LeverWealth

Monday, October 03, 2011

My five year prediction for the PR industry

—The next five years

—80% of PR revenues will be through digital interfaces.

—Relationship based practice (every ‘like’ is a relationship building block).

—PR industry will be a major economic driver in the (the internet economy)

—The range of digital interfaces will explode and interaction between things and people (with their associated apps) will become a new form of “Internet of Things” communication and engagement.

—Digitally evolving modes of communication such as body language, touch language, direct brain interfaces based on electroencephalography (EEG) technology, etc.

—A new range of communication via smart phones apps (and other platforms) or services like Pachube deliver Internet of Things capability and is opening up for PR to engage.

—Avatars and Internet of Things devices are going to be included in social segments/segmentation.

—Social Network societies with personal as well as new ‘tribal’ groups

—Media evolution planning as part of campaign/relationship planning (the media will have changed by the time the campaign kicks in)

—Semantic concepts (aka values) used for individual, personal and tribal group segmentation

—Corporate ontology’s as part of brand value, reputation and relationship management with semantic intelligence and competitive evaluation

—Radical Transparency

—Noticeable structural change in the nature of organisations.

—The value of the Internet

—GDP of Europe was EUR 11,791, 000 million in 2009. The euro area accounted for 76.0 % of this total, while the sum of the five largest EU economies (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain) was 71.6 % (Source: Eurostat)

—In 2010 the internet economy represented 7.2 percent of UK. GDP (sources : Google/BCG).

—This GDP share is likely to grow by about 10 percent annually, reaching 10 percent of GDP by 2015

—By extrapolation, it is not unreasonable to assume the internet economy represents 7.2% of the European Economy or about EUR 848,963 million (800, billion)

—And it will be worth EUR 1,200,000 million in three years time.

—The United Kingdom exports £2.8 in e-commerce goods and services for every £1 imported – Digital exports to Europe could be very high

—Change of Internet and its use

—Internet use will be up by a factor of 3 in 5 years

—U.K. smartphone adoption growing 70 percent to more than 11 million subscribers this year.

—37 per cent of adults and 60 per cent of teens are ‘highly addicted’

—Almost half of Internet users connected to the Internet, using a mobile phone, while away from the home or office.
There were 17.6 million mobile phone Internet users in 2011, representing 45 per cent of Internet users, compared to 8.5 million users (23 per cent) in 2009.

— UK internet population spent 3.4 billion hours online during August 2011

— 32.5million UK people are collectively watching over 5 billion online videos every month (17 hours per person per month).

—UK online retail will hit €40 billion by 2014 onlineshoppers will increase from 31 million to 40 million. Since the start of 2011 online retail has grown 18% (to October 2011)

—Online charitable giving has risen by 85% in the past three years

—Britons spend 43m hours gaming every day, with consoles accounting for 21 per cent of that figure. Social networks claim 18 per cent and casual games 17 per cent.

—Using the Internet to sell goods or services, for example via auction sites such as eBay, saw large growth in 2011.

—International comparisons show some countries have an opportunity. The UK is one of the best situated

There is no doubt that this is a major opportunity for people active in the sector.

—What needs to be done

—Recognise the contribution of the internet (£100bn 250k employment in 2010)

—Doubling the broadband internet access speeds for an economy can increase its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 0.3%

—Development of internet based businesses

—Investment in research and teaching

—The PR industry’s need to do more digital work

— The value of the PR industry in the UK is £7.5bn (Source: PRCA)

—If all PR was online PR, the PR industry would represent 7.5% of UK internet business

—However, 30 percent of communications professionals work at firms devoted to social media rather than traditional media. (source: Bizbox)

—The PR industry executed 2.25% of the UK internet business. That is a start which can now be developed.

—PR people contribute £122,000 per year to their industry (GDP).

—Internet employees contribute £ 400,000 per year to their industry (GDP).

—If the digital contribution from the PR industry was 100% of its activity, at internet industry productivity rates, the PR industry would be worth £24.6 billion.

—Where is the PR industry focussing its future efforts

—According to the ICCO, demand for digital services rose internationally in 2010. As a percentage of overall fee income for public relations consultancies, these services remained relatively small (ranging from 5 to 20 percent) but showed an increase over 2009.

—A survey by Stevens Gould Pincus, suggests the use of social media for public relations and public affairs purposes jumped 15 percent from 2009 to 2010.

—30 percent of communications professionals work at firms devoted to social media rather than traditional media.

—At this rate, the digital/social media element of the PR industry will represent £180 billion by 2016 all by itself (over 2.5 times the rest of PR industry earnings).

