In Memory of Peter F Drucker

It time to talk money. Of course there is the folding stuff (cash to most of us) and e-money. The ERSC fumbles with the idea of other forms of money and there is also what Don Tapscott suggested in his 1996 book that the digital economy is a “new economy based on the networking of human intelligence”.

Evans and Wurster identified that information adds value to things in their seminal book.

In 'Blazing Netshine' I noted that we have more accumulated data and information now that at any time in the past and that it can be corrosive (acting as a rip tide that can undermine the stoutest defence).

There is plenty of evidence that this is so. It is common sense. If information adds value, it can also undermine value.

We use money as a measure of many things and, in doing so rely on its robust reputation. But in a era of so much information with its corrosive capability, can we continue to have so much faith.

I think not. We are in danger of missing early signs that money may not be as reliable as it is cracked up to be.

The new financial reporting demands on companies seem like a good idea to many but are, in fact, an expression of doubt about the usefulness of money for valuing companies. Money is still the tool of choice and yet is being undermined by the people who most need to use its capabilities.

These government backed doubts are dangerous in that they undermine the value of money as a reporting mechanism for corporate reporting.

Worst still are those who would pretend that a wide range of intangibles have financial worth. Typical among these are those measures that try to value brands. Companies may (think they) own brands but the nature and value of brands are owned by the consumer.

Baruch Lev has made it quite clear that the intangible values are many times more 'valuable' that the financial metaphor valuation used by accountants and economists.

We must, therefore, have robust alternatives to money for to trade in the market of social development.

Intangible values are information based. Information, as we have seen, can destroy as much as it can create. When information is used as the basis for knowledge, or our view of certainty, it is very powerful indeed.

There is every reason to believe that we have to be much more aware of this significance.

The pound in your pocket, may quickly become valueless. The other values may be sound but our reliance on money as a metaphor for wealth needs a lot more thought to save a lot of angst which our economies may want to avoid.

These thoughts are not some random idea.

Peter Drucker noted that “Mark Hanna in 1896 knew very well that there are plenty of concerns other than economic concerns... But knowledge, the new resource for economic performance, is not in itself economic.”

In effect, he warned that those of us who have an information and knowledge role and responsibility, public relations practitioners, should note that the Hanna certainty cannot be relied upon.

He said: “As soon as knowledge became the key economic resource, the integration of interests--and with it the integration of the pluralism of a modern polity--began to be lost. Increasingly, non-economic interests are becoming the new pluralism--the special interests, the single-cause organizations, and so on.

“Newspapers and commentators still tend to report in economic terms what goes on in Washington, in London, in Bonn, or in Tokyo. But more and more of the lobbyists who determine governmental laws and governmental actions are no longer lobbyists for economic interests. They lobby for and against measures that they--and their paymasters-- see as moral, spiritual, cultural. And each of these new moral concerns, each represented by a new organization, claims to stand for an absolute.

“There is thus in the society of organizations no one integrating force that pulls individual organizations in society and community into coalition. The traditional parties--perhaps the most successful political creations of the nineteenth century--can no longer integrate divergent groups and divergent points of view into a common pursuit of power. Rather, they have become battlefields between groups, each of them fighting for absolute victory and not content with anything but total surrender of the enemy.

“We need systematic work on the quality of knowledge and the productivity of knowledge—neither even defined so far.”

Drucker well understood that we have to go beyond traditional economic thinking in a networked, knowledge society.

He re-enforced the concept:

“We also need to develop an economic theory appropriate to a world economy in which knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant, if not the only, source of comparative advantage.

Despite my diversions into the world of functional PR, this really what this blog is about. We have to work on our role in deploying the 'key economic resource'. Elsewhere, I explain why Public Relations has a critical role in this endeavour. This is an endeavour towards Drucker's aim:

Organizations must competently perform the one social function for the sake of which they exist--the school to teach, the hospital to cure the sick, and the business to produce goods, services, or the capital to provide for the risks of the future. They can do so only if they single-mindedly concentrate on their specialized mission. But there is also society's need for these organizations to take social responsibility--to work on the problems and challenges of the community. Together these organizations are the community.

This then, is where the need to understand the value of relationships, the tangible and, especially the intangible token and its value is critical.

At the core of this form of economic activity, social cohesion and social advantage is a discipline that can and should spring from the practice of public relations, a discipline that levers wealth or, to put it another way, the management practice that operates in a market place for mutual knowledge trade and advantage.

The Relationship Value Model defines the quality of knowledge and offers the practice that levers the productivity of knowledge which is why we have to look beyond money. It is only then that we can resolve the Drucker's over-riding imperative society's need for organizations to take social responsibility--to work on the problems and challenges of the community.

Drucker, P (1994) The Age of Social Transformation, The Atlantic Monthly,

Evans, P. and Wurster, W. S. (1999) `Blown to bits', Harvard Business School Press.

Phillips, D (2000) Blazing Netshine on the Value Network

Tapscott, D (1996), The Digital Economy: promise and peril in the age of networked intelligence. McGraw-Hill, New York, p. xiii

When your past catches up

There are times when its good to hide from one's history especially when it involves work.

