Drucker meets Grunig

Are Grunig's comments about Public Relations being a management function misplaced as far as the United Kingdom is concerned?

Recently elevated to Charter status and claiming to add £3.4 billion to the UK economy, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations claiming to represent the interests of its 8000 members does not seem to have got the message.

The Institute provides a long list of case studies for the delectation of its members through its web site.

Not much of this corpus has the basics that would be recognised by the late Professor Drucker. "As Columbus discovered America, Drucker discovered management" claimed Ken Witty, the producer of the TV documentary of this icon of management. Ambling through the Institutes case studies he would not recognise any of them as contributing to management.

Drucker invented Management By Objectives and, the nearest the CIPR studies comes to acknowledging the great man, many of the studies have 'objectives'.

But none of them follow through. It was Drucker who said Objectives should be SMART:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Realistic, and

• Time-related.

It is here where the case studies fall down.

For the most part, most fail because the objectives are not specific as to what measurable means. In turn they may or may not be achievable or realistic.

The extent to which PR can claim to be a management practice is dependent on its acceptance of management disciplines.

PR, one might see from these case studies, is not manageable and can not be included in the pantheon of management if Drucker is to believed. It was he who said 'If you can't measure it, You can't manage it'.

Peter Drucker pointed out in the 1970s that effectiveness was 'doing right things, while efficiency was doing things right'.

It would seem that PR falls into the first category. As John Naisbitt noted and the CIPR demonstrates "We are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge."

Where PR might start to 'do things right' also comes from Drucker who said “Knowledge is power. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not hiding it.”

In practice we see individuals and coalitions of people with knowledge. They are not powerful. It is only when knowledge goes through a process that makes knowledge productive. In its communications role, Public Relations facilitates transmission. But it is only when this process has the objective of making knowledge productive that it has any claim as a management process.

If this is true then we might re-asses the CIPR corpus as demonstrating a capability as a management practice.

Making knowledge productive has to be SMART and is a Public Relations process:

• Specifically to evoke or provoke response to an issue (or issues)

• Measurably resolving issues between the parties (organisation/ publics)

• Achieved to the extent of resolving dissonance (and no more)

• Realistically to the extent that interactive evocation or provocation is optimised (not maximised)

• Time-related to the extent that knowledge can be evocative or provocative.

Here we can see and measure how relationships can facilitate the transmission of information to make it productive.

In applying such a test to the case studies some of them can be identified as management processes. This is not to excuse the corpus because the SMART elements are not sufficiently explicit.

In applying such a test, one might ask about other mechanisms for measurement. One such would include Return on Investment. There are two elements at work here. One is the immediate return on the process and the other is the long term asset value.

The immediate return is a matter of identifying the value ascribed in meeting the SMART objective (financial or intangible) and the cost of implementation (human resource and facilities applied). It would be simple if the cost of communication and interaction could be identified. Here we have a dilemma. The cost of maintaining, for example, a free media is a difficult assessment and takes us along a path examining the value of cultures and economic infrastructure. Communication in the USA is cheaper than in Africa for both cultural and economic reasons. Closer to home examples include the differing cost of interaction with the elderly or socially or economically deprived.

The asset impact is of significance because the capability to interact with knowledge has undergone a transformation. Here we may see that this capability has enhance the 'knowledge inventory' of an organisation because 'transmitting information to make it productive' can be achieved at a lower human or material cost.

Both the immediate and asset returns can be measured, in part, in financial terms but frequently this is only part of the story. The intangible value is often very different.

True ROI measures are hard to come by.

There is another way. Public Relations is a cultural activity. The influence of every PR campaign has an effect on culture. But this is for another day.

Picture: The Instruments of Knowledge 1994, Oil on canvas, 66 x 84 cm, Sydney, Private collection Ralph Heimans

Aha! Neville Hobson, you asked how I square my views on PR with membership of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations' definition. Well, luckily, I have already covered this in a previous post.

I still hold that PR levers wealth and explain here....

The debate about public relations being about relationships and relationship management is even more important and goes back 30 years. There are a couple of problems about how to define an organisation and how to define relationships.

In exploring these concepts we discover that there are values involved and that these values are the stuff of relationships and are the means by which organisations can exist. The research also shows how organisations are not really a hierarchy (management pyramid) but are made up of groups of people with (to a greater or lesser degree) convergent interests.

