Media Impressions

Our role as consumers in the crisis of capitalism

2012-01-17T01:52:00.000-08:00

Interesting article by Robert Reich, ex-Goldman Sachs and very successful Treasury Secretary under Clinton, now Professor of Public Policy at Berkeley on our role as consumers in the crisis of capitalism.

Organisations start to post corporate communications plans online

2012-01-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

The transparency and public diplomacy agenda is seeing a growing number of public organisations start to post their strategic or corporate communications plans online. This is a new trend although it is one where very few commercial organisations have followed the same path and would seem to be an area crying out for more research. Here are the unscientific results of some of these reports which I have found online in preparation for a course I am running this term on Corporate Communications and also for the Erasmus IP programme in March in Belgium on lobbying and government relations.

I became aware of this trend, attending the Euprera conference at Leeds Metropolitan University in the summer where Robert Hastings, formerly Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs at the US Defense Department spoke about the development of a strategic communications plan for the department. Staying with the military and the US Marine has its 2007 report online. Be prepared for an aggressive corporate agenda!

As part of this process and here the public diplomacy agenda would appear to be particularly influential and is driving the development of several reports looking at the role of strategic communications at a national level. First the US Defense Department's research team, the Defense Science Board has produced one and more recently the UK's Chatham House think tank has produced one in conjunction with Bell Pottinger, titled Strategic Communications and National Strategy. The idea underpinnng these is that communications is a strategic resource and is a response to the perceived dominance of communications by Al-Qaeda in the first few years after 2011.

It would appear that the forerunner (happy to be corrected if readers have other examples) of major communication plans online is the EU's White Paper on Communication Policy in 2006 and the EU Green Paper on Transparency in the same year. Although the borough of St Edmundsbury in Suffolk deserve an honourable mention for putting up corporate communication plans in 2003, the earliest I have found.

Active current corporate communication plans available online are Portsmouth City Council and the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence.

Finally a special mention should be made of one commercial group of companies, cement manufacturers, which with funding from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and carried out by environmental consultancy ERM and Batelle has produced a corporate communications guide to its operators, titled Communication and Stakeholder Guidebook for Cement Facilities.

I would welcome any links to add to the list.

Leveson enquiry and reputation of UK tabloid media

2011-11-24T07:43:00.001-08:00

Does the media "get" the impact of the Leveson enquiry? I think it is starting to, but it is finding the whole process extraordinarily difficult and alien to it. Many of the commentators on Newsnight and the Today programme, often former editors now Professors of Media, seem to me "behind the curve" and very protective of their former colleagues and not aware of the major reputational damage being inflicted.

Associated Newspapers was very ill-advised to put out such an intemperate comment/news piece about Hugh Grant's evidence to the enquiry within just hours of his appearance. Note that they are no longer allowing comments on this piece and also the announcement does not appear to be on the Associated Newspapers web site! Leveson was not amused. These were the comments of a major power broker - editor Paul Dacre and Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday team - under pressure and not at all happy - were they shown to Associated Newspapers?

News International and now Associated Newspapers both with formidable insight into their readers and customers. But the evidence of the last year is that both seem to have no understanding of their responsibility to their wider stakeholders. Perhaps this is because of their long held power and deference of many stakeholders to them. Does PR play any influential role at Associated Newspapers - I wonder - I suspect similar to News International which did not understand the role of PR until Edelman came on board in the UK in recent months.

Having just given a lecture on crisis PR in the consumer context, there is a very apt quote from Timothy Coombs and Sherry Holladay in PR Strategy and Application (Ch.12), "crises typically violate how constituents expect an organisation to behave." Yes, we might have known about some of the tactics of the tabloids which have come out in the Leveson enquiry, but the extent and range of evidence does feel to me like a "violation". I wonder if we may in a few years look back and realise that Leveson was the start of an important reformation of the tabloid press.

Kaizo talk at Greenwich

2011-11-16T06:46:00.001-08:00

A big thanks to Dave Robertson and Bryony Chinnery from Kaizo who gave an interesting talk last night to the Masters PR students on recent work. This included talking about Cargill's Truvia, a natural sweetener which has just gained EU regulatory approval and which had a major pre-launch event in London in the summer and Unilever VIP, a Facebook community which they have helped develop for the global brand.

Lobbying - readings part 2

2011-10-21T00:29:00.000-07:00

My colleague Paul has come up with some very good additional readings on lobbying.

Dahan, N.M. (2009) "The four Ps of corporate political activity: a framework for environmental analysis and political action", in Journal of Public Affairs, 9 (2 ), pp. 111-123;

McGrath, C. (2006) "The ideal lobbyist: Personal characteristics of effective lobbyists", in Journal of Communication Management, 10 (1), pp. 67-79

McGrath, C. et al. (2010) "The evolving discipline of public affairs", in Journal of Public Affairs, 10 (4), pp. 335-352;

Industry Paper: (an oldie, but still a goodie - link supplied, and copy attached)

Parvin, P. (2007) Friend or Foe? Lobbying in British Democracy - a discussion paper, London: Hansard Society

[Accessed via http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/downloads/archive/2007/09/24/friend-or-foe-lobbying-in-british-democracy-jan-2007.aspx on 20/11/2011]

Books:-

Strictly functional/nuts and bolts rather than theoretical, but in that respect, probably necessary and worth including. Has full section on the EU too.

Zetter, L. (2011) Lobbying: The Art of Political Persuasion (2nd ed), Petersfield: Harriman House

Lobbying in the EU - readings

2011-10-20T01:20:00.000-07:00

This is a list of introductory readings and links which I have put together for the Erasmus IP which Greenwich along with six other universities across Europe is participating in next March in Gent, Louvain and Brussels studying lobbying and government relations in Europe as part of postgraduate public relations study across Europe. The timing of the intensive two week workshop could not be better with lobbying a topical issue in many countries. I and my colleagues would be interested to hear about other works which we should be including and any suggestions would be welcome. I have also included the participating universities below.

Papers and cuttings

Alter, R. 2010. Clearer Lobbying for Cleaner Policy Making. OECD Observer.

Anon. Lobbying in theEU. 2008. EU Insight.

Anon. Coalition Building. Towards a New Agora. 2011. World Bank.

Anon. Expert Group on Conflict of Interest with aspecial session on lobbying: enhancing transparency and accountability, Paris. June 2007. 2007. OECD.

Godwin, R. 2011. Lobbying, a ticking timebomb. Evening Standard. 14^th Oct. 2011.

Jensen, I. 2002. Public Relations and Emerging Functions ofthe Public Sphere. An Analytical Framework. Journal of Communication Management.

Mack, R. 2005. Lobbying effectively in Brusselsand Washington– getting the right result. PracticePapers. Journal of CommunicationManagement.

Jaatinen, M. 1998. Lobbying for conflict accommodation – contingency model. Corporate Communications.

Svendsen, G.T., 2011. Evaluatingand Regulating the Impacts of lobbying in the EU? The case study of greenindustries. Environmental Policy andGovernance. Wiley.

Schepers, S. 2010. Business-government relations: beyondlobbying. Corporate Governance.

de Bussy, N.M., Kelly, L. 2009. Stakeholders,Politics and Power. Towards and understanding of stakeholder identification andsalience in government. Journal ofCommunication Management.

Books

L’Etang, J. 2009. Public Relations – Concepts, Practice andCritique. Ch.5. Public Affairs andthe Public Sphere. P.96. Sage.

Von Schendelen, R. 2003. Machiavelli in Brussels. The Art of Lobbying the EU. Amsterdam Press. http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DqEoqkJ0WIUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA11&dq=eu+and+lobbying&ots=D8wiCQi6G9&sig=7wapq9gK7ligLcjGmkbzdUjnAYw#v=onepage&q=eu%20and%20lobbying&f=false

Tench, R., Yeoman, L. 2006. Exploring Public Relations. Pearson. Ch.23, Public Affairs. p.447.

Links

Amin., M. 2010. The “L” Word: Is lobbyingactually a sign of progress in developing countries? World Bankblogs. http://blogs.worldbank.org/psd/node/10439

Alber & Geiger. 2011. “EU’s leading lobbying law firm.” http://www.albergeiger.com/?gclid=CPPoiaz_9KsCFYMPfAodjSOWJQ

Banks, M. 2011. UK could “learn from EU” on lobbying rules. The Parliament.com. 18^th Oct. 2011. http://www.theparliament.com/latest-news/article/newsarticle/uk-could-learn-from-eu-on-lobbying-rules/

Bingle, P. 2011. Why lobbying is a good thing. The Dispatch Box, The blog of Bell PottingerPublic Affairs. http://bp-pa.blogspot.com/2011/10/musing-on-why-lobbying-is-good-thing.html

EU Transparency Register. 2011. http://europa.eu/transparency-register/index_en.htm

Igan, D., Mishra,P., Tressel, T. 2009. AFistful of Dollars : Lobbying and the Financial Crisis. IMF Working Paper. Accessed online.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2009/wp09287.pdf

Lobbying in the European Union. Current Rules and Practices. 2003. European Parliament. http://ec.europa.eu/civil_society/interest_groups/docs/workingdocparl.pdf

OECD. 2008. Lobbyists, governments and public trust. Building a legislative framework forenhancing transparency and accountability in lobbying. http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,3746,en_2649_34135_41074896_1_1_1_1,00.html

Sharif, H. 2011. Ihate lobbyists. And I am one. But they are absolutely necessary. The Commentator. 18^th Oct. 2011. http://www.thecommentator.com/article/546/i_hate_lobbyists_and_i_am_one_but_they_are_absolutely_necessary_

Worst EU Lobby Awards. http://www.worstlobby.eu/

European partners in Erasmus IP

UniversitéCatholique de Louvain http://www.uclouvain.be/

Arteveldehogeschool www.arteveldehs.be

Nancy-Université

(UniversitéNancy2) http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/

Universitatea din Bucureşti http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/litere/dcrp/index.php

Universidad Cardenal Herrera www.uch.ceu.es

Instituto Superior de Novas Profissoes http://www.inp.pt/

University of Greenwich www.gre.ac.uk

Facebook and privacy - how will it impact on the IPO?

