Category: General

Tom’s Bumper Summer PR Miscellany…

Here are some personal picks from my most recent trawl of the RSS feeds…

What is PR?

  • OK this is late (from last February) but worth a listen.  It’s a podcast from the BBC World Service program The Bottom Line, with some well known PR executives having a lively discussion on what Public Relations is. Recommended.

Traditional Media…

 

 

Issues Management…

 

PR Skills…

  • Liam Fitzpatrick has generated a lot of discussion with his suggestion that writing skills shouldn’t be prioritized over other communications skills. 

I’m not suggesting that a communicator should be allowed to get away with bad writing. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t make sense to prioritise writing over any other skill – if a single skill is all that matters why shouldn’t it be film-making, web design or spamming twitter?

Dave Fleet [@davefleet] and Shel Holtz don’t agree.

 

PR thinking….

You should listen to this interesting CIPR interview with Seth Godin for this quote alone:

“PR is a human form of spam”

 

[@andismit]

 

Great Storytelling…

This is a phenomenal example of great corporate storytelling…

 

Changing face of PR….

  • If you’re working in PR, you really should spend some time on the PR on Facebook page. No really. You should.

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  • Really interesting research from a HP study on Twitter and influence that found that the number of followers on Twitter doesn’t necessarily translate into influence.

 

  • Josh Bernoff proposes a new model for PR and influencers. The problem of course is that people who would avail of this model are probably already doing a great job of reaching and engaging with folks.  The muppets sending irrelevant spam, well they’ll keep doing it.

 

An antidote for social media twaddle…

  • If like me you get grumpy reading the twaddle many of our self styled social media gurus peddle on Twitter as expertise, then this is the site for you.  The URL isn’t for the faint hearted.

 

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You also have to love these modern retro posters, via BuzzFeed.

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Struggling with LinkedIn?

 

Finally…

Have pity on those of us with a stationary problem.  For us this is real innovation.

Welcome to the era of hair trigger commentary..

At first glance it might appear that Shirley Sherrod, Old Spice, and Uniball have little in common.

However, they do.

Each have fallen foul to knee jerk commentary from people who haven’t taken the time to analyze, contemplate or find out the facts before casting “informed” judgment.

It’s something we’ll all have to get used to, and it creates an ‘interesting’ environment for public relations practitioners who must deal with the aftermath of this whiplash analysis.

For the record:

  • Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign after a blogger posted an edited YouTube video that took a talk she gave on racial reconciliation completely out of context.
  • The recent Old Spice social media campaign – maybe because it was high profile -  attracted all kinds of “commentary” from people who said it was a failure in terms of sales after only a week online.  A ridiculously short period of time – oh and sales are up!
  • Uniball is a little more obscure, but the company was lambasted for pointing people to their Facebook site rather than the corporate web site as part of a high profile promotion.

In all three cases, commentators didn’t let analysis or even the facts get in the way of a good rant. Instead they took partial information and just jumped right in to give their “valued” opinion.

You see this increasingly on Twitter, with people erupting about some issue or other, only to tweet later that they were mistaken or it wasn’t true – and of course that’s the 2% that actually bother to correct it.

I posted about Old Spice last week, because I thought it was smart both in terms of its traditional, and more especially its social media execution.  It was a subjective post.

Although it shouldn’t, it does amaze me, in the case of Old Spice and Uniball, that people can call a campaign a failure without any knowledge of the objectives or the results.

Clearly this is the outcome of our always-on media environment and I’m far too old and grumpy to expect it to change.

Instead we can all expect to see a lot more of it and from a Public Relations standpoint expect to be fighting a lot more fires as a result.

Everyone is in the communications business…

In the past eighteen years I have attended, participated or given innumerable media training sessions.  I’ve also had the opportunity to see first hand why media training is important – in positive, negative and often entertaining ways.

Regardless of the emergence of social media, and your views on traditional media, training remains important.

Media training is useful not only to people facing journalists or bloggers, but in fact anyone in the business of communicating – which these days means pretty much everyone.

The basic tenets of media training are constant.

  • You need to prepare.
  • You need to know your audience.
  • You need to listen.
  • You need to think.
  • You need to stick to the facts.

