The New Look of Public Relations — A Dissenting View [by Richard Edelman].

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.