I’m honored (or honoured) to have written a guest post on one of the best blogs in all of PR/Communications — PRConversations — thanks to Judy Gombita, who recruited me. The topic is my tripartite professional association affiliation — IABC, PRSA and the Institute for PR. Namely, are they valuable, necessary and a good value? The comment stream alone is worth reading, with several luminaries weighing in (and no cursing or objects thrown so far, thankfully.) Give it a read and tell me what you think!
Posts Tagged ‘PR’
Talking About PRSA, IABC, IPR on PRConversations Blog
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Work-Life Balance: Do we #SoloPR folks have it?
Monday, July 12th, 2010Over on PRSA’s ComPRehension blog, I opine on tips to help keep work and life in some kind of balance from my perspective as an individual practitioner. Read it and weep, or laugh, or tell me I’m an idiot! http://comprehension.prsa.org/?p=1816
Communication Important in Change Management (Shocking!)
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010A professor from San Francisco State used three quick cases to show that when employees are dealing with difficult change initiatives, leaders have to talk with them. Stunning, eh? OK, I’m feeling snarky today, I admit it!
Professor Mitchell Lee Marks writes in the 24 May issue of the Wall Street Journal (in the MIT/Sloan Review section) that empathy, making the business case and getting employees to think about the future are essential to getting them to let go of the past and move on. It ain’t brain surgery, but for many business folks, the fact that there are actual people hiding under the numbers on the income statement can be a bit of a shock. Here’s a quick rundown of Dr. Marks’ thinking, and my two cents.
- Dr. Marks likes empathy, because employees often feel that no one understands their pain. He calls for leaders to acknowledge the feelings of fear and resentment. My Take: That’s an oversimplification. You run the risk of insincerity– remember President Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain…”? You will have to demonstrate that you care — and it’s anyone’s guess whether you’ll be believed. You have to try, but it’s not a certainty that it will work. Nor is it certain exactly what kind of demonstration is most likely TO work. It’s trial and error. A bit of venting IS healthy, but not too much and not too often.
- Making the business case is the hardest dictum to follow, because the most persuasive facts and data from the leader’s perspective are often not-so-much for employees. My Take: Don’t make the business case into a pie-in-the-sky employee benefit if there is any chance of downsizing, layoffs, firings — whatever you want to call it. Making the business case is like the flip side of empathy, because it’s much more a left-brain activity. Facts and data eventually win the day, but have some pity for these folks.
- Looking to the future — the visionary leader sees the next objective, then the next and so on, and is supposed to keep us focused on the future. My Take: I don’t think you can get people to focus on how great the future will be until they exit the “anger” stage of their mourning. The world is changing fast. Talk about customers to move from problems to solutions.
I think what set me off was Dr. Marks’ tone (probably the editor’s tone, now that I think about it). It was as though all of this was brand spanking new.
News flash — every leader should know this backwards and forwards. It’s part of leading.
Transparency: Always Best?
Monday, April 12th, 2010It’s become almost a cliche. The conventional wisdom is that organizational communication requires “transparency through every aspect of corporate communications,” as Brigham Young University’s Dr. Brad Rawlins wrote in 2008. Openness, authenticity, successes and failures, ongoing discussion and abandoning the drive to maintain a perfect corporate image. Dr. Brad’s colleagues at BYU, Dr. Rob Wakefield and Susan Walton looked into this assumption and found it wanting, according to their presentation at the 13th International Public Relations Research Conference in Miami in March.
Rob and Susan argue that there are two flaws in the practice of transparency that need to be clarified, as per the summary of their paper:
- Transparency often is interpreted as being completely open at all times — but there are times when it is in the best legal and moral interest of entities to not disclose, and in these times this is the most ethical stance for both organizations and their stakeholders; and
- Entities increasingly are self-proclaiming “transparent” communication, when investigation reveals that the claims are smokescreens to deflect actual lack of openness and honesty.
The authors conducted a series of interviews with seven senior level PR execs or consultants who work with PR leaders around the U.S., asking when, specifically, transparency is needed and good for organizations and society; when it’s better to not disclose information; and in what situations does transparency actually harm stakeholders?
