The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.
I cannt falt it either.
Monday, December 22, 2008
How you will spend your time and attention
Andrew Lark spotted this quotation from Pew Research:
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Sorry is a word
John Varley The Chief executive of Barclays Bank says that the banking industry is going through what he calls a public relations crisis, that it must apologise for what went wrong - because banks will not regain the vital trust of customers unless and until they own up to the sins of the past and say sorry.
Apart from pointing the finger at the failures of the banking industry (see my last post), one can ask what he really means by sorry.
He has a long way to go.
People confer trust on organisations. To do that they need some form of relationship. Progressively such relationships can become a trusted relationship based on experience of behaviours.
Banking behavious in all manner of relationships has a track record. It is diverse. It is networked between different publics and stakeholders. Relationships are not always two way and many relationships are formed beyond the control or wit of organisation.
For example, of the 42 new web pages about Barclays Bank today, only two were directly under the control of the bank perhaps a further ten included content mediated by the bank and all the rest were prompted by a community commenting in various ways about the bank.
At this stage, one might ask if John Varley means the banking industry is sorry for corrupting relationships because by looking at the range of people and institutions commenting about just one bank, close scruteny suggests that there is a long way to go before effective working relationhips (two way semetrical?) have been established and even further to go to identify trusting relationships.
The sinners of the past whose practices created toxic relatiohips are still in post and will have to change a lot if they are going to have any impact on relationships (first) and trust.
Perhaps they could start with transparent engagement.
One thing that they are going to have to come to terms with is the nature of wealth. John Varley made me wince when he said that:
"As soon as asset prices stabilise, then we will see the financial economy recover. And when will that occur? That will occur some time over the course of the next 18 months."
One can only wonder what he means by asset price.
An asset price is the measure of the value of an exchange between a willing seller and willing buyer.
There are lots of stable asset prices like the price of photo assets on Facebook. The price is measured in the enhanced value of relationships brought about by the photo.
A hyperlink in Delicious is an asset and such assets have a value and a price. The asset price, once again based on relationships has not changed much this month - or even this year and so there is asset price stability.
Looking at the asset price of a steel works or houses also depends on relationhip networks.
So is John Varley suggesting that he is really looking for stable relationships?
Good man!
Who is his relationships manager?
The relationship management model may also be of some help too.
Picture: The William Heath Robinson Trust http://www.heathrobinson.org/
Individual Social Responsibility - A Driver for PR
In September I made it quite clear that I though that the banking crisis was above all a crisis for public relations. My thesis is now underpinned by comments by the chief executive of Barclays, John Varley.
In an interview with the BBC's Robert Peston for last Monday's Panorama (8.30pm on BBC1) John Varley said that the banking industry is going through " a public relations crisis, that it must apologise for what went wrong - because banks will not regain the vital trust of customers unless and until they own up to the sins of the past and say sorry."
How did the industry get to the point where it has a public relations crisis?
Was it because it had good public relations? Obviously not. Here we are, sixteen months after the the toxic nature of the banking failure came to light, being given lessons in PR by a chief executive.
Were the practices of the banks so well served by the PR industry that they lost trust, not just between banks but between banks, business, retail customers and government? We have now seen that relationships served by poor PR is, in itself toxic.
Was the industry served by good public relations advice that put the industry into a circumstance that "will take between one and two years for lending to stop shrinking"?
Lets look at what was involved.
PR managers need to know about the products and services provided by their organisations. After all they have a responsibility for explaining what the organisation does to its publics. Failure to understand the product is high risk. PR practice without individual social responsibility of the nature of understanding the organisation dangerous.
PR managers have a responsibility for identifying threats to relationships and reputation and have a duty to inform the organisations of the threats and their consequences. It is a matter of individual social responsibility to both identify such threats and to engage internal publics through their own individual social responsibility to remove such threats.
The role of PR as watchdog and advisor in the management of relationships goes beyond the description of our trade, it is a matter of corporate financial prudence. It is extraordinary that Varley was not told that relationships are a corporate asset. After all, the evidence, as I pointed out in 2006, is robust. Individual social responsibility to internal and external publics includes a need to understand the financial implications of actions that will undermine relationships and reputation. Failure to do so is, of its nature more toxic than the reasons for the credit crunch.
PR managers have a responsibility for advising organisations about the ethics of practice. Ethical practice is about values and has to be part of individual social responsibility.
It is a matter of corporate social responsibility and, more important, individual social responsibility.
Now we have a senior manager in the banking sector pointing his finger at the practice of public relations.
