PR Studies

Sorrell on Keynes and Friedman

Heard in an interview on the Radio 4 Today Programme this morning, and taken from today's WPP results release:

"the revival of Keynesian economic policy and eclipse of Friedmanite monetarism, along with state-directed capitalism, have pumped and will pump massive amounts of liquidity into the system."

I read this out in a lecture to final year PR students this morning, and I'm offering a prize for anyone who can come and explain what Sir Martin Sorrell means. No takers yet (but I've been busy meeting students all day so far.)

UPDATE: No one has come forward to claim the prize (one student says there were too many long words!). By the way, I did understand the point Sorrell was making and wasn't singling this out as an example of impenetrable jargon. Just as a genuine challenge to students seeking to understand the complexities of what's going on in the world of business.

Ordure! Ordure!

Merde. After five years of hard-earned and well-merited obscurity, this blog is up for an award tonight. The Flackenhack category - Wank 2.0: User Generated Twat.

I can't make it tonight. But I hope I'll be able to take those on the shortlist out for dinner some day: I'd be honoured to spend some time with Ben Hammersley, Jeff Jarvis, Richard Millington and Brendan Cooper. May the best blogger not win!

Practitioners: 'what do you read?' meme

I'm keen to start a regular 'bookshelf' column in Behind the Spin magazine. This will give PR practitioners a chance to say which books they most often consult. In previous issues, Lord Chadlington has mentioned his admiration of the novels of Anthony Trollope. Currently, Karl Milner praises Drew Westen's The Political Brain (a timely read about the pyschology of US presidential campaigns).

They could be books on politics, business or society; textbooks, style guides, self-help manuals or novels. They could be standards or surprises. Either way, I think it will help today's students and young practitioners.

Here are the groundrules. Choose up to ten books, and write up to 100 words explaining each choice. Send these to me with your portrait photo in JPG format (email address on right). You're also welcome to cross-post to your own blog.

To get you thinking, here are the top ten books I most often refer to (space does not allow descriptions):

1. The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
2. Strategic Communication Management, by Jon White and Laura Mazur
3. The Empty Raincoat, Charles Handy
4. The Economist Style Guide
5. Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky
6. Journalism: Truth or Dare?, Ian Hargreaves
7. Naked Conversations, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
8. Permission Marketing, Seth Godin
9. Evaluating Public Relations, Tom Watson and Paul Noble
10. The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, Al Ries and Laura Ries

Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People came surprisingly close to being picked and this morning I found myself recommending Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene whilst admitting I've never read it myself...

Bloggers: the party's over

It's a classic article that's already creating lots of chatter: Wired magazine's Twitter, Flickr, Facebook make blogs look so 2004.

The author's right: blogging's slow, it's boring, it doesn't generate buzz. If you want to make friends, go on Facebook; if you want to influence people, try Twitter.

Thing is, from the same facts I've reached a different conclusion. I think Facebook and Twitter (so 2008) may just have saved blogging. Blogging's relative slowness and the need for considered, self-contained posts makes it an ideal place for reflection. As the speed and quantity of posts has declined, the quality has been increasing.

Reflection may sound rather academic; so let me recommend a well-aimed rant that reminds me why I still love blogging. Just don't tell Tom Murphy that blogging's dead; that would really fire him up.

We're hiring again

In the week the Governor of the Bank of England and the Prime Minister mentioned the R word, I'm still concerned with recruitment. We took on two colleagues in the summer to deliver our new BA Journalism degree, we've already hired one lecturer on a one-year contract and we now need another. Our public relations and communications teaching team now has around 14 members.

Universities are not immune to the wider economy, but they work on different cycles. Student numbers overall are still increasing, and Master's courses are growing in popularity. Recruiting students from outside the EU helps with income, as does research and consultancy work.

One of our star researchers has gained public funds for a one-year research project, so we're looking to replace her. We welcome applications from practitioners, but we need someone with a strong interest in theoretical concepts for this post. Here's the advertisement on the university website.

A one-year post might suit someone returning to university lecturing or looking to make the transition into the sector full time. Please contact me if you'd like to discuss this informally, but do avoid the telephone while we resolve the problems with our new IP phones...

Peter's friends

For me, the most interesting narrative - the only interesting narrative - of the story concerning George Osborne, Peter Mandelson, Oleg Deripaska and Nat Rothschild is this: Don't mess with Mandelson.

It appears to be his revenge for the leaked private conversation from a Corfu taverna that caused embarrassment when he was recalled to the UK government. That's certainly the angle taken by the Daily Mail. In revenge, Mandelson - through friends - has turned the news spotlight on George Osborne.

