PR Studies

Blessed are the speechmakers

Today's lesson in presentation skills is taken from the Catholic church. It's reported that priests have been advised to limit their sermons to eight minutes, to make them topical, and to avoid reading from scripts.

Today's students need to listen to these lessons. I have just assessed a rather flat presentation in which the team read from typed scripts inevitably resulting in a dull delivery. Yet when I asked a challenging question, the unscripted answer was fresh, interesting and academically sound. They were capable of being interesting, but seemed to think that dullness was expected of them.

The best explanation I've heard for why student presentations are so often so poor is that they only have university lecturers to emulate. Oh dear. 'University lecturer, you have just an hour to speak with deviation, hesitation and lots of repetition on the subject of...'

The trouble with Twitter

It should be about conversations (or 'two-way symmetrical' dialogue in textbook speak). But there's something asymmetrical about how Twitter is so often used.

Perhaps the problem is with the concept of 'following'. By following a celebrity, or a publication or a brand, I'm signing up for an asymmetrical relationship with little prospect of it becoming an equal conversation (symmetry).

Students and other novices often struggle to find the right balance. Are their tweets suitable for the public domain, or would they be better on a more private social network? How to develop from a personal comment on my activity towards a contribution to a public discussion?

Here are two useful posts from US academics aimed at PR students:

• Donna Talarico: 10 things to Twitter about in College
• Karen Russell: PR students: what not to tweet

Via PROpenMic

Meet Generation F

In the week Facebook turned six and announced its membership had passed 400 million, it's time to review what we know of the Facebook generation (Gen F).

This was also the week when commentators have realised that social networks and microblogging are more compelling among this group than old-fashioned blogs.

Our guide to Gen F is Stephen Davies, citing the One Young World initiative. Read his post.

My contribution to the discussion was to ask a group of first year students attending a 9am lecture about their media and communications usage so far today:

    95% had sent or received a text message
    10% had made or received a voice call
    70% had listened to the radio
    5% had watched TV
    30% had used Facebook
    0% had used Twitter
    20% had read a newspaper
    0% had bought a newspaper

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).

Wispa it quietly

It's been ironic reading so many positive comments about Cadbury, in a batch of essay assignments, in the week its directors recommended the proposed acquisition of the business by Kraft.

One comment in particular seems worth revisiting. The now-famous bring back Wispa campaign was cited as a good example of relationship management (in the way the company apparently did a U turn and responded to its customers' wishes). The same campaign is also named by Phillips and Young as a good example of  'groundswell' - using social media channels for campaigning purposes.

What if it's neither of these? What if the bring back Wispa campaign was an example of an old-fashioned PR stunt out of Barnum & Bailey, or from Grunig and Hunt's bad old press agentry/publicity model.

You see, our transparent age of social media is meant to make the old-style PR stunt ineffective (unacceptable too). So it's awkward to find an example of it working so well - and the source of the campaign being able to cover their tracks.

So, based on a nudge and a wink more than hard evidence, I name Borkowski as the PR brains behind the Wispa campaign. (He continues to deny it publicly but he's probably made the commitment to do so to the client). Let's please stop using it as an example of the crowd versus business. It's an example of PR orchestration simulating (and stimulating) public opinion. We think we're so sophisticated, but it seems we're still suckers for the old gags.

Freddie Starr ate my wispa.

Advice for Behind the Spin contributors

I welcome approaches to write for Behind the Spin, but frequently find myself having similar email exchanges with would-be contributors. So this post should make the process clearer for all (and save me some time).

We are a magazine for public relations students and graduates. If you have news of interest to our readers, then please contact news@behindthespin.com. If you would like to write a feature, then contact editor@behindthespin.com.

What is news?

We're very keen to hear news about PR students or PR degree courses. 

News typically describes an event, frequently in the recent past. News tends to be written in the past tense, is usually objective (it or they, not I or we), and news articles should be as short as possible. The best way to write news is to answer this question: what happened? 

What is a feature?

A feature article should be about a theme or idea. It can be longer than a news article (our features are typically 1000 words) and can be personal. But your feature does not have to express your opinion: you can contact others and include a range of opinions in the form of quotations. Or you can write a profile on one person.

What can I write about?

We give some indication of the type of features we're looking for on the About page. But you're also welcome to contact us with your own ideas. You could:

• Write a profile of a senior practitioner
• Spend a day with a junior PR practitioner and write about their working day
• Focus on careers: how to get a graduate job in a top consultancy; how to earn big money
• Focus on issues: why are there so few men in PR?
• Focus on sectors: how to find work in fashion PR?; what's it like working in NHS comms?
• Focus on change: how is social media changing PR?
• Focus on courses: is a PR degree worth it?
• Answer a question: is media relations declining in importance?
• Turn your dissertation or essay into an article
• Write a review of a recent book about (or of relevance to) public relations

Unpopularity contest

Here's why social media for students should be an unpopularity contest. Because the question is: are you a leader or a follower?

There's immense social pressure on people to conform: young adults feel it most strongly, as is evident through their choice of clothes, music, sports, drinks and so on.

But surely social media encourages like minded people to gather together. Surely it promotes conformity. Consider those Facebook profile photos where the individual is indistinguishable from the herd.

We are tribal animals, so it's a good ploy to conform to the rules of the tribe. To an extent, yes; but it's a competitive world out there, and we can't win every race. How best to equip youself, if not to win, at least to finish the race?

I think it takes some non-crowd behaviour. It comes down to individual application. Are you an outlier?

