The Home Office finds out the truth about 'Social Media'

The government and police have not sought any new powers to shut social networks, the Home Office said after a meeting with industry representatives, Reports the BBC.


While one may respect the Home Secretary for her political acumen and position in government, her knowledge of the internet, including mobile internet and social media may need some help.

That Facebook, Twitter or RIM can have some material effect on communication affecting a riot is undoubted (these are platforms and channels for communication). That they are  capable of activities that will change behaviours is very doubtful. That she can upset the economy with her tinkering is probable.

In the USA and Europe, and to a lesser extent across the world, £millions has been spent on using the internet to change behaviours by companies such as Wallmart, Exon, Toyota, General Electric and Allianz, the biggest in the world. They have all tried and all failed. They are not the only organisations who have a problem with getting online users to do things.  Google proudly released Wave and dropped it. TouchPad failed because it had few of the apps that made Apple’s iPad a runaway hit. Just 48 days after Microsoft began selling the Kin, a smartphone for the younger set, the company discontinued it because of disappointing sales.

The people in the thick of it are not so good either and the Home Secretary has realised that.

Meantime, economic research tells us:

• The Internet economy now represents 7.2 percent of U.K. GDP, more than construction, transport, or utilities.
• The United Kingdom ranks first in e-commerce and exports £2.8 in e-commerce goods and services for every £1 imported
• There are 250,000 U.K. jobs in Internet companies
• Small and medium businesses that are high-Web users experience higher growth and more international sales than those that do not use the Internet
• A recent additional study tells us that sales via the internet are, by themselves, of the order of £62 billion ($103bn)

The Home Secretary also had to consider how many social network outlets there are? The ranges of protocols being used that can be brought into play to avoid censorship (FTP, WWW, Email,etc etc)? The range of platforms in use (PC, Mobile phones, gaming machines etc)?

Her knee jerk reaction to the Prime Minster's elastoplast rhetoric was potentially very damaging and would solve nothing.

It is ironic that a British Home Secretary should attempt shackle the Web, invented by a British scientist  20 years almost to the day from its launch.

The trust machine

From time to time, I get excited about a future beyond my comprehension.

Imagine a computer chip that can decide, all by itself, if your organisation is trustworthy. Not a computer, not a big system but a chip (ergo, you can put lots of them into a single 'computer'). Imagine this chip gathering all the information on and offline that will allow it to make judgements about you, your organisation, the value of your products brands and the ethic you stand by.

IBM's cognitive chips, launched this week, are part of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project, which aims to create a system that is capable of rewiring itself as it interacts with its environment while still analyzing complex information from several sensory modalities.

The announcement this week of the new cognitive computer chips is a big step on the way.

These systems, which would not be programmed like traditional computers, will learn through experiences like humans. They will create hypotheses, find correlations, remember, and learn from their environments.

As always, the PR industry will ignore all of this as being too technical and of tomorrow and not worth investing time in today.

As ignorant as BP's Tony Hayward was of public relations, the practitioner that ignores IBM's big announcement will be as unstuck. 'I'd like my life back' will also be a closed option for organisations that don't heed an ability for a computer to judge the capability, efficacy and ethics of an organisation.

I realise this is not a subject for journalists' given the job of investment banker or discovering a Higgs Boson particle or, harder still, being a professional PR practitioner, but it is important for the rest of us.

It is important because, unlike a number of practitioners who are obviously one egg short of a dozen, modern practitioners will have to persuade the David Cameron's,  Tony Haywood's and the Metropolitan police that good PR is not predicated on someone being able to write news copy or depend on some "Other Buggers' Efforts'.

Why must we take note now?

Firstly, this is going to have an effect within five years (less time that it took Twitter to master PR). Secondly, it will have a memory that can remember what you, as a practitioner did today (as in right now). Finally its ability to combine radical organisational  transparency with the totality of the organisational environment is now assured with all the organisational consequences that entails.

