So Harry Potter Deathly Hollows is available at BitTorrent according to Duncan Riley. It just strikes me that the nature of transparency and Internet porosity need to be better understood by the big brand leaders.
Then there is another form of transparency. If you use Firefox, Guy Kawasaki says this is an essential plugin: It enables you to place your cursor over a link and see a snapshot of the web page. It is instant transparency gratification you might imagine. In a Social Frame it has that time quality. But is it helpful?
Part of transparency is about getting facts to help with planning (radical transparency helps with very dynamic change management) and changing the world which Seth Godin has offered as a metaphor for marketing is, he suggests, limited to a few weeks time but not tomorrow or a year's time. Does this mean that there is a time window for transparency to be relevant as well?
In his analysis of the works of Cory Doctorow, professor Graham J. Murphy in his paper 'Somatic Networks and Molecular Hacking in Eastern Standard Tribe' (which has delighted Cory who wrote the book) offers the anti-establishment view of Intellectual Property without criticism. Which is an issue because transparency is only transparent in a social frame.
The end game in transparency from a Doctorow “post-genre science fiction” perspective is shrouded in granularity and positivism but I think there is something else and it runs counter to the set of mores the characters in Cory's books seem to regard as set in stone.
People are not like that.
It is why I have developed the Social Frame concept.
People do have value systems and are guided by them in what they do but the value systems that count are:
At a moment in time,
Mitigated by the environment and
Subject to Interactive capability.
Thus only those people who are aware of the values of Eastern Standard Tribe can be involved with the tribe and where it is if they have the right environment and interactivity to achieve their tribal ambitions. Time again is an issue associated with transparency. If you try to be interactive outside your time zone, the story tells us - you go nuts.
The biological limitations of our techno/knowledge capability is now pretty well established and being able to scan ourselves--our intelligence, personlities, feelings and memories--into computers is a near reality. It is based on transparency and porosity. In this scenario, the person can time shift in the past. So transparency and time has some historic flexibility.
But there is a lot of work on systems that would use their experience of past executions of algorithms in order to automatically improve their own performance in terms of 'speedup'. That is, speeedup beyond the capability of human biology. Past transparency becomes one of the elements in developing speedup.
The computer can then determine which social frame it needs to optimise the speed of adoption of an activity. Thus accelerating away from human competence.
This suggests that the availability of the Harry Potter book days before its publication is yet another step towards the domination of computers over people.
Wizard!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Reputation of PR - The Reputation of Marketing
I am a PR person. Its what I do. I am proud of what I have done in PR and I get very cross with practitioners who bend the rules.
The boundary between lying, hype and spin, creative content is pretty narrow and the latter is much miss understood. Once, I used to write up a lot of customer case studies and while the applications should, in theory, have been the same, the stories ranged from vernacular art to asset contribution for the same story. Was this spin or creative use of the same data to offer a relevant approach to a number of editors? I used to write the press releases and packs for new product launches. Many product upgrades are often technically interesting but often show little by way of enhancement in practice. Persuading a product manager to expound the relative merits and note that the new development comes from experience and good evolutionary design offered an opportunity to tell the same story in feature length detail from different perspectives for months and was far more interesting to users that the label 'new'. Was this spin or creative use of the same data to offer a relevant approach to a number of editors? To be sure, it was not lying or hype.
The one truth that I have been aware of is that the knowledge, wisdom and sense of the public is pretty good and pretty accurate most of the time. Redundancy is not a very good time in organisations but long before an announcement is made, most people know or have a feeling that its coming. The announcement plan has to be carefully developed and executed. But handing bad news is in most respects no different to handling good news (what is hard to manage, and experience is a great tutor, is the guilt and sense of loss of the people who are not made redundant).
The business of acquiring and selling companies with the interesting pressure of all manner of people seeking some indication of what is going on is always can be a time of considerable pressure to bend the truth. But, even today, if the opportunity came my way I will buy and sell companies and will act for organisations that want to do the same. And, as I say to those who enquire, would they really want me to be more specific when talking about people's lives, jobs' savings and ambitions? If so, they have the wrong person.
Was this spin or straight talking? To be sure, it was not lying or hype.
And so the work of PR goes on. There is no real reason to stretch the truth. Unless, of course you lack creativity and live at the bottom of a well. I guess there are a lot of so called PR people who do both and some of them do it with great aplomb.
Lets contrast this with the same work but undertaken as a marketing exercise.
The independent production company at the heart of the BBC's royal row had previously used the same footage of the Queen apparently storming out of a photoshoot to sell the series abroad, sources claim. The fact that she was 'entering' the sitting did not matter a jot to the marketers.
O2's iMode has been abandoned because it the 'Internet' service was limited to services no one wants or paid for content (£10m spent to get 260,000 customers) and was just like a similar bling product "Surf the Net, Surf the BT Cellnet" (the service was a failure with consumers, who quickly discovered it was nothing like the internet they knew).
It is now possible to pay for your organic food with a green credit card, to live in the tree house of your dreams thanks to green mortgages, and put all your hard-won lucre from saving the planet into a green bank account. Cynics, reports the FT suggesting that green products are as much an exercise in hype as last week’s Live Earth concerts.
RBS Private Banking is designed specifically for customers who expect personal service and excellent products (front page) .... We may use and share your information with other members of the Group to help us and them assess financial and insurance risks; recover debt; develop customer relationships, services and systems (T's and C's).
The list of this kind of marketing is endless.
The reputation of Marketing seems to be one of high cost, silly slogans, scream marketing and - well - lies!
Is this what we teach in business schools?
Who wants to take a Marketing Degree? Who want to be associated with Marketing Communications or even 'Marketing PR'?
The boundary between lying, hype and spin, creative content is pretty narrow and the latter is much miss understood. Once, I used to write up a lot of customer case studies and while the applications should, in theory, have been the same, the stories ranged from vernacular art to asset contribution for the same story. Was this spin or creative use of the same data to offer a relevant approach to a number of editors? I used to write the press releases and packs for new product launches. Many product upgrades are often technically interesting but often show little by way of enhancement in practice. Persuading a product manager to expound the relative merits and note that the new development comes from experience and good evolutionary design offered an opportunity to tell the same story in feature length detail from different perspectives for months and was far more interesting to users that the label 'new'. Was this spin or creative use of the same data to offer a relevant approach to a number of editors? To be sure, it was not lying or hype.
The one truth that I have been aware of is that the knowledge, wisdom and sense of the public is pretty good and pretty accurate most of the time. Redundancy is not a very good time in organisations but long before an announcement is made, most people know or have a feeling that its coming. The announcement plan has to be carefully developed and executed. But handing bad news is in most respects no different to handling good news (what is hard to manage, and experience is a great tutor, is the guilt and sense of loss of the people who are not made redundant).
The business of acquiring and selling companies with the interesting pressure of all manner of people seeking some indication of what is going on is always can be a time of considerable pressure to bend the truth. But, even today, if the opportunity came my way I will buy and sell companies and will act for organisations that want to do the same. And, as I say to those who enquire, would they really want me to be more specific when talking about people's lives, jobs' savings and ambitions? If so, they have the wrong person.
Was this spin or straight talking? To be sure, it was not lying or hype.
And so the work of PR goes on. There is no real reason to stretch the truth. Unless, of course you lack creativity and live at the bottom of a well. I guess there are a lot of so called PR people who do both and some of them do it with great aplomb.
Lets contrast this with the same work but undertaken as a marketing exercise.
The independent production company at the heart of the BBC's royal row had previously used the same footage of the Queen apparently storming out of a photoshoot to sell the series abroad, sources claim. The fact that she was 'entering' the sitting did not matter a jot to the marketers.
O2's iMode has been abandoned because it the 'Internet' service was limited to services no one wants or paid for content (£10m spent to get 260,000 customers) and was just like a similar bling product "Surf the Net, Surf the BT Cellnet" (the service was a failure with consumers, who quickly discovered it was nothing like the internet they knew).
It is now possible to pay for your organic food with a green credit card, to live in the tree house of your dreams thanks to green mortgages, and put all your hard-won lucre from saving the planet into a green bank account. Cynics, reports the FT suggesting that green products are as much an exercise in hype as last week’s Live Earth concerts.
RBS Private Banking is designed specifically for customers who expect personal service and excellent products (front page) .... We may use and share your information with other members of the Group to help us and them assess financial and insurance risks; recover debt; develop customer relationships, services and systems (T's and C's).
The list of this kind of marketing is endless.
The reputation of Marketing seems to be one of high cost, silly slogans, scream marketing and - well - lies!
Is this what we teach in business schools?
Who wants to take a Marketing Degree? Who want to be associated with Marketing Communications or even 'Marketing PR'?
Monday, July 16, 2007
Let John Mackey be a lesson to us all.
Hans Kullin notes that If you are in public relations, a worry might be that one of your company's employees gets caught in the act of anonymously posting negative comments in online forums. But few would probably expect that this person would be the CEO of the company. That's exactly what the CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc. did. AP has the story.
I think it is inevitable that there will be negative comments. Live with it, manage it and if you don't think straightening out wayward CEO's is not part of the PR job - retire!
I noted the story and think it should provide a (lame) example of Transparency in the NewPRWiki. It would add to the essays I added on The Nature of Transparency, Internet Agency, Porosity, Richness and Reach.
Had CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., John Mackey, read these articles (and the concepts have been about for the last decade), he would not have been such a prat and if the Whole Food PR person had taken on board what the Internet really means to us all - and these are the five tenets, life would have been less fraught for Whole Foods Market Inc. shareholders.
'Blazing netshine' will find you out!
I think it is inevitable that there will be negative comments. Live with it, manage it and if you don't think straightening out wayward CEO's is not part of the PR job - retire!
I noted the story and think it should provide a (lame) example of Transparency in the NewPRWiki. It would add to the essays I added on The Nature of Transparency, Internet Agency, Porosity, Richness and Reach.
Had CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc., John Mackey, read these articles (and the concepts have been about for the last decade), he would not have been such a prat and if the Whole Food PR person had taken on board what the Internet really means to us all - and these are the five tenets, life would have been less fraught for Whole Foods Market Inc. shareholders.
'Blazing netshine' will find you out!
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Content Is not King - discuss
Alice Marshall, Founder, Presto Vivace, wrote in Daily Dog
I agree that content is not the king it may once have been. I disagree with all the rest.
Press Agentry is not public relations.
The value of PR is not derived from content or from relationships derived through third parties (journalists, blogger.com or even Twitter).
The real value of PR is in the ability to understand the nature and value of relationships (of all kinds) to and within an organization and the ability to plan, manage and optimise the organization's ability to benefit from relationships.
Creating and selling-in content has its excitements but public relations, the planned management of organisational relationship optimisation, is a service upon which all organizations depend for survival.
No relationship—no organization.
Public relations provides the service that, among other things, offers a living to content creators.
The role of risk, opportunity and uncertainty management in relationship development has to be a highly developed management science.
Journalism and blogging, even communications, are not Public Relations they are just tools to be deployed.
"Very few gold prospectors made money in the gold rush of 1849; the people who got rich were those who sold Levi's, buckets, shovels and related equipment.
During the dot-com boom, we repeatedly heard the call, "content is king." It was said that those who created compelling content would be the winners in the Internet economy, even while online publications were bleeding money. Even as news organizations were laying off reporters and offering others buy-outs, we were told that content was king.
Yet the people who made money from the dot-com boom were the manufacturers of router and network equipment, web servers and infrastructure related products and services. Those who built the Internet itself did well. The content creators took a bath....."
I agree that content is not the king it may once have been. I disagree with all the rest.
Press Agentry is not public relations.
The value of PR is not derived from content or from relationships derived through third parties (journalists, blogger.com or even Twitter).
The real value of PR is in the ability to understand the nature and value of relationships (of all kinds) to and within an organization and the ability to plan, manage and optimise the organization's ability to benefit from relationships.
Creating and selling-in content has its excitements but public relations, the planned management of organisational relationship optimisation, is a service upon which all organizations depend for survival.
No relationship—no organization.
Public relations provides the service that, among other things, offers a living to content creators.
The role of risk, opportunity and uncertainty management in relationship development has to be a highly developed management science.
Journalism and blogging, even communications, are not Public Relations they are just tools to be deployed.
Friday, July 13, 2007
How Virtual can the world get?
David Doane has been talking about identity transparency and growing trend towards the virtual workplace. He proposes the possibility of ultimately decoupling not only users from the physical network environment, but also allowing all of our files and technology resources to be decoupled from their physical platforms as well. A new level of "identity transparency" would exist that would allow us to set up our entire workplace instantly and completely from wherever we like.
A lot of us are already going down that route anyway. I use Google mail and write documents on its 'Docs & Spreadsheets' application. My proposals and lectures and courses are at PBWiki and my slides are also on kept online. It means that I can work at home and deliver everything without carting a laptop around.
But why stop there?
What does Facebook do? It helps us do all the letter writing, social gossip and keeping up with friends work all in one place. We can use micro time to do what took months not so long ago. We have merged the virtual and the real. We can sustain relationships with almost daily exchanges of value statements, photo's, music, videos and group activities.
A lot of organisations outsource all sorts of things and so do consumers. From manufacturing to book keeping, laundry to security we outsource a lot of things that we did not do before. It is an idea that can go a long way. It can include a lot of things that are tangible as well.
Serviced offices are at the posh end of cybercafes. So why not decouple the office as well. What about the car? Mine spends most of its time parked on the drive.
What is we also follow the lead of many third world economies and use micro payments to buy the sachet and not the packet? One aspirin instead of years worth of headache cures in a bottle?
Its not that we don't do it now online. I charge a micro payment for you to use this blog. Its the advertisements that (mostly) you choose not to pay because you ignore the 'G' brand at the top of the page and the Google ad. For Google, serving up millions of pages per hour, that is not a problem and I get a 'free' blog.
With ubiquitous communication, all these things are possible.
With the Internet providing both the communication and acting as a software application. We can make virtual, real.
We can use all those underused artefacts much more efficiently.