2011-09-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

It would appear that there is a growing concern over recent Facebook changes which in turn raises more general worries over Facebook's approach to privacy. Certainly speaking to my students today, all active Facebook users (I am not a Facebook user), there is growing concern about the new changes. Next year's likely IPO for the company must raise concerns that the company will seek to commercialise too quickly, something which Sir Martin Sorrell has recently alluded to at the recent Royal Television Society Cambridge conference.

Siemens shows awareness of societal pressures

2011-09-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

The decision by Siemens to withdraw from the supply of nuclear power stations is a particularly interesting consequence of what Jensen might term "organisational legitimacy and identity in the public sphere" in her important 2001 paper on the application of the public sphere to public relations practice. According to the announcement, Siemens is withdrawing from the supply of nuclear power plants responding to the "clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".

In other words it is not responding to market conditions but to societal pressure. In most markets, Siemens supply of nuclear systems would be entirely socially acceptable, particularly in the current environment with jobs such a key focus for most countries but the announcement from Siemens suggests that Germany's focus on alternative energy makes this market focus no longer acceptable from such a major German supplier. It is a very different decision to, for example, the reversal of Shell's Piper Alpha disposal which was taken in a crisis PR situation facing widespread public hostility. This decision appears to be the consequence of what might be called rational discourse in the public sphere and Siemens reading of the situation as a reflective "economically successful, legal and responsible company".

What will the Siemens' shareholders think of the decision?

Spills and Spin

2011-09-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

A book we are planning to use alongside other works on our MA PR Corporate Communications course (within the MA PR programme) this coming year is Tom Bergin's Spills and Spin: The inside story of BP. He has been an oil analyst with Reuters for a number of years so brings a strong understanding of the sector to his coverage of BP's problems. Incidentally, today's Sunday Times reminds how BP is still struggling to move forward and one suspects to survive over the next three years on its own (would the UK government allow a takeover?).
(http://www.oilspillnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/1295067618-47.jpg)

I am only half way through but the book is really strong on exploring the culture, organisation and personalities of BP as well as understanding the role of the communications, media and financial markets. So it is an ideal book alongside the course before we even get to sessions on crisis PR.

The book is strong on setting the context for the Gulf accident. It was well known that BP has had problems with building a strong safety culture for many years (way before the Texas refinery disaster in 2005) which does raise the question how could the main board directors have allowed both Browne and then Hayward to downgrade the minimal safety culture which was in place, even further by signing off so many cutbacks.

One of the issues which the BP saga throws up for corporate communications teams with major companies is what do you do if you sense your senior management is not managing the company in a prudent fashion. To have two major accidents on American soil (Texas refinery) and US waters (Gulf rig) in less than five years as BP did, suggests major flaws in the organisation. Bergin also highlights that the macho culture under Hayward (unlike Browne) led to a number of senior women leaving BP - an early warning sign?

As some commentators have pointed out, it is strange that the two bosses critically involved in BP have moved on from BP with apparent ease. Lord Browne went on to advise the government on the future of universities and the adoption of market pricing (hopefully BP's trajectory is not an indicator of future problems in academia); while Hayward is set to make millions with Nat Rothschild in a new energy venture. It turns out that both appear to have left all the problems behind with BP; while their own personal reputations seems relatively unscathed. In complete contrast with Fred Godwin whose reputation has continued to decline while RBS' would appear to have strengthened. Something of a mystery.

Command and control model of PR takes another hit with fall of DSK

2011-07-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

The DSK affair in New York has led to much soul searching in the French media. In particular, about their attitude towards DSK and his well-known attitude to women but more generally about lack of exposure of what some French female commentators are saying was a macho culture in the French political class generally.

At the same time, the French media have turned on the PR team behind Dominic Strauss-Kahn and have explored in detail their tactics in managing the DSK brand - a very powerful one in French politics which could have well led to him becoming the next French President before the brand and his career came to a grinding halt in the Sofitel hotel in New York. If the reports are accurate, then the model of PR adopted by his team was a classic example of command and control, similar to the Campbell/Blair model in the early years of New Labour.

DSK was advised by a small team of top PR advisers operating out of one of the top French and international communications operations, Euro-RSCG in Paris. The same people are also advisors to many of leading French organisations and individuals. Of course in the French language, the term PR or "relations publique" is hardly ever used; it is communications or com for short reflecting the strong influence of marketing and advertising in the development of PR in the French market.

The history of "command and control" as a PR tactic in any country is it seems reassuringly effective in the early days but when it fails, as fail it will, it tends to crash with spectacular results. In an era of social media, organisations, leaders and brands need to understand that the give and take of comments, compliments and criticisms is part of the process of operating in a global market. It is part of the "licence to operate" which any politician and organisation needs to gain from what is seen to be an equitable or in Grunigian terms a symmetrical relationship with stakeholders and society. PR practitioners need to encourage organisations to participate in this process not to try to hide away or control the flow of communications as in the case of DSK and the PR team behind his rise and fall.

Edelman comes on board to help Murdoch

2011-07-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

Having just completed my blog yesterday on the lack of touch shown by News Corporation and the Murdoch family in the crisis facing them and I see that Edelman have been appointed to assist. A very good move as they are experienced practitioners and understand that modern organisations have to build a constituency of support across stakeholders. They cannot rely on a shareholder only model for operations and communications which the Murdoch family have to date adopted in extremis.

Already there seems a better touch to the responses by the family not least agreeing to appear before the House of Commons committee next week. Rupert Murdoch's interview with the Wall Street Journal was ill-judged both in choice of media (they should seek a non-Murdoch owned media) and in comments and the Edelman relationship with Rupert is going to be a fascinating to observe to see if he will take advice. The resignation announced this morning of Rebekah Brooks only helps. Certainly it is going to be an interesting case study in crisis and corporate communications over the coming weeks and months.

Murdoch family's heritage hinders understanding of role of communications in time of crisis

2011-07-14T03:33:00.000-07:00

The inability of the Murdoch family and senior management of News Corporation and News International to engage publicly with the forces at play which are tapping at the very foundations of the organisation betrays all too clearly the way they have traditionally done business in the past. They have prospered in a world of meetings behind closed doors; of private meetings to brief key stakeholders on the agendas which were important to the family and the organisation; of sympathetic treatment by their own media to communicate key agendas. All could be termed the traditional approach to public relations based on controlling communications and agendas and in their case, actually controlling media. There is no sense of them understanding the role of public relations in a modern democracy, building a constituency of support through dialogue with wider stakeholders which most organisations have started to learn and adopt.

Why is nobody speaking for the Murdochs; or why are the the family not themselves speaking out? They have some of the best PR advice through their son-in-law, Matthew Freud but their continued silence speaks of their uncertainty and lack of understanding of these difficult times. The only forms of communication - and unintended - currently from the Murdoch family are hurried snaps taken by the paparazzi of the family and senior executives behind tinted car windows as they rush from one "fortress" or underground carpark to another. Images of the bunker provide a powerful narrative for other media and for the general public.

(Daily Telegraph.)

The family need to communicate in these difficult times as their continued silence must be starting to having significant damage on the morale of people working for the company; only heightened by Gordon Brown's extraordinary outburst in Parliament yesterday where he called News International a "criminal media nexus". Here is a former Prime Minister calling a major global corporation a criminal enterprise - has this ever happened before in Parliament? I doubt it. Comments like this will be noted in the USA and in global capital markets and will be a question mark against the organisation and its reputation.

Crisis PR models suggest that the Murdochs probably thought that phone hacking was an issue not a developing crisis and so did not respond adequately when they had the time. Their initial response would also appear to have involved a cover-up. Timothy Coombs a leading academic in the field of crisis communications also highlights that crises which are due to organisational "misdeeds" such as cover-ups have the most severe consequences.

Equally crisis communications models would also indicate that today's crisis can become a different crisis tomorrow. I think it is increasingly likely that the Murdoch family will be required to step back from day to day management in their media operations under a "fit and proper" ruling and become passive investors with much smaller stakes than they have at present both in the UK and USA. That is the much larger crisis which they may face and how they respond now will determine that very potential outcome in two or three years time.

Reputation agendas and research

2011-04-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

Came across the Ipsos-Mori Reputation Research Council which includes the views of 38 Directors of PR and Communications for leading UK companies primarily. The latest survey and feedback from members is included. Data suggests that a low priority is given to EU elected and departmental officials (p.25) in terms of both who the CEO listens to and as a stakeholder group which the organisations regards as important in terms of "licence to operate". This is surprising for such large companies and I wonder if it would be echoed with a more pan-European communications network?

While I hope to attend the Oxford University Said Business School's Reputation Symposium later this summer. Some interesting working papers with PR relevance are also available on the site or via the author.

Facebook - might they introduce a corporate community charge?

2011-04-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

A recent piece in the Financial Times about a visit to Facebook's headquarters by leading figures from the advertising industry got me thinking about the potential valuation figures for the company when it floats next year as most commentators predict. I think that the valuation figures being quoted from $75-100bn are probably feasible based on its size and potential but I do not see advertising as we know it, being the driver of revenue, in fact just the opposite. Facebook is not about transactional relationships but communal or social relationships and although this may be changing on the edges, I don't think at its core it is changing. However there are other commercial opportunities.

One of the students at Greenwich was showing me recently some of the brands she follows on Facebook including the fashion magazine Glamour which has over 20,000 followers or friends. Having looked at some of the UK retail brands such as M&S which has over 250,000 and it is clear that a growing number of businesses are understanding how to develop active and relevant communities on Facebook which support their other online and offline activities.

But this brings no money into Facebook - as far as I can see. However, as a guess I would have said that the active community on Facebook for Glamour magazine must be worth at least £10k a month to Glamour magazine, maybe more (50p per user per month?). I cannot see any reason why Glamour magazine would want to advertise on Facebook, when it already has such an active community which will spread by word of mouth and through the magazine and web site. What must the M&S site be worth to Marks & Spencer with a much larger community?

However, in the future, might Facebook look to impose a community or poll tax when a corporate community has reached a critical mass of members say over 15,000/20,000 but could be smaller depending on size of organisation. Facebook might select to charge only for commercial organisations not NGOs or charities but potentially could be a significant source of revenue and I doubt that Facebook would lose many brands as a result. I think this is a possibility as one of the very clever approaches which Facebook has followed from the start is building the size of the network before it seeks to commercialise. Let more and more companies see the benefit of belonging to Facebook and then introduce a corporate community tax when they are on the hook and feel commercially they cannot withdraw.

