Well, with a full six weeks at Edelman behind us, I think I can safely speak for all the grads when I say we have all settled in nicely. So much so in fact, that I have started to find myself dropping in some hastily learnt PR-speak when chatting to my friends, only to be confronted by the same bewildered look I am sure I was sporting when we were first being told about PR2.0 on our first day back in September.

But once you do begin to get your head around ‘new social media’ and the ‘conversation space’, you quickly start to notice that, far from being airy terms with little real-world grounding, these ideas actually have genuine momentum.

Take a prime example from the last few weeks.

Radiohead, one of the UK’s major rock acts, released their seventh album In Rainbows as a legal download via their own website. But this was a download with a twist. We, the consumers, were given the opportunity to decide our own price for the download. The band did not even offer a recommended or a minimum price, they left the valuation of the album entirely down to the individual. If you wanted to pay 0.00p you could. Or if you wanted to prove to yourself what a committed fan you are, you could have chosen a deliberately inflated price tag running into the thousands, or maybe even the millions (though this may have led to question marks over your sanity, as was the case with one Tory donor last week).

Personally, I chose to pay £6.45, which is about what I expect to pay for an album these days, and I suspect that this middle ground, guilt-free approach will have found favour with many other fans as well. But the point is, we had the power to choose. In many ways, you could say In Rainbows represented the dawn of ‘Consumerism 2.0’, an age where consumers directly value the content of what they purchase. Consumers have always held the balance of power in the marketplace, but now they yield that power with greater individual freedom than ever before.

Of course, this can over-stated. I do not expect to walk into a Soho bar any time soon and be greeted with the question “So, how much do you want to pay for this pint?” Radiohead were in a unique position to offer their fans the choice – they had just ended a six-album record deal with EMI, which had propelled them from a local Oxford pub band to a globally acclaimed rock act, and were financially secure enough to be able to adopt such a risky strategy. Few other bands will ever find themselves in that position.

Nevertheless, there are some signs that In Rainbows does offer a glimpse of the future. For a start, the media coverage that surrounded the band’s decision made for phenomenal PR. Virtually every national newspaper in the UK covered the story, music websites were inundated with fans reaction, and even GMTV reserved a brief morning slot to plug the album. Make no mistake, consumer choice is a buzz topic for the media, and Radiohead tapped into that brilliantly.

Furthermore, the move proved that anyone or any company that has the courage to offer something genuinely new and innovative will be far better placed to take a seat at the conversation table, that sacred place where every business dreams to dine. Why? Because, contrary to what advertising would have you believe, you cannot force the man or woman on the street to talk or care about your brand. You have to give them a reason to do so. Only then will you become part of the conversation, and only then can you begin to harness the benefits of consumer trust.

Radiohead certainly earned my trust. I have been enjoying In Rainbows since the day of its release. Damn fine album, by the way.

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