The PR Warrior

FROM THE VAULT: The PR Warrior Accentuates the Positive in his Lessons from the Frontline

Yesterday I trawled the PR Warrior's vaults checking out the past 10 months' worth of posts. 

Reason being I had just written two not-overly-complimentary back-to-back posts on Westpac and wanted to make sure that over the journey I haven't been too negative with my stories! Nothing really wrong with being negative as long as criticism is constructive, and that's something I try hard to do, but maybe it doesn't always come out that way? 

Anyway, I discovered 'positive' stories far outweighed those where I had a strong opinion about a brand or company that I felt was going about things the wrong way.

Seeing as I had gone to all that effort, I thought I'd write a post highlighting both the positive posts and the those where I perhaps slipped in a left jab or two!

Here are the examples...some good lessons all round in this lot!

'Positive' (i.e. brands doing interesting stuff!)

Apple

Mini

Tiger Woods

Movember

Queensland University of Technology

Playboy

Powderfinger

Country Fire Authority

McDonald's

P!nk

V Energy Drink

Tourism Queensland

'Negative' (errr, constructive criticism!)

Bank's Inertia Fuels Nude Pic 'Storm'

A Lesson for Brands in Today's Social Age: Suck It Up & Get on With Life!

'Twitterrific' Time Magazine Shows Up The Australian Newspaper

PRIA Missteps with First Episode of PRTV

What Brands Can Learn From AC-DC

Australia's greatest musical export AC-DC recently returned to home soil for a major sell-out tour.

These guys are simply amazing. Still rocking after all these years, packing in the crowds year after year after year. Who would have thought the band would still be one of the biggest rock acts in the world some 35 years after their formation in Australia in 1974?

So what can brands learn from AC-DC?

1.  Consistency

2.  No frills

3.  Give the customer what they want

4.  Remain true to your roots

5.  Don't screw the marketplace

For the full post, check out @parkyoung's blog IN BRANDS WE TRUST.

The Issue of 'Control' Looms Large in Latest Twitter Kerfuffle

It's been mildly interesting to follow the @westpac Twitter hullabaloo that emerged yesterday afteroon (hullabaloo is probably the right word - it's certainly far from being a debacle or fiasco).

I posted about it here - Westpac Deletes Quirky Tweet - Proves it Hasn't Got a Clue(train); included is an update to the story as it continued to unfold into the night.

I've had numerous discussions since with a range of people - in person, on Twitter and via comments on the blog post itself.

I must say the conversation has been robust and certainly far from black and white.

Many points of view have been overlaid with a variety of acute observations; a couple merely skimmed across the surface of my post and felt I had beaten up the issue with a view to creating web traffic.

Now, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I don't make it a habit of bashing big brands, nor do I go out of my way to deliberately inflame situations in order to generate traffic for my site. Simply not interested in doing that.

On the rare occasions I get involved commenting on a situation where a major company has stuffed up something (generally it has been online), I tend to come at it from the sidelines as an interested observer trying to piece together various streams of a story. Given my background, I generally offer some commentary from a PR perspective.

Anyway, back to Westpac... 

I've taken in all views and had time to reflect on the post.

Here are some additional clarifying thoughts: 

There's a bigger picture at play here. 

The tweet in question was in my opinion pretty harmless and could have been corrected quite easily. The fact someone higher up in Westpac thought it necessary to delete said tweet is one thing, that action was taken after potentially thousands had already seen it and commented on it (in a generally light-hearted way I might add) is just plain weird, and it brought unnecessary heat down on the brand. 

The irony is people liked the tweet. As I said in the original post, it was out of left field, a bit quirky, and it helped @westpac gain between 150 to 200 extra followers. That's something like a 20-25% boost in Twitter followers. There's a message there!

Some of the comments on the post included:

• Andrew Wilson made a good point that a brand's authenticity shouldn't just be in the social media space but reflected right across a company's operations. 

• Sarah Thomas thought it was surprising Westpac didn't have real-time social media monitoring in place, but hat-tipped the bank on updating their status on Twitter.

