Earlier this evening the Communication Leaders of Chicago honored the Edelman family for its lifetime service to the industry. Below, please read my acceptance speech, which I delivered on behalf of my family.

Chicago is the soul of Edelman. Dan Edelman started the firm with four people in the Merchandise Mart in 1952, He was one of the Greatest Generation, proud of his war time service in psychological warfare, determined to get ahead in the post-war years. He had a big idea, the power of third-party endorsement of products through the new media channel, television. He invented the media tour, putting spokespeople on the road for print, radio and broadcast interviews. My mother Ruth was Dan’s partner in building the company. She would meet and entertain clients and host charity events.

Chicago was the perfect place for an entrepreneur in the 50s and 60s. Edelman served brands that became the essence of family life in America, from Sara Lee to ReaLemon lemon juice to California Wines to Orville Redenbacher popcorn. We grew up with the founders and spokespeople of these companies like Charles Lubin, the little baker from the West Side, who pioneered frozen cakes. Teddy Bensinger gave me a McGregor baseball glove for serving as an unpaid model for his annual report in 1961. My brother John got to sit in the lap of Eva Gabor, spokesperson for California Wines, as she crooned “I was weaned on wine,” in her Hungarian accent.

Chicago was also the crucible of change for a nation bringing meaning to civil rights and struggling with the war in Vietnam. We have been privileged to know the Reverend Jesse Jackson for 50 years, including his two runs for President, which paved the way in 2008 for Barack Obama. My mother attended the trial of the Chicago Eight, leaders of the antiwar movement who came to Chicago to protest during the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

Chicago has been the hub of Edelman’s innovation, which has enabled us to remain family owned and independent. Edelman Digital was spawned doing the first Butterball Turkey Talk-Line online in 1996. Our first experiential work was based in Chicago, the Microsoft Explorasaurus bus touring the country to bring digital to the people. Dan also founded Zeno, Edelman’s sister firm in 1998 in Chicago, with my sister Renée as the founding member. Zeno Chicago is now the largest office in the Zeno network.

Chicago has also been the best expression of the firm’s commitment to the community. My parents were deeply involved in charitable causes, from their board memberships at the Lyric Opera, Art Institute and Immigrant Service League to my mother’s advocacy for Federal mental health funding in partnership with Illinois Senator Paul Simon. More recently, our team worked with the Department of Defense on its Warrior Games program, a multi-sport, adaptive competition for wounded, injured, or ill veterans to enhance their recovery and rehabilitation.

In the past two decades, Chicago has lost its great independent communications firms. Leo Burnett is part of Publicis, Draft and FCB part of IPG. That is not the future for Edelman. To paraphrase Robert Frost, we took the path less traveled and that made all the difference. Walk around the Edelman Museum on Canal Street. See the great work for long time clients such as Starbucks, Unilever, Walmart, and J&J. Understand the impact of Chicagoans in our Hall of Fame, including Pam Talbot, Nancy Ruschienski, Jay Porter, Dom DeFrisco and Betsy Plank.

On behalf of John and Renée and with the promise of continued service to the industry by my three daughters and in memory of my beloved parents who are smiling down on us tonight, I thank Ron Culp for the nomination and the Communication Leaders of Chicago for this incredible honor.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

I want to provide context for today’s announcement of the simplification of our firm’s structure.

Our strategy for the past five years has been in two directions. We built an advisory capacity to compete with specialist firms in financial, public affairs, employee engagement and impact. Simultaneously, we also have been building our marketing business, emphasizing earned creative based on action, with ideas that connect with the burgeoning creator economy. We structured our advisory units as boutiques and positioned creative and strategists as dedicated teams.

Clients now require integration of specialist services into the larger firm for speedy access to our geographic reach, deep industry knowledge and creative ability. We are best when we bring the full force of Edelman to the complex problems facing our clients. Corporate affairs, marketing and government affairs are now all closely aligned on the client side. We are skating to where the puck will be — everything is interconnected now.

Edelman is the leading integrated communications advisory firm, operating at the intersection of culture and commerce. We are going to focus on the five industry sectors — health, technology, food & beverage, financial services, and energy transition. We will sunset the Edible, Revere, Salutem, Mustache, EGA and Delta brands. We will maintain two client specific entities — Assembly for Microsoft and Kinisi for J&J. Conflicts will be managed by our sister firms Zeno and RUTH. DXI, Smithfield and UEG will be connective tissue between Edelman and Zeno in the DJE family.

We have always been dedicated to excellence in client service. We must remain nimble and agile in delivering on our clients’ needs with senior people leading every engagement. As part of today’s simplification, we will be parting ways with 330 colleagues across our global network — 5.3% of our total workforce. I want to thank them for their service to the firm and our clients.