I was recently asked to comment on the predictions I made in 1995 and 1998.

Well, in the seven years a lot has happened but much of it is holding up quite well. The timescales were a little ambitious and both Google and Blogging were not yet the vouge a decade ago but to have to post justify ones statements in the present era is a bit of a chore.

This is open house. Who wants to pick holes in my vision of the future a decade ago?

Picture: Future Blender Public Gallery

Peppered with messages

Reasononline tell us that Jonathan Adelstein, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, is outraged at what he sees as product-placement manipulations by TV networks. Because "the public needs to know when they're being advertised to."

How silly. Messages come at people from many directions. Multitouch communication is necessary and we know from research by Guy Constadine that people are very good at identifying advertising messages all on their own.

For this reason, it should not be unexpected that many consumers dismiss such attempts at influence if it is not relevant to their particular social frame.

Does anyone imagine that the Parkinson Show is anything more than a puff for his guests? Its still quite a fun show.

From the Philippines

This post is from Manila where there is an inventions fair.
In the relationship value model, you will recall that it is significant for the public relations process to come into play before value can acrue. That is why I am here.

New Blog service

This is a straight off topic plug for a new service of mine. Some will know that I dabble in media content analysis (I set up Media Measurement in the 1980's). This interest is now manifest in news abstracting and other technologies.

I am developing a new blog service to search for, analyse and report on blog posts about organisations, brands, people, places, etc. We are looking for people who have an interest in Blog management and or interested in subject matter arising in blogs.

The service is designed to:

• Seek blog posts every day for a subject (e.g. A company name, person, brand)
• Identify the core concepts mentioned in posts
• Show the most important issues mentioned
• Identify the issues clusters (news topics)
• link back to summaries of the blog posts and drill down to the original clusters.

In addition the service will provide:

• A list of the most frequent bloggers about the subject
• A list of bloggers by issue
• A list of places, people and organisations mentioned in posts

Furthermore

• A searchable archive
• A reporting interface
• A capability to manage forward relevant blogs and reports to clients

My objective is to offer public relations practitioners with tools to identify issues, people, places (locations) and their associated blogger sources for blog management.

At present we have a beta capability and seek a daring few who would like to have an input into the development of the service.

More information is available here.

First Blog lecture?

At 4pm today, I will be presenting the Leedsmet Internet Undergraduate lecture.

Usually one presents with slides and whiteboard but to re-enforce the significance of the Internet, I will use a blog instead.

I think this is a first.

There are a number of issues involved. First there is the intellectual property issue.

Should I hold the copyright? Won’t it be ripped off?

Well no and yes. Why hold the copyright. If I did the reach of the lecture would be minimal. Will it get ripped off by others? Well… yes. Some will reference it and some will steal it.

Does it matter.

Well, my students will not gain the upper hand because their lecturer is making the content available to all. I will not be paid for my hard work and research over many years by many of the people who use the material.

On the first point students at the lecture can find out more. Their physical presence and their association with Leeds Metropolitan University will give them opportunities to use the original research and they can talk to the lecturers.

On the second point, there is no loss offering the intellectual property to one and all but a powerful point is made about the significance of the Internet to our students and there is a gain in reputation and there is again awareness of my work.

Oddly enough, people still want to hear the lecture, see the person and – will yes, pay for the privilege.

Here we see a lecture, re-purposed and adding values all over the place.

PR creates wealth. It is the only management practice that does.

This is in the mould of what could be called PR 3.0

icture by Lela Zone

Future PR? Not!

From a link in Richard Bailey's Blog, I note that Brendan Hogan offers his view of public relations in 2030 here. In addition there are comments by Mike Manuel about a different set of PR rules. Mike is quite sensible but Brendan is way off the mark and I disagree with him on almost all counts.

Here is my annotated rant and response.

1 We will offer clients a "Consumer-Generated" media relations offering in addition to, and in conjunction with, our traditional "Mainstream" media relations services. Will they ever be completely integrated?

Inter-reaction between organisations and people will be quite granular, will be timed to deliver at an optimum moment relevant content through a range of channels. The difference between research and evaluation will have vanished (and practitioners will need to keep up with trends) because the top brands will want near instant response to changes of interest and mood among consumers. Basically, when the consumer is in the mood, the message will have to be there and the means by which the consumer responds will have to be in place (we may be using a form of Social Frames) This will require that in-house or agency people will uses a wide range of people working a in wide range of practice (domains of practice).This multitouch PR will need to be very responsive.

In 2030 the print media will be much closer to home. It will be much smaller. It will lever its emotional link with consumers. It will have shed a lot of the overhead it can't sustain like advertising departments (most print advertising will be delivered against demographics through on-line purchasing – an extension of Google's adsense). Editorial deadlines will vanish and print will be an extension of online content as opposed to online being an extension of print. There is no case for print alone – except as brochureware and bookish tracts - enter the 3000 word 'press release' story to read on the underground (subway if you live in New York).

2 As is already happening in other parts of the network, our service lines will become increasingly specialized on niche audiences and industries -- broadcasting to narrowcasting -- GLBT, Seniors, Youth, Ethnic, Obese, Aboriginal, etc.

