The social network for PR students, faculty and practitioners worldwide, PROpenMic is run by one of the world leading Online PR teachers Robert French at Auburn University in the United States.

Today, he celebrates six months of PROpenMic by looking at how the site has done compared to other PR education sites (subscription). The results are very impressive. It has a huge following.



The commitment and dedication of this one academic is inspiring. Compared with the relatively highly staffed and resourced competition, this site is a real competitor.

The traffic rank is exceeded only by ODwyerPR.com and SNCR.org which means that two of the yop three are academic in thier thrust.

But just below the surface of these data is another story.

It is the story of the extent to which practitioners are involved in these centres for knowledge and other web sites. There are not many more than 8000 PR folk who normally frequent any of these sites each month.

Using comparative data we can see how many visit other PR practice sites.

Twenty five thousand practitioners go to the PRCA site (the USA's PR profession site). One in eight PR practitioners in the UK goes to the CIPR site.

It would not take long to build a pretty good profile of web site use by practitioners.

A good dissertation for a student huh!

The past and the present

Dave Chaffey has a really good case study about easyJet on his site. It plots the success of e-commerce for an icon of the e-commerce age.

The numbers, as you would expect are huge and the capability of the company is impressive.

By sheer chance, I have another study about the company. It is an audit by eFootprint, a company I am involved in with Robin Gurney at Altex.

What we have is a take of two parts. The first is a study of Web 1.0 and the second is beginning to show the impact of Web 2.0.

There are some interesting things we can begin to take away from such studies.

Some are obvious like making web sites mobile phone friendly. Others are interesting like the sudden growth of web pages being indexed by search engines over the period of huge Web 2.0 growth (from an already high level) and, of course, the content now being contributed by social media users.

Here we can see a company in transition. Is it moving with the times? Has it begun to move from a web strategy to an internet strategy?

It would be fascinating to see hear what the company is proposing - and even more fun to be involved.

The role of emotion in the immersive web

Some time back I began work on the future of the internet. I wanted to have a view of where PR would fit into the web over the next decade.

I could see how a range of platforms such as PC's, laptops, cell phones, computer games and domestic multiple screen as well as digital wall paper could produce new environments that would change the way we use the internet.

It is no longer a great leap of faith to see how different channels for communication can be mashed to provide rich experiences that our big brains so crave.

In addition, it was obvious that these developments would increase the emotional connection between people, avatars and the hybrid person avatar (such as the Wii opponent represented as an tennis partner on a screen).

One of the elements that makes this kind of immersive web sticky is emotion. Today, browsing through the New Scientist's YouTube site can across Peter Molyneux's video where he shows how this can evolve. Peter is the wizard behind Lionhead Studios (worth a visit just for the graphics) and explains the concept very well.

Emotional Internet is on its way!

The Value of Relationships – a PR opportunity?

The wise men comment on the financial tsunami that has broken over the financial world in the last few months on the BBC.

They are worrying over the future of capitalism which is a sideshow compared to the other changes happening around them.

As readers here know, I have been talking about such shock waves for some time and I have been yelling into the void that we have to come to terms with intangibles and notably the value of relationships. When relationships break down the commercial consequences are, as we can see, dire. But history also tells us that when relationships fail between peoples the consequences are far worse.

It seems to me that too many people are too aloof to see the present danger.

In an era of internet driven transparency, the lack of it un-nerves many and so it is to be expected that bundles of "special investment vehicles" would eventually un-nerve people. In this case the people are bankers.

But this is insignificant compared to the next shock wave and the ones after that.

In business the practice of 'off balance sheet' finance from lease and lease back at one extreme for companies large and small to cloud computing for mostly small organisations, there is a similar shock waiting just round the corner. The question about assets that underscore the value of the company is a very real one and is not measured in the flights of fancy or terror at the LSE. It is measured in the cloud and the relationship value of the relationship networks on and off line..

