannot turn the clock back. He gives vivid evidence of the importance of a parent speaking with a child in the first two-and-a-half years of life, beyond commands like “drink your milk,” to the more complex grown-up conversation. The result is a much better prepared child, able to soar in nursery school.
3. Outsourcing is Bad News — He talks about his youth, when his family raised its own fruit and vegetables, before the advent of wrinkle-free clothes standing for hours ironing or shoveling the driveway after a big snowstorm. He wants there to be more time spent by parents with kids to develop their values.
4. The School of Experience — Christensen is emphatic about allowing children to fail. “Encourage them to stretch, to aim for lofty goals. If they don’t succeed, make sure you’re there to help them learn the right lesson; that when you aim to achieve great things, it is inevitable that sometimes you’re not going to make it.”
5. The Way Our Family Behaves — He so acutely observes, “A culture happens, whether you want it to or not. The only question is, ‘How hard are you going to try to influence it?’” He suggests that you praise the good behavior, and be consistent in modeling appropriate interaction with friends and family.

I am so proud of my daughters. Margot graduates from business school a week from Thursday, Tory graduates from college next Saturday and Amanda from high school next Friday. Roz and I have tried our best to make them hard-working, unspoiled, open-minded and decent young adults who will do something with their lives. As Christensen writes, “As parents, we share a common worry; one day our children are going to be faced with a tough decision and we are not going to be there to make sure they do the right thing. All we can do is hope that somehow we have raised them well enough that they come to the right conclusion by themselves.”

I have every confidence that when the time comes, each of them will make the right call. Now it’s on to graduation week; here’s hoping that I don’t mess up the photo taking part.

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

Image by Desert News.

What was surprising, even shocking, was the opening remarks by The Conference Board CEO Jon Spector, who unveiled his group’s own study of CEOs in Asia, Europe and the U.S. The Conference Board found that CEOs rank human capital, operational excellence, innovation, customer relationships, global political risks and government regulation as the top challenges for 2013. Dead last in every region were corporate brand/reputation, sustainability and trust in business. Financial services was the only industry in which trust in business moved out of the cellar — it was ranked seventh by CEOs in that beleaguered sector.

The Conference Board said of the low ranking by CEOs of trust in business, “New regulations and their more consistent enforcement have created even greater transparency, which is the first step in restoring trust.” The study authors go on to say, “Many executives believe that business has done a poor job of telling its story and let hostile critics define it by the misdeeds and malfeasance of a minority of corrupt individuals.” In the U.S., government regulation is seen as the second most important challenge for business. The U.S. is the only region in the world where government regulation even ranks in the top five challenges. So here you have a demand for less regulation while CEOs suggest that enforcement of the new regulations has restored trust; this is a baffling logic problem.

The Conference Board findings directly contradict the data released by our firm in January that showed real suspicion of business, particularly in developed markets. You may recall that only 18 percent of respondents in the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer trust a business leader to tell the truth in a complex situation. Forty-eight percent believe that excessive compensation and a culture of corruption are responsible for the problems in banking. Trust in the CEO as a spokesperson is half as much as for a technical expert, academic or person like you. And nearly two thirds believe that the bad behavior evident in financial services is now spreading to all industries.

My fellow panelist, Steve Paskoff, released his own survey results on attitudes of employees in the U.S., who find a generally inhospitable climate of trust in the workplace as a result of inconsistency, unprofessional conduct, dishonesty and an external focus by CEOs. Paskoff said, “Leaders have to model the values because trust is based on behavior – do you do what you say? Behavior matters, not just the numbers. You have to encourage workers to raise their concerns. You will get much more out of the human capital – better productivity, lower turnover, less chatter at the water cooler or online in blogs like Cafepharma.”

The move to split the jobs of chairman and chief executive officer in the U.S. and to limit compensation in the financial sector in Europe are warning signals for those of us in business. The problems of individual companies or a sector (financial services) are weighing down the reputation of the rest of business, a classic case of what the economists term an externality. The solution is to have a higher standard, the License to Lead, to replace License to Operate. It moves the goal posts from meeting the minimum legal standard to a higher objective of involvement in solutions for society’s problems as part of the mandate of business. It further requires radical transparency on performance, consistent communication with stakeholders and incentive compensation awarded on more than market share or stock price. Business as usual will not make the grade.