This is very old think. Its the old (and devalued) advertising model. Niche audiences as broad as suggested will turn consumers off. The evolving gold standard public relations process acts on the mind of publics by explicating the context in which the world we 'see' is recognisable (“marked”) so that the internal self can recognise, evaluate and relate to the PR objective. Our audiences will reflect the commonality of interests to optimise return.

3 Whereas the Economist recently identified employees as "unintended guardians of the brand", in 2030 employees -- and increasingly customers -- will be the brand, and will need to be cultivated as such.

The whole notion of brand management has to undergo a revolution. The existing models are far to fixed in the stakeholder model. This rigid thinking is not of the networked society and by that I do not mean just electronically networked. I mean the society living in a weightless economy. Rigid corporate models are dangerous. This idea of hierarchical structures has to be re-evaluated by the PR industry. It is already being left behind in this regard.

4 We will be able to accurately measure the impact of our activities on the bottom line

So What! The bottom line is not even the objective of management. Wealth creation is much more significant. Without the creation, sustenance and increase of wealth at the core of organisational activity, the bottom line is irrelevant. I can guess that a lot of PR will be aimed at narrow objectives but this will have to be predicated on a higher model of practice. The value of relationships is pretty powerful stuff in a weightless economy.

5 Non-financial drivers (reputation and brand, management experience, governance policies etc.) will overtake financial drivers as determinants of a corporation's "value".

Almost there. Lets start with the idea that without relationship management there is no brand. So, the big driver is relationships. Relationship management is an opportunity for PR if it is to be more than agentry. Brendan's ideas are not nearly thought through otherwise his earlier comments would be seen as the house of cards it is. To start with, it may be an idea to understand that reputation is a manifestation of value not the other way round (and here is an example of what I mean).

6 We will consult regularly into the c-suite as that is where our clients will sit -- as chief reputation officers, chief marketing officers and chief communications officers.

Only if PR is interested in its value creating role will it deserve a place in the c-suite. Otherwise, its practitioners will be in the waiting room while the big decisions are made in the board room. I see hear and smell functionary in this statement. Perhaps this is where consultants want to position themselves but the real PR is not kicking its heals in the corridor.

7 "Change Communications" will simply become "Communications" because change, to abuse an over-used euphemism, will be the only constant (yeah, kick me).

PR is not about communications. Communications is very important but relationships and relationship change (the fundamental of wealth creation) is not wholly reliant on communication. Change communication is an oxymoron because the real need is to change the value of relationships. Treating the symptoms meant that this was always an 'ism' dreamed up in an idle moment by an out of work publicist.

8 We will always be "on" -- increasingly having to react and respond to events happening at any time, anywhere in the world -- whether in Toronto, Saskatoon, or Mumbai. Traditional press cycles and time-lags will be a thing of the past.

Note the future tense. What we need to know is that the memories our work leaves behind are always on. The impact of globalisation is with us now and monitoring and evaluation are critical, have to be real time and actioned upon.

9 We will be cultivating conversations and two-way dialogs, not simply one-way interactions.

What a nice simple idea. Will dialogue will be enough? Even now it is not enough. There is a need for engagement which means that public relations will be as much about changing organisations as engaging the public sphere. How much will public relations be involved in changing organisations in 2030?

Some, in PR, claim "global teams dedicated to providing useful intelligence and insights by harnessing the latest in technology and research". However, they are still able to be seen to offer ill thought through ideas about the future that miss nearly all the major changes needed in a society that is networked, global and facing the issues surrounding a need to understand personal, social and cultural differences and needs.

The lessons of global terrorism and New Orleans depravation show how much we need to understand, interact, respond and change at the highest level to ensure the peace, properisty and value creation we all desire. If, in the next 25 years we do not see what is unleashed by globalisation at both micro and macro level, a new dark age is already here. That goes for PR practice more than any other area of endevour.

Picture: Neanderthals British Museum

The thinking continues

This post continues where an earlier one left off.

It's about value.

Here are some words that need to be removed from the language of management:

Assets, stakeholders, marketing.

They need to be replaced by values, groups and relationships.

Then we know the value of people in creating enterprise.

Now add back asset, stakeholder and market and you know what you are dealing with as an investor, customer, worker, supplier, neighbour and all the other groups that make the enterprise tick.

Now apply that thinking to Glaxo, Barclays, Department of Health, Homeland Security and Oxfam.

As a 'stakeholder' (person?) you can now make better decisions about organisations.

If we look at the word asset first. Think money. Money is a metaphor for relative value. I can exchange a money unit for labour or products or services.

If we replace the word money for value it only works if we can compare one value with another and money is often used to do just that. But in a global, networked society, money is a bit clumsy.

If we want to use money to measure things like reputation or love, it is out of its depth. If we want to use money to measure the value of an idea, it has its limitations and using money to value relationships is just not possible.

For a long time this did not matter a lot but in the 'weightless economy' it is an issue. In the kick and fumble economy (so called tangible economy that you can kick or drop on your foot - is this a Kumble economy I wonder?) money is used a lot. It is how our accounting systems work.

What we now need is a form of 'money' that can compare the value of, say, reputation in the weightless economy with a tangible machine in the Kumble economy.

