From the basement to the penthouse; PR's new status: Thanks to high-tech and dot-com plays, public relations is hitting heights as marketing's power tool.

Peek inside the offices of Middleberg Euro RSCG, and you'll see 160 employees working the phones, surfing the Internet, preparing for client presentations as well as adhering to the time-honored tradition of taking clients to lunch.

But if you pay close attention, you'll soon realize that it's the Middleberg public relations professionals who are grilling the client, not the other way around. Because, increasingly, it's the PR people who are calling the shots for clients when they're choosing an advertising agency or meeting with Wall Street rainmakers.

"PR has changed fundamentally, forever and for the better," says CEO Don Middleberg, who last year sold his agency, Middleberg & Associates, specialists in communications for Internet companies, to Euro RSCG Worldwide. "To which I say hallelujah, our time has come."

Public relations, says Mr. Middleberg, is no longer the backwater refuge for journalists who couldn't cut it in the media or creatives who dropped out of advertising. The era of digital communications and the hype and buzz surrounding high-tech and dot-com companies have ushered public relations into the limelight -- so much so, the industry believes it can never again be considered the Rodney Dangerfield of marketing communications.

VALIDATION

"What all of this dot-com PR stuff has done is validate PR as a very important and vital part of the marketing mix," says Toni Lee, who has handled corporate communications for ad agencies, including Grey Advertising, and now runs her own PR agency, TL Communications, Wilton, Conn.

"Up until this point, [PR has] always been seen as a somewhat second sister or second cousin to advertising," Ms. Lee says. "Companies spent a lot …