The robot that is silent in the factory over the weekend can come to life to make that iPod stand you dreamed up or the new garden gate. The directions you get from Google map can include a list of people going over the same route to allow you to car share.
What about the home? Lots of my house is not used for days at a time (e.g. the spare bedrooms). The bedrooms are not used for hours on end. Lots of clothes are only used in the winter. They could be part of the virtual world concept too.
What happens when we separate the tangible from the intangible. If bricks are tangible a house is only bricks and intangible design and skills. If we add ubiquitous communication to bricks (using, lets say, RIDF chips) and all the rest of the IP is provided online the DIY home maker can place the bricks in the right place and order.
Thinking at these extremes gives us a very good clue about the Internet Mediated future.
Working with these ideas that are certainly in the minds of futurologists, PR has a role to play in offering the concepts of relationships in creating the right environment for it all to happen.
For example, I might lend my coat to a friend, but would feel wary of lending it to a stranger.
There is time to think about these issues now But there won't be in the near future.
A lot of us are already going down that route anyway. I use Google mail and write documents on its 'Docs & Spreadsheets' application. My proposals and lectures and courses are at PBWiki and my slides are also on kept online. It means that I can work at home and deliver everything without carting a laptop around.
But why stop there?
What does Facebook do? It helps us do all the letter writing, social gossip and keeping up with friends work all in one place. We can use micro time to do what took months not so long ago. We have merged the virtual and the real. We can sustain relationships with almost daily exchanges of value statements, photo's, music, videos and group activities.
A lot of organisations outsource all sorts of things and so do consumers. From manufacturing to book keeping, laundry to security we outsource a lot of things that we did not do before. It is an idea that can go a long way. It can include a lot of things that are tangible as well.
Serviced offices are at the posh end of cybercafes. So why not decouple the office as well. What about the car? Mine spends most of its time parked on the drive.
What is we also follow the lead of many third world economies and use micro payments to buy the sachet and not the packet? One aspirin instead of years worth of headache cures in a bottle?
Its not that we don't do it now online. I charge a micro payment for you to use this blog. Its the advertisements that (mostly) you choose not to pay because you ignore the 'G' brand at the top of the page and the Google ad. For Google, serving up millions of pages per hour, that is not a problem and I get a 'free' blog.
With ubiquitous communication, all these things are possible.
With the Internet providing both the communication and acting as a software application. We can make virtual, real.
We can use all those underused artefacts much more efficiently.
The robot that is silent in the factory over the weekend can come to life to make that iPod stand you dreamed up or the new garden gate. The directions you get from Google map can include a list of people going over the same route to allow you to car share.
What about the home? Lots of my house is not used for days at a time (e.g. the spare bedrooms). The bedrooms are not used for hours on end. Lots of clothes are only used in the winter. They could be part of the virtual world concept too.
What happens when we separate the tangible from the intangible. If bricks are tangible a house is only bricks and intangible design and skills. If we add ubiquitous communication to bricks (using, lets say, RIDF chips) and all the rest of the IP is provided online the DIY home maker can place the bricks in the right place and order.
Thinking at these extremes gives us a very good clue about the Internet Mediated future.
Working with these ideas that are certainly in the minds of futurologists, PR has a role to play in offering the concepts of relationships in creating the right environment for it all to happen.
For example, I might lend my coat to a friend, but would feel wary of lending it to a stranger.
There is time to think about these issues now But there won't be in the near future.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Is PR a management or subversive practice?
For some time I have been looking at how convergent values in organisations wrest control from time to time and become either the dominant coalition or threaten the dominant coalition.
Groups, with a common value system form and have the purpose of creating change. For the most part, this is healthy. Mostly this is the management structure. It is the departmentalisation of organisations that allow special skills (specialists value systems)to be deployed in a recognised structure in support of the whole. It's how things get done.
Sometimes groups for with other departments and with different levels of workers and managers.
In a time of ubiquitous communication this is becoming easier and there are 'cross discipline' coalitions based on common value systems such as common interests or objectives (values).
In many cases, these groups are formed with external participants such as vendors, suppliers, consultants, distribution chains, customers etc. each of which have convergent value systems with the organisation's values.
They have in common values systems that form 'coalitions'.
The benefits of ubiquitous communication (internal and external phone, email, wiki, blog, IM etc) is that it breaks down barriers and offers enhanced transparency to optimise return on tangible and intangible organisational assets.
Sometimes such value system coalitions form in a disruptive way.
They can gain considerable power. Sometimes they take over as a temporary or permanent 'dominant coalition'.
The dominant coalition has to work hard at maintaining its supremacy to survive.
In extremis (e.g. acquisition or bankruptcy) the dominant coalition is removed from inside the organisation to being outside the organisation.
Dominant coalitions survive by maintaining effective relationships with value system coalitions (VSC's). They are permanently involved in a public relations struggle (that is, a struggle to maintain effective relationships) throughout the organisations and between the organisation and external value system coalitions such as suppliers and customers.
As ubiquitous communication is optimised, the strength of external value systems coalitions can very quickly wrest control.
Is it the role of the PR team to optimise the effectiveness of the dominant coalition or to sustain or facilitate the formation of value systems coalitions.
If the former, the role of public relations is a management function (it is part of the dominant coalition. If the role of PR is synonymous with communication, the role of public relations is to optimise ubiquitous communication, and is subversive to the dominant coalition because it facilitates the formation of value system coalitions.
Groups, with a common value system form and have the purpose of creating change. For the most part, this is healthy. Mostly this is the management structure. It is the departmentalisation of organisations that allow special skills (specialists value systems)to be deployed in a recognised structure in support of the whole. It's how things get done.
Sometimes groups for with other departments and with different levels of workers and managers.
In a time of ubiquitous communication this is becoming easier and there are 'cross discipline' coalitions based on common value systems such as common interests or objectives (values).
In many cases, these groups are formed with external participants such as vendors, suppliers, consultants, distribution chains, customers etc. each of which have convergent value systems with the organisation's values.
They have in common values systems that form 'coalitions'.
The benefits of ubiquitous communication (internal and external phone, email, wiki, blog, IM etc) is that it breaks down barriers and offers enhanced transparency to optimise return on tangible and intangible organisational assets.
Sometimes such value system coalitions form in a disruptive way.
They can gain considerable power. Sometimes they take over as a temporary or permanent 'dominant coalition'.
The dominant coalition has to work hard at maintaining its supremacy to survive.
In extremis (e.g. acquisition or bankruptcy) the dominant coalition is removed from inside the organisation to being outside the organisation.
Dominant coalitions survive by maintaining effective relationships with value system coalitions (VSC's). They are permanently involved in a public relations struggle (that is, a struggle to maintain effective relationships) throughout the organisations and between the organisation and external value system coalitions such as suppliers and customers.
As ubiquitous communication is optimised, the strength of external value systems coalitions can very quickly wrest control.
Is it the role of the PR team to optimise the effectiveness of the dominant coalition or to sustain or facilitate the formation of value systems coalitions.
If the former, the role of public relations is a management function (it is part of the dominant coalition. If the role of PR is synonymous with communication, the role of public relations is to optimise ubiquitous communication, and is subversive to the dominant coalition because it facilitates the formation of value system coalitions.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Manging online PR with modern management tools
This is another 5 minute lecture this time looking at how we can use modern management techniques it is an introduction to this post.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Are web sites dying?
In many marketing courses, there is a mantra that says that, online, the thing to do is 'drive traffic to your site'.
This is now soooo yesterday!
The question for business and consumer communications practitioners is simple. Do you really want to drive your publics to places they really don't want to go.
Today there was news that MySpace has 10 million UK users. It is worth looking at what this really means.
Lets start with the Tesco, a big company with a global reach of terrestrial shops and a sizeable (£1.2 billion) online business. The BBC.co.uk a worldwide broadcaster and Amazon.co.uk an online only retailer.
The BBC' reach comes out on top with Tesco almost invisible. All three sites are in decline.
If we add blogs into this analysis (by adding the reach of Blogger.com). We see a different type of performance:
Which takes us to social networks like MySpace.
Social networks and blogs are where online visitors want to go. They don't seem to want to go to traditional web sites.
Is this because people don't want to find out about the products and services available from retailers?
Well, it seem that people want to find out stuff if we add Wikipedia into the mix.
So, its not that people are not interested in finding stuff and just want to chat. There is something going on here that requires further investigation.
Online advertising is up 42% this year so, convention says, the retailers should be 'driving' a lot of traffic to their sites. Even with declining visitor numbers, the amount of money spent by consumers shopping online increased by 33.4% to £10.9bn last year.
More people are spending more time online and more people have broadband.
People say they are shopping a lot
Its not just Tesco, M&S (which aims to increase its annual online sales from £100m to £250m.) and John Lewis (catalogue and web sales division, John Lewis Direct, increased by 64%) are, like most retailers just not getting the interests.
Perhaps the retailers are happy with what they have got and do not want to join the real online community in the social space. Perhaps they have not yet noticed that their current online advertising and web sites are loosing the attention from the online community they once enjoyed.
If so, is this a short sighted policy?
Perhaps, there is a case for looking at what the marketers are trying to do and how the online community has moved on. Hitwise reports that the Entertainment category has overtaken the Retail category in share of UK Internet visits for the first time. visits to Shopping & Classifieds websites were down 5% year on year in May. UK Internet users aged 55+, the so-called silver surfers, are set to overtake 35-44 year olds as the demographic age group with the largest representation online. Those aged 55+ accounted for 22% of UK visits to all categories of websites.
Perhaps as the demographics change, the use of the Internet for all manner of solutions and its ubiquity as part of daily life including the social nature of the commons is coming into play.
Perhaps the conversation has overtaken the advertisement, flash and bling of the traditional web site.
Perhaps the social media lesson should be quietly introduced to the boardrooms of the retail sector.
Perhaps the big take out is that people seek relationships online. An area where PR could be pivotal.
This is now soooo yesterday!
The question for business and consumer communications practitioners is simple. Do you really want to drive your publics to places they really don't want to go.
Today there was news that MySpace has 10 million UK users. It is worth looking at what this really means.
Lets start with the Tesco, a big company with a global reach of terrestrial shops and a sizeable (£1.2 billion) online business. The BBC.co.uk a worldwide broadcaster and Amazon.co.uk an online only retailer.
The BBC' reach comes out on top with Tesco almost invisible. All three sites are in decline.
If we add blogs into this analysis (by adding the reach of Blogger.com). We see a different type of performance:
Which takes us to social networks like MySpace.
Social networks and blogs are where online visitors want to go. They don't seem to want to go to traditional web sites.
Is this because people don't want to find out about the products and services available from retailers?
Well, it seem that people want to find out stuff if we add Wikipedia into the mix.
So, its not that people are not interested in finding stuff and just want to chat. There is something going on here that requires further investigation.
Online advertising is up 42% this year so, convention says, the retailers should be 'driving' a lot of traffic to their sites. Even with declining visitor numbers, the amount of money spent by consumers shopping online increased by 33.4% to £10.9bn last year.
More people are spending more time online and more people have broadband.
People say they are shopping a lot
Online shopping has already clocked up online sales of £100 billion.
Why then are the retailers just not a big target for the online community?Its not just Tesco, M&S (which aims to increase its annual online sales from £100m to £250m.) and John Lewis (catalogue and web sales division, John Lewis Direct, increased by 64%) are, like most retailers just not getting the interests.
Perhaps the retailers are happy with what they have got and do not want to join the real online community in the social space. Perhaps they have not yet noticed that their current online advertising and web sites are loosing the attention from the online community they once enjoyed.
If so, is this a short sighted policy?
Perhaps, there is a case for looking at what the marketers are trying to do and how the online community has moved on. Hitwise reports that the Entertainment category has overtaken the Retail category in share of UK Internet visits for the first time. visits to Shopping & Classifieds websites were down 5% year on year in May. UK Internet users aged 55+, the so-called silver surfers, are set to overtake 35-44 year olds as the demographic age group with the largest representation online. Those aged 55+ accounted for 22% of UK visits to all categories of websites.
Perhaps as the demographics change, the use of the Internet for all manner of solutions and its ubiquity as part of daily life including the social nature of the commons is coming into play.
Perhaps the conversation has overtaken the advertisement, flash and bling of the traditional web site.
Perhaps the social media lesson should be quietly introduced to the boardrooms of the retail sector.
Perhaps the big take out is that people seek relationships online. An area where PR could be pivotal.
Friday, July 06, 2007
On recieving a pitch from Chevrolet
Mary Lide, an Intern at McGinn MS&L, a PR company of some size, sent me an email about Chevy's new sponsorship of the Live Earth concerts. I show her email and my reply.
On 05/07/07, Mary Lide wrote:
Because of your interest in advertising and marketing, Chevy thought you might like to know that it has launched a campaign to get the word out about its efforts to reduce petroleum consumption and promote advanced technologies.
Concurrent with its exclusive online sponsorship of this weekend’s Live Earth concerts at liveearth.msn.com, Chevy’s multi-media campaign will also include newspaper, radio, magazine, out-of-home and digital advertising. Television ads will follow later this year.
Some of Chevy’s initiatives to reduce fuel consumption include:
- 1.5 million E85 FlexFuel ethanol-compatible cars on the road;
- A fleet of fuel-cell vehicles that don’t require gas;
- Continued development of the Chevy Volt plug-in electric hybrid car; and
- Introduction of more hybrid models this year, including Chevy Malibu and Tahoe.
Click here to read more about the campaign. And you can learn more about Chevy’s green efforts at http://www.chevrolet.com/fuelsolutions/.
Mary Lide
Intern
McGinn MS&L, 2300 Clarendon Blvd., Suite 901, Arlington, VA 22201.
Confidentiality Notice
DO NOT read, copy or disseminate this communication unless you are the intended addressee. This communication may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. It is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are on notice that any unauthorized disclosure, copying, distribution or taking of any action in reliance on the contents of these electronically transmitted materials is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please call us (collect) immediately at (703) 312-0140 and ask to speak with the sender. Also, please immediately e-mail the sender that you have received the communication in error.