As Douglas Flint, HSBC’s* chairman, recently said at the St. Gallen Symposium, “I don’t think it matters what [we] bankers think about our reputation; it only matters what’s reflected back to us by society.”

And it’s a reflection that business should fix.

*Edelman Client

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

I agree with Senay’s assessment of the convergence of media. I also agree with his recruitment of non-traditional talent. Where we part company is his strategy for becoming a one-stop shop that is as much an ad agency as PR firm. At Edelman, we are going to evolve and expand the remit of the public relations business.

The world is moving in our direction. We are not selling to an audience; we are trying to build relationships across the community of stakeholders. The horizontal, peer-to-peer, conversation is supplanting the top-down, controlled messaging that is the essence of advertising. The consumer is now also an employee, a shareholder, a member of an NGO, a community activist and a passionate user of products willing to advise on design.

PR is more than a set of tactics or tools. It’s a mindset; the ideas that come from PR people are different than those that come from advertising people. Both are engaged in storytelling, but the PR idea stimulates discussion and has the potential to play out over years. A PR idea has to start with relevancy and newsworthiness.

We are going to take full advantage of the inherent advantages of PR, which are credibility, speed, two-way interaction and continuous story creation. In the end, the consumer may not care about the source of the content, but quality counts.

We see massive white space opportunities with media, squeezed by declining print circulation and diminished digital advertising rates. We can accelerate promising content through promoted tweets and sponsored lists that go viral. We are going to reinvent the advertorial in cooperation with mainstream media. We will propose topics for special reports financed by a sponsor but with editorial autonomy. We will create a place for intelligent debate, from salon dinners to Twitter newsfeeds and industry conferences.

It is public relations that is best poised to serve clients in a dynamic marketplace that can be disrupted by a poor customer experience well catalogued in social media. We listen, we recommend policy change, we announce the new approach giving due credit to the aggrieved customer who pointed out the problem.

We see the potential of expanding into new product development, utilizing the community. Our client Adobe uses Facebook (image above) and its fans to beta test its products while in the development phase, then gives credit to members for useful adjustments. For this program we developed Adobe’s Create Manifesto, which helped frame advertising and overall communications.

We are playing a broader role, but we have to focus in our area of comparable advantage. Clients want specialist expertise and the opportunity to choose best in class partners. We are happy to work with advertising agencies, CRM and media buying firms for the betterment of clients.

Our industry has grown more slowly than advertising and much slower than digital in the past year. We have to re-frame our argument. Some will opt for the FH play of becoming a full-service provider. Others, like Edelman, will expand the definition of PR.

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

You will see a photo of my dad (above), age five, shoveling snow away in front of a house in Brooklyn. This was his favorite shot from his childhood. “See, that’s me. I was working hard even back then. I was always doing something,” he would tell me. He reminisced about sitting in the back seat of the family car as they took the drive from Brooklyn into Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge when the family relocated to the Upper West Side. “I saw the big buildings and the hustle and bustle. I knew this was where I wanted to be.” Then he recalled walking over to Columbia’s campus at age 10 to watch Lou Gehrig play baseball for the Lions. “He hit a home run to the steps of Low Memorial Library. That’s when they played ball on South Field.”

He built a global PR firm which serves clients in 64 cities. But he never changed at his core. Every day was a new challenge. There would be no slackening of effort. He would never take anything for granted. He would be at his desk or visiting the offices or seeing clients. He would be fair, decent and honest. He would save and reinvest, instead of spending on conspicuous items. He would adore his wife, cherish his family and persuade each of his kids to join the business. He would be an active member of his community, by volunteering for charitable boards, engaging with politicians and going to synagogue.

I hope that you enjoy the film and my speech. I miss him every day but know that he is on my shoulder for big decisions. After 35 years of working side by side, I pretty much know what he would recommend—do the right thing, not the short cut or the financially advantageous thing.

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

April 26, 2013 Correction: An earlier version of this post stated the Paladin Award was given from PRSA. The Award was given from The PRSA Foundation.

