Ogilvy's Luca Penati on staying relevant in digital PR

Among the changes digital has brought to the industry, one of the biggest shifts it has made is that companies are publishers for the first time, says Luca Penati, managing director, global technology practice at Ogilvy PR.

“Every company today is a media company. You can now tell stories directly to your stakeholders, consumers and partners through different technologies and avenues, and that could bring some complexity,” Penati said.

Social media brings a host of tools to a digital PR strategist’s arsenal, but the most important item in the digital PR strategist’s tool-kit is listening, Penati believes.

“If you’re a good listener, you’re a good strategist,” he said. “In the digital space, you have an ongoing focus group that is available to you 24 hours a day. Use it.”

While traditional PR principles are still very much applicable in the digital space, Penati warns that the compression of time is a new issue.

"The difference is, previously, you had 24 hours to manage a crisis, and now I’m not sure if you even have 24 minutes,” he said adding that being online, every second could be viewed as a crisis. “The challenge is deciding which is a crisis that you should react to, and which is just an issue to deal with.”

Penati identifies key drivers where social engagement will impact businesses in the next ten years. “The use of social applications in enterprise will grow as people will start to demand enterprise applications on their mobile phones," he states.

The impact on mobile in emerging markets, which sees people experiencing the internet for the first time not through the PC but their mobiles, will also bring about more location-based applications and services.

Social commerce will take off, Penati said, and identified crowd-sourcing as the next big thing.