My reply is as follows:
Dear Mary
I know that the automotive industry is trying to understand social media and that email marketing has a track record. I thought that you may like to consider the alternatives and their values in communication with people who are interested in advertising and marketing. You see, the whole paradigm has changed. Hopefully you will find out about the impact of Social Media next year on your return to University (unless you would like to attend mine where it is an absolute certainty).
If what Chevy is doing is interesting to me it will come via an expert practitioner blogger (in this case probably Heather Yaxley) through my RSS feed. By then the content will have been both edited and evaluated by a trusted third party. I will pull it from her.
On the other hand Chevy has chosen to use email marketing. It works. But, for me, it does not have the authority that Heather has.
Do I really want another email or to read newspapers, seek radio output, find a relevant magazine, gaze at poster and web site pop-ups or have my TV viewing interrupted as your campiagn suggests? Well ... probably not.
But, if Chevy has really got great ideas, advanced technologies, optimized solution and related benefits plus friendly ways of letting me find out about these things, that news will get to me when I really want to know about it. It will impel me to pass the good news on. Probably when I am not trying to write about how social media offers opportunities and how companies can offer their expertise do the promotion for them - which is where my interest lies.
One can imagine many marketers will be in shock and awe at the sheer expenditure Chevy will put behind this campaign.
A much bigger statement could be made if the same amount of money was diverted to help further reduce our automotive carbon footprint. CSR does really start at home. By all means sponsor the gig, it will help raise awareness about global warming and its dangers but why not Suggest to Mr Lutz that he cancel the ad spend and divert it to research.
Do it now. I know its late in the day, but there is the advantage.
Such a move will be a shock to everyone. It will really press the story home. It will be a huge corporate statement.
Of course it will also get tonnes of online and offline coverage. It will be a massive story about Chevy and how serious it really is about carbon emissions and will be a big boost to the sponsorship and the brand.
You would not have to tell a sole.
Word would get out.
It would be a massive story.
It would outperform all your current plans.
Otherwise advertise.
It is brave of you to pitch to a blogger. Thank you for that.
Kind regards
David Phillips FIPR
PS 'The tree hugger' is so dangerous - you got you plug too.
The Intern is from McGinn MS&L a PR company of some size specialising in issues tracking and cultural analysis.
On 05/07/07, Mary Lide
Because of your interest in advertising and marketing, Chevy thought you might like to know that it has launched a campaign to get the word out about its efforts to reduce petroleum consumption and promote advanced technologies.
Concurrent with its exclusive online sponsorship of this weekend’s Live Earth concerts at liveearth.msn.com, Chevy’s multi-media campaign will also include newspaper, radio, magazine, out-of-home and digital advertising. Television ads will follow later this year.
Some of Chevy’s initiatives to reduce fuel consumption include:
- 1.5 million E85 FlexFuel ethanol-compatible cars on the road;
- A fleet of fuel-cell vehicles that don’t require gas;
- Continued development of the Chevy Volt plug-in electric hybrid car; and
- Introduction of more hybrid models this year, including Chevy Malibu and Tahoe.
Click here to read more about the campaign. And you can learn more about Chevy’s green efforts at http://www.chevrolet.com/fuelsolutions/.
Mary Lide
Intern
McGinn MS&L, 2300 Clarendon Blvd., Suite 901, Arlington, VA 22201.
Confidentiality Notice
DO NOT read, copy or disseminate this communication unless you are the intended addressee. This communication may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. It is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are on notice that any unauthorized disclosure, copying, distribution or taking of any action in reliance on the contents of these electronically transmitted materials is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please call us (collect) immediately at (703) 312-0140 and ask to speak with the sender. Also, please immediately e-mail the sender that you have received the communication in error.
My reply is as follows:
Dear Mary
I know that the automotive industry is trying to understand social media and that email marketing has a track record. I thought that you may like to consider the alternatives and their values in communication with people who are interested in advertising and marketing. You see, the whole paradigm has changed. Hopefully you will find out about the impact of Social Media next year on your return to University (unless you would like to attend mine where it is an absolute certainty).
If what Chevy is doing is interesting to me it will come via an expert practitioner blogger (in this case probably Heather Yaxley) through my RSS feed. By then the content will have been both edited and evaluated by a trusted third party. I will pull it from her.
On the other hand Chevy has chosen to use email marketing. It works. But, for me, it does not have the authority that Heather has.
Do I really want another email or to read newspapers, seek radio output, find a relevant magazine, gaze at poster and web site pop-ups or have my TV viewing interrupted as your campiagn suggests? Well ... probably not.
But, if Chevy has really got great ideas, advanced technologies, optimized solution and related benefits plus friendly ways of letting me find out about these things, that news will get to me when I really want to know about it. It will impel me to pass the good news on. Probably when I am not trying to write about how social media offers opportunities and how companies can offer their expertise do the promotion for them - which is where my interest lies.
One can imagine many marketers will be in shock and awe at the sheer expenditure Chevy will put behind this campaign.
A much bigger statement could be made if the same amount of money was diverted to help further reduce our automotive carbon footprint. CSR does really start at home. By all means sponsor the gig, it will help raise awareness about global warming and its dangers but why not Suggest to Mr Lutz that he cancel the ad spend and divert it to research.
Do it now. I know its late in the day, but there is the advantage.
Such a move will be a shock to everyone. It will really press the story home. It will be a huge corporate statement.
Of course it will also get tonnes of online and offline coverage. It will be a massive story about Chevy and how serious it really is about carbon emissions and will be a big boost to the sponsorship and the brand.
You would not have to tell a sole.
Word would get out.
It would be a massive story.
It would outperform all your current plans.
Otherwise advertise.
It is brave of you to pitch to a blogger. Thank you for that.
Kind regards
David Phillips FIPR
PS 'The tree hugger' is so dangerous - you got you plug too.
The Intern is from McGinn MS&L a PR company of some size
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Transparency
Prompted by a post from Shel Holtz, I have added a couple of pages about Internet transparency on TheNewPR Wiki.
It includes the significance of Internet Porosity, Agency, Richness and Reach because they are all significant to our understanding of transparency.
It includes the significance of Internet Porosity, Agency, Richness and Reach because they are all significant to our understanding of transparency.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Evaluating Online Public Relations
Evaluating the effects of online public relations is a hot topic. There are all manner of ideas. People suggest ways that include Return on Investment, measurement of outputs, out-takes and outcomes and much more.
None seem to have a ring of truth. Its a pretty hard thing to do when everything from a blog post to twitter tweet to a mainstream news item can result from something as simple and a wiki contribution.
I have put some thought to it in a five minute lecture.
The lecture URL is: http://www.archive.org/details/5Minute-evaluation1
Here it is again because I am trying to make streampad work (so you can download the script and embed it yourself as well).
None seem to have a ring of truth. Its a pretty hard thing to do when everything from a blog post to twitter tweet to a mainstream news item can result from something as simple and a wiki contribution.
I have put some thought to it in a five minute lecture.
The lecture URL is: http://www.archive.org/details/5Minute-evaluation1
Here it is again because I am trying to make streampad work (so you can download the script and embed it yourself as well).
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
Planning Online Campaigns - its tougher than you think
The recent posts have examined risk and uncertainty planning tools to manage change and risk, how can we apply this to development of online public relations?
Most practitioners use a search engine to see what is available about their clients online.
Few organisations are not involved.
There are rules about online campaign planning.
* The first is that at each stage risks and opportunities become apparent. They have to be managed.
* Events online including what people do, technologies that emerge and competitor activities will mean that we need to re-visit assumptions that may be only a few weeks old.
* Monitoring and evaluation is a constant. Stuff happens all the time and so it has to be monitored.
* There is no substitute for a structured approach.
There is a process which includes the following:
1.Landscaping
The Internet offers ever new and evolutionary forms of interactions for relationship building as a matter of course. These affect all forms of communication and social interaction.
This means that the practitioner needs to follow events, know what kind of online interactions are attracting attention. In 2005 it was blogs, 2006 it was YouTube and huge interaction between photos from cell phones being loaded onto MySpace and facebook.. By 2007 Twitter was became fashionable and the ability for people to add application, Web Widgets, to social sites like Facebook took off in a big way. We also saw the first changes in time shifted TV viewing and streamed Internet Protocol TV. The first digital posters appeared on the London Underground and Games online meant that the massive games demographic joined the online community with Xbox and Sony Play Station. Newspapers offered blogs, podcasts and video online. Radio podcasts meant that time shifted radio programmes were available.
Consumer habits have and continue to change. The Internet is the biggest high street by factors. People spent less time reading newspapers and watching TV and much more time online. The channels for communication changed.
This speed of change affects organisations. Learning to be aware of these developments and finding time to stay abreast of developments is crucial to the communications specialist.
In the PR industry, we are fortunate in that many practitioners provide free insights into these developments on blogs, in podcasts and at conferences. Trends are provided by research organisations.
Sources that help include: http://www.statistics.gov.uk; http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz; http://www.nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/index.asp;
Ofcom Research and Market data; http://www.internetworldstats.com; http://www.pewinternet.org; http://www.emarketer.com; http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli; http://www.readwriteweb.com; and http://www.alexa.com
2 Channel Analysis
Checking out the presence of the organisation and its competitors' online presence in a wide range of web and social media is next. In the chapter on channels for communication we identify some methods for each channel. The structured way of doing this is involves identifying the extent of exposure in each channel (web, blogs, podcasts etc.), the key subjects in the conversations, the most regular sources (e.g. bloggers, Twiterers etc) who are adding content and the extent they are referenced by others. These are, for want of a better word, the opinion formers and a key public for each subject.
Internet mediated interventions come in many forms. Of course, there are the visible channels such as web sites, emails, forums as well as blogs and Social portals, virtual worlds like Second Life and the newer forms used in communication online. For the technically minded, the Internet goes further because its protocols (Internet Protocols) have been adopted by other channels such as television (IPTV), mobile telephony platforms and computer languages which describe the nature of the content so that computers can manage it (e.g. XML, Micro-formats and tagging). The practitioner has need to be informed of current, emerging and new platforms and channels for communication.
3. Organisation analysis
In preparing any Public Relations plan, there is a need to understand the organisation. With the potential for unimaginable numbers of people to find, and evaluate the direct and indirect statements made by the organisation, regulators, information aggregators, the media and social commentators online, there is a need to be precise in statements about the organisation. Claims served up with spin, hype, exaggeration or bling draw a rich and often lurid repost in cyberspace at a time and in circumstances not of the organisations choosing.
Value systems evident online need to analysed and defendable. Wenstop & Myrmel, (2006) offer virtues, duties and consequences as three types of value systems that need to be identified and organisations often need to modify un-realistic claims to be able to compete online.
Such analysis will affect evidence and content published in online corporate backgrounders (history, financial and management structure, products, markets, associates and regulators, endorsers). Some of this will be provided by the organisation (or it will point to it – often using hyperlinks sometimes selectively using web widgets) bearing in mind that for most organisations, they are not responsible for the majority of data about them that is published (starting with Internet data, government, regulatory and trade data provided by third parties as well as web site and social media content).
In addition, analysis of the content offered online will indicate the kind of organisation behind the website facade. Using a form of Uses and Gratification analysis of web sites and other online content quickly exposes the nature of the organisation not by what is said but by how it is presented.
Practitioners need the tools, expertise and authority to present and construct the online persona of organisations.
A useful method for examining the online image of an organisation is by examining its web site and selective commentary of the online audience for the values that are identified. Statements such as 'reliable delivery, most advanced product and similar statements - most marketing departments insist on adding such statements in product literature and web pages. There will be statements that are made by corporate leaders as well. These are are statements by the organisation about its values. These need to be examined and catalogued as the value systems of the organisations.
Because the online community is critical (not frequently adversely critical), its will examine these statements and where there is dissonance - i.e. the claim is unreasonable or unbelievable - will expose such statements for a an Internet user generated version. many companies have fallen foul of this form of online analysis. If an organisation makes a claim on or offline, it must be able to defend it. Risk/opportunity analysis is a useful tool for evaluating value systems.
Situation analysis is a valuable tool for identifying a profile: This will include analysis of the organisation on and offline and a typical profile would include analysis of:
* Company (Product line, Image in the market,Technology and experience, Culture, Goals,
* Collaborators (Distributors, Suppliers, Alliances)
* Customers (Market size and growth, Market segments (including Internet user groups), Benefits that consumer is seeking, tangible and intangible, Motivation behind purchase; value drivers, benefits vs. costs, Decision maker or decision-making unit, Retail channel - where does the consumer actually purchase the product? Consumer information sources - where does the customer obtain information about the product?Buying process; e.g. impulse or careful comparison, Frequency of purchase, seasonal factors, Quantity purchased at a time. Trends - how consumer needs and preferences change over time).
* Competitors (Actual or potential, Direct or indirect, Products, Positioning, Market shares, Strengths and weaknesses of competitors)
* Climate - or context (The climate or macro-environmental factors are, Political & regulatory environment - governmental policies and regulations that affect the market, Economic environment - business cycle, inflation rate, interest rates, and other macroeconomic issues,
Social/Cultural environment - society's trends and fashions, Technological environment - new knowledge that makes possible new ways of satisfying needs; the impact of technology on the demand for existing products.
An additional analysis might include a PEST analysis is an analysis of the external macro-environment that affects all firms. P.E.S.T. is an acronym for the Political, Economic, Social, and Technological (and Gregory 2006 adds legal) factors of the external macro-environment.
Organisations are exposed in a range of channels for communication. Some have a different view to values systems than others. Televisionaudiences will accept hype statements with little qualm unlike blogging community.
One final test is useful which is to examine how the online community regards online content.
The Uses and gratification theory, first identified in the 1940s by Lazarsfeld and Stanton (1944), attempts to explain why mass media is used and the types of gratification that media generates.
Denis McQuail (McQuail, D. (1987): Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction (2nd edn.). London: Sage) offers a schemata to help establish the quality of web sites. When reviewing a site, this is a method that may be valuable to gain insights into how people will regard and use a web site (or a blog) and Morris and Ogan (1996) poit out that U&G is a comprehensive theory and is applicable to Internet mediated communication ( see also McLeod & Becker (1981).
