Its Google wot done it!

The Internet is disintermediating whole businesses. Independent action by companies is not possible and the Internet is in 'Hurry up' mode. The effects impact business, social and economic on a grand scale.

The UK company WH Smith announced plans to split into two separate quoted companies, focusing on its retail operations and news distribution.

The WH Smith retail business, founded more than 200 years ago and which now operates 674 stores in high streets, train stations and airports, is to be demerged from the news distribution operation, which delivers magazines and newspapers to retailers on behalf of publishers.

By far the biggest distributor of news is now the Internet and large part of that is delivered via search engines like Google and Yahoo. That is not to say that consumer magazines and local newspapers will not flourish and require WHS style distribution. In addition WHS has the infrastructure to add new lines and contracts to lever some returns from its high speed delivery capability.

The Internet has put Marketing on the back foot and gone further: the business model has been disintermediated!

The demerger plan was announced as the group posted half-year profits up 4% at £71m. The increase was achieved despite slowing sales in both parts of the business and as a result of CEO, Ms Kate Swann's strategy of increasing margins and cutting costs. Ms Swann said margins could be improved further, but conceded that eventually she would have to find a way to boost top-line sales.

With, online sales in the UK penetrating deeper into the retail markets than in the USA and with the Internet now bigger than Oxford Street, WHS could do worse that ship online purchases round the country for dot.coms using local franchises to do the 'last mile'. It would be ironic if such a service began to deliver books for Amazon.

In the meantime, there is a great case for implementing a proper relationship management plan and that includes a stakeholder modelling programme up front.

Having said all of that, there is fly in the ointment. The 'real' real world hoarding gold against hard times is back. This time I do not think it will hurt the dot.com businesses. It may even give them a spur but it will tough on the old giants and the people who employ them, as unemployment continues to rise.

Will the sale of the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday be at the market peak?

Picture: The London Stock Exchange Daily Telegraph

Spin, CSR, Dan Smith, Really we are nice people

Former government adviser Des Smith has been arrested as part of a police probe into cash-for-honors allegations.

So, no more secret meetings between the head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Dan. Smith, as adviser to the government's £5bn city academy programme, it was revealed, had promised that wealthy individuals who agreed to make large donations to expand the programme would be rewarded with knighthoods and even peerages!

The freedom to protest is removed in certain circumstances in the Terrorism Act (2000). The freedom to go about your business without being questioned and harassed by the police also. So CSR managers need to be very careful. Top cop Yates is watching.

The arrest followed reports that the House of Lords Appointments Commission had blocked the appointment of four of Prime Minister Tony Blair's nominations for peerages - all wealthy businessmen who had made loans to Labour. All they wanted to do was say thier mind and because the freedom to demonstrate outside parliament was taken in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005). they can't felt deprived.

Of course, we may never hear of Des again. The right to trial by jury was removed in certain cases by the Criminal Justice Act (2003), as was the right of silence and the rule of double jeopardy, which the British have had since Magna Carta. So, if they do't get him now, they can try, try and try again.

Des Smith, is a secondary headteacher who was also a council member of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT), which helps the government to recruit sponsors for the academies.

He has resigne from the advisory post after admitting that he had been "naive" in comments to an undercover reporter.

"I have been shattered by this experience. I was naive. I shouldn't have said what I did. I'm desperately sorry," said Smith. Well he would say that wouldn't he, now that the freedom to communicate privately without surveillance is removed in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) and its further order in 2002. Just don't say it again Des. Under the Protection From Harassment Act (which was drafted so loosely that any repeated form of conduct could be deemed a crime). Mr Smith, youv'e blown your defence you can't even say 'sorry' again.

The government has hailed the involvement of business in the schools as bringing "a distinctive approach to school leadership, drawing on the skills of sponsors and other supporters." Yup!

But critics have questioned why bog standard businessmen with no record in education should be allowed to have a role in the running of schools. There are 27 established so far, which have largely replaced bog standard secondary schools that were, err... 'failing'.

The inquiry was originally launched in response to a complaint by Scottish and Welsh nationalist MPs that Labour had broken the law preventing the sale of honours such as peerages and knighthoods. Now, 'there's brave for yew'. But you can hide in the hills for a long time so I guess its all right for some.

The investigation is being led by Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who has said he is prepared to widen the investigation to consider more general allegations of corruption. Of course, he can work on who Des has been associating with including the school caretaker. The freedom of association was blunted in the Terrorism Act (2000) as was the presumption of innocence. This could be big problem for the school pupils. They HAVE been associating with Des (and with each other - a real conspiracy) soi they can expect a knock on the door from plod and not the Easter Bunny.

Of course, this is not a problem. Its an emergency and under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 during an emergency - which can be declared by Ministers orally and without parliament being consulted - the government can make special legislation in a seven-day period which allows the forced evacuation of people, the seizing of property without compensation, the banning of any assembly (which can include the House of Lords itself) the conferring of jurisdiction on any new court or tribunal. So, because a Minister (any Minister) only has to believe that an emergency is about to occur to grant himself or herself these powers. You see? You no longer even need a spin doctor.

So des could be smuggles out of clink and all would be OK.

If it turns out they are wrong, there is no sanction against the Minister so he's OK too. This means that there will be no doctors involved which is jolly handy because today loads of them look like they are going to be fired.

So Des, sorry mate, your fixed unless you know some 'really nice people' who are Ministers of the Crown.

Picture: Tony Blair at a City Academy - He was not saying 'This is how you sign a cheque'

Civil servants with severe anxiety - Survey

Internal Public Relations is important for all organisations. For the British government, it is critical with so much change in the wind.

But the results of a government survey revealed in Personnel Today must be quite alarming.

