Now is the time of year when students begin to look forward to their next steps in education.
I am fortunate to be able to help some students with an interest in online public relations and at this stage, we are exploring ideas.
Without giving away any of my students work but just exposing some of my thinking to them and a wider audience I seek criticism from real experts.
The first of the conversations I have had is challenging. It is for a work in social media.
We know that there is a lot of practitioner experience available from all over Europe and the United
States in particular. However, there is much less well grounded academic research available. This is a fast moving environment and traditional academic publishing is, by comparison, slow.
This means that the student has an opportunity to add to the body of knowledge as part of a Masters degree by submitting their own papers.
While, at face value, one may like to look at so called 'social media' as it is used today there are some early decisions one would have to make.
Perhaps it is a good thing to first of all think about what we mean by 'social media'. Is this truly a media, or is is a defined range of communications channels used by people (after all FTP is not social media but is used a lot). If so which people?
Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, Linkedin and bulletin boards, Blogs, wikis, Foursquared, Augmented Reality, video and other sharing channels (like, for example, YouTube, Slideshare and Picasa) are available on many communications platforms such as PC's laptops, smart phones, games machines like Nintendo Wi and Xbox and slates like iPad. Some are good on one channel and not so good on others.
The range of platforms offers us a view as to what sort of people access which channels and under what kind of circumstance. We still need more research in this area.
From this we might understand that people without the relevant platforms or channels might be disenfranchised. But we know that there are intermediaries (who has not seen a child show a grandparent
something 'cool' on a mobile phone).
Thus I think it is worth exploring what we think we mean by social media.
We have to define the channels that exemplify social media and then explore the platforms on which these are available.
A student will need to find sources that can inform an understanding of channels that are available, useful and are or can be (or have been) popular.
A student will need to explore the recent academic works from the PR, marketing and communication academic journals.
The extent to which these disciplines are new suggests that it will be useful to look at a number of other academic disciplines.
I find that the behavioural sciences and neuro-psychology research is informative and is beginning to
explain people's use of platforms (for example people watch television and use a laptop and a mobile phone concurrently under a number of circumstances) and these activities use a wide range of parts of the
brain that normally would not be active using only one platform/channel.
This involves a lot of searching and research - and playing with lots of digital toys too :)
At an early stage, it is helpful to look at how much content there is available to the public and how much of it is about, for example, a specific brand. Here is some software that gives us a quick overview http://www.trackthisnow.com/.
I would not be at all surprised if, at an early stage, a researcher did not discover that there is a lot of content discussed and shared about almost every thing in many channels and across a lot of platforms.
Experience suggests that most organisations do not and actually probably cannot engage their communities at such a hectic pace across so many platforms and channels. This is an interesting consideration when thinking about the role of both PR and marketing in an age of near ubiquitous interactive communication.
For one student this may help in a finding as to how relevant Social Media is as a brand communication instrument. In the totality of all the conversations of all the people using a range of channels and platforms, it may be that research will explore any opportunity to be part of such conversations and if, in addition, the brand can be 'inserted' into the conversation.
My view is that it will quickly becomes noticeable that this is much more difficult than most believe (and challenges much current practice).
A proposal to consider the future is one that has me hooked.
A student might be extremely brave to consider the future and the evolution of Social Media communication past, present and the new trends for the future.
It is a fascinating subject. The amazing first burst of Usenet and BB's activity three decades ago was astonishing. It showed that people want to engage with each other online, globally and in a new and dynamic way.
I know it has taken the communications industries a couple of decades to see how dynamic the whole concept is and there is a long way to go among leaders in industry and commerce (and academia and government). Equally, I recognise that there is the potential for a radical revolution as potent as any in prospect or history.The Bourbons discovered what happens when eating cake is no longer an alternative to recognising social change in 1792. Such revolution is in prospect for a lot of countries, economies and governments not to mention companies in the next few years.
The extent to which near future developments such as the Semantic Web with automated ontology creation will affect corporate transparency and porosity is an interesting thought.