In this scenario, Facebook can be seen as the owner of a very desirable shopping centre which charges a commercial rent for organisations to have a shop front in the world's largest social network. The benefit of this potential approach is it would not impact on the social relationships at the core of the Facebook model which earlier attempts based on conventional advertising have done before being withdrawn.

Lobbying and government relations in the public sphere

2011-03-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

The University of Greenwich is part of an Erasmus Intensive Programme (IP) submission providing Masters students in PR and communications the opportunity to research and study government relations and public lobbying in the European public sphere over an intensive two week period. If successful and the decision will be known in the summer from the EU, then Masters students from Greenwich and six other European universities running Masters programmes in public relations/communications will be participating in a joint programme based in Louvain, Gent and Brussels for two weeks in March 2012. The programme along with a programme of lectures and seminars includes visits and workshops with industry/NGO and EU participation across a range of current lobbying and government relations agendas. The programme will be repeated in 2013 and 2014. It will be the first ever Erasmus IP with a public relations focus.

European Commission, Brussels. (Photo courtesy of: Financial Regulation.)

The programme will be exploring issues around public diplomacy, agenda setting in publiic, legitimacy and transparency in lobbying and government relations based on a public sphere model of practice. Traditionally lobbying and government relations has been seen (and is to varying degrees in practice) an activity taking place behind closed doors. The EU, as its White Paper on communications (2006) highlights, is moving towards a public sphere model of communications, supported by growing transparency legislation, and the influence of social media, so this tension at the heart of lobbying and government relations in the EU makes the relevance of this programme proposal strongly. Recent coverage of MEPs resigning over payments for lobbying further strengthens the case for the Erasmus IP programme and for greater research and consideration of practices in the sector.

The programme is being led by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium with strong support from the Artevelde University College of Ghent. The other universities involved include: University of Nancy 2 in France; University of Bucharest in Romania; University Cardinal Herrera in Valencia, Spain; INP in Lisbon, Portugal; and University of Greenwich, London, UK. The Erasmus IP proposal is a tribute to the hard work of the MARPE network of PR universities and in particular Anne-Marie Cotton at Artevelde University College Ghent.

PR currently lacks role in MBA curriculum - "a notable omission"

2011-03-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

An important initiative from the PR Society of America - getting PR in general and in particular reputation management and corporate communications onto the MBA timetable as a recemt comment piece in the FT highlights. As PR has now got into the boardroom as a strategic management function surely it must be only time before it becomes part of the MBA curriculum? However, has PR yet got enough influence or academic credibility within the great business schools to effect this change?

Harvard Business School - birthplace of MBA.

I am not sure. For example, the Said Business School at Oxford which has a Centre for Corporate Reputation shows no apparent interest in PR's contribution to the subject when I last looked. Certainly when PR does get onto the MBA curriculum does it will be an important milestone on the professionalisation of PR.

Michael Porter sets agenda for 2011

2010-12-29T03:10:00.000-08:00

Sure to be a must-read piece for those involved in corporate communications, financial PR, corporate governance and public affairs, is an article by Professor Michael Porter and colleague Mark Kramer in this month's Harvard Business Review. Famous for his work on competitive forces and industrial clusters, Porter is damning on business, short termism and failure to put society or "shared value" at the heart of its business activites.
Michael Porter.

"The capitalist system is under siege. In recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems. Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community." A major theme of the article is the concept of "shared value" which the authors say is not CSR or philanthropy but "reconnecting business with social progress."

Coming from the pen of such a leading figure in business strategy, and in a leading business publication, the article is sure to put more focus on the stakeholder/shareholder debate; and also the more modern framing of the argument around concepts such as sustainability and the need for organisations to think about and implement such concepts in a more fundamental way.

Is Rolls-Royce too wedded to key stakeholder relationships?

2010-12-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

Following Rolls-Royce's handling of communications as a result of the major engine problems on the new giant Airbus has been instructive if somewhat painful from a UK PR plc perspective. No wonder, that according to PR Week's latest edition, it is in discussions with leading consultancies on getting some additional help. One or two of the media have even linked it to BP in terms of a major UK brand not understanding the new rules particularly in a crisis PR situation.

(Image: Wing damage to Rolls-Royce powered Quantas new generation Airbus A380 which landed safely in Singapore.)

What are the new rules? Well that is an exaggeration - but I think that social media has enhanced the role of a more generalised public opinion as opposed to a key stakeholder approach which is the approach which Rolls-Royce took in response to the situation. The trouble with this is that the company decides if a stakeholder community is important and of course it may be that public opinion decides that actually travel safety issues are of a great deal of interest to many of us, not just investors, customers of Rolls-Royce and regulators, something which Lex in the Financial Times pointed out. The response of Quantas, operators of the plane in question, was particularly instructive and showed it understood about the need for a wider communication approach to the incident.

It turns out courtesy of CorporateComms that the Director of Communications at Rolls-Royce does not believe in the impact of social media which seems unfortunate in the context and particuarly so as other media are now developing this aspect of the story.

For those PR practitioners interested in reading more regarding the role of generalised public opinion particuarly in crisis PR situations, there is a very good paper in the academic journal Corporate Communications by Oyvind Ihlen of the University of Oslo.

Wikileaks exposes public and private communication dilemmas for organisations

2010-12-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

The explosion of coverage about Wikileaks and its exposure of US diplomatic correspondence has raised a whole range of political and foreign policy issues and comments; as well as a wide ranging debate about the role of information, social media and its impact, new forms of media and so on.

From a PR perspective, I find it interesting that leaders and some media commentors have been so outwardly unsettled about the process as though the way you speak publicly about a country and organisation can be radically different about the way you communicate it in public. To have such a disconnect, I would suggest is not feasible in a global networked society.

Certainly I think we have the right as citizens to know that the ruler of Saudi Arabia is encouraging the USA to bomb Iran or that China is accepting of the idea that there should be a unified Korea in due course. These are important pieces of information that should have been brought out of the private sphere into the public sphere.

Might organisational culture issues also be at work here. Could the diplomatic service of countries be somewhat traditional in their approach to communications - believing it is acceptable to have two modes of operation - the public sphere mode and the private sphere mode and only in the latter mode where you are totally "honest" about the country and rulers. Of course Habermas would have been able to point out that "rational discourse" is a facet of a genuine public sphere something which does not appear to be going on - it all appears to be stored up for the private message to Washington. In terms of reputation, legitimacy, transparency and relationship management having such a gap between public and private communications raises serious issues for an organisation. In an networked global environment, traditional communications approaches by the diplomatic service or other large organisations - and banks seem to be next in the Wikileaks crosshairs - are no longer feasible and will need to be re-thought.

It should be noted that the British Foreign Office has created a blogging community on its web site giving views from round the world. Is it a genuine conversation? Certainly it is an interesting initiative although a search on the site suggested that nobody was confident enough to talk about Wikileaks which suggests that "rational discourse" is somewhat lacking!

The changing rhetoric of the Irish financial crisis

2010-11-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

The bailout of the Irish banks by the European Central Bank, heading presumably towards a conclusion over the next week or so, has resulted in a somewhat confused media coverage as a consequence of the apparent uncertainty by the Irish government on how to handle the story. We have had the crisis linked by Irish Ministers and commentators to the 1916 Rising; to the Civil War; 90 years of independence from Britain; even to the patriot Michael Collins. The Financial Times pointedly linked the confusing reaction of the Irish government to a protection of Irish elite groups - a story line which Jon Snow of Channel 4 amongst others had also picked up earlier. As the story developed one could sense the growing exasperation by international media trying to understand the communications agenda or "rhetoric" of the Irish government and its failure to accept the realities of the situation.

Michael Collins, Irish patriot and Minister in first Free State government in 1922 part of the emotional imagery drawn on by Irish government in initial response to ECB support.

There was no sense by the Irish government of preparing the country, of reaching out to the electorate to explain the situation and the opportunities of the situation. Better to be able to borrow money at 5% rather than 8% as currently. Right up until this weekend there has been the totally unconvincing message that no rescue was needed. The reality for the last few weeks or so, is that Irish banks have not been able to access international markets and have only been able to borrow from the ECB. Robert Peston on the BBC earlier this week was devasting in setting out the severity of the situation and his latest blog confirms the situation.

In fact it could be said that the markets have taken a more rational view of the situation and have decided that the Irish economy could not sensibly take more cuts but needs to grow, hence the need for a bailout and access to more capital. Liquat Ahmad in Lords of Finance points out, in an excellent book on the main actors in the 1920/30s financial crash, that the problems in that era were accentuated by bankers cutting more and more, when already heading into a desparate recession and failing to understand the measures which should have been taken including recapitalisation which will be the case for Ireland.

In rhetorical terms, one could say that the Irish government's approach to communications has been strong on emotion (pathos) but weak on facts (logos) although that is changing. Why did the Irish government try to hold a line that support was not necessary backed up by a nationalistic approach about sovereignty? This will only have heightened the sense of disillusionment of the Irish electorate when they have to change this position which they are now doing. The Irish government should take lessons from John Major in the UK who pulled the UK out of the ERM, forerunner of the Euro, suffered the temporary brickbats, was totally pragmatic about the situation, enjoyed two years of growth (admittedly less easy in the Euro) and won the next election.

Reputation and social construction - L'Oreal and former CEO Owen-Jones

2010-09-30T02:50:00.000-07:00

An intriguing example of the social construction of reputation can be seen in a recent interview in the weekly French business magazine, Le Point of the former, highly regarded CEO of L'Oreal, Lindsay Owen-Jones. In the article, he talks of his concerns how the Bettancourt affair which has been a powerful back-drop to French politics over the last year, may have impacted on the L'Oreal brand internationally. However, the social media comment underneath the main piece (and other media which have covered the story) suggests his own reputation as receipient of a £90M gift from the Bettancourt family which was undeclared until recently, may be more on trial than that of L'Oreal. However, in the developing online debate, former employees have also come to his rescue, so giving readers the chance to consider a wide range of perspectives.

