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

Dear Mr Buckland.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your etc

iPad activism and the investing institutions

So much of the chatter about the end of The News of the World has been about reputation.

A lot of it centres on reputation as a commodity. Building reputation is, apparently, about advertising or PR'ing or connections.

Well, in the digital age such nonsense is patently, visibly and completely exposed.

Reputation is not owned by organisations it is proffered by constituents. That complex societal group that is bounded only by its interests in the values surrounding the organisation (as distinct from Publics, Stakeholders, Market segments and followers). This is not about the values of the organisation but its interaction with values held by the constituency.

Reputation management gets on well with marketing because so many people believe reputation, trust and regard are bought with pieces of silver.

Relationship management, which is a two way street, is much harder. In this street, values have teeth and bite.

Relationships and values management are the critical elements that distinguish PR from other disciplines. It is what makes PR different from marketing, advertising, propaganda, spin and publicity.

Without PR, corporate managers like Rupert Murdoch (Newscorp), Tony Hayward (BP), Pierre Beaudoin (Bombardier), Jamie Buchan (Southern Cross) have failed. They believed that PR was about spin and press releases and more fool them and more fool their shareholders for employing such people.

Mr Murdoch needs a PR manager and not a 'reputation' manger and that will allow him to begin to build trust, reputation and regards for his empire.

To do that, he needs savvy shareholders.

Sensible shareholders are now in short supply. Sensible shareholders will by now have worked out that lack of sincerity and ethics as part of the DNA of corporate culture will mean that they will take a haircut sooner or later on the bourses of the world.

Explaining this to shareholders is the job of the institutions like CIPR, PRCA, IAB etc.

It has to be explained among the investing institutions (remembering that institutional investors are in the same mould as the failed banking sector) in simple outcomes terms.

The argument is relatively simple. If the bloggers says the directors suck, fire the chairman at the AGM. If Facebook says service sucks, fire the executive board during interims and if Twitter says it is uncomfortable dump the stock fast.

This is not an ethical brief we have to give to the financial institutions. This is war. The normal citizen can and does become an iPad activist at the drop of a hat. In the case of NotW, as Robin Grant put it "brands were being bombarded in protest – most of whom will have been unused to such a spike in negative attention. This was not just happening on Twitter, with targeted brands’ Facebook pages becoming venues for significant protest too." Unless and until the financial sector gets its act together the pension funds will suffer at the hands of social media time after time. This is why it is in the interest of the financial institutions to be assured that they have proper Public Relations managers advising the Boards they invest in. Andy Coulson, is not and never can be a public relations practitioner. He is a journalist. He does not have what it takes to be effective in modern PR. Gaming the system was fine when Coulson was the editor of the biggest circulating newspaper in the UK. Try Gaming Google+ and the online world will crush the company and shareholders with it.

Why pick on G+? Because it is of a new breed of services with in built web 3.0. The semantic web. Semantic as in searching for and exposing secrets (automatically soon enough too).

A number of authors have been making this point for years (first time I published a book about it was in 2008). There is nothing new here.

What we now need are some PR institutions that are aware of what is happening in the fields of communication and who are prepared to make the point to corporate managers and investors and in public if need be.


Cartoon by the clever Vicky Woodward

In defence of Aves

Having been involved with PR evaluation for over 20 years, I have been watching a number of recent debates about the use of statistical analytics with a lot of interest. 

Last week PR Week , the Public Relations industry trade publication, put a number of perspectives together about the use of Advertising Value Equivelents (AVE’s), http://goo.gl/oBEk. There is heated debate on the subject. 

Tom Eldridge put an argument together entitled “ Why Klout and Peerindex fail to measure your online reputation” last January http://goo.gl/oKrOo.

Newly financed http://www.ubervu.com has, like many others, automated sentiment analysis as part of its service.

The evidence of these debates goes on and on.

What they all have in common is that they use algorithms in an attempt to bring insights into an ocean of data.

In PR, Marketing and advertising the use of algorithms is commonplace and always has been.

In psephology, the study of election results, as well as in sample surveys and  focus groups, the face value figures are not commonly helpful and need interpretation. In their development, a system of managing these extrapolations quickly turns into an algorithm used for used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.

There are some key elements to be considered when using algorithms for gaining insights.

The first is the quality and range of data used.

In almost all research there are a lot of variable to be considered.

For example, in many evaluation methodologies used in PR and advertising media selection, a test of readership for a specific article is expressed in a range of ways including newspaper readership, circulation, position of page and position on page and a whole range of other data points.

The extent to which any of these measures can be attributed to the actual readership of any specific news story is often not clear.

A measure of value of an advertisement can be attributed to the cost the market will bear and thus an advertisement of a specific size, page and position will provide evidence of the value of that real estate in a publication. Such space, were it to be editorial and as appealing to the reader could be considered to have a comparable value.  An Advertising Value Equivalent is on its way. Because editorial has the imprimatur of being editorial it is regarded with more authority by the reader and therefore, some say, has an even greater value. For some it is twice as much and for others five times as much and more.

