Bluegrass Consulting: Blueblog

Many people consider that online communication platforms such as YouTube and Facebook provide a light-hearted medium which has little or no legal risks or consequences. This, however, is not the case and if you are a communication professional using these social media platforms to promote a product or issue you need to know about consumer protection laws.

If you aren’t familiar with the relevant laws and you are not compliant (or where you are familiar with those laws and are still not compliant), you may not only find yourself in hot judicial waters, but you are also risking the integrity of your brand, corporate image and your own individual reputation, not to mention the wrath of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), the supervising regulator.

Don’t let PR be misleading or deceptive

Sue Gilchrist, Partner, Freehills, told Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit that all online communication amounts to a representation subject to Section 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) to the same extent as extent as in traditional media:

A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.

Sue urged communication professionals to remember your (or your client’s or employer’s) “intention is irrelevant”. Although it may seem obvious to you that it is a PR-generated testimonial, or that a blog contains somebody’s personal opinion, “not everyone is savvy” and you could be engaging in a misleading or deceptive communication.

Sue told the conference that if a case does proceed to court, there are a few things the court will consider in determining whether there has been misleading or deceptive conduct, including:

• the class of persons likely to be misled
• the standard of intelligence, astuteness or gullibility of this class, otherwise known as the ‘the reasonable person test’.

New media platforms and section 52

The court will also take into account other relevant factors, including the nature of new media formats and their potential audiences. For example, platforms such as YouTube are accessible by a very wide range of people which means that the class of persons who must be misled in relation to activities on such platforms is likely to include people of very different levels of astuteness or gullibility.

Since the court is likely to consider the position of the least astute and most gullible members of this class when determining whether consumers will be or are likely to be misled, activities in new media carry a particular risk of misleading at least some consumers.

It is therefore important to consider the full range of consumers who are likely to come into contact with your new media activities.

However, this is not to say that the emergence of new media has made it more difficult for communication professionals to adhere to section 52. The important thing to remember is that the same consumer protection rules apply to new media as they do to more traditional media. So communication professionals should take the same precautions to avoid misleading consumers in new media.

Indeed, activities on new media platforms may be comparable to national newspaper or TVC campaign in terms of their reach, scope and exposure to consumers of varying levels of astuteness.

Although some communication professionals may see section 52 as an obstacle to their creativity, it is important to remember that section 52 plays an important role in protecting consumers by helping to ensure that consumer-facing activities are not misleading or deceptive. Compliance with this principle will also help build consumer trust in a brand or its products. Your creative talent will be engaged even more in ensuring creativity and compliance.

The courts will generally allow a certain amount of “puffery” and creativity in communication designed to sell a product or promote a brand. Section 52 does not prevent communication professionals focussing on the positives of their brand or product.

What section 52 will do, however, is require that communications are balanced and, so, where communication focus so heavily on the positives that it risks misrepresenting the product and/or creating an overall impression that is potentially misleading, those positives may need to be limited and the negatives specifically disclosed.

What can communication professionals learn from Ian Turpie?

An example of a case which came to the attention of the ACCC was TV personality Ian Turpie’s spruiking of nasal spray for erectile dysfunction for the Advanced Medical Institute (AMI) back in 2004, despite him not suffering from this condition.

In addition to pursuing AMI and Mr Turpie, the ACCC can and will pursue individuals who have knowingly been involved and in this case also pursued the AMI advertising agent that drafted the advertisement. The Court held AMI, Mr Turpie and the advertising agent to have contravened the Trade Practices Act (and awarded costs against both AMI and the agent). The ACCC used this “decision as a warning to advertising agents who play an important role in the preparation and/or publication of advertisements on behalf of their clients.”

Misleading the public can damage your brand and your own reputation

Even if misleading and deceptive conduct does not result in legal action, misleading consumers can damage your brand and your own organisation. An example more specific to new media was the YouTube video of a girl’s romantic quest to find her “man in the jacket”, which turned out to be a company generated video used to promote Witchery’s new men’s line.

This was a campaign that was heavily criticised by the media, which were more than a little annoyed for taking the bait: “If the CEOs of Naked Communications and Witchery think that the media will forgive and forget being lied to, then the biggest joke is on them.”

The public also didn’t seem that impressed with being fooled by a girl whose apparent search for love took her all the way to The Today Show, the hosts asked her if it was a hoax, which she denied.

Witchery and Naked Communications, the agency responsible, are not the first or last to use social media in this way. But the commentary around the issue focused on the lack of remorse, and indeed arrogance, from Witchery and Naked once the deception came to light and this may have contributed to the campaign being received so negatively.