Corporate Reputation gains Oxford Professor

2010-09-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

PR Week reports that Said Business School at Oxford University has appointed a visiting professor for corporate reputation. It doesn't say but I assume it will probably be the first in this area appointed by the university. Can we say that in terms of the professionalisation of PR, and as an indicator of the growth of the profession this is an important milestone, after all PR has probably been the most active management discipline to date in its use of reputation as a core part of the corporate communications skillset? Well in practice yes; but not necessarily in terms of academic research and I think there are some opportunities being missed on all sides.

We can see this in the Said Business School at Oxford which also hosted last week its first reputation symposium with some leading names presenting such as Charles Fombrun. Looking through the programme and abstracts there is no mention of public relations and no speakers from the PR academic community which seems to be a somewhat perplexing trend in the subject.

In terms of organisational practice PR would seem to be the leading management discipline in its involvement with the concept of corporate reputation. But in terms of academic work and papers this is not the case. I am not sure why this is the case, but there may well be an element of academic snobbery after all PR is a very young academic discipline and as the University of Bounemouth Conference this summer on PR history highlighted with a fair few skeletons in the cupboard. But I think there is a need for openness from other disciplines in this respect particularly as issues such as social construction and legitimacy are ones which PR academics have been doing some good work, such as Jensen. I would also suggest that Revealing the Corporation an important early work in the development of corporate reputation, one of the best chapters in the book was by James Grunig, a well known and now retired PR academic.

A historic summer for the PR profession

2010-08-04T02:31:00.000-07:00

The summer of 2010 may be looked back on as rather significant in the development of public relations. It has been a summer for Accords - for stating principles and definitions of PR practice. First there was the Stockholm Accord which sought to define the practice of PR overall as part of the World Public Relations Forum. This perhaps has not had the coverage it deserves but it is an important document on the role and value of PR within organisations and interpreting it in the language and issues facing today's global organisations. It is a document for PR practitioners but also one which will be very helpful for other senior management professions and stakeholdes in understanding the role of PR.

This was followed in July by the Barcelona Declaration on measurement and evaluation. The Declaration seeks to set down some broad principles for measurement and evaluation of PR and in particular the need from measuring outputs to outcomes. It also fires a broadside at AVE, (Advertising Value Equivalents) which has been one of the key but generally discredited metrics used by practitioners in measuring outputs in the form of media coverage. It also highlights the importance of measuring PR's impact on business results such as sales which as the Declaration highlights raises the issue of PR understanding the metrics used in marketing. An interesting point which does highlight the interesting overlap between transactional relationships and stakeholder relationships which is at the heart of the marketing and PR ties.

Both are very interesting documents and statements which provide a useful point for practitioner, observers, students and academics. They do show the growing confidence of the PR profession which the Stockholm Accords highlight and the need to articulate the progress they have made to the wider world. Having briefly and enjoyably studied medieval history at A-Level, these Accords and Declaration by the PR world this summer, remind me somewhat of the great Councils and Edicts of the early Christian church as it sought to ensure that its authority and primacy of intepretation went unchallenged.

Finally, and the subject of a future blog, it is entirely appropriate in such a summer that the University of Bournemouth has hosted the first International History of PR Conference.

A Fistful of dollars - IMF report on role of lobbying in financial crash

2010-06-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

I attended earlier in the week a very good workshop run by the University of Kingston in London on the financial crisis and the developing political and economic agendas for future financial market regulation. I went to get additional context for a Financial PR course we are running on the new Masters PR programme at Greenwich starting in September.

The role of media and the influence of lobbying during the crisis was an interesting sub-text in the workshop. In particular a recent report by the IMF titled A Fistful of dollars on the relationship between lobbying and risk taking by the sub-prime mortgage financial institutions on Wall St was explored. Essentially the report highlighted that those financial institutions which lobbied most actively against any tightening of regulation in the sub-prime area by the authorities were also those who took the most risks, suffered the worst returns over time and were major recipients of the US government bailouts.

No PR or communication academics are quoted in the IMF report but they could have done as lobbying draws on PR frameworks in its approach to communications although particularly in the US has developed its own route of professionalisation. Lobbying needs to consider the question raised by Larissa Grunig on the role of PR and quoted by Dejan Vercic "Are we in the business of persuasion? of information? of negotiation? of co-optation? of co-operation". Perhaps it was better put by both Grunigs later (1992) as framed by two extremes; compliance gaining (asymmetry) and problem solving (symmetry). Does lobbying do problem solving? The IMF report is a damning indictment of the destructive role which lobbying can play when seeking compliance not to solve problems. But the PR profession cannot ignore the wider lessons which the report raises.

BP, PR and Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety

2010-06-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

Taking a view of BP's PR efforts on social media today compared with the first weeks and it is noticeable that Twitter is being much more actively used by BP than at the start as well as the company's Facebook BP America page. The Facebook page is also taking in feeds from Twitter comments and commenting on them showing a growing understanding of the integration of the different services.

A comment from BP America's today (14th June) "We want our page to be an appropriate forum for everyone, and an exchange of constructive dialogue from differing opinions" highlights the developing conversation. This was entirely absent in the first hours and days of the Gulf oil spill.

Tony Hayward, CEO of BP.

BP's PR effort on a range of counts has been heavily criticised. The latest broadside was this weekend in the Financial Times although the article acknowledged that any company would have suffered major reputational damage over such an incident. However the FT notably linked communications problems to wider organisational and cultural issues within BP over how it ran its American subsidiary. In particular a failure to have a senior heavyweight management team run by Americans dealing with the US government and US media (as opposed to its very British-
centric team who have gone down badly) and included in this was the
fact, that BP also employs a British PR consultancy even for its US work, Brunswick. Other commentators have been more direct over Brunswick's failures and I would add that social media has also never been Brunswick's strength.

Ross Ashby. (Source: Principia Cybernetica.)

This lack of organisational and cultural sensitivity in BP brings us to one of the pioneers of systems theory, Ross Ashby. A physciatrist and academic, Asbhy was famous for his work on Systems Theory and Cybernetics and influential to a generation of academics particularly in the (1960s) developing field of business and organisational strategy (not least PR's own Open Systems Theory). His Law of Requisite Variety ( interpreting in organisational context), says that an organisation must have the capabilities (technical, managerial etc) and "variety" for the environment in which it operates. The more complex the environment the more "variety" needed within the organisation. On all these fronts BP has failed - and BP's communication performance is symptomatic of these failures.

UK election - old media and new media - who was the winner?

2010-05-13T01:57:00.000-07:00

There has been quite a debate in all forms of media about the role of mass media versus new media in the election. Jon Snow summed up what many believe that online in the UK election has played a limited role compared with the Obama campaign, although he was writing during the campaign. Reflecting on it after the campaign what role did new media play?

Talking to Paul Simpson an active LibDem tweeter, and in the Top 30 Political UK tweeters (as well as a colleague at Greenwich) - he felt that Twitter did not have a great campaign and was used primarily by the parties to amplify messages with lots of aimless re-tweets, but not to develop discourse. (Is Twitter losing some vibrancy generally?). A good overview with links and a summary of the overall social media campaign is provided by eModeration which highlights the strong vote for the LibDems on the Facebook poll where apparently over 400,000 took part.

One point which I don't think the commentators in mainstream media have made enough of, was the good turnout. There was some talk in the run up to the campaign that there might be a low turnout in the 50s. In fact the election achieved a UK turnout of 65%; UK Electioninfo provides some good data on turnouts since 1945. What is striking is that since 2001, turnout has been growing when it nearly went below 60%. Are we seeing social media's influence in these figures and is Facebook combined with the impact of the TV debates perhaps the real winner for this campaign in energising young people and getting them out to vote?

Crisis PR at BP

2010-05-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

Watching how BP handles the major oil pollution incident off the US Gulf coast is going to be very instructive in terms of crisis PR. The severity of the situation is immense, even for a company of BP's size and experience in crisis PR situations. It is also in a politically sensitive area just recovering from the effects of Hurricaine Katrina in 2005 which has given an added dimension to US coverage and that is an aspect which is somewhat different than many crisis PR situations facing organisations.

My impression is that after a slow start BP is starting to get its crisis PR team into action with mainstream media in the UK! However the USA is another matter and social media also looks weak. The comments on Twitter suggest an increasingly hostile reaction as more information comes out but also quizzical that BP does not appear to have an active policy of communicating across all channels of communication including Twitter .

Advertising agencies losing out on data primacy

2010-04-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

Interesting perspective highlighted in today's Financial Times that advertising agencies may be losing out to increasingly digital savvy clients and also no longer seen as having access to key sources of data. According to the Council of Marketing, the key data for organisations in terms of marketing and advertising is now primarily in-house such as web site traffic. This trend is leading major companies according to the story to build their own resources in-house, draw on specialist IT suppliers and cut back on traditional agencies. Another element in the move from mass media to interactive media and changing influence of the promotional disciplines.

Citizen takeover gathers pace at United

2010-03-14T01:31:00.000-08:00

The pace of developments at Manchester United continues to surprise. It really is becoming a fascinating story about "ownership" of a brand and the legitimacy of ownership when the customers decide that the owners are not running the organisation in a responsible way. Certainly it is showing the impact that an involved, committed and passionate community of users and consumers (brand community) can have around an established brand when they want greater involvement. In the case of Manchester United it is no longer a question of shared ownership of the equity of the brand, which most assumed was the agenda with brand community, the fans are actually setting the agenda of ownership - they want to take control. The coup of getting David Beckham to wear the green and yellow scarf was a symbolic moment and according to the Guardian, media around the world have covered this aspect of the story taking the story to another level.
(Photo from gulfnews.com)

The Guardian piece also suggests that the club have introduced a range of classic control measures on communictions which any PR consultant can tell them are useless. The measures including firing any employee wearing the scarf and now they are editing out all mentions of the protest from United press conferences which are covered on its own TV station, MUTV. That will be the first commercial activity which the protest group, MUST, will target, as the actions of the club are undermining the legitimacy of their own TV station. The owners if they are going to succeed will need to need to build a dialogue with the fans. They cannot ignore the demands, can they build a compromise position where the fans have a larger stake, which surely is a position for the Glazers to consider? I doubt they have the capability to develop such an agenda not least because football has traditionally shown little understanding of the role of public relations in contrast to marketing as academics such as Maria Hopwood from Leeds Met highlighted at the CIPR Academic Conference at the University of Stirling in the summer.