• Steve Sammartino believed Westpac blew an opportunity, while Karalee Evans felt it was a mistake for the bank to delete the offending tweet but could understand why they did it.

• "Stephen" believed the follow-up tweet from Westpac didn't acknowledge the "heightened public interest"; Craig Badings rightly pointed out the situation was "indicative of the struggle so many corporations have with the immediacy, authenticity and intimacy of communicating online". 

Lip Service?

My bigger picture contention is that major companies continue to struggle with the new media landscape - is it a case of the technology (the 'movement'?) moving too quickly for them? Are they taking the social web seriously, or are they simply paying lip service? 

This story is less about an innocuous single tweet and more about a prevailing attitude that big companies still think they can shut down conversation and control the message. Well, I'm sorry but you can't.

A chunk of my original post put the situation in context with a couple of theses from The Cluetrain Manifesto. Ten-plus years on it's still frighteningly fresh in its observations. I do ponder the question: 

How many senior executives and corporate affairs people have actually taken the time to read the book and take notes? 

Without putting too finer point on it, this 'movement' hasn't just snuck up on us, it's been emerging for some time.

And...it's not just about the technology!

(OK, I'm over this story now...NEXT!)

Westpac Deletes Quirky Tweet - Proves it Hasn't Got a Clue(train)

Why is it so hard for a major company - in this case, one of Australia's biggest banks - to lighten up and have a bit of fun? 

Why do large organisations find it so difficult to express their human side?

In today's social media age, this is emerging as a huge issue - the disconnect between big companies and their customers. It happens across so many fronts, but every now and then, something jumps out and screams:

"Why don't these companies get it?"

A couple of weeks ago it was Macquarie Bank. 

Today it was Westpac's turn.

It started innocently enough when this quirky 25-character message appeared on the bank's official Twitter account:

"Oh, so very over it today".

It quickly struck a chord on Twitter.

@brisbanetimes was quick off the mark and alerted Westpac's media relations team to ensure everything was alright at the bank.

According to the Times:

"Within two minutes of making that phone call at 4.26 pm, the Tweet was pulled from the site, but not before thousands saw it."

And not before a few quick tweeps managed to get a screen grab of the 'offending' tweet (below).

 (hat-tip @vlietman)
 

I don't know about you but the tweet in question represents all that is great about Twitter - it's a medium through which big companies can show their human side. 

Sure, there was the odd facetious tweet or two in reply (hey, they're a bank, what do you expect?), but by and large tweeps thought the remark was cool and were genuinely supportive of the Westpac tweeter responsible. In fact, the response from the public was overwhelmingly...

POSITIVE!

Why? Because the tweet was real. Authentic. Quirky. Out of left field. So...unexpected (from a bank, anyway).

Check some of these responses:

This story was quickly picked up by sections of the mainstream media, and several tweets commenting on the kerfuffle were from journalists. I fully expect this to be in The Age tomorrow!

Follow the tweet stream here. I've been watching this unfold in real time as I write this post. Fascinating stuff!

True Colours

Of course we're not talking a major issue here by any means but sometimes it's the small things - that get blown up into bigger things (thanks to social media) - that reveal a brand's true colours. 

Now, here's a company that could use some positive word-of-mouth buzz. (For a quick recap, click here and here). Alas, Westpac has gone out of its way to demonstrate yet again it's a company that's hopelessly out of touch. It has some real PR challenges ahead as the bank clearly doesn't understand how strategic communication works in today's hyper-connected environment.

Cluetrain Manifesto

Readers of this blog will probably know the ol' PR Warrior has a soft spot for the Cluetrain Manifesto. Indeed, I might even bang on a little about this seminal work, first published in 1999. Okay, maybe a lot :)

But check out these two Cluetrain's 95 theses and you'll understand why it's as relevant today as ever before (and that the message clearly is not getting through to the corporate sector):

#21: Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

#84: We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they come out and play?

These words were penned over 10 years ago and yet they could have been written in response to today's Westpac Twitter ordeal.

P.S. Could somebody please send some copies of Cluetrain to Westpac's C-suite and media department. Thanks.