ACCC vs. Google - a world first

The ACCC is currently taking action in what is a world-first against Google Inc for allegedly deceptive conduct related to sponsored links on its websites. The ACCC says that Google claims to rank search results by relevance, but it actually engages in deceptive conduct by selling off the top positions to commercial partners. This case is currently being played out in the Federal Court.

What you need to know to stay out of trouble

In summary, if you want to achieve effective online communication, it pays to follow these basic rules as outlined by Sue:

• Where a communication is an advertisement, ensure clear disclosure that is it advertising
• Claims must be based on reliable and current information
• Take care that the overall impression is not misleading
• If engaging in comparative advertising:
  • identify the scope and comparison
  • undertake due diligence on the competitors product
  • make sure relevant brands are protected.

Good luck! (And watch your back…)

So, the big question, dear reader, is have YOU been busted for being a naughty PR/public affairs pro? Please, do tell? Or do you have any tales of woe and warning to share? Don’t be shy, we won’t sue!

Ruci Fixter

A full report on Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit, featuring leading Australian marketing, PR and social media pros and can be downloaded at Public relations and managing reputation).

Crowdsourcing is, alternatively, a ’super charged suggestion box’ or a ‘cheap way of ripping off ideas’. But however it is described, it can help integrate audiences and business processes, deliver tangible business outcomes and engage with stakeholders in a meaningful way, claimed Dan Young, Director - Digital, Burson-Marsteller at Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit.

The power of crowds was an overarching theme of 2010’s New Media Summit, which is not surprising given social media’s comms cred. Though one sometimes wonders if the ultimate professional communication is an each-way bet:

• Personalisation/niche vs. attempts to reach millions/billions of eyeballs
• Word of mouth (a la real mouths - i.e. old school) vs. Online viral (new school WOM)
• Doing ‘it’ to keep up with the comms Joneses vs. actually being skilled enough to deliver results.

Nick Holmes a Court, Executive Director of BuzzNumbers, also had crowds on his mind when speaking at the summit. He spoke about analysing online crowds and utilising their power to help drive communication programs forward. Nick (@nickhac) referred to Dunbar’s number: “150…the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.”

The logical corollary to this is that if organisations think they can control large numbers of people based on the assumption that they have a reliable, solid relationship with them - think again!

Trust in crowds, organisations and public relations

Nick’s presentation was relevant to all topics at the conference as he referred to the trust consumers have in different modes of communication, the utility of digital communication, analysing crowds and making a success of online communication. It will come as no surprise to learn recommendations from people you know are the most influential form of ‘advertising’, but one stat from Nick’s source jumped out:

• Consumer opinions posted online and brand websites generate an equally high degree of trust (70%).

Now figure that one out. It supports the argument, and seems counter to propositions advocated by the likes of Fleischman-Hillard’s Napoleon Biggs (at this very summit) that social media has significantly more influence than corporate websites. David Meerman Scott has argued for the corporate website side of the debate and I have also asked is PR missing the main digital game by focusing too much on social media at the expense of corporate website content?

Crowds, though…can they be trusted? Well, Nick said they have transient memberships and there is a low risk to being a member of an online crowd. So their devotion and loyalty seems a questionable and unreliable quantity.

However, due to the ease with which one can join an online crowd, the many means of discovering this crowd (not to mention the many means through which one can exhibit behaviour in the online environment) and the compounding interest and impact a crowd can have…can organisations afford to miss leveraging the crowd wherever possible? Nick certainly discussed some powerful cases studies to support his assertion that, in many cases, the answer is no.

But perhaps the punch line is this: the internet is the 2^nd most influential source (after TV) of information - and TV is in its sights. That, and his comment that consumers are becoming advocates in the new social media-enabled world, should give organisations a wake up call if they are not already engaged with the digital reality.

Dan Young

The heart of the crowds

“Engagement between a brand and its customers can take many forms,” said Dan Young (@danieljohnyoung). “It can be as simple as talking. It can mean engagement through advocates. And it can relate to support.

“But the richest form of engagement is embracing. In this area, brands are involving all customers. Most commonly, this takes the form of audience integration with business processes.”

In essence, Dan said, this is crowdsourcing.

Or, more fully: “Crowdsourcing provides opportunities for brands or government agencies to tap into the creativity, experience and wisdom of a mass group of people. It provides a tool for understanding what stakeholders really want.”

It provides a fantastic opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of these communities. And by involving the crowd in a meaningful project, brands can engage and embrace these audience groups.  So it all has an holistic, integrated and ‘full-circle’ dimension.

Arguably the greatest value of crowdsourcing is that it provides an opportunity for an organisation to learn about it stakeholders’ preferences and positions on issues, then work in a collaborative manner to adapt its processes, products and behaviour to better meet their needs. Sounds like close to a perfect manifestation of Web 2.0’s potential.

Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine, who coined the crowdsourcing term, said it, “forces companies to approach us as potential partners”, and that organisational stakeholders, “get to participate meaningfully in the process”. It is changing the nature of the basic business model, he argues in this presentation.

Dan persuasively discussed a number of very successful crowdsourcing campaigns by the likes of Ford, Threadless, Dell, New Zealand Police and more. But perhaps the most significant example was The Guardian’s use of crowdsourcing to help it evaluate and prioritise a range of documents relevant to British MPs rorting their expense accounts.

• Readers reviewed more than 170,000 expense documents in the first 80 hours
• About 27,000 readers reviewed more than 220,000 pages of submissions
• It created a wealth of exclusive leads and copy for the paper and, in the process, enriched its relationship with, and advocacy from, its readers to a significant degree.

The crowdsourcing take-away

Dan’s final tips on the specifics of crowdsourcing were to bear some key dimensions in mind:

1.       Don’t ask your stakeholders to do too much - you need to ask them to invest a reasonable amount of time and make it easy for them to participate

2.       You’ll need to put very clear guidelines in place about how your customers can interact with the crowdsourcing program

3.       But you also need to be prepared to lose control - like a good brainstorm.  Many wrong answers may eventually lead to the right answer

4.       Play to the sense of community but also recognise individual contributions - this will provide people with the incentive to participate and share

5.       Finally, and most importantly, don’t make the mistake that Kraft made with iSnack 2.0 - allow the community to determine success.  This indicates respect for their perspective and insights and will deliver value to your organisation in the long run.

As an added bonus, ICT and PR professional Jan Willem Alphenaar has put together a useful and interesting presentation on crowdsourcing that is well worth checking as well.

“Search is the reputation gateway,” said Napoleon Biggs, VP Digital Fleischmann-Hillard Asia at Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit. And whilst this claim seems accurate in our web-wound up world, his claims that social media will soon be the primary source of information on organisations, rather than the latter’s corporate site, is not aligned with the views of commentators such as David Meerman Scott.

Yet, as Facebook now ranks as the number one go-to website over Google in the US, there is evidence to suggest Napoleon is on the money. It seems a fair assumption that many of the visits to Facebook will be to seek information (in a social sort of way, of course) on organisations, products and services.

Napoleon (@webwednesday) mentioned the rather scary notion of 440 million people around the world sharing their opinions on Facebook alone. You can’t blame organisations and brands for quaking a little in their gumboots just a little - all that control they used to have…gone in the click of a mouse!

Communication, engagement…or a ‘listening brief’?

So what should organisations do about this? Engage? Or continue the command-and-control paradigm (or, in the communication context, the broadcast rather than engage model) that may have served them quite well in the past? Or are there alternatives to the reductive black and white scenario?

As much as the contemporary communicator is schooled in the notion of dialogue and engagement above all else, even James Grunig said there is a time and a place for two-way asymmetrical communication (i.e. communication taking place that maintains an organisation’s ‘power’ over its stakeholders or, to put it another way, not communicating, not engaging and probably just listening).

And it may simply be because of the nature of the organisation, or the nature of the issue, that a bunkering down approach is taken. It doesn’t necessarily mean an organisation is seeking to maintain any sort of Machiavellian control.

The march towards dialogue also has ramifications for the marketing element of professional communication. All this talk of engagement has changed the language of marketing, but I doubt very much whether it has changed its essential behaviour or processes.

Marketing is still there to identify a need, turn it into a want and sell the living daylights out of it. Just because there is a conversation around the process doesn’t change its essential intent or objective.

Approaches to professional digital communication

Napoleon’s presentation had a strong focus on China, with an underlying key message being that, as always, professional communicators need to:

• customise content and messages for different stakeholders or target audiences
• utilise the communication mechanisms that are most salient for an organisation’s target audiences.

His tips on utilising social media?

• Digital is raw, live: don’t stand back and vacillate. Get in there and get active
• Don’t try to fake it - online is a unique environment where mistakes are amplified and permanent
• Strategic and proactive offence (i.e. communication) is the best defence for an organisation’s reputation…so build relationships by engaging with organisational advocates AND naysayers.

When in a crisis situation, Napoleon said social media needs to be monitored to determine:

• what/who are the conversation/information sources and how is it spreading?
• who are the influencers?
• what is the emotional context?
• what actions are crisis participants taking?

This information is vital in determining what crisis management responses organisations should take. Fundamentally, however, you should have a game plan prepared, advised Napoleon. And one of the key strategic elements of this game plan is no doubt being flexible.

The online environment is not stable. Left-field is where you can expect your next challenge to come from!

Corporate websites: the digital sanctuary?

One of the interesting elements of what is not being spoken about terribly much in public relations circles (and did not seem to be flagged at all during the New Media Summit - not ‘new’ enough?!) is ‘content’.