Public relations in its role of facilitating relationships allows values to be exchanged and built upon.

But let me take you into a lecture theatre with a couple of hundred people in the audience.

In trying to explain relationships I take two exquisite roses with me and a $50 note and after some initial comments hand out one rose to a pretty girl half way up the auditorium.

What I have done is to create a relationship with the pretty girl. She blushes. But why?

All I have done is give here a rose, a token.

But she attaches a whole lot of values to a rose. It is symbol of romance and has all manner of connotations. The relationship, fleetingly, blossoms.

The audience looks on and each of them in turn attaches values to the rose and observe the exchange and using their interpretation of this action come up with a whole range of conjecture about this turn of events.

I then introduce my wife who is sitting at the front and give her the other rose and she to has a number of values she attributes to the rose and in this circumstance the rose represents atonement. Of course, at another time and in different circumstances, a rose could represent a moment of great romanticism, but not on this occasion.

I then take the $50 bill. It would buy 20 roses. I give it to another pretty girl... Not surprisingly she takes offence and refuses to accept the money.

Relationships are created in an environment (channel if you will) using the exchange of tokens and where there are common values and common understanding of those values, relationships can blossom.

This is the job of public relations. It entails understanding the environment, identifying tokens that have common values and offering those tokens to create relationships from which new values can spring.

And, to put all of this into context, the rose I take into the lecture theatre is really just a dead stick. It is our culture that gives us all the values we attach to a rose.

So relationships are important and so is the cultural context. Relationships both create organisations and provide the environment, culture and context for survival.

We see expressions of brand values change and morph in the bloshphere just as much, if not more so than the lecture theatre. It happens all the time but always in context. Indeed the fulsome hyper-linking of the bloggersphere and the dynamic of wiki's are the classic case of culture and context building. In these cultures value is being created and even money (which is only a metaphor for value) is being made.

PR at its best is multi-touch. It is evidenced in coverage on TV, radio, the press, magazines, web sites, blogs, wiki's, podcasts and mobile communication and at the water cooler. By enjoining conversations in these channels and by being in tune with the culture of our publics through relevant channels we influence the values held by them and progressively create relationships that shape opinion and values.

Just look at how this works in the connected world. We seek information and build links between the people who provide it for us. In blogging we do it with blogrols; hyperlinks and engagement.

But.... unlike most people, the best practitioners have, or know people who can, identify the stakeholders, the objectives, the strategies and tactics most applicable to gain positive outcomes. We use the boutiques to help implementation and we monitor our effectiveness.

Practiced at its best, this is a management discipline. It is the only management discipline that is optimised to do all these things. Accountants can't do this, advertisers can only work on the fringes, the marketer has to narrower view. Human resource managers are hidebound by the (these days fractioning – remember Neville Hobson's comments about BA food in his recent podcast?) walls of the organisation. It is only public relations that has the breadth of understanding and skill that can do all that is needed.

So we can work in the cultures and among the publics to engage them in development of their values and appreciation of our point of view effectively and with better results than all other management disciplines.

We create the space where value can accrue and offer the knowledge by which value can be acquired.

Now... I accept that this is a utopian view of PR as practiced. It is far wider than most common practice – much of which is boutique work like media relations - but it is public relations.

I hope I have been more convincing about PR levering wealth. It is a bold jump for the profession but one that is well worth making.

Neville added another comment and said this “touches on the reputation of PR in eyes of others and we don't get support from outside the profession for the view.” Well, more fool us.

He suggested that we loose our licence at a time when 'anyone can communicate' and the adder of value is dispersed. But more fool us for not developing and using capability to influence the agenda.

I agreed that the 'change required in PR isn't inevitable. Because it is up to the practitioners to be part of the change otherwise they will be irrelevant and therefore cannot add value.'

But what is in a name? If the PR industry does not do it, someone will and if not us then more fool us.

So, I hold by my precept that public relations is the management practice that levers wealth. And, potentially is the only such practice available to do so.

I will say this: it is only now, with the engagement that has become so evident because of blogs and wiki's that this idea can have traction.

Our era of global engagement is the one that provides the evidence that engagement through relationships add value. It allows us to see how intangible relationships and intangible assets open the way for companies to design, develop make and sell goods and services and make profits.

We can be, if we choose to be, at the heart of this process.

Else we are but fools.

