The Web is in Trouble

The Web is in Trouble

Tweeted about by the Guardian's Jack Schofield almost before the ink was dry we see that Bryan Appleyard, in today’s Sunday Times, is being controversial.

He says:

“The web is in trouble. Last week craigslist, a vast classified-ads site, had to abandon its “erotic services” category because of claims that it was an “online brothel” being used by sexual predators. And in France L’Oréal discovered eBay could not be forced to stop selling cheap knock-offs of its products.”

Well I never. Imagine.... Porn on the Internet. What is the world coming to?

This sounds like the crackdown on Bolton’s on-street vice trade which resulted in more than 150 prostitutes and 115 kerb-crawlers being arrested in the last two years.

As for counterfeit being trades on eBay it’s almost as bad as Hua Xue. He was stopped by police when he was riding his bicycle in Southbourne and was carrying some counterfeit films which had not been released in UK cinemas. Gosh! Is this what happens on the internet too?

Mr Appelyard was doing his best. The internet is giving newspapers a lot of grief. It is giving journalists more. They have to be very good to survive.

So Bryan dragged up the 2006 book by David Edgerton. He writes:

“The internet”, says David Edgerton, professor of the history of technology at Imperial College London and author of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900, “is rather passé . . . It’s just a means of communication, like television, radio or newspapers.”

Edgerton is the world expert in tech dead ends. Fifty years ago, he points out, nuclear power was about to change the world; then there was supersonic passenger flight, then space travel. The wheel, he concedes, did change the world, as did steam power. The web is not in that league.

One great promise of web 2.0 was that it would lead to a post-industrial world in which everything was dematerialised into a shimmer of electrons. But last year’s oil price shock and this year’s recession, not to mention every year’s looming eco-catastrophe, show that we are still utterly dependent on the heavy things of the old economy. In fact, says Edgerton, we may, in retrospect, come to see coal as the dominant technology of our time. China and America have lots of the stuff and they plan to burn it. The web, like it or not, uses energy, quite a lot of it, and that will continue to be made with big, heavy, industrial-age machines.”

An excellent example of a specific viewpoint.

Because it is in the Sunday Times, it will have traction and notably already has online.

This week I, with Philip Young of Sunderland University launch our book (Online Public Relations – Kogan Page) which offers a countervailing view (Twitter #opr2ed)

There are two issues to consider.

The first is that, like coal, the internet offers mankind the opportunity to be more productive. That is, an ability to add intellectual properties to ‘things’ that make people more effective in their lives.

Coal does this by providing energy beyond the capability of human physiology to bring water, food, improved housing, health and facility. By using our big brains we can do this better than other species (none of which have come close to the human capability).

The internet, among other advantages, makes people more productive by reducing the time it takes to bring co-creators together by levering up the human need for social groups sharing common values and facilitates new ideas to extend our physiology in other ways. It extends knowledge freely available to mankind and provides much facility in the use an application of such knowledge.

There is a further advantage for the, still young, internet. It has the capability for very fast, human moderated evolution. A small proportion of the billion or so users of the internet are deployed in developing its capabilities not just in Open Source activities such as Linux or Wikipedia but in the capability to use Open Systems such as Yahoo! BOSS and other such ventures now becoming apparent from the likes of Google, Proctor and Gamble, IBM and many more.

None of these companies could afford tens of thousands of developers but, the Open Movement is harnessing the capabilities of hundreds of thousands.

Some of their inventions will make a big difference to many lives (an example is in development of mobile micropayments for India’s small farmers). Others will be shooting stars and most will have no significance at all.

Internet evolution and the evolution it offers other forms of individual, corporate political and cultural activity is very dynamic.

There is whiff of industrial revolution in this form of change.

Yochai Benkler tells us about these changes in spades and answers Bryan pretty comprehensively on the specifics of values and copyright.

As David Edgerton will remind us, that was a time of social change too and the attack on the rights of people was pretty dramatic too.

People, that is, the members of the species that adapts so well, will resolve the issues that arise including issues of privacy.

The Ethics of AVE’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, now we know where I stand.

Now for the Ethics part.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So where do PR practitioner get guidance?

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

The Next Big Thing

The development of Open Source, Open Systems and Open Access is coming to a device near you at the speed of Jensen Button with the force of the Atlantic Shuttle.

Yochai Benkler spells it out, Clay Shirky explains it well, Creative Commons, founder Lawrence Lessing has been broadcasting about it. Yahoo! did it this weekend, Google has a ton of it and yet few are prepared to explain it in newspapers. Journos just don’t get it. Tapscott and Williams put it quite clearly.

Perhaps they are limited by the poor (and out of date) descriptions in Wikipedia.

Open source, as in open source software, or public collaboration on encyclopaedia or open debate in blogs, releases capability, knowledge and insights to the world. Its free.

Open systems provide computing power, platforms and methods that can be used to re-cast and re-model information.

Open access like an Application Programming Interface (API)

The important thing is that anyone with the inclination can both access this ‘openness’ and can build on the information and capability offered to create new things.