Here we see evidence of the second key element in using algorithms.

The data used and the methodology adopted need to be common, commonly understood, and transparent for anyone to judge the veracity of the results provided.

In an article, ‘The problem with automated sentiment analysis’, Freshnetworks show how deeply one needs to look into such algorithms http://goo.gl/tjCyI and demonstrate clearly that the devil is in the detail. It notes that humans can be about 80% accurate in sentiment analysis of media corpora and that machines can compete but not in the fine detail. Thus the computers provide an excellent overview already.

That there are criticisms and that there are issues is beyond doubt but progressively, the ability of computers to take the strain and reduce no small proportion of cost.

I suggest, before dismissing automation as useless, there is a case for looking for current benefits in the knowledge that very soon developers will have the computing ability to resolve the issues.

AVE’s may be dismissed in 2011 but will they, or an alternative come back to bite the critics in a year of two?

I believe they will.  

Colin Farrington bid farewell

I understand that the Director General of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Colin Farrington left his post at the end of March.

I had little experience of direct dealings with Colin. On the occasions that we met, he was always a polite urbane and considerate.

Our relationship was quite fun. I am a good deal older but have this funny internet obsession. The younger Colin was by no means an enthusiastic observer of ubiquitous interactive communication.

His preferences were of the order of the CIPR President’s Grand Prix Awards marking the end of the CIPR PRide Awards and self selecting Chartered Practitioner status badge, which is awarded to CIPR members who can demonstrate an outstanding level of professional practice and knowledge (beyond, say, PR professors).

Colin was the man in charge when the IPR gained its Royal Charter. He saw to it that the research showed an industry worth £6.5 bn. The online opportunity at the time (2005) would have doubled this value had the Institute grasped the opportunity. It was more than aware of the opportunity from the work of the IPR/PRCA Commission in 1999.


He is  a member of The Guild of Public Relations Practitioners which aims to ‘foster its profession, trade or craft’. This purpose is achieved through charitable works, education, fellowship, and trade and commerce.
The Guild of Public Relations Practitioners therefore works to promote the PR industry.

He is a gentle person compared to the rough-house of the Brown babe Angela Smith telling the CIPR to stuff its Public Affairs Council; local press jumping on shallow thinking in the provinces; getting rolled over by a bunch of incompetent jurnos who can't cope with spam not to mention  the shaggy  Neanderthals at the NLA ambling out of the ice age tundra.

Who ever may take up the mantle of guiding practice in the future will no doubt be pleased with Colin's achievement in the evolution of the Global Alliance.

There are some quite big issues that the Institute has to face. It needs very different leadership now.

The big issue about the nature of Public Relations needs attention (The Charter says it is: "the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics"). We live in different times. The very nature of an organisation is different. The nexus of contracts is replaced by a nexus of relationships. Not everyone subscribes to a view of social groups being defined by the excellence model, if indeed, we should define groups at all in a post modern era when 'user defined groups' are so fluid. The new models of public relations theory are designed for a new century and are based on research. This research is pivotal. It gives practitioners powerful tools (download) to understand how organisations can perform better with enhanced PR practice.

There is the question of PR education. Lots of folk are coming from any old trade into PR without having to re-train. People like Ben Smith of PRMoment  - great critic of the industry skimming over the realities at a journo level (and all in 140 characters). It is going to be tough turning down all those ex-ministers lining up to do 'PR' after the election and we have to remember the difference between facility houses and PR. Some are very good but they are but facility houses to the profession.

The Institute think's its cool to be both regulator and provider of PR courses (but that's how we make money init). The PR degree courses are a mess. All too many are not much more than a course in spamming 'press releases' and having a 'creative idea' to fly a barrage balloon over the Houses of Parliament.  Some are excellent and need heavy promotion from the professions' promotion of professionalism but some are dreadful and don't even include compulsory ubiquitous interactive communication studies (UIC).

Practitioners in-house and in agencies are finding internet mediated civilisation a tough call. Social Media has now been with us 30 years and it is just a view of tactics in communication. PR is about much more. It is staggering that some people in the communications industries, and notably the PR industry are inadequately qualified to manage its rate of change and even junior novices are at a premium. The whole idea that there should be a 'digital' module in a PR course is not just quaint, it is a cruel joke to play on innocent practitioners. UIC changes society. It is not 'just another communication channel'.

What role is the institute playing in PR research? In communication Tim Berners-Lee, Google, Microsoft and large parts of language research is deeply into the study or science of meaning in language using semantics. Is the institute able to grasp and run with what is now already part of PR research and advance the opportunities now we understand the nature of relationships. The PR industry did not find XPRL  very interesting (as communications facilitator, now important for RSS, on one hand and semantic web on the other) and so it is unlikely that another game changing development will go much further without hard nosed foresight and drive from Institute professionals.

The present review by the Institute has to be pretty thorough and needs to look forward. It also has to be much tougher on itself and its members. Being professional now does mean that an average PR manager should hold a reasonable degree. In the UK that means a Masters. More PR people on the boards of more companies means there is a need for research based training for aspiring managers.

