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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.