UPDATE:

Roughly four hours later, Westpac responded thus:

As Mumbrella comments:

One of the biggest perils of updating Twitter for corporate accounts is that those who take part often have access to several profiles including, usually, their own personal one. 

Some insightful comments below are worth reading (thanks guys for your input into the conversation).

Good on Westpac for responding reasonably quickly with a light-hearted tweet, although I can't help feel a lot of effort probably went into getting the tone of the above tweet right :)

Mistake or not (and let's face it, it really wasn't a big deal), the bank's knee-jerk action in deleting the tweet in the first place brought unnecessary 'heat' on the company and I maintain is consistent with a brand that is, like many large organisations, struggling to adapt to the new media age.

All this reminds me of something I heard several industry observers make mention of at a conference last year, and that was the public will give big companies something like 18 months' grace to get into social media, make mistakes and earn their stripes etc. But, if they keep cocking it up, consumers won't be as forgiving. It was an interesting observation then, and it remains quite a relevant point today, some six months later.

Interesting times ahead!

Social Media and How it is Impacting on Public Relations (Part Two)

This is PART TWO of a guest post by strategic public relations professional and blogger, Craig Pearce (below). His views and news on PR can be found at Public relations and managing reputation: better business and society. 

 In the second post of this three-part series (READ PART ONE HERE), issues discussed will include the participation required to utilise social media to its full effect, the dialectic between reputation and engagement for organisational stakeholders and social media as an issues management activity. The third and final post will flag the importance of social media to organisational stakeholders, its word-of-mouth impact and what public relations needs to do to leverage the opportunity that social media is presenting it with.

 What are your thoughts on Grunig’s propositions? 

Can PR folk be effective at their highest level without a clear understanding of two-way symmetrical communication? 

Do you try to control target audiences/stakeholder? How have you fared?

Participation and engagement in a digital environment: implications for public relations 

The internet and social media has empowered communities, or stakeholder groups, “in a way that is truly revolutionary,” according to Professor James Grunig. It has not, however, evolved the essential model of his best practice PR theory, two-way symmetrical communication.

Social media possesses, however, “properties that make them perfectly suited for a strategic management paradigm of public relations – properties that one would think would force public relations practitioners to abandon their traditional one-way, message-oriented, asymmetrical and ethnocentric paradigm of practice.”

Grunig, the world’s leading authority on public relations, recently said, in an article entitled 'Paradigms of Global Public Relations in an Age of Digitalisation', that social media has, “the potential to truly revolutionalise public relations.” This post – the second of a three-part series – discusses certain elements of the article that I think are of interest and relevance to the profession.

The notion of ‘participation’ (as exemplified to an almost poetic degree by social media) is directly analogous to public relations, which is one reason why PR owns social media and discussions such as Grunig’s are ones we must pay a great amount of attention to.

One of the crusading themes of Grunig’s career has been to get PR practitioners thinking and acting more strategically, as well as encouraging the profession to make its presence felt more assertively within business and society (and probably academia, too!). Social media, he says, will not be utilised to its full potential until this occurs. It will be used as a dumping ground, a channel for one-way communication that does not truly engage with stakeholders.

Engagement and reputation for public relations

Grunig makes the interesting proposition, if I read his discussion correctly, that reputation is irrelevant to organisational stakeholders who are engaged with it. “I believe that organisations have reputational relationships only with people for whom the organisation has no consequences,” he says. “These audiences have little importance to an organisation.”

 This notion will surely challenge a few brand-driven marketers. Stakeholders who are truly engaged with an organisation are ones, “who might be affected by management decisions or who might affect those decisions – such as employees or community residents.”

These active groups of stakeholders will, “make issues out of the consequences of organisational decisions.” This makes it particularly important for communication with stakeholders to occur before decisions are made. This is the approach that will be most effective in resolving potential issues in a negative environment, but also how to leverage the positive dimensions of a situation, even on a topic as prosaic as what washing powder constituents are most likely to prompt a customer to buy it.

An essential element of this is that ongoing market research and environmental scanning are an intrinsic element of strategic public relations. PR needs to be proactive, ahead of the game and issues management-driven to achieve the best possible result for an organisation and its stakeholders.

