Posts Tagged ‘evaluation’
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
“The Wall Street Journal” closes its Boston bureau. “Forbes” lays off a couple dozen this week, with rumors flying of more to come. “The New York Times” is looking for 100 buyout exits. Conde Nast shutters “Gourmet” magazine, and “Cookie,” “Elegant Bride” and “Modern Bride.” It’s a lousy time to be a journalist, eh? But what about being the PR people who pitch these pubs?
With advertising spending falling (or at least reclassifying from print to broadcast and Web), “getting media attention” in the right segments continues to be a critical element of PR activity. But the burgeoning social media market is threatening to change that calculus, if you believe the doyennes of blogs, Twitter and similar platforms. And why wouldn’t it? If we were pitching Modern Bride before, why can’t we pitch Classic Bride, Becoming Mrs. Jones, or The Broke-Ass Bride?
Does a company that makes bride dresses, or wedding catering, or domestic partnership photography have the time necessary to build relationships in social media? Or do they just need a quick ad with a special phone number that offers 20 percent off, a mention in a popular blog?
How many of us will the new behemoth integrated agencies need to help facilitate these processes? Who’s going to pay us to tell them to talk to a bride blogger in Madison, Wisc.?
This is only part of the puzzle — I have written before about the lack of independent and authoritative content in new media. Unless many of us suddenly become willing to pay a subscription fee for such content, it’s going to go away. Perhaps crowds really are wise, and not mobs. Perhaps over time, Wikipedia is more accurate than the Encyclopedia Brittanica, notwithstanding being horrifically inaccurate at the moment we need factual information, or openly manipulated.
Any of us who care about this topic will need to develop our own ability to engage in social media, build our reputation for accuracy and probity, and somehow compete with the fakers, liars, and spammers. That’s not an easy task.
Tags: @commammo, Blog, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, communication vehicles, effective communication, evaluation, Journalism, measurement, Media Relations, PR, PR measurement, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Measurement, Media Relations, News Analysis, Public Relations, Strategy | 5 Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
There is an existential discussion going on over at PRConversations. A post by the eminent Toni Muzi Falconi asks the question, “What comes next after Grunig?” — Jim Grunig being the legendary PR pro and educator whose landmark research in the 1980s led to the Excellence Theory of public relations.
PR has long had a love-hate relationship with theories. One hallmark of a true profession is that it has a strong theoretical basis in academic circles. So, the lack of a theory of its own (as near as I can figure) has led to gnashing of teeth and some amount of inferiority fantasy in the academic community.
Many of the most studied theories — Community Theory, Rhetorical Theory, Framing Theory, Systems Theory — borrow heavily from other disciplines, most notably from the general communication studies field. Coupled with PR practitioner resistance to theory in general and the academy in part, scholars for a time were very quick to dismiss PR as a separate profession. They preferred to see it, instead, as a part of communication, journalism, or marketing, and thus not as serious as their intellectual fore-bearers.
Grunig, along with co-researchers David Dozier, William Ehling, Larissa Grunig, Fred Repper and Jon White, conducted a massive study funded by the IABC Foundation to answer the question of why public relations has value to an organization.
In itself, this research wasn’t geared to establish a theoretical foundation for the profession. Instead, it answered two main questions: “Why and to what extent [does] PR make an organization more effective, and how much is that contribution worth economically?” and, “What are the characteristics of a public relations function that are most likely to make an organization effective?”
It was the process of identifying the structural and behavioral aspects of PR departments that led to the idea that Excellence was a theory. In a nutshell, Excellence says that the PR team should be led by a manager who is in senior management, and its work should primarily rely on two-way, symmetrical communication.
It’s this contention that an increasing number of scholars are taking issue with. The foundation of our profession is persuasion (Bernays, Ivy Lee) and the use of language and discourse in service of that effort (Rhetorical Theory) — either one-way or two-way, but definitely asymmetrical.