Financial reporting has to change and it has to recognise the intangible assets that are the basis of most enterprise. There is plenty of evidence that the intangible values in and of organisations is both in-house and beyond. There are many case studies showing that beyond the corporate firewall there is greater value. The examples are not 'high tech' or special and they cut across sectors as diverse as gold prospecting (Goldcorp), education (MITOpenCourseWare), pharma (Procter & Gamble) and computing (IBM). No form of human endeavour is exempt. Each of the above examples are deriving huge value and enhanced assets through community and 'open source' interactivity with huge numbers of none-payroll people involved.

These relationships assets need to be represented in the financial and management reporting conventions on across the world. They need to be reported in company accounts. At best such value is expressed on the stock markets of the world and yet, as we are seeing today, this is a poor measure.

In politics too, we see how relationship assets are exposed to transparency and, driven by the internet, can have far reaching effects. The US presidential election may seem to be an exemplar but compared to the DDoS attacks on NATO countries like Estonia and Georgia there is more than elections at stake. Garry Warner notes some of the motives and user mobilisation techniques available. This is cyberwar between peoples and not necessarily governments or politicians. Our economies, society and polity are now dependant on the internet and yet, unless we can reach out to all communities on a global scale, we will soon be fighting another war with a very different, if just as effective Blitzkrieg taking conflict to the people.

The rise and rise of user created value and wealth through collaboration seems to be passing sensible people by. It may seem that the content of MySpace or Bebo or even blogs is of little consequence and at first sight that is understandable. But every post is of consequence to at least one person if not a huge crowd. It has value. This stuff is being generated at the rate of millions of (over 1.5 million blog posts, over 3 million Twitter Tweets perday, 50,000 Facebook transactions per second) items a day. Each has value (at least to one person), value that cannot be ignored and has to be counted as part of the world economy.

Whether capitalist or not, it's there. The capitalism debate needs to be put back in its 20^th century box. It is no longer relevant.

Meantime, what is a relevant lands in the lap of relationship management. This could be public relations 2.0 and 3.0 but right now is well beyond the scope of most PR research and practice.

Who will take up the challenge?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PR - a Profession Tainted by the Financial Community

I am incensed.

Two blog posts have prompted me to respond in pretty harsh terms. One is to Tom Watson’s post in which he says “If you think about it, public relations has always been defined as a management activity” and Richard Bailey’s post entitled “Where is PR”.

My argument is that the role of PR as a management discipline is in tatters. The loss of trust, absence of transparency, destruction of relationships, spin and hype surrounding financial instruments and the turmoil in the financial markets demonstrates that PR practitioners in the financial institutions have failed in their fiduciary duty.

The fiduciary duty, in Wikipedia is identified as ‘a legal relationship of confidence or trust between two or more parties, most commonly a fiduciary or trustee and a principal or beneficiary’. If PR is to believe it has a management role it has to recognise that it has a legal duty as well. But what of the arguments about PR as a management activity? I explicated some of my thinking:

To Tom’s post I make this repost:

Of course PR cannot be anything but a management function (all the rest is execution). It must have the regulatory oversight of marketing but much else beside including its contribution to strategic corporate value explication, corporate and operational decision-making, strategy development, realisation, and policing of corporate responsibility if it has a writ in relationship management.

But we have to be wary of what we mean. If PR is a management function then the financial turmoil we are witnessing today is in part (mostly?) caused by poor public relations.

Lack of transparency (notably of the value of paper) poor corporate responsibility (is the organisation able to stand by its responsibilities - if this not so CSR is not a PR responsibility) and spin instead of conversation blind relationships and undermine trust.

These are PR issues. Issues that are hardnosed and at the centre of good governance and public relations practice.

What then were/are the responsibilities of the in-house practitioners in the financial institutions?

The role of PR would be able to strategically develop and deploy radical transparency to enhance trust (especially in derivative bundling and holdings - the very products of these organisations).

The role of PR would also ensure that corporate responsibility would entrust employees and commercial partners with responsibility for their actions and the extent to which transparency could be deployed to underpin trust - and thus deserve the rewards and - importantly - severe penalties.

The role of PR would also apply downward pressure on over-claiming and spin to ensure that obfuscation was culturally unacceptable.

Finally, the role of PR would develop interactive relationships (mutual understanding in Grunig’s world) through effective engagement using tools of internal and external communication.