—The industry would increase employment to 467,000 (to be competitive with the rest of the internet industries) in five years.

—How the PR industry will develop

—The development of internet mediated PR may be by the existing industry or by an emerging industry of specialists.

—It will be involved in a form of PR whether the industry likes it of not.

—The successful development will need to be competitive with other internet sectors (e.g. input £400k to the sector each person/year)

—The development will be on a wide front because the range of communications technologies, platforms and channels will be so diverse and will be integrated for optimum effect.—

—W3C is talking PR

—Already W3C is talking the PR language:

“The role of vocabularies (Ontologies) on the Semantic Web are to help data integration when, for example, ambiguities may exist on the terms used in the different data sets, or when a bit of extra knowledge may lead to the discovery of new relationships. “

An introduction to methodologies

—In planning PR activity, there will need to be elements that take account of:

◦The values systems and brand values of client and consumer

◦Different forms of segmentation from stakeholder theory to new ideas in the field

◦Channels that are evolving/changing or will be new at time of execution

◦New social frames/constructs

◦Development of protocols that will deliver an annual return on costs

◦The return per day (allowing for holidays and weekends) has to be of the order of £2000 per day per employee

—This will require a significant element of cost management, training and automation to deliver significant effect for optimal effort (and a 3.2 fold increase in productivity).◦

—Where the new productivity comes from ?

—Undergraduate education has to be much broader and must include an understanding of the technologies five years hence to leaven PR practice and give them a flying start

◦There are still schools teaching undergraduates how to write a ‘good press release’ but not the need for styles to deliver an effective blog post, Facebook messages or email.

—University research has to inform teachers and practitioners about the digital era

—The realms of research will extend into may other academic areas

◦there is every good scientific reason to believe that the internet is as much part of human evolution as speech. We love it!

—Research will be needed to inform practice as well as academia and PR teachers.

—There is a deep need to be aware of the need for productivity throughout the industry.—

—

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Six years later, we are talking about value

I was watching Derek Halpern talk about blog posts on YouTube and he suggested re-visiting old posts. I did.
The oldest talked about valuing relationships.

Here it is:

We have moved on. In six years, we have some better views:

Now, of course we are getting closer to having a form of ROI which I outlined in June.

In this instance, I did propose a form of valuation that would be effective for all types of PR and which would provide a value for public relations. We do have tools that can help with this approach and that would be useful.

So now who is going to work on creating some real (Open Source) facilities for the PR industry to share to be able to measure its effects?

Thursday, September 01, 2011

Measuring and evaluating

As we get closer to the new academic term, I thought it may be helpful for students to take a look at how they can examine the work they have been involved in during this gap year.

We have moved past the time when a PR practitioner could imagine that he or she has delivered anything of worth if it is not available online. Getting some sense as its effect, even effectiveness may mean using any number of services.

Of course there are a host of tools out there which can be used but it may be very useful to have a quick look at the range of different tools and approaches that can be used.

Now, this is not a game about 'evaluating PR' - whatever that may mean. This is not about outputs and outcomes. It is all about how internet technologies, aided by people, have represented the activities of an organisation in a range of ways. Its more complicated than traditional PR evaluation which has been stuck in the mud of counting column inches for far too long.

Perhaps the first task is to look at some of the tools available. The broaden the mind.

A close examination may offer an insight into the ones that will shed light and the ones that will shed confusion.

So many claims and so little transparency is not helpful.

The next thing to do is to determined what each service offers. What, information, for example is provided and what is its value to a communications expert.

Perhaps then, it would be time to see if we can offer insights to the practitioner in order to aid decision making about activities with measurable outcomes.

The list I offer is gleaned from bookmarks created over the years (so some links may not work). They are about tools that can offer a wide range of data .

Here, then, is the first column of your spread sheet!

Oh, yes and here are some old pages I produced four years ago:

Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Home Office finds out the truth about 'Social Media'

The government and police have not sought any new powers to shut social networks, the Home Office said after a meeting with industry representatives, Reports the BBC.

While one may respect the Home Secretary for her political acumen and position in government, her knowledge of the internet, including mobile internet and social media may need some help.

That Facebook, Twitter or RIM can have some material effect on communication affecting a riot is undoubted (these are platforms and channels for communication). That they are capable of activities that will change behaviours is very doubtful. That she can upset the economy with her tinkering is probable.