The development of virtual realities such as 'walk in' Augmented Reality will change personal relationships, experiential marketing and even replace some travel and meetings and is an exciting prospect. I can bet, and history is on my side, that it will become popular in personal relationship experiences long before commerce really gets its head round the wider applications.
The ability to, at will, identify clusters of online values (words, pictures, experience values) and their proponents, supporters and interested constituents will transform marketing. But much more important will change the nature of relationship building, commerce and even the nature of value.
Yes, the future is interesting.
There is another tack that has been presented to me. It is the consideration and strategic analysis’s of brand
communications in different social media platforms. I am sure this will be fascinating for people in PR and Marketing.
Its drawback is that it will need updating every six months or so and so the challenge is be to find a replicable methodological approach - but, of course, each time results are report, they will create a sensation of interest as long as the methodology is robust.
Being able to'listen' to the totality of conversations of a sample in each channel and across a number of
platforms has its challenges and then to try to identify the extent to which the brand is implicitly or explicitly part of these conversations is not impossible and there will be a lot of people who will find this capability really helpful.
A researcher would have to deploy some heavyweight technologies but they are available.
No one can imagine how excited I am at working with bright enquiring young brains in such an array of new thinking that will soon be available to the public relations practitioner - well, those who are following there new developments.
I am, of course interested in comments and insights from you..... One thing we do know is the power of the network to help answer hard questions.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Stockholm Accords and Sustainability
This is second of a series of lectures notes I am preparing about the Stockholm Accords.
Some months have passed since the World Public Relations Forum discussed and approved the Stockholm Accords. It was the culmination of an intensely participated collaboration process which involved some 1000 leaders of the global public relations community from 42 countries by the PR industry's Global Alliance.
There is a Stockholm Accords digital HUB that you may visit here at: www.stockholmaccords.org. The discussions are worth following and I recommend all practitioners to visit and get engaged.
You can access the Accords here. I have also provided a text version here (for all those people who like to copy 'n paste and not get irritated by the use of PDF)
The Accords offer us a view of sustainability in these words:
An organization’s sustainability is based on balancing today’s demands with the ability to meet future needs, based on economic, environmental and social dimensions*.
In this network society, sustainability leadership offers a transformational opportunity* to enhance the organization’s reputation and demonstrate success across the triple bottom line.
Public Relations professionals identify, involve and engage key stakeholders* contributing to appropriate sustainability policies and programs by:
· interpreting society’s expectations for sound economical, social and environmental investments that show a return to the organization (the advocate)*;
· creating a listening culture – an open system that allows the organization to anticipate, adapt and respond (the listener)*;
· ensuring stakeholder participation to identify what information should be transparently and authentically reported (the reporter)*;
· going beyond today’s priorities to anticipate the needs of tomorrow, engaging stakeholders and management in long-term thinking (the leader).
Reviewing each of these elements in turn, we can extend the debate.
An organization’s sustainability is based on balancing today’s demands with the ability to meet future needs, based on economic, environmental and social dimensions is a bold and, I suggest, a late 20th century view. It will hold good for some time to come but the move towards greater competitive transparency, the evolution of the semantic web and ever more effective 'Blazing Netshine' that allows us all to search and expose the minutia of human endeavour will challenge economic, environmental and social dimensions with added elements.
The nature of value is being challenges in many ways.
What is 'free' (i.e. not paid for with today's monetary currencies) is frequently challenged in today's society. Patents and Trademarks, copyright and personal assets are exposed in near ubiquitous interactive communication and yet many things seemingly 'free' are much valued.
The 'Free' search engine Google has immense value for most people well beyond the irritation (and much ignored) advertisements. Its value as part of a new form of memory and access to knowledge is huge and dwarfs the utility of Library of Congress and all the other libraries in the world combined.
The nature of value is changing so fast, one might begin to consider coinage as being of lesser utility this year compared to last.
