Public Relations has had a really good go of it. It really has. Since Edward Bernays got things rolling in the early 1900s many great things have been accomplished with the help of PR. Great leaders have been lifted to power. Tiny companies have been built into incredible empires. But the traditional application of PR has lived a full enough life and it’s time for it to be put to rest.

Now, I’m not here to say that PR is dead. Far from it actually. But the old school version of it has to be put out of its misery. It is simply no longer relevant.

If your company is still only leveraging a traditional PR and media relations approach (relying heavily on the media) to connect with audiences you are missing some great opportunities to connect with your customers in meaningful ways.

In PR one of our main goals is to get our company’s (or client’s) story told in the best way possible to the most relevant audience possible.

Companies may feel that they are getting full value out of public relations activities, but if you are not strategically leveraging social media within your PR activities you are only getting a fraction of the possible outcomes.

And this means your company may be missing the cool aspects that social media can offer.

We all now have the tools to find the right audience and share stories with many, many people in direct and meaningful ways. Plus you can create an ongoing instantaneous two-way dialog with key existing and potential customers. That’s hard to beat.

But what does this really mean?

This process isn’t as simple as loading a clever Wordpress blog theme and writing up a piece about your company’s latest press release.

To create an analogy – PR 1.0 only offers the pre-game promotion and commentary for Sunday’s big football game.

PR 2.0 allows us to offer the pregame stuff as well as during the game play-by-play action and the post-game recaps and storytelling. All of the during- and post-game “coverage” can then be told and retold and will give people that didn’t attend the game a feeling that they missed something and that they will want to do everything they can to be there next time.

So let’s think about it. If you buy a game ticket and you only get the pre-game activity, are you really getting what you intended to pay for? Probably not.

I’ve been searching to find some examples in the public space for companies that have leveraged this kind of a strategy, but I haven’t come across a lot. Do you have any examples?

One company that I have seen use this a bit is Trek Bicycle and the Lance Armstrong Foundation with 2009’s The Bikes of STAGES project.

Concept: Use Lance Armstrong’s race bicycles as canvases painted by some of the today’s best contemporary artists (Shepard Fairey, KAWS, Damien Hirst, Kenny Scharf, Marc Newson, Nashitomo Nara).

After a long season of racing the bikes all over the world, sell the bikes at auction in a New York City art gallery (The Armory) to raise funds for and spread the message of the Lance Armstrong Foundation’s global fight against cancer.

Pre-event: Lance Armstrong, fans, Trek Bicycle, the global media and bloggers used social media (Twitter, Twitpic, Facebook, flikr, blogs and other platforms) and traditional media to spread photos and the story of the campaign across the world.

Trek also leveraged this site: The Bikes of STAGES as a central gathering place for the project to show some of the images from around the world…telling the public version of the story, as well as the behind the scenes elements (behind the curtain) that most people don’t get to see.

During-event: Trek, Lance and others used Twitter, Twitvid and other channels to cover the auction live.

Post-event: the same The Bikes of STAGES site continued as  the central gathering place for the project….in addition to blogs and other social media sites around the world.

Results: The effort raised $1.3M for the fight against cancer. The secondary results included the ways that Trek Bicycle was able to position its bikes and Project One, a custom paint and build program as among the world’s best.

By leveraging PR 2.0 social media elements, companies (like Trek Bicycle), organizations (like the Lance Armstrong Foundation) and other groups are able to provide a much deeper and richer experience for more complete storytelling that stretches from pre- to post-event.

Have you seen any good examples of this happening?

If so, we’d love to hear your favorites.

Do you disagree? Let me have it.

*Photo #1 – Trek Bicycle
*Photo #2 – Velonews