So Colin, you have had your victories and now is a time for a very different harder, much more professional Institute.

The Practitioners' Rough Deal

An excellent post by Stephen Waddington, prompted me to to resond to some of the comments it evoked.

The original post is here and I have extended the arguments below.

The initial comments was:

The challenge of identifying the authority of a blog was raised yesterday at econsultancy’s Online PR roundtable.

Technorati recently changed its blog authority ranking to reflect the real time potency of a blog rather than influence over time. Consequently only very high profile blogs are being rated.

The number of inbound links combined with Google PageRank was proposed as a solution at yesterday’s roundtable.

And then there are a lot of differnet methodologies.

My response was:

Typical of the PR industry, come up with black art reaction and ignore the research - soooo professional. The research work presented by Bruno Amaral this July (bledcom.com) is based on blog discourse. It shows the proof of concept in analysis of (blog) discourse for the creation and development of relationships (oh, and for those who want to know buying and selling is part of a relationship for lots of people as well). What, it seems, this debate might be about is the extent to which there are common tokens identified and expressed with mutual understanding as to the values that are attributed to them by actors which will ensure relationships are created, re-enforced and extended. One way of doing this is to use semantic analysis to identify commonly held and agreed values (which is what Bruno did). This may provide the same answer as a mash up of inlinks, page rank, alexa traffic figures, bloglines citations, number of readers/subscribers, words published per day, number of comments etc. The one thing we do know is that one approach is definitely built of sound science and three years of solid, peer reviewed, research and the other may not be. If one was betting the survival growth and profitability of your company on the methods used, there might be a reason for choosing one methodology over another.

My principle beef is that there is a lot of good research about that the PR industry ignores. A lot of research is conducted in the universities, is converted to dry academic papers and some long and boring books that a few undergraduates and even smaller proportion of PR Masters students have to read.

The chance for a practitioner to get at this stuff is zip.

Its not as though organisations like the Chartered Institute of Public Relations or the PRCA help much - if at all. In the case of the CIPR one struggles to find the courses and conferences that are leavened with expert academic research because the institutions do not list the people and qualifications of the teachers and trainers. Of course, knowing which PR celebrities, old codgers and underemployed practitioners are engaged by the CIPR would be interesting but the web site is a bit shy about revealing this.

On the other hand, there are the academic institutions. These places, where PR academics count how fairies on pin heads communicate and undertake senility surveys of ten past it practitioners. They are stunningly secret.

Sometimes they invite the world into their cloisters and sometimes they are seen at conferences wearing their habits.

I was a bit surprised to discover that universities with PR degrees are staggered that the PR industry needs social media expertise from students emerging into the sunshine of modern practice. This reeks of academia polishing the ivory towers.

PR academics NEVER criticise practice or practitioners. As the financial industry went into melt down not a single PR academic suggested even meekly, that banks like other institutions needed to manage relationships if they were going to lend to each other (and customers?). Not much good at grasping the hour these PR academics.

Here they are without an argument to put about really great measures of successful PR such as ... well we all know how much Advertising Value Equivalents are used.

I really do want to see the survey of top 1000 company CEO's who use the measure, rely on it, base the future of their companies and careers on such a profound measure of ...... ummmmm.....

I know of a university with a PR course that has a PR office that uses Ave's. Where is the PR equivelent of:

Three more scientists have resigned from the UK drug advisory body after the home secretary sacked of its chief advisor, Professor David Nutt, for disagreeing with government policy on marijuana.

So am I really surprised about the comments of Stephen's blog. No.

Am I amazed at the PR institutions and academics lack of spirit in pouring scorn on iffy methodologies. No.

But I believe that practitioners deserve more.

The Ethics of AVE’s

There are elements of the publicity industries that use Advertising Value Equivalents described by the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication as the "Equivalent cost of buying space devoted to editorial content".

As I wrote in "Evaluating Press Coverage" in 1995.

"The relationships between reader and publication and between editor and reader is symbiotic, and invited with permission by advertisers - advertising value equivalent (AVE) and editorial are not the same and you can't use the same tools to measure effectiveness. There is no advertising equivalent to editorial nor is there a measure of advertising avoided because of editorial coverage. There is no common measure for advertising and editorial. Measurable factors include whether it is timely compelling, relevant, useful authoritative."

Today I would add 'in context'. These arguments would have a lot more traction these days.

This year I was criticised for my work on online advertising opportunity by Katie Paine who obviously had not read my views on the relationship between advertising and editorial but, these days, her views are quite valid.

The contribution of Jim Macnamara, Professor of Public Communication University of Technology Sydney, is one of the most significant (PDF).

There is very good research into PR evaluation here and there are some excellent blogs on the subject which are listed on Katie's blog under 'Best Sources for more measurement info'

Well, now we know where I stand.

Now for the Ethics part.

I suppose its worth looking at different approaches to ethics and ethical behaviour.

Ethics in PR is quite complicated and I outline some of the considerations in slides to accompany my ethics lectures to undergraduates.

