The past and the present

Dave Chaffey has a really good case study about easyJet on his site. It plots the success of e-commerce for an icon of the e-commerce age.

The numbers, as you would expect are huge and the capability of the company is impressive.

By sheer chance, I have another study about the company. It is an audit by eFootprint, a company I am involved in with Robin Gurney at Altex.

What we have is a take of two parts. The first is a study of Web 1.0 and the second is beginning to show the impact of Web 2.0.

There are some interesting things we can begin to take away from such studies.

Some are obvious like making web sites mobile phone friendly. Others are interesting like the sudden growth of web pages being indexed by search engines over the period of huge Web 2.0 growth (from an already high level) and, of course, the content now being contributed by social media users.

Here we can see a company in transition. Is it moving with the times? Has it begun to move from a web strategy to an internet strategy?

It would be fascinating to see hear what the company is proposing - and even more fun to be involved.

The role of emotion in the immersive web

Some time back I began work on the future of the internet. I wanted to have a view of where PR would fit into the web over the next decade.

I could see how a range of platforms such as PC's, laptops, cell phones, computer games and domestic multiple screen as well as digital wall paper could produce new environments that would change the way we use the internet.

It is no longer a great leap of faith to see how different channels for communication can be mashed to provide rich experiences that our big brains so crave.

In addition, it was obvious that these developments would increase the emotional connection between people, avatars and the hybrid person avatar (such as the Wii opponent represented as an tennis partner on a screen).

One of the elements that makes this kind of immersive web sticky is emotion. Today, browsing through the New Scientist's YouTube site can across Peter Molyneux's video where he shows how this can evolve. Peter is the wizard behind Lionhead Studios (worth a visit just for the graphics) and explains the concept very well.

Emotional Internet is on its way!

The Value of Relationships – a PR opportunity?

The wise men comment on the financial tsunami that has broken over the financial world in the last few months on the BBC.

They are worrying over the future of capitalism which is a sideshow compared to the other changes happening around them.

As readers here know, I have been talking about such shock waves for some time and I have been yelling into the void that we have to come to terms with intangibles and notably the value of relationships. When relationships break down the commercial consequences are, as we can see, dire. But history also tells us that when relationships fail between peoples the consequences are far worse.

It seems to me that too many people are too aloof to see the present danger.

In an era of internet driven transparency, the lack of it un-nerves many and so it is to be expected that bundles of "special investment vehicles" would eventually un-nerve people. In this case the people are bankers.

But this is insignificant compared to the next shock wave and the ones after that.

In business the practice of 'off balance sheet' finance from lease and lease back at one extreme for companies large and small to cloud computing for mostly small organisations, there is a similar shock waiting just round the corner. The question about assets that underscore the value of the company is a very real one and is not measured in the flights of fancy or terror at the LSE. It is measured in the cloud and the relationship value of the relationship networks on and off line..

Financial reporting has to change and it has to recognise the intangible assets that are the basis of most enterprise. There is plenty of evidence that the intangible values in and of organisations is both in-house and beyond. There are many case studies showing that beyond the corporate firewall there is greater value. The examples are not 'high tech' or special and they cut across sectors as diverse as gold prospecting (Goldcorp), education (MITOpenCourseWare), pharma (Procter & Gamble) and computing (IBM). No form of human endeavour is exempt. Each of the above examples are deriving huge value and enhanced assets through community and 'open source' interactivity with huge numbers of none-payroll people involved.

These relationships assets need to be represented in the financial and management reporting conventions on across the world. They need to be reported in company accounts. At best such value is expressed on the stock markets of the world and yet, as we are seeing today, this is a poor measure.

In politics too, we see how relationship assets are exposed to transparency and, driven by the internet, can have far reaching effects. The US presidential election may seem to be an exemplar but compared to the DDoS attacks on NATO countries like Estonia and Georgia there is more than elections at stake. Garry Warner notes some of the motives and user mobilisation techniques available. This is cyberwar between peoples and not necessarily governments or politicians. Our economies, society and polity are now dependant on the internet and yet, unless we can reach out to all communities on a global scale, we will soon be fighting another war with a very different, if just as effective Blitzkrieg taking conflict to the people.

