What our web sites say about us

Over the weekend, Brono Amaral have been showing off some of our latest research into network effects for PR management at the Bledcom conference.

It has been fun.

One of the things we have comparing is the difference between word counts about web sites and the semantic (important concepts) in a web site.

To show what I mean the next two extracts are a word count and a concept count of what I have said about research and evaluation on this blog.

This is a word count:

able advertising applications ave blog comments company content conversation david editorial ethics evaluation google identify internet labels links management measure media news number obama online organisation pages people per phillips pm post pr practice public relations relationship research results search semantic significant site social twitter value view web work yahoo

created at TagCrowd.com

and this is the semantic view:

conversations deadlines dimension edited evaluation geography journalists label media morals morphs newsletter opinion page philip platforms posts pr priorities professionals public relations research showing tools version young

created at TagCrowd.com

The difference is huge.

The word count shows words that are common in the discourse while the semantic view is about meaning and the drivers of my posts.

Of course, there is a role for both forms of analysis but by far an away the most informative is the semantic analysis.

In bigger corpora my experience is that word counts become ever less helpful and semantic analysis offers real insights.

At Blecom, Bruno and I showed this form of analysis as a proof of concept for some pretty big networks (in real time too) and the results were very interesting.

Crisis? Prevention is better than cure

A huge amount of time is devoted to managing issues and crisis and their Public Relations impacts. Crisis is a huge waste of time and the costs are astronomic.

Today, the internet is making reputation risk management a much more significant area in need of attention. It is an area of practice that is developing fast.

Managing reputation risk is neither hard nor rocket science (but rocketeers do use risk management techniques). One issue avoided has two immediate benefits. It saves cost and expensive management time and it helps sustain reputation, goodwill and brand equity. Not a bad return for a few hours work.

This is not something to give to a fresher PR executive. It is a job for senior mangers and is at its best when undertaken with a professional external advisor (and I know a few who are good at it).

In past posts, I have covered the management discipline of risk management here and here.
There is a chapter in 'Online Public Relations' about it.

The methodology I have adopted comes straight out of the risk management models use in many other industries.

What I have not done is to provide a copy of a simple spreadsheet that can be used in risk management assessment and am happy to provide it to anyone who asks.

Essentially, a focus group convened to look at risk is invited to come up with thoughts about risks that may befall an organisation in a number of categories (see below). The process evaluates percived risk to help prioretise the deployment of budget and resources.

Each percived risk is assessed for likelihood and impact typically on a scale of 1 to 5. The result is multiplied and provides a risk factor. The higher the factor, the more likely the risk.

The PR team then come up with methods for mitigating the risk and then the focus group re-assess the risk to see how much risks can be mitigated and where the greatest effort (and risk avoidance budget) goes.

Of course who should do what, when and how to mitigate risk is integral to all risk management and it is helpful to have good data to support investment and activity.

Reputation, and importantly online reputation can and should be managed.

The types of risk that might be considered by a practitioner concerned with blogs, Twitter, discussion boards and all that stuff out there and online that is just about to come as a surprise:


Legislative change
local
regional
national
European
Global
law
regulation
Corporate change of direction
Change in requirement
Change in objectives
Change of output, outtake, outcome requirement
Change in publics/stakeholders
Added publics
Removed publics
Publics change
Implementation impact
Technology change
Content not available
New/changed opportunity
Unexpected change in team
Managment team
Technical team
Operations team
Competitor action
Merger/acquisition,
Competitors me-too actions
Management Directive
Budget
Delivery schedule
monitor, measurement, evaluation requirement
other
Corporate re-organisation
At board level
Departmental re-organisation
Merger/acquisition
Problem not anticipated
Reputation/ethical issue
Corporate, brand, personnel crisis
Server down/overload
System attack/bug
Change in available resources
Budget
Vendor availability

The Value of Online Content

So you ‘Goole’ your company to find that Google has indexed 200,000 pages that have a reference to it.

These references have a value. Some are pages on your web site; others will be orphaned pages, some are pages that reference your organisation because you have a commercial link arrangement. Some are references in newspapers and magazines that have written about the organisation because of PR or other newsworthy activities and some will be blog post, LinkedIn references, information sharing sites, YouTube videos, Twitter mentions, social network reference and there will be a lot of others too.