Picture: “The fool doth think himself wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” As You Like It Shakespeare

Glittering Opportunity for PR

In listening to Hobson and Holtz discussing the future of PR last Sunday, we heard a classic example of expertise trying to think through changes taking place in society.

It was interesting, valuable and a good listen. I was also gratified to be included in this podcast. Like a lot of PR this is grounded in practice, and advanced practice at that. This is not empirical research and, with the greatest of respect to messrs Hobson and Holz, showed that we have to create a better research base to give practitioners the authority among dominant coalitions.

It was a surprise to find that Brendon Hodgson was given so much air time. This is incomplete thinking. In addition, they were critical of the Hodgson timescale. They should know that agencies take a very long time to get the message and are right to point out the pacing of the predictions.

But back to the main issues.

First we need to identify what an organisation is. The triangle (empirical/semantic) structure of an organisation is not representative of the reality. The dominant coalition, as we know it morphs and changes.

We all have experience of the decisions in companies being driven from a range of internal groups and this influence does affect the person we recognise as a CEO who is the focus for such power shifts.

Organisations have presence in cultures. For example in the culture of computing technology organisations like IBM and Microsoft have a powerful influence on the culture.

As people in cultures gain a voice, they change the cultural landscape which in turn has an effect on the organisations whose being is dependent on the culture.

We can test this hypothesis using media coverage as a metaphorical representation of culture. In this coverage there are concepts encompassing a range of cultures. But, if you look at the concepts that apply to, say, Madonna, there are few in common with, say, banking. These are two separate cultures.

Today, with wider communication, values can be created through a broad interaction of many people. Stalin can no longer rule. If ever there was evidence for this today, modern day China is an example. These cultural values are very importnat if we seek to engage with publics.

This means we need to be competent with the tools of communication and Dan York's contribution was absolutely right. There is some experience in how to manage this.

In summary, the podcast suggested:

Whether or not called public relations, new, more advanced yet practical and cost effective methodologies are emerging and are long overdue. They are knowledge based. Within the existing profession we can embrace them. They will continue to emerge because there is massive demand for public relations development. It will be a painful process but most of what is lost can be brought back and much is new and we do not have to give it away.

While nearly every other form of commercial activity has changed beyond recognition, the practice of public relations has remained almost static. Press release writing, press list building, issuing of press releases and terrestrial event management is still the bigger part of PR practice. It cannot long remain this way.

PR practitioners have a glittering opportunity if members seek knowledge, are more professional and get organised to compete. There is yet time to catch up but I fear there is not the will.

I can but agree. They were my words to the CIPR annual conference in 1995.

Then I was projecting into the future today I am frustrated that so few of my PR Colleagues still don't understand a decade later.

Picture: By

John Brown  "Being alone is being away from those who understand you."

The future of PR in a Word

For Immediate Release, The Hobson Holtz bi weekly podcast will be talking about the future of PR this week.

It will be interesting to see how far they are prepared to go.

The social media tools like blogs, podcasts, wiki's SMS, mobile PR and the rest are a tempting finishing point and yet they are only tools.

The future of PR can be much bigger. If one believes, as I do, that the practice of PR adds value (a comment made by Shel in his Thanksgiving podcasts #88), then the future of PR as the management function that adds value and creates wealth is bright.

If one believes, as I do, that the creation of wealth from tangible and intangible assets is through relationships between organisations and people, then this is our future.

It does mean that a lot of people in the public relations sector will need to go back to school. It means there will be a tussle between PR and other management and academic disciplines such as accounting and economics.

Back to the tools. The inevitability of social media tools is that they become pervasive in the delivery of television, radio, the press and the web and other communication channels. In turn this means that value will be driven by these developments.

The tools will deliver the capability but without PR, all this is noise for the ill prepared corporation (government and other groups). While the changes in technology are inevitable, organisations will loose the opportunity to deliver products and services. They will not be able thereby to create values including profits unless they can see how public relations delivers value and wealth.

It is not inevitable that this is the future of PR. Far too many people in the business do not want us to go down this route. Its complicated, requires education investment in our own futures and is much wider than most PR practice. The PR industry missed the opportunity that the web offered way back in the '90s and has been playing catch up with IT departments since but that was small beer by comparison with being involved wealth creation.

The future of PR could be missed by the PR industry – what is in a name?