Perhaps we can if we look at relationship dependencies, then there is a glimmer of hope. For example, a big generator that creates electricity for a city is a big tangible asset. It goes onto a balance sheet with no trouble and is written off over a number of years. Its value can also be summed up in the relationships that its energy consumption and outputs create, sustain and add to relationships. These include the direct relationship between the vendors, operator and customers and indirect relationships that also accrue.

The extent to which the the thing, the generator (token) has material values (relevant values in a social group) is a measure of its real value. But these values are significant in their relative aspects. Just like using money, there has to be a form of exchange value and this means that the values need to be comparable.

Having the lights on is relatively more valuable if you are cooking compared to sleeping. The relationship value between the generator and the social group will, therefore, change under different circumstances.

The value is then dependent on the environment, at a specific time.

It is also dependent on the extent to which there is knowledge about the benefit of the light and its dependence on the generator and the extent to which awareness is exercised in the brain. Such aware social groups may appreciate put a value on the generator directly or indirectly. But the value will change dramatically when there is an issue (change of circumstance). If the generator stops and the light goes out, the social group will become active. They will want information and a reason for the loss of value. And the value of the generator will decline.

There is no money involved in this it is simply the value of tangible asset in the raw.

So far so good.

More thinking is still needed to be able to identify and measure values.

Picture: Parker Hannifin Corporation is the world's leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control technologies

Tomorrows PR is closer than you think

Next Tuesday, I will be lecturing on Internet communications technologies applied in the public relations context at Leeds Metropolitan University (more information is available from Liz Yeomans if you would like to be there).

It will provide an opportunity to examine the extent to which computers are taking on an editorial role in their own right and I will show a number of sites which offer computer generated blog content for tennis, cricket and football enthusiasts. This is because this kind of language processing will soon provide intelligence about both mediated (the traditional media) and unmediated (blogs, Usenet and other on-line content).

Such processes will offer on-line real time intelligence about the agenda's of these channels for communication, the people and places involved (see Google Earth as an example) and the progress of news and opinion over time.

For practitioners using the Relationship Value Model, these forms of real time content are beginning to offer practitioners a close view of expressions in a range of media as they morph and change over time and the values that accrue.

As a simple research project, and using part of speech tagging (POS) I am looking at nouns as expressions of tokens and adjectives, adverbs etc. as expressions of values to see how closely we can identify drivers for relationships in the words both the man-in-the-street and journalists.

This is blue sky research that will, one day, I hope, offer practitioners real and valuable tools to aid planning, management and measurement of PR campaigns and effects.

I imagine that within a year, such tools will be generally available and, hopefully, offer the first significant PR tools for practitioners working in relationship management.

The opensource value relationship media moguls

My colleague at LeedsMet, Richard Baily has the knack of putting his finger right on the important trend with a practical example. He spotted that Audi is setting up its own TV channel. The idea is not new but both the technology and opportunities are of a different order to past examples.

The significance of this, as I pointed out over the weekend is that, among the channels for communication, the monoliths are and will have a rough time unless they seek a different value model.

The genie just won't go back in the bottle.

Now, you can have your own TV station for cost of a series of TV ads. Content is not so costly and the range of relationships offer big returns.

Multitouch is here and the savy relationship management managers will exploit it anyway they can. If this means own TV stations, own news media and working with others in a networked community, so be it.

We have already seen the CEO of BBDO has been quoted as saying mobile telephones and other devices will soon become more important for marketing than traditional television (FT 06/04/05)

The added collaboration increases the size and value of the company (more material relationships) and at the same time the opensource/collaborative process reduces financial costs.

In the process, we see added value accruing to both the organisation and the publics. Better reach and wider choice are obvious. This Audi experiment is a classic example of the Relationship Value Model in practice albeit a tentative step.

Here then is the real opportunity. It is the agency that aggregates the content, clients and relationships and in doing so becomes the opensource media mogul.

The only requirement is that the agency really understands the nature and significance of Relationship Value.

Picture:

A Day in the Life of Chemmy Alcott. Sharing the secrets of her fitness regime, British ski champion Chemmy Alcott drives through the Austrian Alps in her Audi A3 Sportback for a day of intense summer training. See the video here.

Flat Earth

The old hierarchical structure of organisations is again tested and this time by Forrester research. In the summary of Globally Distributed Development Defined, they identify exactly how porous the shell of organisations have become.

One thing they do point up is that the Relationship Value Model has not yet arrived in Forreserland.

They identify this problem:

“The challenge of globally distributed development is more difficult than most companies believe. Application development (AD) organizations have run distributed projects for years — teams work at multiple locations, some developers telecommute, and the customers they serve often work at remote locations. But distributed development in 2005 means much more than this. Not only do AD staff work in multiple locations, but their teams also include third-party consultants and tool vendors' staff, spanning continents and cultures. Companies moving to a globally distributed development model must alter their processes, their tool sets, and their staffing models to address these different types of challenges.”

The same can be said for call centres, distributed manufacturing, all of supermarket food sourcing and almost every form of corporate business today.