The rise and rise of user created value and wealth through collaboration seems to be passing sensible people by. It may seem that the content of MySpace or Bebo or even blogs is of little consequence and at first sight that is understandable. But every post is of consequence to at least one person if not a huge crowd. It has value. This stuff is being generated at the rate of millions of (over 1.5 million blog posts, over 3 million Twitter Tweets perday, 50,000 Facebook transactions per second) items a day. Each has value (at least to one person), value that cannot be ignored and has to be counted as part of the world economy.

Whether capitalist or not, it's there. The capitalism debate needs to be put back in its 20^th century box. It is no longer relevant.

Meantime, what is a relevant lands in the lap of relationship management. This could be public relations 2.0 and 3.0 but right now is well beyond the scope of most PR research and practice.

Who will take up the challenge?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PR - a Profession Tainted by the Financial Community

I am incensed.

Two blog posts have prompted me to respond in pretty harsh terms. One is to Tom Watson’s post in which he says “If you think about it, public relations has always been defined as a management activity” and Richard Bailey’s post entitled “Where is PR”.

My argument is that the role of PR as a management discipline is in tatters. The loss of trust, absence of transparency, destruction of relationships, spin and hype surrounding financial instruments and the turmoil in the financial markets demonstrates that PR practitioners in the financial institutions have failed in their fiduciary duty.

The fiduciary duty, in Wikipedia is identified as ‘a legal relationship of confidence or trust between two or more parties, most commonly a fiduciary or trustee and a principal or beneficiary’. If PR is to believe it has a management role it has to recognise that it has a legal duty as well. But what of the arguments about PR as a management activity? I explicated some of my thinking:

To Tom’s post I make this repost:

Of course PR cannot be anything but a management function (all the rest is execution). It must have the regulatory oversight of marketing but much else beside including its contribution to strategic corporate value explication, corporate and operational decision-making, strategy development, realisation, and policing of corporate responsibility if it has a writ in relationship management.

But we have to be wary of what we mean. If PR is a management function then the financial turmoil we are witnessing today is in part (mostly?) caused by poor public relations.

Lack of transparency (notably of the value of paper) poor corporate responsibility (is the organisation able to stand by its responsibilities - if this not so CSR is not a PR responsibility) and spin instead of conversation blind relationships and undermine trust.

These are PR issues. Issues that are hardnosed and at the centre of good governance and public relations practice.

What then were/are the responsibilities of the in-house practitioners in the financial institutions?

The role of PR would be able to strategically develop and deploy radical transparency to enhance trust (especially in derivative bundling and holdings - the very products of these organisations).

The role of PR would also ensure that corporate responsibility would entrust employees and commercial partners with responsibility for their actions and the extent to which transparency could be deployed to underpin trust - and thus deserve the rewards and - importantly - severe penalties.

The role of PR would also apply downward pressure on over-claiming and spin to ensure that obfuscation was culturally unacceptable.

Finally, the role of PR would develop interactive relationships (mutual understanding in Grunig’s world) through effective engagement using tools of internal and external communication.

PR, then, as a management function is pervasive. Its role is at least as deep in the organisation as finance or IT. It reaches into every conversation, transaction and relationship.

This pretence to be a management discipline is all very fine, but are the Universities up to the task? Can they show students how to manage boards and senior managers who have been brought up on hype as a habit and can they show the contribution that trust offers in delivering sustainable development and profitability? Can they then also teach those multiple disciplines that can help students deliver as practitioners?

I subscribe to the PR is a management discipline school and, as a practitioner, have been through the bruising experience of taking on executive boards as a result. Its a very tough job. Its a job that entails close working (and not always agreeable) relationships with board chairmen and a very straight relationship with the CEO and the other members and, in passing, it means that marketing has to answer to PR.

Is this, Tom, what you mean by being a management function or is it something more fluffy like teaching PR as part of communication - or worse - marketing.

