Bluegrass Consulting: Blueblog

Friday: 27 August

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).

Tuesday: 24 August

In an ideal world, politicians would hold strong and sincere convictions and would debate on concrete issues aiming at improving the life of citizens. In this world, politicians would strive to raise public awareness rather than to sustain ignorance.

Given the way both the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have been dealing with the issue of immigration, if this world existed it was a long, long time ago.

In the recent elections, Prime Minister Julia Gillard decided to distinguish herself from her predecessor by shifting from a “big Australia” to a “sustainable Australia”. So far this kind of strategy is understandable: as a newly designated Prime Minister and with little time to convince, it is quite normal that she should try to differentiate her policy from her predecessor’s.

It is however more questionable that she should clearly link immigration policy and population policy, which is a dangerous shortcut that could be harmful to Australia in the long-term.

It does not matter whether it shows opportunism on behalf of the Labor candidate and whether both skilled and unskilled immigration have played their part, in particular in the country’s growth. The shift from a “big Australia” to a “sustainable Australia”, which is backed by almost 75% of Australians, appeared positive to Julia Gillard’s election.

On the other hand, after President Sarkozy’s popularity plumbed the depths in July 2010 (26% of favourable opinion), he gave a very strong speech in Grenoble on 30 July 2010 where he declared nothing less than a “war on crime”, forgetting that the age of prohibition is long gone. In his speech the French President promised legislative reforms to withdraw the French nationality from non-natives criminals.

This unfortunately sounds like Sarkozy’s favourite remedy to unpopular polls; he indeed gave similar speeches on security when he was Interior Minister in order to increase his popularity as a potential candidate for presidency.

Once again, this very negative strategy seems to be working as a poll of 6 August 2010 stresses that 70% of polled agreed with the president in regard to the withdrawal of the French nationality for some non-native criminals when the life of a policeman is threatened.

Apart from being populist and xenophobic, this is just another step in the escalation of a government where the current Interior Minister was condemned after he professed racial insult and where French police imposed brutal treatment of immigrants.

In the end, while Prime Minister Gillard’s communication has not been as ambivalent as Sarkozy’s, the goal remains the same: winning elections. It is a shame that political figures devote more time to discussing sensitive issues in a populist manner rather than engaging in open and constructive debate on what are important issues at many levels. While it is clearly a good means to their end it definitely does not heighten politics.

Arnaud Eard

Arnaud comes from Paris and gained a MA in International Political Economy at the University of Sheffield. He has been interning at Bluegrass Consulting since May 2010.

Tuesday: 17 August

This is part 2 of a 4 part series which uses Julia Gillard and the current Federal Election to examine whether spin techniques effectively developed for the 20^th century media model are now outdated and ineffective in the 21^st century.

Gillard’s declaration she’s “going to discard all of that campaign advice and professional or common wisdom and just go for it” (in regard to “risk averse” election campaign communication) highlights the fact that old spin (controlling information by restricting journalist access, staying ‘on message’, an over-supply of information {e.g. renouncements of announcements} and over emphasising the positive) hasn’t been working.

These spinning techniques, which 10 to 20 years ago were largely a hidden and unknown art, are now a notion so familiar to the public, they no longer work. The extensive criticism and coverage of the much overused ‘moving forward’ slogan is just one example of that.

In addition, Channel 7 reporting political news, with the by-line, ‘cutting through the spin’, is another example of how widely spin it is now ‘accepted’.

You can’t be tricked when you know the tricks.

Nothing new in blaming the media

Much has been written on the role of the media in the challenge for straight forward authentic communication. The 24 hour media cycle, the demand for ‘new’ news, means journalists fail to properly cover policy due to a lack of time, and as Bernard Keane also points out, a lack of specialist skills: “The result is too much cynicism and not enough scepticism.”

Despite politicians and their advisers knowing the media is likely to misrepresent them, “gratifying them” remains the “primary purpose of the professional politician (who acquire) a crippling self-enfeeblement driven by their dependence…”

Keane also explains, and as we all know, it’s in the media’s interest for politics to remain in a “permanent cycle of spin, conflict and commentary, while actual problems are never resolved”. Good news doesn’t sell papers and conflict is essential to a ‘good’ news story.

But this is something spinners have known for a long time! That we haven’t found better ways of dealing with this is positively amateur.

Worse still…we have a major trust deficit

Spin can be defined as a type of propaganda, providing an interpretation of an event or issue to persuade public opinion in favor or against. It is between the two World Wars that spin was really pioneered, with Joseph Goebbels using it to great effect for the Nazis. Post war America refined his approach, with Eisenhower’s Republicans bringing professional propagandists into their inner circle for the first time, ensuring a decisive win.