Social media participation: inherently an issues management tactic

An involvement in social media facilitates effective issues management. One oversight in Grunig’s suppositions is, I think, that he misses the issues identification and reputation protection dimension of an ongoing involvement in social media.

He mentions using scanning tools like Google alerts, but this is, really, a reactive mechanism. It is not a participatory or engaging one. Involvement in social media is an almost inadvertent means of environmental scanning and/or issues management.

Social media activity is an issues management behaviour because it is an example of relating to publics in a proactive, sharing, organic contributing manner. It is a behaviour that is in front of the issue, a part of it, not playing catch up with it. Social media’s potential will not be realised just by watching and a low-level participation. Ongoing and meaningful giving (as defined by stakeholders and the organisation) and conversation is required.

 Many, including me, have discussed how Involvement in social media helps manage reputational crises and there are two elements of this that are relevant to this discussion. 

The first is that when a crisis hits, an organisation will already have a number of connections that/who it can communicate with. A network has already been set up. This facilitates an organisation getting its own position on the crisis out into the environment.

The second element has two dimensions. Both are relevant to the relationship that effective engagement through social media will have generated. The first is simply that this relationship exists. 

Stakeholders are listening. They are engaging, just as the organisation is.

The other dimension is that because of this relationship the stakeholders will be:

·       more willing to listen to the organisation

·       more willing to forgive it (if, indeed, it has actually done something ‘wrong’, or not aligned with its own or its stakeholders’ values)

·       more amenable to distributing information relevant to the organisation’s crisis response to their social media (and offline, for that matter) connections.

Those stakeholders it has involved with in a social media context may even advocate/support the organisation’s perspective, largely because of the positive relationship they had with it pre-crisis.

Trust had been developed between the organisation and its stakeholders – facilitated by the mutually meaningful and valuable social media-centric relationship!

Crisis management programs that have utilised social media have been, to date, dominated by organisations that are, in the main, using social media in a meaningful way for the first time during the crisis. And this approach has been valuable.

How much better would the result have been if it had actually engaged (and I mean truly, profoundly interacted/gave/etc) in social media before the crisis began?! You would have to think much better.

In the first post of this three-part series, issues discussed included how social media has complicated stakeholder targeting and communication, the notion of ‘giving’ that characterises both public relations and social media and the lack of control that organisations have over their stakeholders. The final post flags the importance of social media to organisational stakeholders, its word-of-mouth impact and what public relations needs to do to leverage the opportunity that social media is presenting it with. 

What are your thoughts on Grunig’s thoughts? Is organisational reputation irrelevant for those who are engaged with it? 

Do you think it is feasible for an organisation’s pre-crisis engagement in social media to mitigate the crisis’s effect on the organisation?

THE THIRD AND FINAL POST IN THIS SERIES WILL BE POSTED NEXT WEEK ON CRAIG'S BLOG: Public Relations and Managing Reputation | Better Business and Society. 

What's YOUR Gut Feel on Social Media?

As we edge towards the six-week mark of the new year, one thing I am certain about and that is the Australian marketing and PR industry - as well as business generally - is finally starting to sit up and take social media seriously.

Now, there's no 'hard stats' to back this up, merely gut feel from talking to many people in positions of influence within major organisations, chatting to others (consultants and the like) who are also dealing with the 'big end of town', as well as reading a large number of press articles that, well, seem downright positive and pragmatic about the subject.

This time last year, mainstream media was quite derisive about the social web. You could almost hear the journalists snorting as they filed their stories on Facebook, Twitter and the like (invariably the articles never strayed too far away from the major platforms).

It appears to be a different situation now. 

Serious Stories

For a few weeks there, the Australian Financial Review contained numerous 'serious' stories on social media.

So too a number of other newspapers.

And this, in The Economist last week - a 16-page special report on social networking (I know it's not Australian-produced, but it is read quite extensively in this country, I understand).

Maybe it's because Australians are now recognised as the heaviest users of social media?