At HM Revenue & Customs, 60% of employees do not feel change is managed well, while nearly three-quarters (72%) felt they were not given the opportunity to contribute views before changes affecting their jobs were implemented. At the Cabinet Office, only 19% felt change was managed well, while half (51%) of the employees at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) do not think they are given sufficient information about changes that will affect their jobs. A spokeswoman at the DWP said that given the scale of the changes in the department - which is losing 30,000 jobs - "it is not at all surprising that our staff have concerns". She said senior managers were producing action plans based on the survey results.The internal surveys also show that nearly half of all Department of Transport civil servants are seriously considering leaving to take another job in the next 12 months, while job security at the Cabinet Office has fallen by 15% compared with last year.

One cannot help thinking that it is probably better to employ Public Relations specialists than spin doctors.

Ms Roger Stakeholder Management and Health Trust Money

In the Daily Telegraph today a report says: "There are around 30 cancer drugs going through the later stages of clinical trials that could boost survival rates and are likely to be considered by regulatory bodies over the next five years. They include Avastin for colorectal cancer and Tarceva for patients with advanced lung cancer.

"Reacting to yesterday's court ruling, Prof Karol Sikora, Dean of the University of Buckingham's Medical School and former chief of the World Health Organisation's cancer programme, said: 'What we have seen in this case is the due process of the drug regulation system being bypassed in favour of political expediency.

Prof Sikora is reported saying: 'There is a raft of new treatments coming through in the next five years. To remove the emotional element we have seen in the Herceptin case and the complete financial meltdown of the NHS we are going to need a much more rigorous system.'

And here he misses the point. It is not just emotion. It is a battle between cultural values and is typically a marketing responce and 'you saw it here first'.

This is a case where the approach to stakeholder engagement is based top down thinking so common in the UK's National Health Service.

In identifying stakeholders and thier issues and by examining the objectives of the Health Service in order to manage expectations in concert with resources, an accepatble solution can be found. This approach to PR management is pretty obvious and it is not rocket science, it is a simple process, issues management and all.



Picture: Edinborough News

Culture affects adoption of new ideas

Is there a relationship between national culture and adoption of new products, ideas, or behaviour to suggest a framework for distinguishing between innovative and imitative behaviour.?

When applying the four dimensions propounded by Hofstede to distinguish national cultures for developing hypotheses pertaining to patterns of adoption of new products, namely innovative and imitative behaviour of consumers and the sources of influence that instigate them into such behaviours, inferences can be found.

Research by Sangeeta Singh, published in International Marketing Review
provided support for some of the hypothesised effects which suggest that indeed, certain dimensions of culture are a key factor in determining whether or not consumers will display a propensity to innovate. Specifically, it was found that cultures characterised by small power distance, weak uncertainty avoidance and masculinity will demonstrate innovativeness. The findings also indicate that consumers coming from different national cultures are going to vary in their susceptibility to normative influences and interpersonal communications. Consumers coming from a large power distance, strong uncertainty avoidance and/or feminine cultures are going to be convinced into adopting new products through normative influences while those from more collectivistic cultures are more likely to be swayed by interpersonal communications.

Picture: Prof Geert Hofstede

Engaging stakeholder

To make money, companies have to find new ways of engaging stakeholder. New research by Colin Williams suggests this is becomming an imperative.

A recurring assumption across the social sciences is that non-commodified work has been increasingly replaced by the commodified sphere in which goods and services are produced and delivered for monetary exchange by capitalist firms for profit-motivated purposes. The purpose of his paper is to evaluate this thesis critically.

Analyzing the extent of commodified and non-commodified work in the advanced economies, the commodified sphere is shown to be far from hegemonic and, if anything, to have receded rather than penetrated deeper during the last four decades. This is here explained in terms of both the existence of resistance cultures to market-ism and the contradictions inherent in the structural shift towards commodification.

The outcome is a call to transcend the representation of commodified work as victorious, all-powerful and hegemonic, and for greater discussion of the feasibility of, and possibilities for, alternative futures beyond a commodified world."

First, Identify and quantify significance of stakeholders, of course!

Source:
Title: Beyond the market: representing work in advanced economies
Author(s): Colin C. Williams
Journal: International Journal of Social Economics
ISSN: 0306-8293
Year: 2006 Volume: 33 Issue: 4 Page: - 297

Picture: Stakeholders

The marketers numbers do not add up

In his paper published in the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Andrew Greenyer reviews the role of modelled data in target marketing.

He notes that there has been widespread denigration of UK modelled information
and key recent factors, influences and statistics on the availability and use of specific/personal marketing data are sub ject to increasing restrictions. Part of this is due to public dataset withdrawal, privacy legislation and so on.

Here comes the good bit: Channel proliferation and change in the balance of spend between prospecting and developing existing customers are noted. All are then related to the revival of need for modelled data.

While the demand for volumes of individual consumer marketing data continues to rise, the availability and useability of that data is in decline. Modelled attributes are becoming the only way to fill the gap.

This paper demonstrates that the widespread criticism of modelled data ignores the increasing need for such information to meet the inexorable trend away from mass advertising and towards direct marketing techniques.

Source:
Title: Back from the grave: The return of modelled consumer information
Author(s): Andrew Greenyer
Journal: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management
ISSN: 0959-0552
Year: 2006 Volume: 34 Issue: 3 Page: - 218

Relationship management is core - more research evidence

As one would expect from Wolfgang Ulaga and Andreas Eggert this is an excellent paper that identifies that established models of buyer-seller relationships do not reflect managerial emphasis on supplier performance evaluation when modelling business relationships.

The paper proposes that relationship value should be included as a key constituent in such models.

Here we see more support for t adding relationship value to the ballance sheet.

The paper aims to explore the construct's links with key constituents of relationship quality, i.e. commitment, satisfaction, and trust which is, to my mind the wronge direction because of the level of supposition in the implied questions (do we really 'have' to trust always?).

The findings suggest that relationship value is an antecedent to relationship quality and behavioural outcomes in the nomological network of relationship marketing. This is a problem for them because they keep tieing it back to marketing which is constantly being disintermediated. Better if they sought to PR solution.


