Simon Hill, Speed’s new business chief, is babysitting my blog next week. Simon is a former journalist, senior PR person, in-house PR director and runs a mean allotment.
Expect pragmatism and a tendency to confront tricky issues.
The book is go
I am writing a book. With Stephen Waddington. It is frank, pragmatic and does not use long words. Not too many anyway.
It’s about the future of brand reputation and, therefore, what the future may hold for PR.
We’ll be previewing some of the content before it’s published. But in the meantime, here’s what the first chapter covers, and I’ll have details of other chapters in the near future. Don’t expect an-time classic, but do expect sound advice and a hefty dose of honesty:
- Pace of technological change has caught the practice of reputation management on the hop. And many brand managers feel control is slipping away.
- How PR exercised ‘control’ in far simpler times
- The fragility of relationships with customers, shareholders, media and reputation influencers
- The editorial world: how it has changed, how it is changing and the factors that will govern corporate reputation as that change accelerates
- In pursuit of the science of reputation. Digitisation can bring automation and mechanisation, but does that help your reputation?
- Judgement in the glare of an agile direct and indirect media
- If control has gone, can brands take greater command?
Stay tuned.
CIPR talk: media change, PR change and networks in the language of a seven-year-old
I did a short talk (more of a gentle rant with strange anecdotes) at the CIPR’s Digital Impact conference on Monday. Rather than a Slideshare dump I thought I’d jot down some of what I talked about in case it’s of interest. It was all about how the UK media is changing, cutting through the crap of what digital media means for PR and what digitised ‘networks’ are really all about.
I got into PR, and in particular the technology side, because I trained as a journalist and was brought up playing with technology. My mum had been PA to the late Robert Maxwell. My dad installed mainframes for big companies. The bubblewrap opportunities were sensational for a seven-year-old.
I wrote crap for my local paper at 13. At 15 I was writing it regularly, after doing some intensive journalism training (mostly how to stitch people up). Then after a news journalism course I started working as a ‘normal’ reporter for a local newspaper. I chased down parish council tittle tattle, interviewed local ‘personalities’, knocked on the doors of newly-bereaved families and was humiliated at the judging of school fete fancy dress competitions. Then it was regional dailies, tabloid writing, some broadcast stuff, then PR.
Since then (the early to mid-90s) the media has changed hugely. It wasn’t a cosy world back then, especially if gypsies chased you with bricks, but now the media is not what it’s used to be. Print is on one knee. TV is wobbly. Radio is growing. Social media is rocketing. If Maxwell was still with us, he’d probably have tried to do some dodgy deal to cut on it on.
Snapshot of media change in the UK
1709, oldest surviving UK newspaper starts in Worcester. It was to be 282 years before I wrote for it, yet it survived that and is still around today
More newspapers, more magazines
1920s, early public radio
1930s, early public TV
1950s, TV really took root. If PR had been an established sector then, everyone would’ve rushed to start hip new TV PR agencies
1980s, beginning of diversification sparked by technological change
1990s, the internet. The conventional media largely ignored it until the second half of the decade, some beyond that
So media really started to digitise in the mid 90s. Initially it was about the web being a new platform for publishing words and pictures. Then video came. Technology has made all of this possible. About six years ago we saw the arrival of much-hyped web 2.0. There was a load of bollocks about this, but basically from a media perspective it means media began to change from being one-way to two-way. Before then, the only way the media had really been two-way was the odd TV vox-pop and the letters to the editor page, which was mostly made up anyway.
What digital actually means for PR people
So now the people can answer back. Brands may be able to talk to them directly, but then there are conversations they may want to have and they may not want to have. These are some of the fundamental issues for building reputation through social media these days and you’ll be familiar with them I’m sure.
What does this mean for PR? We’re about managing reputation. What it means for me is that we have to modernise what we do so that we can do that across the diverse and digitised media landscape, and be ready to tackle the way that landscape will evolve further.
Five years ago I felt I was looking over my shoulder at the rise of digital PR. Today that’s not the case. We are not there yet, but soon there will be no regular PR and online or digital PR. It will all just be PR.
The reason for that is that there will not be a distinction as such between conventional and social media. It will all just be media. We just have to figure out how to become the new middleman for a new media landscape.
Examples of how conventional media is addressing digitisation
Oil and water – can conventional and social media mix?
I think that The Guardian site is the closest I’ve come to a national newspaper that has rebuilt its content around its audience using features such as content curation and micro-blogging. An example is the microsite created for the Grand National. Content was posted in real time in a micro-blog format. Race results appeared in real term. And longer stories filed after the racing at Aintree. It’s typical of how The Guardian deals with a big story. It handled the Chilcot Inquiry in exactly the same way.
If you’re a reader of The Guardian site and follow some its journalists on Twitter you’ll spot how stories develop. Journalists tweet about stories they’re writing on. PRs or people in their network make suggestions for sources of information. A first story will go live as a blog maybe after a journalist has done a couple of interviews. Readers will comment on the story. Additional sources will chip in and the journalist will curate comments and produce a second and third version of the story. This provides PRs with more opportunities than ever to influence how a journalist writes a story.