I don't expect this story to run and run, though the BBC's Nick Robinson thinks it may still have legs. At times in the last 24 hours, it has seemed this is the biggest story on the BBC since the Large Bank-run Collider.

For students who may not recall his earlier role in the creation of New Labour, the noble lord is sometimes viewed as a 'prince of darkness' - a modern Machiavelli.

Publish, then filter

John Naughton celebrates an approximate tenth anniversary of blogging in his Observer column. (I'm a newbie who started blogging elsewhere in 2001, though PR Studies has only been going for five years.)

He quotes Andrew Sullivan who sees blogging as a new literary genre and Clay Shirky who sees it as the mass amateurisation of publishing: 'publish, then filter'.

Blogging briefing

'A little less conversation, a little more action please'... After two days of talking it's time to change pace and invite a new group of practitioner-students to carry on the discussions on their blogs. (Of course, conversation counts as action in our world). Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Set up your blog. I recommend WordPress (though quite 'techie', it's open source, industry standard and free); there's a ready-made forum for your PR-focused WordPress blog at PR Blogs.org. From then on, it's about content, conections and community:
2. Content: Have any ideas in class sparked your interest? What are other PR bloggers writing about? What's going on in the world? What have you been reading? So many questions... How will you write about it (short and frequent posts probably work better than long and occasional ones).
3. Connections. Think link: is your blog a stepping stone to other sources and ideas? Are you begining to get noticed (inbound links, comments, RSS subscriptions)? Remember that Technorati authority will be one of the ways of evaluating your efforts.
4. Community. Who cares? Diarists throughout history have been content to write for themselves (and occasionally for posterity). That's a good start point. If what you write has some value to a handful of people whose commentary also interests you, then you will have developed a valuable community. Some blogs have a wider reach than newspapers; most are better for focusing on small, niche interests. Join PROpenMic and let this vibrant community of PR students, practitioners and faculty know about your blogs.

Some key guidelines. Get started before the end of October, and communicate your blog's URL by the usual channels (email, social networks, class wiki page). You need to keep your blog running for three months: it will be formally assessed after the end of January 2009. My guidelines for PR student blogs may still help, though much has changed in the last two years.

A 'two-way symmetrical' with James Grunig

You must have noticed. The emergence of Twitter (twitch-speed) and Facebook (fun, frivolous and frankly personal) has allowed blogging to settle into a comfortably reflective niche in the personal publishing ecosystem.

This means it's suitable for discussing, debating and disseminating ideas - but preferably in everyday language (note how Seth Godin does this, but not the debating bit). PR Conversations has lived up to its name by debating public relations and social media with James Grunig.

Here's the key discussion point I take out of this. James Grunig says:

I think public relations is headed in two incompatible directions... I call these two competing approaches to public relations the symbolic, interpretive, paradigm and the strategic management, behavioral, paradigm.

Practitioners who follow the interpretive paradigm emphasize messages, publicity, media relations, and media effects to put up a smoke screen around the organization so publics cannot see the organization’s behavior as it truly is.

In contrast, the behavioral, strategic management, paradigm focuses on the participation of public relations executives in strategic decision-making so that they can help manage the behavior of organizations...The strategic management paradigm emphasizes two-way communication of many kinds to provide publics a voice in management decisions and to facilitate dialogue between management and publics both before and after decisions are made. The strategic management paradigm does not exclude traditional public relations activities such as media relations and the dissemination of information.

I see public relations moving in both directions. I hope it will move away from the interpretive approach and become more of a strategic management approach. I have done everything I could do in my career to move it in that direction. However, I believe practitioners who emphasize marketing communication and media relations in their work are pushing hard to maintain the interpretive approach.

This is a good start point for our discussions in the class running on Friday and Saturday.

Students: here's how to join the CIPR

As Carys Samuel (one of our CIPR student reps) said at last night's guest lecture, you should consider joining the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. The student application form is here (in pdf format) and the annual membership fee is £35. This runs to the end of September 2009 so don't delay if you're to gain a full year's benefits.

Here's why I think you should join (most important reasons first, though you may disagree with my priorities):

1. Public relations, like any other management discipline, is currently at best only semi-professional in its status. This will only change as professional standards and professional membership becomes expected. Education, qualifications, continuous professional development are all drivers of professionalisation. You can take charge of the wheel!
2. A member database of close to 10,000 members - complete with contact details - is a vital resource as you seek placement experience and contacts in order to develop your experience. You'll be listed in this, too.
3. You can add membership status to your CV. You're already paying much more to be a full-time student, so why not take this extra step and gain much more credibility?
4. You will receive the much-improved PR Week for free as well as the CIPR member magazine, Profile.

I've been a member for ten years and will gladly answer your questions and sign your application forms.