Now, the content of an organisation’s website is potentially the element that will attract the most possible eyeballs. And lead to the greatest amount of engagement.

So why aren’t PR pros talking about this? Why aren’t they pitching it to potential clients? What focus is occurring here regarding the strategy and tactical/technical skills to make a difference to organisations and their stakeholders?

This is especially important when Napoleon makes the point that people are using the web for purchasing advice. Don’t organisations want to get in on the action of leveraging, highlighting and/or influencing the advice that is given?

Sure, there will be hesitation and scepticism from many in utilising content provided by organisations, but with the power of SEO and the resources that organisations have at their disposal, it would seem a potent opportunity they have at their fingertips.

And are consumers really so gullible to think that organisation-initiated, sponsored, moderated and, yes, even involved or monitored social media dialogues are completely free of an organisation’s grip?

As the web is a fractured environment full of dissenting voices, most of them small in stature and characterised by inconsistency and a lack of evidence for their assertions, organisational websites are almost like the calm amongst the storm: a digital sanctuary.

Also, organisations should be employing strategic communication approaches such as strategic alliances and thought leadership. Using such approaches gives the organisation 3^rd party credibility and content that their stakeholders will value.

This, then, supports their attempts to have their websites (and, by extension, themselves) perceived as being credible.

Corporate websites or social media as an organisation’s communication/engagement hub? Either/or? Is there another paradigm? Command and control…or a blend? Another paradigm? What do you think about Napoleon’s points and this discussion?

A full and comprehensive report on Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit, featuring leading Australian marketing, PR and social media pros and can be downloaded at Public relations and managing reputation). The report captures key points made at the summit, provides additional perspectives from the speakers and analyses their thoughts.

Craig Pearce

Related posts

• Free report: PR at war – opinion explosion at social media summit
• Strategic communication with Facebook
• Social media communication generating trust

The value, and key, to utilising the world’s social media darling to its full extent lies in comprehensive targeting, compelling advertising, putting product in users’ hands and continuing the relationship with communication that truly engages with, and provides value to, target audiences…said Paul Borrud, General Manager, Facebook Australia, at Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit (a full report on the summit, featuring leading Australian marketing, PR and social media pros and can be downloaded at Public relations and managing reputation).

Paul’s presentation was timely. Facebook is everywhere. In 2010 it has gone ballistic in the virtual sense. If there is one social media brand to have your hands all over right now, Facebook is it.

It is the most visited website in the US, outranking even Google, though it still doesn’t have Google’s reach.  And Facebook is the most searched term across search engines.

This raises important issues for communicators:

• Is social media (or more specifically, Facebook!) where greater resources should be directed rather than Google Adwords, corporate websites, SEO etc (in both the digital and overarching comms mix)?
• Is social media (or, once again, just Facebook) where searches for information are, or will primarily, take place for information?
• Is the sort of information and the type of communication that occurs within Facebook something that public relations professionals are able to control?

Other facts to raise the communicator’s eyebrow include:

• Over seven million Australians are ‘active’ Facebook users
• Globally, it has over 400 million active users
• In Australia, over 35s is the fastest growing sector
• 18-24 year olds are the core group of users, with 79% of those engaged using it more than email, 38% more than mobile phones and 35% more than any other ‘communication device’
• Facebook operates in 75 languages
• Three billion+ photos are uploaded on to Facebook each month (and this is not a ‘photo site’)
• 20 million users become fans of pages each day.

Thoughts on communication strategy

From a strategic communication perspective, Paul advocated integrating all brand extensions into the same fan page, rather than running a different fan page for each product. Over time, there can be a focus on different products (or services) at different times.

Certainly, this solves one of professional communicators’ greatest dilemmas, that of consistently generating quality content of interest to target audiences.

On the other hand, however, who is to say the brand of one product, despite being the property of a single organisation, will suit the tastes/aspirations/etc of another brand/product? Will it lead to a weakening of individual brands’ equity? Classic marketing thinking would seem to suggest so.

Paul defined his approach to communication into three phases:

• Build a fan base
• Use fans as a focus group
• Launch new product.

As with any form of social media, Paul said a basic premise of using Facebook for commercial purposes is to provide value to your network (or fans).

Somewhat conversely, Paul said to apply the 70/30 rule (i.e. get your network to provide 70% of the content and you just provide 30% - great thought! Easier said than done, though no doubt the clever strategist will come up with solutions to this formidable challenge.)

The notion of authenticity is social media 101, of course. In fact, it should be strategic public relations 101, but that’s another story. A manifestation of this in a commercial sense is, as Paul said, “Asking for forgiveness, not permission.” This has at least two implications:

• Get stuck into social media. Don’t hang around waiting and watching. The only way to leverage is to participate
• Whilst being sensitive to the needs of your stakeholders is of course important, so is realising that mistakes are made. Social media is a new field. It’s okay to step out of line if your intentions are good (if they aren’t, go back to PR school), so say you’re sorry and you’ll try harder to get it right next time: but don’t hang around waiting for someone to say, ‘yes, you may give this a try now’.