Using McQuail, practitioners can create questionnaire to invite people to evaluate web sites, blogs and wikis or any other online property to identify its value as an online resource.
The basis by which this can be done are these:
1. The first is information, where we use the media to educate us in certain areas, such as learning more about the world, seeking advice on practical matters, or fulfilling our curiosity.
2. The second factor is personal identity, where we may watch television to associate an actor's character with our own. For example in the comedy 'Friend' all the actors have different personalities, we as the audience imagines or desires that we were them or resembling them.
3. The third usage of media is 'integration and social interaction', and refers to gaining insight into the situations of other people, in order to achieve a sense of belonging. For example, when watching a movie, we may get very emotional because we experience a sense of connection to the movie, and experience symptoms like crying, or covering our eyes. Television also facilitates us in our personal relationship with friends as we are able to relate and discuss details of media texts that we like in common with our friends.
4. The fourth usage of the media identified by McQuail is 'entertainment', that is, using media for purposes of obtaining pleasure and enjoyment, or escapism. For example when we watch TV shows or movies we end up going into a new world of fantasy, diverting our attention from our problems, wasting time when we are free and even sometimes acquiring sexual arousal or emotional release.
Academic Darren Lilliker would add Interesting as a fifth element.
With this analysis, the practitioner is well armed to develop the plan further.
4. Value partners
Online, there are no messages hidden from users which might give rise to a view that there is little need for segmentation. This is a misleading view. There are platforms and channels for communication as well as types of content, written and semiotic, that are more significant for some audiences than others. These people who have an interest in the values and value systems of the organisation will be drawn to them and where there is dissonance will, at some point take issue.
Using segmentation techniques offered by Smithi (Smith 2002) and Grunig and Huntii (1984) among others as described by Anne Gregory and Alison Theaker in their books as well as Freeman (Stakeholder theory) and a multitude of others (not least the many market segmentation theorists and practitioners) are now joined by User Generated Markets. Users are now beginning to decide that they would select issues, products and brands which undermines segmentation theory used by most organisation. The evolution of online behaviour whereby User Generated Market segments, (often confined to closed communities such as Facebook, MyRagan and Melcrum), form round brands, issues and organisations makes discussion of these networked social groups (mostly very small groups) important. There is nothing new or revolutionary about the concept. Small communities through history have behaved in the same way aided by the normal discourse of daily lives leavened by gossip. The Internet, a place, has many networked communities. There is a temptation by many of us who are used to mass communication and mass markets to imagine that because we can find references to issues and brands online that these sites and post are a homogeneous market. The evidence suggests they are comments in relatively small often transient online social groups. It is typical for people to use search engines to identify what the online community is saying. This is far too simplistic. The online community is predominantly active in small groups and cares little for views expressed across the whole Internet unless seeking to selectively 'pull' new information. Online social groups range from the intense and academic to hard news and simple family snap shots. To imagine that all comments about an issue, brand or event from a single sweep of comments across all such groups would be a mistake.
Segmentation is needed. It is needed because the language of different channels is different (Twitter versus Times online) and the channel is a message in its own right and to be able to hold a conversation through such channels needs to be adapted to meet user needs.
Historically is was considered enough to frame some public relations communication in a few succinct messages. In a conversation, this is simply rude. Statements need to be supported, users need to be able to explore further and frequently seek to 'pull' more information. This means that the content available needs to be comprehensively available through devices such as hyperlinking. Where information is not provided by the organisation, online communities will go elsewhere online to meet their needs. The attention to the organisation is broken and the link lost. Value partners are valuable when they have all the information they need to hand.
5. Aims and objectives
In landscaping and organisational analysis the practitioner will have identified the organisation's aims, corporate objectives and mission statements. In addition, there will be a driver that prompts entering into the online world. It may be a brief or thepractitioners own initiative but there is purpose.
It might be a corporate desire to be evident online to extent the 'eFootprint' to add to the asset base of the organisations (online presence and online relationship are significant assets), it could be a need to establish relationship offering products or services, knowledge, need and satisfaction. It can be political, commercial, charitable, public sector or something else. The key is that the online activity is becoming critical for an organisations.
The first question is why. What does the organisation want to achieve. What does it seek to achieve.
Setting online objectives is not as simple as many other forms of PR. Online objectives have to coincide with organisational objectives and organisational values and both will quickly or probably already are transparent to the world. Setting objectives requires risk analysis and a view of how to mange the unknown. What, in other areas can be a campaign will soon reach further both inside an organisation and beyond it. Employees, customers vendors and other partners will have compete visibility. Its an axiom that all you do and say online is available to everyone - forever - however embarrassing that may be.
Objectives need boundaries - most often they need to be SMART
1. Specific – Objectives should specify what they want to achieve.
2. Measurable – You should be able to measure whether you are meeting the objectives or not stage by stage.
3. Achievable - Are the objectives you set, achievable and attainable with manageable risk?
4. Realistic – Can you realistically achieve the objectives with the resources you have?
5. Time – When do you want to achieve the set objectives? Or can you sustain objectives to the point where the online community is satisfied you have served their needs.
To sum up: Do your objective chime with the organisations objectives; are they compatible with values held by the organisation that are defend-able in any forum, is risk and opportunity manageable, are they SMART and agreed with the organisation?
6. Strategies
At last! here you are in a position to get to grips with what you want to do.
Online strategies have to be creative in concept. There are so many platforms and channels for communication. There are no boundaries. You can use eposters or SMS, blogs or wiki's, podcasts or virtual environments. The online media and media online can be part of a campaign that includes Internet mediated television or games machines. There are exciting ways you can monitor, measure, evaluate and report. There is also considerable strategy theory from experts like Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Philip Selznick, Igor Ansoff, and Peter Drucker.
Some of your objective will be strategic because online the consequences will be felt at the highest level. Some will be more functional. Certainly they will be explicit.
Strategy is adaptable by nature. It will consider availability of resources (financial, time, technologies). Allocation of responsibilities and reporting with associated training and management infrastructure are all considerations.
There is an imperative for good clear communication inside the organisation and there is usually a need to involve internal 'stakeholders' because online initiatives will affect them and they will be well aware of your programme almost as soon as it goes public. All online activities require a capability to manage change.
Using management aids to decision making and project planning (ibid) you will develop a plan and processes for management monitoring and reporting and progressively you will include elements that have the right pay off when they are applied. They need a reality check. There is so much online that it is easy to imagine a Second Life presence but difficult to execute. and the process of developing the strategy will include even more risk and opportunity testing.
7. Tactics
I have an ever growing list of media channels available. They will be deployed to meet the strategic plan. There is no online PR campaign that only uses one tactical device. There will always be a proactive element, a monitoring element and a capability to respond to events and actions by the organisation and or its online community.
There are things we need to know about channels for communication which I listed here.
To be able to deploy tactics, they need to be well understood:
Are they technically possible
Do you make of buy (use an existing service or develop your own - who hosts, who has copyright, is your information confidential, are you sure about the nature, even nationality of your vendors.
Can you sustain the activity for the duration. Online interventions are very time hungry.
How are you going to test and evaluate the concept (e.g. channel) and technologies?
What are the risks and are there other opportunities?
When do you deploy your programme?
How will you launch what you propose?
How does this tactic integrate with other tactics in the strategic plan.
8. Monitor
We have mentioned that there is a need to maintain landscaping. It is valuable that such monitoring is structured (create your own - closed - wiki) and include the process for assessment including risk and opportunity management.
In addition to this, there is a need to be able continuously monitor what is happening and for each social media you have identified, you will include methods for monitoring and evaluating. The new book in print from Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Groundswell (2008)iv, identifies people in social media with five characteristics: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, and Spectators. These are five elements that offer structure to your monitoring and evaluation techniques.
Monitoring these five elements is essential when using social media.
Monitoring traffic on your web site and its competitive ranking and capabilities will be needed by every practitioner but monitoring and evaluating much of what is happening online is simply impossible. Chat is a case in point. A busy chat room generates huge content as do many brands in blogs and social networks.
Using the monitoring tools available, makes evaluation and reporting difficult. But there are a lot of tools to help. In some areas far more than for media relations. To cope with such activity it is worth creating a resource where real time information is available (a wiki?) and is available to a wide number of people who are involved in the project.
Online public relations is one form of PR that has to be monitored and evaluated. The risk in not doing so are far too significant and dangerous to leave it to chance.
That just about covers it I think.
Most practitioners use a search engine to see what is available about their clients online.
Few organisations are not involved.
There are rules about online campaign planning.
* The first is that at each stage risks and opportunities become apparent. They have to be managed.
* Events online including what people do, technologies that emerge and competitor activities will mean that we need to re-visit assumptions that may be only a few weeks old.
* Monitoring and evaluation is a constant. Stuff happens all the time and so it has to be monitored.
* There is no substitute for a structured approach.
There is a process which includes the following:
1.Landscaping
The Internet offers ever new and evolutionary forms of interactions for relationship building as a matter of course. These affect all forms of communication and social interaction.
This means that the practitioner needs to follow events, know what kind of online interactions are attracting attention. In 2005 it was blogs, 2006 it was YouTube and huge interaction between photos from cell phones being loaded onto MySpace and facebook.. By 2007 Twitter was became fashionable and the ability for people to add application, Web Widgets, to social sites like Facebook took off in a big way. We also saw the first changes in time shifted TV viewing and streamed Internet Protocol TV. The first digital posters appeared on the London Underground and Games online meant that the massive games demographic joined the online community with Xbox and Sony Play Station. Newspapers offered blogs, podcasts and video online. Radio podcasts meant that time shifted radio programmes were available.
Consumer habits have and continue to change. The Internet is the biggest high street by factors. People spent less time reading newspapers and watching TV and much more time online. The channels for communication changed.
This speed of change affects organisations. Learning to be aware of these developments and finding time to stay abreast of developments is crucial to the communications specialist.
In the PR industry, we are fortunate in that many practitioners provide free insights into these developments on blogs, in podcasts and at conferences. Trends are provided by research organisations.
Sources that help include: http://www.statistics.gov.uk; http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz; http://www.nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/index.asp;
Ofcom Research and Market data; http://www.internetworldstats.com; http://www.pewinternet.org; http://www.emarketer.com; http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli; http://www.readwriteweb.com; and http://www.alexa.com
2 Channel Analysis
Checking out the presence of the organisation and its competitors' online presence in a wide range of web and social media is next. In the chapter on channels for communication we identify some methods for each channel. The structured way of doing this is involves identifying the extent of exposure in each channel (web, blogs, podcasts etc.), the key subjects in the conversations, the most regular sources (e.g. bloggers, Twiterers etc) who are adding content and the extent they are referenced by others. These are, for want of a better word, the opinion formers and a key public for each subject.
Internet mediated interventions come in many forms. Of course, there are the visible channels such as web sites, emails, forums as well as blogs and Social portals, virtual worlds like Second Life and the newer forms used in communication online. For the technically minded, the Internet goes further because its protocols (Internet Protocols) have been adopted by other channels such as television (IPTV), mobile telephony platforms and computer languages which describe the nature of the content so that computers can manage it (e.g. XML, Micro-formats and tagging). The practitioner has need to be informed of current, emerging and new platforms and channels for communication.
3. Organisation analysis
In preparing any Public Relations plan, there is a need to understand the organisation. With the potential for unimaginable numbers of people to find, and evaluate the direct and indirect statements made by the organisation, regulators, information aggregators, the media and social commentators online, there is a need to be precise in statements about the organisation. Claims served up with spin, hype, exaggeration or bling draw a rich and often lurid repost in cyberspace at a time and in circumstances not of the organisations choosing.
Value systems evident online need to analysed and defendable. Wenstop & Myrmel, (2006) offer virtues, duties and consequences as three types of value systems that need to be identified and organisations often need to modify un-realistic claims to be able to compete online.
Such analysis will affect evidence and content published in online corporate backgrounders (history, financial and management structure, products, markets, associates and regulators, endorsers). Some of this will be provided by the organisation (or it will point to it – often using hyperlinks sometimes selectively using web widgets) bearing in mind that for most organisations, they are not responsible for the majority of data about them that is published (starting with Internet data, government, regulatory and trade data provided by third parties as well as web site and social media content).
In addition, analysis of the content offered online will indicate the kind of organisation behind the website facade. Using a form of Uses and Gratification analysis of web sites and other online content quickly exposes the nature of the organisation not by what is said but by how it is presented.
Practitioners need the tools, expertise and authority to present and construct the online persona of organisations.
A useful method for examining the online image of an organisation is by examining its web site and selective commentary of the online audience for the values that are identified. Statements such as 'reliable delivery, most advanced product and similar statements - most marketing departments insist on adding such statements in product literature and web pages. There will be statements that are made by corporate leaders as well. These are are statements by the organisation about its values. These need to be examined and catalogued as the value systems of the organisations.
Because the online community is critical (not frequently adversely critical), its will examine these statements and where there is dissonance - i.e. the claim is unreasonable or unbelievable - will expose such statements for a an Internet user generated version. many companies have fallen foul of this form of online analysis. If an organisation makes a claim on or offline, it must be able to defend it. Risk/opportunity analysis is a useful tool for evaluating value systems.
Situation analysis is a valuable tool for identifying a profile: This will include analysis of the organisation on and offline and a typical profile would include analysis of:
* Company (Product line, Image in the market,Technology and experience, Culture, Goals,
* Collaborators (Distributors, Suppliers, Alliances)
* Customers (Market size and growth, Market segments (including Internet user groups), Benefits that consumer is seeking, tangible and intangible, Motivation behind purchase; value drivers, benefits vs. costs, Decision maker or decision-making unit, Retail channel - where does the consumer actually purchase the product? Consumer information sources - where does the customer obtain information about the product?Buying process; e.g. impulse or careful comparison, Frequency of purchase, seasonal factors, Quantity purchased at a time. Trends - how consumer needs and preferences change over time).
