Online PR Hypecycle - where are we?

I have been wondering where online PR has got to in the Gartner Hype Cycle.
It would be nice to believe that it has already arrived in mainstream practice in the UK.

But, I don't think so.




The tale begins with the 1995 CIPR annual conference in, I think, Warwick when Jon White, Reggie Watts and I expressed opinions about the future of PR. We were sked to look ten year out. Reggie and Jon were about right with CSR and the role of PR in management. I, on the other hand was about five years to ambitious.


The CIPR/PRCA Internet Commission did brilliant work only to be sidelined by the year 2000 internet bubble crash and it was only when the 'Web 2.0' hype began to bite that the PR industry began to look at online PR again.

Now, with to research published by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) showing that 25-34 year olds spend 13.9 hours per week online (up from 13 in 2007), 36% are heavy daily users and almost two thirds are online daily there is considerable incentive for companies to shed Web 1.0 and take part.

Even more compelling is the latest AOP research, released this week which shows business websites emerging as a highly valued and indispensable source of information for business decision makers. The survey, conducted in association with IPSOS Mori, revealed:

* B2B websites are ubiquitous among business decision makers, 97% stated that this is the media most used for work
* 60% ranked business websites as an essential source of information in their work
* 60% consider business websites as providing information that they couldn’t get elsewhere

Of course, there is a lot more similar data showing how important online selling, marketing and opinion forming has become. The evidence is now overwhelming and inside many companies is the uncomfortable feeling that they are now very wrong footed.

But we are not there yet. The demand is building but not compelling.

The focus is on how the economy will survive the 'Festive Season' and then the cold reality of January will make people look much harder at where their future lies and that is when there will be the big change.

PR Facing $10 billion plunge?

There is a hush about the impact of the Crunch on PR.

We have to face up to it.

Yes there are opportunities but if you take out a quarter of the revenue that supports any industry sector, it has an effect all round.

In February 2009, the number of advertising pages in print publications will be reduced. The pre-Christmas advertising will have gone and sales advertising will have vanished.

It is hard to guess by how much the decline will be but let’s be optimistic (as I think this week’s media reports have been) – print media ad spend will decline 50% across Europe in 2009.

When will the recovery come? April? June? September? Or, as media report in the UK has it, perhaps 2012 (http://xrl.in/12n8).

And if by then, the newspapers and magazines have not found a new way of engaging readers they will be dead or next to it?

While we are imagining this Armageddon, let’s call it 50% fewer editorial pages.
Perhaps 50% of PR activity is predicated on contributing to editorial pages.

As the blood spreads on the editorial carpets so too does it spread to the miltch cow 25% of the PR industry. That is 25% of Press Relations PR jobs, revenues, support and so forth.

In the UK this represents a loss of PR sector revenues amounting to about £0.3 billion (for the Global Alliance lets imagine perhaps $10 billion worldwide).

This is a big issue for the industry and its associations. We do need to start talking about it.

The Nature of an Organisations

As many will know, I have a problem with the theory that most people still to describe an organisation.

In the light of the exchanges on Toni's Blog, it seems a good time to re-phrase where I am coming from.

Coarse' concept of a nexus of contracts is now stretched to the point that it is no longer practical (and Sonsino's idea of a nexus of conversations is too lightweight).

At every level and in every department, organisations have become porous. They lease the office, factory, computer and machine tool, Like Procter and Gamble, Lego, or IBM they use open source Intellectual Property to compete with products. Manufacture is shipped to another company/country and even the means for payment and distribution belongs beyond the institutional structure. It is not that this is some cyberspace phenomena. It is not a virtual phenomena. This is about hard bricks and mortar, real machines and products you find in every home.

The organisation as it could have been described in 1958 no longer exists. In 50 years it has become an institution held together by relationships. So when we in PR talk of public relations being between an organisation and its public's, we need to have a better idea of what we mean by organisation.

But the changed nature of an organisation does not stop there.

In the past, we recognised the militaristic nature of corporate structures. There were managerial divisions such as R&D, Manufacturing, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Transport. There were ranks such as labourer, clerk, foreman, supervisor, manager, department head and director. Contact between organisational division was discouraged. They were kept in separate locations and often had to make a journey or (expensive) telephone call via an operator to make inter departmental contact.
A clerk would never talk to a manager because the manager knew everything and past on the information that a supervisor needed to know, who in turn told the clerk what to do. You can see it laid out in its perfect symmetry in the Swindon Railway Museum. In 1958, just 50 years ago, that is how it was.

Today the newest, youngest employee can communicate to anyone of any rank in any division or department at will. With a really bright idea, that person can also create a small group of enthusiasts for something that will be just great to make them all rich and the company prosper. The old idea of an organisation is now different. Communications inside the company has changed that.

But hang on.... the organisation outsources lots of stuff.

So this new, junior person and his group of enthusiasts may well be dealing with an external institution (who might also work with competitors).

The nature of this group is that they have built relationships, are able to act independently and within and beyond the boundaries of the organisation. They have wrested control from the organisational 'dominant coalition' and the structure of organisations is changed.

Great theory.... is there any evidence?

Three months ago people who lent money to banks had almost no say in how those banks should be run. Then tax payers money was leant to banks. Now the editor of every newspaper, every Parliamentarian and, it seems, every bar room bore is affecting how banks are run. Outsourcing access to capital to taxpayers changed the way banks are run. The rise and rise of Management Buyouts (still an active market worldwide despite the credit crunch) is a manifestation of control moving inside organisations.
So far, I have avoided including the impact of ICT. But lurking in the background are things like email, low cost telephony and fast data transfer that made all this happen.