PR, then, as a management function is pervasive. Its role is at least as deep in the organisation as finance or IT. It reaches into every conversation, transaction and relationship.

This pretence to be a management discipline is all very fine, but are the Universities up to the task? Can they show students how to manage boards and senior managers who have been brought up on hype as a habit and can they show the contribution that trust offers in delivering sustainable development and profitability? Can they then also teach those multiple disciplines that can help students deliver as practitioners?

I subscribe to the PR is a management discipline school and, as a practitioner, have been through the bruising experience of taking on executive boards as a result. Its a very tough job. Its a job that entails close working (and not always agreeable) relationships with board chairmen and a very straight relationship with the CEO and the other members and, in passing, it means that marketing has to answer to PR.

Is this, Tom, what you mean by being a management function or is it something more fluffy like teaching PR as part of communication - or worse - marketing.

It remains to be seen whether the Masters courses will pick up on the failure of PR in the financial sector as a case study. Will they use this experience to help other sectors where, right now, the practice has to be able to deliver trust between organisations and their constituencies as the effects of the credit crunch works though into the ‘real’ world where trust will also determine corporate survival?

For Richard my response follows a similar path.

The Euprera agenda begins with spin because it has the preamble:

"Public Relations and Corporate Communication have been, and are, rapidly evolving and expanding their influence within complex organizations."

Well, semantics first. Corporate Communication is to Public Relations as tennis balls are to Wimbledon. Why not add in press release writing and events management? The highest calling is to be responsible for managing organisational capability in relationship development with publics/constituents. The rest is technique.

The truth is that PR has wimped out of its responsibilities for so long that its premier European education and research organisation can get away with the intellectual equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing. Here we see the professionals and academics twirling around for the entertainment of an audience.

Lets call a spade a spade. The world is going through financial turmoil because public relations practitioners were just not up to the job.

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

I don't really care what the twirling dancers may want to reply, the semantics are but chiffon disguising the stumbling footwork. The fact is that there is only one discipline responsible - public relations management.

As a discipline it evidently has not expanded influence within complex organisations and most notably today, the majority of the whole financial sector worldwide. Today, if you have money from the public or are a government, you can buy almost any bank in the world at a massive discount - if you dare to trust the balance sheet!
The abysmal internal and external relationships that has lead us to this pass has one culprit.

Oh, I am sure that the PR courses taught by the worthies at the conference cover subject matter like ethics, the nature and role of symmetrical and a-symmetrical relationships in developing mutual understanding and the role of transparency in building mutual trust. But do they follow this through with how these elements of PR play out in practice? What are the consequences? Or how these elements are managed (by the practitioner?) in an organisation?

If not, why teach these subjects? Are these elements of PR degrees added to give some form of academic respectability in the courses like sequins stitched on to make a plain frock look like a ball gown?

The insecurity of the profession as it dances an endless two-step between being press releases and a contender for the 'C' suite is down to poor education. It is just not difficult to circulate a memo to the board saying that trust and transparency issues are ruining relationships and will wipe out the company if the board does not get a grip - and I know how to solve the problem. Any junior PR can do it and the 'head' of PR should, knowing how to manage communication effectively, find such a move easy. Its sure route to the 'C' Suite and it is only those who lack courage, doubt, are insecure or ill trained and have not arrived who doubt.

But how to manage that sort of relationship and that sort of programme is not typically part of the PR industry's research or teaching or practice. Perhaps then, PR is not seen in academia as a management practice.

I have not seen, and doubt if we will ever see mass, professional or academic condemnation and approbation of PR management at the UK's Northern Rock and HBOS banks, even though we, as tax payers, are picking up the bill and many will also pay with their livelihoods.

The reality is that public relations, as a management discipline, is tough, hard nosed, institutionally pervasive and offers trust in and through constituent desire for engagement; offering symmetrical relationships to deliver long term stability, and in the case of commerce, consequential trade and profit.

The firm (which, I contend, is the nexus of relationships), will always be better off with good public relations and it starts with answering your question 'where is PR'.

It should be quaking in its boots. It should be anticipating the enquiry into its failures that prompted the Credit Crunch and financial sector melt-down and its consequences.