This year the Cabinet Office started to push the idea.

OSS Watch funded by the JISC at the Oxford University Computing Services is working hard to develop UK capability.

The whole idea is controversial. It touches on the debate about copyright and trademarks, and patents.

In essence the argument goes thus:

Knowledge which is held in a walled garden is only available for further development to those in the garden. This is fine when organisations have the capability to tease out all the opportunities such intellectual properties offer. A case in point is the telecoms company BT. It had a patent that covered the concept of a Hyperlink and just could not see the huge commercial opportunity such a capability could offer the company. It was not until the hyperlink was generic to the use of the internet that it realised the benefits and by then the cat was out of the bag. Not all people in organisations have the time or imagination to bring all ideas (even patents) to market or into wider use. Indeed few companies have enough people with the time to do such things.

The alternative is to make such knowledge available to all. The creative genius of a population of enthusiasts drawn from the billion users online and their enthusiasm for new things like attempting to develop new applications, products services and knowledge is prodigious. They do have both time and enthusiasm to tease out the opportunities.

The ability of a lot of people, the commons to interact is the key.

Where organisations open up to this community of enthusiasts, the outcomes are astounding as Benkler explains in his book The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (The book is online, downloadable, available as a PDF and, in printed form, a best seller – new media did not kill-off old media). With Helen Nissenbaum, he describes ‘commons based peer production as a socio-economic system of production that is emerging in the digitally networked environment. “Facilitated by the technical infrastructure of the Internet, the hallmark of this socio-technical system is collaboration among large groups of individuals, sometimes in the order of tens or even hundreds of thousands, who cooperate effectively to provide information, knowledge or cultural goods without relying on either market pricing or managerial hierarchies to coordinate their common enterprise.”

By standing on the shoulders of giants these people can collaborate and use existing knowledge, processes and content. Where is it’s not available, the commons size and ability to collaborate allows them to re-invent and at an incredible rate.

This is a new parallel economy and social driver. It is the next really big thing online and it affects Public Relations.

I will write a lot about this in the near future because it will be so important to PR.

'Online Public Relations' re-visited

With Philip Young I have re-written Online Public Relations. The copies arrived this week and so I have been re-reading it in its published form.

First of all, the thank yous.

Notably Philip. There are some flashes of writing style which he has been able to inject into my dull prose which, in a book, is significant and, of course, he is far to modest about his contribution. He has insight which is a great help when trying to go through the strategic significance of the internet to PR.

Anne Gregory, the series editor has been very flattering too and that is good for the ego. She says in her foreword that the book provides some 'clear pointers for organizing (I hate the modern use of 'z') public relations professionally now and indicates a vision of the future', which is what we aimed for.

But, as I have re-read through the pages, one thought keeps coming back. It is a work built on the expertise of so many excellent minds. In the ten years from the first edition to this one, the body of theoretical, academic and practical knowledge available is now huge. For this work which is about how to use the internet intelligently and effectively to draw on its potent and energising characteristics, we have plundered a wide range of sources.

Of course the work and insights of people like Neville, Shel, Richard (his bibliography is a brilliant aid for practitioner and academic alike) and Toni stand out in their writings (books, blogs, papers) and the thinking of David Weinberger, Don Tapscott, Clay Shirky, William Dutton and a the hundreds of other contributors refenced in the book are very significant.

Ours is less a book about mechanics or the application of communication tools and so other significant authors like Joel Comm's 'Twitter Power' (among many) are of immense value and publication coincides with the launch of Rob Brown's Book "Public Relations and the Social Web: How to Use Social Media and Web 2.0 in Communications" which is a great complementary, not to mention timely, contribution. Rob's book examines public relations practices in the digital environment and shows readers how digital public relations campaigns can include communication channels such as blogs, wikis, RSS, social networking and SEO, and the Social Web, taking up from the short introduction Philip and I make to these communication channels in the second chapter.

One thing that was a bold move was to predict (Chapter 28) where the internet will go in its effects on future practice. Coming 20 years after the World Wide Web was introduced (some years after I got involved with the internet - it makes me wince to recall) we are pretty sure that the involvement of tens of millions of people in its evolution will both accelerate development and become more integrated in human interaction.

The reasons are simple. Thousands of new forms of interaction are presented to people every year (month?). Some take off and others whither away. This is digital/human interaction and evolution on steroids and the arbiters of what will succeed and fail is in the hands of a billion digital consumers and the people they influence.

The combination of Open Source (in its many manifestations) and Open Systems (corporations making their knowledge and capabilities available publicly like Yahoo! and very recently Google with its Analytics Data Export API not to mention the concept in use by the arts), offers to a massed development community access for developing new products, services and interactivity which will manifest itself in startling new ways (to get some idea of scale, the Yahoo open systems are accessed by developers numbering hundreds of thousands of people).

In PR we can expect the rate of change to get faster (who could have imagined we would add content about a book in Facebook ten years ago!).

At the same time practitioners will need new management capabilities and I am particularly pleased we included a chapter on risk management (Ch. 21). I think it is the first time risk management has been included in a PR text.