Some of these references will link back to your organisation’s websites/s and many will be a mention in passing.

Individually and collectively, all these mentions have a value. They are assets even though they do not appear on the balance sheet. Without them, your organisations will be invisible to most people who want to know about your organisation and others that do have such links will have a competitive advantage.

The problem we have is finding out what this asset is worth.

Worth can only be established at a time of transaction between a willing seller and a willing buyer and as most online references are not monetary by nature we face a problem in valuation.

The big problem is in knowing the nature of the currency.

A mention of an organisation in a blog post or a visible sign in the background of a Flickr photo provide brand presence but may not have any intent to offer value (monetary or otherwise) by the publisher or, conversely, the intention may be absolutely commercial in intent.

In PR, we have always had a problem of converting such intangibles into monetary values. It is why some practitioners use Advertising Values, a very rough and ready (and mostly misleading) transmogrification from one set of values into another in an attempt to find a common monetary currency.

Online there are a number of transactions that have monetary value. For example, we know the cost of advertising on the web pages of newspapers. There is the value of Pay Per Click advertising which is well established as well. The price of banners and other commercial online devices are pretty easy to ascertain.

However, they have the same problem that editorial in newspapers have. They apply to advertising and only in a tiny fraction of web sites and internet channels.

 It would seem that the problem we have in identifying the value of online assets is pretty complicated.

 Working with my friend Girish Lakshminarayana  I have been looking at ways we can approach this problem and over the next few months hope to find currencies and a means of developing currency conversion that will allow us to offer robust metrics.

It will not be easy but there are some ideas that we have that make me think this is doable.

In the meantime, we will also be looking for examples of expression of relationship and the currencies that apply.

If there is PhD student out there who would like to join the fun, let me know.

The New Regulatory Environment

There is some good that comes from the miserable event in Parliament yesterday.

The Treasury Select Committee did little to shed light but its work, I think, points to how we can look forward to the changes that are needed in a new regulatory framework.

Mervyn King can begin to look for answers instead of frightening the horses.

I cannot speak of the role of compliance officers and risk managers in banks. I cannot speak for the PR industry and the role of the publicists who advised bankers facing a Parliamentary committee. But I can consider what we can learn from the debacle.

What was evident is that there is a need for enhanced corporate transparency. Transparency that allows regulators such as the FSA to have mandatory visibility of necessarily regular advice from compliance offices, risk managers and relationship managers (PR people) to boards of big commercial enterprises like banks.

Advice that can, in addition, be made, to an extent, available at times when such institutions seek support from shareholders and the public purse to re-finance their activities.

Such internal managers can be charged with a mandatory role of advice designed to protect long term shareholder value.

This changes the role of these internal managers. It gives them a mandatory role as well as an internal one.

For PR, it means that the responsible practitioner has to be able to evaluate and explicate the work of companies as it affects and can affect internal and external relationships and thereby trust and reputation. It makes them responsible to the board in the interest of shareholders and other stakeholders.

There is a case for the FSA to be charged with the role of monitoring this internal advice and acting upon it but this changes the mandate for such regulators. The mandate has to be able to respond not just the the industry sector or government but, in globalised industry and commerce, a responsibility for ensuring that the sector is not acting against the interest of the public sphere, a theory that is well grounded in Europe and more so in the USA.

Of course there is more to this but something positive is available from the farce of the Treasury Select Committee activities so far.

Did PR fail the banking industry? Arguably so says Edelman

Richard Edelman was the principle guest in a wide-ranging one-hour For Immediate Release live discussion on BlogTalk Radio on 7 February on the topic of trust from the communicator’s perspective.

He was asked about the need for organisations to have well managed relationships to enable trust to flourish and, given that relationships is the PR turf in management, did public relations fail the banking industry?

He responded that he was "... not sure that PR people sufficiently made mention of the downside to an entirely de-regulated environment because because people were making so much money. "

Richard Edelman said "I think that the job of the communicator within the organisation goes beyond press relations or social media outreach.

"I really think our job is at the table as advisers bridged to constituencies that the corporation does not have relationships with, whether NGO's or social active groups or whatever".