Value displays a stronger impact on satisfaction than on commitment and trust, they say. "Value also directly impacts a customer's intention to expand business with a supplier. In turn, its impact on the propensity to leave a relationship is mediated by relationship quality. Contrary to previous research, trust does not appear in this study as an antecedent of behavioural outcomes, but as a mediator of the satisfaction-commitment link."


When the goal is to increase business with an existing customer, managers should focus on relationship value. In turn, when managers are concerned with the risk of customers leaving a relationship, they should focus on relationship quality. Trust appears as an important ingredient in stabilising existing business relationships."


Source:
Title: Relationship value and relationship quality: Broadening the nomological network of business-to-business relationships
Author(s): Wolfgang Ulaga, Andreas Eggert
Journal: European Journal of Marketing
ISSN: 0309-0566
Year: 2006 Volume: 40 Issue: 3/4 Page: - 327

Relationships and Interaction

"The original International Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) project challenged both the structure and process of business. The challenge was to the idea of the business world as an atomistic structure of independent actors within markets. Instead, a structure of relationships between interdependent companies was suggested. The challenge to process was to the idea of independent action and David Ford, Håkan Håkansson's view of business was based on the interaction between these interdependent companies. The analysis in this paper suggests that the challenge to ideas on the structure of the business world has been partially accepted, but that the challenge to the idea of independent company action has not.

The paper suggests reasons for this difference in impact. It emphasises that many approaches to understanding and managing business relationships are based on the false idea that relationships are some kind of management technique that can be employed by managers at their discretion. The paper suggests instead that business relationships are an inevitable outcome from the nature of business and hence beyond the complete control of either participating company. The paper also suggests that an interaction view has profound implications for authors' view of the nature of business and business activity. The paper presents a detailed comparison of the differences between a world based on markets and action and one based on relationships and interaction. It concludes with the thought that increasing one's understanding of the nature of business interaction will be a prime task in the future for the IMP Group, for businesses researchers in general and for managers."

I would suggest that the idea that a company can 'control' is the failiure. The need for convergent values is the missing link in this thinking.

Extract

Title: IMP – some things achieved: much more to do
Author(s): David Ford, Håkan Håkansson
Journal: European Journal of Marketing
ISSN: 0309-0566
Year: 2006 Volume: 40 Issue: 3/4 Page: - 258
DOI: 10.1108/03090560610648039

Get it or loose it

In reporting this paper by Thomas Ritter and Achim Walter one hopes to make it obvious that the PR industry has to get a bigger and better handle on the use of digital communication. If they fail to do so, thier clients will be ill served.

The paper presents a case study of a service-orientated group of social businesses in the not-for-profit sector, where a triangulated approach is employed, a three-factor model of effective e-mail use is proposed. Using focus groups, diaries and survey, the impact of e-mail was investigated on four key dimensions of internal communication at Parkside Housing Group.

Whilst overall e-mail was found to be less influential than face-to-face communication, e-mail was found to positively and specifically influence: the communication climate, where it provides a mechanism for staff to feed their views up the organisation; shared objectives and goal alignment, where it helps staff to understand the overarching goals of the organisation (the 'bigger picture'); and perceived external prestige; the construed external image of the organisation by helping the organisation to share positive publicity, and its successes, amongst staff."


Title: Matching high-tech and high-touch in supplier-customer relationships
Author(s): Thomas Ritter, Achim Walter
Journal: European Journal of Marketing
ISSN: 0309-0566
Year: 2006 Volume: 40 Issue: 3/4 Page: - 310
DOI: 10.1108/03090560610648066
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

This is self promotion

"The concept of organisations with values that extend from physical assets, intellectual property, process, know-how, knowledge brand and reputation attributes is understood as being part of the value of companies. Stakeholder relationships are intangible assets and there is a significant body of opinion that identifies intangible assets as a major driver in the global economy, corporate survival and success. There is a pivotal management role in relationship management which is the lever by which value from intangibles is optimised.

The paper describes how, for companies in the twenty-first century, the creation of value increasingly depends on intangible assets such as knowledge, systems, data, intellectual property, brands and relationships. This opens up a new area of public relations practice whereby public relations managers take responsibility for the creation of value through relationships throughout organisations.

Title: Relationships are the core value for organisations: A practitioner perspective.
Author David Phillips
Journal: Corporate Communications: An International Journal
ISSN: 1356-3289 Year: 2006 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Page: - 42 DOI: 10.1108/13563280610643534
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

dynamics of public relations

The dynamics of public relations:

There are, again, arguments about the nature of public relations, I thought an an academic reserach perspective would offer light insteadof heat. Carmen and Lyndon's research paper offers a view in European Journal of Marketing

"Public relations is variously defined: those within the PR sector tend to view their activities as having strategic and corporate impact, while many marketers classify PR as little more than a tactical ingredient of the promotional mix. This contrast is important, given marketers are heavy users of PR activity. This confusion has hindered the development of the PR profession and added to the blurring of exactly what constitutes PR. Contributes to this discussion by identifying the core constituents of public relations and the underlying driving forces. Through a holistic approach, examines PR-ness? at three different levels. Survey data were gathered from public relations consultancies in the UK. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to examine the responses of 297 public relations consultancies in England. As a result, the many driving forces within the PR domain have been identified and grouped into nine measurement scales of PR-ness?. These findings provide PR practitioners with a set of issues to address in order to progress the perceived professionalism of their activities and they offer a framework for assessing subsequent progress in this respect."


Extract from: The dynamics of public relations: Key constructs and the drive for professionalism at the practitioner, consultancy and industry levels by Carmen Lages and Lyndon Simkin published in: European Journal of Marketing Volume 37 Number 1/2 2003 pp. 298-328 Copyright © MCB UP Ltd ISSN 0309-0566

Stakeholder Analysis for Systems Thinking and Modelling

Stakeholder Analysis for Systems Thinking and Modelling: "The importance of stakeholder concept is growing in management literature. Since Freeman published his landmark book, 'Strategic Management: A StakeholderApproach' the concept of stakeholders has become embedded in management scholarship and in managers thinking," Suggest the authors of this paper.