It remains to be seen whether the Masters courses will pick up on the failure of PR in the financial sector as a case study. Will they use this experience to help other sectors where, right now, the practice has to be able to deliver trust between organisations and their constituencies as the effects of the credit crunch works though into the ‘real’ world where trust will also determine corporate survival?

For Richard my response follows a similar path.

The Euprera agenda begins with spin because it has the preamble:

"Public Relations and Corporate Communication have been, and are, rapidly evolving and expanding their influence within complex organizations."

Well, semantics first. Corporate Communication is to Public Relations as tennis balls are to Wimbledon. Why not add in press release writing and events management? The highest calling is to be responsible for managing organisational capability in relationship development with publics/constituents. The rest is technique.

The truth is that PR has wimped out of its responsibilities for so long that its premier European education and research organisation can get away with the intellectual equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing. Here we see the professionals and academics twirling around for the entertainment of an audience.

Lets call a spade a spade. The world is going through financial turmoil because public relations practitioners were just not up to the job.

When one banker cannot trust another banker there is a breakdown of not just trust but relationships and an absence of meaningful, symmetrical communication. Who was the manager responsible within the organisation for trust, relationships and communication? Where are the PR practitioners 'expanding their influence within complex organizations'?

I don't really care what the twirling dancers may want to reply, the semantics are but chiffon disguising the stumbling footwork. The fact is that there is only one discipline responsible - public relations management.

As a discipline it evidently has not expanded influence within complex organisations and most notably today, the majority of the whole financial sector worldwide. Today, if you have money from the public or are a government, you can buy almost any bank in the world at a massive discount - if you dare to trust the balance sheet!
The abysmal internal and external relationships that has lead us to this pass has one culprit.

Oh, I am sure that the PR courses taught by the worthies at the conference cover subject matter like ethics, the nature and role of symmetrical and a-symmetrical relationships in developing mutual understanding and the role of transparency in building mutual trust. But do they follow this through with how these elements of PR play out in practice? What are the consequences? Or how these elements are managed (by the practitioner?) in an organisation?

If not, why teach these subjects? Are these elements of PR degrees added to give some form of academic respectability in the courses like sequins stitched on to make a plain frock look like a ball gown?

The insecurity of the profession as it dances an endless two-step between being press releases and a contender for the 'C' suite is down to poor education. It is just not difficult to circulate a memo to the board saying that trust and transparency issues are ruining relationships and will wipe out the company if the board does not get a grip - and I know how to solve the problem. Any junior PR can do it and the 'head' of PR should, knowing how to manage communication effectively, find such a move easy. Its sure route to the 'C' Suite and it is only those who lack courage, doubt, are insecure or ill trained and have not arrived who doubt.

But how to manage that sort of relationship and that sort of programme is not typically part of the PR industry's research or teaching or practice. Perhaps then, PR is not seen in academia as a management practice.

I have not seen, and doubt if we will ever see mass, professional or academic condemnation and approbation of PR management at the UK's Northern Rock and HBOS banks, even though we, as tax payers, are picking up the bill and many will also pay with their livelihoods.

The reality is that public relations, as a management discipline, is tough, hard nosed, institutionally pervasive and offers trust in and through constituent desire for engagement; offering symmetrical relationships to deliver long term stability, and in the case of commerce, consequential trade and profit.

The firm (which, I contend, is the nexus of relationships), will always be better off with good public relations and it starts with answering your question 'where is PR'.

It should be quaking in its boots. It should be anticipating the enquiry into its failures that prompted the Credit Crunch and financial sector melt-down and its consequences.

It should be concerned that the role of its institutions will be subject to academic scrutiny over standards.

It should be examining how future generations of practitioners do not lead us to such a pass.

Unless we see such investigation then perhaps in answering 'Where is PR' the repost will be 'no one cares.'

Is this where we believe that our reputation should be?

