By: Mary Keating

First, and most notably, it was Time Magazine proclaiming “You” to be person of the year for pushing boundaries on collaboration, knowledge sharing and social networking.  The reasons are clear.  Internet sites like Wikipedia, MySpace and YouTube have changed the face of information gathering and sharing. 

Now others are jumping on the bandwagon.  Just this week, Advertising Age named “The Consumer” as Agency of the Year for their role in promoting (and demoting) brands. 

A revolution?   Perhaps, but to me this is really an issue of scale.  Hasn’t the customer always been at the heart of every business?  Weren’t they “always right?”   In theory, yes.  But this was traditionally an organizational point of view – rarely tested in the glare of the public at large.  What’s changed is the availability, through technology, of a forum that allows consumers to flex their muscle publicly and in real time.  And so companies must deal with their customers publicly and in real time - and face the consequences of not doing so within the same constraints.     

It’s the public piece of the equation that makes the stakes so high and the real-time piece that makes it a formidable task – and speaks to the ascendancy of the discipline of public relations.   Combined with a growing sense of loss of control of corporate brand, it’s no wonder companies are scrambling to get a foothold, get ahead, or at the very least sustain no damage.  It’s a brave new world.  Public relations have never been so public.

Mary Keating is the national leader of the Technology Communications Practice for Hill & Knowlton Canada.