We are beginning to understand value differently. We are beginning to understand commonly held values as being the element that aids/is the essential ingredient for relationship creation (paper by Bruno Amaral and me) and meta values commonly held between two or more people as an indication of the strength of relationships.
Indeed, we are now seeing such values attached to ideas and artefacts as a description of their value and utility for individuals and communities.
It follows that basing anything on economic needs may have to face up to a new form and understanding of economics that truly are (in a process of becoming) dimensionally different. Here is a simple example of what I mean. What is the value of Google to humanity in this generation? Google valued by markets at $165bn gets two trillion site hits per year. It is a lot of knowledge transfer and priceless (if sometimes trivial).
This leads one to imagine the environment for the existence of organisations.
In an era of developing ubiquitous access to knowledge, corporate environments will have difficulty being an entity. The nature of transparency, porosity and agency as described by the PRCA/CIPR Internet Commission a decade ago (and revised by Philip Young and myself in Online Public Relations) mean that organisations become less bound by a corporate 'hard shell'. We already see this in organisation where 'contracting out' and the use of agents such as PR consultants to act on behalf of and in the interests of an organisation is commonplace. As each employee gets a Twitter Account, the evolution of this transparent and even porous nature of organisations becomes ever more, and publicly evident. The changing environment militates against the structure of organisations as we know them today and we see this in a range of manifestations where the boundaries between one organisation and another is blurred.
An organisation’s sustainability based on balancing demands in social dimensions is also a significant challenge. The social constructs for much of society is changing.
The emergence of Brazil, India and China as big and developing (and more open) economies, the ability to communicate across borders at will and the dynamic of social groups formed in the silicon sitting rooms of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are very different social dimensions. Add smart phones and location based micro communities and society looks very different. These are considerations for all who signed up to the Stockholm Accords and have to be thought through by the professional bodies as well as their members.
The professional bodies also have to re-act or be left on the shelf.
The Accords postulate that, in this network society, sustainability leadership offers a transformational opportunity to enhance the organization’s reputation and demonstrate success across the triple bottom line.
Sustainability to be long lasting has to be flexible and enhancing reputation is not limited to economic, ecological and social advantage.
I have already suggested that economical advantage my be difficult to quantify as values take on a different role and are probably better viewed in relationship building terms than monetary value.
Environmental and social advantage may then also be measured in their capability to bring relationship values to the fore. This is not a tautologous argument. Environmental and social values are not the same and current practice needs a lot of new and additional work to achieve 20th century gaols. To be effective in the 21st century, PR has to evolve a triple line that can extend into the much more complicated world of individual, corporate and environment relationships and their value drivers today.
Oddly enough identifying, involving and engaging key stakeholders is very easy. We have not yet developed the technologies sufficiently well but espousing values will quickly build relationship clusters with people holding similar values. In the bast it was a little understood but effective brand empathy matrix. Today, we understand it as a not wholly different, but stakeholder derived values matrix.
As we move towards greater competitive transparency and learn to manage organisational porosity it will become much harder for an organisation to determine what information should be transparently and authentically reported. The stakeholder not only has the whip hand by virtue of a wider view of values porosity will inevitably reveal and the community will punish any organisation that lacks authenticity. Secretive accountants and pharmaceutical companies are going to have to find a values driven accommodation with society to remain as they are.
It is professionalism that develops a capability to go beyond today’s priorities to anticipate the needs of tomorrow and, in addition more emphasis on todays word among PR teachers.
Some months have passed since the World Public Relations Forum discussed and approved the Stockholm Accords. It was the culmination of an intensely participated collaboration process which involved some 1000 leaders of the global public relations community from 42 countries by the PR industry's Global Alliance.
There is a Stockholm Accords digital HUB that you may visit here at: www.stockholmaccords.org. The discussions are worth following and I recommend all practitioners to visit and get engaged.