The importance of symbols in the campaign is particularly interesting both in terms of brands but also their historical pedigree. Beckham wearing the scarf and so symbolising - even anointing its significance - to the whole role of the scarf in its different colours from the traditional brand have a powerful resonance. All revolutions - or citizen takeovers - have icons, something which Wally Olins, a leading corporate identity practitioner and commentator, has highlighted in several papers highlighting the use of icons in the French revolution (tricolor, Marseillaise etc).
(Delacroix: Liberty leading the people. 1830. Britannia.com)

Manchester United - fighting for organisational legitimacy against citizen power

2010-02-18T08:28:00.000-08:00

I am not up in sports PR but it is fascinating to watch the way that Manchester United as an organisation is fighting for its credibility. Not as a club - only this week it continued to be as successful as ever on the pitch - but its present ownership structure is rapidly losing credibility in the face of its own fans, wider supporters of football, undoubtedly the sports media as well as the government - all concerned by the high level of debt on its balance sheet.

It is yet another example - Trafigura was an earlier one - where organisations depend on a "licence to operate" which is not given by the courts or bought in the market but which depends on the way that an organisation engages with its stakeholders and the wider community to earn respect and support.

It is no longer too far fetched to see that the fans who have no legal power in the ownership of Manchester United as presently structured i.e a private company; may force the Glasers to sell over the next 12/18 months. Might this be the first Citizens Takeover in a stakeholder age? Might the concept get an airing in the forthcoming election?

Financial PR and investor relations in a stakeholder environment?

2010-02-11T09:17:00.000-08:00

The growth in interest and prominence of the stakeholder approach to organisations (as highlighted at the recent World Economic Forum), in contrast to a shareholder focus, poses an interesting problem for f inancial PR and in particular investor relations. How do they adapt to this new environment as both have grown and become highly profitable parts of the PR industry (investor relations would see themselves as a different profession) in an environment where shareholder focus has been dominant? Will their role change; will they become less powerful and influential within the communications framework of major publicly quoted companines and how will they reconcile the stakeholder agenda?

Of course it could be argued that stakeholder communications is a fig leaf for organisations in their dealings with society and that shareholders and the requirements of financial markets are going to dominate, whatever organisations say in public. We can see this in the recent acquisition of Cadburys by Kraft. The Chairman of Cadbury's was able to say without embarrassment that the board of Cadbury's had done their fiduciary duty to shareholders by selling the company. Although in a later speech to the Said Business School at Oxford he did highlight his concerns that so many key shareholders by the end were just hedge funds. .

However, there are more fundamental issues at work which need to be considered. Both financial PR and in particular investors relations are a product of the "efficient market theory" which is that markets are inherently efficient and the price of an asset fully reflects the information available. Markets by implication are also ently hungry for information to further improve market pricing and their overall efficiency.

Caption: Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed and strong supporter of the efficiency of markets. (Google Images).

In this context, the role of both professions can be seen as assisting market professionals in the efficient working of markets by providing information, admittedly from the company's perspective, which have been seen to date to enhance market efficiency. However, now efficient market theory is badly discredited as a result of the financial crisis, if not before. The significant asset bubbles in property were not properly priced and a recent piece in the Financial Times shows how badly - with 90% of one of the most toxic form of derivatives, CDOs were issued in 2007, having defaulted. A clear example of not market efficiency but information asymmetry with buyers understanding a great deal less than sellers about the assets they were buying.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and whether both professions are starting to rethink the implications of the financial crisis. I have not seen much evidence of a debate going on but would welcome hearing about this if anyone has further information on the subject. It would be an interesting subject for a one day conference at Greenwich.

In the meantime it is interesting to note that the Walker Review of Corporate Governance, a potentially influential report, published November 2009, by a senior City figure commissioned by the UK Treasury, uses the word "stewardship" in terms of the role of major shareholders. Now "stewardship" is a term, normally associated with great Estates where they are passed from one generation to another, with no idea of selling the assets which you have inherited. The same principle can be seen with many family firms, where inter-generational transfer is a key requirement. Shareholders as stewards - that takes some thinking about and what are the implications for financial PR and investor relations practice?

Social media and semantic web insights

2010-01-30T05:22:00.000-08:00

Last few days there have been a number of major articles and presentations on social media and the internet which look to be a good resource in terms of making sense of it and considering future developments. The presentations were at the World Economic Forum at Davos and the article is from the Economist.

Two hour workshop on social media at the World Economic Forum with all the main players participating and chaired by Loic Le Meur, a leading French blogger and social media commentator. First 10 minutes were good and hopefully the rest will be equally good.

Tim Berners Lee on the semantic web and web scale developments. A good five minutes.

The Economist and social networking.

World Economic Forum has had some very good sessions on social media and this was an excellent one with Chad Hurley, YouTube; Bill Gates and EU Commissioner Viviane Redding (v.good) from 2007. Still appears to be available on Google Video. Always good to see what still applies and what was seen as the key development three years ago.

Celebrity culture survives waves of ad revenue destruction in USA

2010-01-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Guardian highights a fascinating but gruesome picture of US magazine publishing and impact of recession and internet on magazine advertising revenues. The article draws on annual figures for 2008/9 published by Magazine Publishers of New York. What amazes me is how much advertising revenue, Time magazine still generates at over $400M in spite of a 13% fall in ad revenue during the year.

People magazine is the king and queen of the print media - a celebrity magazine - it is just shy of a $1bn ad revenue and still growing! Its web site is also still growing. Started in 1974 and apparently a spin-off from Time magazine. Mass media when successful is a formidable money making machine.

Picture credit

Agenda setting by PWC

2009-12-29T01:11:00.000-08:00

While browsing, I came across a good example of using social media in an agenda setting role by PriceWaterhouseCoopers'. As a leading provider of accountancy services globally, it is, I assume, asked to comment on proposed new regulations by financial regulators and other industry bodies worldwide. This is a well established process by regulators and government civil servants involved in developing regulation in seeking specialist opinion from a wide range of interested parties. PWC has a section where it publishes its formal responses online (PWC Inform)- a good example of transparency and of course agenda setting by an industry leader in a particular field. Incidentally a good source on the EU Transparency Directive and relevance for financial reporting and implications for financial PR.

Google pays no tax in the UK (or as good as) - what impact on reputation in the UK?

2009-12-26T07:54:00.000-08:00

The Times has highlighted that Google pays virtually no tax in the UK - even though it earns around £1.6bn from the UK alone; one of its largest country markets. In addition to paying no tax, Google has through the growth of online advertising related to search, seriously damaged many British local newspapers and put people out of work, with consequent reduction in tax revenues and additional cost of unemployment benefit.

Quite legal, but from my perspective that probably damages its corporate reputation in the UK; particularly as some comments below the article suggest it has made only minimal contribution to UK charities. If I was the UK government or an MP asked for a meeting by a Google public affairs advisor to discuss some issue which is affecting its business, would I bother? Doing a quick search on Twitter suggests that it is an issue with a reasonable amount of discussion.

It would be interesting to have a listing of businesses which pay the most tax in the UK. Certainly contribution to the UK exchequer in the form of tax payments in these days of tightening public sector budgets may enhance and damage some companies' reputations with the public. Does such a listing exist? Are companies which pay a lot of tax emphasising this factor strongly enough or is paying too much tax seen as a negative factor with investors? I suspect organisations are somewhat unsure how to play (even pay) the tax card.

Iraq Enquiry end of an era - time for social construction in public enquiries?

2009-12-16T04:29:00.000-08:00

Is the current Iraq Enquiry the last one of its type?

The idea of an Enquiry of the "great and the good" asking polite questions of the "great and the good" with limited aspects of inquisition has surely passed its sell by date. It is looking somewhat old fashioned and tired. The format has been given a general pasting by the media and the latest incident with the Chairman cutting off TV coverage because some mild comments were made about US intelligence makes the whole process look even more bizarre. Certainly I don't think any one on the Enquiry is going to have their reputations burnished by this process. In fact, if one was responsible for PR for the "British Establishment" currently one would be worried - MPs and expenses, the City and financial crisis, the "great and the good" - they all look so tired and unimpressive.

But is there a different approach? I think it is time that consideration was given by the authorities to allow people to comment on this and future Enquiry web sites in some form of moderated forum or web comment. Yes, the Enquiry did take views from people initially but why not develop this process further online.    After all Enquiries are a form of seeking out the "truth" and to date they have been a vehicle in all countries generally to allow an "establishment" version of the "truth" to be created.   Now it is surely time and with social media entirely possible, that different versions of the truth can be discussed and aired and people can make their own minds up. This is the form which online media is moving towards with social media commentary at the end of main articles and blogs. It is interesting that the BBC has set up a forum site to ask people's opinion on what they want from the Iraq Enquiry.

In other words a social construction of the "truth" should be part of the agenda of government Public Enquiries and the discussion can take place around each one as well as in the media.   Interestingly both PR and marketing are currently very interested in social construction of brand and reputation as traditional approaches to construction of brand and reputation are seen to be too controlled and lack authenticity.

In fact from an archive perspective, the web site and commentary along with the final report can become part of the permanent record of the Enquiry online.   A decision might be made to allow commentary to continue for a further two months after publication and then it is closed down on that site as representing a full and complete record at that moment in time. It might be that retrospective comments say at 5, 10 and 20 years on the various sites become a pattern to allow for new thinking and discussion on the subject.

Anybody got a good example of a public enquiry running alongside social media?

2009-12-11T07:08:00.001-08:00

Big companies watch out - a developing agenda against market domination?

2009-11-26T02:39:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a developing agenda in the UK about addressing the fact that we have allowed large swathes of the economy to be dominated by one or two key players - finance, food retailing, energy, media just for starters. Might this become a developing agenda in the next Tory government which seems more focused on the issue than Labour?

