PR Studies

Ridiculous PR and objectivity

Wikipedia requires contributors to write from a 'neutral point of view' and its founder Jimmy Wales discourages edits from PR practitioners because their view is deemed, as paid advocates, to be biased. (There's currently a lively debate on this topic on a Facebook group.)

This post is not about Wikipedia, but about the struggle for PR to be practised objectively. For, on the face of it, the paid advocate cannot ever be neutral.

It's because PR seems incapable of neutrality - and will always be vulnerable to charges of 'spin' or even deceit - that we should mind our language.

It is because we act as advocates (and have an intermediary role between the organisations and key groups) that we must be mindful of how the organisation is perceived. 

A stream of self-serving, upbeat messages can easily be dismissed as 'just PR'. To be effective, PR must adopt the language and values of news and be written objectively. How does this sound?

• 'Smiley Company are pleased to announce Fun Fridays'

It's wrong in so many ways. It put the organisation at the centre of the story, where it is unlikely to belong. It views the company as plural (we, they) and describes its state of emotion (who cares?). In short, it's not news. It may look like PR (and there's a lot of this about), but it's not ever likely to be effective public relations.

How can ojective public relations improve on this?

• 'Call for Fun Fridays to banish national gloom'

It's still weak, the softest of soft news, but it does raise a topical issue. It's not so smug and doesn't open the organisation to ridicule. At least it's not quite so readily dismissed.

When subjectivity is so inappropriate and so easily-spotted, why is it still so common in public relations statements? The answer has to be group think - the downside of organisational group dynamics - and the desire to please the boss or the client.

But what is more pleasing? Soft words that flatter the boss but fail to deliver any news (and may lead to ridicule); or a more objective approach that removes the self-serving publicity but may deliver greater news impact?

It's the difference between writing with the organisation/client in mind and writing with the reader in mind (the reader, conventionally, being a jaded journalist who has seen it all before).

It's easy to understand, but hard to put into practice. I raise it here because I see so many students and junior practitioners falling into group think and believing that PR means writing in an overly-promotional style.

To respond to Jimmy Wales, we may not be neutral but we can and should be objective.

 

Back to earth. Back to reality.

There's a feeling of 'back to school' this week. But that's not the reason for the jolt.

The reality check is the decision to fold the Media Guardian supplement (and Education and Society supplements too) into the main paper. Clearly, this is a commercially-driven decision taken because of the migration of job advertisements from print to online (and elsewhere). Decades ago, before the world of the web, each Monday's Media Guardian had page after page of job ads and was the place to find a whole range of graduate opportunities. Times change, and so does technology.

The second jolt relates to this first one. Here's a very lucid perspective on the issue of unpaid internships from an MSc Marketing student. The phrase that leaps out at me is this uncontentious-looking one: 'I’m 23 and aspire to a career in advertising'. Only connect. The Guardian loses its well-established Media supplement  because of the migration of classified ads online. Then ask some questions about the future of display ads and print media.

Yes, but surely broadcast ads have bounced back in the past year. Perhaps; but what's the wider picture? The future of advertising isn't in advertising. It's in creating ideas, delivering compelling communications, fostering communities and managing digital campaigns (as this student is already aware). In other words, the future of advertising looks very like public relations...

Hopefully smart graduates are alert to this. Hopefully their lecturers and textbook authors are too. But I very much doubt that university marketing and management teams are when they offer courses that appear to promise glittering careers in glamorous twentieth-century industries that evoke a Mad Men world.

Bump. Back to reality.

Journalisted: out of darkness, enlightenment

Here's a tale from the dark ages (less than 20 years ago).

I've arranged some press briefings for a visiting executive and I'm asked to supply the following: who each journalist writes for, copies of their last three published articles, a list of their hot topics, bugbears and some personal notes (favourite food, sports etc).

The exercise requires you to imagine finding this out without the internet (it barely functioned back then). It wasn't easy.

Today, PR people can read journalists online (publications and blogs), follow them on twitter and friend them on Facebook. This makes the task so much easier - except that the media landscape is much larger and more fluid than in the past. Who's a journalist? What's a publication?

So you can do it yourself, or you can be grateful that someone else has pulled together much of the data. Take a look at the Media Standards Trust's Journalisted site. Once you struggle past the poor search facility, it's a mine of information including social media features such as a tag cloud of frequently mentioned terms.