I am deeply optimistic about the future of Edelman. We are a $1 billion revenue business, 5,870 employees strong. We are ideally suited for a world of geopolitical uncertainty, the proper role of business in societal issues, and dispersion of authority away from experts. We maintain our 60-office network as a dramatic competitive advantage. Our creative and strategy teams have broken the glass ceiling with ideas premised on action. We are investing in our own large language model premised on 25 years of Trust data that enables AI as a predictive tool, both communications and action, enabling better decisions by business related to trust. We are working on the most important challenges including advising the food industry on labelling, on the acceptance of artificial intelligence as a trusted partner in society, and the potential of immunology in disease treatment and prevention. We are launching the 25th Edelman Trust Barometer in Davos next month, looking at trust in institutions after 50 elections that involved over half of the world’s population.

I look forward to a strong performance in 2025.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

The Pew Research Center is out with a fascinating new report on America’s News Influencers. These are the people with at least 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube who regularly write about current events.

This new and highly influential group of podcasters matters more than ever because of the dramatic fragmentation and decline in trust of traditional media and the collapse of viewership on cable TV. MSNBC and CNN are now at 25-year lows in viewership. MSNBC has 45,000 and CNN has 65,000 viewers in the 25-54 age group as of last week. CNN is down from 560,000 viewers as of September 2020. Meanwhile, Fox News now has nearly 75 percent of cable news viewers.

These influencers are most likely to be posting on X (85 percent), followed by Instagram (50 percent) and YouTube (44 percent). By two to one, the influencers are male, and slightly more likely to identify as Republican than Democrat (27 percent vs. 21 percent). The topics they most often discuss are politics (43 percent), social issues (21 percent), international issues (18 percent), technology (5 percent) and the economy (5 percent). Only 16 percent of them have experience in the news industry, and three quarters are seeking to monetize their presence on social channels via subscription, donation, or merchandise.

According to Pew, 20 percent of Americans report getting their news from these influencers; 37 percent of those are under 30 years old. Seven in 10 said that the news they get from influencers is at least somewhat different from the information they get from other sources. One key finding is the confirmation of thought bubbles; far more respondents say they mostly agree with what they see (30 percent) versus what they disagree with (2 percent). This existence of confirmation bias has contributed to the incredible growth and effectiveness of news influencers. Influencer Marketing as a practice has always been used in this way - brands partner with influencers who align with their target audience's values or interests, which then allows the influencers to validate and reinforce consumers' beliefs by endorsing the brand or product.

Here is a list, in no particular order, of some of the most prominent news influencers from the Edelman Public Affairs Unit for both Conservative and Liberal constituencies:

Conservative

Joe Rogan
Tim Pool
Candace Owens
Steven Crowder
Charlie Kirk
Elon Musk
The Daily Wire (Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh)
Benny Johnson
The Hodgetwins
Dan Bongino
Megyn Kelly
OutKick Network (Clay Travis, Collin Rugg, Buck Sexton)

Liberal

Ethan Klein
Hasan Piker
The Young Turks
Pod Save America (Jon Favreau)
David Pakman
MeidasTouch (Ron Filipkowski)
Molly Jong-Fast
Brian Tyler Cohen
Mary Trump
The Lincoln Project

The essential question for communicators is whether to put CEOs or CMOs in front of these influencers. As a matter of PR practice, it is our responsibility to find channels that reach large audiences. I spoke to Edelman Vice Chair Nikki Haley this morning and her advice is as follows: “Americans are looking for news sources that provide truth and common sense. They want to learn something. They are choosing what they want to hear instead of waiting for a network to program it. Podcasts now must be considered as a critical component of media strategy.” She just hosted Charlamagne tha God on her own podcast to discuss why minority groups shifted to Trump in this past election.

Business podcasts more often focus on entrepreneurs and technology, including Harvard Business Review and TED. The political news influencers will move toward business coverage in the coming months. Smart CCOs will advocate first for sit-downs with smart observers of the scene such as Scott Galloway of The Prof G Pod podcast. Galloway is a moderate and can address issues such as DEI and sustainability without political overtones. These new news influencers should be included in media plans over time on topics such as in-sourcing, upskilling, support for entrepreneurs and American optimism. They are no longer the future; they are the new normal.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

The seismic shift in the U.S. electorate led to the massive victory for President-elect Trump. Voters focused on economic uncertainty and inflation. Working class people of all ethnic backgrounds shifted allegiance based on personal well-being. But the most stunning change was in younger voters, with young men, 18-29 years old, shifting 28 points to the right (3 million votes) while young women shifted 15 points (1.5 million votes). Creators played an important role in influencing younger voters.