It is an accusation that the industry has to take seriously.
Is it down to a chief executive of a bank to point out these failures or is it the individual social responsibility of practitioners and corporate social responsibility of the profession and its institutions to examine practice?
The track record of chief executives is, at a personal level, quite good but in practice they need robust professional capability in execution. Chief executives also need to be managed and, in this case not by the marketers, accounts department or non-executive board but by the PR manager.
In the month that the credit crunch struck (August 2007) I made exactly this point an so it was not exactly that we in PR (and Sir John Sutherland no less) were not aware of the need and consequences of poor social responsibility.
I am a Fellow of the CIPR and it is, I believe the dusty of Fellows to make the point and to call on the CIPR to be serious about the role of PR in guiding, advising and helping management of our clients.
A long time ago, I gave notice of the ethical, individual social responsibility, issue and asked:
Two-way symmetry is no longer enough.
I have moved on. It is not enough just to stand fast and change the nature of the organisation such that its ethic will match that of its publics (the Grunigian view). It is a matter for being proactive both internally and with publics and, additionally, to be proactive in the eco-system of the client environment such that the environment can sustain the organisation.
We have to act.
In an interview with the BBC's Robert Peston for last Monday's Panorama (8.30pm on BBC1) John Varley said that the banking industry is going through " a public relations crisis, that it must apologise for what went wrong - because banks will not regain the vital trust of customers unless and until they own up to the sins of the past and say sorry."
How did the industry get to the point where it has a public relations crisis?
Was it because it had good public relations? Obviously not. Here we are, sixteen months after the the toxic nature of the banking failure came to light, being given lessons in PR by a chief executive.
Were the practices of the banks so well served by the PR industry that they lost trust, not just between banks but between banks, business, retail customers and government? We have now seen that relationships served by poor PR is, in itself toxic.
Was the industry served by good public relations advice that put the industry into a circumstance that "will take between one and two years for lending to stop shrinking"?
Lets look at what was involved.
PR managers need to know about the products and services provided by their organisations. After all they have a responsibility for explaining what the organisation does to its publics. Failure to understand the product is high risk. PR practice without individual social responsibility of the nature of understanding the organisation dangerous.
PR managers have a responsibility for identifying threats to relationships and reputation and have a duty to inform the organisations of the threats and their consequences. It is a matter of individual social responsibility to both identify such threats and to engage internal publics through their own individual social responsibility to remove such threats.
The role of PR as watchdog and advisor in the management of relationships goes beyond the description of our trade, it is a matter of corporate financial prudence. It is extraordinary that Varley was not told that relationships are a corporate asset. After all, the evidence, as I pointed out in 2006, is robust. Individual social responsibility to internal and external publics includes a need to understand the financial implications of actions that will undermine relationships and reputation. Failure to do so is, of its nature more toxic than the reasons for the credit crunch.
PR managers have a responsibility for advising organisations about the ethics of practice. Ethical practice is about values and has to be part of individual social responsibility.
It is a matter of corporate social responsibility and, more important, individual social responsibility.
Now we have a senior manager in the banking sector pointing his finger at the practice of public relations.
It is an accusation that the industry has to take seriously.
Is it down to a chief executive of a bank to point out these failures or is it the individual social responsibility of practitioners and corporate social responsibility of the profession and its institutions to examine practice?
The track record of chief executives is, at a personal level, quite good but in practice they need robust professional capability in execution. Chief executives also need to be managed and, in this case not by the marketers, accounts department or non-executive board but by the PR manager.
In the month that the credit crunch struck (August 2007) I made exactly this point an so it was not exactly that we in PR (and Sir John Sutherland no less) were not aware of the need and consequences of poor social responsibility.
I am a Fellow of the CIPR and it is, I believe the dusty of Fellows to make the point and to call on the CIPR to be serious about the role of PR in guiding, advising and helping management of our clients.
A long time ago, I gave notice of the ethical, individual social responsibility, issue and asked:
Is the ethical practice then to expose the values or to change them?If the values that drive the public relations of an organisation are toxic, as in the now admitted case for banks, we have to re-visit the role of PR.
A purist practitioner would expose the values and be damned and would allow the organisation to be damned by its constituencies. It is a form of practice that can stand back from the consequences of foolhardy management.
On the other hand the PR manager (a person who attempts to manage the relationships between an organisation and its constituencies) would attempt to change the organisation.
Two-way symmetry is no longer enough.
I have moved on. It is not enough just to stand fast and change the nature of the organisation such that its ethic will match that of its publics (the Grunigian view). It is a matter for being proactive both internally and with publics and, additionally, to be proactive in the eco-system of the client environment such that the environment can sustain the organisation.