For the media business, this was an important test of new muscles. I had a chance to speak today with Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL* about how his company covered the disaster.

1. Huff Post Live was a top-ranked destination in search engines for those seeking real-time coverage. The investment in Skype* connections for Huffington Post reporters on the scene made their video footage among the first to make it onto the web. I found that the video linked to written commentary made this a much more useful stop than YouTube.
2. Patch, the local news network, was able to provide as many as 50 reporters who contributed to the Boston coverage. The journalists were finding runners and spectators who were from towns around Boston, who added immeasurably to the quality of the commentary as first person witnesses.
3. The AOL landing page served as an aggregation site for charities seeking assistance or as a guide for those wanting to help.
4. Both Huffington Post and Patch continued to update stories throughout the evening and, into the wee hours. By contrast, the mainstream media, even those based locally, had stories on line that were as much as eight hours old.

For the PR people in government, there is a new expectation of communicators as the single point of entry for up-to-date information. The Boston Police Department received kudos from the public for its speedy response to the crisis. For example, when cell service was taken down to prevent possible triggering of additional bombs, the Police used Twitter to tell broadcast media where to park their trucks for interviews.

I had a discussion with Rachel Haot, chief digital officer of New York City, on a panel at the Arthur Page Society Spring Seminar about ten days ago on this very subject. Specifically, Haot discussed social media use during Hurricane Sandy. Here are the five key points from her presentation:

1. Have a relationship of trust with key social media so that they can be your partners in reaching the public. Twitter offered free sponsored tweets for public service messages during the disaster.
2. Be present on all social platforms with frequently updated content. There is a critical listening function for the digital team.
3. Make sure that you are offering speedy customer service. Haot’s digital operation was tied into the police and fire departments, which were able to respond to requests for help from stranded drivers.
4. Be an aggregator and a curator. The quality of information is so improved by crowd-sourcing of visuals and in-person testimony.
5. Have an agreed-upon process on content flow, with the Mayor’s office exerting ultimate control. One example to prevent panic was the banning of all capital letters in communications.

Times of crisis have always been opportunities for PR and media to step up to larger public responsibilities. Now, this is more true than ever given the higher bar on transparency and two-way communication.

*Edelman client

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

Image by Aaron Tang.

• Infectious Diseases
• Poverty
• Unhealthy Behaviors Leading to Non-Communicable Diseases
• Inept Health Care Systems

He spoke eloquently about behavior modification for infectious and non-communicable diseases. “Here is the main lesson we have derived from the designated driver program that seeks to stop drinking and driving. It is not enough to preach. It is not a lack of knowledge that we observe. Knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient factor to create change. You have to create incentives to change. A perfect example is raising taxes on tobacco; teens cannot afford expensive cigarettes.”

He went on to discuss the importance of good communications in preventing the spread of epidemics such as the avian flu. “We can use social networks to diagnose disease — a good example is a rise in searches on Google when an outbreak is beginning. And we need to speak through mainstream as well as social channels to tell those who show symptoms to see the doctor or stay at home.”

Frenk described a fundamental change in the education system that is coming from on-line learning. “We are experimenting with doing homework in the classroom through team problem-solving and simulation. You can listen to the lecture at home.” He said that the school is offering free on-line courses to the public. Fifty-five thousand signed up and 8,000 completed the entire program, including the exam. “We are at the point where online tools can instruct the masses in public health.”

He noted that the health establishment should be proud of itself in accomplishing a long-sought goal, longer life expectancy. “The aging population is a big achievement. But there is the fact of competing risks, meaning that you are going to die of something someday.”

Frenk was very tough on the obesity issue. “This is the first generation of Americans that will die younger than its parents. This can be attributed largely to obesity and sedentary lifestyles. We have to create an environment that encourages physical activity; let’s design cities to promote walking. But we also have to end subsidies that make it cheaper to buy an empty calorie. We should make it cheaper and easier to buy fresh produce.”

