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Day Thirty-Two: Waggener Edstrom

There aren’t too many agencies out there who derive daily inspiration from astrophysicists, electrochemists and engineers. But at Waggener Edstrom (WagEd), these disciplines are held in high esteem because of the innovators behind them.

They’ve even gone so far as to name their conference rooms after famous leaders in innovation. People like Virginia Apgar (the “Apgar Score); Henry Ford; Thomas Edison; and Michael Faraday (so influential in the sceintific community that Albert Einstein kept a portrait of him in his study).

I visited the Bellevue, WA office of this global PR shop. With roughly 250 employees here, WagEd pays more than lip service to these ideals. One of their biggest investments now is in the digital space with a group called “Studio D.” They have developed some killer tools for the utilization and measurement of digital media there including a Twitter mining web app that intelligently evaluates the twitterverse. Called “twendz,” this app monitors and measures both frequency and tone of conversations about their clients, products and services. And that’s just the start of their new tool development series as they seek to innovate new ways to use the digital media space to provide added value, measured goals and intelligent research for their clients.

I sat down with Erik Denny, VP of Public Relations for Waggener Edstrom in the Eastman Kodak conference room today to learn more about their culture of innovation.

“The influencer landscape has changed,” Denny said, “our industry needs to change some of our strategies to fit that changing landscape.”

It’s not just a simple technology shift. We both chuckled remembering the days of measuring column inches with rulers, faxing press releases and running around with floppy disks of media databases. It’s a shift in where we find value in shaping opinion and changing behavior.

“It used to be the goal was to land that big story in the New York Times,” Denny added, “even a few years ago we’d send a link to the client and call the job well done. Today, that story is just the launching pad. The important stuff is in the conversation that follows.”

And that’s where WagEd truly excels. It’s at taking a look at harnessing that elusive conversation and coaching their clients on how to authentically engage in it for the benefit of both the target audience and the business.

In talking with Denny, I began wishing there were a new word for innovation.

As it stands, it is a buzz word that these days gets bandied about with reckless abandon and little attention to what it really means. Too often “innovative” is used as a synonym for “new.”

It’s not.

The primary difference being that “new” merely refers to anything of recent origin. I can get new shoes, but that doesn’t mean they are innovative shoes.

“Innovative,” on the other hand, means to do something in a new way. For example, if my shoes did my walking for me, that would be innovative (and at times, greatly appreciated).

True innovation requires first and foremost passion, and then perhaps imagination. Without both, one can never move the needle from “new” to “innovative.” At Waggener Edstrom, they live and breath the passion and imagination that is required for true innovation. It is clear that their minds are wrapped around a universe where it’s not impossible to imagine shoes that walk for you. And that imagination is coupled with a passion to try and make those self-walking shoes.

On their website, WagEd has an “Influence Manifesto” and video detailing their approach to shaping opinion and intereacting with communities. In it they note that in today’s world, everyone is an influencer.

And while there are shades of influence, I think it would be hard to find someone in communications who could disagree with that. What differentiates WagEd, however, is that they are doing something about that fact with new tools and new strategies for not just measuring but engaging with those influencers.

For lack of a better way to say it, that’s innovative.