It should be concerned that the role of its institutions will be subject to academic scrutiny over standards.

It should be examining how future generations of practitioners do not lead us to such a pass.

Unless we see such investigation then perhaps in answering 'Where is PR' the repost will be 'no one cares.'

Is this where we believe that our reputation should be?

FIR Interview: A Conversation with Jane Rowe

By 1803, having already demonstrated his inventive nature by inventing a new kind of paper for cannon cartridges, John Dickinson started his company and designed and built a new machine capable of the continuous manufacture of paper to replace the handmade techniques then used, notably by the Frenchman Henry Fourdriner. These innovations made the company that bore his name both successful and famous.

Today, his company now merged into Hamelin Paperbrands is adopting Web 2.0 both in marketing and, interestingly, in its products.

Our guest today, Jane Rowe, is the revolutionary voice in this wonderfully traditional institution, bringing modern conversational marketing to a 205-year-old company.

She talks with FIR Correspondent David Phillips about her introduction and adoption of Web 2.0 and how she is introducing it to her department, colleagues and industry.

Jane is a very active member of the FIR community and contributes to the FIR Friendfeed Room and comments by email regularly.

At the end of the interview, Jane reveals on FIR the news that she is to take up new responsibilities in the near future.

Listen to this podcast now:

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (9.6Mb, 10:28)
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About our Conversation Partner

Jane Rowe is a dedicated marketer and communicator with over 20 years experience in the marketing specialism. Currently Marketing Director for Hamelin Paperbrands Ltd (formerly John Dickinson Stationery), Jane’s responsibility extends to the management of an extensive portfolio including classic brands such as Basildon Bond personal stationery and Oxford Black n’ Red notebooks.

Prior to joining John Dickinson Stationery in January 2005, Jane worked for the major service organisation, The Automobile Association (The AA), where she was Strategic Projects Manager responsible for internal communications for a team of 250 marketers, new product development and innovation. Before this Jane worked in a variety of marketing management roles in companies such as John West Foods Ltd, Peaudouce (UK) Ltd and Britax Consumer Products Ltd.

Jane has a BSc (Hons) degree in Food Marketing and more recently won a scholarship to study for an MBA at Henley Management College, graduating in 2007.

As a great advocate for encouraging people to take responsibility for their own personal development, Jane is now focused on developing her own understanding of new media and the value it can deliver across businesses to both internal staff and customers.

In November 2008 Jane moves to a new role as Marketing & Merchandising Director for Spicers Ltd, the largest office products wholesaler in Europe based in Cambridgeshire, where she lives with her husband and son. Jane currently blogs at http://movingstationery.wordpress.com.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at
fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox. 

The Tesco Story - A little help from online friends needed

I came across a video about Tesco that has been viewed a million times. Even for the biggest retailer in the country that is a bit excessive and all the more so because it was an activist video.

I just had to dig further.

On June 29th 2008, David Smith and Zoe Wood reported on the Annual General Meeting of Tesco. Tesco, like all big, successful companies has its detractors. At the time, the company accounted for £1 of every £7 spent at British shops, was facing the effects of recession, high input costs and resurgent competitors.

Tesco is the fourth most visited retail site in the UK, it had 32 million web page impressions claiming some form of allegiance and its sites www.tesco.com, www.tescoreports.com, www.tescocorporate.com (which had lost the link to the financial consultancy Investis) and tescoplc.com where its press releases and CSR policy statements are published.

According to David Bowen in an FT article in May 2006: "The web is even more important than newsreaders in the area of social responsibility. Whether a company is trying to provide data on waste, to explain how friendly it is to the community, or to lay out its policy on child labour, it cannot do so in sound bites – it needs space, and a website has more space than any other channel.

"Tesco and Sainsbury both understand this, though having looked at their sites I fear they may also believe CSR is a sub-division of marketing. What surprised me more than this is the variation, and in places lack of interest, I found as I wandered round other giant retailers’ websites."