Several of our major clients are using the imminent implementation of “Obamacare” as a spur to change their health policies. They are putting good-for-you food into the company cafeteria. They are reducing health care premiums for those who regularly report on their blood pressure and weight plus take an annual physical exam. Edelman offers an employee who quits smoking $2,000 in cash plus a hotline to discuss stress at home or in the workplace. Chevron (an Edelman client) has an award-winning program to test workers for HIV-AIDS in developing markets. As Dean Frenk concluded, “It is going to take regulatory action, education and involvement by business to shape an environment in which the healthy choice is the easy one.”

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

Image by Ariel Gutiérrez Vivanco.

Dr. Chen was passionate about the global aspirations of the University. He does not want to establish a second campus outside of Beijing. “The entire focus for us must be to maintain our quality; this must be the center of all of our decisions.” Rather, he wants to bring the world to Tsinghua. Ten percent of all the students at the school are from overseas. They mingle with the Chinese students. “We want our foreign kids to see the Chinese culture and to make friends with local students,” he said. This is in sharp contrast to the experience that my daughter had at the Hamilton College program at Minzu University, in Beijing where her group of expatriates was kept separate from the main body of students. Note that there was a 22 percent increase in Chinese students coming to the U.S. last year, while only a two percent rise in Americans going to study in China. “Too many Americans come to study in China and only get language training. That is a missed opportunity. There is a way to integrate the students at the school.”

He said that Tsinghua began as a science and humanities school, then in the 1950s moved toward a special focus on science and technology. In the 1980s, the focus was broadened again, this time to be science and humanities, plus professional schools in business, law, medicine and media. The business school is especially popular. “We integrate our engineering and technology work into the MBA course, calling it MBAx. For the business school, half of the lectures are in English. Seventy percent of incoming business students have international experience.” The school also runs a science park that is an incubator for technologies spawned there.

He explained that the school is truly for the best and brightest without regard for family income. “Twenty-three percent of our students come from poor families. We give them scholarships, in part funded by endowment, in part by using the tuition of full-pay students. Our annual cost is $800 for a student; this is decided by the central government.” He said that the average professor gets a salary of $30,000 but also gets free housing, a major benefit when apartments are going for over $1 million in the area near the school.

The school is looking carefully at digital delivery of education, “especially at the local level in China. We are confident that the learning pattern will change. We will have a more flexible curriculum. There will be student teams representing different specialist schools working on complex problems,” he noted.

Dr. Chen’s background is in environmental systems. He is profoundly interested in finding solutions to China’s green issues. He said, “The key to change will be the establishment of a legal regulatory system that governs environmental performance. At present, violators get only a small penalty. It will also be up to the ordinary people of China who see economic development as the priority at the moment instead of environment.”

This man is the next generation of leadership in China. He is 49 years old, the youngest president of Tsinghua since the early 1960s. He lived overseas for a decade. He is the first president not to hold the title of Academician of Chinese Academy of Science and Engineering. He is so proud that the U.S. State Department is now sending its officials to train at the University before serving in China. He is a bridge-builder, a listener and a decent man determined to make Tsinghua a place where “there can be free discussion of ideas on the basis of academic freedom.” We will hear much more of him and the school.

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

On the Saturday evening prior to my leaving for Europe, I had my first Passover since my father’s death. I had to sit at the head of the table and conduct the service. My mother and sister were able associates as we retold the story of the flight from Egypt. My mother lit the candles and said the prayer, then later did her inimitable version of Dayenu, “it would have been enough,” in Hebrew.

After arriving in Paris early on Monday, my experience began at noon with a tour of the Shoah Memorial, one of the oldest Holocaust museums in the world, opened even before Yad Vashem in 1953. As I was walking into the museum, a group of elderly people was gathering outdoors to hear Serge Klarsfeld, noted Nazi hunter. On the table was a notecard with the date, March 25, 1943, and another with the town of Drancy. The people were gathered to commemorate the transport of French Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau on that day 60 years ago, as they do every day, with a different collection of mourners.