Just one concern. Did the difficulty of media relations in the dark ages make us more respectful of and knowledgeable about the media? Because now that it's so easy, why is there so much bad media relations?

Reinventing news as culture and community

Here's the paradox. We won't pay when we can get something for free; but we're willing to pay a lot for unique experiences involving real people and a sense of community.

Simon Jenkins muses on the future of the newspaper business in The Guardian. (And, yes, I feel a bit guilty that this reached me through my RSS reader, not through my letterbox.)

Media, popularity and public opinion

Mark Lawson asks Is it time to kill off Big Brother? in The Guardian.

In an analytical piece he reflects on Big Brother's ten years and suggests:

• That there's a natural eight year lifespan for popular television series
• Big Brother has influenced other areas of public life: politicians and football coaches now fear instant 'eviction' if public opinion turns against them
• The media tries to predict rather than report the public mood, and it's turned its back on Big Brother this series (contributory factors being the busy news agenda this summer with MPs' expenses, swine flu and Michael Jackson dominating news and commentary pages).

Blurring boundaries in media

The Guardian's annual list of media influentials has been published today. It's increasingly hard to define the media because of convergence (Google, Apple and Huffington Post people are prominent, as is politician David Cameron); national boundaries are also blurring (see above) and public relations remains in the shadows - though just as prominent as marketing and advertising in this list.

PR practitioners within the top 100 include Max Clifford (at 65), Matthew Freud (74), Alan Parker (82) and Roland Rudd (92). 

The economics of news

I'm sure David Phillips will enjoy this (he's been defending the internet from the attacks of media pundits only today).

John Naughton's usual column is missing from today's print edition of The Observer. There's a small note to say it's available online instead (a suitable place, you might think, for a column about technology). I'm sure it was moved for reasons of space... until I read it. The column's about the problems facing the newspaper industry, including the issue of charging for content online and the difficulties even Rupert Murdoch will experience in moving to a paid-for model for online news.

Surely this can't have displeased the section editor? Will Naughton mind he's been exiled to cyberia?

Susan Boyle: rags to riches

Here's what we can learn for sure from the past week in the life of Britain's Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle.

We learn of the enduring power of storytelling - this is 'rags to riches' while 'David and Goliath' is another perennial favourite. There are surprisingly few great stories.

Great stories get people talking; great stories have the power to move. Great stories remind us of our humanity.

What we don't exactly know is what this tells us about the balance of power between broadcast and social media, between manufactured and organic success. Sure, people will comment on the ability of a YouTube video to make her a global viral phenomenon - but don't forget that this would not have been possible without prime time broadcast television.

Sure, she's a homespun amateur talent. But the ITV programme is presided over by Simon Cowell, that master creator or manufactured success. Will she now have a makeover?

The Guardian newspaper has a detailed analysis of the fame factory at work, including comments from Max Clifford. (That's how The Guardian justifies most of its celebrity and entertainment coverage - by taking an analytical view of the phenomenon.)

See also NBC: An Unlikely Star is Born. Don't be too quick to dismiss the so-called mainstream media and their ability to influence public opinion.

The past and future of PR

With the exception of one brief era, all human communications can be characterised as social media. Epic poetry, fireside storytelling and conversations have dominated our collective history.

The exceptional era has been the industrial age, which introduced mass media (large circulation newspapers and broadcasting). We're now emerging into a post-industrial age in which mass media sits alongside new forms of web-enabled social media.

So to suggest that public relations is returning to a more conversational style involving community building and storytelling is not to predict something new, but rather to describe a return to something more traditional.

This was one of our discussion points from a guest lecture I gave for London Metropolitan University PR students yesterday.

Print is dead?

Ahead of tonight's talk (Print is dead: long live new media) take a look at my news reader this morning. It's dominated by news feeds from traditional media sources (The Guardian newspaper and PR Week in my case). Only one solitary PR blogger interrupts the stream of news from professional reporters (the energetic Trevor Cook).

One hypothesis suggests that new media will replace old media; this is supported by the closure of some magazines and the decline in circulation (and advertising revenues) of most newspapers. Another hypothesis argues that the traditional skills of the news journalist (speed, selectivity, accuracy, compelling storytelling, editing) gain new value online; that there's new life in old brands.

Notice how both hypotheses can be true when traditional media adapts for an online future.