This throws up an issue about how we define organisations and we have been down this route before. What this points up the huge value that needs to be placed on the value of relationships and the value of the expert who can aid the management of relationships throughout organisations.

This thinking is also the thinking of the open source movement and much of Web 0.2.

This meanst that now it is time to take the issue further and consider citizen everything. Yes, everything. Journalism, TV, radio, music, video, TV, invention, production, distribution, exchange and horror of horrors – the nature money itself!

We are aware that intangibles are the larger part of corporate assets measured in terms of money (which is only a metaphor for wealth) and now I want to explore this concept further.

If we take money out of the equation, we get a better view of value. It no longer gets in the way of thinking about value.

I am working on it now because I want to look at how the Relationship Value Model can be applied to the big companies? What happens to the big projects, the big engineering, the big aeroplanes.

The thinking begins!

Picture: The Solidity of the Road to Metaphor and Memory, 1934 Misha Reznikoff , oil on canvas 30 1/2 x 40 3/8 Smithsonian American Art Museum

The question of content

The AOL Time Warner debate rumbles on about who really acquired whom.

The real issue is about content and this is a critical issue for public relations.

We love the content of our publications. The touch and feel of a book, newspaper or magazine is a mixture of visual and touch signals that are very important in our lives.

We are happy as couch potatoes and the effect of visual cognition is dramatic. Some visual environments are associated with presence, which is characterized by high levels of arousals and intensive affect. High levels of arousal and intensive affect are associated with lower levels of ad awareness, which means that peripheral cues will play a more important role in the persuasive process as technology advances in visual communication develop.

Has pap TV had its day?

Radio is not just wallpaper. Sounds are evocative and stir emotions. Like all other media, radio is growing fast.

The importance of all this is that this is about the future of communication.

Usenet, that ancient manifestation of citizen journalism, showed us the way back in the '70's. Listserve, Chat, discussion boards, Instant Messaging, Blogs, Wiki's and podcasting are a continuum. With the Web, iTV, SMS, mobile voice, video and movies they form a high reach divergent and convergent communication mix and, more to the point, content.

Which takes us back to AOL/TW. The rich content in the Time Warner archive is important and significant. With the Internet's capability to offer transparency, porosity and agency, this archive is now vulnerable and all the more so because of Web 0.2. This makes it even easier for information to be made available, 'leak' out of organisation, and morph as it goes (see this BBC report). Additionally some content will be re-cycled forever.

Joel Cere Reports on Sir Martin Sorrell's IABC comments. He points out that Sorrell

'...singled out News Corp recent online media “panic buying” spree and the threat to some traditional media’s business models (newspapers classifieds v. Craiglist). His question to media owners: “How can traditional media continue to charge more for less?" Sir Martin Sorrell blamed the failure from traditional media to embrace online on the age of people who run major media/ad groups and a reluctance to change. may also have made the point that the News Corp buying spree will not help News Corp. NewsCorp cannot keep up and cannot put up.'

I commented: Citizens, global citizens in networks, media, disparate on-line global media and now Web 0.2 break out of the command and control media mogul's grasp.

At present rates newspaper and magazine editorial will shrink by 30% in five years (print won't die – it will change). Web TV (including podcasting) will undermine the big TV companies (and they will begin shrieking about stinking fish any day now – just like the music industry did over MP3). But the effect will be a breakout just like citizen music with share of the music consumer market fleeing the big producers in double digits per year.

The UK's Newspaper Licensing Agency, the Copyright Licensing Agency and their international counterparts want to control the distribution of news articles (news clips) and just shoot themselves in both feet (if its not relevant and accessible on line, its not relevant any more and is accessed by minorities already overwhelmed by vastly more significant stuff on-line). Once again, the protectionist media owners have failed to grasp the significance of our networked society.

Sir Martin just blurted out what is known.

There is a paradigm of buyer/seller. It is the paradigm of mass media, full on above the line advertising, point of sale promotion and marketing managed discounts.

But people want more. They want and always have wanted added value. The seek extra values they can take out of a transaction, the experience of relationships. They want content.

Some will come from the AOL/TW's of this world but the nature of open source translates well into citizen content with its massive manpower and hyper commitment. People seek the community and selectivity, involvement and recollections of relationships that the psychologists have been unravelling in the last four years. These ideas of associated value has had the brand management industry entranced and it has struggled with this idea. But the reality is that this is a public relations industry opportunity because PR can add extra value in relationships. This means that to serve his clients, Sir Martin may think it is some value to invest in some serious research. By that, I mean real hard empirical research among the top PR academic research houses in the world. There is no need to research blogging or podcasting or Web 0.2. That is a given. What is important is why and how multitouch relationships building is important, can build value and create wealth. WPP has spent money on advertising, marketing and brand management academic research. Now, to survive, it could look has to look towards the only organisations it has that can strategically manage multitouch – PR.

Picture: Time Warner

Reputation is a reflection of wealth

PR people are obsessed with corporate reputation, the reputation of CEO's, brands, services and such like.

Of course, this is, again, the industry looking for measures that are symptoms and not cause.

As organisations develop wealth through the relations they create, the participants in this relationship building activity compare the explicit tokens espoused by the organisation with their own.