The tour was conducted by the director, Jacques Fredj, who provided several important statistics. Seventy-five thousand French Jews were sent to the gas chambers; 225,000 were saved. About half of the Jews in France at the time were long-standing residents; the others were relatively recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. There was no distinction made between them in selection for the camps. There was a card file maintained by the French Vichy government with the name and address of each Jew—I saw the card file, a yellowing reminder of the horror of the time. The Catholic Church played an important role in saving Jews through last-minute conversions, provision of sanctuary and food. A wall of heroes is prominent at the entry to the Memorial. The museum has the deportation order signed by The Maréchal Pétain, the French leader of the Vichy government and hero of WWI, to refute any notion of official opposition to the Nazi campaign. At the end of the exhibit are photos of children, all French, most of them murdered in Auschwitz. One of the few to survive was Simone Veil, who is pictured at 15, an adorable, curly-haired, round-faced young woman.

I then had lunch with Eric de Rothschild, owner of the Château Lafite Rothschild and the Rothschild investment bank. His family has been the prime funder of the Memorial since its creation. Interestingly both his father and uncle were spared in the Holocaust because they were officers in the French Army and captured in 1940. The Nazis did respect the Geneva Convention on the treatment of soldiers, even Jewish ones. Rothschild talked passionately about France as the most important place for education of the local populace about the Holocaust, noting the horrible killing of three Jewish children last year at their school by a crazed Arab immigrant. Thousands of local children visit the museum each year; he also funds trips for the kids to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

My Seder in Paris was my first-ever with a Sephardic family. The fifteen people gathered were a mix of young and old, the adults having come to France from former colonies such as Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. Though we went through the usual service, there was one unforgettable new element. At one point, the host stood up and said, “I am going to Israel now. I need your wishes for the next year.” He folded his napkin and put it on his back as if it were a cape. Round the table he went, as each of us asked for something special. He strode out of the room, then returned, and remembered what each of us had asked for, reassuring us that it would be done.

During dinner, I chatted with Michel Fredeau, a senior partner at BCG, who kindly invited me to join his family for dinner. He told me the story of how his father survived in Grodno, Poland. “The family had a maid who got pregnant. She was having a very difficult birth. My grandmother arranged for her to be treated by a superb doctor. My family realized that things were getting desperate as the Nazis announced that they were to be put together in a small part of town, the ghetto. My grandfather built a false wall and put money and valuables inside. My father, a teen at the time, was tasked with escaping the ghetto once a week to tap the money stash, so the family could buy food in the black market. When the Nazis announced that the ghetto would be liquidated and all would be sent to a camp, the family split up. My grandfather volunteered to stay behind with the youngest children in the neighborhood, those three and under, who would make noise and be detected. He and all of the children went to the gas chambers. My father found the family maid, who built him a hide-away under her bed, a wooden coffin in which he had to stay for two years, emerging only at night for a few hours. He survived to move to France and start a family.”

I did not sleep very well on Monday night. The Fredeau story, the yellowing cards, the photos of the kids who had no future were all too present reminders of the importance of recognizing one’s tradition and celebrating it each year.

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

I ski adequately, a generous description of my hunched over style borne of fear, years of playing tennis and squash and a misplaced belief that an athletic crouch allows the best adaptation to unforeseen dangers. I do this sport as a concession to my wife, a Middlebury graduate who loves skiing. But I also do it because I am not good at it and have no illusions about my future as Jean-Claude Killy.

I have found that the best antidote to middle age is to keep trying new things. For example, I am now a yoga devotee, with sessions twice a week. The goal for me is minute improvements in balance and flexibility. If I try too hard, I negate the gradual changes that happen through practice and relaxation.

I also work out with a trainer from the New York City Fire Department. He has a 45-minute circuit that involves kettle bell weights, bosu balls, pull-ups and push-ups, a heavy rope and a quarter-mile sprint. We begin as the sun is rising over the Hudson River. After round one, I am winded but confident. Part way through round two, my muscles ache and I feel as if I am being tortured in a medieval jail. The 40 seconds on an exercise seem an eternity, the 20 seconds off only enough time for four deep breaths. I stagger home from the park, sweating profusely, desperate for a shower. But I have a great sense of achievement, a job well done.