The Governor of the Bank of England is concerned about banks which have become "too big to fail" and has raised this on a number of occasions. Today's Financial Times has a commentary piece from Maurice Saatchi, someone who is close and influential in the free-market end of the Conservative Party on the way cartels have found their way around the work of regulators. While today sees the launch of ResPublica an interesting new think tank launched by Philip Blond and someone who is supposedly close to David Cameron. He argues that the degree of monopolisation in many key markets in the UK damages society and urges further development of the John Lewis model - where it is owned by a charitable trust with the workforce sharing in ownership of the company. David Cameron is attending the launch.

Of course large organisations are notoriously hard to dislodge and will no doubt be highlighting their role in society but it will be an interesting agenda to watch over the coming years. It does highlight how weak the role of the Competition Commission has been in this country. Why does it not set a target that no company can own more than 15% of a key market? Tesco has a 30.7% share of the UK food grocery market.

Goldman Sachs grapples with society's changing demands

2009-11-20T01:46:00.000-08:00

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in simple terms is in response and has in turn seeded the wider agenda in society that there is more to business than just making money. A business has a wider responsibility to its varied stakeholders not just returning money to its shareholders or paying large bonuses to its employees. Now what happens when a company's culture is built entirely on making money - end of story. That appears to be the case with Goldman Sachs according to many of the comments in a recent Financial Times article.

(Photo from FT.com)

The strength of the money making culture at Goldman Sachs would appear to have made it harder for them to understand the developing anger around the large profits made by the bank over the last year and the forthcoming bonuses for staff. Note even the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch can do a piece on "5 reasons we hate Goldman Sachs".

Goldman Sachs is trying and has announced a major initiative supporting small businesses in the USA and has said sorry in a somewhat ritualistic way. But the PR team at Goldman Sachs need to read Prof. Jensen's 2001 paper on the public sphere and the role of the public sphere in developing organisational legitimacy and identity for an organisation. The implications of this paper is that Goldman Sachs to achieve organisational legitimacy going forward will have to change its culture and that unbridled money making is no longer acceptable for such a large and influential organisation. Did the Goldman Sachs partners think of that when they went public back in the 1990s?

Changing influence in the boardroom

2009-11-09T02:07:00.000-08:00

Media section of Guardian.

Is anybody doing international PR for the Tories? They need it and so does UK.

2009-11-05T02:45:00.000-08:00

The Pierre Lallouche outburst in the Guardian by the French Europe Minister has been building up for some time. Reading the French media for a number of years, which I do, both online and print, it is clear they find the Conservative position on Europe totally baffling. The word "autistic" used by Lallouche which may be politically incorrect but is an interesting choice of words as it is a condition which I think the medical profession find somewhat baffling to understand the causes, hence its controversial use in this context.

For many years, the Tory party had the wonderful brand even if unofficial of the "natural party of government" and a strong feel for international affairs. After all it was a Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, who helped set a post-Empire agenda with his "winds of change" speech. All that instinct seems to have disappeared from the Conservatives, hence Lallouche's comments and sense of bafflement.

French media tend to highlight the Conservative leadership as coming from a narrow elite and also one which has no experience of working in industry compared with their énarques. (The famous Bullingdon dining club photo with David Cameron and Boris Johnston.)

Worryingly for the Conservatives and UK plc, other governments are giving the same message to the Conservatives and its position on Europe with both the US and German positions made clear in briefings to senior journalists.

Are the Conservatives concerned? Probably not as being attacked from France will play well in marginal seats where they are fighting UKIP and perhaps the BNP, which incidentally has become the most actively visited political website of the UK parties. However almost certainly the Foreign Office is concerned and I would have thought the City and wider business community is starting to worry that this uncertainty over Europe makes the UK an increasingly uncertain base for a stable long term investment climate.

Strategic agenda for PR

2009-10-24T03:37:00.000-07:00

I don't know anybody who articulates the wider agenda for PR as well (and as influentially) as Richard Edelman and in a language that senior management in organisations understand. That is why McKinsey, the consultancy firm have interviewed him in their online business journal.

Twitter, Trafigura, and the public sphere

2009-10-20T02:12:00.000-07:00

The Trafigura episode is a good example of an active public sphere (Habermas) not least because it was not primarily in the mainstream media or by government that the episode was resolved but by active discussion across social media notably Twitter. Prof. Jensen's use of the concept in a 2001 paper on the role of PR and the public sphere looks remarkably relevant today, as she further developed the role of the public sphere to include a further sphere in which "the identity and legitimacy of organisations are discussed and reflected - without necessarily claiming governmental intervention" - a concept very relevant to CSR.

Perhaps an active public sphere momentum has developed in the UK as it is interesting to see that later the same week, media itself was under the spotlight. Following a column in the Daily Mail by Jan Moir on the death of Stephen Gately which many saw as homophobic, and again following a firestorm of comment on Twitter, the Daily Mail saw advertising withdrawn by major companies as a result of the controversy and many thousands of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission. Some, of course might argue that Twitter is a limited vehicle for discourse - an important feature of the public sphere - but at this moment Twitter seems the most poweful form of social media in terms of the context of the public sphere and "legitimacy of organisations".

Trafigura - also test case on role of lawyers and PR in organisational reputation

2009-10-17T02:52:00.000-07:00

Now that Trafigura has withdrawn its injunction against the Guardian, it is time to look over the entrails of a fascinating episode which surely will be a much studied event for its implications for corporate social responsibility, online PR practice, crisis PR, organisational reputation and legal practice.

The role of the whistleblowers site, Wikileaks needs to be recognised. This I understand was where the Minton report - a chemical analysis of the waste material in the hold of the ship - first appeared in a publicly accessible location and the initial Guardian injunction also forbade it to publish the link. Wikileaks, based on Wiki software is a haven for whistleblowers to bring documents to public attention which governments and organisations wish to keep buried. You can see on the Minton page on Wikileaks, how it operates with about eight different servers in different countries, and which enhances the overall resilience of the system to being closed down in one particular country.

The role of social media in the event has been well covered. Perhaps we can say that the "Court of Public Opinion" has overwhelmed the "Commercial Courts" and certainly it was interesting to hear Lord Goldsmith, a former Attorney General the morning on the BBC Today programme, acknowledging that the law would need to look at the implications of technology. It is also worth noting that a Norwegian lawyer, representing NRK, the Norwegian broadcaster which covered this incident highlighted that in fact the rights of news media are protected more strongly than they realise by European human rights law.

However, another consequence, I would suggest, is that over time it will have enhanced the corporate reputation of PR in the corridors of power. This may seem strange when surely every professional body involved with Trafigura has come out with some reputational damage. However, Carter Ruck, the legal firm representing Trafigura has been promoting their role as guardians of corporate reputation based on their use of judicial injunctions to suppress unpleasant news. A technique which the early proponents of PR in the last century, seeking to control communications, would have understood well but modern PR practice knows is just not feasible. It also appears that Carter Ruck were the lead counsel in the handling of this event, not the PR advisors, Lord Bell and Bell Pottinger., as is often the case as legal advice carries great weight in the corridors of power and the hierarchy of external opinions.

But if the "Court of Public Opinion" has become the highest court in the land, on occasions when society judges an injustice is being done or freedoms are being infringed, a function amplified by social media, then the skillset of lawyers basing their defence on law not rhetoric or dialogue (where many such as Michael Mansfield are actually very strong); then lawyers may not be best suited to putting a case to this "court" while PR has a better understanding of this role on behalf of organisations, as PR Week has highlighted in an interesting commentary by the Editor on the challenges and opportunities for the profession at a senior level.

How long before this story comes out on Twitter/social media?

2009-10-13T02:25:00.000-07:00

Guardian has been gagged on a story including reporting a question in Parliament. How long before the person(s) and organisations involved comes out? A search on Twitter suggests those involved have already been discussed yesterday on the Guido Fawkes blog. Apparently Carter Ruck the solicitors are trying to close down this mention on Guido Fawkes. Why do organisations bother to try to close down stories through the courts - it seems an antiquated approach in this day and age? Are any legal firms working with PR agencies to address these type of stories using social media? It would be interesting to hear of any examples.

History of mass media - two landmarks in UK media

2009-10-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

For those interested in the development of media (decline of mass media - rise of new media) in the UK, the past week has been particularly noteworthy. Earlier in the week the IAB (an excellent resource on most aspects of e-commerce, nationally and globally) announced that online advertising overtook TV advertising in the UK for the first time. The first major economy where this has occurred. The internet is now the single largest recipient of advertising across all types of media with newspapers - regional and national - having been passed in 2006, according to a report in the FT.

On Friday it was announced that the Evening Standard, the London afternoon and evening newspaper, was adopting a free model starting on Monday 5th October, giving up the 50p daily charge and £12M of subscription revenue, and so becoming, as far as I am aware, the first major city anywhere in the world to adopt this model. One question I have not seen answered is how is it going to be distributed as I am assume that small shops are not going to provide space for its distribution as they get nothing in return. This move will not be popular with the likes of Rupert Murdoch and other newspaper owners as it must result in a further downgrading of the value of traditional mass media brands on their balance sheets.

What goes around comes around - financial regulation

2009-10-01T09:51:00.000-07:00

The history of PR highlights that one of the early drivers of PR was to try to protect industry against regulation and early luminaries such as Ivy Lee and Bernays partly made their name in this respect as Stuart Ewen in PR - A Social History highlights.

In this context it is interesting to note that regulation has been dominating the news agenda again and this time regarding surely the most powerful global sector - financial markets. Clearly we have witnessed a great failure of financial markets and particularly the efficient market theory which has underpinned the workings of modern markets - but should this also be seen at the micro scale as a sign of the failure of the financial PR industry generally? Probably it would have been so regarded by the early PR pioneers. Time for a retrospective on financial PR and the lessons learned?

Social media conferences - Oxford and Georgia, USA.

2009-09-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

Report in Guardian
Reuters Institute Oxford which hosted the conference.
University of Georgia and Integrating Social Media and Traditional PR
Conference blog with highlights of main contributions.

Happiness is now on the agenda and its official

2009-09-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Following the discourse in policy and political circles since the financial crash has been a giddy but fascinating ride. The latest development is that President Sarkozy has called for the way we assess GDP and national economic performance needs, to be reassessed and that happiness and health need to be measured and added to the picture. This would have the impact of pushing France much higher up world economic rankings and closing the gap with the USA.