Of course, in a book for PR practitioners, a lot of great work can only be referenced and some of our further thinking had to be missed out (we are well over the word count as it is).

We aim to persuade Kogan Page to publish the book in its entirety online using a facility they have developed for this kind of thing. Its work in progress. We can then associated it with a web presence for the book that can expand the thinking add further bibliographical content (like Joel and Rob's books) and much more.

Of course that does not prevent making comments here or even on Twitter!

The Avata Hero

It is amazing how we have all become avatar junkies.

Today we mean and use avatars as more than a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet. Avatars have wider semiotic role that is even beyond an embodiment of a person or character or even view of life.

Sure, the characters we see rushing round the screen when we play tennis using an Nintendo WII are avatars but they are more. They are a representation of ourselves and our opponents. Who, one might ask, are you playing tennis with?

But what of the email address customerservice@leverwealth.com? Is this email address a person or the representation of a broader semantic description of a person or group of people? What of the music we offer from web site that represent a brand value, event or other range of values?

There are other manifestations that can be considered. Lots of web sites have pictures of people that represent 'the public' but which are really stock photographs from commercial libraries of the beautiful people.

These semiotic variants of the avatar are all part of the repertoire of representations we have at our disposal and there are many more.

In PR how should we regard avatars. Are they, for instance, a form of passing off... a cousin to astroturfing? Or are they a benign device like wall paper?

In a world that now values transparency as an tool in the construction of trust, should we use avatars in communication?

I suspect that they are not going away anytime soon. Indeed, I believe that we will have our own array of avatars that will be semiotic representations of our various selves in many Internet driven forms of interaction and communicating.

So now we need to think through the ethical and moral use, not to mention the legal ramifications involved in the use of avatars.

A simple utilitarian view will require a lot of mind searching before unthinking use of avatars is the norm in PR. After all, are we helping understanding or are we disguising reality in the use of avatars?

But avatars can be a useful device.

They can represent organisations, company departments, the professional occupation of a person who does not want to make their private self public.

When we use the semiotic device of calling ourselves 'the Press Office' what do we mean and what form of disclosure is needed to explain this 'person/department' called a press office?

Perhaps it is now time for some thought to be given to how we handle the avatar issue and where this fits into considerations astroturfing and passing off.


I think that there is a very good case for having avatars and virtual metaphors for people, activities, departments and even, in some cases, whole organisations.

So what are the rules for disclosure?

There is, of course, the utilitarianist view. The use of avatars and online metaphors is OK as long as the generality of the population understands and accepts them.

Well, that no longer holds water. It was fine for an era of mass communication. But its rubbish in an era of user generated publics (or social segments, if you like).

Today maximisation of the good by institutions for those within the society, and by individuals is a code (utilitarian ethical construct) for public actions and personal actions in a mass media era. The issue of what should be done about behavior that produces significant harm for a society on a mass media level would be to select policies which would reduce the overall harm. On the other hand in a era of niche and networked communities, this can become unwieldy as the network takes on a role of communication for a wide (even mass) community because of the network effect. With the unforgetting and time shifting internet at play today's decision can equally be found wanting in a short-while especially as the half life of existance is both short and long tailed.

There is the other way. We can charge practitioners not to use avatars or online metaphors of they will damage long term relationships with the organisation to the detriment of shareholders/voters.

There is some work to be done in this area.

Image NC&TA

More Stuff

While we are looking at our online toys, it may be an idea to look at some of the others we have been looking at such as some tracking software like TrackThisNow.

Widget update

And ... now... you can put in the full URL and the widget does all the work for you.

Online Opportunity Value

In the column to the right you will see the Advertising Potential Value Widget!

The widget makes a stab at the potential price of advertsing on a web site even if it does not carry advertsisements.

We have been playing with our widget, and now you have an opportunity to try it too.

When you put a URL into the box you need to strip out the prefix

e.g. if the url is

"http://www.bbc.co.uk"you need to enter:

"bbc.co.uk" to

get a return

NOTE: the return you get will be the value based on the UK audience figures only. The global equivalent will be bigger and based on a different base point.

As I mentioned in the post below, this is an experiment and advertising cost has a context. This should be taken into account when ascribing value and cost to any media.

In addition, not all web pages are optimised for advertising purpose and thus not all web pages would be suitable to carry advertisements (and many blog pages and other content is not suitable either.

This is not going to be a micron accurate measure but will be, at worse, indicative.

However, it may allow you to test an approximation of advertising value potential for web pages were they in competition with newspapers for advertising revenues.


As we test the widget there will be enhanced as we go forward

This then, is yet another step in the research project which I explained to Katie Payne here .

If you would like a copy of the widget for your own blog the script is as follows:


Enjoy!

An (online) Advertising Potential Value

How much is the page worth where your online content has appeared?

Interesting idea?

Most of us have seen advertisement in online newspapers. They now form a significant part of publishing revenues.

In exploring the price of online newspaper advertising, it is no great leap of logic to try to attempt to satisfy the question of the difference between price and value.