Two years ago, I went with my family and two other families to hike Machu Picchu. I had only done day hikes, usually a few hours up a local hill such as Camelback in Scottsdale, AZ. This journey was completely different, at a very high altitude (10,000 feet to start, 14,000 feet at the top of Dead Woman’s Pass — so appropriately named). You begin the journey with gusto, bounding up the ancient Incan stairs so meticulously laid into the mountainside. But as the air thins and your thighs remind you that they are the most important part of your body, you remember the admonition of the guide at the start of the trip. Slow down, look at the next step, take a break at regular intervals. The physical exertion also heightens your senses, to the growling of the Urubamba River below, to the flowers growing along the path and to the incredible terraced agriculture developed in a nation that has only 7 percent flat ground.

Last week, my youngest child and I walked from Midtown Manhattan to the Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown where we would celebrate her birthday, deciding to forego public transportation for a lengthy walking tour. Along the way, we discovered a statue erected in 1850 to General Worth, hero of the Mexican-American War. We saw apartments on Lafayette Street constructed in 1830 for the wealthy of the time, including John Jacob Astor. We passed the original St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the Lower East Side, where legend has it, that recent Irish immigrants had to resort to rifles to fend off Nativists bent on destroying their new parish.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that you don’t have to excel at something to do it. If you limit yourself to that which is comfortable or habitual, you miss the opportunity to live well. Now it is back to the slopes for another day of bruises.

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post announced that it would allow marketers to have sponsored content on its home page. The material could come from the marketer or from staff working on The Washington Post advertising staff, according to Josh Sternberg’s piece in Digiday, without involvement of the editorial team. I spoke yesterday with Katharine Weymouth, publisher of The Post, who confirmed that Brand Connect is part of a larger strategy to form deeper relationships with marketers, including sponsorship of conferences, special inserts and cross-platform offerings including sister publication Slate.

David Plotz, editor of Slate, moderating a panel.

So how can PR people play in this fast-evolving world of mainstream media? I got good advice at lunch yesterday with a major client. “Bring me big, creative ideas. I am not getting them from the ad agency. Give me the chance to evaluate content partnerships with media companies. Give me something that I can build on for the next five to 10 years – I am not interested in short-term sponsorships only. Tell me how I can reach influentials.”

Every one of our clients will need to become a media company; skilled in presenting its own story, attracting eyeballs as a credible source on subject areas in which they participate. As part of this effort, smart PR people will forge connections between publishers and clients that allow both to benefit. A good example is the program that we have created for Dairy Management* with The Washington Post.

The Post organized a symposium for opinion formers in Washington last summer, titled: “Future of Food: Food Security in the 21^st Century,” including speakers such as Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, FEED Project CEO and co-founder, Lauren Bush and Land O’Lakes CEO Chris Policinski. The discussion carried far beyond the room with multiple content extensions, including a Washington Post Live livestream and Twitter hashtag (which organically trended to No. 2 globally). A special insert on the event and food security topic was included in The Washington Post print edition, and this piece was shared with dairy farmers and partners. To further reach informed consumers, Dairy Management sponsored a related article series on Washington Post owned Slate.com, highlighting topics including on-farm production and sustainable nutrition. Dairy Management partnered with The Post on an influencer dinner the night before the event.

We have also initiated Dairygood.org, an owned media property for the dairy industry, which offers views from multiple stakeholders ranging from farmers to consumers.

We have created a physical on-site newsroom in Rosemont, IL where an editor/producer, community manager and analyst act as the core team and work with other content producers. This is currently staffed between DMI and Edelman employees. Each day the team reviews industry news and determines what content to produce. A great idea was the simple graphic the editorial team produced for Valentine’s Day, which got hundreds of shares across social media.

Or, there are more text-rich original content pieces, including one written by a Missouri dairy farmer.

The editorial team has produced infographics and visuals to accompany articles, and as the newsroom matures, it will eventually do more with video. Each piece that gets published gradually builds the audience and helps the content teams refine their content development and strategy.

We need to be the smarter point of connection between media and client than the ad agency or media buying firm. We may not have big advertising budgets to wave around but our content can shine through as much more compelling and connected. We should not simply be a funnel through which media present their properties, we should be a true intermediary offering value to both clients and media.

Richard Edelman is president and CEO.

*Edelman client