AVE's are a utilitarian approach to publicity. They provide happiness and least pain for the greatest number of people involved. Namely the agency and the client managers involved. However the consequentionalist use of AVE's, if determined solely by consequences or production of the greatest good consequences and least bad, have to be considered as does the need for everyone affected to have universal and equal consequential benefit. If you like, this might be how John Stuart Mill, might take a view of AVE's. He might like them especially because of the quality of happiness they bring to so many.

All well and dandy, until one begins to apply Bentham's theory. If AVE's are not proven and the company auditor says they cannot be added to the value of the company's goodwill, then they are bad from an ethical standpoint even from a utilitarian perspective.

A Kantian view would ask if such actions are universalisable. If they are, then they would apply in every case. We know this is not possible (how would one apply AVE's to a BBC post on one of its many blogs?).

Bernard Williams would, of course have a fit. He would see the doctrine of negative responsibility for the fact that AVE's are OK as a measure but only among a small clique of publicist as an affront.

Perhaps we should use descriptive ethics and do what people think is right. We might choose normative ethics and ask how should people (practitioners) act or perhaps we might consider applied ethics and take moral knowledge and put it into the practice of using AVE's.

So where do PR practitioner get guidance?

The CIPR code of conduct asks of members to respect the customs, practices and codes of clients, employers, colleagues, fellow professionals and other professions in all countries where they practise.

Thus it would seem that if a client likes to use AVE's that's fine and ethically utilitarian.

On the other hand the Institute says its members deal honestly and fairly in business with employers, employees, clients, fellow professionals, other professions and the public. This would suggest that practitioners will honestly reflect the advertising value of editorial coverage and will apply integrity (part of the code) by checking the reliability and accuracy of information before dissemination. That makes AVE's bad ethics.


This is not unlike the PRCA code which says its members have a positive duty at all times to respect the truth and shall not disseminate false or misleading information knowingly or recklessly, and to use proper care to avoid doing so inadvertently.

And PRCA member agencies also must have regard to all the circumstances of the specific situation and in particular the complexity of the issue, case, problem or assignment, and the difficulties associated with its completion such as, for example, measuring editorial as though it was some form of advertising.

Now, if we take the view of people like Jim Macnamara that there is no such thing as editorial and advertising equivalency add to it a view of ethics (utilitarian or otherwise) then members of the CIPR and PRCA will not use AVE's because it is unethical.

Is there then an ethical case for using AVE's and is it ethical to use them in contravention of the codes of conduct which are the ethical basis of membership of the professional bodies?

At a time when the banks and UK parliamentarians are facing ethics issues as never before the questions associated with AVE's are significant, as is much management practice, now a potential problem for the practice of publicists and public relations practitioners.

Why 20th century marketing is dead

If one of the worlds, leasing business publications was to be found to be selling editorial to the highest bidder it would be a scandal...right?

People would loose trust in its editorial independence.

It would loose its appeal to industry leaders.

Of much greater significance is that it would be vilified in social media and progressively its reputation would cost its shareholders their fortune just as those who once though banking shares were a smart lost theirs.

Indeed, those who colluded in such a scam would be suspect. Their ethical practice would be called into question and their reputation too will suffer.

Well, there are marketing practices that drag people along this gently inclining slope to the slippery bit and in an era of transparency cannot avoid the finger being pointed:

"Please let me know ASAP if you have a client that might be interested to participate in BusinessWeek's Cloud Computing ad section. This is a "pay-to-play" opportunity ($6,980 entry fee) to appear in a hot section.

"Appearance here will position your client as a leader in the the cloud computing space. BusinessWeek delivers a prime audience of 4.8 million decision-makers, consisting of over 1.8 million senior executives, and 2 million business technology influencers.

"BusinessWeek magazine will publish this section in its April 13, 2009 global print (and online) edition (hits newsstands/goes live April 3). Produced in partnership with the Cloud Slam 09 Virtual Conference Event, this timely section, titled "Cloud Computing: Next-Gen Internet to Power Business," will discuss the business imperatives of cloud computing, i.e. harnessing power, opportunity of on-demand computing, storage, applications, infrastructure, etc.

"If your client were to commit to advertise, we would develop complimentary coverage to appear in the section article (or develop a top quality "advertorial" piece); interview and content development by Internet veteran Vance McCarthy. Exposure includes visibility on www.cloudslam09.com during and after the event, and on www.businessweek.com/adsections providing links to their website (can include video), and high quality reprints. We are also offering Cloud Slam '09 Sponsorships. Further, we can create a very cool, interactive 3D “virtual booth” for your client at a relatively small fee. Uniquely, the booth 'container' is in PDF, so it can be distributed everywhere your client wishes, beyond the event! Lots of value and impact in this package! Another complimentary element here is BusinessWeek's social networking Business Exchange site now taking flight.

There is nothing new in this. It has gone on for years and yet, because it is common practice does not make it right.