No doubt, this will take me and a number of other practitioners, and hopefully, some academics, time to think through but it is a significant professional challenge.

Stepping aside from press and social media PR

The nature of public relations as the agent which provides structured concepts and understanding of mean by which ideas are exchanged and flourish is as old as humanity. It is the fundamental which distinguishes civilised man from social animal. It allows man to productively invest the majority of time in relationship building in order that social interactions can cumulatively enhance human existence.

So what does PR do?

• It acts as an agent
• By explicating structured concepts
• Making them available and pertinent using structured means
• With capabilities that extend well beyond social grooming
• In a process with relationship productivity
• Which accelerates evolution beyond biological development

The trouble is that people in PR do not recognise this high calling. It is, for many, far too grand. For some it is even hard to comprehend.

If we don’t look at the stars but look at the functions we can see the work and effects of the continuum.

The media proxy is a tool. PR in its widest sense, is ambivalent about which media it uses. We have become transfixed by the press and press relations (so called) skills. They are useful. It is helpful to have people who do it well. They are functionaries (and mostly very nice people). They are infrequently people who understand PR. They have many solutions to problems - and they are all called press relations.

In the 1960’ PR was much more about politics. It was important because its application formed the bulwark between the totalitarianism of Russion Communism and democracy.

If you look at the practitioner of a certain age like Doug Smith, Peter Walker and many more, they began life as political agents. Some became lobbyists others worked in-house and others ran agencies.

One of the skills that were needed by these practitioners was an ability to work with journalists.  But by no means the only skill.

This was an age when wars were won because we did NOT use propaganda.

Many of the issues were big and  global. A period of Cold War (and Cuban Missile Crisis) were real events. The civil rights movement, the environment, women's demands for equality, the space race and the landing on the moon, as well as the Vietnam War, Mods and Rockers and the Beatles made our lives even more psychedelic! 

For the first time in a generation we had disposable incomes, holidays and consumerism.

The forms of communication included protests and marches, the largest political youth movement in a liberal democracy (the Young Conservatives) met weekly in every constituency in the land. Trades Union committees also met weekly and held open air events in most high streets. Young Farmers was a publicity outlet for the farming industry and there were any number of such clubs from the Chamber of Commerce to the First Thursday group (young marrieds meeting once per month). People went out to meetings. The PR people of the time made sure that their client was represented at such meetings. There was, of course, the press. It reported on these happenings. Sometimes, people like me invited them to meetings or sent editor’s letters. Occasionally we wrote leaders.

Mass Television changed a lot of this.

In 1962, the Pilkington Report  recommending a 2nd BBC programme, separate BBC service for Wales and the restructuring of ITV. First transatlantic TV programmes became possible.

At the same time there was a printing revolution. The stars of Corination Street, with a viewing public of 21 million in 1962, deserved their own spotlight, human interest stories and vox pop magazines to give viewers added information and, it transpired increased interest.

In July 1962, the Sunday Times was reporting 'news' and selling 1,110,457 copies, a rise of 143,397 on the previous half-year. Women's Own, which told of the happenings in Corrie, sold 3 million copies with 120 staff.

Photocopiers, lazer printers, web offset, gravure, colour in daily newspapers,  and the ability to print fast and cheaply brought a concurrent revolution.

PR had to change and the easy, but not nearly as effective, form of PR was to use the now fast growing print media, radio and television. It was indirect but productivity was phenomenal. One article could reach every member of the First Thursday movement. Wow!

It was a communications revolution!

No one went to Young Conservative meetings any more. They were too busy watching Ena Sharples or reading Private Eye.  

The growth in the numbers of titles in the consumer and trade sectors made it quite hard to maintain share of voice in the 1970’s and so PR was directed away from community influence to printed press editorial volume (and for a time a massive burst of fly posting).

In effect, much of PR became press agentry.

And, by 1980, it had become dead easy. We had learned to manage it.