About a dozen books and more than 100 articles with primary emphasis on stakeholder concept have appeared in management literature following Freeman's book. This paper presents stages through which the stakeholder concept developed in the management literature. Using a chronological map it explores and classifies stakeholder literature for a better understanding of the stakeholder concept.

It also examines the relevance of stakeholder analysis in systems thinking and modelling. We suggest that a systematic analysis of stakeholders could enrich the problem structuring and scenario planning.

A 21st Century Survey?

Two recent surveys with very different results show us how important it is to find monitoring and evaluation organisations that can help Public Relations decision making.

One should not be too distressed to see two surveys with almost diametrically opposed findings as was the case in research finding Microsoft 'World's Most Valuable Brand' - Digital-Lifestyles.info:

"Two new studies into branding have produced two very different results, with a UK study declaring Microsoft the strongest brand in the known universe, while research in the US saw consumers slapping Microsoft down to near-bottom of their 'most trusted' list.

Microsoft topped the list, with the study showing most consumers held positive feelings about the brand. Andy Farr, executive director at MBO commented, 'When you look at what customers and consumers say to us, they do hold Microsoft in high regard.'

Across the pond, a brand study by Forrester Research saw Bose, Dell and Apple Computer being declared as technology brands trusted by U.S. consumers, with users warily eying the likes of Toshiba, Hitachi, Microsoft, Gateway and LG.

With Microsoft's brand scraping in at a lowly 20th spot out of the 22 companies included in the poll, Forrester's warned that Microsoft faces big a consumer defection risk.

With a deft turn of marketing-speak, Forrester analyst Ted Schadler observed that, 'A decline in trust causes brand erosion and price-driven purchase decisions, which in turn correlates with low market growth.'"

Well, now we know what nonsence much marketing is based upon and what trite conclusions can be drawn by 'experts'.

The trouble is that the marketing companies are not interested in values. The values people hold and the values of the organisations they are investigating. It is the dissonance that is the issue not a fired from the hip answer to a question.

Picture: All femail survey crew

VoIP calls up 2million Brits

VoIP calls up 2million Brits "Around two million Britons have used computer-to-computer VoIP packages to place calls over the internet in the last 12 months, with the same number of newcomers to the technology expected by this time next year."

Nearly everone I know uses Skype.

But I expect we will find out when Media Research Inc include VOIP in their surveys. I have to say, it is unlikely. There are far too many channels for communicatuion to asses and no one can remember which ones they used for what more than a day ago.

UK publishers embrace free content trend

UK publishers embrace free content trend: This snippet comes just in time to save the UK publishing industry.

There is every case for charging for content if you have the unique capability or content that someone wants. But sooner or later the technology will catch up. People will pay for values that are a fair exchange. Information has been disintermediated. It looks like the publishers have now begun to find out:

"The 2006 census by UK trade group the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) found that only 37 per cent of members now charge for branded online content, down from 63 per cent in 2005.

Publishers' major income source is display advertising, which accounts for 41 per cent of revenue. Paid content makes up 18 per cent, of which 78 per cent is from subscriptions and 22 per cent from one-off payments, and sponsorship accounts for 9 per cent.

But for those Association of Online Publishers' members that do charge, subscriptions form a significant part of their overall income. More than a third (37 per cent) of publishers who charge for content earned more than £1 million in subscription revenue alone in 2005; 26 per cent earned more than £5m.

More business publishers charge for content than consumer publishers: 40 per cent compared with 34 per cent.

The recent consensus on paid content has been that the majority of web users will only pay for content that is unique, such as specialist business information or opinion and comment that cannot be found elsewhere on the web for free."

Wherever that may be. If its worth it it will be out there.

News and jobs for journalists :: Times claims traffic boom up to 8 million users

Times claims traffic boom up to 8 million users: "Times Online's audience has increased from 1.5 million to 8 million unique users in just 18 months, according to online editorial director Peter Bale.

Speaking at the Blogging4Business conference yesterday in London, Mr Bale said that a quarter of Times Online's content is now commissioned specifically for the website and that comment and opinion is what differentiates Times content from rival news sites."

Amazing what happens when you peek out from the firewall.

Intellectual PR – that's not too hard is it?

There is a some debate about the future of PR as it moves away from the agentry model to do more by way of contributing towards corporate value and monetisation of Intellectual Capital.

The disintermediation of the value chain and the consumerisation of information is challenging for all organisations. In particular, it is a challenge for PR.

We deal in intangible assets. If you like, it is the new market. It is a bigger market than all the usual markets such as the LSE and there is a lot of sense in getting out of such old model institutions.


This dramatic change will need PR expertise that understands the nature of values that are relevant to 'stakeholders' which in turn means that there is a need to be able to map stakeholders, their interests and their relative significance.

It also means that there is a need to be able to identify the values that such stakeholders hold dear and, using a range of tools including communications tools, a capability to marry client values with their significant cultural partners.

Its not hard.

Here is how to find, map and evaluate stakeholders.

Here is how to identify their values (and benchmark them against the organisation)

Here is how to respond to stakeholder concerns

Here are the range of skill sets needed to implement campaigns.

And here are the communications channels available to do it.

Now, that was not too hard was it?

Web site relationships

I tend to follow the work of Lynda Hon because it tends to have an edge to it. Her latest research study with Eyun-Jung Ki, Linda published in the Journal of Communication Management looked at how organizations display use of relationship maintenance strategies through their web sites.

The results revealed that openness was the strategy used most frequently.

The quality of the openness dimension also was rated more highly than it was for any of the other strategies.

The second research question explored whether industry type made a difference in organizations' use of the relationship maintenance strategies.

A statistically significant difference among industry type was found for three of the strategies – positivity, openness, and access.