What gives the speech added impetus is he is drawing on the work of US economist and Nobel prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz and the publication of the results of the Commission of Economic Performance and Social Progress, set up by the French government of which he was a leading member. Stiglitz is quoted in the FT (print version but not online) as saying "What we measure affects what we do." (Useful to remember for PR campaigns as well.) He then goes on to say "Behind the cult of the figures, behind all these statistical and accounting structures there is also the cult of the market that is always right." (A nice nod to Foucault.)

What is interesting for PR is the way that the dominant paradigm of market force supremacy which has stood relatively unchallenged for 40 years continues to be worked over from a range of sources. It would be very interesting to hear how this discourse is influencing the work of the large PR agencies and in-house teams for major global companies. Second, it also raises issues about the way that PR programmes are measured - what metrics are being used and are the metrics all market based or is there some debate going on in the industry about using metrics which might have a wider social context. Finally, it could be argued that what Sarkozy and Stiglitz are wanting to measure and to value in an economy are aspects such as social cohesiveness even social capital. Some commentators have argued that PR is about organisational social capital and that makes this intiative particularly interesting and also one which will further add to the interesting discourse developments over the coming months and years.

PR Academic Conference, University of Stirling - initial thoughts

2009-09-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

Just a few initial thoughts on the PR conference at Stirling which I much enjoyed.

Foucault and Habermas were mentioned more than Grunig.
PR as dialogue, discourse, rhetoric as well as power and contested space were well explored reflecting developing research agendas.
The PR practitioner as an ethical negotiator might have been a sub-heading for the event as certainly ethics was a constant refrain. In fact by the end, when Joanna Fawkes from Leeds Met said that "PR as persuasion" was a more ethical stance, there were plenty of nodding heads looking for some moral confidence and certainty on the subject.
From a practical PR perspective, Prof. Anne Gregory's talk with Paul Willis on work on the UK National Health Service was fascinating for integration of business and PR strategy, interpretation of social values which the NHS embodies into the campaign and then how the communications training programme is being rolled out across the NHS.
Some interesting European research from Ralph Tench on corporate communications due to be launched this week was unveiled. Perspectives from practitioners on new and developing areas of practice from the survey highlighted decline of marketing communications in terms of importance for corporate comms and growth of internal communications. Research also highlighted uncertainty about how to use social media.
A fascinating session on terrorism and PR; with a particularly interesting paper from University of Coleraine in Northern Ireland on the way they have used a research project looking at first year students' perspectives on the Troubles to develop awareness about media and PR.
No mention of social capital which surprised me.
Leeds Met and Stirling had an impressive range of papers and both bring different and complementary research perspectives to the industry. Leeds Met is more practice based while Stirling is more focusing on explore the influence of different social sciences on the PR sector.

Stirling is a great location and the conference was held in the management centre which is superbly designed for networking with the bar just off reception. Very welcoming and stimulating event.

A great summary of the media landscape in a Robert Peston blog/speech

2009-09-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

Planning a course on Media Relations it would be hard to find a single source which raises so many issues on role and future of journalism and by implication role and future of media relations as Robert Peston's latest blog entry. This is a reprint of Robert Peston's speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival sponsored by the Media Guardian and reprinted as a blog. The speech being a blog is of course significantly enhanced by readers' comments underneath (114 two days later) - for a recent Royal Bank of Scotland blog he ended up with over 700 - and this is of course an increasingly interesting and important aspect of media relations in terms of monitoring and judging how a story and discourse is being received and in its future development.

I also thought it was particularly noteworthy how important the blog is in the development and disseminaton of his ideas; "For me, the blog is at the core of everything I do, it is the bedrock of my output. The discipline of doing it shapes my thoughts. It disseminates to a wider world the stories and themes that I think matter.....Most important of all, the blog allows me and the BBC to own a big story and create a community of interested people around it. Sharing information - some of it hugely important, some of it less so - with a big and interested audience delivers that ownership and creates that committed community."

A grand discourse on the future of the City of London

2009-08-29T02:01:00.001-07:00

The fall-out from the financial crash continues. Markets and economies may be stabilising but we are now in the midst of a grand discourse and clash of ideas on the role of financial markets. Lord Turner, head of the FSA, the City regulator, has been quoted in a magazine article as saying that some City trading activity is "socially useless" and "efficient market theory" has been found wanting and consideration should be given to a transaction tax called Tobin's tax, after the US economist who first suggested it, to reduce the power of financial markets.

The reaction from the City and also government has been strongly critical but interestingly the reaction from the financial press has been more nuanced and supportive of the debate. This supports my sense that the City has ridden roughshod over the financial media (and society?) for too long and is paying the price. The City has also ignored the requirement in a modern democracy that a major sector needs to participate in the debate of ideas with society, along the lines of Habermas' communicative action with a genuine interest in hearing different perspectives. The City has put forward a very narrow ideology based on jobs and importance to UK plc and the financial crash has led to this being questioned. Somehow one cannot imagine that the industry body, the British Bankers Association, has ever funded research on supporting the rationale of financial markets, but perhaps this now needs to be part of its communications strategy going forward, if it wants to protect the interest of its members.

The French philospher, Michel Foucault, would surely have been interested in this debate. Not only is the accepted "truth" of the primacy of financial markets now being contended but it is the way that the new discourses are being developed. Foucault was interested not only in the "regime of truth" but the processes developing it. The current debate has not come from the left and traditional critics of the City; but this time from the heart of the City establishment - and in Foucauldian terms, this is what gives it such power. In fact the original Prospect article which takes the form of a round table discussion/interview with Lord Turner by leading City analysts and journalists including a recently retired Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, John Grieve. In PR terms it will be interesting to see what discourse strategies are developed by the City establishment in the coming weeks and months to defend its position; certainly it is a particularly interesting challenge for the City's financial PR community to consider.

No doubt the City will "win" the argument in the short and medium term. However, as some media have suggested the most difficult long term blow for the City comes with the comment that it is "socially useless" In a society where corporate social responsibility is part of the framework and language of modern organisations and the way that they sell themselves to future employees - that is indeed a damaging blow.

US healthcare debate - PR's dirty secret?

2009-08-15T02:17:00.000-07:00

Is the US healthcare debate which seems to have quickly moved to "sound and fury" and limited illumination of the various points - or at least how it is reported over here in the UK - also an example of PR distorting the "public space".

Bloomberg highlights that it is a lobbying feeding frenzy with most of the lobbying coming from the major interest groups such as the health insurers. Open Secrets a NGO whose mission is to bring into the public forum, the link between private finance and Washington politics, has a table showing that healthcare lobbying accounts for some of the largest investment in lobbying by any industry sector groups over the last 10 years. Another list provided by Open Secrets , shows leading Washington lobbyists. I can only see one firm which jumps out with strong links to major international agencies, Ogilvy Government Relations, which is part of WPP.

Behind the lobbying will be some very large PR campaigns, both media relations and public engagement. A former PR director of communications in the US insurance sector has given insight into this area and criticised some of the techniques used in an interview on another NGO site, Center for Media and Democracy, whose domain name suggests the agenda, PRWatch.org.

I am not across the debate and the various points of view. However I was very struck by hearing recently from my cousin who lives in the USA about her fears and concerns about health care and the cost as she and her family get older particularly as unemployment grows. Certainly looking at the sheer volume of money from the health industry in the US going into the political process which has probably been matched by PR and advertising campaigns over this period and it does suggest that the communication process has been "colonised" as Habermas suggested.

Is there a debate in the US PR industry about its role in the healthcare debate as it raises important issues for all of us involved in the industry?

Goldman Sachs reputation under the spotlight - time to read about Habermas and social legitimacy

2009-08-06T03:50:00.000-07:00

The reputation of Goldman Sachs, the legendary investment bank, which survived the financial crisis in better shape than almost all financial institutions, has now come in for a new series of attacks in the media, some from unexpected media sources, such as Rolling Stone magazine as well as the New York magazine. These articles have in turn generated a wider news agenda.

Recent comments have been more nuanced than the general attack on all banks earlier in the year; as this time it has primarily focused on Goldman Sach's access to power particularly under President Bush, and how the bailout of the banks and other key financial institutions such as the insurance company AIG was especially beneficial for the organisation. Taibbi, the author of the highly critical article in Rolling Stone would say even saved Goldman Sachs.

The Financial Times this week, entered the fray about Goldman Sachs, as it had commissioned WPP company Brand Asset Consulting, to do a major survey on the attitude of US citizens to financial organisations. This large 17000 people survey, which one assumes had taken place prior to these recent critical articles, highlighted that the reputation of Goldman Sachs had suffered over the last two years, more for example, than Morgan Stanley which has been noticeably less successful. The FT quoted survey organiser, Anne Rivers, that "Goldman Sachs still has that Gordon Gekko look to it among the general public,” referring to the villain of the 1987 film Wall Street.

It raises an interesting point about corporate reputation which the New York magazine suggests, that Goldman Sachs may be suffering as it is seen as too successful and powerful. Can too much success be damaging for the corporate reputation of a major organisation - Microsoft might suggest this is feasible. But is this the reason in the case of Goldman Sachs?

I think the problem is related to the fact that financial organisations are still coming to grips with the new order. They are no longer "Masters of the Universe" - able to set the political and financial agenda - which for the last 20 years they have been able to do so, with governments in awe of them. The financial community needs to think about the concept of a "licence to operate". Social legitimacy draws on, amongst others, Habermas and communicative action and that organisations need to earn the right to operate. The financial sector has been a classic example of a sector which has "colonised" and so distorted the communicative process with wider society about its role i.e set the agenda, not listened carefully to society and other interest groups.

The financial crash and rescue of the financial community by international governments has changed all this. I would suggest that society is now requiring that large financial organisations like Goldman Sachs need to be more than just financial technocrats and need to articulate more strongly how they are contributing to society. This is not something which changes over night but, I would suggest, is an important element of corporate reputation and the latest comments from the Head of Communications at Goldman Sachs suggests that this lesson is still being learned, as the Reuters blogger suggests.