The signs and symbols, expressions and actions and representations of attitude, emotion, belief or cultural values are examined for cognitive consistency, and cognitive dissonance. Through this process they value the organisation's tokens by comparing them with their own perception. Where there is consistency, the reputation is positive and where there is dissonance, the reputation is in decline.

In resolving dissonance the public relations practitioner adds both value and enhances reputation.

This means that the practitioner's primary role is in resolving those issues that surround dissonance and thereby enhance the value of the organisation and, as a by-product, change its reputation.

The value of organisations change before their reputation does.

In attempting to measure reputations, some people use a all manner of algorithms and achieve the kind of results that one expects from measuring symptoms. They conclude that the symptoms exist. Wow!

This is an approach that might change one's view of blog management. Managing comment in blogs to enhance the value of an organisation as a defence against criticism is about managing dissonance to enhance corporate value and the by-product is an enhanced reputation. Such activities are implemented in a variety of ways among the different domains of public relations practice. Thus Jim Horton might refelct on the value of not the reputation of The New York Times but its loss of value.

Picture Cognitive Dissonance by Charles Neenan

Actors

I have been asked to explain what I mean by 'Actors'.

There is a case for using the term in the sense of the 'actor network theory' a more human version of the computer model.

I used there term in much the same way as it is used in social network contexts and from the Latin etymology:

1. one that acts: a doer

2. one that takes part in a situation

3. (legal) An advocate or proctor in civil courts or causes.

4. (legal) One who institutes a suit; plaintiff or complainant.

5. (policy debate) One who enacts a certain policy action.

Latent publics are important in PR but Actors are not latent. There is knowledge and cognition in the human and social make-up of people that means that there is always a possibility of identifying tokens and values where there can be common ground. But sometimes these can be very difficult to find and the process may be long term to develop mutual values.

Thus there remains a group of actors available in as in Grunig's latent publics.

There is a need for actors to 'hold' tokens and values and thereby be a participant if only because of awareness within a social frame.

Actors are people.

We need PR evaluation principle

In the light of the recent IPR Summit on Measurement I think it is time to create an underlying precept for PR evaluation.

My view, which is that there are two models to be concerned with.

The first is a transactional form of relationships (a buyer/seller - agentry – model). In this model the organisation and the public take out of the relationship a value (the buyer gets benefits the seller is rewarded for providing them).

There is the second and higher level of relationship management (explicated, among others, by the Relationship Value Model) in which, the participants in the relationship get the rewards as in the buyer/seller model and also identify added mutually accepted and understood values. This is new value i.e. the creation of wealth.

Indeed, there is no other discipline that can create value ergo... PR is the process by which value and wealth are created.

This then gives us a real and true Return On Investment (ROI) which is not about transaction but about wealth created.

This is important for Public Relations both in practice and for academia because this is really where the value of public relations is to be found. By extension PR evaluation should seek answers where and to what extent value has been created both positively and negatively.

I touched on this concept in a previous post. In that case I showed that it was not too difficult to take a subjective view of changing values but this is far too vague for our purposes.

You may imagine that I prefer a robust, granular, replicable and transparent process having watched the wriggling smoke and mirrors hype which masquerades as PR evaluation from all too many vendors and which is endorsed by institutions that should know better.

But it is not easy to create such capabilities.

This is not a single 'magic bullet' but there is a need for an over-riding concept and I think that the added value provided by public relations is a good place to start.

Picture: Magic Melodia - The world of magic, of dreams, of alternative realities echoes throughout the new complexity modes of thought. - In art maybe, but this should not be the mantra for PR evaluation. The Art of Leila Kubba Kawash

What is PR about

Its worth listening to this BBC programme called The Message chaired by Jenny Murray (pictured).

How Mintzberg relates to the Model

Fraser Likely prompted me to look again at the work of Henry Mintzberg (Pictured) this week and I am grateful to him for doing so.

On Mintzberg's site is a reference to a chapter he has written for Developing Theory about the Development of Theory, to appear in Oxford Handbook of Management Theory (Michael Hitt and Ken Smith, editors) called The Invisible World of Association. The paper posits:

“We have business and we have government. For too many intents and purposes, we have nothing in between. This distinction has framed the great social debate for more than a century: capitalism versus socialism, markets versus controls, individualism versus collectivism, privatization versus nationalization, “free enterprise” versus “democracy of the proletariat.” The debate features no cooperatives, no NGOs, no not-for-profits, no volunteer organizations, not because they don’t exist—clearly they are present in large numbers—but because they have been forced aside by this simplistic divide.”

It strikes a chord with the Relationship Value Model and does so for this reason.

The Models shows that corporations as well as political and other institutions comprise a coalition of relationships among actors with convergent tokens and values.

It points up that there is not a simplistic divide and goes a step further in showing that even in government and business, it is too simple to lump them together as homogeneous entities. It also shows that the boundaries of these entities are not as rigid or clear cut as one may imagine.

Mintzberg offers us types of association (Activist organisations using advocacy for others, protection associations with advocacy for ourselves, benefit associations offering serviced to others and mutual associations offering services for selves) and I would add that these associations are also not as hard bounded as one might imagine.