It will be interesting to see how this changes as social media really begins to bite and i have no doubts there will be a sea change for some.

Picture: Image Relationship Marketing

Dysfunctional PR

There may be many domains of PR practice and many description for PR but how many 'models' of PR are there. If one works froward from a form of practice that emerges from Rhetoric, the art or technique of persuasion, we progress through a range of practices that attempted to change relationships either directly or through the mediation of third parties.

In her post 'The end of PR as we know it' Katie Payne points us to Carl Botan and his recent paper about a model of cocreationalism. In the paper, Carl makes the point that there is a debate and that it passes most practitioners by because the trade papers (Notably PR Week) don't follow what is happening in academia.

Its rather like the Medical Journals not knowing about fundamental medical research and debates about palliative cures.

For many practitioners, this is not a problem and not a big issue. They have a form of practice that my colleague Richard Bailey would describe as collecting the 'low hanging fruit'. An example of which is provided by Julia Hobsbawm, whose practice is predicated on media contacts and is pretty well described by The Independent and the Observer. Julia was singed because she offered a 'mates rate' for writing and networking.

Compared to some of the ideas offered in the book and papers on Relationship Management by Ledingham & Bruning over some years years or the Accommodation Theory (Cancel, Cameron, Sallot, & Mitrook which has offered a continuum view for some time with a range of case studies.
and Carl Botan's latest view.

I accept there are issues. Elizabeth Toth in the current edition of Journal of Communications Management says: “New scholars find themselves in university communities that will not reward them for publishing public relations theory unless this theory is positioned as communication, management, ethics or history.” For some of us who are able to stand outside such imperatives, is, to an extent, a luxury but it has not prevented some excellent work.

But as Professor Toth says, “both practitioners and scholars have legitimate complaints about the communication between them” and, as a new PR mag hits the streets in the UK, there is no need for the trade media to be so badly informed and to do so little justice to excellence among both practitioners and academics. It makes the industry dysfunctional.

Picture: Dysfunctional media

A reminder to me - what has the Internet done?

There are many economic implications that stem from the digital tsunami.

We are now seeing empirical evidence of how relationship management using digital relationship building is changing the value and trading advantage of companies. An Empirical Investigation of Net-Enabled Business Value by Anitesh Barua, Prabhudev Konana, Andrew Whinston, and Fang Yin. MISQ Dec. 2004 is but one example and there is a much more evidence.
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) have wrought many changes. And the pace of change is accelerating.
We have seen many exmples of Internet driven disintermediation. This change was well established in the PR literature half a decade ago. We see it web sites like Amazon.com and eBay.
Google disintermediates the print and distribution of newspapers with Google News. In response newspapers have gone direct to thier markets and in some cases very profitably. In the Guradian's case the return on discounted real term investment in year to February 2006 is quite acceptable (5%).

This is an economic and marketing shift that relevant to the practitioner with an interest in newspaper publishing, press relations and reach of message.

How far disintermediation will affect retailing is uncertain. What we know is that it is a lot with implications for retailers, rents for city centre and out of town malls, the pension funds that own them and civic urban renewal and economic planners. This affects jobs, investment, transport and much more. The chain reaction is already noticed and soon enough will be dramatic.

For the practitioner involved in any of these sectors, this change is significant. Old relationships need to be managed and new relationships built and sustained. Some of these relationships will be personal and local others will be global. One of the important issues is that a local issue in Leeds can have an effect in California. The ability to to develop relationship (stakeholder)strategies that recognise these fast changing influences and deploy public relations objective setting and strategies is a management function that will become, progressively more important.

Rockwell Automation in ten years has created technologies that embed in mechanical processes that are, in their own right 'intelligent'. They can make decisions. They are so good that they are embedded in the engines of aircraft taking you on holiday. Most aircraft can do the whole trip without a pilot! In Afghan airspace, most aircraft do not have pilots! The cost of filling supermarket shelves is continually being reduced through more efficient technologies. The cost of food production in both the developed and developing worlds is dropping because of better ICT systems. This in important because it shows how even the fundamentals of primary production are affected. It is not just the 'weightless economy' that is being affected. ICT efficiencies throughout the supply chain are sought all the time.

In 2006, a software programme was taught to identify the extent to which a number of press clips were favourable from any number of human perspectives. It also identified issues that were of concern to millions of bloggers by reading and assessing millions of blog posts. Add Web sites, on-line media, discussion boards and Usenet and other communications technologies to this mix and there are two problems. Finding all the relevant stuff which can be hidden in the 'long tail' is one and reading it is the other. Neither can be done by a human, but this is content that offers competitive advantage and corporate protection from unhelpful issues.
Such developments will be commonplace and in use before the 2006 intake of PR students finish their final dissertation.
Key in all this is an ability find and process the content (and have an open mind about developing technologies and their deployment) and the ability to advise the client in such a way that the effect is as near as possible two-way symmetrical relationships.

As things stand, there is no way that such students can be taught about these advances. After four years of study they will not be competitively competent. But the most successful organisations will be using such tools and will be gaining confidence in their abilities.

They will need to. The market and issues intelligence derived from these capabilities will determine who wins in the market place and which organisations are most in tune with their constituents.
There is a need to develop this thesis and there is plenty of evidence to help make the case.
This is the kind of hard fact that is important for corporate affairs managers seeking both corporate commitments and a reason for pursuing digital strategies.

In addition, we are used to a process of market disintermediation. This is where the value chain is broken down when the consumer circumvents one or more elements in the supply chain. It is is great significance to marketing.

Picture: "Creating Meaningful Communities" by Nita Tiffaha Jawary

Transparent Politics

Corporate transparency, and Internet agency came together for an American politician last week. He lost.
It is an example of how a person (or corporation) can create values that are positively damaging.

PR 3.0 makes it quite clear that in any relationship values are exchanged. In building relationships one offers tokens with values that can be appreciated by the other party.