In the USA and Europe, and to a lesser extent across the world, £millions has been spent on using the internet to change behaviours by companies such as Wallmart, Exon, Toyota, General Electric and Allianz, the biggest in the world. They have all tried and all failed. They are not the only organisations who have a problem with getting online users to do things. Google proudly released Wave and dropped it. TouchPad failed because it had few of the apps that made Apple’s iPad a runaway hit. Just 48 days after Microsoft began selling the Kin, a smartphone for the younger set, the company discontinued it because of disappointing sales.

The people in the thick of it are not so good either and the Home Secretary has realised that.

Meantime, economic research tells us:

The Internet economy now represents 7.2 percent of U.K. GDP, more than construction, transport, or utilities.
The United Kingdom ranks first in e-commerce and exports £2.8 in e-commerce goods and services for every £1 imported
There are 250,000 U.K. jobs in Internet companies
Small and medium businesses that are high-Web users experience higher growth and more international sales than those that do not use the Internet
A recent additional study tells us that sales via the internet are, by themselves, of the order of £62 billion ($103bn)

The Home Secretary also had to consider how many social network outlets there are? The ranges of protocols being used that can be brought into play to avoid censorship (FTP, WWW, Email,etc etc)? The range of platforms in use (PC, Mobile phones, gaming machines etc)?

Her knee jerk reaction to the Prime Minster's elastoplast rhetoric was potentially very damaging and would solve nothing.

It is ironic that a British Home Secretary should attempt shackle the Web, invented by a British scientist 20 years almost to the day from its launch.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The trust machine

From time to time, I get excited about a future beyond my comprehension.

Imagine a computer chip that can decide, all by itself, if your organisation is trustworthy. Not a computer, not a big system but a chip (ergo, you can put lots of them into a single 'computer'). Imagine this chip gathering all the information on and offline that will allow it to make judgements about you, your organisation, the value of your products brands and the ethic you stand by.

IBM's cognitive chips, launched this week, are part of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project, which aims to create a system that is capable of rewiring itself as it interacts with its environment while still analyzing complex information from several sensory modalities.

The announcement this week of the new cognitive computer chips is a big step on the way.

These systems, which would not be programmed like traditional computers, will learn through experiences like humans. They will create hypotheses, find correlations, remember, and learn from their environments.

As always, the PR industry will ignore all of this as being too technical and of tomorrow and not worth investing time in today.

As ignorant as BP's Tony Hayward was of public relations, the practitioner that ignores IBM's big announcement will be as unstuck. 'I'd like my life back' will also be a closed option for organisations that don't heed an ability for a computer to judge the capability, efficacy and ethics of an organisation.

I realise this is not a subject for journalists' given the job of investment banker or discovering a Higgs Boson particle or, harder still, being a professional PR practitioner, but it is important for the rest of us.

It is important because, unlike a number of practitioners who are obviously one egg short of a dozen, modern practitioners will have to persuade the David Cameron's, Tony Haywood's and the Metropolitan police that good PR is not predicated on someone being able to write news copy or depend on some "Other Buggers' Efforts'.

Why must we take note now?

Firstly, this is going to have an effect within five years (less time that it took Twitter to master PR). Secondly, it will have a memory that can remember what you, as a practitioner did today (as in right now). Finally its ability to combine radical organisational transparency with the totality of the organisational environment is now assured with all the organisational consequences that entails.

No doubt, this will take me and a number of other practitioners, and hopefully, some academics, time to think through but it is a significant professional challenge.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Stepping aside from press and social media PR

The nature of public relations as the agent which provides structured concepts and understanding of mean by which ideas are exchanged and flourish is as old as humanity. It is the fundamental which distinguishes civilised man from social animal. It allows man to productively invest the majority of time in relationship building in order that social interactions can cumulatively enhance human existence.

So what does PR do?

It acts as an agent
By explicating structured concepts
Making them available and pertinent using structured means
With capabilities that extend well beyond social grooming
In a process with relationship productivity
Which accelerates evolution beyond biological development

The trouble is that people in PR do not recognise this high calling. It is, for many, far too grand. For some it is even hard to comprehend.

If we don’t look at the stars but look at the functions we can see the work and effects of the continuum.

The media proxy is a tool. PR in its widest sense, is ambivalent about which media it uses. We have become transfixed by the press and press relations (so called) skills. They are useful. It is helpful to have people who do it well. They are functionaries (and mostly very nice people). They are infrequently people who understand PR. They have many solutions to problems - and they are all called press relations.

In the 1960’ PR was much more about politics. It was important because its application formed the bulwark between the totalitarianism of Russion Communism and democracy.