But in June 2008 the message had not gone home. Contributing to the Boards woes were a number of issue campaigners:

• The celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall campaigning for higher-welfare chickens in Tesco stores; 
  
• Jim McLaughlin, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) in Arizona, told shareholders and the board that 'We are here to inquire why there has been no dialogue in the US, whereas in the UK it is an established practice for Tesco to engage with unions; 
  
• The anti-poverty charity War on Want alleged that Tesco is being supplied by an Indian factory where textile workers struggle to survive on less than £1.50 a day and a 60-hour week; 
  
• Activists had, according to Smith and Wood, also accused Tesco of bringing tons of produce to Britain from crisis-torn Zimbabwe 
  
• The company, it was reported, had become the shorthand villain of the piece for campaigners who blame supermarkets for driving local businesses out of towns and villages.
  

Robert Clark, an analyst at Retail Knowledge Bank was reported to likening the situation to the mid-Nineties, when Sainsbury's was the market leader but lost its crown after it was seen to become arrogant and lose touch with shoppers - an environment that enabled Tesco to expand rapidly.

Both sides of the arguments appear in social media like blogs, discussion lists and videos and there were those million YouTube views.... surely that MUST be ringing bells!

The remarkable evidence is that there is a debate and yet there is no evidence of Tesco interacting with the communities engaging in the issues. No press release, no comments in blogs, or video sites. Silence!


That month its shares fell to their lowest level for two months after a trading update showed growth half that enjoyed by rival Morrisons. Tesco also admitted that Asda and discount outlets such as Aldi were 'having a moment in the sun' in the tougher economic climate. The moment in the sun extended month after month.

In August 2008 the biggest private sector employer was concerned about the effects of negative press coverage on staff and hired the Wriglesworth Consultancy following a five-way pitch.

Then PR Week announced in September that Trevor Datson Tesco's head of corporate media relations had "jumped ship" to join Danone as external communications director in the UK.

Is there cause and effect?

Could there be a case for deeper engagement? Could this be achieved without the Board's fundamental approval and involvement?

Are we watching a case study on how not to handle social media in the making?

Chrome - user experience and reputation

Using Chrome highlights one other issue. The speed of site download.

Once one is used to the speed of Chrome, slow loading sites are very noticeable. This is going to be an issue and will impact on the reputation of organisations.

Sluggish sites reflect on the overall competance of organisations.

The Words Don't Stack Up

I now have a capability to search the semantic concepts that describe organisations across the internet. Using http://www.netreputation.co.uk/values, you can join in the fun too.

What it does is to collect the texts in Google news articles, blog posts, website pages, and Google natural search.

Using Latent Semantic Inference, it finds the most to least concepts evident in each corpus.

The theory is that an organisation with a good internet strategy should provide a list of concepts that are similar between these four sources  and offer a coherent view of the organisation, its products and services and their merit in a balance grouping of value concepts.

One might at least expect the web site and natural search (with good search engine optimisation) to have common concepts and that these should at least offer a coherent range of concepts (keywords) that describe the values of the organisation.

Here is the good news.  If you want to describe your organisation get the blog returns... they tend to be really good.  They reflect what even the fussiest marketing man would want to hear. Then try news coverage. Most companies would like that. Mostly, it’s great coverage pointing to a coherent structure of values.

 

From there forward it goes downhill. The website will be pretty, the navigation flawless and the words – completely at sea. Lacking coherence, the offer of the day ahead of company values and one can only feel for the poor visitor trying to make sense of the content in the site.

Well that is pretty bad. Worse is to come. The top ten citations from natural search confirm only that Search Engine Optimisation is, to most people responsible for it, a place of loathed melancholy, where brooding darkness spreads its jealous wings.

The capability of companies to build a coherent internet strategy is the biggest issue facing PR practice today.

The easy bit, where the practitioner has control like the website, is a mess. The part of the internet which can be influenced using SEO is incoherent and yet where there is less control in press coverage and precious little control, in blogs, life seems flawlessly wonderful.

Who owns your life

ReadWriteWeb covers a whole range of confidentially issues in its post this evening written by Marshall Kirkpatrick. 

The problems with Google collecting information abaout us, recording our documents search and reading habits and even owning Blogger.com is not as simple as Google being Big Brother.

It goes beyond this. It is a question of who owns what we are. At present it does look rather like Google. 