As Paul said after the summit, “Conversations about brands are happening regardless of whether or not the brands want to take part. They can be a passive observer or an active participant. When you’re active you can shape your brand in front of a large audience, which will pay dividends.”

There are doubtless some nuances to Paul’s claim that organisations can shape their brand. Plenty of pundits have espoused that it is not organisations that shape brands, it is those who use them. Social media has accelerated this ability of brand ‘users’ to shape what constitutes a brand (i.e. what it represents).

So the notion of who is controlling or shaping a brand is a field ripe for debate and further insight.

Facebook outranking market research?

The issue of using fans as a focus group is a particularly interesting application of a social network. On the one hand it is engaging with target audiences so an organisation can adapt a product and adapt its communication to suit the needs and preferences of those it is seeking to sell to.

But on the other hand this is using two-way symmetrical communication purely to sell a product, rather than do the target audience any big favours. It is marketing adopting a best practice public relations methodology to dress up its profit-making objective.  But it is doing so in a very transparent manner, so it is hard to argue that everyone isn’t a winner through this process.

Another interesting dimension of using social media for research is whether social media:

• will overtake formal market research as a means to determine target audience needs and wants
• become a standard means through which to test potential products’ and services’ market potential and effectiveness
• develop methodologies for communication metrics to be developed that clearly elucidate the effectiveness of professional communication to achieve business-relevant results.

Social media conversations: who if profiting?

Paul was adamant that social media is about relationships, not marketing. Yet Facebook (like many other forms of social media), is a mechanism that exists, at least partially, for advertisers, marketers and public relations professionals to help organisations achieve their business objectives.

So the mentality that says ’social media is about relationships, not marketing’ is either specious or, in fact, social media is facilitating a new way to do business, a new way for organisations to think. This is an approach that has been articulated before, but it is worth reiterating:

• The dialogic characteristics of social media are forcing organisations to talk more with their target audiences and stakeholders than they might have pre-social media
• It seems logical to hypothesise that increased dialogue leads to increased understanding which, finally, leads to organisations actually wanting to change their behaviour as a whole (not just in the context of communication)
• The rationale underpinning this is that if an increased number of conversations occur between an organisation and its stakeholders, then unless the needs and preferences of those stakeholders impact on the way an organisation behaves, then those conversations will eventually be seen by stakeholders as meaningless. This, in turn, is liable to lead to compromised relationships, a less favourable organisational reputation and, ultimately, a failure to meet business objectives.

The critical upshot question for Facebook

Is there a risk that its seeming increasing use by marketers will devalue the Facebook brand, one founded on the notion of sharing personal information and networking with friends?

Commerce is everywhere these days (McDonald’s provides encouragement awards/meal vouchers to my son’s soccer and Nippers clubs - much to my chagrin) and people seem very open to commercial intrusion into their lives. So maybe it’s a null and void question/argument.

Certainly, the internet is a pretty social and open environment, so it’s hard to argue that its mechanical communication devices should be devoid of commercial trappings. But there does seem something paradoxical about the notion of personal networking and the commercialism that Facebook’s business model seems predicated on.

It’s unlikely, however, that this will impact on Facebook’s utility as both a social networking tool and a means for professional communicators to facilitate engagement between an organisation/brand and its stakeholders.

Focusing on Facebook results

Paul concluded his presentation by reminding attendees of what to focus on:

• Leveraging the social graph
• Building your brand and shaping it
• Get started and iterate
• Develop a conversational calendar.

A full report on Frocomm’s 2010 New Media Summit, featuring leading Australian marketing, PR and social media pros and can be downloaded at Public relations and managing reputation).

Craig Pearce

This is a summary of a post more fully explored at Public relations and managing reputation.

Media are not normally invited to participate in round tables, as it is generally one of the goals of the round table to produce content (initially captured in the form of a white paper) which is placed in a wide variety of media outlets. Thus, having one or two media outlets present at a round table can undermine this occurring.

Having said that, there are no rules that can’t be ‘bent’. It may well be that the one or two media outlets noted above are far and away the most influential on an organisation’s target audience. So if this is the case, then it can definitely be a viable approach to take.

Round table - media participation or not?

There is value, and there are limitations, in having a media outlet involved in the round table (RT).

