Reprinted with permission from O’Dwyer’s Public Relations News

Bob Feldman, formerly CEO of GCI Group, and Jeff Hunt, a 17-year veteran of Burson-Marsteller, who are now in their own firm, said PR pros must take notice of advice in The McKinsey Quarterly that chief marketing officers might be the ones to lead in refurbishing the tarnished reputations of the financial and business worlds.

Feldman and Hunt, now partners in Pulse Point Group, Los Angeles and Austin, say McKinsey’s advice is “a warning to communications and PR heads” that they must present the case for PR to their managements or risk being “marginalized.”

The partners feel that PR has much the better case because it is involved not only in marketing but can handle regular and social media, investor relations, public affairs, and corporate social responsibility programs.

PR deals with “earned” communications, they noted.

The goal of PR and communications people is to become the “chief reputation officers” of their companies, they added.

Pulse Point’s blog carries the full position of Feldman and Hunt at www.pulsepointgroup.com/POV.

Their blog uses the title “chief communications office” to refer to PR heads, but only eight of the 100 corporate communications/PR heads at PR Seminar May 20-23 use CCO. Feldman was among about 20 counselors attending the meeting.

Feldman and Hunt describe themselves as a  ”communications management consulting firm” that focuses on three areas: organizational design, boardroom services, and digital media.

Says Feldman: “We’re doing a lot of work with companies on restructuring their communications organizations—both internally and externally; working on boardroom-level reputation issues, and advising on digital media strategies at the corporate communications level.”

Clients include Amgen, Dow Chemical, VMware, University of Texas, MasterCard, CA, and MD Anderson.

Feldman was head of corporate communications at film studio DreamWorks after leaving GCI.