Events, case studies, features and editorial schedules gave any organisation that wanted: presence and huge share of voice.

In the background, there still were the people working to have effects on corporate relationships.

They had work to do in PR. It was manifest as social, economic, political, institutional, community, internal employees and the Board relationship development.

To fulfil the role of PR, there always was a need to have some form of public presence. Speaking to a Young Farmers branch or presenting the “Retailer of the year” award at the local Chamber of Trade Christmas bash still figured (and still do figure) in the range of communication channels used by organisations that have good PR.

So, what happens as one media vanishes and another emerges?

They tend not to vanish but they do morph.

PR people have to change.

Just as TV stopped a form of social interaction in its tracks, So too, the internet cast a cloud over press, radio and TV as the premier medium.

Just as meetings still happen (and protests and and the Chamber of Trade “Retailer of the year” awards), press radio and TV will continue and will continue to have some relevance and importance. It is yet another capability needed by PR to do its job.

Like the 1960s, the new social media ‘PR’ will be full of hype and difficult to understand and within a couple of decades will be easy.

In the background, there will still be people working to have effects on corporate relationships.

They will work and or direct PR in areas such as social media, press relations and meeting   with social, economic, political, institutional, community, internal employees and the Board. They too will use such tools as are sensible to achieve the high goal which affects the evolution of mankind.


So, is the internet different?


To my mind, the internet is different. There is a limit to the range of social media but the internet is much more fundamental.

For PR, the internet is as important as print and television and much more.

It is versatile, has many manifestation,can be part of a personal activity and can affect the world at large. Its many applications in the higher idea of public relations will make it very important.

It is different to print radio and television because it allows development at a faster rate (it is, in its own right, a self fulfilling form of PR).

So, to the question.

If you define PR as press agentry, it’s not going to give you much of a living in the future. If PR continues to act as the midwife of human development, its future is both secure and ever more significant.

In addition, for those organisations that use PR for its real purpose, their future is both assured and very exciting.

A letter to my MP over the Court of Appeal’s NLA's decision

Dear Mr Buckland.

The British economy does not need more restrictions on its most successful sectors. The internet is delivering £100 billion a year to the UK economy and needs reasonable attention to protect the opportunity it brings our citizens.

Specifically, and in this case, I am writing following the Court of Appeal’s decision on the 27 July regarding ‘temporary copying’. The decision means that many UK citizens will unwittingly infringe copyright as they use the Internet.

This situation has arisen as a result of a judgement in Newspaper Licensing Authority Ltd. (NLA) v Meltwater Group and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA). Further details can be found here (http://bit.ly/oqhEoX) but the principle on temporary copies extends far beyond this case.

The ruling is such that that the process of your constituent displaying a web page on screen would be considered in law as the same as making a copy, and that anyone browsing a web page is subject to such terms and conditions. Their display of such web pages in their home or place of work is potentially, terns sight unseen, contrary to the law. 

The legal position of your constituents is thereby compromised (and most frequently, in all innocence) and the consequence is not helpful in the interests of the UK's world leading, and economically significant)  position viz a viz the internet.

Owners of web sites have many ways in which they can protect content from even the most ardent hacker as many companies in your constituency can attest. 

In the lead up to this Decision, a number of newspaper proprietors have put themselves beyond normally acknowledged protection offered to your website-publishing constituents and local enterprises. Thus the proprietors seek special pleading and potentially at the expense of Swindon people and  businesses.

For some, there is a need to protect intellectual property and to gain reward for diligent, legal and honest effort invested in content. However putting the onus on users of the Internet to avoid infringing rights sight unseen is counter-intuitive and a threat to the free use and access of the internet.

One anticipates the Hargreaves Review (http://bit.ly/e7jPxQ) will consider this special pleading by media owners and no doubt you will have a constituency interest in his findings and how he will inform the Secretary of State for Business and Intellectual Property.

