Mark Penn, CEO, Burson-Marsteller

Many assumed a "wait and see" stance these past few weeks as uncertainty continued to drive the markets and outlook for the PR firm business and beyond. Yet that holding pattern may shake out as businesses get a clearer bead on the future, precipitated in part by yesterday's inauguration finally signaling a shift from promising to practicing change.

So what exactly does the future hold for the agency business under an Obama administration? What lessons can we—as a profession and as individual practitioners—learn from President Obama's communications strategies, techniques and tactics? Where will policy and PR intersect in the year ahead—and what does it all mean to you and your day-to-day work?

For the answers, we checked with Mark Penn, whose domain is the nexus between PR and politics. Worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and president of market research, polling and consulting firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, he has advised both Clintons, Tony Blair and Bill Gates. In 2007, he authored "Microtrends: The Small Forces behind Tomorrow's Big Changes," the paperback edition of which will be published in spring. Precipitating its release is Penn's new "Microtrends" column, which runs regularly in the "Media and Marketing" section of WSJ.com and focuses on demographic trends in society, business and politics.

Here, Penn—who has been called the "Master of the Message" by Time magazine and the "Guru of Small Things" by The New York Times—gives us a sneak peak of his trend-spotting talents to help you navigate the months ahead, and shares his post-inaugural analysis of the new administration, its key communications challenges, and the year ahead for Corporate America and its agency partners:

If you were advising Obama's first 100 days from a communications perspective—what would you advise?

I think the most important thing in the beginning of a new term is to make sure you'll lay out the vision of where you're taking the country, that you bring people together around that vision, and that you then bring people together and lay out some of the specifics. Those are three things Bush didn't do that at the beginning of his second term.

How do you think the new administration has handled its communications efforts thus far?

Everything has been going very well—starting with a round of excellent appointments. I think he's done the right thing in not trying to act as president before the inauguration, and they have done a reasonably efficient job in getting out all their major announcements. I think at the end of this period—at the end of pre-inauguration period, where we were up until yesterday—he appears to have put together a very, very strong cabinet, and people are very hopeful about what that cabinet can accomplish.

What communications innovations or strategies do you think we can expect from the Obama administration? What lessons might those efforts suggest for PR agencies?

I think the question will be whether they can speak directly to a fervent group of supporters and get them behind their legislative proposals in the same way they were behind the candidate before. They were the first presidential campaign able to reach a significant majority of Americans online. We can anticipate that the president for first time will not just do a website, but will communicate actively via email, social media and the Internet in general. Innovations aside, I think the televised presidential addresses—as led off by the inauguration and the State of the Union speech—will be his most important communications ahead. They are the Super Bowls of political communications.

What have been its communications team's biggest challenges from your perspective? How were those handled?

So far, I don't think they've had a significant challenge. I take that back. The most significant challenge was around the Illinois governor situation. They handled it well by separating themselves from the governor. They did an investigation of all contacts that appeared to be credible and addressed any questions about their involvement by anybody in the incoming administration.

What are the biggest challenges you see on the horizon for the Obama administration from a communications perspective?

I think you could say the biggest challenge is likely to be a year or year and a half from now—when it will be time for people to assess whether commitments made now were fulfilled.

What communications challenges do you see in store for Corporate America and its agency partners in 2009?

The biggest challenge is what to do in a shrinking marketplace in a world where advertising is becoming less effective and PR more effective. I expect more clients will use PR. The challenge in this environment is to get clients to increase their PR to gain market share—and to once and for all utilize the proper mix of advertising and PR, which was historically too weighted to advertising.

How can agencies do that?

In the first quarter, you should be focused on gauging the full impact of the economic slowdown. During that period, plan on how to gain market share for clients now so when the recession is over, those who have gained market share will be well positioned for growth.

What key opportunities and growth areas do you see on the horizon for agencies?

I think we're going to be looking outside the U.S. for growth opportunities, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. I also think agencies are obviously going to be looking for issue work that's going to result from the new administration creating new policies—and I think we're going to look for additional crisis related work that comes from so many companies going through financial crisis and expanding their need to communicate to employees.

What specific practices areas will take a hit?

I think clients are generally cutting back out of caution. But I do think that the public relations field overall is going to do better than advertising. Clients have been under-spending on PR all along.

What are you hoping to accomplish with the WSJ.com "Microtrends" column?

The latest one is on "new info" shoppers…we just posted it. The idea is that instead of window shopping, people are doing "Windows shopping," meaning they're browsing for information online before purchasing. The column underscores how important independent information about products has become in shopping—and how we under-serve clients in not understanding how the shopping process has changed from a communications perspective.

As far as what we're hoping to accomplish: We're going to highlight weekly changes I see going on that are relevant to marketing communications—and it will all be leading up to the paperback coming out in April. I believe more than ever that these small changes that we're ignoring are having a profound impact on society, economy and communications. The entire financial crisis started with subprime mortgages—that's a great example of what I call a "microtrend."

There will be new chapters in this edition of the book—new ones on a lot of the micro-groups that came out of the financial crisis, like the "New Mattress Stuffers," etc. There's also a new chapter about the dramatic increase of people living together who aren't married—they're called "Cohabitors." Those are some examples of what you can expect in the book and column.

Your advice to other council members for managing their firms during recessionary times?

I think that with the growth of the importance of online communications and of digital images, we all must together underscore that the value clients can get out of PR has never been higher. That way, when they come to making their budgets, they use a scalpel and not a sledge hammer.

So many people are now information seekers that the info they respond to is what they look for, rather than just advertising information. That's a fundamental change that makes PR affect what gets printed and how it's found more important than ever.

What do you love about your work in the field?

What we're trying to do is called "Evidence Based PR." What I love is relating a more scientific research-based approach to communications and PR and seeing how that works.

Has the PR industry sufficiently embraced research to help clients?

I think there's a lot of room for growth in using research to understand how communications works and what the most effective strategies are. We're also creating a series of Web related tools that you can watch for [on the Burson-Marsteller site] that give measures of your communications effectiveness. The answer is that measurement and research is critical to great public relations.

Brian Pittman (bpittman@bulldogreporter.com)