PR Studies

Key themes for 2011

Looking back on 2010 allows us to predict some of the main talking points for the year ahead.

Value

I have previously argued that the Stockholm Accords were a milestone event. This document qualitatively articulates the value that public relations provides to organisations at a macro level.

But can we quantify this value? The hyperactive and always challenging David Phillips will attempt this at a conference this year, from his perspective that the PR business has been failing to reach its full potential for years.

Though these questions may sound academic, this will be a year in which practitioners in all sectors will need to prove their value to their clients and employers. So they would be well advised to take note of these discussions.

Within higher education, the new fees regime from 2012 will challenge universities to demonstrate the value of their degree courses. My humble effort is a project to document how graduates have benefited from their PR degrees over the past two decades.

Transparency

Remember Gordon Brown forgetting his mic during the election campaign? The problem was the disconnect revealed between the public and private person (a problem some of his senior colleagues had been concerned about for years).

Now consider the implications of WikiLeaks (and the parliamentary expenses scandal). These challenge the assumption of private, and make a presumption in favour of information being public. We've not heard the last of the tussle between public and private, national security and civil liberties. (There's also a civil liberties argument in favour of less being known about us, not more).

Public relations, concerned as it is with matters in the public sphere, has a role in defining what should be known in the public interest, and what should be concealed for private reasons. Expect public relations teams to be auditing information flows and anticipating what would happen if and when the private becomes public. The intention will be to inoculate against further Gordon Brown moments.

A brief history of briefing

It's the public relations story of the past week, the rather sinister power of PR to damage and undermine through the process known as briefing. Even experienced hands are surprised by the viciousness as we saw from an interview with the Chancellor Alistair Darling and from the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley. As for less experienced people, Christine Pratt of the National Bullying Helpline must be regretting her tangle with the 'forces of hell'. She's enlisted the help of Max Clifford so she knows she's in a fight.

In an ideal world of transparency, there would be no unattributable briefings - and no 'off the record' comments. But we don't live in that perfect world. Briefings - often resulting in coy comments such as 'sources close to the Prime Minister confirmed' - are a form of institutionalised insider gossip that suits the media and PR people close to power.

In a world where everything is on the record, attributable and recorded, people would speak much less freely. The media would lose its privileged access to insight and information. PR people would become pointless intermediaries and the public would be less well informed. Is a lack of truth-telling preferable to truthfulness constrained by, say, anonymity? Few would argue that it is.

What principles can we apply to guide us through these murky waters? Remember that one guiding principle - to tell the truth - often conflicts with another principle - to respect client confidentiality.

• Assume that everything can be made public. In a world of small, ubiquitous cameras and recording devices, we shouldn't assume that our comments will stay private. A private email can easily become very public.
• Do you have good grounds for keeping something private? The most obvious example is national security (the 'lives are at risk' argument). But there are others: commercial negotiations could be scuppered if made public, so jobs could be at risk. There are also competitive reasons not to disclose future product developments. It may even be illegal to use privileged information as you could be convicted of insider dealing.
• Non-attributable: do you have a good reason for keeping your name out of the story beyond saving your job and reputation? The answer is when you believe it's in the public interest for information to be made known, but the information would be compromised if its source were made public.
• What is 'off-the-record'? The simple answer is that nothing is off the record, so don't use it. But there are occasions when there are conflicting principles. We saw this with the MMR vaccine when former Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to say whether his youngest child had received the vaccine so as not to breach the child's right to privacy. Yet this risked undermining the government's case that the vaccine was safe, so the decision was taken to brief senior journalists on an 'off the record' basis. A much better phrase is 'background briefing': is it important to explain the wider context that requires potential breaches of confidentiality or national security? Is the briefing the lesser of two evils?

Corporate reputation management: Nestle

Here are some links for a case study we'll be exploring in class on Monday.

What is Nestle best known for? Confectionery (KitKat) and coffee (Nescafe) are the most recognisable of its many brands.

What about the company's strategic direction? Nestle says it is 'the world's leading nutrition, health and wellness company' and that it is committed to increasing the nutritional value of its products while improving the taste. The UK site is more explicit, claiming it's 'putting health and wellness at the heart of our business'.

As The Economist explores this week, this is a bold claim for a chocolate company ('The unrepentant chocolatier'). What are the risks and challenges arising from this focus?

We'll be analysing whether this corporate strategy is consistent with what we can know of the organisation's culture and values. How should this strategy influence corporate communications?

And then there's the long-running saga of the promotion of infant formula in the developing world. Nestle defends its actions as responsible and agrees in most cases that 'breast is best'. Yet the campaign isn't going away, and has become a defining issue for anti-globalisation activists. What can and should the company do about this? What effect could this have on its reputation, particularly in light of the focus on health and wellness?

