Facebook tries too hard to monetise?

The evidence is surely growing that Facebook is trying too hard to monetise the relationships on the social network as it approaches its IPO and may damage the product.  Sir Martin Sorrell is probably right when he has advised organisations to be cautious about it as an advertising medium  rating it more highly for PR activity.  Are PR consultancies and in-house PR teams leading Facebook activity by organisations and major brands; or are marketing teams heading this up or a third way with major brands developing cross-disciplinary teams including customer service?  

Leveson provides important archive for students of lobbying

Source: Daily Telegraph. 

One of the interesting by-products of the Leveson enquiry is the related evidence released on 24th April as part of James Murdoch's evidence.  The emails between James Murdoch, Frederic Michel and Adam Smith provide an important source of primary data for any students interested in the study of lobbying in the UK during a major corporate acquisition with related regulatory and governmental involvement.

Lobbying in its traditional secretive form - and the UK is rather strong in this tradition - leaves a poor audit trail and therefore students of the subject will be interested in this developing archive which is coming out of the Leveson enquiry.  In contrast an example of better practice certainly in providing an audit trail of lobbying can be seen on the submissions for the EU Single Market Act.

Another source of data for research comes from the first Erasmus IP on Public Relations: Government Relations and Lobbying in a European Perspective which finished just before Easter and which I and colleagues and PR students from Greenwich participated in.  The presentations and papers from this very interesting two week workshop attended by over 20 academics from seven universities and 60 Masters students across Europe are on the social network Yammer and can be made available to research students on request.

The potential for research in this area can be seen from an extract from a report I wrote just after returning from the first Erasmus:  

"The strong foundations achieved with the first year of the Erasmus IP provide a good platform for further development of the programme.   What is clear is that lobbying is a discipline of great power and influence but in practice terms would appear to be rather unreflective and with an uncertain praxis.  The Erasmus IP therefore has the opportunity to help bring practitioners and academics together over the next few years and to help develop stronger research in a very important discipline for good governance and democracy."

Start of Erasmus IP on lobbying and government relations

Good to hear from the Greenwich MA PR students and academics via Twitter in Belgium.   They along with 50 other Masters students studying PR and communications from 7 universities across Europe have just started on a two week Erasmus IP studying -  Public Relations: Government Relations and Lobbying in a European perspective, based in Ghent, as well as visiting Louvain-la-Neuve and Brussels.

I will be joining them next week in Ghent which will include a day when Greenwich hosts a day's workshop on lobbying by the financial sector.   We are delighted to be welcoming; Florence Ransom from the European Bankers Federation; Karel Van Hulle from EU Internal Markets (DG MARKT); Hannah Grant from Insurance Europe  and Hans Hank from FTI Consulting.

I am also giving a talk on Legitimacy and Transparency earlier in the week and found Susanne Holmstrom's chapter in Public Relations Research a great starting point.  Looking forward to joining the programme on Sunday.   Also to see this Erasmus IP develop further in 2013/14.

Our role as consumers in the crisis of capitalism

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

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

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

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.