Invest KOREA

Making a Statement

Edelman Korea helps companies communicate with the public in keeping with changing communications trends

Four million people.

It’s a number that keeps appearing during a conversation about the state of PR today with Sungbin Jang, managing director of Edelman Korea.

When The Shilla hotel in Seoul barred a woman wearing a hanbok, a traditional Korean dress, from entering its buffet restaurant last year because they considered the garment a safety hazard, 4 million people found out about the gaffe in no time via Twitter. (The woman also happened to be a renowned hanbok designer.)

When a man claimed he had found a dead mouse in bread baked by bakery A, 4 million people found out about it through SNS quicker than it could be revealed that the scenario was, in fact, rigged by the man.

In an age when information is next to impossible to control due to the prevalence of SNS, effective PR is more important than ever for both domestic and global companies in Korea. As Korea’s largest foreign communications firm, Edelman Korea continues to push the boundaries of how PR is done.

“In Korea, as a global agency, we have to do something earlier than others and then develop the market with our thought leadership,” said Jang, who joined the company last year.

One of global Edelman’s 65 offices in 29 countries, Edelman Korea started doing business domestically in 1993, when it acquired a local firm, and began operating under its current name in 1996. Public relations was a fairly new industry in Korea at the time.

“We saw an opportunity to bring Korean companies out of Korea and make them global,” said Jang, who said his employees take pride in serving as mediators between Korean companies and overseas markets.

With about 50 yearly-contract corporate clients and about 180 projects a year, Edelman Korea engages in mostly public sector PR, with clients including the Blue House, the City of Gwangju and KOTRA. Long-time private sector clients include Samsung. Jang and his staff of 70 specialize in areas including public affairs, reputation management, crisis management, creative brand marketing, consulting and content creation. They promote everything from razors to Korean food.

A constant goal of Edelman Korea is to change the perception of what good PR is. In the United States, the media is important but considered simply a medium of communication. In Korea, good relations with the media tends to be the top priority, Jang said.

“But we want to do something much more valuable,” he added. “You know, the media is a kind of channel, not the objective.”

Edelman takes a four-leaf-clover approach to the media. The first leaf would be traditional media, or newspapers and television. The second leaf would be owned media, or a media outlet owned by a company, like a corporate homepage. The third would be hybrid media, a good example of which would be the Huffington Post The fourth leaf would be new media, or SNS.

“The landscape has changed quite rapidly, so we also have to change, because we communicate through the media to the audiences on behalf of our clients. So we have to be capable using all different forms,” Jang said.

With offices located in Jung-gu, Seoul, Edelman Korea plans to launch a new brand next year. Edelman has various brands worldwide, and the new one, Zeno, would deal mostly with hybrid PR and help Edelman Korea work with a broader base of customers.

Jang’s advice to companies in this age of fast-traveling information? Invest in owned media.

“At [the very] least, they need a place to say what they want to say,” he said.