I can’t do justice to Rob and Susan’s thinking in such a brief post, but in short, they learned enough to come up with an alternative to transparency — not a new theory, they hasten to say, but a different perspective: Translucency.
Something translucent lets in light, and one can see the rough outline of things, but those things aren’t entirely visible. Rob and Susan say there are four key considerations under which translucency can and should occur:
- Translucency is a commitment to communication to your stakeholders — not an advance commitment to what that communication will contain.
- Translucency occurs when credibility as already been established.
- Translucency might be most effective when there is reason to believe that an organization’s arguments and data are rock-solid, but not persuasive.
- Translucency is most effective when and organization already has put in place a process and structure for bringing greater light of information through the glass.
No one seems to want to admit that there really is a thing called “too much information.” Rob and Susan do a fine job offering a possible filter to address that problem.
Amazon’s Recovery from Kindle Content Deletion Crisis Evaluated
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010In the middle of 2009, owners of e-reader Kindle got a nasty surprise when Amazon snatched back e-books that it turned out were supplied illegally. Amazon’s supplier didn’t have the rights to distribute the content, so Amazon accessed Kindles and deleted it.
Seems like no problem to me, but then, I don’t have a Kindle. Amazon got to enjoy seven days of flame and shouting for its trouble.
Drs. W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay of Eastern Illinois University (kind of a hotbed of pithy PR scholarship), presented a paper about Amazon’s week from hell at the 13th International PR Research Conference. Dr. Coombs is a preeminent theorist on crisis communication, the author of several books and papers about it, and a good presenter who carries a quick wit with his slide rule. He a smart dude.
Apparently, the “Kindle Community” was pretty angry about having “their” stuff unceremoniouslyyanked. Amazon’s notification statement lacked complete information, or ordinary human compassion, according to those who read it:
“The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell, published by MobileReference (mobi) and 1984 by George Orwell, published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occurred, your purchases were automatically refunded. you can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although are rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.”
Commenters went ballistic, and before you could blink, there were boycotts threatened. So Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos posted an abject apology, saying in part: “Our ‘solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” He beat on his company pretty hard.
Coombs and Holladay found that the florid, nearly over-the-top apology worked very well. 71 percent accepted the apology, nearly 16 percent accepted it conditionally, and just 13 percent rejected it. More important, more than 21 percent indicated they were more likely to buy from Amazon versus 10.5 percent said they were less likely to buy.
So what’s that mean? It means that Coombs’ main theories of crisis communication are holding steady in the online world — the process of admitting you’ve done wrong, taking steps to rectify the situation and ensure it won’t happen again, and beating yourself up a bit in the process result in restoring positive feelings among your stakeholders.
There surely are crises where this won’t happen — some things are just too bad — but this study gives additional support to the basis for advice during crisis times.
Watch for the complete paper in May when the IPRRC proceedings are released.
Driving Me Crazy: Southwest Didn’t Err
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010Sometimes I really think the end of the republic is nigh. A large man who usually buys two seats (because he is so large) wants to snag an earlier flight which has only one seat, cannot fit without discomfort to himself and his hapless row-mates, so he cries, “discrimination!” Oh, and he also has a new film coming out soon. Hmmmmm. Grrrrrr.
According to a story in the Newark Star-Ledger website, Kevin Smith fit into the middle seat with the armrests down, but the flight crew believed he was a safety risk and removed him from the aircraft. Smith activated his 1.6 million Twitter followers to take Southwest Airlines to task.
The story clips from several bloggers, including Sonny Gill, the HuffPo and a couple of others. The debate seems to be over whether airlines need to make accommodations for “persons of size.”
Southwest has a policy. If you’re big, buy two seats. Smith knew the policy and often did so, according to numerous media reports. As a frequent traveler, I know that it’s good to get home early if you can. But if my choice is to wait a while and have my comfy two seats instead of being a human Panini, I’m waiting.
We all know that air travel today is like bus travel in 1966 (which I remember, thanks) — crowded into old, creaky seats, mashed together, with substandard sanitary facilities and somewhat, er, limited cuisine. Southwest does a fab job, in my book, of making a rather unpleasant task bearable, mostly with good cheer, Heineken and tasty bags of peanuts.