So the general feeling I'm getting - and I'd be interested in others' views on this - is that business in Australia is truly starting to wake up to the fact the world has indeed changed thanks to technology and the emergence of the social web. That it's not just about dipping your toe in the water and opening up a Facebook account, but thinking strategically about how the social web can have an impact on your brand.

For marketers and PR people, there seems to be a resigned inevitability to it all. A bit like - "Oh well, this isn 't going to go away...I suppose I'll have to do something about it". But this is balanced by pockets of enthusiasm from those in the industry that are picking up on the incredible opportunities social media presents companies and brands.

Will this polarising view continue, I wonder?

Cold Hard Reality

For business people, they're realising social media isn't so much a fad as cold, hard reality. And you know what, I'm not seeing any where as much of the fear as I did last year. These past few weeks, the vibe I've been getting from senior business executives has been surprisingly upbeat, indeed curious, about the potential opportunities provided by new media technologies. Maybe it's resignation to the fact it isn't going to go away? Or, they've done their homework over the Christmas break and now have a better grip on the situation.

I'm not saying there aren't any in marketing and PR (or business or media or government) who haven't got their heads in the sand. There are still tons of them, no doubt!

As I said at the outset, gut feel only. 

There are plenty of stats that point towards greater acceptance of social media in the form of marketers indicating they will be spending more in the space this coming year. 

I guess I'm thinking more about public acceptance levels of - and excitement for - the social web generally. Has it finally gone 'mainstream' within the business community?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

What does your gut tell you? 

SOURCE: Photobucket 

Bank's Inertia Fuels Nude Pic 'Storm'

You have to appreciate the irony!

Some poor dude who works at Sydney's Macquarie Bank - financial adviser David Kiely - was this week caught on television checking out several racy photos of supermodel Miranda Kerr (from her recent shoot for GQ magazine).

For those who don't know the story, Kiely's workstation was in the background of a live TV interview between one of his colleagues and Chris Bath of Channel Seven news.

If you squint, you might - just might - see Kiely in the background opening up an email and checking out pics of Kerr. At the last second, he spins around and looks into the barrel of the camera - sprung! 

NOTE: we're not talking hardcore porn here but stuff you generally see on TV's Video Hits on a Sunday morning..or...the Daily Telegraph! See below...

 

Just wondering, if anyone at Macquarie Bank read the above issue of the Daily Telegraph while at work, would they be in trouble too? But I digress - this is not about HR but PR (I wonder if there's a HR Warrior out there?). 

Okay, at time of writing, according to various sources, David Kiely is in hiding awaiting some measure of internal discipline. At the very worse, if the reports are correct, he faces the sack.

Meanwhile, the YouTube clip has gone bananas and the world's media has gotten in on the act.

Pleasingly, the public have come to the broker's defence, with efforts to "save David Kiely's job" now in full swing. Kerr herself has said she would support the effort by signing a petition if required. 

Meanwhile, Macquarie Bank has reportedly stuck to the corporate line that it "takes matters such as the unacceptable use of technology extremely seriously"...yeah, yeah.

Boring and Stiff

Looking at this from a purely PR perspective, it would seem that by putting out the regulated (i.e. boring, stiff, jargon-filled) corporate response - and then going into hiding and refusing to comment - Mac Bank has fuelled the issue.

Had the bank acted swiftly - and you'd hope that sanity would prevail and Kiely only gets a rap across the knuckles at the very worst - then the negative ripple effect ("Save David Kiely's job" etc) would have been severely blunted. As it is, all eyes - the media's and the social web - remain trained on Macquarie Bank.

The bank has stuffed up the classic PR tenet - be first to fill the page. If you don't, others will...as they have in this case.

In terms of brand and reputation, if this issue is about Mac Bank upholding "moral standards", don't forget we're talking about a company that is hardly representative of community attitudes. Remember, this is the bank that has a history of paying outlandish bonuses to its senior executives, to the outcry of the media and general public.

So what I take from this is that Miranda Kerr's bottom is not acceptable at Macquarie Bank, but paying the boss a $100 million nest-egg is. 

Interesting...

Oh, as an aside, GQ Australia editor Nicholas Smith says the magazine is pitched at Macquarie Bank staff.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Smith said:

"We actively think of the Macquarie Bank worker when we put our magazine together each month."