He speculated on whether PR failed in the crisis saying: "Arguably so, because I am not sure we exactly have a vision of what the surviving institutions are going to be.

"The need is still there to establish what the vision is of the financial institution of the future."

"Our job is to think dimensionally.

"It is a matter of policy.... that we have to advocate (and) not just be a crisis manager."

Given that Richard Edelman is the CEO of the largest independent PR firm in the world, these are significant statements. They show a level of uncertainty about the role of PR and imply criticism of the practice in the financial sector.

In addition, he is, not far from my perspective (if, necessarily, less strident).

I have argued:

"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'?

Can we now see senior members of the PR industry moving towards a view that relationships served by poor PR is, in itself toxic?

Having considered the many domains of PR practice (PDF) that "beyond press relations or social media outreach" and thinking through the knock on effect between the different disciplines, this is a matter for all practitioners.

There is more to come out of this and it needs to be an open debate in the PR sector. Not to discuss this openly will affect trust in the profession of public relations, which takes us back to the debate in the FIR programme.

The value of hyperlinks

It seems odd to imagine a Hyperlink as being the basis of relationship ... but then, on second thoughts, it seems pretty obvious. But, it would be mere spin to make the claim without proper grounded research.

Bruno Amaral is examining how relationships are formed in some very interesting research for his Masters thesis.

We have been using some powerful new software designed for purpose by my friend Girish in Delhi involving word clustering, latent sematic analysis and web site network analysis and visualisation and it was the latter approach that prompted thinking about the nature of the hyperlink in the development of relationships.

The theoretical precept is that relationships are formed by exchange of tokens which have common values explicated by the participants.

My analogy is that of a rose and I use it a lot in lectures.

Being a man of certain years I take a full red rose to the lecture and after a preamble take the rose, admire its deep red colour and beautiful perfume and then walk to a pretty young student high in the auditorium and present it to her with a broad smile.

Mostly the students blush. No one has yet refused it.

You see, a rose has a number of values that are associated with it. Regard, romance, love, passion and a mutual exchange.

I can then explain that we all attribute values to a rose. Not everyone associates a rose with exactly the same values but where there are common values them the message is the basis for creating a relationship.

In PR that is what we do all the time. We interpret tokens such as products and services in such a way that their values will build relationships with publics.

Of course, people observe the exchange of tokens and interpret such actions from their own  perspective and their own set of 'rose values'. 

In a lecture, one can make such a point with a not much more than a raised eyebrow but make it clear that the audience' observation of the present is also part of relationship building.....

And then comes the let down.

Reaching into my pocket I produce a £20 note and offer it to another girl. No one has ever accepted it!

So the values of a rose is higher than the value of a £20 note?

The point is made.

We give different values to different tokens at different times......... after all a rose is only a dead stick.

Now, if we translate this to a hyperlink, we begin to get a view of how important a hyperlink really is.

It can be of great value because of the values expressed once the link is clicked on. Sometimes this is a great way of building relationships and sometimes its a disappointment and sometimes we just don't go there.

Even more important, we might click on a link one day and on another will think it is inappropriate.

Using hyperlinks in PR is a skill.

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/

The Nature of an Organisations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great theory.... is there any evidence?

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

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

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

PR - Is it about relationship management?

Tomorrow, thanks to Mafalda Eiró-Gomes (who is always so charming), I will be giving a lecture on the role of Public Relations as a relationship management discipline at the Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, Lisbon, Portugal. My chairman is Nadim Habib, Managing Director of Hill and Knowlton Portugal who I am looking forward to meeting.

I shall begin with a hypothesis about what happens if an organisation loses its relationships with its publics, how much would it cost?

I thought that I would quote Sir William Rees-Mogg's article in the Times today where he recalls the story of the Clydesdale Bank many years ago and the first Mr McAlpine. He writes: “When asked for security for a loan to develop his building company, Mr McAlpine turned up at the bank with a group of his sons. The bank lent on the security of the character and potential of those young men. This turned out to be very good business for the bank and made possible the success of the McAlpine business.”