I don’t think they needed to apologize.
I can’t shake the idea that the esteemed Mr. Smith is subscribing to the old adage that all publicity is good. I wonder if we compare movie openings press coverage, that his clip count will be higher this time around.
The Measurement Debate Continues
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010The estimable Shonali Burke has started a fortnightly Twitter chat — #MeasurePR — that begun 2 February, with the equally estimable Katie Paine as first guest. I caught only the last half, which featured good discussion and the usual paroxysm over advertising value equivalency. AVE is bete noir for @KDPaine and @Shonali, who both are categorical in their condemnation of the practice. A couple of participants, however, say that there still is demand on the part of clients for AVE.
The Institute for PR Measurement Commission condemned AVE last fall, AMEC (the professional organization for media evaluation firms) has declared its intent to find a logical replacement, and a recent paper offered Weighted Media Cost as an element worthy of inclusion in measurement programming. Where does this leave us?
I have no stake in this game. My personal belief is that AVEs are bad science, but I’m also sensitive to the need to help clients. AVE is easy for a client to grasp — “if we paid for the space our story ran in, it would have cost us X.” Katie points out that doctors won’t prescribe a medicine if it’s not right for the patient. AVE isn’t life and death — but what do we do after we’ve explained the drawbacks and negatives and the client still wants it?
I can’t help but put myself in that situation — young company, trying to latch on with a client. Do I tell the client “No. I won’t do AVE” and risk having him/her say, “Well then, I’ll go find someone who will!” ?
#MeasurePR had much more great content than this AVE nonsense, and I really do wish we could collectively move on. I’m done writing about the debate, at least for now.
Looking for a quick way to improve measurement?
Start setting objectives and measuring your attainment of them. Stop worrying about generating lots of eyeballs and do some audience research to reach the right ones. Start looking for correlations between your various communication outputs (and outtakes) and business metrics, such as revenue, cost savings, cost avoidance, time saved, help desk traffic, speed of benefits enrollment, travel system savings, expense systems savings, etc…
One Rule to Choose Method of Communication
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010“It’s just too complicated and difficult.” So began a conversation with a frustrated colleague, struggling to keep tabs on the myriad communication vehicles sprouting like mushrooms in a damp glade. I asked, “What’s complicated about having so many choices? Choices are good, right?” He didn’t think so.
I have to admit, our profession was a little easier to execute back at the beginning of my communication career. As an internal communications specialist, we had a print newsletter that represented 90 percent of our communication activity, followed by VHS videos and a mainframe email bulletin board that no one really used. Oh, and we got faxes from Corporate, copied them and walked the tower delivering the latest announcements.
Externally, we did news releases and media advisories, called reporters and tried to get a haystack full of clips to demonstrate our superior abilities. Once in a while, we’d do a news conference. Yes, this was before the Dawn of Time Itself.
These days, you hear someone talking about “The New Twitter Whatever,” and the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Twitter? Is it passè already? Where exactly will this new method of communication fall alongside Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, De.lic.ious, Posterus, Amplify, Yelp, Yammer, YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace, YourSpace, HisSpace, HerSpace GLBTSpace, and all the other stuff?
The answer (write this down now) is: Use the method that fits the objectives for your audience.
Think about the end result — the objectives of your communication — and walk through the strengths and weaknesses of these different methods.
- Outcome – Increased enrollment in 401(k) plan
- Method – Newsletter article, intranet quiz, reprint of magazine piece, video explanation from CEO, in-person meeting with representative
In the scenario above, which method is likely to work best? You may choose more than one, but if you could only choose one, which would it be?
- Outcome – More qualified prospects
- Method – TV news piece, trade publication story, customer referral request, Twitter campaign, CEO blog
I’m oversimplifying the issue. There are a number of intermediate steps between more generalized communication activities and the outcome we see here.
There is no doubt that the ever-increasing modes of communication are making PR people’s lives more challenging. But the thought process, considering each method through the prism of the desired outcome is the path to choosing well.
Effective Messaging is Not Passe
Thursday, January 7th, 2010As much as many of our social media mavens would like to have it so, the concept of messaging isn’t going away for some time. The methods of delivery are definitely changing, but in public relations, we still have to reach people.
