PR Studies

So you want to work in fashion PR?

I had two enquiries from prospective students interested in fashion PR at a university open day yesterday. I wish I'd picked up this article from Saturday's Guardian before I met them. Ambitious students should note the questions employers are likely to ask you at interview, published at the end of the piece.

The fall of advertising, and the fall of financial institutions

This goes even further than the thesis proposed in Al Ries and Laura Ries's 2002 book The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.

Have you noticed the link between those institutions spending most on advertising and sponsorship and those now losing their independence?

I started observing this trend a decade ago with Equitable Life. I'd trusted this cautious insurer with my personal pension plan because it came highly recommended by other professionals. Then the company appeared as sponsors of a prime time television comedy, Frasier (remember the tag line, 'it's an equitable life, Henry'?); next thing the company was closed to new business and savers took what they could from the wreckage (in those days there was no sympathy for savers and no talk of nationalisation).

Now we have numerous case studies: Northern Rock - sponsors of a professional football team, Newcastle United; AIG, sponsors of Manchester United; Halifax (now part of no-longer-independent HBOS), famous for the singing mortgage adviser ('as seen on TV'); and bowler-hatted Bradford & Bingley and its TV presence (pride comes before the fall).

I'm not suggesting cause and effect (that the cost of TV advertising or football sponsorship tipped these institutions into insolvency), but I am suggesting a corporate or managerial vanity that should have indicated to investors that their money would be safer elsewhere.

If advertising wasn't the answer, could PR have done better? It would have taken a very confident and assertive PR adviser to have cautioned against this corporate vanity. Unfortunately, we're only ever blessed with hindsight once it's too late.

Out of the wreckage, some institutions will emerge even stronger. I'm suggesting it's likely they will have been less flashy with their money (our money) in the good times; they may also have some of the better PR advisers in the sector, who will not only have helped save their employers' independence, but may also have saved them millions on advertising on sponsorship.

Student skills shock bosses

There's no news in something predictable and expected ('dog bites man'). So seek out the alternative ('is it new or is it surprising?' I was once asked when phoning the Telegraph's environment correspondent with some PR story or other).

So how's this? I have plenty of anecdotal evidence of our students impressing employers; take this about Wolfstar intern Natalie Smith ('the best student we have ever had' according to Stuart Bruce).

Don't be too impressed, because I've selected this example to quote. But I'm asking a colleague with extensive market research experience to look at the following anomaly. Having assessed 180 students on their paid year placements, I find that the area in which they gained highest marks was that element influenced by employer feedback. Employers consistently rated our students a whole grade higher than my university colleagues did.

I mean to research this further to explain this apparent anomaly. Not that I'm complaining: I prefer it this way round. 'Student skills shock bosses': just don't leap to conclusions.

Welcome to university: it is worth it...

There's an analysis of university education in The Economist this week from an ROI (return on investment) perspective.

It shows all types of students still gaining a 'graduate premium' - except in one instance. Males with degrees in arts subjects (that would be me) can expect to earn less across a lifetime than their equivalents with just two A levels. The graduate premium continues to favour women, presumably because unskilled females are so poorly paid.

As the article goes on to say, money may be important (not least to graduates with loans to repay) - but it's not the only reason for choosing a university education.

Autumn public lecture series - you're welcome

Here's our autumn 2008 public lecture series. We use this to encourage student membership of the CIPR, but the lectures are free and open to anyone who is interested in attending.

We meet from 6pm for a 6.30pm talk in Lecture Theatre C at the Leeds Metropolitan University Headingley campus. Parking is free at the university in the evening.

Monday 13 October
Karl Milner, Director of Communications, Strategic Health Authority Yorkshire and the Humber
Death and miracles, five stories of NHS communications

Monday 3 November
Michelle McGlocklin, MD, Weber Shandwick Technology
PR in the technology sector

Monday 10 November
Sharon Jandu, MD, Global PR and Marketing
A perspective on global PR and global clients

Tuesday 18 November
Justin McKeown, Trimedia and chair of regional CIPR committee
50 PR ideas in 50 minutes

Monday 24 November
Karen Hellas-Kelly, Absolute Leeds columnist and former PR consultant
From catwalks to fields: consumer PR

Where is PR?