Important elements to bear in mind when considering this question include:

• Do not involve media as a round table participant if it will stop you from gaining the desired coverage from priority media (or any media you want coverage in, for that matter)
• The participating media outlet will want an exclusive on the content - so they get to use it first
• That’s fine, but only if you are happy for it to be the only media outlet that covers the round table/white paper issues
• As I have written before, you can create a campaign for metro media that is based on one article or op-ed being placed and then you can leverage radio and/or TV coverage off that single placement
• The other option is getting a media outlet present that is part of a broader network, so the syndication of the story leads to multiple placements, but just within one media ‘house’ .

Public relations’ media coverage: giving an exclusive - yea or nay?

One approach to apply with securing media coverage is arranging an exclusive/placement with one metro publishing house and one exclusive with a vertical B2B publishing house. This may lead to more than one actual placement in both sectors:

• One is published virtually instantaneously and one takes longer
• Metro is often for a broader audience and B2B is generally for a more niche audience
• Metro media is often more particular than B2B in publishing content so it’s generally much easier to get placement in the latter
• After the content is used in metro media the issues not covered can be value-added to and used as a B2B media relations campaign.

And don’t forget, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush……..make sure you are smart when creating your media placement KPIs. Sure, get it so its business-relevant et al, but you also want to make sure you over-achieve, not, gasp, under-deliver!!

In other words, if getting that single placement is all important on different levels (strategically appropriate to target audiences, makes you look good in front of your organisation etc), then it may well be a prudent methodology to apply. Be smart about this on a variety of levels.

Have you used a round table to produce content that generated media results? What lessons did you learn? Where else apart from media did you use the content that was generated from the round table? Have you ever had media participate in a round table - can you share your experiences?

Craig Pearce

Twitter: @commaim

This is a summary of a post more fully explored at Public relations and managing reputation.

Public relations professionals (including political lobbyists) can be both a positive social force and a facilitator for helping positive social forces take place. Climate change is a perfect example of how public relations can make, and help make, a positive difference to the world.

The core strategic remit of public relations professionals is to identify issues impacting on organisation-stakeholder relationships and undertake three activities:

• Enhance the communication between an organisation and its stakeholders to create the best possible and most business-helpful relationships between them
• Encourage organisations to adapt their processes/behaviour so that they are more in line with stakeholder expectations and wants (leading to a socially-helpful relationships)
• Encourage stakeholders to adapt their behaviour so that they are more in line with organisational preferences.

The easy way out is to brand all public relations practitioners who work for these industries such as power generation, resources and FMCG (with the latter’s love of resource-heavy packaging) as pariahs, but we are all conflicted by contemporary society.

In Australia, especially, we are dependant on coal-fired power stations (a huge emitter of carbon) to live our daily lives. And heaven forbid the politician who tries to wean us off this dependency. The result will be increased prices for electricity, at least some unemployment and plenty of local community turmoil.

Politicians, driven by votes, lack the fibre to make these calls. Voters, driven by financial issues, lack the fibre to support the hard decisions being made. And so life goes on…

It just goes to show what a heavy responsibility business has. It is they who run western democracies, not governments. What public relations professionals can do is peel the scales from organisations’ eyes:

• Identify stakeholder sentiments in wanting to reduce the impact of global warming
• Provide positives for them in changing the way business operates (enhanced stakeholder loyalty)
• Take a strong role in driving corporate social responsibility and leverage the positive stakeholder relationship benefits that result from taking such as approach.

I have said before, public relations professionals are the conscience of an organisation. We advocate stakeholders as much as we advocate organisations. By ‘working’ for both we are more likely to help encourage a win-win outcome for all parties.

Lobbyists, with their ear of both business people and politicians, arguably have a more important role to play than your garden variety PR practitioner. This strain of PR pro needs to point out, to organisations, the benefits to the environment and to society of an organisation behaving in a certain way. This then helps the organisation ’sell’ its lobbying position to politicians, making it a win-win-win situation.

Getting strategic

Go and seek the internal organisation influencers. Present them with data you have found (including through market research) on how an enhanced sustainability profile can benefit the organisation - its business outcomes, its relationship outcomes, its reputation.

“Companies that have built a strong reputation spark positive word-of-mouth,” said the Reputation Institute in their 2009 Global Reputation Pulse. And we all know positive or negative word of mouth impacts on sales and is the most potent form of marketing available.”

Influence these key stakeholders. Create your own internal advocacy campaign. Create alliances internally with those that will help get your efforts over the line. Get external third party support/credibility from those who the big decisions makers (CEO, COO) think highly of.

Yes, we can!

In short, apply best practice communication strategy to your own efforts to make a positive difference to this world. Act local, think global. Can we make a difference? Most definitely, yes we can.

[Tell me other ways in which PR pros (especially lobbyists!) and marketers can make a positive difference to the environment and society. Do you have stories of communication professionals that have been brave in advocating the environment and society to corporate behemoths?]

Craig Pearce

This is a summary of a post more fully explored at Public relations and managing reputation.