This is quite important in public relations practice. It means that we have to be reasonably sure about which coalition of relationships within (and without)organisation is being represented by the public relations programme and, equally which coalition/s is/are the relationship partner.

In each case, such coalitions can be quite broad and, in some instances, can stretch well beyond the bounds of the organisation concerned.

We see this with some campaigning organisations in some cases such as Life Sciences Research, quite blatantly and brutally so. In this instance the campaigning 'association' (to use Mintzberg's term) no longer identifies the company as a the legal entity but as a coalition of related organisations/associations including the New York Stock Exchange.

While direct approaches to organisations can be very effective, this example demonstrates the power of relationship action across the wider nature of a company, their broader nexus of relationships.

This validates the Mintzberg hypothesis which is why his view is so significant yet again.

Where did the Relationship Value Model come from?

The Relationship Value Model, is work in progress and is based on a stroke of luck last May when following the UK General Election.

I was creating summaries using a natural language engine engine which generated semantic concepts about the actors (politicians) involved. This provided a very granular analysis of concepts derived from investigative reportage at a time of very high visibility about the leaders of the political parties. The corpus is about 1800 press articles.

The process is replicable and agnostic and it occurred to me to examine coverage of three party leaders for each party plus three other people as a control group (an industrialist, a celebrity and a sporting figure in the news at the same time).

As expected the concepts for the politicians were significantly the same and the three in the control group had concepts that had virtually no relationships to the politicians at all.

I then took the concepts for each of the actors and gave them four subjective values: Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity and Thread (SWOT) from the perspective of the actors concerned.

Analysis of this data immediately grouped the actors into their respective political parties and the control group had few (negligible) similarities. There are differences between actors in the political parties but the level of convergent values is very high for each of the political 'organisations'.

From this, it seemed to me, I could postulate that an organisation is the nexus of people with both common tokens (in this case semantic concepts from the content analysis) and common values (SWOT) under common circumstances (i.e. a general election - which I describe as a network).

This led to a postulate that there is a need to re-visit two concepts. The first is the nature of organisations (nexus of contracts is no longer accurate and nexus of conversations is too narrow - Coase/Sonsino). An organisation, it seems, is described by common tokens and values held by actors. Such commonality is not a single semantic structure but coalitions of tokens and values commonly held by actors - and thus - an organisation is the nexus of relationships.

The findings are very exciting for practitioner and theorist.

• Organisations are very loosely bounded and more organic than is traditionally held.

• Relationships are formed from an appreciation of both explicit tokens and implicit values between organisations and people and or organisations.

• Relationships flourish when explicit tokens and implicit values held by social groups create a third token or values which is recognised by the parties involved and recognisable by other actors in the same network (how wealth is created).

• Stakeholders cannot be seen as a homogeneous social group, the theory is flawed.

• This is a proof for Georg Simmel (it is also offers an empirical test for the theories of Durkheim, Webber and Marx).

• 
  

Picture First published on BBC.co.uk Tuesday 3rd May 2005.

All change in PR

If the ammount of published pages continues to decline at the current rate, traditional media relations will have 30% fewer editorial pages in print publications inside 5 years.

What will PR people do then?

Television and the online citizen

The 800lb gorilla is back in the limelight. Al Gore put it there. But the gorilla is about in many ways. The movement is gaining ground for Internet Protocol Television (TVIP)and much more.

Some of the will be interactive offering the visual equivalent of blogs. Some will be mobile.

What is much more important is that almost anyone will be able to create a TV station and use the Web to transmit.

The gorilla will still be big but will break out of the straight jacket of controls, reach and limited programming content.

For PR this means we need a much deeper understanding of semiotics and all the paraphernalia of visual (as well as sound) production.

This new evolution, similar to the impact of the web on newsprint, MP3 and podcasting for music and voice will be a citizen movement. The big corporations will have some but the populous will have an even bigger slice.

TV advertising revenues will, like print and sound, take a beating and the communicators will have a great time.

The gorilla now needs to watch out for citizen TV and the online community needs to be wary of the power of 800lbs.

(picture from the Goriller Foundation)

The Quest for Public Relations

Advertising effectiveness is not what it was, marketing is confused. The industry is in crisis.

At the same time, Public Relations is at a crossroads.

In communication, the number of pages of print has declined for the third year running and email, blogs, podcasts, Wiki's, IM, iTV (and up coming Internet Protocol TV) romp away.

The staples of PR practice like media relations are no where near as attractive as they were.

The revenue stream is moving in a different direction.

There are emergent practices like CSR rubbing shoulders with Reputation Management and ethics consultancy in an era of advisory. There is a confusion of communications channels and they require many different skill sets – and, though revenue rich, they are a moving target.

Inevitably this means that public relations practice will morph and change.

To be able to manage this change, there is an even greater need for practice to be grounded in good and ubiquitous theory. Just like medical doctors, accountant and lawyers, there is a need for the fundamentals to be in place.

Upon this foundation the industry can adopt the new processes and adapt to the emergent environment.

For many years, there has been a school of public relations that espoused a practice called 'relationship management'. In simple terms it is a practice that posits that public relations is about creating, sustaining and managing relationships between organisation and their publics.