Later, Bill Clinton and chief spinner James Carvelle mentored Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson/Alastair Campbell as they reinvented the Labour Party. And it is perhaps with Blair that we saw the beginning of the decline of 20^th century spin. Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former Press Secretary, while still in that role, spoke publically of how this new communication had become a hindrance to good government and had cost them dearly in terms of trust.

“We did make a concerted effort to get a better dialogue with some parts of the media…this was of course about reaching their readers. …but therein lay the seeds of spin. The consequences were greater than we anticipated. People stopped trusting what we had to say.”

A lack of trust virtually makes spin ineffective, as can be seen in the 2005 UK general election. The Government thought services were improving in heath and education. Polling showed the public also thought their schools and hospitals were improving. But they also thought they were lucky and that nationally things were getting worse.

They discounted their own personal experience because it was in agreement with the government line, and they were almost programmed to disbelieve anything the government said. (This example was found in Ivor Gaber’s paper Too much of a good thing: the ‘problem ‘of political communications in a mass media democracy)

Post 1 in this series began to examine the PR spin techniques of the NSW ALP Right and their role in the current campaign, as well as whether the declaration of the ‘Real Julia’ was actually just part of the strategy and part of managing perceptions around Australia’s first female leader and the way in which she took power. It concluded by questioning whether publicly rejecting the”very risk averse standard campaign model” was just more spin…

Post 3 will examine whether social media can help build trust and how the future of spinning lies in losing control. The final and fourth post will examine Ms Gillard’s apparent rejection of the “very risk averse standard campaign model” in the context of the election result.

Ruci Fixter

Friday: 13 August

Julia Gillard’s political woes shine the light on the failure of modern day spinners clinging desperately to a political communication technique invented for the 20^th century model of mass media. In the 21^st century, these techniques are proving increasingly out of date and so dangerously ineffective it could lose Labor an election when spin, ironically, should be key to winning elections…

Standard and well known spin techniques such as the ’seven second grab’, key messages, catchy slogans and carefully controlled media management have all backfired spectacularly for Ms Gillard. All of a sudden, these tricks look very dated prompting her to publicly reject this “very risk averse standard campaign model” and re-introduce herself as the “real Julia” in a desperate search for authenticity.

This move was a somewhat startling acknowledgment that the usual spin simply wasn’t ‘cutting through’. Techniques designed to win were, in fact, conspiring towards losing Labor the election.

Focus groups - unfairly dumping leaders for false infidelity?

So how is it the ALP’s crack campaign team, seasoned professionals whose job it is to know the business inside out, couldn’t predict that this ‘old spin’, on its own, wouldn’t work? They should have been even more aware of the dangers, given the current levels of cynicism around how Julia assumed office.

In fact, one almost wonders if there was even a communication strategy in place to deal with how the electorate may have responded to Rudd’s unprecedented and brutal assassination. Or was it so clever we almost missed it…?

Many people place the bulk of the blame for the campaign’s rocky ride at the feet of NSW Right leader Mark Arbib, who both secured and destroyed Rudd’s leadership. It is not only the role he is believed to have played in convincing Rudd to dump the ETS, a turning point for voters, but the risk averse, poll-centric, NSW Labor Right strategy, that he along with long term friend and campaign director Karl Bitar have continued to push as the best campaign model.

But it appears that the result has been panicky politics driven by focus group research, which has seen leaders dumped like 20-somethings dump lovers over false infidelities. Many argue their use of the focus group results is not accurate or effective.

Former staffer in the Carr and Iemma Governments, Mark Aarons, explains their technique involves targeting the least politically committed voters in marginal seats. Their theory is that “…these people determine who win government and their views should therefore predominate in policy-setting. In a bizarre reversal of conventional political wisdom, leadership is redefined as following such people by pandering to them.”

Aarons’ experience was that this strategy “led the (Iemma) government up a blind alley”, not reflecting mainstream voters who hated the policy idea” (in this instance the Kurnell desalination plant).

However, most say there is little wonder the Arbib-Bitar partnership believe in this model. Arguably it has won them office in NSW since 1995 and, maybe, even the Kevin 07 election. Why fix it if it ain’t broke? But election 2010 seems to have broken the mould. Time will ultimately tell.

Old spin doesn’t work for ‘real Julia’

These campaigns have been largely stage managed spin-fuelled fiestas, and none more than Kevin 07. And as Michael Gawenda points out in Business Spectator, Gillard 2010 is in many ways no more or no less stage managed than Kevin 07 was.

However, what is different is that she has only been PM for six weeks and the way in which Rudd was deposed. Going to the polls seems rushed…standard NSW campaigning?

What is interesting and maybe very clever spin, is this point made by Gawenda:

“Gillard had two major problems coming into this campaign: she had been involved in the assassination of Rudd and she was a woman. Gillard and her advisors, it seems, decided that any sign of aggression, of passion or even vision, would be turned against her - she would be seen as an angry, pitiless, female, political executioner. So for the first two weeks of the campaign she behaved as if she was on Prozac.”