So, are we shocked to see circulations of publications in free fall when the words they print are really just advertorials? Well not really. Will anyone regret the going of such publications. Well no, not really.

Feel for the poor pensioner who depends on investment in such shares for a living.

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.

Freezing out CIPR slackers

February 2nd 2009. Overnight the long forecast snow fell over London and the South East of England

There was disruption to roads railways and airports.

Websites vital to travelers ground to a halt.

The reputation of these organisations is harmed

As I write, members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations face hearings in front of the Institute's disciplinary committee.

They are the Public Relations managers in The Highways Agency (http://www.trafficengland.com).

Other organisations that do not have professionally recognised members in their PR office, like South West Trains (http://www.southwesttrains.co.uk) whose web sites are down, will get what they deserve. Employing monkeys has its own rewards, I guess.

There are those whose organisations which have web sites that are very slow and in imminent threat of stopping all together.

This displays a wanton and flagrant abuse of the first clause of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Code of Conduct.

It says: Maintain the highest standards of professional endeavour, integrity, confidentiality, financial propriety and personal conduct.

It shows lack of "Encouragement of professional training and development among members of the profession" which is clause six.

Worse, these people are failing to be "...aware of the limitations of professional competence: without limiting realistic scope for development, being willing to accept or delegate only that work for which practitioners are suitably skilled and experienced."

For a number of years and in each of the three books I have written on the subject (two for the Chartered Institute) I have made it quite clear that a slow or crashed website is a reputation issue more than anything else. UK PR bloggers (and others in other countries) have also made the same point.

To put an organisation in a position where its principle form for communicating with its publics is not available shows complete lack of professional competence.

I just hope that the CIPR is monitoring the situation and will make its position quite clear in the next few hours.

As a professional organisation, it is time to make a stand or loose more credibility in representing the interests of people claiming some form of expertise in client communication.

Individual Social Responsibility - A Driver for PR

In September I made it quite clear that I though that the banking crisis was above all a crisis for public relations. My thesis is now underpinned by comments by the chief executive of Barclays, John Varley.

In an interview with the BBC's Robert Peston for last Monday's Panorama (8.30pm on BBC1) John Varley said that the banking industry is going through " a public relations crisis, that it must apologise for what went wrong - because banks will not regain the vital trust of customers unless and until they own up to the sins of the past and say sorry."

How did the industry get to the point where it has a public relations crisis?

Was it because it had good public relations? Obviously not. Here we are, sixteen months after the the toxic nature of the banking failure came to light, being given lessons in PR by a chief executive.

Were the practices of the banks so well served by the PR industry that they lost trust, not just between banks but between banks, business, retail customers and government? We have now seen that relationships served by poor PR is, in itself toxic.

Was the industry served by good public relations advice that put the industry into a circumstance that "will take between one and two years for lending to stop shrinking"?

Lets look at what was involved.

PR managers need to know about the products and services provided by their organisations. After all they have a responsibility for explaining what the organisation does to its publics. Failure to understand the product is high risk. PR practice without individual social responsibility of the nature of understanding the organisation dangerous.

PR managers have a responsibility for identifying threats to relationships and reputation and have a duty to inform the organisations of the threats and their consequences. It is a matter of individual social responsibility to both identify such threats and to engage internal publics through their own individual social responsibility to remove such threats.

The role of PR as watchdog and advisor in the management of relationships goes beyond the description of our trade, it is a matter of corporate financial prudence. It is extraordinary that Varley was not told that relationships are a corporate asset. After all, the evidence, as I pointed out in 2006, is robust. Individual social responsibility to internal and external publics includes a need to understand the financial implications of actions that will undermine relationships and reputation. Failure to do so is, of its nature more toxic than the reasons for the credit crunch.

PR managers have a responsibility for advising organisations about the ethics of practice. Ethical practice is about values and has to be part of individual social responsibility.

It is a matter of corporate social responsibility and, more important, individual social responsibility.

Now we have a senior manager in the banking sector pointing his finger at the practice of public relations.

It is an accusation that the industry has to take seriously.

Is it down to a chief executive of a bank to point out these failures or is it the individual social responsibility of practitioners and corporate social responsibility of the profession and its institutions to examine practice?

The track record of chief executives is, at a personal level, quite good but in practice they need robust professional capability in execution. Chief executives also need to be managed and, in this case not by the marketers, accounts department or non-executive board but by the PR manager.

In the month that the credit crunch struck (August 2007) I made exactly this point an so it was not exactly that we in PR (and Sir John Sutherland no less) were not aware of the need and consequences of poor social responsibility.

I am a Fellow of the CIPR and it is, I believe the dusty of Fellows to make the point and to call on the CIPR to be serious about the role of PR in guiding, advising and helping management of our clients.

A long time ago, I gave notice of the ethical, individual social responsibility, issue and asked:

Is the ethical practice then to expose the values or to change them?

A purist practitioner would expose the values and be damned and would allow the organisation to be damned by its constituencies. It is a form of practice that can stand back from the consequences of foolhardy management.