This is quite an open and transparent market. The rates are published and in a form that equates exposure and price. This suggests that the market is not just active but transparent as well. The Guardian article yesterday puts this space into perspective even if it is gloomy about the prospects for the publishing industry.

Value and price, measured using the exchange rate of monetary currency, would seem to be a reasonable measure for online newspaper advertising.

But it is not a good currency for editorial and social content. There do not seem to be transparent markets or effective exchange rates that convert online conversations into a currency that can be used in most modern commercial environments.

In this research project, I have taken the price of online newspaper advertising and by using the published rates, numbers of visitors from ABCe and have worked through an Alexa comparison of user visits. This has given me an algorithm to provide a figure that would project the value of an advertisement on web pages that are not online newspapers.

In other words if you were going to advertise on that page, how much would it cost you?

If you like, an Advertising Potential Value!

In testing, I have played the results back into online newspapers and the results are pretty good. The formula got within 5% for the Telegraph and Guardian and within 10% of the price charged by Mirror Group.

I know that context is different and I know that web pages are optimised for purpose and thus not all web pages would be suitable to carry advertisements (and many blog pages and other content is not suitable either). I am also aware of the issues we have as between different web sites indexed by Alexa. This is not going to be a micron accurate measure but is will be, at worse, indicative.

However, this allows me to test an approximation of advertising value potential for web pages were they in competition with newspapers for advertising revenues.

NOTE: the return you get will be the value based on the UK audience figures only. The global equivalent will be bigger and based on a different base point.

Over the next few days, I will build a widget so that you too can have a look at the results and will post it here.

The Real World of the Internet

This report of the intersection between the internet and people by Michael Silberman at the Mother Jones website during the Obama campaign is a great case study.

While it applies to political campaigning the concept works across so much of online public relations

All too often, we separate out the need for being of the community and being online. Today, I was vaguely listening to the radio in the car (after listening to FIR) to hear that there is a school of thought that pure play online retailers are detached from consumers because they do not meet them in person as traditional retailers do.

I thought this was a bit harsh because my experience is by no means bad. However, the Mother Jones article takes us a lot further forward.

It speaks to the need for good internal and motivating online interactions, cross over between the front line and back office and integrated and multi-media use of internet properties.

There is nothing about internet communication that is a one trick pony.

Have we learned yet - Brands need hunter-gatherers

The idea that a brand is a promise of an experience to come; an experience past and a special form of cultural magic is re-emerging from the stupor of civilisation as we have known it for five thousand years.

Elizabeth Albrycht, in her June post "Brands as Media: Platforms for Value Creation" put forward the idea that brands are changing because of a "shift in technology and audience expectations is driving a major evolution in marketing, which, at least initially, is leading companies to develop, purchase and/or maintain/support media properties, be they online forums, blogs, and social networks. (This is already starting to result in brands competing with traditional media, the very places they have supported by their advertising over the past decades. With large consumer products companies in better financial shape than media companies, this might result in some odd marriages in the next few years.)"

She follows Haque who posits that "traditional branding activities, especially advertising, imposes costs on consumers. Costs of interrupted attention, time spent waiting for a TV show to resume, polluted visual fields in cities and countrysides, and so on. Culturally, consumers are now expressing their increasing resentment of these costs and refusing to pay them (and technology is giving them ever more tools to easily do so)."

This suggests that brands are morphing and are taking on new rolls and capabilities.

Brand marketing without push advertising, heavily PR dependent consumer journalists and blinding Point of Sale is a strange beast.

It moves towards a community experience, part of the gossip communities indulge in and leavened by a capability for the community to cluster round the best gossips, the best informed gossips and the most enabled (RSS) gossips in the world.

These are people.
Real people.

They are the top hunter gatherers of the 21st century and they contribute to the tribe as part of the community.

In their rituals they seek the information that the gods of technology offer them and interpret these oracles to in a conversation with their community.

Some are so good that people flock to their communities from many other tribes, who in turn spread the word.

We seek them out as mankind did for tens of thousands of years before agriculture produced enough ears of wheat for communities to build settlements, markets and inventories.

These people have to work with the grain of the community. They need to be of the community and their expression of the brand has to compete within the daily chatter of the community as it forages.

To shout out a brand message disturbs the community. If it has value it will become part of the community's conversation and culture but if it has no meaning it becomes culturally disruptive at a social cost to the perpetrator.

In this technology fuelled era, we are seeing echoes of mankind's almost lost past.

Image: Hunter Gatherer Wiki.

Why 20th century marketing is dead

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

People would loose trust in its editorial independence.

It would loose its appeal to industry leaders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Value of Online Content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Domians of PR practice and influence

We are constantly being asked to describe what the PR sector does in the context of its role in influencing opinion and decsiosn making.

Last month I needed a lecture to to put this into context and, in the process, describe PR in its wider role.

I was helped by a paper I prepared some years ago about the domains of PR practice. 

My attempt to introduce this area of PR practice is reproduced below.