You can access the Accords here. I have also provided a text version here (for all those people who like to copy 'n paste and not get irritated by the use of PDF)
The Accords offer us a view of sustainability in these words:
An organization’s sustainability is based on balancing today’s demands with the ability to meet future needs, based on economic, environmental and social dimensions*.
In this network society, sustainability leadership offers a transformational opportunity* to enhance the organization’s reputation and demonstrate success across the triple bottom line.
Public Relations professionals identify, involve and engage key stakeholders* contributing to appropriate sustainability policies and programs by:
· interpreting society’s expectations for sound economical, social and environmental investments that show a return to the organization (the advocate)*;
· creating a listening culture – an open system that allows the organization to anticipate, adapt and respond (the listener)*;
· ensuring stakeholder participation to identify what information should be transparently and authentically reported (the reporter)*;
· going beyond today’s priorities to anticipate the needs of tomorrow, engaging stakeholders and management in long-term thinking (the leader).
Reviewing each of these elements in turn, we can extend the debate.
An organization’s sustainability is based on balancing today’s demands with the ability to meet future needs, based on economic, environmental and social dimensions is a bold and, I suggest, a late 20th century view. It will hold good for some time to come but the move towards greater competitive transparency, the evolution of the semantic web and ever more effective 'Blazing Netshine' that allows us all to search and expose the minutia of human endeavour will challenge economic, environmental and social dimensions with added elements.
The nature of value is being challenges in many ways.
What is 'free' (i.e. not paid for with today's monetary currencies) is frequently challenged in today's society. Patents and Trademarks, copyright and personal assets are exposed in near ubiquitous interactive communication and yet many things seemingly 'free' are much valued.
The 'Free' search engine Google has immense value for most people well beyond the irritation (and much ignored) advertisements. Its value as part of a new form of memory and access to knowledge is huge and dwarfs the utility of Library of Congress and all the other libraries in the world combined.
The nature of value is changing so fast, one might begin to consider coinage as being of lesser utility this year compared to last.
We are beginning to understand value differently. We are beginning to understand commonly held values as being the element that aids/is the essential ingredient for relationship creation (paper by Bruno Amaral and me) and meta values commonly held between two or more people as an indication of the strength of relationships.
Indeed, we are now seeing such values attached to ideas and artefacts as a description of their value and utility for individuals and communities.
It follows that basing anything on economic needs may have to face up to a new form and understanding of economics that truly are (in a process of becoming) dimensionally different. Here is a simple example of what I mean. What is the value of Google to humanity in this generation? Google valued by markets at $165bn gets two trillion site hits per year. It is a lot of knowledge transfer and priceless (if sometimes trivial).
This leads one to imagine the environment for the existence of organisations.
In an era of developing ubiquitous access to knowledge, corporate environments will have difficulty being an entity. The nature of transparency, porosity and agency as described by the PRCA/CIPR Internet Commission a decade ago (and revised by Philip Young and myself in Online Public Relations) mean that organisations become less bound by a corporate 'hard shell'. We already see this in organisation where 'contracting out' and the use of agents such as PR consultants to act on behalf of and in the interests of an organisation is commonplace. As each employee gets a Twitter Account, the evolution of this transparent and even porous nature of organisations becomes ever more, and publicly evident. The changing environment militates against the structure of organisations as we know them today and we see this in a range of manifestations where the boundaries between one organisation and another is blurred.
An organisation’s sustainability based on balancing demands in social dimensions is also a significant challenge. The social constructs for much of society is changing.
The emergence of Brazil, India and China as big and developing (and more open) economies, the ability to communicate across borders at will and the dynamic of social groups formed in the silicon sitting rooms of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are very different social dimensions. Add smart phones and location based micro communities and society looks very different. These are considerations for all who signed up to the Stockholm Accords and have to be thought through by the professional bodies as well as their members.
The professional bodies also have to re-act or be left on the shelf.
The Accords postulate that, in this network society, sustainability leadership offers a transformational opportunity to enhance the organization’s reputation and demonstrate success across the triple bottom line.