* Competitors (Actual or potential, Direct or indirect, Products, Positioning, Market shares, Strengths and weaknesses of competitors)
* Climate - or context (The climate or macro-environmental factors are, Political & regulatory environment - governmental policies and regulations that affect the market, Economic environment - business cycle, inflation rate, interest rates, and other macroeconomic issues,
Social/Cultural environment - society's trends and fashions, Technological environment - new knowledge that makes possible new ways of satisfying needs; the impact of technology on the demand for existing products.
An additional analysis might include a PEST analysis is an analysis of the external macro-environment that affects all firms. P.E.S.T. is an acronym for the Political, Economic, Social, and Technological (and Gregory 2006 adds legal) factors of the external macro-environment.
Organisations are exposed in a range of channels for communication. Some have a different view to values systems than others. Televisionaudiences will accept hype statements with little qualm unlike blogging community.
One final test is useful which is to examine how the online community regards online content.
The Uses and gratification theory, first identified in the 1940s by Lazarsfeld and Stanton (1944), attempts to explain why mass media is used and the types of gratification that media generates.
Denis McQuail (McQuail, D. (1987): Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction (2nd edn.). London: Sage) offers a schemata to help establish the quality of web sites. When reviewing a site, this is a method that may be valuable to gain insights into how people will regard and use a web site (or a blog) and Morris and Ogan (1996) poit out that U&G is a comprehensive theory and is applicable to Internet mediated communication ( see also McLeod & Becker (1981).
Using McQuail, practitioners can create questionnaire to invite people to evaluate web sites, blogs and wikis or any other online property to identify its value as an online resource.
The basis by which this can be done are these:
1. The first is information, where we use the media to educate us in certain areas, such as learning more about the world, seeking advice on practical matters, or fulfilling our curiosity.
2. The second factor is personal identity, where we may watch television to associate an actor's character with our own. For example in the comedy 'Friend' all the actors have different personalities, we as the audience imagines or desires that we were them or resembling them.
3. The third usage of media is 'integration and social interaction', and refers to gaining insight into the situations of other people, in order to achieve a sense of belonging. For example, when watching a movie, we may get very emotional because we experience a sense of connection to the movie, and experience symptoms like crying, or covering our eyes. Television also facilitates us in our personal relationship with friends as we are able to relate and discuss details of media texts that we like in common with our friends.
4. The fourth usage of the media identified by McQuail is 'entertainment', that is, using media for purposes of obtaining pleasure and enjoyment, or escapism. For example when we watch TV shows or movies we end up going into a new world of fantasy, diverting our attention from our problems, wasting time when we are free and even sometimes acquiring sexual arousal or emotional release.
Academic Darren Lilliker would add Interesting as a fifth element.
With this analysis, the practitioner is well armed to develop the plan further.
4. Value partners
Online, there are no messages hidden from users which might give rise to a view that there is little need for segmentation. This is a misleading view. There are platforms and channels for communication as well as types of content, written and semiotic, that are more significant for some audiences than others. These people who have an interest in the values and value systems of the organisation will be drawn to them and where there is dissonance will, at some point take issue.
Using segmentation techniques offered by Smithi (Smith 2002) and Grunig and Huntii (1984) among others as described by Anne Gregory and Alison Theaker in their books as well as Freeman (Stakeholder theory) and a multitude of others (not least the many market segmentation theorists and practitioners) are now joined by User Generated Markets. Users are now beginning to decide that they would select issues, products and brands which undermines segmentation theory used by most organisation. The evolution of online behaviour whereby User Generated Market segments, (often confined to closed communities such as Facebook, MyRagan and Melcrum), form round brands, issues and organisations makes discussion of these networked social groups (mostly very small groups) important. There is nothing new or revolutionary about the concept. Small communities through history have behaved in the same way aided by the normal discourse of daily lives leavened by gossip. The Internet, a place, has many networked communities. There is a temptation by many of us who are used to mass communication and mass markets to imagine that because we can find references to issues and brands online that these sites and post are a homogeneous market. The evidence suggests they are comments in relatively small often transient online social groups. It is typical for people to use search engines to identify what the online community is saying. This is far too simplistic. The online community is predominantly active in small groups and cares little for views expressed across the whole Internet unless seeking to selectively 'pull' new information. Online social groups range from the intense and academic to hard news and simple family snap shots. To imagine that all comments about an issue, brand or event from a single sweep of comments across all such groups would be a mistake.
Segmentation is needed. It is needed because the language of different channels is different (Twitter versus Times online) and the channel is a message in its own right and to be able to hold a conversation through such channels needs to be adapted to meet user needs.
Historically is was considered enough to frame some public relations communication in a few succinct messages. In a conversation, this is simply rude. Statements need to be supported, users need to be able to explore further and frequently seek to 'pull' more information. This means that the content available needs to be comprehensively available through devices such as hyperlinking. Where information is not provided by the organisation, online communities will go elsewhere online to meet their needs. The attention to the organisation is broken and the link lost. Value partners are valuable when they have all the information they need to hand.
5. Aims and objectives
In landscaping and organisational analysis the practitioner will have identified the organisation's aims, corporate objectives and mission statements. In addition, there will be a driver that prompts entering into the online world. It may be a brief or thepractitioners own initiative but there is purpose.
It might be a corporate desire to be evident online to extent the 'eFootprint' to add to the asset base of the organisations (online presence and online relationship are significant assets), it could be a need to establish relationship offering products or services, knowledge, need and satisfaction. It can be political, commercial, charitable, public sector or something else. The key is that the online activity is becoming critical for an organisations.
The first question is why. What does the organisation want to achieve. What does it seek to achieve.
Setting online objectives is not as simple as many other forms of PR. Online objectives have to coincide with organisational objectives and organisational values and both will quickly or probably already are transparent to the world. Setting objectives requires risk analysis and a view of how to mange the unknown. What, in other areas can be a campaign will soon reach further both inside an organisation and beyond it. Employees, customers vendors and other partners will have compete visibility. Its an axiom that all you do and say online is available to everyone - forever - however embarrassing that may be.
Objectives need boundaries - most often they need to be SMART
1. Specific – Objectives should specify what they want to achieve.
2. Measurable – You should be able to measure whether you are meeting the objectives or not stage by stage.
3. Achievable - Are the objectives you set, achievable and attainable with manageable risk?
4. Realistic – Can you realistically achieve the objectives with the resources you have?
5. Time – When do you want to achieve the set objectives? Or can you sustain objectives to the point where the online community is satisfied you have served their needs.
To sum up: Do your objective chime with the organisations objectives; are they compatible with values held by the organisation that are defend-able in any forum, is risk and opportunity manageable, are they SMART and agreed with the organisation?
6. Strategies
At last! here you are in a position to get to grips with what you want to do.
Online strategies have to be creative in concept. There are so many platforms and channels for communication. There are no boundaries. You can use eposters or SMS, blogs or wiki's, podcasts or virtual environments. The online media and media online can be part of a campaign that includes Internet mediated television or games machines. There are exciting ways you can monitor, measure, evaluate and report. There is also considerable strategy theory from experts like Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Philip Selznick, Igor Ansoff, and Peter Drucker.
Some of your objective will be strategic because online the consequences will be felt at the highest level. Some will be more functional. Certainly they will be explicit.
Strategy is adaptable by nature. It will consider availability of resources (financial, time, technologies). Allocation of responsibilities and reporting with associated training and management infrastructure are all considerations.
There is an imperative for good clear communication inside the organisation and there is usually a need to involve internal 'stakeholders' because online initiatives will affect them and they will be well aware of your programme almost as soon as it goes public. All online activities require a capability to manage change.
Using management aids to decision making and project planning (ibid) you will develop a plan and processes for management monitoring and reporting and progressively you will include elements that have the right pay off when they are applied. They need a reality check. There is so much online that it is easy to imagine a Second Life presence but difficult to execute. and the process of developing the strategy will include even more risk and opportunity testing.
7. Tactics
I have an ever growing list of media channels available. They will be deployed to meet the strategic plan. There is no online PR campaign that only uses one tactical device. There will always be a proactive element, a monitoring element and a capability to respond to events and actions by the organisation and or its online community.
There are things we need to know about channels for communication which I listed here.
To be able to deploy tactics, they need to be well understood:
Are they technically possible
Do you make of buy (use an existing service or develop your own - who hosts, who has copyright, is your information confidential, are you sure about the nature, even nationality of your vendors.
Can you sustain the activity for the duration. Online interventions are very time hungry.
How are you going to test and evaluate the concept (e.g. channel) and technologies?
What are the risks and are there other opportunities?
When do you deploy your programme?
How will you launch what you propose?
How does this tactic integrate with other tactics in the strategic plan.
8. Monitor
We have mentioned that there is a need to maintain landscaping. It is valuable that such monitoring is structured (create your own - closed - wiki) and include the process for assessment including risk and opportunity management.
In addition to this, there is a need to be able continuously monitor what is happening and for each social media you have identified, you will include methods for monitoring and evaluating. The new book in print from Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Groundswell (2008)iv, identifies people in social media with five characteristics: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, and Spectators. These are five elements that offer structure to your monitoring and evaluation techniques.
Monitoring these five elements is essential when using social media.
Monitoring traffic on your web site and its competitive ranking and capabilities will be needed by every practitioner but monitoring and evaluating much of what is happening online is simply impossible. Chat is a case in point. A busy chat room generates huge content as do many brands in blogs and social networks.
Using the monitoring tools available, makes evaluation and reporting difficult. But there are a lot of tools to help. In some areas far more than for media relations. To cope with such activity it is worth creating a resource where real time information is available (a wiki?) and is available to a wide number of people who are involved in the project.
Online public relations is one form of PR that has to be monitored and evaluated. The risk in not doing so are far too significant and dangerous to leave it to chance.
That just about covers it I think.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
More about Risk Management
I commented that risk management was a well established discipline. Almost immediately, I was asked to explain myself.
Here then are my thoughts on risk management and how practitioners can implement social media campaigns and incorporate risk management and planning for the unknown in an era when we don't even really know what traditional newspapers, radio and television will look like in five years time, a planning time scale for many organisations.
Risk management
Risk Management is a well established discipline with an excellent literature.The Institute of Risk Management has an excellent guide that will be helpful to PR professionals working in both on and offline practice.
The basics of risk management are relatively simple to grasp. In most PR work there are risks. To manage risks we need to identify them. This can be done by an individual, a focus group or management team or can be established from research.
Risk can be examined from many sources. Examples are:
Legislative change
local
regional
national
European
Global
regulation
Corporate change of direction
Change in requirement
Change in objectives
Change of output, outtake, outcome requirement
Change in publics/stakeholders
Added publics
Removed publics
Publics change
Platform/channel for communication
Change/changing
New
Fast/slow adoption
Reach
Reliability
Perceptions of
Implementation impact
Technology change
Content not available
New/changed opportunity
Unexpected change in team
Managment team
Technical team
Operations team
Competitor action
Merger/acquisition,
Competitors me-too actions
Management Directive
Corporate aims and objectives
Budget
Delivery schedule
Monitor, measurement, evaluation requirement
other
Corporate re-organisation
At board level
Departmental re-organisation
Merger/acquisition
Problem not anticipated
Reputation/ethical issue
Corporate, brand, personnel crisis
Server down/overload
System attack/bug
Change in available resources
Vendor availability
Regular checking of these elements to identify potential or actual risks is helpful, if not essential.
Having described such risks, the practitioner (evaluation team) will asses each element in terms of likelihood of occurrence and impact (perhaps on a scale of five for each) typically using aids to decision making. The next part of the process is to create a mitigation (or contingency) plan, process or protocol to reduce either of both risk of likelihood or impact. Then a new assessment is made of the likelihood or impact to see if the proposed programme for mitigation has had an effect that makes the risk acceptable within the campaign.
An example of risk management might be a risk of porosity where employees use blogs. The risk is likely and could have significant impact. A practitioner might propose that all employees are given some company guidelines (an example is IBM which has an excellent policy statement). such a plan will help reduce both likelihood and impact.
Using such a process through each part of the planning process reduces risk to a manageable level and also helps to make precise projections of expected outcomes.
Of course, for each risk there is an opportunity. By applying the same technique but looking for opportunities and means to optimise such opportunities, the practitioner can enhance the effectiveness of any approach to a campaign.
Uncertainty management
In planning against uncertainty the rules are simple. We consider variation, foreseen uncertainty, unforeseen uncertainty and chaos.
Variation
All plans have expected outcomes, financial budgets and timescales. These are often identified using aids for project planning.
Monitoring such plans will identify where plans are going awry. Often such occurrences are small. These are 'variations' to the plan. Good monitoring will give teams notice that remedial action has to take place and contingency can be built into the plan. An example might be a contingency sum in a budget and some flexibility in delivery time built in.
Foreseen uncertainties
There are some variations that are identifiable and understood that the team cannot be sure will occur or when an event it will occur. To mitigate foreseen uncertainties, the plan will need to include the capability to identify the event and a capability to deploy a pre-planned contingency programme. An example might be unscheduled maintenance that is running the campaign blog. A real example for all practitioners in online public relations is planning for the sure-fire certainty that in the next few months, channels for communication will change. Equally all our constituents will adjust the channels for communication to be able to cope with the time available to use their different channels - its called attention deficit. Every practitioner should be aware that for a range of reasons the organisations web site will, as some time, by flooded with requests. When that happens, there has to be a plan to keep the server responding and offering the information the online constituency needs and the web site open for business as usual. This is a PR problem. It is not an IT department problem. Risk analysis is critical in identifying and mitigating these events. Practicing for such events has to be included in any plan. Who does what, when and how and if they are not available or facilities are down should be part of such a plan.
Unforeseen Uncertainty
This kind of event can not be identified during project planning. There is no Plan B.
The team will be unaware of the event’s possibility or consider it so unlikely that there is no in-built contingency plan.
“Unknown unknowns,” or “unk-unks,” as they are sometimes called, make people nervous because existing decision
tools are not available. Unforeseen uncertainty is not always caused by spectacular events or issues. They can arise from the unanticipated interaction of many events, each of which might, in principle, be foreseeable.
The first thing that we have to do is to make the organisation aware that unforeseen events do happen and they have to be, and can be, managed. Contingency planning has to evolve as the project progresses.