President-elect Trump went with long-form Podcasts and unscripted content partnerships on YouTube to target young males. Among the shows he did were The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast, and Andrew Schultz’s Flagrant podcast. Then there were sit downs with content creators such as professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau, Logan Paul, Adin Ross, and the Nelk Boys. The “Bro Podcast Tour” registered 123 million views for the fourteen appearances, reaching an audience that was 80 percent male. Half of these appearances were in October. The newly elected president sometimes appeared with his VP candidate, JD Vance, or Elon Musk.

VP Kamala Harris focused more on short-form video on TikTok and Instagram, more as media messaging channels than collaboration. The campaign tried to court Gen-Z voters by capitalizing on memes such as Brat Summer or Coconut Tree. The candidate appeared on five major podcasts in October (such as Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy), with 50/50 gender breakdown. She also did more mainstream media than the Trump campaign, with appearances on The View and 60 Minutes. Harris had VP candidate Tim Walz, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and businessman Mark Cuban on her podcasts. Harris had a @KamalaHQ TikTok page. She relied heavily on celebrity endorsements from Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift.

Media consumption patterns are a key indicator in voter intention. Latinos and young people are twice as likely to get their news from social media (there is major crossover between youth and Latino given young population). The increasing reliance of young people on social channels as primary outlets for news is seen in these two statistics. As of 2024, 52 percent of TikTok users get their news on the channel, up from 22 percent in 2020, while 40 percent of Instagram users get their news on the channel versus 28 percent in 2020. Part of this is lack of access to local newspapers (one third have closed in the past two decades) while the number of reporters is down 60 percent.

A few conclusions from Tyler Vaught, who runs our Creator Marketing offering at Edelman. First, the social media landscape has moved from User Generated Content to established episodic shows with massive audiences. Second, scripted, filtered, and edited content is out, while raw unedited authenticity and vulnerability is in. Third, lengthy, unscripted conversations with show hosts allow for the creation of parasocial relationships which build trust and affinity. Fourth, traditional celebrity endorsements have much less power over young voters because this generation prefers accessibility, getting to know the person.

Creators are no longer the future to build trust with audiences, they are the present. Trust in mainstream media has been deeply eroded, especially for Republicans and bottom quartile income earners. Brands must pay attention; politics is a mainstream topic for Creators, so risk mitigation is more important than ever. Brands should clearly establish their values, recognize their permission space, and thoroughly vet Creators for communities and conversations that make sense.

The American people have chosen. A red wave swept the country, with electoral results comparable to the Reagan victory 40 years ago.

The essential question for business at this time of change is ‘Quo Vadis?’ (Where to go?)

Four years ago, the world was staggering through the horrors of COVID-19, with enforced isolation and high death rates causing severe alienation in the work force. During the pandemic, George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, prompting protests and civil unrest and employee pressure to remedy decades of injustice. Rising temperatures and unusual climate events accelerated environmental policies. Sino-American trade tensions forced companies to adapt supply chains, while the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused many corporations to pull out of Russia.

CEOs spoke out publicly on these issues to employees, consumers, and other stakeholders hungry for leadership. Business was filling a competence void left by Government. Trust moved local, to My Employer’s CEO, with ‘information from your employer’ becoming the most important source of objective information.

Fast-forward to 2023 and, as political momentum gathered, CEOs shifted gears, increasingly keeping their heads down, believing staying out of the fray to be a less risky proposition. Some companies backed away from DEI commitments, affected by pressure from politicians and activists including Robbie Starbuck. The vast majority held firm.

Now the Trump team is promising a fundamental shift in direction for Government. Much of the Trump platform will be welcomed by business, specifically deregulation, lower taxes, and a pro-growth agenda. But there will be areas of contention between business and the new administration, such as trade and tariffs. Without question, handling employee pressure is going to take up far more bandwidth for executive teams.

The election was all about the economy. This is the time when business can shine, with well-paid jobs and affordable products that provide a better quality of life. There is a place in the middle for business to operate with values and commercial clarity. Action on global matters can’t happen without business leadership but must be done without political ideology as an overlay.

This is the leadership opportunity of the moment; to show progress on problems that affect your business or industry directly, including advocating for policies that enhance company performance while building a strong culture. The decision to be made, therefore, is not whether to speak publicly on issues, but when. That’s just good business — and it’s what your employees and customers will certainly demand.

Richard Edelman is CEO.

It has been eleven years since the passing of my parents, Dan and Ruth Edelman. It is fitting that they passed in the same year, 2013. They were inseparable in life, complementary in their skills, aligned in their goals of family, business and community. For this dynamic duo, there was no separation of the three facets of life.

