PR Studies

Book review: Loose

Loose: The Future of Business is Letting Go
Martin Thomas, Headline Publishing Group 

Marketing consultant Martin Thomas was co-author of Crowd Surfing, one of my favourite books in 2008. When I saw the new book's contents page containing such chapters as 'Not a place for tidy minds' and 'The end of planning?' I knew I was in for a treat.

In follow up to Crowd Surfing and Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody (my top pick from 2008), this feels like a radical manifesto. It's certainly a challenge to the micro-managers, the planners and brand consultants whose traditional role has been to offer predictability and certainty.

We live in a complex, non-linear world - and the challenge is how to 'embrace the chaos and ambiguity of modern life'.

The author is keen to stress that this is not a web phenomenon. 'Something interesting is happening beyond the world of social media: public meetings are suddenly all the rage.'

It's a social phenomenon - and an understanding of behavioural economics is more useful than mastery of technology, Thomas argues. 'The simplistic view of man as a rational economic animal doesn't appear to fit the mood of the times.'

Simple prescriptions obviously won't do, though the author does offer some broad guiding principles for successful loose organisations (on page 168). He also gives many case studies to show where loose principles prevailed (ASDA, Pret a Manger, First Direct and Unilever among them).

He quotes Google's Shona Brown discussing loose management: 'The way to succeed in fast-paced, ambiguous situations is to avoid creating too much structure, but not to add too little either.'

Those singled out for criticism include business schools that have inculcated a rational approach to business. 'We are witnessing the unravelling of the most fundamental building blocks of the commercial world and a collapse of faith in tight, empirical rational models and ways of thinking.'

Thomas writes well of the millennial generation who 'take great pleasure in subverting any attempts by authority figures to silence them.' But I should say that I'm more likely to be criticised by my students for teaching in too 'loose' a way by those who want me to give them much more precise instructions ('just tell me what you want me to do').

The author is an articulate and well-read guide. Though it's a business book and not an academic text, he frequently makes me feel inadequate by his erudition.

While there's nothing I can disagree with the in the book's premise, it's not an original idea. I'm surprised the author makes no reference to open source, whose concepts have already been taken beyond software development into politics and marketing.

And a book that makes an even more compelling case for creativity and innovation in business is Charles Leadbeater's We Think (not cited here).

But it's an enjoyable and valuable read and the challenge for many will be to learn the lessons and put them into practice.

'The principles that appear to determine the success of any social media initiative are becoming well established: be responsive, be human, be transparent... Unfortunately, most institutions struggle to live by them.'

Pan-European PR

I'm researching some case studies and inviting expert opinions for a class I'm teaching this summer.

One of the assignments - which can't be researched in any textbook - involves proposing a suitable PR and comms network for a US technology startup newly arrived in Europe.

• Where to place the headquarters?
• Where else to locate team members?
• Which languages are essential?
• What combination of in-house and consultancy expertise would you recommend?
• Which PR and comms specialisms are vital at the outset?

I'll be approaching some of the larger PR consultancy networks to hear what advice they can offer, but I'm happy to listen to a range of opinions on the topic - and would welcome your input (in public or in private) via:

• Documents or slides
• Video or audio interviews
• Hyperlinks to online content

I'm also recording contributions from country and regional PR experts (practitioners and academics) and am collecting the thoughts of some European thought leaders in public relations research.

A brief history of briefing

It's the public relations story of the past week, the rather sinister power of PR to damage and undermine through the process known as briefing. Even experienced hands are surprised by the viciousness as we saw from an interview with the Chancellor Alistair Darling and from the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley. As for less experienced people, Christine Pratt of the National Bullying Helpline must be regretting her tangle with the 'forces of hell'. She's enlisted the help of Max Clifford so she knows she's in a fight.

In an ideal world of transparency, there would be no unattributable briefings - and no 'off the record' comments. But we don't live in that perfect world. Briefings - often resulting in coy comments such as 'sources close to the Prime Minister confirmed' - are a form of institutionalised insider gossip that suits the media and PR people close to power.

In a world where everything is on the record, attributable and recorded, people would speak much less freely. The media would lose its privileged access to insight and information. PR people would become pointless intermediaries and the public would be less well informed. Is a lack of truth-telling preferable to truthfulness constrained by, say, anonymity? Few would argue that it is.

What principles can we apply to guide us through these murky waters? Remember that one guiding principle - to tell the truth - often conflicts with another principle - to respect client confidentiality.

• Assume that everything can be made public. In a world of small, ubiquitous cameras and recording devices, we shouldn't assume that our comments will stay private. A private email can easily become very public.
• Do you have good grounds for keeping something private? The most obvious example is national security (the 'lives are at risk' argument). But there are others: commercial negotiations could be scuppered if made public, so jobs could be at risk. There are also competitive reasons not to disclose future product developments. It may even be illegal to use privileged information as you could be convicted of insider dealing.
• Non-attributable: do you have a good reason for keeping your name out of the story beyond saving your job and reputation? The answer is when you believe it's in the public interest for information to be made known, but the information would be compromised if its source were made public.
• What is 'off-the-record'? The simple answer is that nothing is off the record, so don't use it. But there are occasions when there are conflicting principles. We saw this with the MMR vaccine when former Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to say whether his youngest child had received the vaccine so as not to breach the child's right to privacy. Yet this risked undermining the government's case that the vaccine was safe, so the decision was taken to brief senior journalists on an 'off the record' basis. A much better phrase is 'background briefing': is it important to explain the wider context that requires potential breaches of confidentiality or national security? Is the briefing the lesser of two evils?