Sustainability to be long lasting has to be flexible and enhancing reputation is not limited to economic, ecological and social advantage.
I have already suggested that economical advantage my be difficult to quantify as values take on a different role and are probably better viewed in relationship building terms than monetary value.
Environmental and social advantage may then also be measured in their capability to bring relationship values to the fore. This is not a tautologous argument. Environmental and social values are not the same and current practice needs a lot of new and additional work to achieve 20th century gaols. To be effective in the 21st century, PR has to evolve a triple line that can extend into the much more complicated world of individual, corporate and environment relationships and their value drivers today.
Oddly enough identifying, involving and engaging key stakeholders is very easy. We have not yet developed the technologies sufficiently well but espousing values will quickly build relationship clusters with people holding similar values. In the bast it was a little understood but effective brand empathy matrix. Today, we understand it as a not wholly different, but stakeholder derived values matrix.
As we move towards greater competitive transparency and learn to manage organisational porosity it will become much harder for an organisation to determine what information should be transparently and authentically reported. The stakeholder not only has the whip hand by virtue of a wider view of values porosity will inevitably reveal and the community will punish any organisation that lacks authenticity. Secretive accountants and pharmaceutical companies are going to have to find a values driven accommodation with society to remain as they are.
It is professionalism that develops a capability to go beyond today’s priorities to anticipate the needs of tomorrow and, in addition more emphasis on todays word among PR teachers.
Why PR needs to take digital more seriously
A fortnight ago I was invited to make a contribution the the CIPR social media series.
I chose to extend some of the comments here which have leant in the direction of placing PR as the key discipline in the societal evolution of the internet.
This is what I said:
Such a view may change the way we teach public relations and even open new opportunities for research.
This may be exciting for some and threatening for many and downright cookie for lots of our colleagues.
If one believes, as I do, that PR is about the spread of values, knowledge and the development of relationships round values and knowledge then this thesis works.
It is not without some learning which was hinted at in the last chapter of Philip Young and my book 'Online Public Relations' and has a mirror in other research about communities, communication and the spread of values Steven Pinker hinted at this month for the Economist among many other approaches (which made me ask if Public Relations contribute to less violent society?).
I do think that we are at a watershed. The idea that a lot of PR is about events organisation and press relations is already almost indefensible. In addition subject areas like CSR, Corporate Affairs and other like subjects as far too flimsy without a better, deeper sense of what is happening in today's manifestation of human evolution.
Extrapolating Pinker's view that wider community interaction takes the violence from the savage might it not be that community interaction offers us a new form civilisation as well?
If that is so, the discipline that is equipped, not as an arm of marketing but as the high priesthood of devolved cultural development sounds pretty attractive and my thesis is that we currently have such an opportunity.
I chose to extend some of the comments here which have leant in the direction of placing PR as the key discipline in the societal evolution of the internet.
This is what I said:
Such a view may change the way we teach public relations and even open new opportunities for research.
This may be exciting for some and threatening for many and downright cookie for lots of our colleagues.
If one believes, as I do, that PR is about the spread of values, knowledge and the development of relationships round values and knowledge then this thesis works.
It is not without some learning which was hinted at in the last chapter of Philip Young and my book 'Online Public Relations' and has a mirror in other research about communities, communication and the spread of values Steven Pinker hinted at this month for the Economist among many other approaches (which made me ask if Public Relations contribute to less violent society?).
I do think that we are at a watershed. The idea that a lot of PR is about events organisation and press relations is already almost indefensible. In addition subject areas like CSR, Corporate Affairs and other like subjects as far too flimsy without a better, deeper sense of what is happening in today's manifestation of human evolution.
Extrapolating Pinker's view that wider community interaction takes the violence from the savage might it not be that community interaction offers us a new form civilisation as well?
If that is so, the discipline that is equipped, not as an arm of marketing but as the high priesthood of devolved cultural development sounds pretty attractive and my thesis is that we currently have such an opportunity.
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