On the other hand the PR manager (a person who attempts to manage the relationships between an organisation and its constituencies) would attempt to change the organisation.

If the values that drive the public relations of an organisation are toxic, as in the now admitted case for banks, we have to re-visit the role of PR.

Two-way symmetry is no longer enough.

I have moved on. It is not enough just to stand fast and change the nature of the organisation such that its ethic will match that of its publics (the Grunigian view). It is a matter for being proactive both internally and with publics and, additionally, to be proactive in the eco-system of the client environment such that the environment can sustain the organisation.

We have to act.

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?

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?

The Clip Book

Working part time in an agency gives an insight into how far they have regressed.

In the 1980's and 90's I ran a PR consultancy. We had a sister evaluation company (Media Measurement) which did all out work on clip book production as well as evaluation to meet a range of client needs. In those days we used a lot of trees in PR.

The evaluation team were specialist, had all the software and equipment to deliver product on time and right first time.

Professional PR people and awesome writers were not wasted on clip counting and mounting.

Easy.

Now, a decade later I find that agencies are still using PAPER! The Clipbook carbon footprint in the PR industry is massive.

Because clients want it?

Now, I don't care about the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) demand for huge amounts of money to force organisations to knock over more trees. Its time to face them down.

I am not a person who believes that you can't read off the screen. We all do it.

I don't care about size for size Advertising Equivalents spreads and all that complete AVE rubbish. That was invented to satisfy the 20th century egos of Marketing Directors. In those days they had secretaries who typed letters!

Paper guard books offer so little information compared to digital ones. Today, would professional managers accept cash flow forecasts without drill down?

But what I resent most is the complete an utter waste of intelligent people’s time and on every count. Cost, wasted skill, environment damage, encouragement of lazy, typically innumerate, PR practice are all reasons to move away from paper.

Partnering with a professional evaluation company is the right direction for agencies (and I mean partner – not supplier) and this needs to be a three way, transparent relationship with the client.

In cost saving alone, it makes sense.

PR people eschew £50bn

Online spending is now expected to reach over £50bn for the whole year - beating predictions made by the IMRG earlier this year. Last year's total was £30.2bn.

If the public can spend £750,000 online every minute why am I not getting daily emails from the PR industry Associations telling me that my membership will cancelled if I do not attend at least one Social Media workshop by 21 March 2008?

How long can a whole industry ignore the richest high street ever?

Its not just about a swanky web site its about reputation, trust, relationships and zillions of online publics. THAT sounds like PR or are all these things the industry talks about just spin.

First, where is the list of accredited degree courses that do NOT have a one year compulsory digital module - that will show how seriously the institutions are taking £50bn in the context of accreditation? Second, where are the workshops, interest groups and specialist trainers to show how well these organisations are preparing members for £70bn next year.... I could go on.

Its time to elect leaders for the PR institutions that are going to lead.

A web outage is a relationships issue

Yesterday the www.tiny.com service was down. In a few hours there was a mass migration to a range of other comparable services.

Tiny lost customers and its reputation was tarnished.

This is a lesson for us all. If our online presence is not maintained it affects our reputation. It also means people go elsewhere to solve their problem. In the case of Tiny services like http://snipurl.com, http://urltea.com and http://paulding.net and the Firefox add-on all came to the aid of the online community.

When reputation is in the news so to are obscure commenst like this one from Slashdot.com

"Thanks to twitter, SMS, and mobile web, a lot of people are using the url minimizers like tinyurl.com, urltea.com. However, now I see a lot of people using it on their regular webpages. This could be a big problem if billions of different links are unreachable at a given time."

There is a ripple effect and a raft of different issues become relevant.

The circle of relationships is fractured.

But what if your organisation is the UK airport owner BAA?

What is the consequence of its sites being affected especially in times of crisis, as for example when there is a security scare?

This is not a Webmaster issue. Webmasters will be at the coal face trying to get it back up. Its a PR issue because it went down. It will also be a marketing issues, a finance issue, an internal relationship issue and a vendor relation issue.

A web site is a big public relations responsibility. It always was. But now its is a critical area of PR practice - a full lecture and seminar for year two in any BA PR degree.

Using a service like http://www.periscopeit.co.uk, a host data about the performance of a web site plus SMS and email alerts is a simple precaution.

Hopefully, this big issue is part of the CIPR advisory to its members and to its approved course lecturers and courses.

I (ahemmm) expect so!

If the BBC is 'getting it' - just wait for the PR firms to get it too

The BBC stands accused of cheating an lying. Its reputation has been been tarnished by a sequence of revelations. Initially it was over a phone in scam on the top children's programme Blue Peter which was using a studio guest to pose as the winner of a phone-in . .". Next can a programme trailer of the queen walking at a pretty fast lick in her state regalia trailed by the BBC as leaving celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz in a huff but actually arriving for the appointment.