We have to act.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
There are amazing things happening at a very domestic level that give us a clue about what is happening online.
A very special lady in my life is my side of 60 years old and, yes explores products and services before buying in shops, buys and banks online but this story offers a slightly different angle. It is real as opposed to some investigation researched findings.
She was getting very fed up with spray window cleaners. Apparently they are not as good as old fashioned pink Windowlene.
For weeks she scanned supermarket shelves with no luck and eventually decided to use the internet.
Result!
Not only did she find that Windowlene is still available but that a small local shop stocks it.
What a brave local shop and what a result!
This is not some 24 year old geek or a major supermarket or even some magic next generation search - it is good old fashioned Web 1.0 working well.
When, I wonder will she price check in-store? The power of the internet in the hands of this demographic and the increased time spent by them online important not just for retailers but many other organisations.
A very special lady in my life is my side of 60 years old and, yes explores products and services before buying in shops, buys and banks online but this story offers a slightly different angle. It is real as opposed to some investigation researched findings.
She was getting very fed up with spray window cleaners. Apparently they are not as good as old fashioned pink Windowlene.
For weeks she scanned supermarket shelves with no luck and eventually decided to use the internet.
Result!
Not only did she find that Windowlene is still available but that a small local shop stocks it.
What a brave local shop and what a result!
This is not some 24 year old geek or a major supermarket or even some magic next generation search - it is good old fashioned Web 1.0 working well.
When, I wonder will she price check in-store? The power of the internet in the hands of this demographic and the increased time spent by them online important not just for retailers but many other organisations.
This story would be a straw-in-the-wind but is backed up a raft of research.
How much more can we achieve with all the new opportunities developing channels offer?
Watch the growth and growth of online retail
This weeks news from IMRG Capgemini was a real problem for the news media agenda. Far from a slump in retail sales, economic Armageddon and the end of markets as we know them, retailing is fine and, especially online, is doing better than ever.
Growth in online spending for November surged 26% on October and was up 16% on last year.
But I think there is a now a good case for following the rate of growth of online retailing as a major economic indicator.
What is happening online does not suite the doom-sayers and the media agenda which is a bit of a problem for them. The bloggers and people with an interest in what is really happening in retailing have a different agenda.
The propostion that retailing is dead is not helpful or true. There is a adjustment and the markets are uncertain but this downturn like many before it is now over-hyped.
Unemployment levels will continue to grow and others will join Woolworths. The news media will have a bleak agenda and market will adjust but these are symptoms of what was happening in the real economy months ago.
What we are seeing online is the real economy. This week we have see a change in the growth curve and it is up.
I think that this curve will be the one to watch this year if we want to understand what is happening in the real economy.
Growth in online spending for November surged 26% on October and was up 16% on last year.
But I think there is a now a good case for following the rate of growth of online retailing as a major economic indicator.
What is happening online does not suite the doom-sayers and the media agenda which is a bit of a problem for them. The bloggers and people with an interest in what is really happening in retailing have a different agenda.
The propostion that retailing is dead is not helpful or true. There is a adjustment and the markets are uncertain but this downturn like many before it is now over-hyped.
Unemployment levels will continue to grow and others will join Woolworths. The news media will have a bleak agenda and market will adjust but these are symptoms of what was happening in the real economy months ago.
What we are seeing online is the real economy. This week we have see a change in the growth curve and it is up.
I think that this curve will be the one to watch this year if we want to understand what is happening in the real economy.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
TrackThisNow - news service
I am delighted to be able to host this application by Gauri on the netrep server.
Please feel free to try it out at http://www.trackthisnow.com
Its Beta but good.
Please feel free to try it out at http://www.trackthisnow.com
Its Beta but good.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Watching the PR v Marketing presence in Twitter
I thought this would be a good way of watching the most dynamic of comparisons. Watching the trends in conversations in Twitter is pretty dynamic I think.
If I was the President of CIPR - this would be a worry
Following on from where PR is in the Gartner Hype Cycle, I had a look at the trends for online PR.
Its not all that comfortable when you look at how marketing has been doing recently using BlogPulse.
Watching how the industry is competing online might be one of the things that the CIPR statistical people might be reporting to its members.
I think it might be a good idea.
Its not all that comfortable when you look at how marketing has been doing recently using BlogPulse.
Watching how the industry is competing online might be one of the things that the CIPR statistical people might be reporting to its members.
I think it might be a good idea.
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