Google has moer information about more people than most tax authorities and all governement departments put together.

Who will they share this with and for how much.

Is it monet, the freedom of an un-named chinaman or YOU?

Where audience research and PR evaluation is taking us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meantime Tom's reports on the findings of the SNCR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

If a corporate objective sets out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kids on Hols - Broadband dies - Alternatives?

For a couple of years now I have come to expect my home network will deliver 100 mbs between my broadband modem, computers in my house and at the end of the garden. Beyond the modem, that is, the (virtual monopoly) BT service, speeds are typically 5 mbs. But this week have died.

There are many vendors for my kind of domestic system. I use my electricity circuits and Devolo's dLan.

This means that the feeble BT wifi system that comes with their modem is not a problem and I can access both cable and wifi irrespective of the thickness of the walls or distance from the hub.

However, with kids on holiday, I have noticed that the network, the other side of the BT hub is struggling.

I typically get 5 mbs from BT but the last week has seen a drop as low as 750 kbs mid morning, late afternoon and when it rains. I guess, this is down to kids at home watching online TV or just surfin'.

So, its time to break the monopoly. The BT cables.

This is where the system I have at my home comes into its own. Use power cables. The country is wired up to electricity and electricity cables can and are being used for data transmission but not for the domestic user.

Broadband Powerline (BPL) is not some fancy dream or over the horizon technology. It is a reality and is simple to implement. It does not require fibre to be installed and it could be implemented as a national minimum 100mbs system very quickly.

A combination of BPL and Wimax could wire up the nation quickly and no doubt would relieve BT of the onerous task of providing consumers with what they want: fast reliable broad broadband at an acceptable cost.

So cheer up BT, salvation is at hand!

IMRG Capgemini - online retailing to top 50% by 2011

Online shopping is poised to take 20p out of every UK consumer pound by the end of the year, a landmark milestone that analysts believe will make the channel a critical business for many high-street retailers.

An IMRG Capgemini E-Retail report notes that online retail sales amounted to £26.5 billion in the first six months of 2008, up 38 per cent from the same period in the previous year and projected online retail sales would be as high as 50% by 2011.

In B2B because of the growth of online trading, IT workers, now have to be creative, world-aware and business-savvy to succeed. They are now a central part of the wider workforce and drive future development in sectors as diverse as retail, transport, finance and hospitality, reports Retail Bulletin.

Booming e-commerce means sectors not traditionally linked with IT are creating brand new technology-related job roles throughout their businesses and working much more closely with IT workers to help them succeed.

Of course, this also should include the PR sector. But figures are harder to find here.

Next results

The results from retailer Next today suggest that there is a lot more work to be done by the Group to boost its online sales.

The FT reports that Next’s online and catalogue business sales were up 5.6 per cent last quarter with high street sales down 2.4% over the same period.


No one will pretend that online sales can beat the downturn. There will be casualties and for a lot of organisations their online sales still remain only a small fraction of total sales.

So there are things to be done.

The first is to optimise online sales now. This will help with the immediate issues that will plague retailing for a couple of years.

Next is to plan for next year when the online experience and commitment to the brand from the online community has to be of a different order.

And then, as retailing begins to recover, it will have changed for all time because the experience of online shopping will be well established.

The immersive internet will be at hand.

Beating the downturn

"If we – as marketers – follow where our customers go, we will need sooner or later to make the mental shift to consumer generated media."

This is a conclusion made by Eric-Kintz over at his HP blog. Oh... this is just bait for a good ol' fashioned rant.

It is a real problem in PR.

Personal experience and as many reports on the impact of the internet on life, commerce and everything keeps passing the PR community by.

It is no good sticking with the press-releases are our bread and butter mindset. Its just not very effective any more. The Internet has roughly double the influence of the second strongest medium — television — and roughly eight times the influence of traditional print media.

Sure, there is a pile of press clips and exaggerated and meaningless AVE's and so called ROI to demonstrate that PR people can get coverage.

So what. They don't sell product and have a relatively low and declining effect opinion and brand success.

But clients are mesmerised by the glare of online and consultants seek a silver bullet.

I guess there is a simple answer as online spending bucks the recession: focus on developing online capability.