Corporate reputation management: Nestle

Here are some links for a case study we'll be exploring in class on Monday.

What is Nestle best known for? Confectionery (KitKat) and coffee (Nescafe) are the most recognisable of its many brands.

What about the company's strategic direction? Nestle says it is 'the world's leading nutrition, health and wellness company' and that it is committed to increasing the nutritional value of its products while improving the taste. The UK site is more explicit, claiming it's 'putting health and wellness at the heart of our business'.

As The Economist explores this week, this is a bold claim for a chocolate company ('The unrepentant chocolatier'). What are the risks and challenges arising from this focus?

We'll be analysing whether this corporate strategy is consistent with what we can know of the organisation's culture and values. How should this strategy influence corporate communications?

And then there's the long-running saga of the promotion of infant formula in the developing world. Nestle defends its actions as responsible and agrees in most cases that 'breast is best'. Yet the campaign isn't going away, and has become a defining issue for anti-globalisation activists. What can and should the company do about this? What effect could this have on its reputation, particularly in light of the focus on health and wellness?

Markets versus stakeholders

I've been hearing lots of hints lately to suggest that PR people in the public sector feel at some disadvantage compared with their colleagues working in the private sector. (The suggestions make it sound like like it's an envy of larger budgets and also an inability to innovate and take risks).

I'm still puzzling over this perception, but here's one possible explanation.

Successful private sector business tend to adopt a market-orientation. The more customer-focused, the argument goes, the more successul will the enterprise be for all stakeholders (shareholders, employees etc). This market-orientation gives a clear focus to efforts, and leads to some simple and definitive measures of success (like sales).

Compare this with the more confused stakeholder orientation in a public body, trying to balance many different interests without any simple outcome measures.

But I can see an immediate flaw in this argument, because public relations within a market-orientated business is a less rounded and less strategic activity (ie marketing communications) than public relations within a stakeholder-orientation (where it's usually known as corporate communications).

Add to this the effects of the recession, which have to date mostly been felt in the private sector, and I remain confused as to root of this apparent insecurity.

The unacceptable face of public relations

There's a case for viewing commercial public relations as the 'acceptable face of capitalism'. Championing an organisation's responsibilities to all its stakeholders balances the pressure always to put shareholders and profits first. Corporate Social Responsibility and environmental statements play their part in this.

Contrast this with party political public relations where there is a long tradition from Bernard Ingham to Damian McBride via Alastair Campbell of the PR adviser as chief 'attack dog' for his (my examples are all male) political boss. The unacceptable face, if you like, of public relations.

Why such a contrast between the corporate and political worlds? David Starkey, I imagine, would talk in terms of courtiers and princes. The political PR adviser is a courtier whose power comes solely from their close proximity to the prince, hence the need to take risks and retain the favour of the ruler. Call this the Machiavelli theory.

Politicians, in a democracy, stand or fall by their electoral success. So successful politicians tend to be an everyman (or woman) causing least offense to the electorate (and the Daily Mail). Maintaining an inoffensive public persona requires some strong arm tactics behind the scenes and (unelected) courtiers are more expendable than political princes.

Private sector bosses do not have this pressure to stand for election; they are undoubted kings of their courts. Yet they know they are accountable: to shareholders for profits, to employees for strategic leadership, to customers, regulators and communities. These various accountabilities need careful balancing, the role of corporate public relations.

Turning shares into stakes

I've enjoyed a sporadic virtual presence at Davos thanks to many media reports and online commentary. My highlight? This phrase stands out in Richard Edelman's summary:

“You cannot think about shareholder value without considering stakeholders. Any business that wants to endure must have trust and agreement of society for legitimacy." Ian Davis, McKinsey.

It's interesting to note that management consultants are focusing on more than the bottom line (perhaps it's inevitable). But it poses a challenge to PR consultants, because this should be our natural territory. What's the purpose of public relations? To help establish and maintain the social legitimacy of organisations in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. We've recommended and conducted communications audits for many years; who's going to be first to conduct a legitimacy audit?

Welcome to the age of legitimacy. Prepare to move on from the age of marketing and branding.

Where is PR?

More interesting than discussing 'what is PR?' is the question of 'why do PR?' Most interesting of all is the question of where PR sits in the organisation - the theme of the upcoming EUPRERA congress, awkwardly titled 'institutionalizing (sic) public relations and corporate communication'.

Dr Tom Watson has just presented at a management forum in South Africa and has this to say about the locus of public relations education:

If PR is to gain continuing recognition as a management function, programmes need to either be situated in business schools (separate from marketing programmes) or have a strong managerial focus if placed elsewhere.

Mad map I

I was introducing corporate communications yesterday by looking at stakeholders and by looking at PR functions. A conceptualised map came into my head and I scribbled it on the whiteboard (see image, please enlarge for detail).

It's simplified of course, but not I hope too simplistic. One student asked for a reference to the source so I had to admit it was no more academic and authorised than me jotting on a whiteboard. So here it is: published of sorts, and peer reviewed of sorts (by you).

One phrase equity

More praise for Tesco. CorpComms magazine reports on the retailer's community relations initiatives, and Naresh Ramchandani in Media Guardian explores the meaning (free registration) of the firm's slogan 'Every little helps' ('perhaps the most ingeniously modest slogan ever written').