Remembering Bhopal

The statistics are still shocking, 25 years on from the world's worst ever industrial accident - the gas leak at a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India. According to Mick Brown's detailed and moving account in the Telegraph Magazine 'exact numbers are unknown, but most estimates agree that about 8,000 people died from poisoning within 72 hours of the gas leaking into the air. An Amnesty International report published in 2004 concluded that a further 15,000 people had died in the years afterwards as a direct result of long-term gas-related effects, and that 10,000 people continued to suffer from chronic... illnesses.'

Compare this with the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, 'estimated to have caused 57 direct deaths, with some 4,000 additional deaths from cancer among the... most highly exposed people.'

Bhopal (1984), Chernobyl (1986), Zeebrugge / Townsend Thoresen (1987), Lockerbie / Pan Am (1988), Kegworth / British Midland (1989) - note how many of the disaster scenarios remembered (and used as case studies) today date back to the 1980s. They're highly memorable to those of my generation - but I have to keep reminding myself that most current students weren't yet born then.

How we learn: paddling pool or immersion?

Like many people involved in teaching, I like nothing more than learning something new myself. It's a pleasant bonus when the lesson comes from a student.

There's a lesson for me in the apparent contradiction in what one of our placement year students writes about how to learn about two areas of public relations practice.

On crisis communications, she writes: 'crisis is an area that you can only gain experience from when you are thrown in at the deep end'. Yet, on social media just a page later: 'I spoke to a lecturer regarding the lack of social media tuition at university and the opinion was that since we are of a younger generation ... we are assumed to already have this knowledge. This is not true and there is an academic gap that needs to be addressed.'

So, for one area of public relations it's 'learning by doing'; in another, it's 'back to the classroom'. This contradiction is the subject of a paper on 'teaching social media' I'm jointly presenting at the Stirling 21 conference in September, so this is a timely contribution.

Crisis handling at the speed of light

A new Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism paper (free pdf) by BBC newsreader Nik Gowing discusses the challenges of information control in the era of news 24 and citizen journalism.

He's right. 'In a crisis there is a relentless and unforgiving trend towards an ever greater information transparency.' He characterises the dilemmas facing institutions in the F3 formula:

• Should they be first to enter the information space?
• How fast should they do it?
• How flawed might their remarks and first positions turn out to be?

This formula leads to some sound recommendations on crisis communications and Gowing addresses the waves of attention on issues triggered traditional news outlets and the 'civilian surge' of real-time information.

His discussion is based on major international news stories that make headlines on BBC News 24. But everyone can learn from these lessons and he's clearly writing with public relations and corporate communications people in mind.

Among those who have much to learn are those dismissing the so-called mainstream media and talking up social media phenomena such as YouTube and Twitter. They will learn that the era of 'ambient news' is as old as the radio, but accelerated with rolling television news from the 1980s onwards. The relationship between mainstream and social media is clearly symbiotic rather than exclusive (either-or).

The Domino's effect

The video that caused the storm is no longer available at YouTube, but the New York Times reports the maelstrom the company now finds itself in. 'As Domino’s is realizing, social media has the reach and speed to turn tiny incidents into marketing crises.'

More links and analysis, as usual, from Neville Hobson.

When social media costs business

In a perfect - but negative - example of Tom Murphy's PR hype cycle, a firm has lost a multi-million pound long-term contract thanks to social media.

First came the videos posted on YouTube (see links from story in The Sun below) showing building contractors larking around on a construction site.

Then came the mass media exposure: The Sun ran the story (and showed the videos in its online version) and connected the workers to NG Bailey. Then the BBC picked it up. Next word of mouth (I've also heard details of this from a non-media source.)

The third act followed. Trade title Building reports that the Morrisons supermarket chain (the construction site was thought to be one of theirs) has as a result ended a 30-year, multi-million pound relationship with Bailey.

Bailey (no relation to this blog's author) appears unwilling to comment though the company is aware that 'communication is the key to the success of any business.' Presumably the contractual details are still with the lawyers.

UPDATE: The company published this statement on 21 February.

No publicity, mind

It started here as another exercise in word of mouth on behalf of a South African winemaker. Now it's gathering major news headlines and is threatening to become a 'brilliant-marketing-but-bad-for-business' case study. Let's hope for Thresher's sake it's not Hoover all over again.

Be candid, contrite, compassionate and committed

These are the four Cs of product recall management identified by Nirmalya Kumar and Nader Tavassoli, two marketing academics from London Business School. They are writing today in the Financial Times on lessons from Dell's notebook battery recall and previous well-known cases.

Their book on Brand Turnarounds is forthcoming.