I don’t pretend to be as schooled in these matters as some of the commenters at PR Conversations, but as an experienced practitioner who is now dabbling in the academe (adjunct prof at Kent State this fall), I’m intrigued by the intellectual exercise. One person says that such navel-gazing (my words) isn’t important — likening the discussion to a college student trying to examine new majors. But our profession can no longer get by with “trust me” as its operating theory. There are solid reasons why we do what we do and recommend what we recommend. The theoretical foundation for these efforts gives us credibility even if we never mention them to our employers or clients.
What is PR, and why is it important? That’s a question worth discussing.
Tags: @commammo, asymmetrical communication, Bernays, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, communication vehicles, Community Theory, discuss, effective communication, evaluation, Excellence Theory, Framing, internal communication, measurement, Media Relations, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Research, Rhetorical Theory, symmetrical communication, systems theory, Theory
Posted in Measurement, News Analysis, Public Relations, Strategy | 22 Comments »
Monday, September 21st, 2009
Mark W. Schaefer writes a great blog, and today there is a terrific discussion there regarding the echo chamber surrounding social media’s expert class, the Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Julien Smith, Beth Harte, Amber Naslund slate. Namely, Mark observes that we are lacking strong dissenting voices.
Obviously, there are a few people out there who are refusing to drink the social media Kool-Aid — @amandachapel the most notable. My own experience with social media as a user is putting me in the class of skeptics, not outright refuseniks, but I have been asking about the value of social media in PR and bemoaning the lack of objective, independent research to evaluate the often breathless claims of its moral superiority.
At the [grow] blog, commenter @tamadear offers this important proviso:
Nobody responds well to “You’re wrong; I’m right” dissent, to those who dwell on our weaknesses. It makes us defensive and unwilling to listen.
This is very true, and is why in virtually all of my consulting (both inside and outside organizations) I always assume that I may be wrong and use language accordingly. There are far too many pronouncements, baseless and unresearched, in all of public relations, but especially in social media. I have used the term “self-described experts” many times because I have no visibility into the qualifications of the speaker (or writer). Many of them could be literally anyone, and will even call out their lack of qualifications as a benefit of working with them. From Drudge’s refusal to be called a journalist, to Chris Brogan’s declaration that he is not in public relations, I’m often left wondering why I am supposed to regard these people as authorities.
With a tip of the cap to @amandachapel, it’s “caveat emptor” in the world of communication these days — there is big money to be made (a worthy effort that I share the desire to attain) and precious little objective information to help the consumer evaluate claims. There are also few best practices that include true outcome measurement of the sort Olivier Blanchard describes in his excellent slide show, “The definitive social media ROI presentation.” My only beef with the esteemed BrandBuilder is that such end-state ROI calculations performed without care lead to assuming that correlation equals causation. We would love to see revenue increase and expenses go down concurrent with our social media campaign, but what percentage of the improvement is due to social media and how much due to other factors, including simple continuous improvement?
This is the point of the dissent discussion — for every Olivier and Mark there are five people claiming that the action of participating in social media IS the return on investment. That’s just not going to fly, and the more the experts try to convince people otherwise, the worse off we all are. The “conversation” MAY be important — it always has been prior to all of this Web. 2.0 stuff — but aside from questionable research by the people poised to benefit the most from its findings, there simply isn’t much data at this point to declare the social media discussion closed.
What’s your view?
Tags: @amandachapel, @markwschaefer, @thebrandbuilder, Blog, communication, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication vehicles, Cost cutting, discuss, effective communication, engage, evaluation, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Research, ROI, Social Media, Talk, Twitter
Posted in Media Relations, News Analysis, Public Relations, Social Media, Strategy | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
Barron’s this week says that “Digital media and subscription TV are likely to see sizable gains in ad spending as a recovery gains…” A graphic shows that adverts on mobile phones and handhelds are estimated to increase by 33% from 2008-2013, Internet ads will rise more than 10% and pay TV ads by more than 7% during the period. Of course, another chart shows a “U-Shaped” curve for that spending increase, flat through next year. They don’t talk about any of the newest ad ideas though, showing that the social media revolution is still at the fringe of business consciousness regarding driving sales behavior.
Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal talked about the use of Twitter in crisis situations, sharing stories from wine guy Gary Vaynerchuk (@corkd), who got hacked by unsavory characters, and Scott Townsend from a Bartlesville, Okla.-based uniform company who tweeted after an ice storm, and a few others. I can see the application for this type of activity clearly — and I know that my Web traffic increases when I Tweet — so sharing news is great, provided you’re followed. I’ve gotten the most benefit from Twitter to simply meet people and see what others say during Twitter meetings, such as #prstudchat and #icchat. Whether this is building sufficient awareness to help me generate business, I have no clue! Heaven knows I spent enough time Twitter-ing today.
Tuesday at Kent State, the class I’m teaching got into the community theory of PR being advanced by Dr. Dean Kruckeberg of University of Northern Iowa. Fascinating discussion ensued as we investigated the implications of the theory, which holds that organizations are part of society and therefore owe society as a member of its community. I’m too new to this academic stuff, but this challenges me — I tend to be a garden variety capitalist, believing that a company’s only logical responsibility is to its owners, its purpose to make money lawfully. I need to think about this a while…
Tags: @commammo, Blog, communication, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication vehicles, effective communication, employee, evaluation, Facebook, internal communication, Journalism, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in News Analysis, Public Relations, Social Media, Strategy | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
Following a long weekend of being unplugged in the lush green hills of Pennsylvania, I came home with real work to do — an excellent lunch with a colleague, a great meeting with a prospective client and then teaching the third day of class at Kent State. The rest of the week includes a client meeting, a group meeting with another prospective client and the arrival of a friend from out of town, plus a panel discussion with PRSA Akron and teaching. When exactly do I have time to blog or tweet?
I confess that I am wondering about the value of social media — it requires a significant time commitment (especially if one wants to be helpful by finding interesting posts and tweeting them out rather than just trumpeting one’s latest personal ruminations.) I know that this same question, from the reader’s perspective, is being asked in companies all around the country (at least…) I see great value in establishing connections, using the social media tools as a part of an overall outreach strategy, but thus far I’m not certain of the marketing value, perhaps because it’s been such a short time since I launched Communication AMMO.
There is no doubt that making personal connections with prospective clients will require employing other tools — I’ll attend the Institute for PR Summit on Measurement next month, as well as the IABC Heritage Region Conference here in Cleveland in hopes of broadening my business network. But with most of my Twitter followers being consultants and providers, and my blog readers coming mostly from my existing network, the need to expand beyond social media is readily apparent. Where are the clients? Are they not using these tools?
What’s your view?
Tags: @commammo, Blog, communication, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication vehicles, effective communication, employee, evaluation, Facebook, internal communication, Journalism, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Social Media, Strategy | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
Big D continues: “The job of the president’s communication advisors is to identify in advance (better than after the fact) any threats to the president’s preferred meanings and to neutralize them rhetorically. (In fact, the oft-stated claim about how much a president values soldiers’ lives is exactly that sort of pre-emptive rhetoric, designed to head off the opposite claim – that the lives of America’s youth are expendable to the powerful class – before it’s even made.)”
I believe we are in violent agreement here, except for the notion that we can inoculate against the president’s say-do disconnect with rhetoric alone. The president’s actions in these matters are of great importance, as D points out.
Maintaining control over key meanings is almost always possible, although it is sometimes easier and sometimes harder to accomplish depending on how the context shifts across time. For example, if a president’s own son is among the soldiers sent to fight a war, it is a relatively easy task. If, on the other hand, the president cancels a program to provide basic armor plating for military vehicles used by soldiers fighting that war, it becomes relatively more difficult, ceteris paribus. Both examples are elements of the broader symbolic environment (i.e., context) that influences interpretation, but that environment does not entirely determine interpretation.