He continues: “Where relationship banking still survives, there have been relatively few problems of bad debts. The problems have arisen in transactional and unsecured credit card banking with one-off or completely unknown customers. Of course the customers have often behaved badly; if a bank does not know its customers, who are only blips on a computer screen, some of them will behave badly. The bank only has itself to blame.”

The loss of relationships has serious consequences.

The loss of relationships between banks and their depositors and between banks is casting a long and very black shadow across the world and thus, I shall explore the nature of public relations as a relationship management discipline.

Perhaps now we should accept that relationships both personal and corporate are precious assets but where does such wealth come from, what is its nature of the relationship asset and how extensive is this value?

Furthermore, in organisations, who has the role of relationship understanding and management?

For much of its history, public relations in one guise or another has claimed this space and now there is evidence that economist, accountants, marketers, knowledge managers and, all of a sudden, bankers, also seek to understand and deploy relationship value in the organisational context. But the idea of ‘relationships with publics’ is inherent in public relations theory and practice. Its management is sought by many practitioners.

Now, more than at any time since the Great Depression, we need to reflect on the nature of relationship management and who has the corporate responsibly for its governance.

In extending the concepts in Ledingham (Ledingham et al 2000), the paper embeds the practice of public relations deeper into management. As such, it becomes the function for wealth creation and, with misuse, for its loss. In this respect one examines relationships beyond Grunig's and Huang's view that “Public relations makes organizations more effective by building relationships with strategic publics (Grunig and Huang in Ledingham 2000) and views relationship management in a more potent role within the organisation by acting upon its wider intangible and tangible assets to meet corporate value protection and value enhancing objectives.

In the tradition of public relations as relationship management process exposing organisational assets to affective publics to affect wealth, I argue that we need a re-definition of organisations in an era where they are becoming more porous, to an extent more transparent, and with high levels of contracted out services and global partners.

In turn, this points to a practice that accepts relationships as both valuable in their own right and pivotal to wealth generation.

From this postulate, the concept opens up the practice of public relations to offer solutions to the new forms of management in the creation of wealth.

Accompanying the lecture is a 7000 word paper re-worked from the one I gave at the Alan Rawl conference in 2006. It is now even more pertinent and explored the economic value of relationships from a number of perspectives.

Image from Farsight http://www.farsightglobal.co.nz

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?

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.

Where audience research and PR evaluation is taking us.

Using marketing metrics in the age of the internet is like using napped flints to use in brain surgery.

The concepts of top down, corporate marketing design for market segments, brand values and relationships built on the whim of of a 'marketing director', just does not wash anymore. The ogre of marketing is slain.

I read Jeremiah Owyang's post just after Tom Watson's. The contrast is there for all to see.

In one, Gartner's survey is presented by Jeremiah in these terms:

Gartner has recently published research on the topic of “Generation Virtual” (Generation V) which essentially define as two things: 1) This generation isn’t specified by demographics (age) but instead by technology usage. 2) There are four major behaviors

Gartner suggests that Generation V isn’t a demographic categorization, but instead behavioral:

“Unlike previous generations, Generation Virtual (also known as Generation V) is not defined by age — or gender, social demographic or geography — but is based on demonstrated achievement, accomplishments and an increasing preference for the use of digital media channels to discover information, build knowledge and share insights.”

Meantime Tom's reports on the findings of the SNCR

After nearly a decade of social media, a new report from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) has found that although it is clearly changing “the way we think about media and influence … [companies] are still struggling to find effective metrics for deciding who are the influential players” (p.16).

This is a refreshingly honest appraisal of where we are on measuring the effectiveness and impact of all those blogs, podcasts, websites and wikis. The report, New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations, also has a set of eight case studies which illustrate a wide range of measurements and non-measurements of outcomes.

The interesting part of the former report is that is shows that market segmentation:

....... is not defined by age — or gender, social demographic or geography

In other words, this 'demographic' is self selecting. What is more it is not self selecting by some corporatist measure. It is self selecting by measures that are of the moment and of the publics own devising. This latter concept is, I agree, one stage too far for Gartner and miles too far ahead of Jeremiah who sets out to defend the kind of thinking presented by Tom.

You see, Tom reflects on findings that 'show':

- Top criteria for determining the relevance or influence of a blogger or podcaster are quality of content, relevance of content to the company or brand, and search engine rank.