While this lapse was under investigation another storm has broken with revelations of staff passing themselves off as viewers and listeners on radio and TV shows in fake phone in and prize shows including high profile charity blockbusters including 'Children in Need', the BBC's flagship charity-fund-raiser. In the Guardian Janine Gibson has a longer list, She notes: " On Wife Swap, when they say they swap for a week, it's sometimes really only four days. On Countdown, when the guest in Dictionary Corner comes up with a seven-letter word, sometimes that's come down the earpiece from a man in the gallery. On Have I Got News for You, they see the questions in advance, because the point is to be funny, not good on current affairs." She continues: "Even last week ... we might have been comforting ourselves that the news was somehow different. That was until Newsnight admitted that a couple of incidents in a film last month about Gordon Brown were broadcast the wrong way round. Robbie Gibb, the deputy editor of Newsnight, wrote on the BBC editor's blog: "Unlike the incident with the footage of the Queen, whichever order the events had been shown, the meaning would remain the same." Underneath, a viewer has posted: "If the meaning would remain the same, why was the chronological order changed?"


It seems that there is systemic and endemic problem in the BBC. There seems to be an absence of trust and fair dealing. It tells us that something is deeply wrong in the cultures of some of the BBC’s staff and some of its suppliers.

The BBC has undermined its own authority and in a broadcast to BBC staff the director general, Mark Thompson, said: "Our values and our editorial guidelines must take precedence over everything else. There is no excuse for deception..... If you have a choice between deception and a programme going off air, let the programme go. It is far better to accept a production problem and make a clean breast to the public than to deceive."

But this goes further than the BBC. Michael Grade, the executive chairman of ITV and an ex BBC Chairman, in a speech to the Royal Television Society this month, went as far as to doubt the existence of a basic understanding about the importance and value of trust.

That is pretty bad and its is having an effect on TV viewing fugues and that industry as a whole.

But this is not nearly as bad as a PR consultancy I know. The one I have in mind, is oft seen in the columns of the national papers, is a feature organisation in Media Guardian and seems to have a guaranteed slot in PR week. It is a member of PRCA and its employees have senior roles in the CIPR. This consultancy interviewed a student for a job last month. A wide eyed innocent, they thought. Easily seduced into our Graduate programme with examples of high profile brand campaigns, they thought. This agency, told of a campaign that had the brand as hero celebrating 50 years at the top. It was a big and loud campaign - the trouble was - the brand is still not 50 years old, a fact known to both agency and brand manager all the time. The whole promotion was based on a lie. The student turned down the post because she disapproved of the ethics of this consultancy. Now she has spread the word to whole generation of students. The canker of lost reputation is already gnawing away at the bowels of this (in)famous PR firm.

One day, sometime in the future, an obscure blog post will blow the gaff. Questions will be asked. The TV and Newspapers who had been fooled will be outraged, clients will fade away and perhaps the story will be reported in those publications so in thrall to the PR glitter.

One does not have to look to far to see that this canker has been gnawing at another large Agency this year.

Well, some may say, its to be expected.

Corruption in PR in Britain is worse that in Gangland Nigeria because we know how harmful and corrosive it is.

Some organisations will seek advice from a corrupt PR firm. And just like the BBC the effect of malpractice undermines authority and affects trust and value put on the advice given.

Of course there are pressures. Of course there are rewards and of course there is the culture of the organisation.

The BBC latest revelations came about through staff who do have a code of ethics coming forward and making a clean breast of what was happening.

The same will have to happen across the whole of the Television industry including the production houses.

And as they do it, they will no longer be in a position to take at face value the hype and lies of PR people. This is a good thing for PR which also now needs the kind of transparency we are seeing at the BBC.

It is time now for the PR industry to clean up its act too. It applies internally and externally. It is evident in the churn of agencies and Fluctuations of fees and retainers. It is seen as paid-for placement; the late night drop (and that includes that dinner party); exchange of favours; under and over servicing; unequal treatment of journalists. The list is long.


If it is happening in a consultancy near you, there are the confidential lines to the PR associations or, its just possible that social media offers a way like no other to clean up the act of not jst the BBC.

Let John Mackey be a lesson to us all.

Hans Kullin notes that If you are in public relations, a worry might be that one of your company's employees gets caught in the act of anonymously posting negative comments in online forums. But few would probably expect that this person would be the CEO of the company. That's exactly what the CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc. did. AP has the story.

I think it is inevitable that there will be negative comments. Live with it, manage it and if you don't think straightening out wayward CEO's is not part of the PR job - retire!

I noted the story and think it should provide a (lame) example of Transparency in the NewPRWiki. It would add to the essays I added on The Nature of Transparency, Internet Agency, Porosity, Richness and Reach.

Had CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., John Mackey, read these articles (and the concepts have been about for the last decade), he would not have been such a prat and if the Whole Food PR person had taken on board what the Internet really means to us all - and these are the five tenets, life would have been less fraught for Whole Foods Market Inc. shareholders.

'Blazing netshine' will find you out!

The ethics of the 'empty chair'

Like many people, I watched Jeremy Paxman on the BBC Newsnight programme Michael White of the Guardian and "Guido Fawkes" a political blogger.

The discussion talked of the relationship between Journalists, bloggers and politicians.