Agreed. The environment is not the entirety of interpretation. As a counselor to leadership, I argue for no attempt to spin or otherwise mask the reality of the organizations actions – much literature in crisis communication says much the same thing. Big D adds:
Certain types of management make certain types of communication relatively more or less difficult. I am then in a position to say to the leaders of my organization that their actions could put at greater risk our ability to defend certain identity claims and could require a different communication strategy (which might or might not be successful within any given time frame).
Excellence theory applies (perhaps without attribution) dialogic and rhetorical theories. Its focus, however, on the management of the function and its underpinnings of empirical research does seem to de-emphasize other theories. Jeff says that Excellence: “…doesn’t really address…the actual way that symbol systems work through discourse to construct meanings that then become the basis for action. That’s the hard stuff, especially when you’re talking about public communication. [Excellence focuses] instead on the easy stuff – management – which is why [Prof. James E. Grunig is] so popular.”
D believes (and I agree) that management effectiveness is “a hell of a lot easier to measure and explain than communication effectiveness. PR people, however, are seldom going to out-manage the managers, and they are too ready to throw up their hands or have no clear answers when the communication work gets most difficult, which is also when it becomes most important to the organization.”
I don’t think we disagree at all – I am, however, differentiating effective communication from the assumption that it can cure everything, every ill that befalls an organization. The PR measurement Holy Grail is quantifying the impact on a business of communication activity – and the inability of PR to overcome bad management action is often used as a pretext to criticize us and what we do.
Lastly, Big D writes:
Here’s the bottom line for me: Over the past few years I probably interviewed more than 25 people for communications positions at my company. Only a handful, at best, could provide even a rudimentary explanation of how messages related to actions, i.e., how exactly it is that the words they were responsible for stringing together were connected to the outcomes the organization sought. Most of the applicants could talk for hours about project management, working with outside agencies, and so on, but few of them knew a damn thing about communication itself. Do we really need to wonder why we get such little respect as a profession?
We certainly should be experts on communication – why it works and how to improve it – but we also must apply the management function as well. In the course of applying Excellence, we’ll rely upon Rhetorical and Dialogic theories and the traditional mass media theories of forming opinion. I don’t see these as mutually exclusive.
A great discussion. Thanks D!
Tags: communication, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, Communication Theories, Dialogic Theory, effective communication, evaluation, identity claim, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, Rehtorical Theory, reputation management, transparency
Posted in Communication Skills, Measurement, News Analysis, Research, Strategy | 3 Comments »
Monday, August 31st, 2009
A friend of mine, Big D, is a highly educated and experienced business person who happens to work in PR for a large, international company. I wrote a post not long ago on the limits of communication in business, specifically about the “say-do” gap that exists in many organizations and the need for management problem-solving to address it. Big D wrote me a fascinating email to disagree with what he termed my assertion that “communication is inferior to action in structuring perceptions,” saying: “The words we use are strong/they make reality.”
I don’t disagree that words are important – in fact, there is a whole theory of public relations (Rhetorical) that supports that statement. I answered him, saying in part: “Behavior is a demonstration of values; language is limited in its ability to demonstrate.”
Both the Rhetorical Theory and much general communication theory are at odds with Excellence Theory, Big D says. Excellence sees public relations as a management function, which necessarily separates the tactics of public relations from its strategy, “this idea that communication is one thing and an organization’s action/behavior is something else.”
I made the argument that language can’t bridge the “say-do” gap if the behavior in question is oppositional to the language, and provided an example of an organization claiming that it values its employees and communities, having a problem if it is engaged in laying off employees and closing plants. Big D replied:
I disagree. Granted, the communication challenge in sustaining that identity claim is greater and the communicator must be smarter and work harder, but a company can indeed lay people off and close plants and still credibly state that it values employees and communities. It happens all the time, and it happens because of the ways in which communicators can influence elements of context and shift the agreed meanings represented by words like “values,” “employees” and “communities.” That’s the magic of the artful use of discourse (or call it strategic discourse, if that’s more marketable). (emphasis mine.)
