Posts Tagged ‘Public Relations’
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
The continuing debate over advertising value equivalency reached the pages of the New York Times 22 Nov., with a “Soapbox” piece saying Hollywood studios are cutting ad budgets and using public relations as an alternative. One anecdote:
Disney recently went so far as to develop a computer program to help it determine how much monetary value was coming from such publicity efforts. It can quickly plug in data — “Access Hollywood” had a 30-second interview with a star of “The Middle,” a new ABC comedy — and the program spits out what that same 30 seconds would cost to buy.
AVEs are a sore spot in PR circles these days. KD Paine, measurement maven extraordinaire, has campaigned against them for years as bogus figures that don’t quantify the value of media hits. The Institute for PR Measurement Commission (of which I am a member) officially condemned the practice in October, and PRSA has formed a blue-ribbon panel to address measurement generally — looking to a world without AVEs.
I believe there are certain circumstances where AVEs are useful — product publicity, for one, where features and benefits are the subject. But AVEs need to be net of cost, be based on actual charges, not simply “book rate,” and the publication has to be targeted to the specific business need. My example is Goodyear, the tire company. If they get a product review in Road and Track, it’s going to be relevant to their audience, include features and benefits, and in nearly all cases quite similar to an advertisement. What’s unaccounted for is the reader’s perception of value — AVEs are limited by an inability to include the weight of third party independence.
Look, notwithstanding this last paragraph, AVE is a bad metric 90 percent of the time, and there are other ways of evaluating media coverage that are better.
So, why does it appear that so many firms are stuck on this difficult metric? Well, AVEs are simple to understand. Here’s what it would have cost us to buy this time or this space — that’s a lot easier to grasp for a lot of people. There also is the pressure on PR agencies levered by their clients — “I understand you don’t like AVE, but I have to have a dollar figure to tell my CEO, so if you don’t give it to me, I’ll find someone who will.”
Still, I wish that more companies would stop using AVE. Oh, and that more people would understand that PR isn’t limited to publicity and press agentry. Perhaps the best reason not to use AVE is that it doesn’t measure the reputation work that represents most of what PR work is in business these days. For every stunt PR trick, there are months of quiet conversations with centers of influence, months of work on helping employees better understand their industries and organizations, and programs designed to help people grasp the significance of a company’s role in the community. There is more to our profession than being a low-cost replacement for marketing.
Tags: @commammo, Blog, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication methods, communication vehicles, discuss, effective communication, evaluation, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, ROI
Posted in Measurement, Public Relations, Research, Social Media, Strategy | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Several good ones:
Rich Becker — great discussion in the comments on social media concepts…
Brian Solis — Do we need to redefine “influencers?”
Chuck Hemann — What impact on social media use/adoption does organizational culture have ?
Paul Seaman — The Excellence theory says PR is about fostering relationships. Paul disagrees.
Tags: @commammo, Blog, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, communication vehicles, effective communication, engage, evaluation, internal communication, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, ROI, Social Media, transparency, Twitter
Posted in News Analysis, Public Relations, Strategy | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
In the political firestorm that engulfs the United States, one side claims the other has no principles, whilst the other claims their opponents show a slavish devotion to ossified beliefs that make no sense in modern America. Moral relativism, one side’s rhetoric goes, has brought our society to the brink of destruction. Outmoded thinking, the other side’s speaking points read, has made our country a cruel, Darwinist dystopia, where “survival of the fittest” is played out in policy. For some reason, the ongoing debate of tea parties and new Fascism makes me think about public relations.
The collapse of centralization of news and the growth of social media is fueling a similar decamping in our profession. On one side, those who believe that social media is an incarnation of evil, bent on destroying the concept of objectivity and authoritative sources, not to mention the homicide of the public relations industry. On another side (there are more than two), those who see social media as the democratization of information and the dissolution of concentrated media power, elevating ordinary people and adding to the diversity of voices in the media mix.
The ethical questions percolating for me these days relate to our role as PR people in participating in social media. In the sense of the “Excellence Theory,” social media should represent the triumph of two-way, symmetrical communication; active engagement of organizations and their stakeholders, seeking mutual benefit. But it seems to me that organizational participation in social media is still largely an asymmetrical game of persuasion, of message sending rather than dialogue. Marketers dominate the conversation online, devaluing PR objectives regarding reputation in favor of metrics focusing on revenue generation. Organizations continue to struggle to find applications for social media inside the enterprise (speaking broadly here; fully aware there are exceptions), as despite efforts to embrace openness and multi-directional communication, command and control is difficult to release.