I know this means that the average practitioner will have to listen to FIR, join Linkedin, write a blog and Twitter like mad and, at the same time, learn to use and pay attention to experts using RSS.

But the preferred PR industry option is to advise clients (in house or as a consultant), to do more of the same and go down with them.

I am more convinced than ever, that online PR has a future but frustrated that its taking practitioners so long to wake up. If that was not bad enough, I am also alarmed at how bad...... I mean irresponsible .... PR education is when it comes to online anything.

Last week, I had a conversation with two PR tutors who told me that they had difficulty getting PR first degree students to engage with the internet and internet marketing and PR.

In the last month, I have been talking to PR graduates (at least that's what they hope for) from a number of different UK schools and they just did not have a clue about online communication. Sure, they did have a Facebook presence and many had course groups on it.

Some 'Had to blog'. Wow!

Not one used Twitter, none had made a podcast, they could not find an academic paper using a search engine, only one had heard of 'pay per click' the list goes on......

The present economic slowdown means that these young people NEED online capability to get a job this year and survive the next five years in their chosen profession. Failure to provide it in a fun and engaging way is irresponsible beyond belief. Equipping young people with skills in flint knapping is fine for a minority of archaeologists but not the rest of society!

Is it true that when the going gets tough, academia retreats into its ivory tower?

So we don't have expertise among practitioners, who truly can't square the life of tens millions, their own reality and the need to be professional in communication skills and PR students who have been turned off.

If you are a student with online PR on your CV... send it to me. If you are a practitioner who just wants to find out where you career is going, you are too late!

Online Retail - Its a disaster in the making

Today, a crisis broke out in retailing.

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

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

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

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

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

Tiptoe Towards PR Meassurement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Semantic concepts are valuable in other directions too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It certainly has potential.

20 things you need to know about social media

Providing definitive information about channels for communication, keeping it up to date and extending it as media evolves is as important for communication and good governance as the periodic tables are for good chemistry, engineering and pharmacy.

Suitable investment among the universities using the rigour of academic research into the requirements of communicators practising across the many channels for communication is long overdue and synthesising the range of knowledge needed, from a variety of practice perspectives has implications for social and economic policy well beyond the attention it received at present.

Here is my list of the 20 things we need to know to before using specific channels for communication:

The media

1.Title
what is the generic name e.g. email, wiki's etc)

2.Definition
a description

3.Brief history
wikipedia or another resource)

4.Fast Facts
how would the practitioner explain this channel for communication really quickly

5.Communication platforms
PC, laptop, cell phone, print, TV etc

Interactive elements

6.How do people (the public/s) contribute to this channel
To what extent is this common (past/now/future)

7.How does the public share knowledge of content in this channel using this channel and across other channels?
To what extent is this common (past/now/future)?

8.Risk analysis (nature of the risk, likelihood of occurrence, extent of potential damage, mitigation procedure/s extent of amelioration achievable)


Application

9.What services are available to help the practitioner set up/deploy this channel (software, suppliers and/or contractors; are there expert people that the practitioner could employ on behalf of a client)?


10.How to implement the technology (what are the steps involved?)


Policy and optimisation requirements

11.Internal/external policies (examples of such policies will be needed if the practitioner is going to use this channel)


12.How does the practitioner optimise this channel to help people find/use it (e.g. Search Engine Optimisation)?


Monitoring and evaluation

13.Monitor (what is there out there that can help monitor the effect of work using this channel
e.g. can the practitioner set up and RSS feed or a search engine monitor. Can the practitioner monitor how this channel is affecting its audience and how? Does the practitioner need to use a monitoring company and if so who has the expertise
and how much will it cost?)
14.Metrics: What numbers are available in the public domain? What numbers are available in the private domain? Is this best measured as page views or is it by the number of references it generates in www.digg.com. Or by a combination of measurements? Or are the metrics completely different?


15.Evaluate (How does the practitioner set realistic targets and outcomes; how can the practitioner measure how good she is at using this channel for communication; how can the practitioner evaluate the effectiveness of using this channel for communication as part of a relationship building campaign?)