The debate told how some politician 'punish' some journalists by not allowing access, the 'empty chair' whereby access is denied to the fourth estate when the politician has had some sort of bust up with a newspaper, TV channel or journalist. The other side of this trade off is when journalists do not report or who selectively report about a politician in a way that harms the the politicians standing with the electorate and other constituencies.

This is, of course, an example of the all too cosy relationship between Public Relations and the Media.

Underlying this debate is a serious point.

Who is all this content really for? Would it be, just by mis-chance, electors or others who want to be informed about the events among politicians and government?

If not. It does not matter much, other than it is a huge and costly exercise affecting the public purse.

If it is, then there is a big issue and one would no longer doubt why people are turned off by political maneuvering to manipulate the information they need but a wrangle at their expense.

Lets take this further and into the realm of all Public Relations.

Lets suppose an organisation wants to get its message across to a constituency and relies on the media to act as the purveyor. Is this legitimate? Is it ethical?

There can only be legitimacy if this is the only method for communication. Today, of course, this is not so. There are endless channels for communication. The traditional Press, radio and TV are but three conduits among many (The press release is no more than a form of blog post that saves lazy journalists setting up effective RSS feeds).

If, on the other hand, the Press is being used to add legitimacy to a story, then it has to do the job. It should not be selective or deny access because it has had some sort of tiff. It cannot be childish about it. Today, the press release can find its way onto a web site; the background can be offered and debated using blogs, wikis or any other form of publishing and social media. On the other hand the Press can be critical, it can add that most precious of values, time and expertise. It has a resource and journalistic expertise to put the story into critical context. The same might be said of bloggers but without the authority of the publishing house. The closer the media gets to PR the less it is valued for its critical faculty and its authority.

At the same time, when a person (minister, politician, celebrity, company, brand) plays the empty chair routine and and does not provide access to a journalist, programme or newspaper, the media response has, once again, to be critical and explain to its audience that it is being denied access and transparently explain why it is not able to report or discuss issues in public.

The public, including the elector in the case of Fawkes, Paxman and White, can then make a judgement.

Pretending that the present state is 'News as Usual' demonstrates a lack of ethics by both parties. It undermines the authority of both and diminishes trust.

An ignored person, politician, celebrity, company or brand has YouTube and blogs available all the time. Its use is news on a number of fronts. An ignored journalist has the privileged position of showing how a lack of transparency is against 'the public interest'.

The status quo, in an age of social media corrupts both PR and journalism and both sides need to recognise it if only to re-build trust among their respective constituents.

This is not just a political issue, it is an issue for all practitioners. Why only use Press releases and private briefings when the whole world can see the story for what it is using social media.

It is time the publishing houses looked at what they can offer that blogs can't. Expert, timely, critical, reporting.

It is time for PR to act ethically and expose stories to their publics and not hide behind copy takers, the so called journalists of our time.

Could you believe that marketers are unethical?

Between 12% and 15% of clicks through Yahoo! search marketing ads are identified as erroneous and discarded from advertiser bills, the company has said.

eConsultancy reports.

Announcing a stepping up of its fight against click fraud, Yahoo! announced the appointment of veteran company lawyer Reggie Davis to a new vice-president of marketplace quality position.

In a role mimicking a similar senior position at rival Google, he will need a new team as well as cross-departmental efforts to improve reliability and eliminate the possibility of fraud-related legal action.

The advertsing and marketing industries are not comming out of their work in Cyberspace very well. Fraud is Fraud.

Bang! Bang! Marketing

I shudder at a Guardian article about modern day marketing.

I Quote:

"We got a group of 14 or 16 actors, who were all football fans, but pretended to be fans [of the unnamed club]," explains Graham Goodkind, Sneeze's founder and chairman. "And they went round bars and clubs around the ground, in groups of two, saying that one of their mates had been sacked from work because he kept on getting these text messages and talking to everyone about it, and his boss had had enough and given him the boot. So they were going round with this petition trying to get his job back - kind of a vaguely plausible story.

"And then the actors would pull out of their pocket some crumpled-up leaflet, which was for the text subscription service. They'd have a mobile phone in their pocket, and they'd show them how it worked. 'What's the harm in that?' they'd say. And they could have these conversations with lots of people - that was the beauty of it. Two people could spend maybe 20 minutes or half an hour in each pub, working the whole pub. We did it at two home games and reckon we got about 4,000 people on the petition in total."

The petition went in the bin, of course, but subscriptions to the club's texting service soared. "The week after we had done the activity it went up to 120 sign-ups," says Goodkind, who is also boss of the Frank PR agency.

A lot of this is spured by the poor performance of advertising:

A 2004 study by Deutsche Bank found that, in the short term, just 18% of television campaigns in the US actually generated a positive return on investment. In the long term this figure rose, but only to 45%, suggesting that most TV advertising is little more than a fun way for a company to waste its money.

There is much more to this article and it is worth reading iffor no other reason that to look at the ethics of moderndat Marketing, advertising and - I regret to say PR.