- For evaluating a person’s influence in online communities and social networks, the main measures are participation level, frequency of activity and prominence in the market or community.

- About half the surveyed communicators formally measure their social media activities. Their goals are “to enhance relationships, improve the reputation of their businesses, drive customer awareness of their online activities and solicit customer comments and feedback.”

Perhaps one might ask some questions of the research and Jeremiah's knee jerk response which has such resonance with it.

The first is to ask of the study what was the context and environment, the values of the audiences and the ability for them to interact. Without that basic information life is tough.

Next let's consider the influencer platforms that were considered for the study.

Were they an X-box, PC, cell phone or perhaps something more dynamic fun like a Wii or eBook. And if we know that, what influence did the platform (device) have on the channels for communication available?

Such channels could be a web page, blog, or twitter. Perhaps it was a computer game, in Second Life or email. Maybe it was through instant messaging that the interactions were so potent.


Now, once we have unscrambled these influences can we also look at the content. Was it explicit or inferred. Was it the brand or its semantic equivalent?

Then perhaps, the nature of context and environment, the values of the audiences and the ability for them to interact can be examined. The may be we can find out what were the motivations for the audience to select itself with the help and aid of semantically attached, semi detached or just passing acquaintance with the concepts of the minute.


We are beginning to see that the old measures that were flawed even in their heyday are now almost inconsequential.

If a corporate objective sets out:

“to enhance relationships, improve the reputation of their businesses, drive customer awareness of their online activities and solicit customer comments and feedback.”

It is utterly doomed. This is not the ambition of any but a tiny part of any self selecting group. Their ambition is to be able to judge the values of the semantic notions at a time, place (physical as well as emotional context) and environment of the moment and from there interact as availability for interaction presents itself.

Buying using a Wii is different to buying on a website - but both are possible.

I know these are ideas that are hard to grasp and well beyond the current thinking in research but we have to put behind us the idea of golden bullet answers. They were great in the 20th century but not now.

The Gartner report is of a generation of marketers who love the idea of a segment ("Generation V") and the SNCR report is is of a generation of PR that loves to think in terms of the 'impact' of 'mass media'. Both are no longer enough.

The notion of values at the core of relationships at a time, in a context and with varying forms of interactivity has to be developed if we are to gain more effective understanding of the ability of organisations to prosper in this age.

Online Retail - Its a disaster in the making

Today, a crisis broke out in retailing.

The BBC reported "Wedding present firm Wrapit says it is experiencing financial difficulties and is in talks with banks and advisers to avoid going into administration."

This is really bad news for retailers. Online retail has been the one bright light for retailers according to the latest figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.

It shows that UK shoppers spent over £26.5 billion online in the first six months of 2008 despite the credit crunch – up 38% on the £19.2 billion recorded for the first half of 2007. Capgemini and IMRG report that for the first half of 2008, 17p in every pound was spent online. This is roughly equivalent to half of all supermarket sales and larger than all retail sales for clothing and footwear.

What the online retailers really don't want is anything to shake confidence in online retailing and especially this demographic sector at this time.

This is a PR issue for all retailers and I am happy to hold a meeting next week at the CIPR in London with practitioners to discuss the issue but in the meantime, this is a matter for fast work across the retail sector at a corporate level.

Tiptoe Towards PR Meassurement

This weekend I anticipate being able to analyse all the pages of designated web sites using semantic analysis. The objective is to be able to identify values systems evident in the text in the form of semantic chunks.

Using this approach one can identify those elements of text (such as sentences) that are, by virtue of containing words (concept words) identified as having enhanced value by virtue of their strength of connectedness among the words in the corpus, of greater significance than others.

There are a number of approaches one can take. For example one can identify the strength of concept words by page or from the combined texts of all the pages.

My requirement is to be able to identify those concepts that are most connected throughout the web site to yield chunks of text ranked from most significant to least significant (and to identify the URL of the pages from which they are derived).

This is one of my approaches to help provide empirical proofs to support the Relationship Value Model .