Round tables are an excellent methodology to help public relations professionals achieve positive media coverage, enhance relationships with important organisational stakeholders and strengthen organisational positioning.

The white paper, produced from a round table, resources issues-driven media campaigns (of which opinion pieces are likely to play a leading role), direct mail and online communication campaigns.

Strategic communication results with target audiences

The white paper is generally a strategic branding, rather than a tactical sales generating, mechanism, though it can be used for the latter.

A white paper can assist with positioning, tactical sales or organisation-stakeholder relationships because the target audience finds its content of value - so recipients appreciate the white paper’s ’sponsoring organisation’ for producing it.

A final reason for producing a white paper that ‘gives’ to its stakeholders is that it can be part of a program to help rehabilitate an organisation’s reputation after it has undergone a crisis. The thought leadership it shows can all impact positively on knowledge of, and perceptions towards, an organisation

White papers have an excellent track record, if well done, of achieving high level, top tier media coverage. They play an important part in an holistic communication strategy.

The ultimate objective of the round table/white paper is to position the organisation (and/or individual, such as a CEO) more favourably with priority stakeholders.

Elements of a marketing communication round table

There are no hard and fast rules as to what constitutes an effective round table, but primary elements to consider generally include the following:

• Having only one representative of the sponsoring organisation present
• Those present need to be senior organisational stakeholders
• Eight to ten participants is ideal. Any less and you may not get the discussion, debate and quality content required to give the white paper ‘heft’. Any more and it can become unwieldy, with many participants potentially becoming frustrated at their lack of opportunity to make a meaningful contribution
• Limit the discussion to one morning. A whole day is too long and most high-level potential participants will baulk at giving up this much of their time
• Two to three hours should be the limit of time allocated to the round table, with a morning tea break an option to consider, though it is best to keep participants in the room and make it very short
• Make an audio recording of the discussion. Keep it on file as it may be called upon if participants disagree with the way they are quoted
• The white paper produced of the round table discussion will need to be signed off on by all participants.

And remember, as the issue(s) being discussed in the round table should be topical, there is a need to accelerate the white paper generation. Don’t hang around.

Importantly, you want to get that paper and its supporting communication out and in front of stakeholders quickly. You don’t want someone else to beat you to the punch.

Additionally, a slow white paper production process will mean reduced buy-in and attention to it from participants through the sign off process. And that is nothing short of death to ROI.

What did you think of this discussion? What is your experience in holding round tables and producing white papers? Did they achieve the intended results? What were the non-media related outcomes, such as stakeholder relationship enhancement?

Related posts on this topic include tips on getting participants to attend a round table and the media relations dimension of a round table and white paper.

Craig Pearce

This is a summary of a post more fully explored at Public relations and managing reputation.

Social media is a double-edged sword for crisis communication. On the one hand, it allows issues to be identified, monitored and managed extremely quickly. It also allows for real-time interaction with stakeholders, providing a mechanism through which disinformation ’spot fires’ can be put out before they turn into raging bushfires.

But that’s the good news! The flip side is that, as Laurel Papworth has observed, social media has a ripple effect. It allows for news to spread - yes, that burning metaphor again - like wildfire. And nothing sells quite like bad news.

These fiery themes were all-pervasive at a Frocomm crisis communication and social media summit. Other key take-outs included:

• having social media guidelines in place before engaging fully through social media and, as per any crisis situation, being as prepared as possible
• knowing who the influencers on opinion are likely to be and proactively forming positive relationships with them (as they might assist in facilitating and optimising message clarity through the stress and disinformation of a crisis ‘bushfire’)
• not necessarily immediately jumping in to a situation that looks like a crisis: use social media tools to monitor and assess the situation’s genesis and then determine an appropriate response
• that the first six hours of the ’situation’ are critical in determining what the best response will be.

Further salient points that the range of articulate and well qualified speakers made included:

• Social media is a part of communication, not separate from it, so tactics such as traditional media and direct stakeholder communication need to be integrated with the social media dimension
• A crisis is no place to learn about social media;
• The importance of discipline.

Leadership

Leadership was a sub-text of many aspects of the summit.

It was apparent in the mere fact that a relatively recent (but now pretty much accepted part of the professional communication tool box) phenomena such as social media was being discussed as a vital part of such a sensitive process as crisis communication.

It was apparent in the assertion that engaging with stakeholders takes fortitude and strong leadership.

And it was apparent in the notion that by standing tall and taking responsibility for an organisation’s actions (and that includes failings and faults) takes leadership and vision, as a short-term crisis may in fact galvanise an organisation to transform itself into an entity more in line with stakeholder expectations. This, as I constantly reiterate, is likely to help an organisation and its stakeholders form more mutually beneficial, and hence sustainable, long term relationships.