Will Hobson Holtz miss the big picture? Tune in and find out.

Picture “I lost myself in abstract meditations” Dale Chihuly, Sea Form 1985

Journalist Unhinged by the Internet

I am staggered that a journalists should be unhinged by falsehoods in cyberspace. John Seigenthaler writes in USA Today that he has “no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia.” He then rants on about how wicked Wikipedia is for not knowing who done it.

This is a simple 'told you so' post. In 1995, I said it outloud, then in 1998, then in 2000 and again in 2001 and have lectured about it since then all over the world.

The Internet has agency. It can change your messages.

Just like that guy in the pub can be beastly so too can the Internet. But it has reach, a long memory and people as well as machines to do it.

It's common sence to be aware and watch out for it. Its basic PR and if a A former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors has too narrow a view of what PR does .....sob!

Picture: First Amendment Centre

Singing in the bath

Seth Godin is struggling with economics. He is among friends. Economists are too.

Why is it that people do things because they like doing it without gain.

Well, that is not what is happening. What is happening is that people like to add value.

Blogging, like singing in the bath, offer us an opportunity to add to the range of memories we can use in our daily lives. Some of these activities add values to our cultures and the communities within these cultures.

Some of these values, like money, can be used by economists to play with. Other values like singing, can lift the spirits and can be used by people who need a lift. Blogs can offer significant reach for valuable ideas and values.

This is not a hobby economy we are talking about, it is about our culture and that is what the social economy is all about.

Picture: Garden Guides

The shift to online radio

The BBC announced its on-line listening figures this week.

“More than 134 million hours of BBC Radio have been consumed via the Internet this year – the equivalent to 15,345 years of continuous listening.

“The BBC Radio Player – which allows people to listen to BBC programmes on the Internet – has reached another significant milestone in clocking up its 250 millionth request for on demand programming, 100 million of which have been in 2005.

“The figures are released as BBC Radio websites broke all their previous records in October, with 7.7 million unique user agents visiting the sites and listening to 16.4 million hours of radio online.”

Now, 7.7 million is not a great many compared to the traditional audience using radios but it is pretty impressive. Its like having another 7 million radio sets out there and all of them listening to BBC radio output.

It also shows how the Internet is creeping into the traditional media domain.

Culture and PR

These thoughts I owe to the second year BA and HND Public Relations students at Leeds Met.

Yesterday, in a lecture presenting the problems the PR industry faces in resolving the 30 year old problem of how PR is and can be used to in its relationship management role, I was challenged about what I meant by culture.

Culture, the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically (see also Semiotics and Sociology), is the framework upon which all public relations depends for success. But such an answer is far too trite for enquiring minds. It was an issue raised by Elizabeth Albryght in her thoughts about value last week.

I had to go back to the research into the nature of relationships I had been exploring with the empirical research earlier in the year and I realised that in the analysis (which included in-depth analysis of media coverage about nine people with a common interest and a control group of three others), I had identified a group of people who had a common culture (politics) and that within this culturedivergent views and values but that their culture was different to all and each of the members of the control group. there were

In other words, here was a group of people who could classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically and that they belonged to a culture that outsiders could identify even if they did not relate to it or understand it.

Here then was a way we could identify cultures where there was a written record and here also was a way we can identify the divergent views and aspirations of people within a culture.

Further consideration also suggested that such cultures are open to change, can accept and respond to external influences and include such influences within the values of the culture.

The reason I am so sure this is true is that there were events in the period of my research when external influences changed the values of the culture and the members all responded to it.

Interestingly, the change was wrought not by accepting the external influence at face value but in modifying the context of the existing cultural values (the influence was the demise of the Rover Group and subsequent impact on employment – an issue for the cultural group and one member of the control group).

This is classic public relations. We seek to change cultures and inject new ideas and into cultures and we do this in the context of the mutual opportunity open to the organisation and its publics interactivity.

The values that matter are the ones where there is a common context.

Here is another step towards being able to identify value because we do not have to consider all cultural values, only the ones where there is a mutual cultural context.

In addition, this offers a methodology to aid public relations planning because in everything we do, we attempt to influence cultures more than anything else.

Picture Mongolia for beginners

Brands and Consumer Backlash

We have been through the brand issues here on a number of occasions. While companies have brands, brand values are owned by the consumer and too much pressure, especially when brands are poorly targeted can backfire.