Professor Bently, Emeritus of Intellectual Property, Cambridge University is of a similar mind and expresses his view here: (http://bit.ly/r9F12U)  

One understands the dichotomy of Members and legislators attempting to keep up with technological advance. In this case, being sympathetic and attempting to give long established, decaying and desperate vested interests due hearing is necessary but need not undermine the legitimate work and play of your constituents.

In this case, browsing content online must fall within a temporary copy exemption and should not require a right-holder’s prior, sight unseen, consent for reasonable use. 

Your etc

Reflections on PR productivity

jellybean1233  http://bit.ly/nzXw81

The Broadgate Mainland survey is a useful contributor in the development of improved productivity for the PR sector.

We need to do something fast to reduce the effects of a perceived professional diversity trap brought about as a consequence of the present structure and practices in PR.

The survey makes us very aware of the key role that a good old fashioned web site plays in Financial (and a lot of other) public/media relations.

In addition, it offers insights into the role of social media as part of the communications mix that influences journalists and journalism.

ABC data:
A blow to an already struggling industry
The Spectator http://bit.ly/pWC84N

Because press agentry is such a big part of current PR practice, and because of the attrition of print media (see left), it is important that research into the interface between PR people and the press is better understood and that the interplay between PR and Journalistic actors is made much more productive.

Source: Paid Content http://bit.ly/aMGo7e

The PR industry which is so dependant on media relations for its living has to acknowledge that it needs a thriving media sector to survive until it has adapted to the new environment. 

The new environment is one where there are fewer editorial pages, fewer journalists per editorial page and where Radio, TV and digital (including social media) are even more important.

It is now urgent that we develop, across the industry, some response to the implosion of the traditional media.

There are a number of other indicators in the Broadgate Mainland survey  that show us where we might begin to look to make the PR industry much more effective and build a defence for the sector.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, the PR industry is not the first to have a productivity issue and that we can learn from their experience.

In the case of media relations, the best productivity driver is going to be a combination of quality management, cost reduction and satisfying the media that will eventually emerge from the ashes of the present industry.

It is not the place of this blog to do all the research and to make recommendations to the industry and show it teaches best practice. 

I can point out that PR is not alone, there is precedent and how research can inform the industry to help it become better at its job.

In a post in May, I showed the anatomy of a news story (the killing of Osama Bin Laden). It was evident from the findings that there is an interplay between a range of media for all good stories. It is not one medium or another it is all media that really counts.

In the meantime, who would not recognise a journalistic motivator when given this gem from Broadgate Mainland: "The number of hits a story receives has become the most popular measure of journalist success, followed by how an article is shared online." What this is telling us is that the media and the PR industry both have to take a multi-media view of media relations.

From this, the PR industry can begin to assemble the information it needs to be more productive against a backdrop of a declining, but still critical, media relations practice.

Online readership analysis – is bigger better?
 Show me numbers
http://bit.ly/nZfF2K

Here is an example:If journalists are motivated by the web effects of their stories, is the PR industry obsessed with getting stories published that achieve above the average  number of online page views for their stories in the publication's website?

First we need the data (not hard - see graph) and then know what these data mean for practice.

It is by examining these research findings and others that we can begin to find out what high quality looks like.

For some it is the creativity of the original idea established in the strategy. For others, it may be the quality of writing and for another it may be way a story is pitched to the busy journalist.

But for the journalist what is gold plated?

Well, if the survey is to be believed, a happy editor and publisher is a good start and that means good clean original copy that can be used in the publication, blog and Twitter with a minimum of fuss and with every chance that it will go viral the instant 'enter' is clicked.

For enhanced productivity, we can see that more research is needed and then recommendations can be made, best practice can be developed and practitioners and students can be inspired.

Having a sense of what we need to deliver by way of quality, can we gain some idea of what we seek by way of cost reduction?