The Range of Practice

There are a number of ways one can identify the nature and scope of public relations practice.

One is to view practice from the perspective of the publics that influence organisations.

In Chapter 2 of Exploring Public Relations[i], (pp19-22) Tench and Yeomans explore the environments that influence the practice of public relations. This perspective is very important in explaining the role of public relations from a perspective of influencer publics.

This public relations view has counterparts in Freedman’s[ii] stakeholder theory and subsequent papers[iii].  This concept examines the nature of relationship management from the perspective of the organisation and seeks to manage relationships with stakeholders that the organisation perceives as having influence. It is a common management practice and has its problems mainly because of the numbers of publics the organisation ignores in its analysis of its stakeholders.

We can see this effect easily by searching for an organisation using Google’s advanced search capability to find pages published in the previous 24 hours and  then assessing the extent to which the organisation had control of the publication of the content, and thus, its online reputation.  It quickly becomes evident that most organisations have a very modest influence, and conduct their business from a stakeholder perspective (there is an extensive bibliography about stakeholder theory at http://theclarityconcept.pbwiki.com/Academic+Resources

Another view might be from the perspective of PR practice. Basically: what do PR people really do? My unpublished paper [iv] seeks to answer this question.

It shows that there are many types of PR practiced and many of them are focused on limited areas of activity.

What this demonstrates is that, with a grasp and understanding of the range of activities that fall within the broad church of the profession, entrants can be informed as to their choice of career and, in addition, as their career progresses they have a grasp of fundamental principle that will, in time, allow them to manage other specialist in PR and organisational management  with  specific and specialist roles.

The nature of affective publics

To be effective in practice we have seen that the practitioner needs to be able to understand the nature of relationships that are affective.

It is important to note that organisations are not always companies. They can be voluntary organisations, associations, pressure groups, religious organisations and many more.

All organisations can, and most do, have someone with a PR role.

There are many groups that influence organisations. Some are internal (management – the dominant coalition, employee groups – including organisations departments, cross discipline/departmental working parties, informal clubs and interest groups, Trades Unions etc), some are part employed on contracts (accountant, advisors and consultants, contractors), some are part of the value chain (suppliers, wholesalers, retailers etc), some are regulators (local, regional, national and supra-national government), some are regulatory (trade and professional associations, standards authorities, government agencies etc) and then there are consumers and consumer groups including informal recommenders often family or social groups providing word of mouth recommendations.

There is a new form of group emerging. They are of the nature of publics that form round issues as described by Grunig and Hunt but have evolved since their writings 20 years ago[v].  

What we see is groups of people who cluster round tokens. The tokens can be an issue, interest brand, or a set of common values, a feature that has always been part of human interaction, but which is now much facilitated by the internet (see the work of Bruno Amaral) . They are commonly (if narrowly) described as ‘user generated groups’[vi]. 

This array of influencers is considerable and all are potentially the specialist interest of managers and notably public relations managers. In senior posts, PR practitioners may have responsibilities for relationships with many such groups and in some cases all such groups.

The nature of interaction between organisations can be as between two PR practitioners each representing different groups.

The practitioner in an organisation needs to know about those organisations that affect the workings and long term effective survival of the organisation.

 

The influences on organisational direction

To be effective in development of relationships between organisations the practitioner needs to know how organisations are constituted; how they make decisions and what influences their decision making. In addition, the practitioner will need to know how to access the influences on decision making.

Organisations are different. Decision making in a company is very different from decision making in a cricket club or county council.

What we need to be able to do is find out how to influence the decision making process.

It is important in this sphere of PR practice that one examines the nature of organisations.

There is considerable literature but Elizabeth McMillan has  some excellent papers[vii] that explain the nature of organisational structure.

To interact effectively with organisations there is a need for transparency. John C Havens and Shel Holtz cover organisational transparency for organisations showing that to build trust there is a need for transparency and that because organisations disclose information to its publics, it can and does spread to third parties[viii].

For this reason, they come to the same conclusion and Phillips & Young (2009 ibid). 

It is important to be transparent. It is important to manage transparency and it is important that the presentation of intellectual properties (trademarks, patents, copyright content, know how, processes etc), should be in a manner and time suited to the publics involved and knowing that at some time more than one public will have access to the information provided to a third.

The conclusion we then come to is that changing relationships to maximise short term organisational success and optimise long term survival, organisations need a coherent strategy across all domains of public relations.

The PR manager needs to know about the range of organisations and social groups (including ‘user generated' groups) that affect the organisation.

Why organisations like to be influenced

At first glance one could be squeamish about wanting affect the decisions of an organisation.

In fact, for an organisation to be effective, it needs external influence over its decision making processes.

If one takes, as an example an organisation like a County Council in the midst of a once in 20 year crisis brought about by a snow storm.

In 2009, this happened. After a cold winter, stocks of salt for keeping roads clear of ice and snow were depleted. Then in February snow storms covered roads and paths to an unusual extent. The council has a responsibility for keeping roads clear and paths passable. But stocks of salt were depleted. What was to be done?