We often call “influence elements of context and shift the agreed meanings” reframing. Non PR-people call it spin, mostly inaccurately, but still, they aren’t complimenting us. I counsel leaders to avoid words and phrases that can too easily be labeled spin, and be subject to the perception of the say-do disconnect. The “artful use of discourse” is (and should be) a stock-in-trade for any communication professional, and we should beware of reframing ourselves straight into propaganda.
Big D goes on to say that when a country’s leader says, “I value the lives of the men and women in uniform who are willing to sacrifice everything to keep our country free,” sending them to die on the field of battle will not invalidate his/her claim, depending on is how effective the leader is at controlling the meanings of the words in the statement.
This seems relativistic – again, I wouldn’t counsel a leader to say those words, as the claim seems specious at best, if not outright insulting. The leader values the work the soldiers do and the results they will attain more than their lives – he or she has to, otherwise there is little chance he or she will deploy troops in combat. There are political leaders who do not see the value in this sacrifice.
There are many ways of aligning these two seeming contradictions. In fact, Prof. Robert Heath writes in his discussion of Rhetorical Theory that “Cynicism is the outcome of any rhetorical process that is not founded on good reasoning or good reasons.” We absolutely do need to choose our words very carefully because of their ability to create perception and contribute to the development of meaning.
More from the discussion with Big D in the next post.
Tags: communication, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, Communication Theories, Dialogic Theory, effective communication, evaluation, identity claim, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Rhetorical Theory, transparency
Posted in Communication Skills, Measurement, News Analysis, Research, Strategy | 3 Comments »
Friday, August 21st, 2009
Erstwhile commentator David Murray (recently named editor of Vital Speeches of the Day; congrats!) has written about his struggles with the demands of social media, the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and gosh-knows-what’s-new, appealing to Internet pioneer Shel Holtz for help. Shel answered David’s flare and David has since replied on Shel’s blog. The conversation briefly examines the need for social media measurement, and I’ve added a comment to the polite fray.
The substance of my offering is that social media measurement should not stop with output, or the immediate result of the output (Web traffic, comments on postings, etc.) It should, as with any other communication activity, show some kind of impact on business objectives, whether financial or reputational.
Read the Murray-Holtz material and weigh in — is it reasonable to hold social media to similar account as other communication tactics?
Follow David on Twitter @TheMurr; Shel is @Shel. I’m @CommAMMO.
Tags: @commammo, Blog, communication, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, communication vehicles, effective communication, evaluation, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Measurement, Social Media, Strategy | Comments Off
Monday, August 10th, 2009
The Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan. The U.S. House wants to spend $550 million on new jets for themselves. Banks fork over billions in bonuses after receiving trillions in U.S. taxpayer funds. How’d you like to be the PR folks who need to handle those issues?
When I was relatively young in public relations, our top-five execs were poised to gather up a prodigious pile of cash, stock and options — they hit their targets, and then some, for the year. The main way they’d done so, however, was to cut headcount by 10 percent across the board. Preparing the internal communications for that proxy release (which would include the compensation details) wasn’t an easy task.
There were good business reasons for the compensation strategy, not the least that there were contractual obligations — they were owed this compensation. The packages had all been vetted by the compensation committee of the board of directors, comprised only of “outside” directors — people who weren’t also employees of the company. The goals for the year were bottom-line oriented, aligning the interests of the executives with those of the shareholders. A substantial amount of the dollar value of the pay was long-term compensation — three years’ deferred. And, the largest portion of the package was in restricted stock and stock options, both of which were designed to keep high-performing executives at the company for several years.
After reading the proxy, I felt reasonably comfortable with the reasons for the high pay. I wrote a paragraph not too different from this last one in a questions-and-answers document for managers, answering the question, “Why did these executives get such high compensation?”
The corporate treasurer called me, with a smile in his voice, and said, “This is an argument you can’t win. Let’s not try to explain the reasons for the packages. Just say that there may be questions as a consequence of news media coverage and refer interested parties to the Proxy.”
I was pretty disappointed. I’m a fan of sharing the reasons behind decisions. Of course, the danger here was the snicker factor.
The snicker factor is the likelihood that that people will snicker when they read the explanation, that the intent of being transparent and honest will instead be seen as spin.