The model posits that relationships are based on values shared between actors and semantic chunks of text have characteristics akin to values. For all intent and purposes, semantic chunks in web sites are expressions of values. They are not the complete set of because other elements such as design, site uptime, photographs, video and other images are also expressions of organisational (and personal) values.

This new development will take the hard work out of identifying the value systems inherent in a web site and is the first stepping stone towards being able to identify common values between organisations and actors.

I guess that a lot of people will be interested in the values their web site presents to the public (and those of competitors ) but this is only the first step in this journey.

Semantic concepts are valuable in other directions too.

Search engines use semantic analysis of web pages as part of their algorithms to match up search terms to web sites and an example of how this works is provided by Yahoo. Its 'Search Assist' service provides lists of semantic concept words to help people using its search engine.

Thus there is a commercial value in my research at an early stage. It can show people trying to optimise web site content how effectively their content has contributed to accessibility of their site to the public through both common values and search.

The next research aim using semantically derived values is the be able to compare the commonality of values as between different web sites. Thus one can combine the web page corpus of two sites to identify all the concepts for both and the extent to which there are common concepts, unique concepts and the relative significance (lets call it rank for the time being) of different concepts and their associated semantic chunks of text.

So far so good. But can this approach go further? Let us imagine comparing the values of an organisation as expressed through its web site (the place where more important visit most often) and the values expressed in, say, the media or blog posts or in social networks.

In theory, and we will be able to test this in a few weeks, we will be able to identify those values that these media have in common with an organisation and the values that are expressed that are unique to either the media in question or the organisation. This will offer a very powerful view of whether the message is 'getting through'.

The extent to which there is convergence and divergence is, surely, a test of how close the relationship is between the organisation and its stakeholders.

Is this a measure of the effectiveness of public relations as a whole?

It certainly has potential.

Measuring the value of PR - the values that make relationships

Over the next few days I will be working on development of tools that allow me to look at corporate and brand values.

You see, it’s quite hard to really see what organisational values are. There are the things organisation say and claim as values and then there is the reality.

First we need to be able to see what values are claimed by organisations.

My route is, as you might expect, mechanistic, replicable and agnostic. To achieve this computer programme will examine the public face of the organisation (government department, company brand) as is evident on their web site. Yes, it does mean opening up every page, extracting the text elements and, to identify potential value statement, process the text to identify the semantically important phrases. I have elected to choose the most significant ones and limit them to a maximum of three per web page.

This will, experience shows, provide a heap of sentences and they have to be refined. Using part of speech analysis we can identify those phrases that are adjectival.

These phrases can be considered the values of the organisation.

With this smaller group of phrases (values), we can explore those that have semantically similar content and identify generic value systems on the web site.

Hey presto, this is a way of identifying the public expression of values of the organisation.

But, as the more cynical of us might imagine, these values will be those that the organisation wants us to see (they may not be in the same order of significance that a company or government department one brand manager would choose - but we are being agnostic here).

We now need to test these values in the cauldron of public opinion.

The first cauldron is that host of people who have expressed an interest in the organisation. That is, those people who have linked to it. What are their values and which ones do they have in common.

Then there are the commentators like the press, bloggers and others who don't link in.

We can now test the expressed values of the organisation against the values of its publics.

The extent to which there is dissonance is an expression of the value of the organisation's public relations.



That's the theory.



Now to see if it works.....

Relationships the missing link in Clay's book

At last after some long train journeys I have finish Here Comes Everybody, by Clay Shirky.

He brings to the modern time the work of a number of American researchers and weaves some great case studies in a very engaging way.

The one element he needs is the dynamic behind why 'if you publish it people will come'. Of course this is not true but is a truism and it all comes down to the basis of relationships and notably relationships online.

Relationships form when the values of one entity (or person) finds another entity (or person) with values in common.

We go to the places where we know there will be like minded people. We talk to people with similar interests, we seek contexts where the values are akin to our own when we are in the 'mood'. We migrate to the blogs that interests us and then pass along the best to people who follow our blog.

On page 217, Clay explains the nature of 'networks of dense clusters', with a nice explanatory diagram which is a social media take on social networks.

There is some interesting work from the Haas Business School Alumni Networks' blog Group Scope which is not theoretical but is similar and from real life mapping and which shows the diversity of organisations (click here to see interactive version of the graphic) that form around a range of relatively narrow values and through a range of online channels for communication.