So maybe this strategy was deliberate all along.

Play the standard orchestrated campaign cardboard cut-out; let it look like you are being played by the ‘faceless men’, because anything else would make you look like “an angry, pitiless, female, political executioner”.

And then announce the arrival of ‘real Julia’, who it now looks like has been brave enough to stand up to said men, and indulge the electorate with a soft, approachable and benevolent female leader.

Maybe sexist attitudes towards women in power have been grossly overlooked in how this campaign could and needed to be played.

It might actually be very clever indeed - an all together cleverer ‘new’ spin, a planned emergence of the real Julia as a natural evolution of the Gillard personality.

But then, the long term damage to the Labor party, brought about by the scary power of the faceless men, now emblazoned in the psyche of the electorate, still seems a high price to pay for this approach.

Using Julia Gillard and the current Federal Election as a case study, this is the first in a 4 part series examining whether spin techniques effectively developed for the 20^th century media model  are  now outdated and ineffective in the 21^st century. Post 2 looks at the ineffectiveness of ‘old spin’, the role of the media, and the trust deficit. Post 3 examines whether social media can help build trust and how the future of spinning lies in losing control. The final and fourth post will examine Ms Gillard’s apparent rejection of the “very risk averse standard campaign model” in the context of the election result.

Tuesday: 10 August

After the subprime crisis inflicted a strong blow to Western economies, the European Union and the United States have been trying to catch their breath and continue to reform their respective financial sector according to their own beliefs.

The validation by US Senate of President Obama’s financial reform is undeniably a great move forward. However more has to be done, in particular on an international scale with the harmonization of reforms of the functioning of the banking system.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) put bank bonuses under the spotlight. Indeed, the latter were responsible for encouraging financial actors - mainly traders - to take highly risky short-term positions that threaten the stability of the entire banking system.

To avoid the international financial system falling like a house of cards once again, both the US and the European Union have decided to take strong contradictory measures.

In essence, the EU intends to introduce by January 2011 measures that should increase the difficulty for bankers to gather bonuses. Moreover, securities - share included - would have to make up 50% of all immediate bonuses.

Meanwhile, the US has opted to put in place directives on top management’s salary and bonuses.

As a result, traders will have to choose between these two systems, and the absence of consensus will keep on curbing the general process of reforming international finance.

While the US and the EU have been trying to find the best way toward recovery, Asia has continued its impressive rise, as if the GFC never happened.

Singapore’s GDP rose by 16% between January and April 2010, and a rise of another 13% to 15% is anticipated for the rest of the year.

As for China, it has been confirming its impressive two-digit pre-GFC economic growth. Despite currently experiencing a slowdown and being forecast to fall to one digit, its growth remains very competitive compared to Western growth estimates.

Moreover, China has ideologically challenged the US and the EU. On the 12 July, a prominent Chinese credit rating agency downgraded the AAA rating of Germany, the US, France and the UK, blaming the “big three” (Moody’s, Fitch, Standard and Poor’s) for their ideological support of Western economies. By taking this step, China has openly contested the hegemony of the “big three”.

It is now obvious that if on the one hand the GFC has demonstrated the huge vanity of the Western world, it has on the other hand accelerated the rise of Asia. To put it into Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s words, “Asia’s time has come.”

Arnaud Eard

Arnaud comes from Paris and gained a MA in International Political Economy at the University of Sheffield. He has been interning at Bluegrass Consulting since May 2010.

Friday: 30 July

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.

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.

Friday: 23 July

“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

Tuesday: 20 July

After 2 months of fierce struggle, highly expensive ads and the election of a new Prime Minister (PM), the Federal Government and the resources industry have finally reached an agreement on the now scrapped RSPT.

One can wonder if it has resulted into a win-win situation or, given the new neutral name of the tax, if the resources industry is not the main winner of the deal. Is the glass half full or half empty?

From a political point of view, the MRRT appears to be the first victory of Julia Gillard’s new role as Prime Minister. Her ability and her efficiency in leading negotiations surely took a weight off the Labor Party’s shoulders for the election now being held on August 21.

The original RSPT was definitely too disconnected from the way market works whereas the MRRT shows far more respect for market conditions.

However, it appears that former PM Kevin Rudd was close to an agreement and that Julia Gillard only had to seal the deal, probably with larger concessions. So her victory has somewhat of a bitter taste for taxpayers.

From Rio Tinto’s, Xstrata’s and BHP Billiton’s point of view, the MRRT is a genuine victory. Indeed, Gillard’s Government has conceded on:

-          Lowering the rate of the tax from 40% to 30%.

-          Raising the rate at which the tax applies from 6% to 13%.

