PR Studies

Referendum: three awkward truths

Here are three things that have contributed to the awkwardness surrounding the referendum campaign.

1. Governments don't like referendums (the last and only other UK-wide referendum was in 1975) in case we cast a vote about them rather than on the issue. But this government is unusual since it's a coalition and the Conservatives and Lib Dems are split on this question. Heads or tails?
2. Many supporters of Yes are only lukewarm about the alternative voting system (AV) because though it may be a bit fairer, but it's still not proportional. Most, though, would not go along with Lord Owen who advocates a No vote because he's holding out for proportional representation.
3. Those campaigning for No don't want the public to realise that they're almost all Conservatives, hence their enthusiasm to put forward former Labour cabinet ministers. But where has the money for the campaign come from?

My verdict? I think the No campaign has been the more effective and may have succeeded. They've learnt some lessons from US politics and have played to people's fears. Negative campaigning appears to work.

Me? I'm voting Yes. Remember how you felt over the MPs' expenses scandal? Most of the worst excesses came from MPs with 'safe' seats. If you support tribal, binary Labour-Conservative politics, then the status quo has suited you well. But for many of us (and for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) politics is much more than a binary choice. So get used to ranking candidates by preference (or simply voting 1 instead of an X if you must).

What of the cost issue (the main thrust of the negative No campaign? By this argument, we'd dispense with all elections whatever the system because they're also expensive. So it's Yes to democracy. Make sure you vote on Thursday.

PR and the power of ideas

'The power of the idea is more important that ever'.

So reports @souljaof4tune attending today's Impress conference via Twitter.

It's an echo of the point made by Martin Thomas, co-author of Crowd Surfing, at last week's PRCA conference (illustrated here). The idea is central to all PR and marcoms campaigns.

You don't start with the execution (eg advertising); you start with the idea. We recall the 'Best Job in the World' campaign. Some will know that it won a PR award, though fewer recall that this was collected by an ad agency, Cummins Nitro. It's the idea that matters, not the agency or the discipline.

In passing, I did not attend either the Impress or the PRCA conference. Nor do I know Zubair Ahmed (souljaof4tune) or Martin Thomas personally (though I have read his book). But neither drawback is a barrier to the communication of (good) ideas.

Ideas are not the preserve of social media, though this may play a part in shaping them (Crowdsourcing, We Think) and will certainly play a part in their spreading (memes).

But what about the relationship between ideas and public relations? What about the way we teach the subject?

Most courses teach something called Planning and Managing PR Campaigns or similar. It's usually taught as a linear process, suggesting that if you do A followed by B, then C will surely follow. In academic language, it's a modernist approach.

Critics of this approach are emerging. In Online Public Relations, Phillips and Young argued:

‘Put simply, we need to be able to plan for surprises in this fast-changing world… The idea that one can run a ‘PR campaign’ is now flawed. A ‘campaign’ once had time limits and could thus be dropped after the event, but this does not apply today.'

Another objection to the conventional approach to planning is that it privileges reason over inspiration, the plan over the idea, convergent over divergent thinking. So it's interesting to see that Martin Thomas was putting the idea at heart of a presentation focused on the importance of planning.

Once a year, I introduce public relations to first year students as 'ideas management' as it seems to me to be a better starting point than the more complex lessons about reputation, communication and relationships which are to follow.

I know how others would object to this. They would argue that public relations does not own the process of ideas generation - that's research and development's domain. They would say that ideas management leaves PR rooted in the promotional business, and doesn't reflect its full range and sophistication.

In response to the first point, neither does PR have a monopoly over communications or corporate reputation management. But it clearly has a role and the barriers and boundaries are blurring between disciplines.

To the wider point about ideas being over-promotional, at its highest and most sophisticated levels, public relations involves 'issues management' and 'public affairs'. Ideas management is suitable for the promotional side of PR, but adaptable I would argue to the world of issues management and public policy.

As a final point, it seems a good defence of why public relations belongs in higher education. We should go beyond skills training and deliver conceptual and challenging courses to curious minds.

 

How PR works: softly and subliminally

Imagine there's a new technology that can save consumers money, at no expense to them. It sounds like a perfect PR story. But that's to ignore people's inertia, the media's suspicion of a PR-generated story, and the difficulty of grabbing attention when people are selective about the messages they're willing to receive.

There's a randomness to our message and media consumption. Here are some of the factors that worked for me in the Shell Fuel Save campaign:

Availability and attention: I picked up a discarded Metro newspaper on a commuter train last week. Wrapped around the news content was a prominent advertisement for the improved fuels. I had the time; I had the interest (self-interest), I read the message. I live remotely so I'm dependent on my own transport, and a Shell petrol station is nearest to and most convenient for me too.

Warm-up and follow-through: Only now that my interest was gained did I recall reading something about 'Freddie' Flintoff driving further on one litre of fuel. Later, when I filled up at the Shell petrol station, the staff were handing out leaflets explaining the fuels. There were prominent signs to ensure the attention of passing motorists too.

Word of mouth: It may be because of my age and income, it may be because of environmental concerns too, but I'm much more interested in a car's economy than I am by its acceleration. So I do keep a close eye on my fuel consumption and the early indications from my two diesel-engined vehicles are that the new fuels are noticeably more economical. 