P.S. if you didn't get my suggestion re irony at the outset, it's that traditional media (TV) instigated the social media (YouTube) frenzy - albeit inadvertently. Normally these days, it's the other way around. 

UPDATE: Macquarie Bank has finally come out and stated that Kiely would be keeping his job, according to The Australian newspaper.

Social Media and How it is Impacting on Public Relations (Part One)

This is PART ONE of a guest post by strategic public relations professional and blogger, Craig Pearce (left). His views and news on PR can be found at Public relations and managing reputation: better business and society.

The world’s leading authority on public relations, Professor James Grunig recently said that social media has, “the potential to truly revolutionalise public relations – but only if a paradigm shift in the thinking of many practitioners and scholars takes place.” (Praxis, a digital PR resource centre.)

In the Praxis article, entitled Paradigms of global public relations in an age of digitalisation, he provides a lucid analysis of, and adds considerable value to, discussions on public relations and its dialectic with social media. This post – the first of a three-part series – discusses certain elements of the article that are of interest and relevance to me and, I think, the public relations profession at large.

Social media, Grunig says, has “the potential to make the profession more global, strategic, two-way and interactive, symmetrical or dialogical, and socially responsible.” This will not occur, he warns, if PR pros use it as a means of “dumping messages”, however. Rather, he counsels professionals to interact with stakeholders and bring information, “from the environment into organisational decision-making.”

Implications of social media on the practice of public relations

The prevalence of social media has accelerated (or crystallised, it’s hard to know which sometimes) the emergence of disparate cultures and sub-cultures. This has, in turn, led to a fracturing of target audiences for organisations. Segmenting target audiences has become increasingly more challenging (a new meaning of the ‘digital divide’?).

Issues of concern to these audiences, the language they use and their needs and wants make the public relations (and marketing) professional’s job more difficult than ever, certainly, but so do they make it more important. Based on the assumption that public relations professionals are the organisation-stakeholder relationship experts, it has given the profession an opportunity to progress its ongoing battle to secure a more strategic, influential and high-level role within organisations.

Further, this emphasises the need for public relations professionals to be appropriately educated, at both a tactical and strategic level.

The plethora of social media being utilised by target audiences, or stakeholders, has placed a huge burden on PR practitioners. The technical nuances and appropriate social behaviour for each social media ‘species’ demand prodigious (and daunting) amounts of knowledge, as well as multi-skilling and multi-tasking attributes.

And do not forget that both the technical elements and capabilities, as well as the sort of behaviour that is suited to these mechanisms, is in a constant state of evolution – the world has no place for a complacent PR operative.

The conversation = public relations and social media

Another dimension of social media is that its very existence is predicated on the notion of ‘giving’, of an approach that benefits a community or society. Thought leadership plays an important part in this dialectic. Corporate social responsibility is deeply analogous to it.

 All of these elements go back to the core theory of Grunig and his colleagues, that of two-way symmetrical communication. This is an approach which sees public relations as an activity that enables organisations and their stakeholders to come to a negotiated, mutually agreed set of behaviours. These are the PR programs which reap results, according to Grunig (pictured left).

Controlling target audiences?

As Trevor Young recently pointed out, since when did organisations have control over what their stakeholders thought or how they behaved? He’s on the same page as Grunig here, who says, “the assumed control of messages and influence has always been an illusion rather than a reality of public relations practice.”

Some organisations and practitioners might find this reality a little too tough to stomach. If that’s the case, then the social media waters are way too choppy for you, baby.

The only way to influence is to engage. This means conversational communication, two-way symmetrical communication. And not just communication. We are talking behavioural change here, as well, from an organisation and its stakeholders. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Research has discredited the media release, one-way notion of public relations and the assertion that control of stakeholders ever occurred. Stakeholders, “have always controlled the messages to which they are exposed.’ Best practice public relations, Grunig says, is “a participant in organisational decision-making rather than a conveyor of messages about decisions after they are made by other managers.”

PART TWO of this guest post by Craig will be posted next week.