Productivity tools may be helpful http://bit.ly/nSrBTS

The practitioner should now be informed about how to manage time and resource to achieve out-takes.

Hit rate, that is, the number of relevant citations matching the campaign objectives (citations in selected magazines, web sites, social media etc should all count today), is a way of measuring out-take. Too many citation or too few citations in selected media are inefficient. This means that setting realistic out-take objectives is important (and because 'all publicity is good publicity' remains a top priority for a lot of clients, now is the time to check them for blood stained knuckles).

Time/cost ratio of output to out-take is what the industry needs to understand and work on. Another way of looking at press relations is the the reach and frequency of citations in selected media per input hour/cost.

What the table (above) is really saying, and it is only one of many productivity tools that can be used, is that there is another way of distributing press releases that has an inherent  and minimum10% productivity advantage. In an industry that grew 13% last year and which is outperforming the market profitability should be brilliant. But its not. Essentially, the industry is living on borrowed time and the long hours of a measly paid workforce.

When looking at services, in house practitioners and agencies should look at their functionality AND productivity gain. Today week Precise launched its new combined monitoring and media contact service.

Here is a case of an integrated service that could offer productivity advantages. But it is a service a million miles from the industry that persists in wanting dusty old paper press clippings as evidence of effectiveness.

Now my cry goes up... who in the PR industry is going to take productivity seriously and take it to the CIPR, PRCA, the universities and other major agencies of the profession?

The industry needs press relations but it also needs to mitigate press relations damage to its productivity.

The case for internet mediated PR to avoid the professional diversity trap

Having identified from the PRCA/PRW survey that the PR industry needs to face up to a big productivity gap and a professional diversity trap, It is time to see what can realistically be done.

In this post, I will look at the development of internet based PR services as being an area for industry investors and why it should be an area worth a close look by the PRCA and CIPR (which are both doing quite a lot of work at the agency end of digital PR practice) and academia (which is floundering).

For every £1 the UK PR industry contributes, the rest of the economy contributes £177. If we look at these data more closely, this is an overly comfortable position and will deteriorate.

As the economy returns to 2008 levels PR's contribution, unless productivity grows fast) will drop to a ratio of about £1:£227 over perhaps five years (depending on how fast the UK can make up the massive hole the last recession made in national wealth creation). This means that the PR industry needs to act now or shrink back in the pecking order of significant sectors and, at the same time, witness the professional diversity trap becoming worse.

For an industry worth £7.5 billion we can see the contribution of the PR sector in a global context from this graph.

The PR industry in the UK has some things going for it which will stand it in good stead if it grasps the nettle.






First of all, this is a country that is used to making its way as an entrepôt economy and by providing services.






So, it may be sensible to look at some of the growth areas and see how they might give the PR industry the lift it needs.


Internet mediated PR is an area of growth that might prove valuable. Getting ahead of the curve so that we can expert expertise would be good for PR productivity.



Among the top economies, the UK does not have a large number of internet users but this may mean that other countries may be valuable expert markets.






This would only be true if the UK could call on a sound base of users and expertise.

And in this case the UK is among the top three countries for Internet use per head of population.





In addition, the UK population is ahead of the curve in the fast accelerating next generation of communication. UK people are more addicted to their mobiles than any other country bar Russia.






Of course, the markets relevant to this sector of PR will need good upload and download speeds and so a measure of this capability is important.





What this UN data is telling us is that the UK is a good place for the PR industry to develop advanced Internet Mediated Public Relations practice and services and an excellent centre for the development services for other, and especially emerging markets.



In PR we are acutely aware of the human condition and so the UN Human Development Report is relevant to help identify markets where stimulation of human development is significant.




With closer analysis of the data, the UN HDI report may also give the PR industry some clue as to where the most relevant markets may be for enhanced online PR services.

There is work to be done to develop the opportunities for the PR sector.