Here are the key elements for reducing the impact of the unforeseen:
* Teams must go beyond mere crisis management and continually scan for emerging influences — either threats or opportunities. Practitioners should be scanning the horizon more than three months out to identify potential problems while they can still do something about them. Monitoring the destinations of users online is a first consideration. In 2006, the move of the online community away from traditional web sites to sites driven by user generated content was unforseen with unknown additional web sites struggled to attract visitors.
* Risk analysis must be an ongoing activity with no potential hazard excluded because it seemed wacky at the time. With awareness of the growth of Twitter (www.twitter.com), corporate porosity became even more significant.
* With unforeseeable uncertainty, a lot of time and effort must go into managing relationships with key publics, often getting them to accept unplanned changes. Knowing who and how to contact key publics is important. Good old fashioned public relations to maintain good and effective relationships count when the unforeseen happens.
* Top-management support, negotiation techniques, team-building exercises and the practitioner's leadership can help resolve conflicting interests.
* Trust is a core element in managing the unforeseen which means value systems and value system analysis is critical (ibid)
* Managing variance and planning for managing foreseen uncertainty assist managing the unknown because contingency planning will be part of the organisation's culture.
The unforeseen can be managed.
The US Institute of crisis management offers some insights into where to look for unforeseen uncertainty, listing the most common on its web site (http://www.crisisexperts.com)
One of Catastrophes
Casualty Accidents
Environmental
Class Action Lawsuits
Consumer Activism
Defects & Recalls
Discrimination
Executive Dismissal
Financial Damages
Hostile Takeover
Labour Disputes
Mismanagement
Sexual Harassment
Whistle Blowers
White Collar Crime
Workplace Violence
If ever there was a list for identifying how confidence and reputation could be destroyed by online influences, this is it! It offers a start point for scanning both internal and external events that could escalate into unforeseen uncertainty.
So there it is.... we can, and have to plan for risk and uncertainty.
There is a counter argument:
Clay Shirky puts this view for ward: "when you explore really new ideas, it’s pretty much impossible to tell in advances the successes from the failures. The business world today is geared towards “optimizing” the innovation processes in order to reduce the likelihood of failure. That’s a significant disadvantage when compared with the open-source ecosystem, which “doesn’t have to care” and “can try out everything” because “the cost of failure is carried by the individuals at the edges of the network, while the value of the successes magnifies and adds value to the whole network”. “Ecosystems such as open-source get failure for free, and that produces some inevitable unexpected big successes - the Linux operating system - that nobody could have predicted but end up changing the world”.
Which leads to this comment from JP Rangaswami on this blog post: "If you disaggregate the cost of failure it will drop. If you reduce the cost of failure then you increase the capacity to innovate. If the innovation is carried out by individuals at the edge then those costs drop as well. As all these costs drop there is a natural speeding-up. A lovely virtuous circle with the right feedback loops."
So there is a case for experimentation and 'pushing the envelope' for the bold PR person if the concept (strategy) can accommodate involvement by the community to gain a competitive advantage.
So how does this fit into online public relations campaign planning?
Here then are my thoughts on risk management and how practitioners can implement social media campaigns and incorporate risk management and planning for the unknown in an era when we don't even really know what traditional newspapers, radio and television will look like in five years time, a planning time scale for many organisations.
Risk management
Risk Management is a well established discipline with an excellent literature.The Institute of Risk Management has an excellent guide that will be helpful to PR professionals working in both on and offline practice.
The basics of risk management are relatively simple to grasp. In most PR work there are risks. To manage risks we need to identify them. This can be done by an individual, a focus group or management team or can be established from research.
Risk can be examined from many sources. Examples are:
Legislative change
local
regional
national
European
Global
regulation
Corporate change of direction
Change in requirement
Change in objectives
Change of output, outtake, outcome requirement
Change in publics/stakeholders
Added publics
Removed publics
Publics change
Platform/channel for communication
Change/changing
New
Fast/slow adoption
Reach
Reliability
Perceptions of
Implementation impact
Technology change
Content not available
New/changed opportunity
Unexpected change in team
Managment team
Technical team
Operations team
Competitor action
Merger/acquisition,
Competitors me-too actions
Management Directive
Corporate aims and objectives
Budget
Delivery schedule
Monitor, measurement, evaluation requirement
other
Corporate re-organisation
At board level
Departmental re-organisation
Merger/acquisition
Problem not anticipated
Reputation/ethical issue
Corporate, brand, personnel crisis
Server down/overload
System attack/bug
Change in available resources
Vendor availability
Regular checking of these elements to identify potential or actual risks is helpful, if not essential.
Having described such risks, the practitioner (evaluation team) will asses each element in terms of likelihood of occurrence and impact (perhaps on a scale of five for each) typically using aids to decision making. The next part of the process is to create a mitigation (or contingency) plan, process or protocol to reduce either of both risk of likelihood or impact. Then a new assessment is made of the likelihood or impact to see if the proposed programme for mitigation has had an effect that makes the risk acceptable within the campaign.
An example of risk management might be a risk of porosity where employees use blogs. The risk is likely and could have significant impact. A practitioner might propose that all employees are given some company guidelines (an example is IBM which has an excellent policy statement). such a plan will help reduce both likelihood and impact.
Using such a process through each part of the planning process reduces risk to a manageable level and also helps to make precise projections of expected outcomes.
Of course, for each risk there is an opportunity. By applying the same technique but looking for opportunities and means to optimise such opportunities, the practitioner can enhance the effectiveness of any approach to a campaign.
Uncertainty management
In planning against uncertainty the rules are simple. We consider variation, foreseen uncertainty, unforeseen uncertainty and chaos.
Variation
All plans have expected outcomes, financial budgets and timescales. These are often identified using aids for project planning.
Monitoring such plans will identify where plans are going awry. Often such occurrences are small. These are 'variations' to the plan. Good monitoring will give teams notice that remedial action has to take place and contingency can be built into the plan. An example might be a contingency sum in a budget and some flexibility in delivery time built in.
Foreseen uncertainties
There are some variations that are identifiable and understood that the team cannot be sure will occur or when an event it will occur. To mitigate foreseen uncertainties, the plan will need to include the capability to identify the event and a capability to deploy a pre-planned contingency programme. An example might be unscheduled maintenance that is running the campaign blog. A real example for all practitioners in online public relations is planning for the sure-fire certainty that in the next few months, channels for communication will change. Equally all our constituents will adjust the channels for communication to be able to cope with the time available to use their different channels - its called attention deficit. Every practitioner should be aware that for a range of reasons the organisations web site will, as some time, by flooded with requests. When that happens, there has to be a plan to keep the server responding and offering the information the online constituency needs and the web site open for business as usual. This is a PR problem. It is not an IT department problem. Risk analysis is critical in identifying and mitigating these events. Practicing for such events has to be included in any plan. Who does what, when and how and if they are not available or facilities are down should be part of such a plan.
Unforeseen Uncertainty
This kind of event can not be identified during project planning. There is no Plan B.
The team will be unaware of the event’s possibility or consider it so unlikely that there is no in-built contingency plan.
“Unknown unknowns,” or “unk-unks,” as they are sometimes called, make people nervous because existing decision
tools are not available. Unforeseen uncertainty is not always caused by spectacular events or issues. They can arise from the unanticipated interaction of many events, each of which might, in principle, be foreseeable.
The first thing that we have to do is to make the organisation aware that unforeseen events do happen and they have to be, and can be, managed. Contingency planning has to evolve as the project progresses.
Here are the key elements for reducing the impact of the unforeseen:
* Teams must go beyond mere crisis management and continually scan for emerging influences — either threats or opportunities. Practitioners should be scanning the horizon more than three months out to identify potential problems while they can still do something about them. Monitoring the destinations of users online is a first consideration. In 2006, the move of the online community away from traditional web sites to sites driven by user generated content was unforseen with unknown additional web sites struggled to attract visitors.
* Risk analysis must be an ongoing activity with no potential hazard excluded because it seemed wacky at the time. With awareness of the growth of Twitter (www.twitter.com), corporate porosity became even more significant.
* With unforeseeable uncertainty, a lot of time and effort must go into managing relationships with key publics, often getting them to accept unplanned changes. Knowing who and how to contact key publics is important. Good old fashioned public relations to maintain good and effective relationships count when the unforeseen happens.
* Top-management support, negotiation techniques, team-building exercises and the practitioner's leadership can help resolve conflicting interests.
* Trust is a core element in managing the unforeseen which means value systems and value system analysis is critical (ibid)
* Managing variance and planning for managing foreseen uncertainty assist managing the unknown because contingency planning will be part of the organisation's culture.
The unforeseen can be managed.
The US Institute of crisis management offers some insights into where to look for unforeseen uncertainty, listing the most common on its web site (http://www.crisisexperts.com)
One of Catastrophes
Casualty Accidents
Environmental
Class Action Lawsuits
Consumer Activism
Defects & Recalls
Discrimination
Executive Dismissal
Financial Damages
Hostile Takeover
Labour Disputes
Mismanagement
Sexual Harassment
Whistle Blowers
White Collar Crime
Workplace Violence
If ever there was a list for identifying how confidence and reputation could be destroyed by online influences, this is it! It offers a start point for scanning both internal and external events that could escalate into unforeseen uncertainty.
So there it is.... we can, and have to plan for risk and uncertainty.
There is a counter argument:
Clay Shirky puts this view for ward: "when you explore really new ideas, it’s pretty much impossible to tell in advances the successes from the failures. The business world today is geared towards “optimizing” the innovation processes in order to reduce the likelihood of failure. That’s a significant disadvantage when compared with the open-source ecosystem, which “doesn’t have to care” and “can try out everything” because “the cost of failure is carried by the individuals at the edges of the network, while the value of the successes magnifies and adds value to the whole network”. “Ecosystems such as open-source get failure for free, and that produces some inevitable unexpected big successes - the Linux operating system - that nobody could have predicted but end up changing the world”.
Which leads to this comment from JP Rangaswami on this blog post: "If you disaggregate the cost of failure it will drop. If you reduce the cost of failure then you increase the capacity to innovate. If the innovation is carried out by individuals at the edge then those costs drop as well. As all these costs drop there is a natural speeding-up. A lovely virtuous circle with the right feedback loops."
So there is a case for experimentation and 'pushing the envelope' for the bold PR person if the concept (strategy) can accommodate involvement by the community to gain a competitive advantage.
So how does this fit into online public relations campaign planning?
Friday, June 22, 2007
Newspapers v Social Media
The World Association of Newspapers, have published phase two of a research project about youth media behavior. The study, titled "Youth Media DNA" is a result of interviews with young people in 10 countries.
...“discussion with friends” as a top source for news and information, sometimes ranking higher than TV or newspapers
..." social networking and user-generated content sites can be seen as complements to their news and information experience."
...“discussion with friends” as a top source for news and information, sometimes ranking higher than TV or newspapers
..." social networking and user-generated content sites can be seen as complements to their news and information experience."
In reply to Frank Ovatt
I was going to post a response to Frank Ovatt's post The Fork in the Road to PR Research . To do so would be churlish. He is the messenger for Dr. Jim Macnamara.
I sense there is academic frustration.
There is such a focus on the dead tree society that the Institute for Public Relations (IfPR not CIPR) needs to re-consider whether it follows or leads.
Does it inform the CEO or measure the flack?
Does it take seriously that the 'eFootprint' of an organisation is an asset.
Does it recognise with over 10% of the economy of the UK online and a similar proportion in the USA this asset is probably the most important one every company has.
Can it take seriously that most of this asset is mediated by social media. Does this mean that its research will now turn from the dead tree society to what are the components of this asset?
There is a presumption that public relations is communication, the servant is the master. This has to go. Juts stop thinking it.
There is a presumption that the technical is the practice. Marx would be driver to PR's fireman.
Is it that our view of 'public relations' is modern or post modern or Dickensian or pre Dickensian. Are practitioners mere Sophists?
Is a PR person performing the antithesis of a dialogue with Crito?
Dr Macnamara says: "A large part of the PR industry has not yet engaged in any substantial way with new media and concepts such as Web 2.0. Of those that have, the primary focus is how to produce Web sites, produce blogs, produce podcasts. Yet more outputs; more focus on process and practice. It is comparatively rare to find practitioners monitoring and analyzing the use, impact and effects of blogs, for instance, and it is rare to find them at the forefront of policy making and planning, advising their organizations on the implications of new media." To be sure there is an industry involved in doing what he says, but there is another one that is more than well aware of the evolving paradigm. But the real paradigm is not found in such musings. This revolution is much bigger.
He also suggests that "Professional development programs are heavily orientated to practical skills development." Sure, there is a need for a lot of grease monkeys. They perform an essential role in delivering PR - skills that have to be re-learned every month. Yesterday video for YouTube, today a word for Twitter, tomorrow another web widget.
But is he suggesting these are the people who are really in charge of PR? Do all practitioners not have responsibility - just the accountability? They sound like National Health managers. Just tick the boxes and survive. Is this PR?
Modern advertising and direct marketing, for all its ROI is now in flux. Its best efforts are parodied in YouTube; its spin, bling and hype exposed in blogs and its very tenets are changed by the day. In an era of Instant Messaging CRM is but a computer programme loaded with spam. As advertisers desert newsprint and creative television advertising to lavish their largess on a Google computer algorithm, what social science and psychology or cultural studies underpin their hopes?
When the copywriter is the consumer which rules apply?
But relationships, the convergence of values, remain the stuff of organisations and civilisation.
Who cares about six sigma, KPI's, balanced scorecards, dashboards and ROI when ubiquitous communication allows values, the foci of power, to morph and move inside, and often outside, organisations? What do managers care for when their power base shifts by the Twitter Tweet?
We are worrying about evaluation of another age. We are back in positivist/antipositivist debates of industrial capitalism. Yet, as post industrial capitalism fades from view, its failure manifest in the markets it cannot optimise in India, China and Mexico, do we still hanker after the paths of the past.
Who, in the measurement obsessed, and little practised, PR world asks what are we for? How can our client flourish in the micro payment, invest at the point of consumption world that races towards us with 'Google docs' and brand new mobile phone capitalisation of $75billion in pay-as-you-go mobile in rural India.