Glancing at the entrants to Euprera's social media awards 2010, and thinking about those who are putting themselves forward, I realise how hard this is. Starting a blog is easy (no harder than setting up a web mail account); keeping one going, in a social media landscape where Twitter is more immediate and social networks are more rewarding, requires hard work and outlier traits.

I'm not involved in choosing winners (and don't even know why this blog appears among the entrants), but I suspect the winners will demonstrate focus, commitment and dedication (solitary, not tribal, qualities), but will also have the social skills to connect and coordinate communities.

To stick with Malcolm Gladwell, there will be something of the connector, maven and salesman [sic] in them.

There's still time to enter the Euprera awards. Go on, make yourself popular through your unpopular obsessions.

Photo by Julia Roy on Flickr

Is WordPress the future of the printing press?

Today's Media Guardian tells of a magazine run by enterprising journalism students at Goldsmiths, University of London.

It's WordPress-based publication EastLondonLines. 

The students are 'to build an audience from scratch, market it, make it attractive to advertisers and make contact with ... potential sources of revenue.'

It's clearly an active site with an emphasis on breaking news, as you'd expect from journalism students.

Our effort at student magazine journalism is much less news-driven, but this article vindicates my decision to create a WordPress-based niche magazine, Behind the Spin, two years ago.

I've had some interest in the vacancies on this magazine and will be announcing who has been appointed very soon.

Are we teaching twits?

 What an excellent article and intelligent discussion in the Chronicle of Higher Education from the US (via Judy Gombita).

In the red corner is the admission that linear PowerPoint lectures are not engaging for students, who are already distracted by private conversations, laptops and mobile phones. So why not channel this energy positively and have the students post their questions and comments on Twitter?

In the blue corner is the case that higher education is not about cramming bite-sized chunks of digestible knowledge, but should be about understanding a process of thinking about problems. So students need to follow lengthy and subtle arguments without becoming distracted.

It's such as strong debate because both sides are right. To explain this, if I were teaching English or History I would insist on attention to the text with few distractions. But I'm teaching public relations - and multitasking and communications are key qualities.

Conceptually, two-way is better than one-way; engagement is better than just listening. Teaching is conversations, to borrow from Cluetrain, but for now I'd rather these conversations took place within the walls of the classroom. But I'm open to persuasion and may attempt my own experiment soon.

Georgia on my mind

I spoke remotely to a class of students at Georgia Southern University yesterday. Despite some technical difficulties, we had an interesting discussion about trends in international public relations.

In follow up, one of the class - Sarah Wilson - has asked me four good questions which I'll attempt to answer here.

1. What do you do to keep current on PR trends?

I'm a member of our professional body (the CIPR); I read books on and around the subject; I blog about PR and read PR blogs; I talk to practitioners and students; I teach practitioners who are studying for a PR qualification; I attend conferences; I'm a member of PROpenMic.

If I had to pick just one of these, books are still be best way to gain a deeper understanding of a subject.

2. How has PR changed since you entered the industry?

The principles haven't changed in 20 years - but the practice has changed a lot (though it still has some way to go). Looking back, for many years I didn't do public relations - I simply did media relations (and most of that was press relations).

PR has changed as the media landscape has evolved, most notably with the emergence of social media.

But as Sir Martin Sorrell suggested, there are other factors too: the internationalisation of business, the importance of internal communications ('change management'); the agenda around legitimacy and corporate responsibility; the rise of activism.

In summary, looking back I'd say I provided an important tactical tool to my clients. Yet public relations advisers are today in a position to provide key strategic advice.

3. Do you believe that marketing and advertising are encroaching into public relations (eg through relationship marketing)? If yes, please give an example. 

This question is hugely significant to people who work in public relations and to public relations academics - since the future of the discipline is at stake. But I suspect it's of less interest to clients.

There is no question in my mind that certain promotional techniques have been losing effectiveness in our short-attention-span economy. Public relations - either through editorial endorsement or through other forms of third party recommendation - has been a beneficiary from the relative decline of advertising. Yet marketing is not standing still and relationship marketing, viral marketing, word of mouth marketing, social marketing, cause-related marketing etc are all ways in which marketing is seeking to colonise part of the space historically occupied by public relations.

I suggest you need to separate out the purpose for which PR is being used. If it's being used to promote sales, then this is a marketing function and PR needs to find its niche in the marketing mix (the traditional exclusive domain of marketing PR has been media relations, as discussed earlier).

If the purpose of PR is to ensure the organisation's social legitimacy (and thus its long-term survival and success), then I view this as the domain of public relations (or corporate communications), not of marketing. Your question asks about case studies - and clearly there's a need for these to demonstrate to others that public relations can play this more strategic role. Among academics, Charles Fombrun has done most to articulate the field of corporate reputation management and to provide tools for measuring corporate reputation.

The case study I would have talked to you about yesterday, had there been time, is a contradictory one. It's the award-winning PR campaign for Queensland Tourism ('The Best Job in the World'). It's contradictory because the winning team is a Australian advertising agency, CumminsNitro. PR may be a powerful tool, but there's nothing to stop others learning some lessons.

4. What three tips would you give to someone just starting in PR?

One. Start with your own public relations. Join networks and put energy into your chosen networks. Look to get known and take note of your Google search rankings.

Two. It's good to be open-minded and capable of learning - but you'll get hired for being passionate and expert. So look for a sector to specialise in. (As Weber Shandwick's Colin Byrne tells graduates, it's better to know everything about something than something about everything).

Three. Be curious and keep learning. Don't be afraid to ask!