He made the remarks while speaking to CNBC presenters Steve Sedgwick and Geoff Cutmore at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this morning.
"The world has flipped upside down," Edelman said.
"It used to be a pyramid of authority, now it's upside-down. The influence actually rests with the mid-level people, who speak peer-to-peer. If they're for you, you win."
Yesterday, Edelman published its annual Trust Barometer, which reveals the British public's trust in business, government, media and NGOs has plummeted because of an "unprecedented crisis of trust shared across the Western world".
Trust in UK business fell from 46 per cent last year to 45 per cent in the autumn, but then plummeted to 33 per cent, according to the data for the start of 2017, the report found.
• Transcript of the interview was provided to PRWeek by CNBC.