Every company is a media company

2009-07-17T01:52:00.000-07:00

I have recently had a trawl through the news related applications on iPhone and downloaded a number of these to try them out. It is interesting to note that a number of US government organisations have developed applications for the iPhone at a minimal cost (99 cents) and one of these is for the CIA.

What struck me looking at my iPhone this morning is that alongside the Financial Times icon, Sky, Daily Telegraph, BBC (why has the Guardian not created one?) etc on my iPhone, now sits an icon for the CIA - but it could be BP, University of Greenwich or any organisation which I have a relationship with or interest in. Somehow the iPhone screens and collective icons - all of the same size - bring home the point made by various commentators including Andrew Heyward and Richard Edelman that all companies are now media companies and content producers in the social media environment. This of course raises major challenges and opportunities for PR as credible "content producers" for organisations. But perhaps this process can be seen as a necessary development for organisations as they seek to develop new more direct channels of communication and dialogue with stakeholders as traditional media fragments.

The Queen v President

2009-03-19T03:19:00.000-07:00

David Bowen of Bowen Craggs, an agency which advises large corporates on web design, has analysed in his blog the new web site for the Queen versus President Obama's. In other words, Buckingham Palace v the White House. He points out what a number of people have commented on, that Obama's team has not carried into practice the techniques used in the Primary and Presidential campaigns online, and is running a very attractive but conventional one way information web site. Will this change?

Where the hell do we go now?

2009-03-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

Grim piece in the Guardian on regional journalism today. Raises at least two major issues for PR.

First the need to build relationships directly with stakeholders which does not involve the media as in some areas there may not be a local media which carries the authority and credibility which it once had. This is something which PR has been doing for some time and moving away from a media relations model but the pressure is on to develop this faster.

Second it is going to require a high (higher?) ethical code for PR, as for example some local authority PROs might be operating in areas where there is no longer a strong independent media to act as a counterbalance and to hold the council and local authority to task. Will the gap be filled by newer, leaner media operations entirely based on the web? Or will the local authority PRO have to build much stronger links and relationships both online and offline with local citizens so that new forms of checks and balances are created? Certainly Habermas' public space looks under threat at least at least at the local level.

Collector's item - Future of Capitalism

2009-03-10T04:40:00.000-07:00

The Financial Times yesterday (March 9th, 2009) is a collector's item. A major new series has been launched with a banner head across the print version - The Future of Capitalism and its own section online. The feature heading inside, "Seeds of its own destruction", a nod to Marx's famous phrase about capitalism. PR is always interested in the current great debates or metanarratives which are setting the context for the smaller narratives which we are trying to weave into the wider debate on behalf of clients. None come much bigger than this but we live in interesting times.

The FT's decison to launch this major debate can also be seen in terms of the addressing the news agenda in the run-up to the G20 meeting in London in early April, which does appear to be developing as potentially an international political event of some substance.

On another front the FT series is also a collector's piece as it is not often that UK media explores the interplay of big ideas such as the Future of Capitalism with a bow to Marxism, modernism and postmodernism. This is something which French media enjoy but not traditionally UK media with our tradition of anti-intellectualism.

Text 100 report on PR effectiveness with major brands

2009-03-10T02:44:00.000-07:00

Text 100 has produced report on role of PR and in particular relationship between media coverage or media prominence and brand value. According to PR Week a second report is due assessing role of tone of coverage which perhaps highlights one of the areas of the first report open to criticism. Role of media coverage according to research was more marked with more complex products as compared with "low involvement" products.

Command and control and Labour's developing love affair with new media

2009-03-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

Good interview with Alistair Campbell in the Guardian highlighting his growing absorption with new media and acceptance of limitations of command and control. Also PR Week highlights recent Labour conference "Campaigning for the net generation." The event was organised by Progress, a new Labour think tank/campaigning group which if you follow political PR is one to follow.

WPP highlights growth of PR globally

2009-03-07T04:10:00.000-08:00

"Public relations saw some of the greatest growth in the group, aided by social networking sites and polling" Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP was quoted in the Financial Times (6th March 2009) referring to its end of year results for 2008. This continues the trend which WPP highlighted of PR currently growing fastest of any of its disciplines in its previous Annual Report and Accounts.

Apart from the headline figure, the significance of this for PR is that WPP as one of the world's leading marketing communication groups is specifically identifying PR as an increasingly important component of its operations and so in turn this will influence the planning within global and national organisations worldwide as they consider their marketing and communication budgets. The WPP Report and Accounts over the last 15 years one imagines would provide an interesting historical record of the growth of PR alongside other "promotional culture" disciplines such as marketing, advertising etc.

Discourse analysis now part of the narrative

2009-03-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

I am only an occasional reader of the Guardian's print version (Times and FT is my usual read), although look at it regularly online. I was struck by the use of content or discourse analysis in its coverage of Gordon Brown's speech to the US Congress last Wednesday 4th March. It is covered online but you don't get the full impact except in print. Wrapped up in different terminology to make it more accessible - "What the Prime Minister said and what he meant" but essentially making us the readers part of the analysis and able to access the story from a range of perspectives in what one might term a collaborative process.

What is interesting for PR people is how media savvy we have all become and the discourse analysis in the Guardian only develops this further. We increasingly spot the clues and meaning behind "news" stories and can spot the "genuine" or "manufacturered" story. PR has traditionally wanted to hide or at least play down its involvement in developing news agendas and discourse, perhaps this position is no longer sustainable and we should welcome the fact that stakeholders can increasingly understand the source and methods used as we become more open and transparent as a profession. Certainly Kate Moss appearing in the TopShop window in Oxford Street in 2007 - a classic manufactured event - did not stop everyone enjoying and participating in the event and helping make it a genuine "news" event.

PR as propaganda and control

2009-03-03T03:59:00.000-08:00

Last week, I attended an excellent debate at the London School of Economics hosted by the Polis media team and addressing the issue "Why did we not see it coming" referring to the role of media and the crash in financial markets.

For the PR industry it was disturbing as a number of the panellists highlighted the baleful influence of financial PR companies and PR generally in obstructing alternative views about issues such as the "primacy of unregulated markets" and denying access to senior management.

Those speaking and on the panel included: Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman; Evan Davis - BBC; Alex Brummer - City Editor - Daily Mail; Gillian Tett - Deputy Editor of FT, and author of shortly to be published new book looking at role of exotic financial products on the crash and Wilhelm Buiter -LSE and formerly on Bank of England policy committee. The event was chaired by Howard Davis, Vice Chancellor of the University (superbly). Huge number of media folk in the audience.

What came through very strong from three speakers (Brummer, Tett and Vince Cable) was the dire influence of financial PR over a long period in making it very difficult for journalists and other voices to raise concerns or different perspectives from de-mutualisation of building societies in the 1990s onwards. Some of the best quotes which I took down were as follows:

"Incredibly powerful public relations machine whose job it is to lie and dissemble", Alex Brummer, City Editor of the Daily Mail.
"a ferociously powerful PR machine...a PR machine controlling the rhetoric", Gillian Tett, Deputy Editor of the FT.

Two further contributions highlighted how the whole rhetoric and discourse about the role of the City were circumscribed. Vince Cable described being called in during the 1990s and asked by City high-ups why he was trying to damage the City and UK plc for putting forward views that demutualisation of the building societies was not a healthy development. Equally significant was the perspective of Wilhelm Buiter, a former member of the Bank of England interest setting committee who said that everybody - economists, media, politicians etc - were "captured cognitively" by the rhetoric of financial markets.

The PR industry is only just starting to debate the role of financial PR but this is, or should be, a powerful issue in the months to come. Just as we are witnessing the demise of unregulated financial markets so surely we must be witnessing the end of financial PR as currently practised. Perhaps in time financial PR as currently practised/perceived might be seen as one of the last bastions of PR as propaganda and control - or is that wishful thinking.

Mandy - PR for UK plc

2009-02-19T04:57:00.001-08:00

The Guardian today (Thursday 19th) highlights a master PR craftsman at work and someone in a senior position in government wrestling with major communications perceptions and issues at a UK plc level. Peter Mandelson as Secretary of State for Business is particularly concerned about perceptions of UK currently on Wall Street and corporate America, that the UK is now "Iceland-on-Thames". He is understandably worried that this will impact on investment decisions in the UK by major global corporations. The articles surrounding the main story are particularly interesting in highlighting some of the key participants and issues which are framing the discourse. Termed "commentariat" by UK diplomats and referring to Wall Street columnists, pundits and economists.

It is unusual in an organisations, in this case UK plc, to find a senior person who has such antenna and insight about the mood of the current discourse, its significance and how it needs to be reframed. Perhaps, he has been able to use his tactical insight as well to realise that the discourse will gain greater currency if it can be linked with some element more immediate. His swearing and general attack on comments made by Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks while on a trip to the USA (covered in the Guardian on Wednesday 18th) has given him strong coverage back home - "Plucky Peter standing up for UK plc" etc. (Note the particularly strong discourse around this article - around 300 comments on the first day. Interestingly the Guardian has moved the commentary from original story on Thursday to today's development of the story, now over 400 comments, midday Thursday - a topic for another blog.) Boy, is Mandelson getting a good press now. He has also picked a good target as Starbucks has a current valuation of $7.5bn while three years ago was $25bn and is about to probably further damage the brand by introducing instant coffee. I kid you not.

World Economic Forum starts exclusive social network

2009-02-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

The World Economic Forum has not had a good week in terms of media commentary with its brand of thought leadership, namely globalisation and role of free markets, under fire from many quarters. However it has certainly achieved extensive coverage and provided a forum for a wide range of arguments which the media have enjoyed covering from having a go at the bankers and corporate leaders to supposed allies Turkey and Israel having a very public argument.

As an organisation I admire the way it has used new media to open up and allow the rest of us to look over the wall or through the fence at the discussions taking place inside. As an excercise in communications it has worked hard to fight the charge of elitism. But has it scored an own goal with the announcement of an exclusive social network called Welcom? Do exclusive online social networks work? They certainly do offline but online I find it hard to think of a good example. It will be interesting to see how it develops and the discussion online about it.

Digital Britain

2009-02-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

Mixed reactions on the recently launched report by the UK government on broadband and its vital role in UK competitiveness. But an excellent source of data on UK media, impact of internet, size of e-commerce in the UK, online growth rates, etc.