From a grounded theory perspective this was always a non-starter. There is a presumption that organisations are a 'nexus of contracts'. Primarily founded in a Marxists (wealth is founded in production) paradigm, it has failed the information revolution where the greater part of corporate value is identified as intangible assets. In addition, there is the problem of what is meant by 'relationship'.

PR is predicated on these two pillars of shifting sand.

With empirical evidence that can explicate 'organisation' and 'relationship', public relations practice is free to develop practices that are designed to create, sustain and enhance relationships between organisations and organisations and the public sphere.

It is also free to take up a position as a professional practice as opposed to a craft service.

All of human society and all human evolution is based on relationships. Family, tribe, state, religion, civilisation, economies, local and national institutions are the bedrock of human endeavour. Now, that is a great landscape for the practice of public relations and it is our challenge to prove and exploit this opportunity.

It all begins with the initial research, an exploration for PR as daunting, exciting and exotic as the explorations of Marco Polo and the findings as exciting as Xuanadu, the capital of Kublai Khan' s empire.

Can we do it?

Yes we can!

(picture: Marco Polo)

Stock prices for newspapers are down 12 percent this year, advertising dollars are flowing from print to the Internet - Reuters

So far in 2005, mills have cut their newsprint production by 4.4%.

According to a recent survey ( Clear Content, 2005 ) conducted by Clear Context on email usage, the number of email users is increasing by millions everyday.

Blog count doubling every five months

IDC expects the IM market to rocket from $315m in 2005 to $736m in 2009.

BT is upgrading its network to enable it to stream interactive television into customers’ homes over a two-way high-speed broadband internet connection providing services designed to appeal to ordinary television viewers as much as to computer buffs.

Language

We depend on it. It distinguishes us from all other beings. Its use is fundamental to excellent PR. Language is important.

Language development and the working of the brain to allow us to use language is complex. It is important and powerful.

It can affect knowledge, cultures and emotions.

Semiology - is the study of signs and is the process of carrying meaning. It depends on the use of codes that may be the individual noises or letters that humans use to form words; the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear.

To be really good at public relations, we need to know about these things.

To be able to identify the tokens and values our organisations want to reveal and the tokens and values relevant to our publics, we need to have a pretty good idea about what language is and what signs are being communicated in networks and are relevant in social frames.

How to survive, create, sustain and enhance value

The nature of organisations is that they survive by creating, sustaining and enhancing their value.

To do this they develop relationships, maintain relationships and add value to their relationships.

Value can come in many shapes as Charles Handy explains this week.

To create relationships, organisations present explicit ideas, products, services, issues and other tokens to gain attention in social networks through a range of communications channels. They then provide explicate the values they hold in a context that is applicable to the culture and in terms that are acceptable to the network. The symbols, words and presentation used have to be network sensitive and be empathetic to the perceptions of the members of the network.

In turn, the members of the network respond by paying attention and by identifying the common values, new values and dissonant values and respond in a range of responses from acceptance to rejection.

These responses, to paraphrase Gunig and Hunt, can be latent (not immediately recognising the significance), aware (recognising the significance) or active (responding to the significance). A well managed organisation will take a close interest (with continuous monitoring and evaluation) in these levels of response and the extent of acceptance or rejection. This will, or should, have an immediate impact on the behaviour of the organisation. It has to change to meet the type and level of response or loose out on the relationship opportunity that has been created.

In addition, the converse is true. People in networks also offer tokens and values for the astute organisation to respond to. The organisation can choose to ignore (latent response), note (aware response) or react (active response) to the signals emanating from the networks. This skill set is critical, if an organisation is to survive and flourish.

In sustaining relationships, organisations have to react. They have to continue in the exchange of tokens and values to embed the relationships values in the collective memories of network members. The context has to be made wider and affective in the many social frames inhabited by publics. The effective relationships offer a range of contexts in which the exchange of tokens and values can be made. This requires a range of tactics which are evident in the toolkit available in public relations practice to create a wide range of touchpoints to offer a opportunities for the exchange of values between publics and the organisation.

In getting to this point, an organisation is, at best using PR in its agentry mode. It is functioning in the buyer/seller model of marketing. The true value of public relations is when it is creating value. Here there is an ethical element (which I will deal with at another time) but the real contribution to be made by public relations is its capability to create new wealth. Here, the tokens in a relationship and the values of the parties to the relationship bring new concepts and new ideas and new realisations. It is when the organisation sees values espoused by publics that are not its own and creates a response to meet the needs of both parties. It is the time when publics identify values espoused by organisations and adopts them. As Chris Lawer explains, this thinking is at last reaching into areas like brand management thus, organisation may have the brand but the publics own the brand values. Brand values are in the head of the consumer not in the ownership of the brand. Understanding publics such as consumers helps the organisation empathise with the public's brand/social values, respond to it creatively and derive new mutual value.

New realisations may take a different turn. It may be the introduction of people and their ideas effected by PR. My example is the added value generated when a patent, offered to a Board of directors for exploitation.

These ideas go further than the intangible values of Verna Allee which are pictured here. There is a long way to go before organisations realise what thier true values are.