We notice this in Blogs (and in the Usenet and not a few consumer web sites) when angry consumers comment adversely abut companies and products. Today consumerism blog comments identified by Google are running at 50 per day which compares to 40 per day average over the last ten days.

This is a (straws in the wind) measure of Brand angst and one day, when there is time to do it, it should be studied in greater depth.

People can be threatened by brands.

Many brands are presented in a form that brings considerable peer pressure to bear. Others offer prospects that cannot be realised.

For many this is not an issue but for the weaker members of society, the pressure is huge.

Whereas a brand can be a delight and pleasure (and the Dove Campaign is such a lot of fun) banding effort that encourages excess, creates anxiety and brings misery is a threat to marketing as we know it..

In an interactive era, how long can the excesses of brand management can continue?

It is time for Brand professionals and their corporate masters to watch this space and identify the extent to which exess threatenes their future in a world of on-line conversations.

Is Press Relations going to change or die?

I have been collecting information about the fall in traditional media fortunes for a while. Against continued economic growth, traditional media is not having a good time.

Jennifer McClure reports that TV in the USA is having a torrid time. Perhaps 'I told you so' is a bit trite but, the reality seems to be there. Joel Cere's Report on Sir Martin Sorrell's IABC comments show other mistrust in the future of traditional media. The CEO of BBDO has been quoted as saying mobile telephones and other devices will soon become more important for marketing than traditional television. In Radio Gcap is indicative and has announced a strategic review as it looks to counter a difficult advertising market. In a trading update in September, it said like-for-like revenues for the first six months of the year were down nine per cent.

Its not just in the US, Media group Chrysalis is heaving as well. Media Week is offers no comfort either.

Media people, responding to a Media Life poll two weeks ago, are decidedly nervous about where ad spending is headed--and none too hopeful.

Television is on the brink of a major sea-change. People are concurrent-connecting to a range of media. Internet television is changing the nature of TV and a compelling argument is offered by companies like Brightcove who raised $16.2 million from, among others America Online, Inc., IAC/InterActiveCorp, The Hearst Corporation, and Allen & Company.

Fitch Ratings has lowered Dow Jones & Company, Inc.'s (Dow Jones) issuer default rating. The rating action reflects the continued pressure an its core print publishing businesses. Importantly, Fitch believes that Dow Jones' content-loyal subscriber base, and success at developing a paid on-line platform provides some insulation for the company compared with other industry participants facing change. Total output of paper for the press continues to decline. Newsprint has been in decline for four years. Major paper producers are loosing their glitter.

Harold M. Cody is not optimistic about newsprint. Like the music industry, there is a problem with monoculture.

Journalism is aware of the issues but the traditional medium remains in a state of denial. I suspect that David Warsh has it right. The relationship between news and newspapers is well argued in The Editors blog. It also has a clear view about the importance of the Internet for traditional newsprint.

The buzz about alternative forms of communication is everywhere From the Wall Street Journal interview with Rupert Murdoch who argues that on-line advertising is one of the few areas growing rapidly (that is why he has bought MySpace, a site which attracts hundreds of thousands of teens posting pictures and information about themselves) and Razil Suarez comments on how cost effective on-line advertising can be.

But, ABC figures reveal that the consumer magazine market has increased 6.4 per cent year-on-year in the number of copies actively purchased. Total average net circulation per issue has also experienced a significant uplift of 10.5 per cent to 62.5m. Consumer magazines have now moved into their sixth year of continuous volume and value growth.

So what is going on. The evidence of change is far too pervasive to be ignored.

One might ask Sir Alan Sugar or Elizabeth Murdoch They have strong views about advertising and the media.

There seem to be two things happening at once. Traditional advertising is missing the point and the Mass Media is no longer mass.

The media, in fact most communication, is niche and becoming more niche. More TV stations (many on the Internet and much more to come); Lots of radio (available on the Internet); newspapers in decline (except on the Internet); More magazine titles (but much more niche consumer focus – and here is a warning – with lots of mass circulation and fantastic magazine style blogs).

The advertising industry and the Poster Competition (sorry - Marketing) industry are very old fashioned. Even the concepts are dated. The four 'P's (product, place, price and promotion) are no longer relevant. Products and services are designed, developed and produced using networks. The biggest shopping mall in the UK is the Internet (£18 trillion this year). Price is negotiated (on-line comparisons is an example). Then we get to promotion predicated on TV, Radio and Press advertisements (where there is no interactive capability to buy.