Here we see an offer of a photograph implying endorsement of his tale of being in Iraq and working for an end to the confrontation.

These are values designed to build a relationship with voters that included a photograph of the politician in Iraq.

A token to demonstrate values inherent in the politician. Internet agency, quickly found that the photo was of a Turkish street (a very long way from Iraq). All those positive values have now turned negative.

Picture: Canvassing for a vote

Intel outside

Intel to roll out wireless internet across UK - Industry sectors :

"Intel, the world's biggest computer chip maker, is investing $25 million into a project to roll out wireless broadband services across Britain's cities as part of a joint venture with Pipex, the British internet group."


Times summary by: Webpagesummariser

Studios Miss Opportunity

Studios Take First Step In Movie Downloading

"Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and MGM will put films up for sale on a web site co-owned by the group for between $10 and $30. The name of the site is Movielink.com and the average price of a DVD is around $20.

All of the available films will be packed to the gills with copy-protection software dubbed DRM. This will limit the number and types of copies consumers will be able to make with their purchases. In some cases, the movies can be burned to DVD for playback on a specified computer or set-top DVD player, but in other cases the digital versions will have to stay put on a customer's computer. These restrictions are an attempt to curb the illegal pirating of content on the Internet, a scourge of movie makers and theaters."

This is just dumb. Useing a PR 3.0 approach, the jast number of Intelectual Properties locked into the films could be released in so many ways to a huge range of Stakeholders in long and rewarding conversations.

Forbes summary by: Webpagesummariser
Picture: Marilyn Monroe brings a bag of Bell brand potato chips to a champagne party in the Seven Year Itch.

The science behind the desire to communicate

Over the past few decades, philosophy of science has switched from general features of scientific practice to concepts, issues, and puzzles specific to particular disciplines. Philosophy of neuroscience is a natural result.

While this may seem to be an academic issue, it has significant implications for Public Relations.

Whereas in the past, PR was founded in the social sciences and business schools its assumptions are now subject to deeper and more profound study.

We now know that the desire to communicate is fired by endorphins. We are beginning to understand why people relate to 'brands' and the differences between nature and nurture.

There are few hiding places for the past practice of inventing theories based on just historic data. Soon we will know how and why the brain understands things like relationships, reputation, favour ability and much more. Favoured 'isms' will soon be held up against a much harder and more robust science and the sensible practitioners will learn how to ask searching questions about the provenance of research that is being offered to aid management decision making.

This emerging area is spurred by remarkable recent growth in the neurosciences.

Cognitive and computational neuroscience continues to encroach upon issues traditionally addressed within the humanities, including the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, and normativity. Empirical discoveries about brain structure and function suggest ways that "naturalistic" programs might develop in detail, beyond the abstract philosophical considerations in their favour.

Stanford article summary by: Webpagesummariser

Picture: The Endorphin Collection

Wi-fi trains arrive nine months early - Mobile

Wi-fi trains arrive nine months early - Mobile : "Currently the operator of the East Coast Line, which runs from London Kings Cross through cities such as Peterborough, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh, offers wi-fi on a number of services. The further rollout will see all of its rebuilt Mallard trains fully equipped for wireless internet access by August 2006, a full nine months earlier than the previous scheduled completion date of May 2007.

About time!

Scream marketing

Netimperative report that UK marketers still prefer to scream at customers in the b2B sector.

Reporting a survey, from trade body the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), revealed that only 39% of b2b marketers use display ads, while 39% use pay per click search and 29% use online classifieds.

However, b2b advertisers have readily taken to email marketing with 83% of respondents using it largely for product promotion (54%) and company newsletters (49%).

Less than half (47%) use email for customer acquisition, the survey found.

The IAB said b2b marketers plan to increase their online advertising budgets in the next 12 months with 63% of respondents saying that the Internet ‘will take more of their marketing budgets in the future’. Furthermore, almost a third (29%) pledged to increase spend by up to 20% in the next 12 months, with 13% saying they will increase spend by more than 30%.

Guy Phillipson, chief executive of the IAB, said: “These results suggest that b2b advertisers still have much to learn about online advertising. Email marketing has proved effective for the majority of businesses but it’s our job to educate them further on everything else the Internet has to offer.

“Online has revolutionised the way we do business and during the next 12 months we’ll see b2b companies wake up to the true potential of the internet as a sales and customer relationship tool,”

Other results show that nearly all (93%) b2b marketers use the Internet for business on a daily basis, and a further 96% believe that online marketing is appropriate for a business audience.
Interestingly, only 12% believe that the majority of their business activity will eventually be conducted online.

Come on Guys It is time the PR department took over all painting by numbers games including marketing.

Sentient conversations?

Almost 23 million people in the UK visited a search engine in January 2006, representing 84% of the Internet population.

This means that the population has a form of 'conversation' with the Internet. Not a person but a series of machines. They try to persuade the machines that make up the Internet to provide them with information. They try to get the Internet to respond to specific and personal need.

This is a two way 'conversation' but only one person involved and half of the UK population do it every month.

The figures, from Nielsen NetRatings, indicates that the retail sector benefits most from search engines, garnering the greatest number of people clicking-through from the likes of Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. The UK Internet population clicks on over half a billion links on search engines every month. Mass merchandisers received the greatest number of people clicking-through, 7.6 million, which represents 33% of the search audience and 28% of the entire UK Internet population. Alex Burmaster, European Internet analyst at Nielsen NetRatings said: “Retail, government, broadcast media and universities are sectors particularly benefiting from search. The staggering percentage of people using search engines and clicking on links show how deeply ingrained the search experience is in today’s Internet. For many search has become the lifeblood that flows through the Internet body. “Different sectors have been successful in terms of benefiting from or utilising the leading search brands.” Burmaster continued. “For example, universities are the most popular destinations for Google searchers whereas broadcast media sites are the most popular destination for MSN searchers. "It shows that despite Google’s overwhelming popularity there are other viable options. For example, if you provide a web service such as file-sharing or music software you’ve got a greater probability of driving visitors through a smaller search engine such as eWoss,” he added.