The councils across the country tried to get supplies but their normal vendor was out of stock and there was no one nearby who could help out.

Then, the council heard about using table salt. They also found out that stocks were in good supply. This information affected their decision making. They could buy table salt for roads and paths.

In this case the influence of the media, prompted by an initiative by the Gloucester County Council, became a solution across the country.

Here we can see quite clearly that an influence on decision making helped solve a problem. 

However, the council will not have made such a big decisions without taking advice. Some of that advice will be about the suitability of table salt on roads (it has to be mixed with road salt); some will be about cost, transport and the amount needed. Such information will come from third parties, internal expertise and then, with all the facts, the council officers and relevant council committee can make a judgement and come to a decision.

Organisations, welcome influence to help them make better decisions.

 

How practitioners influence decision making

In many cases the role of the practitioner is to influence publics. This may be a two-step process such as encouraging press coverage to offer a point of view and which is read by the target public. In other cases, the process will be one of convening meetings between parties and on yet another occasion it may be the production of publications for circulation to key audiences.

Often, the practitioner will be involved in many activities all aimed at achieving the same end.

This is helpful for the target organisation. A press article may alert the organisation to a possibility; a brochure or paper, will provide detailed information and a meeting can provide the opportunity for an exchange of questions and answers.

This kind of approach works as well for inter-organisational relationship building in its many forms and is the lubricant of much wealth creation.

The process of planning and managing public relations campaigns outlined in chapter 10 of Exploring Public Relations (ibid) provides the basis for identifying the mythologies that are applied in influencing decision making.

Any such plan will have clear objectives; has to be strategic in concept; is often multi-public in nature and frequently will use an array of tactics.

In many instances, this area of public relations work will involve a number of two step processes.

For example a key public may be influenced by the media, its suppliers, public bodies (councils, regulators, professional associations etc) and by some very influential individuals inside the organisation.

The role of the practitioner is to recruit such third parties as ambassadors, persuaders and influencers and a persuasive case has to be put to each.

However, sometimes an individual practitioner may not have the skills, knowledge or experience to do all this work. This is where the diversity of PR practice and the capability of specialist practitioners comes into its own. They can be approached to help by deploying their expertise on your behalf.

The nature of PR consultancy is that it offers such capabilities. These people are readily found as members of the Public Relations Consultants Association (http://www.prca.org.uk) or the CIPR (www.cipr.co.uk), The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC - www.iabc.com/).

While there are many reasons for joining and attending local meetings of such organisation, one of the key ones is to be on good terms with these many different practitioners locally and to find out what they do and how they go about it and, indeed, how they like to be briefed.

In conclusion

This paper set out to show the wider diversity of practice there is in the discipline of PR.

We have seen that there are a number of approaches to understanding the kinds of PR practice available to organisations including Stakeholder Theory and the Excellence Model.

 We have discovered that the usual forms of planning public relations between organisations is applicable to inter-organisational PR.

To be effective in inter-organisational PR it is important to understand how organisations are constituted and how they make decisions.

We also explored reasons why organisations want to change perspectives between each other and that they like to be influenced.

One of the things we noted is that this kind of PR often involves a multitude of opinion formers and influencer organisations who can act as ambassadors and influencers on your behalf.

Finally we discovered that the range of PR disciplines available provide resources and expertise that you can call on to assist in planning, managing and implementing and inter-organisational PR programme.

---

[i] Tench, R. & Yeomans, L. (2006) Exploring Public Relations Prentice Hall

[ii] Freeman, R.E., & Reed, D.L. (1983). “Stockholders and stakeholders: A new perspective on corporate governance.” California Management Review, Vol. 25 No.3, pp.83-94.

[iii] Freeman, R. E. & McVea, J. (2001). “A Stakeholder Approach to Strategic Management” Darden Business School Working Paper No. 01-02

Freeman, R. E. & McVea, J. (2001). “A Stakeholder Approach to Strategic Management” Darden Business School Working Paper No. 01-02

[iv] Phillips, D. (2006) Domians of PR Practice  http://www.netreputation.co.uk/managementclarity/domians_of_pr_practice.pdf accessed 2009.

[v] Grunig, J, E. & Hunt, T (1984).  Managing Public Relations.  Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace.

[vi] Phillips, D & Young, P. (2009) Online Public Relations Kogan Page London

[vii] McMillan, E. (2002) 'Considering organisation structure and design from a Complexity Paradigm Perspective' in Frizzelle, G. and Richards, H. (eds.) Tackling industrial complexity: the ideas that make a difference. Institute of Manufacturing, University of Cambridge.

[viii] Havens, J.C. & Holtz, S (2008) Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand. Jossey-Bass

Managing the Unknown Internet Part 2

In most PR work there are risks and opportunities. To manage them we need to identify them.

This can be done by an individual, a focus group or management team or can be established from research. It’s a great opportunity for a brain storm with someone making notes!

In preparing a strategy for a programme it is worth looking at where there may be influences that can affect it.