There is no six sigma when quality is a value that infests an organisation; KPI's are irrelevant when the nexus of human values denotes an organisation; Balanced scorecards obfuscate the value of relationships; dashboards mechanically display the mechanical and ROI has no meaning if relationships are not(the premier) asset of all organisations. Straw men in the Value Systems world.
The $600k that is YouTube is a lesson for PR. Google paid for a computer programme and machinery of a few thousand dollars worth and $1.6 billion for relationships.
Relationships sharing knowledge remain the most expensive part of the whole life cost of a car - by factors.
If cultivation theory is the limit when neuro-psychology tells us so much more and Facbook confronts Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann we do have a long way to go. We do not see what is really happening to and among real people.
Is Macnamara's fork in the road mere fumblings along an ancient byway, blinded to distraction by the glare and bustle of the highway. It light in a different direction?
It is time for Public Relations research not pseudo-marketing, pseudo-management and pseudo-accounting? We need it to better inform 'management' to help fix that transitory nexus of values that make the relationships we call the firm and then re-cast the nature of the firm.
So where are we? Journalist advise out political elite with, as Macnamara points out, no knowledge of W. J. McGuire’s (now dated) stages of communication; Joseph Klapper’s limited effects findings; Roland Barthes “death of the author”; Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Umberto Eco’s theory of aberrant decoding; social cognitive theory and modern scholars in the public relations field. Add to that Cluetrain Manifesto, Evans and Wuster's "Blown to Bits" and Fred Wenstøp and Arild Myrmel's "Structuring organizational value statements ".
Lets make no bones about it, the billions of Chinese texting messages are now mightier than media mogul; shareable, global, free at the point of use word processing and spreadsheets are in the hands of billions of Indians. The of Microsft's Office is only paid for out of sluggish organisations pretence of assets to defend their walled gardens.
Where now?
Learn why people smile when you give them a rose.
I sense there is academic frustration.
There is such a focus on the dead tree society that the Institute for Public Relations (IfPR not CIPR) needs to re-consider whether it follows or leads.
Does it inform the CEO or measure the flack?
Does it take seriously that the 'eFootprint' of an organisation is an asset.
Does it recognise with over 10% of the economy of the UK online and a similar proportion in the USA this asset is probably the most important one every company has.
Can it take seriously that most of this asset is mediated by social media. Does this mean that its research will now turn from the dead tree society to what are the components of this asset?
There is a presumption that public relations is communication, the servant is the master. This has to go. Juts stop thinking it.
There is a presumption that the technical is the practice. Marx would be driver to PR's fireman.
Is it that our view of 'public relations' is modern or post modern or Dickensian or pre Dickensian. Are practitioners mere Sophists?
Is a PR person performing the antithesis of a dialogue with Crito?
Dr Macnamara says: "A large part of the PR industry has not yet engaged in any substantial way with new media and concepts such as Web 2.0. Of those that have, the primary focus is how to produce Web sites, produce blogs, produce podcasts. Yet more outputs; more focus on process and practice. It is comparatively rare to find practitioners monitoring and analyzing the use, impact and effects of blogs, for instance, and it is rare to find them at the forefront of policy making and planning, advising their organizations on the implications of new media." To be sure there is an industry involved in doing what he says, but there is another one that is more than well aware of the evolving paradigm. But the real paradigm is not found in such musings. This revolution is much bigger.
He also suggests that "Professional development programs are heavily orientated to practical skills development." Sure, there is a need for a lot of grease monkeys. They perform an essential role in delivering PR - skills that have to be re-learned every month. Yesterday video for YouTube, today a word for Twitter, tomorrow another web widget.
But is he suggesting these are the people who are really in charge of PR? Do all practitioners not have responsibility - just the accountability? They sound like National Health managers. Just tick the boxes and survive. Is this PR?
Modern advertising and direct marketing, for all its ROI is now in flux. Its best efforts are parodied in YouTube; its spin, bling and hype exposed in blogs and its very tenets are changed by the day. In an era of Instant Messaging CRM is but a computer programme loaded with spam. As advertisers desert newsprint and creative television advertising to lavish their largess on a Google computer algorithm, what social science and psychology or cultural studies underpin their hopes?
When the copywriter is the consumer which rules apply?
But relationships, the convergence of values, remain the stuff of organisations and civilisation.
Who cares about six sigma, KPI's, balanced scorecards, dashboards and ROI when ubiquitous communication allows values, the foci of power, to morph and move inside, and often outside, organisations? What do managers care for when their power base shifts by the Twitter Tweet?
We are worrying about evaluation of another age. We are back in positivist/antipositivist debates of industrial capitalism. Yet, as post industrial capitalism fades from view, its failure manifest in the markets it cannot optimise in India, China and Mexico, do we still hanker after the paths of the past.
Who, in the measurement obsessed, and little practised, PR world asks what are we for? How can our client flourish in the micro payment, invest at the point of consumption world that races towards us with 'Google docs' and brand new mobile phone capitalisation of $75billion in pay-as-you-go mobile in rural India.
There is no six sigma when quality is a value that infests an organisation; KPI's are irrelevant when the nexus of human values denotes an organisation; Balanced scorecards obfuscate the value of relationships; dashboards mechanically display the mechanical and ROI has no meaning if relationships are not(the premier) asset of all organisations. Straw men in the Value Systems world.
The $600k that is YouTube is a lesson for PR. Google paid for a computer programme and machinery of a few thousand dollars worth and $1.6 billion for relationships.
Relationships sharing knowledge remain the most expensive part of the whole life cost of a car - by factors.
If cultivation theory is the limit when neuro-psychology tells us so much more and Facbook confronts Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann we do have a long way to go. We do not see what is really happening to and among real people.
Is Macnamara's fork in the road mere fumblings along an ancient byway, blinded to distraction by the glare and bustle of the highway. It light in a different direction?
It is time for Public Relations research not pseudo-marketing, pseudo-management and pseudo-accounting? We need it to better inform 'management' to help fix that transitory nexus of values that make the relationships we call the firm and then re-cast the nature of the firm.
So where are we? Journalist advise out political elite with, as Macnamara points out, no knowledge of W. J. McGuire’s (now dated) stages of communication; Joseph Klapper’s limited effects findings; Roland Barthes “death of the author”; Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Umberto Eco’s theory of aberrant decoding; social cognitive theory and modern scholars in the public relations field. Add to that Cluetrain Manifesto, Evans and Wuster's "Blown to Bits" and Fred Wenstøp and Arild Myrmel's "Structuring organizational value statements ".
Lets make no bones about it, the billions of Chinese texting messages are now mightier than media mogul; shareable, global, free at the point of use word processing and spreadsheets are in the hands of billions of Indians. The of Microsft's Office is only paid for out of sluggish organisations pretence of assets to defend their walled gardens.
Where now?
Learn why people smile when you give them a rose.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Management Approaches to PR Planning
The evidence would suggest that optimised relationship development practice needs to adopt and develop a range of management skills to be able to execute complex communication systems which includes a high level of uncertainty and change.
In effect, we need to be able to plan for surprises.
Such management skills come from a range of disciplines. For the most part, they do not replace existing practice but add and extend it.
This means that the practitioner needs to know and understand the management practices needed for planning and implementing complex programmes in order to be able to develop online strategies. Being conversant with such techniques has to be an elementary skill including such ideas as:
Aid to decision making such as: Pareto analysis; Paired Comparison Analysis; Grid Analysis; PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting'); Force Field Analysis; Six Thinking Hats and Cost Benefit Analysis. Other methodologies include Impact Analysis, Avoidance of Group Think, Inductive Reasoning and an approach developed by Charles H.Kepner and Benjamin B. Tregoe in their book The Rational Manager (1965).
Aids for project planning such as: Time estimating; scheduling; cost analysis; Gantt Charts; Critical Path Analysis and PERT; 'Stakeholder Analysis'; Change management and the ADKAR model.
Such approaches are part, and will, of course, be included in any of the traditional Public Relations planning models (Gregory andTheaker ; Smith and many more) which can be summed up as: Research, landscaping, situation analysis, objective setting, Identifying publics, Key messages, Strategy, Tactics, Timescale, Budget, Crisis issues and management plan, Evaluation
As we move into Internet mediated Public Relations, there are notable adaptations to these models. User Generated Participants increase the level of risk involved. We have to face the needs and responses of Internet users, their selection, use and satisfaction with channels for communication to pull content and their capability to participate in the relationship dynamic. We find that the nature of the Internet means we have to adapt many processes that were once adequate and now need to be updated.
Online Public relations is not linear. Stuff happens! This means that there is a constant need to continually research, landscape, perform situation analysis and re-visit objectives. Plans have to be fluid.
We now have to adopt practices from other disciplines where management of the unknown is common. There is a great deal of useful management experience in this field and De Meyer, Loch andPich ( De Meyer A, Loch C, & Pich M 2002 ) offer insights that can be used by relationship management practitioners. An adaptation is is offered below.
First off, they offer a picture of what uncertainty looks like. They offer an approach to uncertainty-based management which derives planning, monitoring and management style from an uncertainty in four uncertainty types — variation, foreseen uncertainty, unforeseen uncertainty and chaos.
PR can also take from research in the financial disciplines that Internet traffic data, displayed in time series, has a number
of characteristic properties, widely known as "stylised facts", which are different to other kinds of time series:
· They tend to be long-tailed, i.e. there is a higher frequency of very extreme events than would not be expected with say normally distributed data (issues arise frequently and randomly all the time);
· They tend to show long-range dependence, e.g. the autocorrelation function (management of events and issues) returns decays to zero at much slower rates than conventional time series models (the Internet has a 'long memory' and 'time shifts' information).
· They exhibit volatility, i.e. the apparent variance (from the plan or anticipated outcome) is not a constant but tends to fluctuate irregularly (for optimum effect, plans need frequent tweaking).
To develop PR programmes using these techniques offers a greater certainty of success and reduction of risk (the combination of the probability of an event and its consequences - ISO/IEC Guide 73).
Risk Management is a well established discipline with an excellent literature. Its application in PR is less well developed than for many other disciplines such as financial, project management, Health and Safety. Contributors to the literature include: (C. Chapman and S.Ward, “Project Risk Management” (Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley, 1997), 7. R.L. Kliem and I.S. Ludin, “Reducing Project Risk” (Hampshire, United Kingdom: Gower, 1997), 10-25. Chapman, “Project Risk Management,” 10, 241.). The Institute of Risk Management has an excellent guide that will be helpful to PR professionals working in both on and offline practice.
So now to extend this thinking....
In effect, we need to be able to plan for surprises.
Such management skills come from a range of disciplines. For the most part, they do not replace existing practice but add and extend it.
This means that the practitioner needs to know and understand the management practices needed for planning and implementing complex programmes in order to be able to develop online strategies. Being conversant with such techniques has to be an elementary skill including such ideas as:
Aid to decision making such as: Pareto analysis; Paired Comparison Analysis; Grid Analysis; PMI (Plus/Minus/Interesting'); Force Field Analysis; Six Thinking Hats and Cost Benefit Analysis. Other methodologies include Impact Analysis, Avoidance of Group Think, Inductive Reasoning and an approach developed by Charles H.Kepner and Benjamin B. Tregoe in their book The Rational Manager (1965).
Aids for project planning such as: Time estimating; scheduling; cost analysis; Gantt Charts; Critical Path Analysis and PERT; 'Stakeholder Analysis'; Change management and the ADKAR model.
Such approaches are part, and will, of course, be included in any of the traditional Public Relations planning models (Gregory andTheaker ; Smith and many more) which can be summed up as: Research, landscaping, situation analysis, objective setting, Identifying publics, Key messages, Strategy, Tactics, Timescale, Budget, Crisis issues and management plan, Evaluation
As we move into Internet mediated Public Relations, there are notable adaptations to these models. User Generated Participants increase the level of risk involved. We have to face the needs and responses of Internet users, their selection, use and satisfaction with channels for communication to pull content and their capability to participate in the relationship dynamic. We find that the nature of the Internet means we have to adapt many processes that were once adequate and now need to be updated.
Online Public relations is not linear. Stuff happens! This means that there is a constant need to continually research, landscape, perform situation analysis and re-visit objectives. Plans have to be fluid.
We now have to adopt practices from other disciplines where management of the unknown is common. There is a great deal of useful management experience in this field and De Meyer, Loch andPich ( De Meyer A, Loch C, & Pich M 2002 ) offer insights that can be used by relationship management practitioners. An adaptation is is offered below.
First off, they offer a picture of what uncertainty looks like. They offer an approach to uncertainty-based management which derives planning, monitoring and management style from an uncertainty in four uncertainty types — variation, foreseen uncertainty, unforeseen uncertainty and chaos.
PR can also take from research in the financial disciplines that Internet traffic data, displayed in time series, has a number
of characteristic properties, widely known as "stylised facts", which are different to other kinds of time series:
· They tend to be long-tailed, i.e. there is a higher frequency of very extreme events than would not be expected with say normally distributed data (issues arise frequently and randomly all the time);
· They tend to show long-range dependence, e.g. the autocorrelation function (management of events and issues) returns decays to zero at much slower rates than conventional time series models (the Internet has a 'long memory' and 'time shifts' information).
· They exhibit volatility, i.e. the apparent variance (from the plan or anticipated outcome) is not a constant but tends to fluctuate irregularly (for optimum effect, plans need frequent tweaking).
To develop PR programmes using these techniques offers a greater certainty of success and reduction of risk (the combination of the probability of an event and its consequences - ISO/IEC Guide 73).
Risk Management is a well established discipline with an excellent literature. Its application in PR is less well developed than for many other disciplines such as financial, project management, Health and Safety. Contributors to the literature include: (C. Chapman and S.Ward, “Project Risk Management” (Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley, 1997), 7. R.L. Kliem and I.S. Ludin, “Reducing Project Risk” (Hampshire, United Kingdom: Gower, 1997), 10-25. Chapman, “Project Risk Management,” 10, 241.). The Institute of Risk Management has an excellent guide that will be helpful to PR professionals working in both on and offline practice.