The reality is that executive pay is a tough story. The reality is that contracts tend to insulate execs from downside risk, that the independent directors are execs at other firms, their motives suspect… You can almost hear the conversation around the water cooler, visualize the Tweets… “Yeah, right! These guys all take care of their own, they’ll do anything to get their piece of the pie, what do they do around here, anyway?”
Do we only explain if there is a likelihood of winning the argument? That certainly would simplify the measurement of our efforts in these matters. By the way, I’m aware of at least one company that, as a matter of policy, separates proactive and positive PR from reactive and negative PR. They feel like they have a great track record and lots of positive reinforcement. It’s not exactly what the Excellence Theory calls for (two-way, symmetrical), but it has its fans.
For another firm, staying out of any no-win story was the primary objective, and they did (and do) a fine job of it.
As long as we define our function as one of advocacy — and are above board about it — this makes perfect sense. In those circumstances, we adopt the model that calls for non-participation if there is no objective benefit to our organization. We increase reputation risk by not participating, but perhaps that’s the main question: How risky is participating and explaining compared to staying away from such controversy?
It seems to me to be a question of certain risk versus uncertain risk — we know the snicker factor will kick in if we participate. We don’t know what will happen if we don’t.
Avoiding the devil you know can be a compelling strategy. What do you think?
Tags: communication experts, communication vehicles, effective communication, employee, engage, evaluation, internal communication, measurement, PR, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Research, transparency
Posted in Crisis Communications, News Analysis, Public Relations, Strategy | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Charlene Li of Altimeter Group and co-author of social media book Groundswell, released research that appeared to show a correlation between engagement with social media and a company’s financial performance. “The study looked at how the 100 most valuable brands — as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking — engaged in 11 different online social media channels,” Li’s blog read yesterday.
The research said that the companies most engaged, dubbed Mavens, “on average grew 18% in revenues over the last 12 months, compared to the least engaged companies who on average saw a decline of 6% in revenue during the same period. The same holds true for two other financial metrics, gross margin and net profit.”
Sounds great! Wow!
Only, there are a few folks who aren’t wholly convinced.
Larry Dignan, writing on the Between the Lines blog on Znet, isn’t convinced at all. In fact, he says “Color Me Skeptical,” pointing out that the companies listed as Mavens “haven’t exhibited stellar financial performance in the last 12 months. Starbucks, a maven, has had its margins blown apart by McDonald’s, a wallflower. Dell is quite social, but needs to transform itself in a company that looks more like butterfly HP. eBay? Investors aren’t exactly stoked about the auction site’s growth social media aside. In fact, a lot of the revenue growth is challenged among the mavens.”
Li’s post makes it clear that they’re not claiming the research is causal — but how many people understand the difference? Additionally, I looked for but could not find the R-Squared value for the correlations, which would have given a better indication of the strength of correlation. The report says “statistically significant,” and the chart of the three financial metrics certainly implies strong correlation, at least with the Maven group. The charts on engagement are scatterplots with regression lines in place, but the financial charts are simple bar charts…
And, what of other factors contributing to the higher revenue and gross and net margin figures? The assumption is that social media engagement is responsible for the increase — what if it’s the other way around? It’s possible that with higher revenue and margin, the companies dedicated more resources (either human or financial) to the engagement effort. The report notes that the higher-engagement groups tended to feature robust teams. Chicken or egg?
Aside from the geeky caviling, I’m by nature quite skeptical of reports such as this (with deep respect, please). Those conducting the research have a vested interest in these conclusions — it really wouldn’t do to show research that says social media has no financial impact when your business depends on the reverse! This area desperately needs additional, scholarly research — using advanced stats to look at as many factors as practical would yield better insights.
For now, I’d pull out the salt shaker before taking this to much to heart.
Tags: communication experts, communication methods, effective communication, evaluation, Facebook, IABC, measurement, PR measurement, PRSA, ROI, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Measurement, Public Relations, Social Media, Strategy | 2 Comments »
