Talking to the trees: Welcome to the Internet of Everything

Cars will talk to road sensors, which will talk to traffic lights and ambulances will talk to patient records, which will talk to doctors about saving lives.

“Things are changing, the sands are shifting” said Alison Clarke, the UK and Ireland chief executive of Grayling, the global public relations firm.

Speaking at an industry awards event in Yorkshire today, she said that bold new technologies are to starting to change the way that businesses communicate with target audiences.

With one third of the world’s population expected to be connected to the internet by 2015, Ms Clarke said people, places and technologies are providing vast amounts of data.

She added that the daily proliferation of new platforms is creating a “global real-time conversation” that feeds on content.

But PR firms are facing increasing competition from advertising agencies, SEOs and digital firms to tell stories on behalf of their clients, said Ms Clarke, who has advised multinationls including Diageo, British Airways, Unilever and Procter & Gamble in her career.

Speaking afterwards, Ms Clarke said the PR industry is better placed than any other discipline to take advantage of the new opportunities because it is good at creating content and telling stories. Ad agencies, on the other hand, have traditionally “shouted out” messages, she added..

Ms Clarke told the Yorkshire Post that the emerging forms of media give corporates great opportunities to reach people in new ways, but they must have a coherent communications strategy.

Some customer service departments are responding on Twitter in ways that clash with the message and style of communications on other channels.

The PRCA industry body hosted today’s event at Queens hotel in Leeds to celebrate excellence in PR in Yorkshire.

Matt Cartmell, director of communications at PRCA, told the room that corporate reputation has become increasingly important over the last 20 years.

He said there has been “an explosion” of interest in the principle of corporate reputation and highlighted annual rankings such as the Edelman Trust Barometer, which this year revealed that less than one fifth of the public believes that business leaders and government officials will tell the truth when confronted with a difficult issue.

Mr Cartmell said: “Businesses have never been so conscious of their reputation. For good reason - the values, ethics and morals of global brands, governments and charities are a mainstay of the media, both newspapers and social media.”

He said reputational damage can result in consumer backlash, shareholder rebellion and government intervention and gives rise to the instinct to kick a company when it is down.

“This trend has accelerated in the course of the economic downturn,” said Mr Cartmell, a former journalist at the PR Week trade title.

The big winners at today’s inaugural DARE North awards were Weber Shandwick, Havas UK and Leeds-based Wolfstar.

The other winners included Acceleris and Cicada Communications, both of Harrogate, and Shrewdd Marketing, which is based in Halifax.

Lord Chadlington, a Tory donor and PR adviser, co-chaired the judging panel.

He said: “People think that because you’re working in Nottingham, Leeds, Manchester or Scotland, your standards can’t be as high as they are in London - and that is absolute arrant nonsense.”

@bernardginns