The Mass Media as we know it has to change. We are prepared to buy news but do not want to have to buy the advertisements at the same time.

Unless the mass media changes, advertisers will flee into the arms of more effective consumer interactions. In fact they may not even be advertisements as we know it.

So lets here it for press relations. This has to morph into a niche business too. The call centres that are currently called PR consultancies will have to change and the practice of public relations has to be more in tune with a wide range of alternative, people-centric, communications channels and that means being alert and aware to the significance of empathy and demands of relationship management.

Picture from Ghost Writer Central

Why is the Value debate important to PR practitioners?

There is a process in building relationships between organisations and publics. It embraces many activities. It is a management function.

This process is held by the management domain of public relations – no other.

There is no asset, no intellectual property, no social construct that is not dependent on affective relationships.

Without relationships we cannot design or manufacture, we cannot create brands, advertise, sell, or maintain customer relationships. Without relationships there is no financial value, no asset, no money, no profit. Without public relations, that is the management capability to create, sustain and enhance relationships, society fails.

Now, I realise that there are practitioners who operate in areas of practice that would seem to be a million miles from the the fundamental of human existence. The press release writer, the party planner, the conference organiser, the blogger are all proud practitioners of their trade and many are very expert. It is in their realisation of how they are effective in creating, sustaining and enhancing relationships through the effective performance of their business that they offer so much.

Some practitioners work in other fields. They are the social and long term conscience and advisor to the corporate managers of organisations. In their realisation of how they are affective in creating, sustaining and enhancing relationships through the effective performance of their skill that they offer so much.

Then there are other practitioners. These people aim to make all the members of their organisation and the members of their organisation's publics more effective in creating, sustaining and enhancing relationships. Their business is the creation of relationship strategy to optimise relationship value.

Finally, there are those people whose work involves working in relationships. These are ordinary folk empowered by public relations and up-skilled by public relations practitioners who are professional relationship management practitioners. These folk deliver the relationships upon which so much depends. They toil in the stone mason's yard of relationships to build the great cathedral of culture.

Public relations releases value from social constructs, intellectual property, creativity, design, tangible assets, manufacture, brands, advertising, selling, and customer relationships.
This is why public relations practitioners need to be involved in and understand New Ways of Determining Value.



Picture: 'Venice: Campo S. Vidal and Santa Maria della Carità ''The Stonemason's Yard'' CANALETTO 1697 – 1768 The National Gallery

New Ways of Determining Value. Cont....

Elizabeth Albrycht very kindly commented on my Peter Drucker post. It is really worth reading.

In my reply, I put my hands up.

The big stumbling block was a helpful definition of an organisation (which, in my way, I have resolved) and what is a relationship (which I have also attempted to resolve). The next problem is that in doing so I identify two elements. The first is what I call 'tokens' and the other the 'values' associated with those tokens interpreted by both sides in an information exchange.

At least this approach put PR at the centre of the debate but leaves many problems to be resolved.

I accept I am using the term 'money' very broadly. The idea that financial value is underpinned by institutions' interpretation of value in $/£ etc. is almost overwhelming and, in my view, dangerous in a global and information rich age.

I see things like 'environmental markets' as dangerous. These are metaphors of metaphors and rely on relative values without being explicit about the nature of relativity. This is only valid if the mechanism for relativity is robust. In most cases, of course, it is not - one of the reasons I think Fombrun and his reputation quotient is wrong.

Elizabeth's comment about scarcity is very germane. Information used to be in short supply (one of the reasons for what we call the 'Dark Ages'). Now we have an over abundance. Perhaps importance/relevancy is the deciding market factor today. This makes the ideas of Jerome Glenn and Theodore Gordon very relevant as well as the associated challenges.

The wall I have now is summed up in Elizabeth's last two paragraphs.

I just know there is a solution there but having the thinking time is just so hard. I think the solution is in the nature of relationships. The problem is that common knowledge of tokens is wrapped up in cultural ideas of values (another observation made by Elizabeth). In any information transaction there can be both the creation of common understanding of value and a further set of values that are created by the parties that are not known/understood by each other. So far the neuropsychology works but nothing else.

I will keep pondering. Help is most welcome too.

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.