These may sound pretty obvious, but it’s amazing how often people communicate without thinking, preparing, listening or talking about what they actually know.

My favorite media training team was always David Tebbutt and Martin Banks.  They brought great common sense, humor and a strong methodology to help countless people communicate effectively.

David recently pointed back to a series of posts he published in 2005 on how to handle the press.

I strongly recommend you click here and go and have a read. It’s always good to refresh the basics.

David has also recently published an interactive version of the methodology diagram he uses in his media training.

Card

Take a look.

 

Posted by Tom Murphy

Smart and funny… recipe for good marketing

You’re faced with an “old” brand (which interestingly – to me at any rate -  was originally created for women in 1937) launched in 1938.  It’s a brand with a lot of baggage, particularly in a world of glossy competitors.

Rather than go the usual route, they took an alternative approach, which certainly appears to be working for them.

Funny, smart ads that don’t involved scantily clad females, and still appeal to the target demographic.

But what’s really smart is how they’re embracing social media creating bespoke videos for people who have tweeted or commented on other social media channels about the ads and about the brand.  There are of course some videos made especially for the ‘great’ and the ‘good’ (not to mention Starbucks), but there are even more for people like you and me.

Smart. Very smart.

A reply to Gail Berg’s post on Facebook…

PR people: if you want respect, pay your dues..

Is PR a profession?  If you think so then Bill Sledzik has a great post with some bad news for you.  He estimates that we’re 0/5 from the five attributes of a profession. His advice:

Follow the PRSA Code of Ethics whether you’re a member of not. Mentor up-and-coming practitioners and interns, encouraging them to act professionally. Support a “professional organization” that attempts to elevate the status of the field. And do the right thing, because “true” professionals act autonomously, always placing the public interest ahead of client interest.

This is a thorny subject. 

From time to time PR people raise the issue of the profession’s (or not) poor perception.  Normally this results in a passionate call to action, a web site, a plan, a petition.  The one common result of these efforts is nothing.  Nothing changes. Last week we had the latest effort from Keith Trivitt and PR Cog*. (*Not to be grumpy but is it ironic that someone writing under a pseudonym is giving out about PR’s perception problems? Really?)

Of course there are very good reasons why PR has a perception issue. First and foremost there’s a lot of very poor practice out there. Some of it is due to laziness, some of it is due to a lack of professional pride or competence and unfortunately some of it is due to a serious lack of ethics. However, it all adds up to a huge reputational challenge.

We are not helped that the barriers to entry into this line of work are at best low and at worst non-existent.

Let’s also not forget that the level of membership of our professional bodies is incredibly low.

I welcome people’s passion and their attempt at affirmative action.  But in my opinion it’s a waste of time, energy and resources.

If you are a PR practitioner and you are serious about addressing our collective perception issues, then the first thing you should do is join your local professional body, adhere to well accepted (global) code of ethics and invest your energy in evangelizing the need for professional membership.

When I lived in Ireland I was a long-time member of the PRII and was lucky enough to spend a few years on the Board.  There I saw firsthand the hard work underway around the world to agree standard codes and evangelize their importance.

The challenge is that while the professional bodies can provide a collective voice for practitioners, their validity is proportional to their membership.  If PR people don’t sign up then their impact and mandate is reduced.

Now I am well aware that these bodies have their limitations, however the fact remains they are already doing a lot of work to address these issues and the more people who sign up, the greater impact they can have.  If you want to make a positive contribution sign up and get involved.

So, put away your new wiki or website. Instead pay a visit to your local professional body, sign up for membership, read and embrace the code of ethics and start educating people about them.

Addressing PR’s perception issues is a complex and some would say impossible task.  However, supporting our professional bodies will help this issue far more than any website or amateur plan.

Share your thoughts in the comments below or let me know on Twitter.

Disclaimer: I was a long time member of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland, though my membership has lapsed since my move to the United States last year.  The PRSA and IABC are on my to-do list.  Add your local professional body to yours Smile.

Update: Judy Gombita over at PR Conversations penned a post on a similar topic a while back: Industry, trade or profession? Some observations on PR associations, present and future