So now to extend this thinking....
What has changed for communications professionals
In its simplest form, PR management consists of planning, executing, and monitoring. In traditional PR, there is little needed to represent a client other than a close brief, data and personable time leavened with creative approaches to impart knowledge. Mostly its a two step (pressagentry , lobby or event based) activity. It is assumed that human planners, (seldom even using formalised risk management tools) will generate the “best” network of activities. The plan is expected to be the same as the execution which is seldom theactualitie. There is a fundamental difference between a Plan and the execution of that Plan. Emerging events alter the execution and no more so when using social media.
The one thing we know is that in 2007 we do not know what channels for communication will be relevant in 2009 or 2011. In the last four years a number of changes in the way people communicate show that change and the rate of change is important for future planning. What we are aware of, is that for large parts of the population Internet mediated channels for communication is very important such as in maintaining relationships with journalism and, for many, it is the dominant protocol for interaction, by example, gamers.
Where once mass media made it relatively easy to offer content to a wide audience, and even a strong media sector with many titles of a few dozen TV and radio channels was manageable, reaching an audience is now more complex. The range of platforms such as digital radio and TV, cell phones and iPods as well asPC's , games machines and other devices adds to complexity. New platforms are arriving fast. Each platform offers a different experience which means that reception and intervention of even the same message may be perceived differently at the point of consumption.
Added to this range of platforms the common and, frequently, convergent channels for exchange of information means that to reach any segment or group of people changes communication from 'silver bullet' outlets to 'silver buckshot' multi touch. The compounding effect of new channels for communication (such asMySpace, YouTube , Twitter) add to complexity in relationship and behaviour motivation planning. Channels for communication can also be part of the message. For example, using aPDF file suggests that further debate is not encouraged while a blog has the opposite effect.
The evolution of the Internet from a platform for communication of data to an application that encourages the manipulation of that data, not just through human intervention but by Intent enabled technologies that act as agents, is now very apparent. It is readily evidenced in the form of the relatively benign web widgets and gadgets to complex capabilities.
New Media does not kill off old media. Old media tends to adapt. Newspapers are now also broadcasters; the BBC is using Twitter (www.twitter.com) and interpersonal telephone conversations include text, pictures and video from home phones,PC's using Skype and mobile devices. Channels also remain available long after they fall out of fashion (e.g. FAX and Usenet) and often morph (e.g. Google Groups) and so there are legacy channels to be considered.
There are further devils in the detail.
The nature of local versus global communication online is a consideration.
These is a notable tendency for publics (or market segments or stakeholders) to give way to online user generated segments where, given that information is online, users gravitate to it and do not conform to the profile identified by the organisation. Online community portals offer rich evidence of this tendency. Groups form that defy their market geographies, age profiles, income and anticipated interests.
People who will never use the Internet are influenced by it at one step removed.
In addition, because a lot of information is made available in the form of 'User Generated Content' (UGC) there is a symmetry in communication which influences both organisations and its public.
Control of 'messages' is largely a thing of the past, messages are changed by human and machine interventions and hop from channel to channel. An organisation now competes with a wide range of other actors in the development and dissemination of, what now becomes the development of value systems, across a network of authors and channels.
Finally, there is an issue of attention deficit. People once did not have to multi-task when interacting with data or knowledge. Now to acquire knowledge it comes to people as a constant, always updating stream of images and texts.
Once, to compete in such an environment, attention was gained by dominating channels. Huge poster campaigns and mass media advertising was a sure fire, if expensive, magic bullet. Now, there is resistance. People 'tune out' these attempts, they also select channels that are either less intrusive or compromise a little interference for cheap access to what they want. They pull information and select methodologies to remain informed without dedicating time to searching to satisfy information needs. RSS is an example.
In developing both traditional media and online strategies there is a need to take into account such volatility as well as the growing complexities. This means that practitioners have to be able to deploy advanced management techniques to optimise motivations among people.
The one thing we know is that in 2007 we do not know what channels for communication will be relevant in 2009 or 2011. In the last four years a number of changes in the way people communicate show that change and the rate of change is important for future planning. What we are aware of, is that for large parts of the population Internet mediated channels for communication is very important such as in maintaining relationships with journalism and, for many, it is the dominant protocol for interaction, by example, gamers.
Where once mass media made it relatively easy to offer content to a wide audience, and even a strong media sector with many titles of a few dozen TV and radio channels was manageable, reaching an audience is now more complex. The range of platforms such as digital radio and TV, cell phones and iPods as well asPC's , games machines and other devices adds to complexity. New platforms are arriving fast. Each platform offers a different experience which means that reception and intervention of even the same message may be perceived differently at the point of consumption.
Added to this range of platforms the common and, frequently, convergent channels for exchange of information means that to reach any segment or group of people changes communication from 'silver bullet' outlets to 'silver buckshot' multi touch. The compounding effect of new channels for communication (such asMySpace, YouTube , Twitter) add to complexity in relationship and behaviour motivation planning. Channels for communication can also be part of the message. For example, using aPDF file suggests that further debate is not encouraged while a blog has the opposite effect.
The evolution of the Internet from a platform for communication of data to an application that encourages the manipulation of that data, not just through human intervention but by Intent enabled technologies that act as agents, is now very apparent. It is readily evidenced in the form of the relatively benign web widgets and gadgets to complex capabilities.
New Media does not kill off old media. Old media tends to adapt. Newspapers are now also broadcasters; the BBC is using Twitter (www.twitter.com) and interpersonal telephone conversations include text, pictures and video from home phones,PC's using Skype and mobile devices. Channels also remain available long after they fall out of fashion (e.g. FAX and Usenet) and often morph (e.g. Google Groups) and so there are legacy channels to be considered.
There are further devils in the detail.
The nature of local versus global communication online is a consideration.
These is a notable tendency for publics (or market segments or stakeholders) to give way to online user generated segments where, given that information is online, users gravitate to it and do not conform to the profile identified by the organisation. Online community portals offer rich evidence of this tendency. Groups form that defy their market geographies, age profiles, income and anticipated interests.
People who will never use the Internet are influenced by it at one step removed.
In addition, because a lot of information is made available in the form of 'User Generated Content' (UGC) there is a symmetry in communication which influences both organisations and its public.
Control of 'messages' is largely a thing of the past, messages are changed by human and machine interventions and hop from channel to channel. An organisation now competes with a wide range of other actors in the development and dissemination of, what now becomes the development of value systems, across a network of authors and channels.
Finally, there is an issue of attention deficit. People once did not have to multi-task when interacting with data or knowledge. Now to acquire knowledge it comes to people as a constant, always updating stream of images and texts.
Once, to compete in such an environment, attention was gained by dominating channels. Huge poster campaigns and mass media advertising was a sure fire, if expensive, magic bullet. Now, there is resistance. People 'tune out' these attempts, they also select channels that are either less intrusive or compromise a little interference for cheap access to what they want. They pull information and select methodologies to remain informed without dedicating time to searching to satisfy information needs. RSS is an example.
In developing both traditional media and online strategies there is a need to take into account such volatility as well as the growing complexities. This means that practitioners have to be able to deploy advanced management techniques to optimise motivations among people.
What has changed for communications professionals
In its simplest form, PR management consists of planning, executing, and monitoring. In traditional PR, there is little needed to represent a client other than a close brief, data and personable time leavened with creative approaches to impart knowledge. Mostly its a two step (press agentry, lobby or event based) activity. It is assumed that human planners, (seldom even using formalised risk management tools) will generate the “best” network of activities. The plan is expected to be the same as the execution which is seldom the actualitie. There is a fundamental difference between a Plan and the execution of that Plan. Emerging events alter the execution and no more so when using social media.
The one thing we know is that we do not know what channels for communication will be relevant in 2009 or 2011. In the last four years a number of changes in the way people communicate show that change and the rate of change is important for future planning. What we are aware of, is that for large parts of the population Internet mediated channels for communication is very important such as in maintaining relationships with journalism and, for many, it is the dominant protocol for interaction, by example, gamers.
Where once mass media made it relatively easy to offer content to a wide audience, and even a strong media sector with many titles of a few dozen TV and radio channels was manageable, reaching an audience is now more complex. The range of platforms such as digital radio and TV, cell phones and iPods as well as PC's, games machines and other devices adds to complexity. New platforms are arriving fast. Each platform offers a different experience which means that reception and intervention of even the same message may be perceived differently at the point of consumption.
Added to this range of platforms the common and, frequently, convergent channels for exchange of information means that to reach any segment or group of people changes communication from 'silver bullet' outlets to 'silver buckshot' multi touch. The compounding effect of new channels for communication (such as MySpace, YouTube, Twitter) add to complexity in relationship and behaviour motivation planning. Channels for communication can also be part of the message. For example, using a PDF file suggests that further debate is not encouraged while a blog has the opposite effect.
The evolution of the Internet from a platform for communication of data to an application that encourages the manipulation of that data, not just through human intervention but by Intent enabled technologies that act as agents, is now very apparent. It is readily evidenced in the form of the relatively benign web widgets and gadgets to complex capabilities.
New Media does not kill off old media. Old media tends to adapt. Newspapers are now also broadcasters; the BBC is using Twitter (www.twitter.com) and interpersonal telephone conversations include text, pictures and video from home phones, PC's using Skype and mobile devices. Channels also remain available long after they fall out of fashion (e.g. FAX and Usenet) and often morph (e.g. Google Groups) and so there are legacy channels to be considered.
There are further devils in the detail.
The nature of local versus global communication online is a consideration.
These is a notable tendency for publics (or market segments or stakeholders) to give way to online user generated segments where, given that information is online, users gravitate to it and do not conforms the profile identified by the organisation. Online community portals offer rich evidence of this tendency. Groups form that defy their market geographies, age profiles, income and anticipated interests.
People who will never use the Internet are influenced by it at one step removed.
In addition, because a lot of information is made available in the form of 'User Generated Content' (UGC) there is a symmetry in communication which influences both organisations and its public.
Control of 'messages' is largely a thing of the past, messages are changed by human and machine interventions and hop from channel to channel. An organisation now competes with a wide range of other actors in the development and dissemination of, what now becomes the development of value systems across a network of authors and channels.
Finally, there is an issue of attention deficit. People once did not have to multi-task when interacting with data or knowledge. Now to acquire knowledge it comes to people as a constant, always updating stream of images and texts. Once, to compete in such an environment, attention was gained by dominating channels. Huge postercampaigns and mass media advertising was a sure fire, if expensive, magic bullet. Now, there is resistance. People 'tune out' these attempts, they also select channels that are either less intrusive or compromise a little interference for cheap access to what they want. They pull information and select methodologies to remain informed without dedicating time to searching to satisfy information needs. RSS is an example.
In developing both traditional media and online strategies there is a need to be take into account such volatility as well as the growing complexities. This means that practitioners have to be able to deploy advanced management techniques to optimise motivations among people.
The one thing we know is that we do not know what channels for communication will be relevant in 2009 or 2011. In the last four years a number of changes in the way people communicate show that change and the rate of change is important for future planning. What we are aware of, is that for large parts of the population Internet mediated channels for communication is very important such as in maintaining relationships with journalism and, for many, it is the dominant protocol for interaction, by example, gamers.
Where once mass media made it relatively easy to offer content to a wide audience, and even a strong media sector with many titles of a few dozen TV and radio channels was manageable, reaching an audience is now more complex. The range of platforms such as digital radio and TV, cell phones and iPods as well as PC's, games machines and other devices adds to complexity. New platforms are arriving fast. Each platform offers a different experience which means that reception and intervention of even the same message may be perceived differently at the point of consumption.
Added to this range of platforms the common and, frequently, convergent channels for exchange of information means that to reach any segment or group of people changes communication from 'silver bullet' outlets to 'silver buckshot' multi touch. The compounding effect of new channels for communication (such as MySpace, YouTube, Twitter) add to complexity in relationship and behaviour motivation planning. Channels for communication can also be part of the message. For example, using a PDF file suggests that further debate is not encouraged while a blog has the opposite effect.
The evolution of the Internet from a platform for communication of data to an application that encourages the manipulation of that data, not just through human intervention but by Intent enabled technologies that act as agents, is now very apparent. It is readily evidenced in the form of the relatively benign web widgets and gadgets to complex capabilities.
New Media does not kill off old media. Old media tends to adapt. Newspapers are now also broadcasters; the BBC is using Twitter (www.twitter.com) and interpersonal telephone conversations include text, pictures and video from home phones, PC's using Skype and mobile devices. Channels also remain available long after they fall out of fashion (e.g. FAX and Usenet) and often morph (e.g. Google Groups) and so there are legacy channels to be considered.
There are further devils in the detail.
The nature of local versus global communication online is a consideration.
These is a notable tendency for publics (or market segments or stakeholders) to give way to online user generated segments where, given that information is online, users gravitate to it and do not conforms the profile identified by the organisation. Online community portals offer rich evidence of this tendency. Groups form that defy their market geographies, age profiles, income and anticipated interests.
People who will never use the Internet are influenced by it at one step removed.
In addition, because a lot of information is made available in the form of 'User Generated Content' (UGC) there is a symmetry in communication which influences both organisations and its public.
Control of 'messages' is largely a thing of the past, messages are changed by human and machine interventions and hop from channel to channel. An organisation now competes with a wide range of other actors in the development and dissemination of, what now becomes the development of value systems across a network of authors and channels.
Finally, there is an issue of attention deficit. People once did not have to multi-task when interacting with data or knowledge. Now to acquire knowledge it comes to people as a constant, always updating stream of images and texts. Once, to compete in such an environment, attention was gained by dominating channels. Huge postercampaigns and mass media advertising was a sure fire, if expensive, magic bullet. Now, there is resistance. People 'tune out' these attempts, they also select channels that are either less intrusive or compromise a little interference for cheap access to what they want. They pull information and select methodologies to remain informed without dedicating time to searching to satisfy information needs. RSS is an example.
In developing both traditional media and online strategies there is a need to be take into account such volatility as well as the growing complexities. This means that practitioners have to be able to deploy advanced management techniques to optimise motivations among people.
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