FIR Interview: A Conversation with Jane Rowe

By 1803, having already demonstrated his inventive nature by inventing a new kind of paper for cannon cartridges, John Dickinson started his company and designed and built a new machine capable of the continuous manufacture of paper to replace the handmade techniques then used, notably by the Frenchman Henry Fourdriner. These innovations made the company that bore his name both successful and famous.

Today, his company now merged into Hamelin Paperbrands is adopting Web 2.0 both in marketing and, interestingly, in its products.

Our guest today, Jane Rowe, is the revolutionary voice in this wonderfully traditional institution, bringing modern conversational marketing to a 205-year-old company.

She talks with FIR Correspondent David Phillips about her introduction and adoption of Web 2.0 and how she is introducing it to her department, colleagues and industry.

Jane is a very active member of the FIR community and contributes to the FIR Friendfeed Room and comments by email regularly.

At the end of the interview, Jane reveals on FIR the news that she is to take up new responsibilities in the near future.

Listen to this podcast now:

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About our Conversation Partner

Jane Rowe is a dedicated marketer and communicator with over 20 years experience in the marketing specialism. Currently Marketing Director for Hamelin Paperbrands Ltd (formerly John Dickinson Stationery), Jane’s responsibility extends to the management of an extensive portfolio including classic brands such as Basildon Bond personal stationery and Oxford Black n’ Red notebooks.

Prior to joining John Dickinson Stationery in January 2005, Jane worked for the major service organisation, The Automobile Association (The AA), where she was Strategic Projects Manager responsible for internal communications for a team of 250 marketers, new product development and innovation. Before this Jane worked in a variety of marketing management roles in companies such as John West Foods Ltd, Peaudouce (UK) Ltd and Britax Consumer Products Ltd.

Jane has a BSc (Hons) degree in Food Marketing and more recently won a scholarship to study for an MBA at Henley Management College, graduating in 2007.

As a great advocate for encouraging people to take responsibility for their own personal development, Jane is now focused on developing her own understanding of new media and the value it can deliver across businesses to both internal staff and customers.

In November 2008 Jane moves to a new role as Marketing & Merchandising Director for Spicers Ltd, the largest office products wholesaler in Europe based in Cambridgeshire, where she lives with her husband and son. Jane currently blogs at http://movingstationery.wordpress.com.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at
fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox. 

The Tesco Story - A little help from online friends needed

I came across a video about Tesco that has been viewed a million times. Even for the biggest retailer in the country that is a bit excessive and all the more so because it was an activist video.

I just had to dig further.

On June 29th 2008, David Smith and Zoe Wood reported on the Annual General Meeting of Tesco. Tesco, like all big, successful companies has its detractors. At the time, the company accounted for £1 of every £7 spent at British shops, was facing the effects of recession, high input costs and resurgent competitors.

Tesco is the fourth most visited retail site in the UK, it had 32 million web page impressions claiming some form of allegiance and its sites www.tesco.com, www.tescoreports.com, www.tescocorporate.com (which had lost the link to the financial consultancy Investis) and tescoplc.com where its press releases and CSR policy statements are published.

According to David Bowen in an FT article in May 2006: "The web is even more important than newsreaders in the area of social responsibility. Whether a company is trying to provide data on waste, to explain how friendly it is to the community, or to lay out its policy on child labour, it cannot do so in sound bites – it needs space, and a website has more space than any other channel.

"Tesco and Sainsbury both understand this, though having looked at their sites I fear they may also believe CSR is a sub-division of marketing. What surprised me more than this is the variation, and in places lack of interest, I found as I wandered round other giant retailers’ websites."


But in June 2008 the message had not gone home. Contributing to the Boards woes were a number of issue campaigners:

• The celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall campaigning for higher-welfare chickens in Tesco stores; 
  
• Jim McLaughlin, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) in Arizona, told shareholders and the board that 'We are here to inquire why there has been no dialogue in the US, whereas in the UK it is an established practice for Tesco to engage with unions; 
  
• The anti-poverty charity War on Want alleged that Tesco is being supplied by an Indian factory where textile workers struggle to survive on less than £1.50 a day and a 60-hour week; 
  
• Activists had, according to Smith and Wood, also accused Tesco of bringing tons of produce to Britain from crisis-torn Zimbabwe 
  
• The company, it was reported, had become the shorthand villain of the piece for campaigners who blame supermarkets for driving local businesses out of towns and villages.
  