My father was hard driving, demanding, well-informed and resilient. A paradigm Type-A personality, Dan was determined to get ahead. He was as competitive on the tennis court as he was in business. He loved sports, especially the Chicago Cubs and the Bears (his fraternity pal was Sid Luckman, legendary quarterback for the Bears, a lifetime friend). He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia University; his success in school was due to both brains and supreme effort, taking notes on his notes to prepare for exams. He loved his country and was proud of his four years of military service during World War II in psychological warfare and military intelligence.

Dan started Daniel J. Edelman, Inc. with four people in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. He invented the media tour while at the Toni Home Permanent Company in 1948, sending six sets of identical twins around the U.S. to be interviewed by local media. He understood the power of celebrities in media relations, using Vincent Price for California Wines, George Hamilton for the Sole Leather Council and Phyllis George for Toni. He also recognized the possibility of entrepreneurs telling their own stories, including Orville Redenbacher of popcorn fame, Colonel Harland Sanders for KFC and Charles Lubin, founder of Sara Lee. Dan was proud of the case study on the Toni media tour written by Harvard Business School Professor and marketing guru Theodore Levitt.

Dan was an inveterate dreamer, believing that Edelman could become a global force in public relations. He established the first overseas office in the UK in 1965, followed by operations in Germany and France. Then came Asia, Dan’s true obsession, beginning in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, then Hong Kong in the mid-80s. The acquisition of Interasia in 1993 propelled Edelman to the top rank in China. Korea, India, Australia and a start-up in Japan followed soon thereafter. Canada and Latin America joined the Edelman roster via acquisition in the 1990s. When we rose to the top of the PR ranking in 2011, his admonition to the Edelman team, “It is great to be the largest firm, but we must always strive to be the best firm.”

Ruth was my father’s partner in building the company. She was out with him five nights a week, entertaining clients, going to charity events and building the brand. She was an astute judge of talent, spending quality time with senior Edelman team members, listening and advising them on family matters or business issues. She was a social force, walking boldly up to important figures, winning them over in five minutes, then introducing them to my father, whom she described as “the most brilliant man.” She ran her household as a tight ship, up early calling around to her friends on the events of the prior night, making sure the kids were fed and on the way to school, going on to do the charity work, supervising homework then preparing for the evening. It was a busy life of friendships with CEOs, influential politicians, sports stars and journalists. My mother courageously battled manic depression for 40 years. She lobbied in the U.S. Congress to raise funds for mental-health research and shared her condition with the public to end the stigma associated with mental illness and increase access to care.

My parents connected on the pursuit of excellence and in service to the community. The three kids (Renée, John and I) were expected to do well in school. We were also to excel in sports. I had a weightlifting coach at age 10 because my mother said that she could "blow me over." She rousted me out of bed promptly at 7 a.m. during the summer to oversee the circuit training for football, replete with a whistle and stopwatch. Competition among the siblings was encouraged and high achievement demanded. Touch football games on the lawn at our summer house in Charlevoix, along with morning sessions with neighborhood kids on the SRA learning plans are examples of life at the Edelmans. My parents devoted hours to charities in Chicago, including the Art Institute, Operation PUSH, Chicago Lyric Opera, Immigrant Service League and Rush Hospital.

Renée, John and I have done our best to keep the ethos of Edelman and Zeno as special institutions that partner with clients to grow their businesses while having a positive impact on society. We do this to maintain the tradition of excellence in creativity and performance. My three daughters, Margot, Tory and Amanda, understand the responsibility of being an Edelman, to put the interests of the company, its people and its communities, ahead of personal needs. But the Edelman legacy spans beyond our family and to the 6000+ employees across DJE– each and every one of them have made our history, achievements and all that we have yet to accomplish, possible. To the DJE team, I’m deeply proud and grateful.

I found this quote from George Bernard Shaw that is a fitting tribute to my parents. I have a copy now sitting on my father’s desk in the Edelman Museum in Chicago as a North Star for the people of DJE Inc.

“This is true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

Richard Edelman is CEO.

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on journalists' battle for truth

Why Chicago Matters

The Edelman News of Today

America’s New News Influencers

Conservative

Liberal

Related Content

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

The Creator Election

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

Post-Election Advice for CEOs

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

Lawfare

The Creator Election

The Fight for Power (Updated)

Post-Election Advice for CEOs

Related Content

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

Tent Mexico; Giving Immigrants a Chance

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

Lawfare

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

The Trust Summit: Ten Highlights

Public & Government Affairs - Team

The Tightrope: How to Approach Influencer Marketing During Elevated Moments

Founder’s Day and the Family Business Journey

Related Content

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

Lawfare

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

A Visit to Pullman

Richard Edelman's 6AM Blog

Yo-Yo Ma and the Pursuit of Excellence

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on journalists' battle for truth