Picture: Sentient

PR 3.0

In a debate about public relations with Richard Bailey I am aware that I have made a lot of assumptions in explaining my view of the practice. Time to come clean!

In the past, I have called it the 'Relationship Value Model'. I suppose that this is quite right but is easily confused with 'Relationship Marketing' which, in true Marketing fashion is a euphemism for 'Direct Marketing' or, more accurately Stalinist persuasion by spam (a euphemism for a large part of advertising).

The Model is all about relationships and creating value. It follows from the practices of Public Relations that are as old as Aristotle, as recent as Bernays and as new as the Interactive Internet. It is about these three elements as well and so can be justifiably called 'PR 3.0'.

A fair warning, if you think PR is akin to 'Sex and the City', this will put you off a lot. But to explain a little, there are many and varied tactical activities that fall in under the PR umbrella many approches to practice and so there is some confusion. Its rather like being a medical doctor but only practising in Cytopathology.

Drawn from Pierce, the Relationship Value Model posit that actors hold tokens that are explicit, personal and can be tangible as well as intangible. It is the basis of the concept described here. I offer up that these tokens are to a greater or lesser degree held in common with other actors and that such tokens have implicit and tacit values. The proposition is that these tokens are material in creating relationships when both commonly held and having similar values that are mutually recognised by actors. The condition for commonality to be recognised by actors is through a culture that aids actors acquire common knowledge of tokens and the values ascribed to them by the actors.

From time to time the extent of material values is such that people come together to form social groups. Some social groups are organisations we recognise as companies. They are, in themselves cultures and they influence culture.

The role of the Public Relations expert is this about managing value.

At the heart of any public relations process is an understanding of the organisational landscape. Those actors, tokens and material values must be at the core of the process. Through a process of landscaping tokens shared with other actors (such as competitors, customers, regulators and the like) and where their values may not wholly coincide with those of the organisation, the potential for changing value is revealed. A mismatch (spin?) will eventually fail.

Picture: Vertical Three

PR(the)Business

Another PR Journal.

Today, I got my copy of PR Business, a new PR industry magazine in the UK.

It goes alongside PR Week which in the UK hides behind firewalls and subscriptions (and so I won't link to its web site – so there!). PR Business goes a stage further, they promised a web site in March and managed a page!

For dead tree stuff, the content is OK but lacks bite.

The only PR firm to be owned by not one but two ex-presidents of CIPR gets a couple of lines after 'merging' with PRAfrica International – Peter, Carol – you must do better!

In 1000 words we are, apparently, still wondering about the reputation of PR at a time when there are more people working in it, more agencies, more by way of fees, more students etc. etc.

The article about RSS feeds (and press release distribution) by Neil Hershberg was interesting. Its not the sort of thing you would get from PRW(RSS = Really Simple Stupid). He glows about NewsML, the means by which news stories wing around the digital world, but his firm is one of the ones that could not be bothered with XPRL (the same deal but with clients and other media and interactions in the loop).

Lawrence Dore had a big feature about technology and is delighted to say that now, instead of writing about it, he uses it. Wow! Technology is boring. Get it - and then get on with the job in hand.

There is a big article about how hard it is to recruit senior PR managers and directors which is no great surprise. Vicky Man is quoted with a lot of hand wringing but confessed to me that 'over 50's are just not needed these days'. I qualify in spades. So I think that there may be a need for some serious investigative journalism here.

Martin Baker was on the case. He wanted to find out what Financial PR's do. For a Sunday Telegraph columnist, it was not hard to find out – it seems they control the flow of alcohol.

Having been brought up in the heyday of George Gale and Mike Kemp lessons from Gary Flood on how to introduce newbie PR people to hard drinking journos who, after ten pints can file 2000 perfect words comes a bit strong. George, who nearly always used a copytake (remember them?) after a serious night out on the political conference circuit, must have been difficult to understand.. I couldn't... but it was all a bit hazy at the time. Mike even drove cars!

So fascinating to see the dead tree industry try again but .....

Here are some others you may like to try:

Journal of Applied Communication Research.
Journal of Business Communication.
Journal of Communication.
Journal of Communication Management.
Journal of Employee Communications Management.
Journal of Public Relations Research.
Journal of Reputation Management.
Public Relations Quarterly.
Strategic Communication Management.
Communications World.
Frontline.
O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report.
Public Relations Strategist.
PRSA Strategist.
Reputation Management.

Academic view of Blogs

Betteke van Ruler (pictured), Professor of Communication and Organization at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, offered Philip Young some insights after the Stuttgart Symposium. It is a most enlightening observation and I offer my take on her views:

van Ruler: The Weblog conference was a quite new thing for me. At the one hand weblogs are nothing more than just another means of communication; at the other hand they are a totally new form of communication, and will, as such, change communication. The research that was presented seems to me rather idealistic, and also oriented at the wrong questions.

David Phillips: Web logs are a means of communication but I think the bigger issues is the significance of interactivity and so, in this sense, we should also look at wiki's and other forms of social communication. It is only at that point that we can see the extent to which communication (and social interaction) is changed.

van Ruler: Although many talk about the wealth of interactivity possibilities of weblogs and that kind of new communication means, blogging is most of all for people who want to express themselves and develop their own identity through blogging, much more than to develop a conversation.

David Phillips: I will be convinced when the research comes available. There is an element of vanity publishing (an irritant when using a blog for serious debate) and, so far we are seeing an early stage in interactive media. I think it offers an easy introduction now and that it will be much more complex and more demanding of interactivity later.

van Ruler: Those weblogs that do aim at “conversation” generate most of all comments, and mostly in the form of “one-liners”, at least as direct reactions. My question is what this has to do with conversation / dialogue as we understand that in real life situations? It would be interesting to compare face to face conversations with these conversations. These new interactivities might generate conversation as we used to understand it, but probably only through the intervention of journalists or through conversations in other, real life communities.