Clearly, these data skim the surface but as part of a contribution towards improving PR productivity to mitigate the professional diversity trap facing the PR industry, I thought it might help PR industry thinking.


Sources: United Nations accessed via Google Public Data Explorer http://bit.ly/pOqBcO

Can PR people write like Journalists?

Over the last few weeks I have been making the case for PR beyond the mass media.

Astonishingly, I have been berated for my lack of understanding of the skills of journalists which empowers them to be able to express themselves in a clear and approachable way.

Worse, I have been told that PR graduates lack the skill and capability of journalists, as if this was a prime component of being a PR person.

Now, I do not in any way want to denigrate the capabilities of the vast majority of journalists to use their language in the best interests of their specific media and many others beside. Who could not but hold in awe the literary exemplars of the medium.

Recently we have considered the capabilities of investigative journalist like Nick Davies of The Guardian newspaper. Imagine not having Neil Harman, the long-standing and widely respected tennis correspondent of The Times on tap almost every day. More of the best in the UK's journalism would be invidious. The best are the best and the rest are not bad either.

Equally one should not dismiss the capability of non news journalists to be creative as is evident in 'The Journalistic Imagination: Literary Journalists from Defoe to Capote' and Carter' by Richard Keeble and Sharon Wheeler.

But what of PR writers?

There are some who are just brilliant. Most are pretty good and most practitioners have to be able to write in styles. Most of us from time to time have been advertising copy writers (I was never good at it) or bloggers, Tweeters, and in-house newspaper editors.

So now, it seemed to me that we need to know how good final year students are at writing.

As PR people they have not only to write, they have to write to an agenda, and because final year PR students are not at university to be taught (this is not school) but to learn, it seemed to me that there is a need for an appropriate challenge.

If one were an employer, for example what would one expect a practitioner to be able to do (recent graduate or not)?

Here are some challenges that I would expect the average practitioner (but not necessarily a journalists) to be able to do:


In the style of Kingsmill-Abbot write a critical essay providing a description of Kant's view of the significance of ethics for democracy. It seems to me that if we do not understand the nature of ethics influence over views of democracy there is no future for a 'free press' or an investigative journalist. Equally, where corporate governance does not understand the nature of ethics and democracy, it has a short term future.

To succeed in this task, the student will need to read Abbot to see what his writing style looks like and will then discover the relationship between Abbot and Kant. The student will also need to be able to take a view of ethics and will need to examine a post modern view of ethics and democracy because of the difference of post modernism and modern views.

My next challenge would be for the undergraduate to write instructions to a newly promoted sales director, in the style of the still hugely popular Jane Austin, on how to formally introduce a member of the Baronetcy to a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. This will require a knowledge of a form literature and the significance of etiquette. Here we can see an acceptance of popular period drama and skills a PR needs to be good at events organisation. It will be a lesson never forgotten.

In the style of David Ogilvy, (Ogilvy On Advertising) describe the importance of Twitter hash tag monitoring to the reputation of FTSE250 companies would be my next task. One of the great copywriters and strategic considerations in social media management in a single assay would be great.

Finally, I would ask my students' to show me how good they would be in explaining the benefits of the PR practice of the media phone round but this has to be done in a script for Simon Cowell during a showing on Britain's Got Talent. Imagining the audience reaction in writing this script and taking it into consideration as part of the exercise will be important.

To be sure that I do not bring my prejudices to the table, perhaps it should be students who award the marks and provide for public scrutiny the critical reasons for the marks given in the style of the Prime Minister.

This would mean they will have to consider the diplomatic elements of criticism without compromising their own future standing among their peers.

My point being that the PR practitioner has to master many skills and to be able to write, as a matter of course, in the language an audience finds acceptable in a place, at a time and in style to meet and match the mood of the moment.

Here is the challenge - an inter-university competition adjudicated by practitioners drawn from organisations that know they have to recruit a PR graduate or journalist in a PR role within a year.

But can we also get this competition broadcast on TV?