So, what are your thoughts on information in this post? Is social media being used actively enough by business to manage a crisis? Can you give some good and bad examples?

Craig Pearce

This is a summary of a post more fully explored at Public relations and managing reputation.

Public relations can learn a lot from marketers, who are often much better at getting a range of direct, unmediated communications tactics ‘right’, as well as utilising market research to inform their strategies and measure their work’s impact.

So, public relations advocate that I am, here are some thoughts on where I think PR people should take a leaf out of marketers’ books.

Business relevance

Too much public relations is activity without a driver. You won’t find much marketing that is not implemented without a very specific business-relevance. Marketing is a tighter, tougher and more disciplined game than public relations.

Evaluation

Marketers are great at crunching numbers and providing a transparent reason why a particular communication or stakeholder engagement approach should be taken. They get creative, then undertake research to determine if this is the best approach to take, both in the creation of products and services and the communication that is used to sell them. A similar mindset informs their brand-focused communication.

Measuring ROI is a critically important issue for them, whilst public relations is still agonising over how best to evaluate its effectiveness. This is despite market research experts like Adrian Goldsmith purporting that reputation can be evaluated and measured.

Sure, they use it to test ideas/products/services and to measure their success, but they also use it to come up with target audience insights that help the business relevance of their activities and to stimulate and profitably direct creativity.

Database and direct communication

One of my favourite areas. There is much to be said for 3^rd party endorsement (i.e. through media editorial placement and strategic alliances) and the credibility/brand enhancement it generates, but surely it is a no brainer that any half-decent communication strategy will feature means of communicating with target audiences that are unmediated.

Unmediated communication allows an organisation to frame its communication in the precise terms that it wants its target audiences to hear:

• Customised to target audience needs, wants, culture and point of view
• No compromise in articulating the information an organisation wants its target audiences to hear, which might otherwise occur if there are the delicate sensibilities of the media, for instance, to be considered.

KPIs/objectives

You’re flat out finding a public relations practitioner that understands that objectives are KPIs (i.e. set, measure, go!), let alone one that is willing to actually set meaningful, business-relevant ones before implementing communication strategies/activities.

Marketing lives and dies by the KPIs it sets. Whether it’s a clear linkage to sales generation, brand awareness, hits to websites etc.

Integrated communication

Dare I posit that marketers are better multi-taskers than PR folk? Well, considering marketers often design and implement integrated marketing campaigns that might use an array of tools simultaneously in concert with each other, it is tempting to think so. Examples of tactics include:

• Advertising (through multiple mediums)
• Competitions (as above)
• Media relations
• Digital communication (social media, website, e-newsletter)
• Database and direct communication
• Point of sale
• Sponsorship.

Of more import is that public relations professionals can learn a lot from the way marketers employ a diversity of tools to achieve a singular outcome.

So, what are your thoughts on information in this post? Are marketers the bees knees? How can marketing and public relations/corporate communication best work together?

Craig Pearce

This is a summary of a post more fully explored at Public relations and managing reputation.

Op-eds are a valuable part of public relations and media relations strategies because of the media coverage and the positive positioning, through thought leadership, they generate. An additional, and extremely valuable, characteristic of the op-ed is that its topic, and the content that is generated as part the op-ed scoping process, can also be used to generate more than a single media placement.

The thought leadership and op-ed (opinion piece) scoping process will always generate more information than can be contained within a single opinion piece. Two things can occur with this information:

• It can serve as the basis for another opinion piece
• It can be used as complementary information to support an issues-based campaign, aimed at generating multiple media placements, that ‘feeds’ off the initial single opinion piece placement and uses core information from that op-ed.

Aspects to bear in mind for op-eds include:

• Giving the op-ed exclusively to one outlet means they should be, strategically, the most appropriate media outlet to  target
• When it comes to mainstream media, you will only be able to place the op-ed in one outlet. That’s it. The exception being if one media organisation owns a variety of media outlets of relatively state-specific nature
• The timing/coordination of how the campaign is rolled out is important - the op-ed and an issues-based campaign (based on complementary thought leadership content) need to work in concert with each other

Leveraging the thought leadership

Another dimension of these approaches is that once you have confirmed an op-ed is being placed in a print or online media outlet (mostly relevant to mainstream metro media like The Australian), you can use the content to pitch to radio or even TV. You can do this the day before the story goes live or you can do it early in the morning of publication.

Radio producers always skim the newspapers (and their online variations these days) to see if there is anything they can explore further on their shows. This can be leveraged for the benefit of everyone : client/employer, the media.

PR people? We make everyone happy!

So, what are your thoughts on information in this post? Have you applied any of these approaches? How did they go? What have I missed out on that is crucial in undertaking these approaches?

Craig Pearce