In online public relations it is possible to second guess many of the potential influences. The recession of 2008/10, is a classic case in point. For a number of companies strategy had to change to maintain presence but at a much lower cost. Promotion budgets are slashed and PR had to take the strain. With reduced advertising, many publications just do not have the space for stories they would have run only months before. Online there were fewer constraints and so budgets have shifted.

In PR there are some pretty well established influences that affect practice



The range of known influences that can affect online PR programmes are extensive.



It is also possible to evaluate risk and asses its influence in terms of probability and impact.
An example might be confidential product information could leak out of the organisation and into the public domain because an employee has a blog.

Having described risks and potential for effects, the practitioner (evaluation team) will asses each element in terms of likelihood of occurrence and impact. It helps put the risk or opportunity into perspective. This is a technique used by many voluntary and public sector organisations. It is the kind of matrix that might be used to assess risk for a school outing and is also used in project management.



Assessing the impact of events which can be estimated before any action is taken and again after mitigating policies are proposed to see if the potential for risk is lowered (acceptable) prior to implementation or exposure.

The next part of the process is to create a mitigation (or contingency) plan, process or protocol to reduce either of both risk of likelihood or impact. This might be the introduction of, say, a company wide blogging policy or the use of data on home computers.

Once a mitigation plan has been worked out, a new assessment is made of the likelihood or impact to see if the proposed actions for mitigation has had an effect that makes the risk acceptable within the campaign.

The process is quite simple and effective and is valuable when attempting to identify competitive advantage versus doubts.

These methodologies can be used in making all manner of decisions including the extent to which the internet should be made available during working hours (knowing that most people have access on their cell phones anyway). This structures approach helps inform such decisions.

Using such a process through each part of the planning process reduces risk to a manageable level and also helps to make precise projections of expected outcomes.

Risk management is a process and can be applied to strategy as well as tactics.




Of course, for each risk there is an opportunity. By applying the same technique but looking for opportunities and means to optimise such opportunities, the practitioner can enhance the effectiveness of any approach to a campaign.

It is all too easy to imagine events in stark black and white answers. This is seldom the only solution and practitioners can work on contingency planning

There are a lot of techniques that can be applied to ameliorate risk, optimise opportunity and, written into the programme strategy using techniques adopted from other disciplines, PR can ensure greater certainty in online activities.



Disaster seldom comes unannounced for most organisations. There tend to be number indicators that presage the public event.

The key is to be able to identify the stages as they present themselves. They are:

Variation

All plans have expected outcomes, financial budgets and timescales. These are often identified using aids for project planning (see above).

Monitoring such plans will identify where plans are going awry. Often such occurrences are small. These are 'variations' to the plan. Good monitoring will give teams notice that remedial action has to take place and contingency can be built into the plan. An example might be a contingency sum in a budget and some flexibility in delivery time built in.

Foreseen uncertainties

There are some variations that are identifiable and understood that the team cannot be sure will occur or when an event it will occur. To mitigate foreseen uncertainties, the plan will need to include the capability to identify the event and a capability to deploy a pre-planned contingency programme. An example might be unscheduled maintenance of a computer that is running the campaign blog One big issue is website uptime with issues such as a slowing of response times of the organisation's web site or, disaster of all disasters, the web site being so overwhelmed that it stops responding (in retail, this is the equivalent of one in ten shops being closed).
When a web site goes down, it is a PR problem. It is not an IT department problem. Risk analysis is critical in identifying and mitigating these events. Practicing for such events has to be included in any plan. Who does what, when and how and if they are not available or facilities are down who else should be part of such a plan.

Unforeseen Uncertainty

This kind of event cannot be identified during project planning. There is no Plan B.

The team will be unaware of the event’s possibility or consider it so unlikely that there is no in-built contingency plan. To be able to manage such events a comprehensive monitoring and alerting process is critical.

“Unknown unknowns,” or “unk-unks,” as they are sometimes called, make people nervous because existing decision tools are not available. Unforeseen uncertainty is not always caused by spectacular events or issues. They can arise from the unanticipated interaction of many events, each of which might, in principle, be foreseeable. The best management practice here is attention to detail and constant re-evaluation of the plan and its application.

The model described here includes risk analysis at just about every point in planning. Mature management of PR will have to begin to include these more complex management techniques in the future and it takes out a lot of the management concerns that surround the use of social media.

Here are the key elements for reducing the impact of the unforeseen:

• Teams must go beyond mere crisis management and continually scan for emerging influences — either threats or opportunities. Practitioners should be scanning the horizon more than three months out to identify potential problems while they can still do something about them.
• Risk analysis must be an ongoing activity with no potential hazard excluded because it seemed wacky at the time.
• With unforeseeable uncertainty, a lot of time and effort must go into managing relationships with key publics, often getting them to accept unplanned changes. Knowing who and how to contact key publics is important. Good old fashioned public relations to maintain good and effective relationships count when the unforeseen happens.
• Top-management support, negotiation techniques, team-building exercises and the practitioner's leadership can help resolve conflicting interests.
• Trust is a core element in managing the unforeseen which means value systems and value system analysis is critical (ibid)
• Managing variance and planning for managing foreseen uncertainty assist managing the unknown because contingency planning will be part of the organisation's culture.