It is the basis upon which the Relationship Value Model ( a very European model) is predicated.


Group Scope have been investigating ‘hot company’ networks based on the idea that key people and investors can help point the way to new companies. They point out that the goal of a ‘derivative network’ is to take a network of interest (aka values systems) and ‘invert’ it to see another view of its affiliations. In each of the ensuing three derivative maps, they expose new sets of people and companies that are not in the group of ‘hot companies,’ but are related to that group through these derivative networks because they have common value systems interests.

In other words, the common themes of 'hot companies' (aka 'hot company values systems') are of interest to a wide, interlinked, network.

Its the values that encourage people in networks to find and then distribute the values in networks of dense clusters.

Here is a Touchgraph image of this blog and we can see the networked relationships:

It is closely interlinked with a relatively few (but germane) other blogs and sites.


















BoingBoing.net, for all its reach is not as heavily networked. It is like a newspaper, a broadcast medium. It is the point well made in Clay's book.

What PR can take out of this is that the 'top blogs', the ones with a big readership and consequently relatively little interactivity, are really just publishers of stuff like any other mass media. If the content from these 'broadcast bloggers' is picked up by the network of dense clusters, great. But if not, try an advert in The Times.

On the other hand, further down the power curve, people who are interactive will pass on the news adding value (commentary, personal recommendation, insights and other values) on the way.

Thus PR is about relationships in this milieu where values are added to the values public relations explicates for its clients. In the networked community, values have a dense relevance among people who have a close relationship with them. These communities are very affective. They are the real key to reputation, for when content in the communities migrates to other (including, but not exclusively broadcast) media, the effect is significant because of the added values contributed by the networked communities.

And, values come before communication. So PR is not just about communication.

Let me explain. Suppose two actors (people) have common interests in similar values but there is no communication between them. In such a case there is no possibility of a relationship forming. However, in a network of dense clusters, there will be a third party who can act as the bridge between the two original actors and will show the values one to the other either overtly or, more often, through other values that are common to all three.

It explains the phenomenon of why RSS is so powerful in bringing relevant people and information to us so quickly. It explains how some activities truly 'go viral' online and it also shows that effective values systems, including corporate values systems have a wider and diverse online 'community' of direct, related and indirect interest. To miss quote an ex US president 'its the values stupid' .

In recent weeks, I have been exploring values and value systems for clients. Of course, driven by the idea that 'key messages', a 20th century marketing idea for brand exposure in mass media, most client have such messages in the meta data on their web sites (although some are far from well optimised). But often these 'keywords' are at odds with the actual content that people seek or read. Even worse, the value systems offered in texts and images on web sites miss the mark which shows up in the demographic data now available from services like Google Trends and MSN labs.

So far, every time we have shown these results to clients, there is an element of shock and a demand for re-evaluation of corporate and brand value systems as well as web design. The former falls directly into the lap of the PR practitioner who now can clearly see where the disconnect (dissonance) between the 'user generated social (sometimes market) segment' and the organisation lays.

Here we begin to see how whole organisations can be changed by the 'messages' (aka values) and how the online community is having a direct influence not only on brand positioning but corporate positioning, not to mention direction, as well.

There are more than a few organisations that are beginning to see that corporate values are critical to long term survival.

The book is worth reading and with just the one further, relationship values, step, would be seminal.

Thank you Clay.

Here comes Everybody Part 2

I have a review copy of the new book by Clay Shirky 2008 Here Comes Everybody Penguin.

The subtitle is "The Power of Organizing without Organizations"

It is an idea that I contest.

A long time ago, last century, Mark Adams, Prof Anne Gregory, Infonic’s Roy Lipski, Alison Clark and some others worked on the key drivers that would be delivered by the Internet (CIPR/PRCA Interet Commission). There were three: Transparency, Porosity & Agency. They are proved right.

Organisations now have all three. There is greater transparency between actors inside organisation. Past departmental silos are dismembered, corporate hierarchies are an ever moving feast and the distinction between an employee and consultant, supplier and manufacturer not to mention factory owner and factory user are a nicety. The boundaries of organisations are crumbling and ubiquitous interactive communication has been the lubricant for this process.