If you look at the practitioner of a certain age like Doug Smith, Peter Walker and many more, they began life as political agents. Some became lobbyists others worked in-house and others ran agencies.

One of the skills that were needed by these practitioners was an ability to work with journalists. But by no means the only skill.

This was an age when wars were won because we did NOT use propaganda.

Many of the issues were big and global. A period of Cold War (and Cuban Missile Crisis) were real events. The civil rights movement, the environment, women's demands for equality, the space race and the landing on the moon, as well as the Vietnam War, Mods and Rockers and the Beatles made our lives even more psychedelic!

For the first time in a generation we had disposable incomes, holidays and consumerism.

The forms of communication included protests and marches, the largest political youth movement in a liberal democracy (the Young Conservatives) met weekly in every constituency in the land. Trades Union committees also met weekly and held open air events in most high streets. Young Farmers was a publicity outlet for the farming industry and there were any number of such clubs from the Chamber of Commerce to the First Thursday group (young marrieds meeting once per month). People went out to meetings. The PR people of the time made sure that their client was represented at such meetings. There was, of course, the press. It reported on these happenings. Sometimes, people like me invited them to meetings or sent editor’s letters. Occasionally we wrote leaders.

Mass Television changed a lot of this.

In 1962, the Pilkington Report recommending a 2nd BBC programme, separate BBC service for Wales and the restructuring of ITV. First transatlantic TV programmes became possible.

At the same time there was a printing revolution. The stars of Corination Street, with a viewing public of 21 million in 1962, deserved their own spotlight, human interest stories and vox pop magazines to give viewers added information and, it transpired increased interest.

In July 1962, the Sunday Times was reporting 'news' and selling 1,110,457 copies, a rise of 143,397 on the previous half-year. Women's Own, which told of the happenings in Corrie, sold 3 million copies with 120 staff.

Photocopiers, lazer printers, web offset, gravure, colour in daily newspapers, and the ability to print fast and cheaply brought a concurrent revolution.

PR had to change and the easy, but not nearly as effective, form of PR was to use the now fast growing print media, radio and television. It was indirect but productivity was phenomenal. One article could reach every member of the First Thursday movement. Wow!

It was a communications revolution!

No one went to Young Conservative meetings any more. They were too busy watching Ena Sharples or reading Private Eye.

The growth in the numbers of titles in the consumer and trade sectors made it quite hard to maintain share of voice in the 1970’s and so PR was directed away from community influence to printed press editorial volume (and for a time a massive burst of fly posting).

In effect, much of PR became press agentry.

And, by 1980, it had become dead easy. We had learned to manage it.

Events, case studies, features and editorial schedules gave any organisation that wanted: presence and huge share of voice.

In the background, there still were the people working to have effects on corporate relationships.

They had work to do in PR. It was manifest as social, economic, political, institutional, community, internal employees and the Board relationship development.

To fulfil the role of PR, there always was a need to have some form of public presence. Speaking to a Young Farmers branch or presenting the “Retailer of the year” award at the local Chamber of Trade Christmas bash still figured (and still do figure) in the range of communication channels used by organisations that have good PR.

So, what happens as one media vanishes and another emerges?

They tend not to vanish but they do morph.

PR people have to change.

Just as TV stopped a form of social interaction in its tracks, So too, the internet cast a cloud over press, radio and TV as the premier medium.

Just as meetings still happen (and protests and and the Chamber of Trade “Retailer of the year” awards), press radio and TV will continue and will continue to have some relevance and importance. It is yet another capability needed by PR to do its job.

Like the 1960s, the new social media ‘PR’ will be full of hype and difficult to understand and within a couple of decades will be easy.

In the background, there will still be people working to have effects on corporate relationships.

They will work and or direct PR in areas such as social media, press relations and meeting with social, economic, political, institutional, community, internal employees and the Board. They too will use such tools as are sensible to achieve the high goal which affects the evolution of mankind.

So, is the internet different?

To my mind, the internet is different. There is a limit to the range of social media but the internet is much more fundamental.

For PR, the internet is as important as print and television and much more.

It is versatile, has many manifestation,can be part of a personal activity and can affect the world at large. Its many applications in the higher idea of public relations will make it very important.

It is different to print radio and television because it allows development at a faster rate (it is, in its own right, a self fulfilling form of PR).

So, to the question.

If you define PR as press agentry, it’s not going to give you much of a living in the future. If PR continues to act as the midwife of human development, its future is both secure and ever more significant.

In addition, for those organisations that use PR for its real purpose, their future is both assured and very exciting.