Bluegrass Consulting: Blueblog

Tuesday: 12 April

It should come as no surprise to hear that Google, one of the most potent organisations in the world, has trust as one of its positioning lynchpins…yet in a (business) world still coming to terms with the fact that those defining a brand are more often its stakeholders than the brand itself, this is still close to being revolutionary, especially if it is being effectively put into action, rather than simply being pontificated on.

Lucinda Barlow, Google Australia and New Zealand’s Head of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, put forward this premise at last year’s Frocomm’s New Media Summit. “We all work for and represent brands and brands are all about trust,” Lucinda said. “People have certain expectations of a brand and that’s what we have to portray.”

But are all brands about trust? I don’t think so. Australian Wheat Board? Rio Tinto? Westpac? Not exactly high-performing brands in the trust stakes.

Google are a fascinating entity in many ways, but their confluence of the dimensions of communication, products and societal centrality is one aspect of this. As a result of this it possesses an enormous amount of power:

• The power over people’s ability to access information (including information being organised in a manner customised to people’s varying ‘niche needs’)
• The power over people’s means of accessing information
• The power of influencing government and regulatory regimes.

In summary, this means the company is playing a significant role in shaping society itself.

The power of giving away control

Lucinda (@lucindabarlow) describes Google as having collaboration at its heart and giving up power to its stakeholders. What a breath of fresh air for a public relations professional!

“Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Lucinda. “This means giving our users around the world access to the information they want, from the widest variety of sources, wherever they are.”

And it is interesting to note that, despite its competition being, “one click away,” Lucinda said Google’s policy is not to lock people into utilising the products it develops, but to, “allow customers to move their data out of Google’s services easily.

“We have a dedicated engineering team, working across all products, called the ‘Data Liberation Front’ to make this happen. To keep you coming back, we have to keep innovating to create great services that are important to people and change their lives.”

Making it easy to not use Google has a number of implications for a professional communicator:

• It gives more power to consumers to set the terms of the relationship. In fact, with products like Google Maps, consumers have the power to actually change the parameters of the product itself
• It is empowering the consumer to be a participant in the brand, not an observer
• The numerous listening and interactive posts it has in the online environment reflect the way its business model is profoundly influenced by its stakeholders’ knowledge, views and behaviour.

Analogous to this is the approach that Lucinda said Google takes to its stakeholder communication: “We need to be fast, responsive, open and transparent in our communication.”

Eavesdropping for insights

“There is a large and growing audience of people who actively listen to, distribute and publish their opinions online,” said Lucinda. “This gives real power to the vocal minority. According to Nielsen, in Australia 45% of people online publish their opinions specifically about products, services, and brands online and a massive 86% read them. It’s such an influential space.

“When you probe what the most trusted sources of information are, word of mouth comes out tops followed by online…because online is seen as a way to scale ‘word of mouth’ and tap into it en masse.

“And you’re not just about managing what gets said about your brand in order to effect sales directly. It’s also about consumer insight. It’s like being permanently tapped in to the world’s largest focus group. Our users decide what’s popular and what they want to watch. They talk about it. They debate with each other. Those comments are gold. Just ask United Airlines…”

Social responsibility

The power of Google means it has a more profound, socially pervasive social responsibility than most organisations. Its enormous global reach (i.e. all stratas of virtually all societies) make this more challenging for Google than most, as different societies and their various elements all have differing expectations of organisations.

As long as trust remains central to its business model, however, it has a reliable compass with which to steer itself. Communication, and public relations in particular, is the ideal mechanism to facilitate this journey occurring.

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).

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

Wednesday: 28 April

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

Wednesday: 02 September