For many organisations, there is every appearance that they are monolithic until you look at the bottom of their website, look at the extent of off-balance sheet financing, examine the services they outsource such as recruitment, competitor research (most people don’t realise that Google is the most used form of competitor research in the world) and now we can see just how much control organisations have ceded to institutions beyond their control.

You see, this disintermediation of the 'organisation' comes at us a many ways.

Yahoo and its attention study

One of the advantages of consulting with an agency with Yahoo! as a client is that you can easily get at the inside story.

The Yahoo! "Return on Attention" research is really interesting.

The survey of 1015 adult UK internet users between the 21stJuly and 25thJuly 2008 showed that people thought they were busier and working longer and 80% think they are living in an age of information overload.
Well, that’s not hard to believe!

There are some serious issues associated with the findings when
• 51% of respondents suffer from three or more symptoms of Information Fatigue Syndrome.
• 54% say that information overload makes it more difficult to concentrate
So it is not surprising to find that 92% of respondents value their time now more than they used to and the gap between information available and information consumption is growing.
Yahoo! quotes research that shows overload creates attention poverty and this has economic consequences and competition for attention becomes a crucial element of business strategy (Sullivan 2006; Burns 2007; Brown and Davis 2006; Goldhaber 1997 and Hagel 2001.
The research also looked at motivations for use of online content and found that:
• 79% want something of value in return for paying attention to advertising, even if it just makes them smile or tells them something new
• 67% think that advertising can be really innovative and engaging
• 88% consciously screen out information and advertising that they think won’t be worth their time
• 66% wish that there were tools that could help organise the information in their lives
• 88% think that technology will continue to improve and will develop in new ways to help accomplish tasks --or do them outright
This brings to mind Kevin Kellys thoughts on the next 5000 days of the internet (http://xrl.in/11tt) which may offer a solution and some of the thoughts I have been expressing of the future of the internet (http://leverwealth.blogspot.com/2008/09/role-of-emotion-in-immersive-web.html).

In the busy lives of people (including the ever growing amount of time they spend online – or feel they have to spend online 68% feel it is getting more difficult to balance life and work.



As a result, people are making increasing use of search engines, tagging or bookmarking of favourites, and sites which allow them to amalgamate content (good for Yahoo! which owns Delicious – of course). Secondly, people are, in general, more likely to return to sites which enable them to do this effectively (and it’s really interesting to see how most online newspapers have now added such facilities at the end of most news and comment.

Yahoo! says that business models that can profit from these trends are the ones that will succeed in the attention economy and certainly we have seen enhanced reach for publications that do.

The pressure. The pressure. It seems to be getting to everyone! We are spending more time with PowerPoint than in the pub.



The data on information overload also gives us some useful indicators.

80% of respondents believe we are living in an age of information overload.
63% of respondents feel information overload affects them.
54% of respondents find overload makes it more difficult to concentrate

I was also interested in the 63% that admit that they feel like they would miss out on something if they “switched off”.

The Facebook generation is over faced.

The data confirms other research showing that while we are addicted to being constantly connected, ‘we are kidding ourselves if we believe we can multitask effectively’ (Lohr 2007); people are increasingly contactable and even on holiday, over half of British adults check their email, (Fried 2005).

Amongst those who feel information overload affects them, 62% are concerned about its effect.

And the numbers who feel they are always-on is considerable.

But nearly two thirds admit that they feel like they would miss out on something if they “switched off” and ‘escaping’ is a word being used.

The causes and consequences of information overload goes beyond the simple 68% of respondents who feel overloaded with tasks and information. 51% of respondents suffer from three or more symptoms of Information Fatigue Syndrome

Research suggests that office workers are distracted every three minutes, yet it can take 15 minutes to regain full concentration on a task, leading to a drain on economic productivity that is partially the result of information overload. This loss of attention has been estimated in the US at a loss of about $650 billion per year.

But on an individual level, the affects of overload are considerable. People, the Yahoo! report says, view themselves as unable to cope with the supply of information. This perception often causes feelings of dependence and frustration that can lead to various symptoms: anxiety, stress, sleep disorders, digestive problems, etc. This leads to more severely divided attention –and a greater need for a return on the attention captured.

These problems have been grouped under the general term Information Fatigue Syndrome. As well as being the cause of a range of biological problems, Information Fatigue Syndrome has been identified as a potential cause for larger and more severe attention disorders.

(see also : Fried (2005); Lohr(2007a); Lohr(2007b); Holstein (2006); Epplerand Mengis(2003); Nellis(2001); Guardian (2005); Chritakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, McCarthy (2004)

I guess most of us are guilty of ‘wasting time’. That great thing about the internet that satisfies our curiosity, the serendipity behind that hyperlink that is not relevant but is irresistible and that has to be balanced against work and domestic distractions.



Pretty serious stuff here and I wonder how much more work these findings will are going to entail to get to the bottom of all the causes?

On a lighter note: Loss of appetite! Wow! Does this mean that using the internet is as good as a diet?

The research also showed how people try to mitigate these problems and ignoring them seems to work quite well and most of them seem to fail.

It is useful to get this information and to be able to see the original research.


I confess that I am a bit surprised at the levels of stress associated with being online.