The unforeseen can be managed.

The US Institute of crisis management offers some insights into where to look for unforeseen uncertainty, listing the most common on its web site (http://www.crisisexperts.com)

In an era when the internet is bringing great change in communication (as well as the way organisations are organised and managed), being able to deploy these types of technique allows organisations to enter new areas of interactions with some confidence to gain optimum benefit at an acceptable level of exposure.

Managing the Unknown Internet

Public relations is a management discipline and as such has to apply management techniques to what it does. So far we have shown a number of such techniques when used to optimise campaigning. All too often we have also mentioned the need for risk management.

Even today, many management teams are wary of the internet and many see it as a threat. For some there is no doubt that it is a threat and needs management.

New channels for communication emerge and often with great speed, the internet is driven by many people and there is much presence that is not controlled by the organisation. Much of internet activity does not follow the usual linear models for management. The sequence of events can be as easily disrupted by the online community as the marketing of finance departments.

The lesson is obvious: plans have to be fluid. We need to be able to master the unknown. We have to grasp opportunities quickly and we need tools to help us make judgments – often at short notice.

The solution is to adopt practices from other disciplines in which “management of the unknown” is common. Some of the greatest benefits to modern living have become possible because we know how to manage where there is uncertainty.

There is a great deal of useful experience in this field, and for example, De Meyer, Loch and Pich[1] offer insights that can be used by relationship management practitioners. One can adapt these ideas for use in online public relations.

So what does uncertainty look like in the fast moving online environment? De Meyer et al offer four uncertainty types — variation, foreseen uncertainty, unforeseen uncertainty and chaos.

Internet traffic data, displayed in time series (a sequence of events, measured typically at successive times, spaced at (often uniform) time intervals such as daily or monthly), has a number of characteristic properties, widely known as "stylised facts", which are different to other kinds of time series:

· They tend to be long-tailed, i.e. there is a higher frequency of very extreme events than have a long life and tail off slowly.

· They tend to show long-range dependence, e.g. search engines will find content that is old and present it today, people will remember and bring content to the fore long after it was news to another group and so forth (the Internet has a 'long memory' and 'time shifts' information – and reputation).

· They exhibit volatility, i.e. the apparent variance (from the plan or anticipated outcome) is not a constant but tends to fluctuate irregularly, something the internet has in common with traditional media that can bring back old news to support a new story.

These are challenging concepts, but can be visualized by thinking about books or recordings sold through an outlet such as Amazon. Traditionally, a band might release a single, which was bought contemporaneously by a lot of people, making it a ‘hit’, before it slipped out fashion. Traditional record shops stocked the big sellers and knew it was not cost effective to maintain stocks when the song dropped out the charts. But the economies of scale offered by Amazon, allied by the infinite amount of virtual shelf space it commands, means that songs that most have forgotten are still available. Ok, they will sell very small quantities but, they are sales nonetheless and cost of storage and display is minimal on the website. This is the well noted ‘Long Tail’ effect[2].

The same long tail effect can be applied to news stories. Whereas once most people would read a story when it was splashed across the front page of a print newspaper and then discard it, such stories are now part of digital archive, quickly accessible to search engines. Each individual story may not be read by a huge volume of people on any one day, but its readership stretches down the long tail (the 'value of the story has a very long 'shelf life'). This too has implications for PR in that today the news never quite goes away. It may be forgotten by most readers, but Google has a long memory and is always ready to serve up scraps organisations might imagine had long vanished.

In other words we are not quite sure where and when our online programme will pop up or in which platform or channel.

The practitioner can use some well known techniques to second guess what will be fashionable or will work (and those that won’t) using risk and opportunity techniques well established in other disciplines[3].

One thing we know is that risk and opportunities changes are dependent on complexity. If a programme is very complicated there is more to go wrong and online PR, with its range of platforms channels and contexts, is quite complicated. But as we now know the opportunities for considerable incremental success is greater.

[1] Pich, M.T., Loch, C.H. and De Meyer, A. (2002) "On uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity in project management." Management Science, 48(8): 1008-1024

[2] Anderson, C. 2006 The Long Tail, Hyperion

[3] Risk Management literature include: (C. Chapman and S.Ward, “Project Risk Management” (Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley, 1997), 7. R.L. Kliem and I.S. Ludin, “Reducing Project Risk” (Hampshire, United Kingdom: Gower, 1997), 10-25. Chapman, “Project Risk Management,” 10, 241.).

The History of the Internet

What a great description.

The New Regulatory Environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did PR fail the banking industry? Arguably so says Edelman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Our job is to think dimensionally.

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

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

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

I have argued:

"The world is going through financial turmoil because public relations practitioners were just not up to the job.

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

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

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

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

Freezing out CIPR slackers

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

There was disruption to roads railways and airports.

Websites vital to travelers ground to a halt.

The reputation of these organisations is harmed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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