Robert Clark, an analyst at Retail Knowledge Bank was reported to likening the situation to the mid-Nineties, when Sainsbury's was the market leader but lost its crown after it was seen to become arrogant and lose touch with shoppers - an environment that enabled Tesco to expand rapidly.

Both sides of the arguments appear in social media like blogs, discussion lists and videos and there were those million YouTube views.... surely that MUST be ringing bells!

The remarkable evidence is that there is a debate and yet there is no evidence of Tesco interacting with the communities engaging in the issues. No press release, no comments in blogs, or video sites. Silence!


That month its shares fell to their lowest level for two months after a trading update showed growth half that enjoyed by rival Morrisons. Tesco also admitted that Asda and discount outlets such as Aldi were 'having a moment in the sun' in the tougher economic climate. The moment in the sun extended month after month.

In August 2008 the biggest private sector employer was concerned about the effects of negative press coverage on staff and hired the Wriglesworth Consultancy following a five-way pitch.

Then PR Week announced in September that Trevor Datson Tesco's head of corporate media relations had "jumped ship" to join Danone as external communications director in the UK.

Is there cause and effect?

Could there be a case for deeper engagement? Could this be achieved without the Board's fundamental approval and involvement?

Are we watching a case study on how not to handle social media in the making?

Chrome - user experience and reputation

Using Chrome highlights one other issue. The speed of site download.

Once one is used to the speed of Chrome, slow loading sites are very noticeable. This is going to be an issue and will impact on the reputation of organisations.

Sluggish sites reflect on the overall competance of organisations.

The Words Don't Stack Up

I now have a capability to search the semantic concepts that describe organisations across the internet. Using http://www.netreputation.co.uk/values, you can join in the fun too.

What it does is to collect the texts in Google news articles, blog posts, website pages, and Google natural search.

Using Latent Semantic Inference, it finds the most to least concepts evident in each corpus.

The theory is that an organisation with a good internet strategy should provide a list of concepts that are similar between these four sources  and offer a coherent view of the organisation, its products and services and their merit in a balance grouping of value concepts.

One might at least expect the web site and natural search (with good search engine optimisation) to have common concepts and that these should at least offer a coherent range of concepts (keywords) that describe the values of the organisation.

Here is the good news.  If you want to describe your organisation get the blog returns... they tend to be really good.  They reflect what even the fussiest marketing man would want to hear. Then try news coverage. Most companies would like that. Mostly, it’s great coverage pointing to a coherent structure of values.

 

From there forward it goes downhill. The website will be pretty, the navigation flawless and the words – completely at sea. Lacking coherence, the offer of the day ahead of company values and one can only feel for the poor visitor trying to make sense of the content in the site.

Well that is pretty bad. Worse is to come. The top ten citations from natural search confirm only that Search Engine Optimisation is, to most people responsible for it, a place of loathed melancholy, where brooding darkness spreads its jealous wings.

The capability of companies to build a coherent internet strategy is the biggest issue facing PR practice today.

The easy bit, where the practitioner has control like the website, is a mess. The part of the internet which can be influenced using SEO is incoherent and yet where there is less control in press coverage and precious little control, in blogs, life seems flawlessly wonderful.

Who owns your life

ReadWriteWeb covers a whole range of confidentially issues in its post this evening written by Marshall Kirkpatrick. 

The problems with Google collecting information abaout us, recording our documents search and reading habits and even owning Blogger.com is not as simple as Google being Big Brother.

It goes beyond this. It is a question of who owns what we are. At present it does look rather like Google. 

Google has moer information about more people than most tax authorities and all governement departments put together.

Who will they share this with and for how much.

Is it monet, the freedom of an un-named chinaman or YOU?