There’s a fashionable trend denouncing “talking at customers” as opposed to “having a conversation.” the trend is going on15 years old, at least. Social media’s recent sprouting of new tools (kind of like a Swiss Army Knife) has made me ponder whether the inexorable decline of mainstream media would lead, finally, to a lack of organizational interest in messaging.
If so, that’s bad news for the PR industry, as Marc Hausman (@StrategicGuy) wrote today.
But I still believe that as long as organizations have objectives, they’ll need messages: crafted, interesting, tailored to audience, pithy, memorable, descriptive, fascinating, thought-provoking and even wise. For that, they’ll continue to need lowly, ink-stained (er, pixel-stained?) wretches who understand the transformative power of words.
A friend once wrote that words are powerful, they create reality. Motivation, excitement, laughter, sadness — in our Western culture, we depend greatly on words.
This becomes even more important in the social media age, when everyone is a publisher, and it’s up to the individual to glean the seeds from the dirt and chaff. There still needs to be an organizational voice carrying consistent, clear messages to stakeholders. It may be one of many (and it should be), but it needs to exist.
Marc is right — if PR firms rely totally on media relations for their enterprise, they are doomed. Or, at least, they’ll be a lot smaller than they are now. Of course, social media doesn’t scale very well — cultivating a relationship with a blogger takes as much effort as doing so with a magazine editor or a reporter — but the number of people reached is typically much lower.
Now, before the “it’s not about eyeballs” people light torches and scream for my head, let me say that until we better understand the communities we might want to reach in social media, we’re stuck with the lack of scalability complaint. It holds us back from helping organizations see the benefits to them of social media engagement.
Once we can get a better read on the characteristics of communities, we can make the scale work — it’s not much different than looking to reach readers of a given magazine. But, we need independent data on the communities and a clear understanding of what we can expect, whether we are selling directly to them, or merely engaging them for reputation purposes.
As astonishing as the advances in technology have been over the past five years, we still have audiences and we need words to help us reach, influence, reward and interact with them. We still have objectives to attain and a business to run. And messages aren’t going away just because the means of delivering them is.
NYT ‘Corner Office’ shows power of leadership communication
Monday, November 2nd, 2009It’s usually on page two of the Sunday New York Times business section. A short Q & A with some notable business leader that covers the usual ground – “How do you hire? What are the most important leadership lessons you’ve learned?” This week, Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, is on the hot seat, and she joins a long list of her peers in crediting effective communication for much of her organizational effectiveness.
There isn’t anything particularly earth-shattering in the interview, and truth to tell, there usually isn’t. But I continue to be heartened by the focus on communication as a business process that I see in this feature almost every week. Faust says:
“I spend a huge amount of time reaching out to people, either literally or digitally, and with alumni networks all over the worl, so that I can connect. Leadership by walking around — that a digital space now, it’s virtual space. An enormous amount of my job is listening to people, to understand where they are, how they see the world so that I can understand how to mobilize their understanding of themselves in service of the institutional priorities.”
The interviewer says, “But you can’t make everybody happy.” Her reply:
“No, you don’t make everybody happy, but if people feel they were listened to, they’re going to be much more likely to go along with a decision.”
If that short conversation doesn’t motivate communicators to see themselves as something other than a media publicity machine, I don’t know what will. We, alone in the organization, are well-equipped to counsel leaders on communication effectiveness. Yet, we too often cede this skill to Human Resources (“Well, it’s really about training people, and that’s HR!”).
We are the experts at communication. We understand why dialogue and discussion among our employee base is important. We know what a good presentation is and how to help improve the level of communication in our organization. If not us, whom? And yet, most of us would rather work with a reporter on a media story than do the hard work of remaking our organizational culture from hierarchy to high performance. We rationalize that choice by claiming that the media story has more impact on revenue. But the jury is still out on that, except for marketing communication and product PR. I submit that we’d positively affect reputation in a measurable way if we focused more on making our leaders and their teams communicate better.
I’ve been reading the Corner Office in the Times for years. I haven’t yet seen an executive say that media relations is a core leadership function.