The dilemma for practitioners is especially acute for agencies and suppliers, and the ad value equivalency debate is an example. AVE has been discredited for years, but is still in common use because many clients demand it. They understand it, and AVE provides a shorthand description that they find useful. The Institute for PR Measurement Commission recently condemned the practice, with one member writing that just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s right. When a client pays an agency and asks for AVE, we should say “no,” goes that argument. But the fear is that, “If I don’t give them AVE, they’ll go find someone who will.”
On the social media side, should all organizations use social media? What is our ethical responsibility here? I’d be hard pressed to say that everyone should embrace social media. I cannot make that claim, that is, if I care about giving good advice to my client. It’s not much different than telling a client reflexively that they need an intranet, or a newsletter, or a video. I need to understand the client’s objectives before I jump to tactics.
That doesn’t even address the more serious ethical challenges represented by social media.
Look at the Astroturfing issues, from fake blogs to agency staff commenting on client products. Is the free market of ideas and caveat emptor sufficient to rein in those who have no compunction about engaging in such tactics?
I have always been an idealist with respect to media, seeing the years between Edward R. Murrow and Watergate as the pinnacle of journalism, heroic reporters, courageous editors and committed publishers digging for The Truth, all with peerless ethical grounding. The disappearance of even the pretext of objectivity in journalism (reaching its zenith — or nadir — with MSNBC/Fox News/The Washington Post/New York Times) has disgusted me, even as I admit that objectivity was a goal, not a reality according to my own journalism professors. We could aspire to objectivity and embrace fairness, something few media outlets now even attempt, at least by my crude measure.
Certainly the outright failure of the trust equation (media, government, business all suffer), should be laid bare here. One must evaluate the media’s biases and objectives, and caveat emptor reigns there, as well.
People determined to do wrong will find a way if their personal ethical compass permits. Maybe that’s the scariest part of all of this. We’re relying on individuals to manage their own ethics in a time when ethics are subjective, not objective, and right and wrong are relative concepts.
Tags: @commammo, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, communication vehicles, effective communication, employee, engage, internal communication, Public Relations, reputation management, ROI, Social Media, transparency, Twitter
Posted in Measurement, News Analysis, Public Relations, Social Media, Strategy | 4 Comments »
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
It’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.
Tags: communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, communication vehicles, discuss, effective communication, employee, engage, internal communication, Media Relations, PR, Public Relations, reputation management
Posted in Communication Skills, Internal Communications, News Analysis, Public Relations, Strategy | Comments Off
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Make a note. It takes practice to handle two conferences in five days’ time. Of course, maybe my energy level would have been higher if I’d been speaking at them instead of attending one (live-Tweeting my way through a couple of days), and introducing speakers and serving as sponsorship chair at the other. Anyone who knows me will aver that I’m a fairly well-smoked ham, so being at the center of attention is exciting for me, rather than exhausting.
But the stress of pressing the flesh, talking to new people, and simultaneously trying to stay engaged in a sudden spate of potential business opportunities turned out to be rather a bit tiring. I also wondered whether the evil humours surrounding new friend Richard Bagnall and his lovely friend Marian might have attempted to seize me, but as it turns out, a couple o’nights of good sleep returned me to fit-as-a-fiddle status. Just ask my students if I lacked energy 22 October in class… Hah!
But now, devoid of excuses, I’m faced again with the ever-growing list of things to do, with ideas for a paper roaming in my head along with the still-warm and previously mentioned business opportunities. Oh, and I do need still to write a final exam and figure out what I need to do when I teach “Face to Face Tactics” at Kent State in the next semester. I also had slowed the pace of my blogging, owing to the madcap hilarity of the past couple of weeks, but accelerated the Twitter-ing at #iprms09. The social media experiment continues.
So it seems that indeed, I’m finding a bit of normalcy amid the falling leaves and gathering chill. Providence willing, I’ll soon have a fall more complicated — this time by billable hours.
Tags: @commammo, Blog, Communication AMMO, communication experts, communication messages, communication methods, communication vehicles, conference, effective communication, LinkedIn, measurement, PR measurement, Public Relations, reputation management, Research, Social Media, Twitter
Posted in Measurement, News Analysis, Research, Strategy | 1 Comment »
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 »