Buy-in

16.Overcoming objections to implementation (what are the practitioner arguments; how are they supported with real and verifiable evidence; can the practitioner call on quantifiable evidence and case study supported reasoning?)


17.Case studies of good and bad practice. Can the practitioner find case studies and look at the best examples and the worst and then identify the risk mitigation or opportunity optimisation policies when using this channel for communication?


18.Relevance to organisations and practice


Planning and implementation

19.Training (training resources, training examples, etiquette)


20.Timescale for implementation (a Gantt chart to identify processes and time taken to implement)

Is there a relationship between profitability and web presence

I have been looking at relationships between numbers of pages indexed by search engines each year and the financial results of companies.

There are a lots more to do before one can draw conclusions but hear is an example from one company.

The key here is to see the relationship between numbers of pages that include reference to the company and the profit indicators.

Does this mean that having a big online footprint aids profits>

The Online Asset - How Obama won

In the past, I have commented on the relationship between traditional press relations and online content.

The difference between the two is that a press release has a limited long tail value whereas an article online has a long half life and contributes to the digital footprint, Google Juice and visibility of an organisational long tail asses.

The former is best considered in accounts as part of P&L and the latter as a corporate asset on the balance sheet.

The extent of goodwill in the former is less potent than the latter.

Today, with Robin Gurney, I am building a company to help organisations identify this corporate asset in its wider sense.

The argument goes like this:

Lets suppose you are the government minister for a small island in a large archipelago in the middle of the ocean and want to increase its GDP to benefit the people of the island.

You elect to invest in building the digital footprint of the island and work at it until it has an online presence ten times bigger than all the other islands nearby.

Thus when people seek to comment about, visit or invest in the group of islands, your island always comes up first in searches, in information resources and in connectivity. The result will soon see more economic activity.

There is a direct relationship between online presence and economic activity.

In concept, it is an extension of the London School of Economics Reports which showed that a 7 per cent increase in word of mouth advocacy unlocks 1 per cent additional company growth (http://tinyurl.com/aohth).

As for an island, so for any country, company, brand, person or politician.

It is not quite a case of simple counts. There are other factors.

Lets take a very simple look at the US Democratic race and see if we can add to other commentators efforts.

The Google index for Barak Obama is, today 5,3700,000 and Hillary Clinton is 5,4300,000.

If my theory was going to be correct, Clinton should have won the race and, plainly, she did not.

But, if we look closer at the results, we see that Clinton has a couple of decades of commentary that is indexed and Obama only four years worth. He made up a lot of ground very quickly.

Now lets look at blog posts:

Obama blog posts 99,859,318
Clinton blog posts 34,127,553

This is a very different picture. Here we are seeing like for like time scales and the digital footprint shows Obama attracting three times as much comment which, one can argue, helped Obama Google Juice as well as wider visibility. What is more, the digital footprint for Obama had the benefit of a steeper long tail curve (more content was more recent).

Then, again, take photographs. Online Obama has 2,990,000 photos indexed by Google and most of them are less than six years old. On the other hand Clinton only has 2,530,000 photos and hers go back to 1969 (see picture above)!

This is why Robin and I think it is important to have robust methodologies for audition online presence. It affects political and corporate outcomes and the extent of correlation between online presence and success are far too close to be co-incidental.

There are other indicators in the use of evolving channels. Twitter is one. Clinton has 4,019 followers and Obama has 33,069 followers; Obama is following 33,960 people and Hillary is following 0.

Leavering value from online presence is not hugely dependant on other marketing activity unless that serves the online presence in a virtuous circle (as Google, Facebook, eBay and Amazon attest) and so auditing online presence is important to be able to identify the value of an organisation.

In addition, it is a significant element in valuation of organisations and for establishing thier future prospects.

Obviously, there will be much more to follow as our research reveals more information but here are some interesting findings over the last few months.

1. In the UK social media interest in organisations in general changed last autumn. The rate of increase in social media comment accelerated very significantly.

2. The rate of change of inbound links is greater for more successful companies.

3. The long tail effect does have a half life. Content effect decays over time which means that having been online for a long time is not always good in itself.

4. Active sites and active social comment raises the digital footprint faster.

Fun huh!