Some other factors worth mentioning in this short, personal, account of campaign effectiveness are:

Context: We don't like the major oil companies - but with BP suffering damage to its reputation this year, now is a good time for Shell to gain advantage through a positive campaign.

Multi-media: In major campaigns (this one is global), it's never a case of PR or advertising; marketing or graphic design. It takes a combination of media channels for the message to reach home. The PR aspect of the campaign outlined above might seem minor - but I'm giving praise for a softly, softly approach. By feeling that I'd somehow stumbled onto a good thing by myself, I'm more inclined to help spread the word.

Social media: Clearly, there's an online element to this campaign (it's supported by this website). But with something as real world and undigital as dirty, expensive diesel, that wasn't the first place to discover the campaign. Online and social media in this case play a supporting role - but I suspect the long tail of blog and Twitter chatter will quickly overtake the 'hit' factor of major media coverage (which has been modest).

He can. Can you?

'I can't find any work experience'. It's a familiar cry from PR students and my response today was unsympathetic.

If a seven year old boy can make news headlines and ludicrously overshoot his modest fundraising target, then surely PR professionals (or PR students) should feel under pressure to do better.

There's a serious point here. The other PR star of this week was Apple Computer boss Steve Jobs for the sheer attention he gained unveiling the iPad yesterday.

Boys do it. Bosses do it. Even educated interns do it. Let's do it. Let's do PR. (With apologies to Cole Porter).

In praise of free PR

Groundswell, Here Comes Everybody, Crowd Surfing, Tribes: some of the most interesting books published this year have referred to the significance of the amateur and the importance of bottom-up, organic campaigns.

That's not to dismiss the importance of professionalism or to devalue the importance of money. But, as a classroom exercise, a group of students were asked to imagine how they would help an individual raise money for charity, for free. Their recommendations were competent, but they kept displaying their dismay at being asked to do this for free (this was for practice, remember, not for real). They hadn't considered that a well-funded charity campaign might be counter-productive. If the charity has the money to spend on promotions, then does it really need our money? That top-down messages are not always persuasive.

It takes experience to give good advice; it takes time to conduct good research. Good public relations does not usually come for free, but it has the benefits of the message being freely transmitted (by the media, via social media and word of mouth). So here's the paradox: good PR advice might be expensive, but has the benefit of appearing to be free.

Here's my standout sentence from Seth Godin's new book, Tribes (my italics):

Marketing used to be about advertising, and advertising is expensive. Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.

You can call it viral marketing, but I call this public relations.

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.

In praise of free-dom

Free markets work because of the profit motive. But there's true freedom in exchanges that aren't governed by big organisations or money:

• Freelances are free from a single boss and a rigid routine
• Open source software is given freely - for the good of it
• Most bloggers are making a free contribution, without any immediate payback
• My students give some of their time and energy in order to gain work experience
• Voluntary work is usually a win-win-win situation
• A town in Devon is pioneering a community currency to encourage local exchanges
• No one I have approached to contribute in some way to Behind the Spin magazine has said 'no', and there's no money on the table (yet)

The most compelling argument in Naomi Klein's No Logo (2001) is of the privatisation of the public sphere. But it seems that there's life in the public, voluntary and community sphere.

Whose week is it anyway?

Sometimes the morning news does up mash up in my mind. Is it Get Safe Online week? Or is it Enterprise Week? The answer to both is 'yes'.

But there are moments of early morning clarity. The Galileo v GPS debate didn't answer the key question. Why would anyone pay billions for something that's available now, works and is free? It reminded me of the plans to take on Google with a European search engine, Quaero. What became of Quaero? It was supposed to launch last year... I think I can guess the answer.

In my back yard

This is the view from my front doorstep this morning (click to enlarge image).

I welcomed the plans to build a windfarm nearby, on the edge of the Nidderdale AONB. Who can object to windfarms when the alternatives are more conventional or nuclear powerstations?

But now the first turbine has been constructed I'm surprised that it's so visible from where I live and from the surrounding countryside. But then windfarms require windy upland locations. I'm hoping that when finished and operational it will add a picturesque focus to the head of the valley.

NIMBYs are easily mocked, but they shouldn't be dismissed. The National Trust has joined battle over government house building plans in a move that could gain it much support from 'middle England'. And this is an organisation that already has 3.5 million members. Compare that to Labour Party membership, which appears to be below 200,000.

UPDATE: One week on, the wind farm is emerging on the horizon. Light angelic mills?

Love it or loathe it

I've always liked 'word of mouth' as a description. (I once hoped to register wordofmouth.co.uk for my freelance business only to find that this domain name had already been snapped up.)

Others are suspicous of the phrase, fearing a loss of message control and doubting whether it can ever be practised ethically when used for marketing purposes.

So we have something powerful, rather ill-defined and in need of best practice guidelines. Sounds a bit like public relations... What we need is an industry association to show leadership. So I'm behind the new Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOM UK) which is being launched today at the Marketing Week word of mouth conference. It follows on from the well-established Word of Mouth Marketing Association in the US.

The ubiquitous Stuart Bruce is involved, which bodes well. My only quibble: that this shouldn't just be about marketing. Its remit should also cover conversations, participation and democracry - the whole of the public sphere (the space in which public relations operates). I find the thought of a marketing sphere depressing, and not just because I'm reading JG Ballard's bleak new novel, Kingdom Come.