More interesting than discussing 'what is PR?' is the question of 'why do PR?' Most interesting of all is the question of where PR sits in the organisation - the theme of the upcoming EUPRERA congress, awkwardly titled 'institutionalizing (sic) public relations and corporate communication'.

Dr Tom Watson has just presented at a management forum in South Africa and has this to say about the locus of public relations education:

If PR is to gain continuing recognition as a management function, programmes need to either be situated in business schools (separate from marketing programmes) or have a strong managerial focus if placed elsewhere.

Good times for PR Week

Those who can remember the 'PR Weak' taunts of a previous satirical blog and the welcome given to PR Business, a short-lived competitor, should acknowledge the recent improvements to our weekly trade paper.

Here are some of them. The industry sector focus (on technology, healthcare etc) - though the paper still has a blind spot when it comes to education and training; the improved features (there's a grown-up debate on the future of PR in the current issue); the weekly interview-based profile of a prominent practitioner; the availability of news via RSS; but above all the recent news scoops around the 10 Downing Street communications team. This has culminated in a piece by editor Danny Rogers in today's Media Guardian.

Hei: welcome to our Norwegian visitors

I'm running a brief session on branding (personal and corporate) and social media today, together with Anderson Lima, for some visitors from Oslo School of Management. My notes for the session are here.

The photo shows the new Oslo opera house, which I visited recently on the recommendation of Svend Anders, who has organised this return visit to Leeds. (All he gets to see here is Elland Road.)

I was glad to have learnt the Norwegian greeting 'hei' (pronounced hi). I'd assumed 'hi' was an import from America; it was, but only having been exported first from Scandinavia. How appropriate, given that Viking explorers were the first Europeans to settle in North America, centuries before Columbus.

Is it safe? PR and the public understanding of science

Here's a conversation I've heard numerous times:

Journalist: 'So can you assure us that there's no risk to the public?'
Scientist: 'I can't say that. There's some risk in everything, like crossing a road...'
PR adviser: (Quietly) 'Doh!'

This summarises the problem of doing public relations for science; it's compounded by the fact that so few journalists and reporters have a science background. So today's top story on the BBC is a coup for CERN, the Swiss particle physics laboratory until now best known for being the place where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web to help scientific researchers communicate and share knowledge.

It was a brave editorial decision by the BBC, though they needed to create a bit of 'the end of the world is nigh' hype based on the 'miniscule' chance of creating a black hole under Geneva. 'The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction' it says on the CERN website in a neat phrase that distinguishes science from science fiction.

PR dissertation: how to do it badly

I get more correspondence on this topic than any other. (I don't flatter myself: a simple Google search throws up my previous Dissertation problem page.) Here's a recent example: 'NEED HELP. I am just starting an MA program in Communication Studies. I am faced with choosing a topic. I am so confused and I need help. I just read the PR blog and I find it very interesting, but I still need help... Hoping to hear from you soon.'

Let me turn this on its head and list the most obvious mistakes students can make with their dissertations:

1. Google is truly the wonder of our age, but not everything that can be known can be found by a Google search (yet). Your best starting point for your dissertation is still the library. Start by reading some books and see what questions interest you. Then keep on reading.
2. You fail to choose a clearly defined subject area (eg internal communications). If you are struggling to write a concise title, it may be that you don't have a clear subject in mind.
3. You don't ask a specific question about your subject area (eg Is internal communications the most important PR channel for FTSE 100 chief executives?).
4. Your literature review is descriptive rather than critical. By this we mean that you list the books you've read and describe their contents, but you don't show that you've read them with the intention of helping you to answer your question.
5. Your primary research is too little, too late. How does a student focus group help you to answer the question we posed about internal communications? You don't say because you don't know.
6. You don't connect your literature review to your research findings. If the two things are consistent, what does this suggest? If they are very different, what can explain this?
7. You don't reach any valuable conclusions because of the reasons given above. Nor do you redeem yourself by proposing any recommendations (eg about further research).
8. There are more online sources cited in your references than books (see point 1 above). References are inaccurate (that's silly: this is one thing you're allowed to copy without us calling it plagiarism. But you need to read some academic texts to see how they do it.)
9. You don't develop a working relationship with your supervisor. This is also silly: they will be marking your work. They may frustratingly believe that questions are more interesting than answers, but they are there to help you, so co-opt them in your project.
10. Last, but not least: you leave it too late.