This gave rise to a concept I call the relationship cloud. Transparent values (ethos + tangible and intangible assets) are exercised with transparent responsiveness and the internet facilitates employee relationship clouds with the networked relationship empowered online and offline actors.

There are no organisations any more. The transition is too far gone to make such assumptions.

All we have is the remnants of the 20th century pretending that Toyota is a company, the Prime Minister is Presidential and the shop is the home of retailing. We still use the names and the images but the reality is that the transition is too far gone to plan ahead on such assumptions.

We are already at the point where there is 'Power of Organizing without Organizations' is in daily practice even among the organisations but we all hasten not to recognise it. It is too far out of the comfort zone of all too many?

Next... page 19

Where are the values?

The Influentials theory debunked.

Fast Company runs an article in which Duncan Watts, a network-theory scientist, puts to test the idea that trends are sparked by a handful of highly connected individuals, or the influentials, as they have become known after the best sellers The Tipping Point and The Influentials.

It was Ilya Vedrashko in his Adlab blog who brought me this gem.

The Influentials is debunked. Katz and Lazarsfeld are questioned and Stanley Milgram "Six Degrees of Separation" plays differently when you run the analysis using robust and life size samples.

In an environment where individual values are the starting point and where they are explicated as tokens and when they provide the basis of attraction online which can be proven over and over again, I am with Watts.

There is a ballance between marketing and Public Relations

There is a balance between marketing and hype and public relations, that discipline comprising management of relationships, transparency and communication.

On the one hand there is a part of human nature that makes people want to be noticed in the social order. This is true of companies too. We like and need marketing. On the other, there is a need to share values using communication which is at the core of relationships. Sharing requires transparency to engender trust and confidence among the people in the group - the heart of good PR.

Over the last few weeks we have seen what happens when markets respond to too much marketing and hype without the modifying influence of relationships.

Lets get to the nitty gritty. In the USA and to a less extent the UK (although it led to the actualitie of Northen Rock going bust - what ever one might call the 'rescue plan') the markets believed the President of the USA and the British Chansellor of the Exchequer when they said that these two economies were strong. They believed the political marketing of, well, the politicians.

Within the closed gardens of the financial institutions it is all too easy to believe such hype without digging too deep. That, and a lack of transparency as so many institutions ignore the conversations that surround them, and there is every belief that the West and notably the US and UK will continue to be financially secure.

Just look at the response to the Edelman Trust Barometer which revealed this week that business opinion formers seem to believe that they can trust the marketing hype of businesses when almost anyone who audits the online community conversations can see less than enthusiasm for corporate speak.

What we have seen is the corporate assets based on tangible assets turned into tradeable products and services using Intellectual Properties and process know-how have been hyped. The sub-prime lenders, celebrity brands and extravagant personal and government spending, funded by loans from the savings of ordinary folk and topped up by China and Indian economic surplus is not a receipt for endless success. The interest, if not the principle, has to be paid back.

It is not that we did not know that Gordon had sold gold at the bottom of the market or that he had borrowed endlessly to fund hospitals and city academies. It is that the balancing effects of transparent relationships and communication, the real drivers of added value have been suppressed. In the UK leaks have replaced Parliamentary announcements, Big Tents have silenced critics and EU jobs have extended political sell by dates with labels that look similar to an ad agency designed price sticker.

In the end it required very little by way of transparency, notably in the shakiness of the US sub-prime loans and the exposure of poor banking practice revealed in the collapse of Northern Rock , and the whole edifice collapses. Trust and confidence is lost when the true nature of the relationships is revealed.

Relationships when undone by transparency crack trust and confidence and we are seeing the effect in spades this week.

This is why I believe that the PR industry needs to have a much better understanding of what drives relationships, why they are so powerful and why they can act for an against the interest of clients big and small.

The values that underpin relationships, including those values that surround corporate and government attitudes towards transparency need to be articulated and, in order that people should be drawn towards them, communicated in an honest and trustworthy manner.

Without such governance in PR, we will continue to hurt the most vulnerable and will undermine the nature of our civilisations.

Image: Diseno