-          Removing the retroactivity of the tax.

-          Applying the MRRT only to iron ore and coal mining companies.

This is good news for big mining companies - especially for those that extract gold and base metals - and testifies of their strong lobbying power on the Federal Government.

On the other hand, medium and small mining companies have lost out given that they were not part of the negotiations.

In the end, the resources industry will have to share a bit more of its colossal profits, logically enough for the Federal Government to help, finance its flagship projects (the national broadband network, climate change, etc.) and lay down a stronger tax base during the resources boom.

The MRRT will enable a better distribution of wealth among Australian people, which was the primary goal of taxing the resources industry. But picking who won the debate seems a fairly simple task - just ask Rio Tinto or BHP. They can hardly contain their delight to have, again, emerged into positive territory.

Arnaud Eard

Arnaud comes from Paris and gained a MA in International Political Economy at the University of Sheffield. He has been interning at Bluegrass Consulting since May 2010.

Friday: 16 July

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

Thursday: 08 July

If ever a social and political issue was so completely driven by the power of imagery as opposed to fact - it is that of ‘boat people’.  We are manipulated and cajoled by a potent combination of pictures, fear laden political catch phrases and an absence of hard facts.

Most of us have heard it at some point - boat people are only a tiny fraction of the ‘illegal immigrants’ coming to our country. In fact virtually all come by plane. Every day, at least 13 asylum-seekers penetrate our borders through airports, by using traditional visa options, a hefty 30 times those who come by boat, according to this report. Furthermore, Amnesty research shows that 96.6 per cent arrived by airplane whilst only 3.4 per cent by boat.

But still the arrival of a new boat and its passengers, its picture sprayed across the front pages of our newspapers and TVs, spells such panic that it dominates the national agenda, the national conscience and national elections, time and time again.

Perhaps the sophisticated nature of aeronautical transport and an established gateway - compared with leaky boats and unwashed passengers - makes one group look safe and the other not? Or perhaps it’s simply because those using our airports, coming in one by one, elude that potent ‘group photo’ that gets everyone so flustered.

Boat people, according to Tony Abbott, pose a threat to “keeping our borders secure and our country safe” . I wonder, how exactly is our safety being jeopardised by boat people and not plane people? In fact, the research says plane people are much less likely to be genuine refugees, only about 40-60 per cent compared with 85-90 per cent of boat people.

Is Abbott piggy-backing off the fear still simmering from Howard’s political opportunistic legacy of ‘children overboard’, and the oh so loose and intangible connection between terrorism, Muslims and boat people?

And whereas boat people are detained while their claims are processed, plane people live in the community and are allowed to work; a Rudd Government initiative. Where is the fairness there?

The truth is, having boats rock up on our shores is not a ‘good look’ politically. It looks like we have no control, when in truth the evidence shows we have far less ‘border control’ through our airports.

Julia Gillard, whilst also guilty of cleverly ‘handling’ this political hot potato, deserves credit for being the first of recent Prime Ministers to point out the real numbers, saying “…the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat is very, very minor. It is less than 1.5 per cent of permanent migrants each year; and indeed it would take about 20 years to fill the MCG…”

So, despite my initial thoughts, she doesn’t seem to be swinging as hard to the Right as may have first appeared.

This can also be seen through her acceptance of the ‘push’ vs. ‘pull’ factor as to what drives the number of boats. “It has less to do with what we do here and more to do with the conditions people are escaping - like war, genocide, imprisonment without trial, torture…” Read here for some interesting research on push/pull factors.

Finally Gillard’s key policy plank that has media headlines pointing to Howard’s Pacific Solution, although scant on detail, is not really like the previous government’s ’solution’ at all. As explained by credible political blog Pollytics.com:

“The creation of a well resourced, properly administered regional refugee processing centre that has UNHCR participation, regional government cooperation, a fair, efficient and consistent refugee status determination process, clearly defined legal rights for appeal and, most importantly, a well functioning resettlement program…was one of the most important long standing goals of most refugee organisations in Australia.”

The post goes on to explain that the Pacific Solution was canned by refugee organisations - because it was exactly none of these things.” It’s also why comparisons between the Pacific Solution and some possible East Timor solution are pretty superficial and lazy.”

Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, a vocal, committed and harsh critic of the Pacific Solution and politicisation of refugees, agrees it is different and has given the plan “his provisional approval“.

If you want to see more on how this could actually work, and be a benefit rather than a burden to East Timor, check out some of the comments here.

In the meantime, as we wait to see Gillard flesh out the policy, let’s remember to not let the pictures of another boat make us panic, look at the stats, the facts, and remember last year Australia took only 0.6% of the world’s asylum seekers. We are after all just a little fish…in that big blue sea.  And if you still want to get upset, think of the planes.
Ruci Fixter