David Phillips: There is this 'one-liner' element but also copy and paste communication. With bloggers copying content and adding to it on their own blogs(sometimes with tools like these).
So there is a variation on the process of communication. The same can be said for SMS communication. In wiki's the 'conversation' is much longer between the participants so this may be that there is a genre difference.

van Ruler: The usability of weblogs might still be in its infant state, but we have to try to understand already in this stage what will happen when blogging becomes more normal, especially what it might mean for public sphere(s).

David Phillips: I could not agree more. The research investment is pathetic in the UK and i hope will be better elsewhere.

van Ruler: That brings me to my third comment, and that is that it would be very interesting to find out under what conditions weblogs create social action, more than just comments of individuals.

David Phillips: I agree. In the same way, it would be interesting to be able to see how other media like newspapers and television create social action. Certainly the experience of media relations evaluation would indicate there is an element of change inherent in media coverage but most of that is the nature of contexting that the media provides rather than actual cause and effect. Certainly we have anecdotal evidence of people commenting that they have bought goods and services after blog referrals. The research needs to be done.

van Ruler: The research at this conference was rather media and media reach oriented. We need studies that are oriented at its consequences. Let me give you an example from my own country: the daily national newspaper, Volkskrant, started a weblog community and webloggers are invited to create their own front pages. They hold totally different selection criteria and this could very well lead to what McLuhan has called a “global village”: we are connected to each other all over the world, but the public discourse has the quality of small village discussions, gossip and small talk, rather egocentric, ethnocentric and emotional.

David Phillips: Here I detect a rather traditional social scientist. If Professor van Ruler was to examine the social structure built round 'material values', one suspects that the picture would be different. It would have, one expects a 'small village' atmosphere but the boundary of the village is the subject matter. We find that people often have several blogs and interactions with other communities through them. So 'Village' is probably right but it is early yet to say with certainty if egocentric, ethnocentric and emotional is an outsiders view of passion, common interest and involvemnet at a subject/interest level among equals.

van Ruler: Some weblog trendsetters are talking about a whole new community building possibility, but for me it looks very much the same as what people thought when television was invented. They thought that TV would be used to learn more, to look further than one’s own backyard. TV, however, is mostly used for Big Brother, IDOLS and for fiction.

David Phillips: I am not quite happy with this and the selection of Big Brother is helpful. It was the discovery that people watched Big Brother AND the web sites AND used their cell phone SMS at the same time that helped us understand how people could be spending so much time on-line. The interactive media and the web have changed television watching habits as well. What we see is a difference in the way people watch (lean back) and blog/search/SMS (lean forward) at the same time that becomes interesting. Yes there will be passive observers but we already have evidence of combined communication habits and, as a consequence a raft of people trying to exploit the opportunity (does this include the PR world?).

van Ruler: Finally, in my country (The Netherlands), many CEOs, politician and celebrities have weblogs, and most of them use these weblogs very strategically, to show a certain identity and to lure others into their aims. This has the looks of a hidden agenda, because they all store it is very personal stories, as the format of a weblog prescribes. What will that do to trust, democracy and other “big things” in our society?

David Phillips: This is why the Public Relations industry has to learn to understand what these media really mean. The 'dead tree' fixation is going away but we need more research, more practical advice and more PR teaching universities taking this media seriously.

Trust and Public Relations

Because new wealth in the form of 'material value' (those tokens with values that are held in common by actors) can only be released through a process of relationships, relationship management is the only management discipline that can create/change value.
For example, people need a relationship to be able to swap money for food where both parties understand 'value' inherent in coins, notes and credit cards. The lump of metal, piece of paper or plastic card represent values but in themselves are valueless.
The nature of the culture for people to understand such values varies. There are many parts of the world where a Euro coin or note and bank credit card would be unacceptable as a metaphor for wealth. It would be difficult for a traveller to 'pay' for water in poverty stricken Africa with Euro coinage or pay for an iPod in Alabama.
However, if the relationship between the participants was such that there was enough trust, it is possible for the exchange to take place even if the food vendor was un-familiar with the coinage.
It would seem that relationships are more valuable than representations of wealth.
This then begs the question as to what a relationship is. What are its components.
In the example above, we can see that there may be an instance when relationships can cross cultures when there is sufficient trust. Trust trust is the belief by one person that another's motivations towards them are benevolent and honest. In a commercial relationship this means that the purchaser needs to believe that the transaction offered benefits worth at least the cost of acquisition and that the vendor is not ripping them off. The latter is achieved through a level of transparency. Thus there are a set of values that are inherent in such transactions. Ideas such as trust metrics show how such values can accrue.
The value comes before and is often confused with reputation. Reputation reflects corporate value and values. There is a take on this from Mori. Reputation, then is one way of measuring corporate value (and begs the ethical 'question should PR work for enhanced value or attempt to create 'reputation' without the underlying value being present?').
Barbara Misztal attempts to combine notions of trust together. She points out that there are three basic things that trust does in the lives of people. It makes social life predictable, it creates a sense of community, and it makes it easier for people to work together.
This suggests that trust has other values which are associated with time, relationships and justice and in particular the values associated with creating a nexus of relationships which make up a community and allow common enterprise as well as common context.
Trust is, thereby, easier to come by in social groups and cultures which have 'material values'.
This would suggest that the idea of the continual conversation in the organisation and the culture where it has or needs a licence to operate is significant. It suggests that this conversation has to extend and exchange values with a wider constituency (more than simple views of stakeholders) and offers a better route to achieving transaction. It also undermines the concept of advertising operating outside a relationship building strategy.
Does this mean that advertising's proper place is as a tool in relationship management. I believe it is. Advertising is effective as a tool of Public Relations in the sense of it being not just a set of skills but a relationship management discipline.

Picture: Wealth and Justice