Secondly, branded media: The Economist. Media is in turmoil, no doubt. Social media provides a means for brands to build develop communities in their own right. The Economist (Speed client) on YouTube is a media owner that has a branded video channel for disseminating its own content. But we could equally be looking at any number of consumer brands. Vodafone is a great example on YouTube that you might want to check out. The Economist has always done video but you have to look hard on the site to dig it up. We’ve created a channel on YouTube and promoted it as an asset in its own right. It has become so successful that it’s a top 100 channel on YouTube, and it’s generating revenue. Increasingly this will become a model for brands wanting to engage with their audience, bypassing traditional media altogether.
How PR people need to change/upgrade their media skills
I think what media change means is that PRs have got to assess what they do and how they do it. Across the board. We’ve got to become the type of PR people, PR agencies and PR sector that that media and clients will demand in the future. If we don’t, we should sod off and find another line of work.
But putting that delicate issue to one side, let’s look at the digital media that are changing the world of PR, and their pros and cons.
Conventional publishers: we need more understanding of each media and how content is likely to permeate within that platform and beyond. The pro is that the ripple effect can cause far broader and potentially more lasting impact, the con is that is requires far more work than just knowing a journalist on a publication and tapping them up. There is a need for firm insight and really clear planning so that our ideas can be successful
Conventional broadcasters: as above, but understand that journalists working for them are following what social media is generating, and that technology is going to change this media big time. An example is IPTV. Of course the ability to watch what TV when you want it has changed things, but imagine if you could engage with a local community group and some of your neighbours via the TV when a topical piece of programming content is there. With integration between the TV and social media communities, and the devices to support user interaction over that content from anywhere, it’s not far away perhaps. TV has long been influential, it will gain combined influence alongside new technologies and its content should have high editorial integrity. The flipside, again, is that keeping tabs on all of that for a PR means a lot of work.
Social media platforms: the pros are that conventional editorial barriers aren’t there, but influence will still be created by editorial content, albeit with the nature of editorial changing. It’s very agile, it can be comparatively cheap, but the potential to backfire is huge because it has that two-way channel. It can go from a minor problem to a crisis in minutes. It also means clients’ PR teams have to make themselves far more agile to ensure the right content is delivered.
Analytical tools: to measure influence on reputation. The great thing about digitised media is the audit trail – if you can track it, you should be able to measure its impact. Another big pro is that a lot of the tools for tracking and assessing social media and all forms of published digitised content are free – the trick is knowing which ones are most effective. And the downside is that PRs could end up digging in the wrong place for the measurement they seek. These tools mean we can track not only what is published and what the reaction is, but the sentiment of those conversations – but what price sarcasm? These tools move us much closer to honest and clinical measurement of PR value, but still we can only really know what impact editorial content in any media has on a brand’s reputation and purchase influence by asking the audience. And even then, they may not be straight with us.
Engagement: both with social and conventional media. Obviously engagement with social media is direct and requires skills. Engagement via digital means with conventional media is growing, but again needs skill and the downside can be that fickle PR methods used in conventional media relations are transposed to digital tools. Crap pitches don’t work offline, so best avoid them online. For media and social media engagement, the network is key.
What this network business means
The first thing to point out is the the value of network to brands lies with the trust factor. People trust other people they’re networked with. If they’re networked around a passion for a brand, that is a good thing for us.
But remember that networks are just really word-of-mouth digitised, and so preserved for the best part of eternity. Social media conversations pretty much replicate those that happen and have always happened in society anyway. The difference is that the media encourages conversations to build faster, encourages more participation and can engage more people. A bigger, bolder, faster, more impactful type of conversation typically – and they can be tracked and joined.
The trick for PRs is to apply themselves in the right way to that environment, rather than blundering in to a pub conversation like a gobby or naive person, and quickly ending up as the object of derision.
At the end of the day, we love a cliche
This article inspired me to go further – not with the benefit of any academic research, but with a thrown-together list based on experience and recent reading.
So without further ado, here are 25 overexposed cliches used by the media and PRs when writing stories:
1. At the end of the day (the daddy of them all)
2. The pioneering approach centres on
3. Remained tight-lipped
4. Face the dilemma of
5. Mounted a new challenge
6. Sparked a u-turn over
7. Red-faced officials
8. Rode roughshod over
9. Emotionally charged
10. Level playing field
11. Wealth of experience
12. The tipping point
13. Launched a blistering attack
14. Was over the moon
15. Astonished onlookers gasped in horror
16. Romped with
17. In a sea change
18. Rub up the wrong way
19. Championed the move
20. Travel chaos means commuter misery
21. Dreams lay in tatters
22. The eye of the financial storm
23. Clouds gathering overhead
24. Rocked by new revelations that
25. And most loathed of all – thinking outside the box
And then there are the ones used by sports pundits. But at the end of the day, that would take all day.
Are account executives becoming extinct?
If you’re an account executive, that may not be the most positive of headlines. A bit Daily Mail really. Chin up, read on – this is not a deliberately gloomy look at the role, it is a pragmatic one, and one that may help turn it into less of a shitty job.
The account executive role is a diverse one. Meaning AEs tend to get a diverse amount of crap to deal with. And a wholly diverse load of meaningless, low-value, borderline-inane tasks that are rarely valued, if even recognised, by clients.
This is not intended to be a lamentable ode to the account executive. Far from it. It is an attempt to signal loud and clear that what PR agencies have come to view as the comfy, conventional dogsbody role on client teams has to change – as part of the broader change that all PR agencies need to go through in order to modernise.
The account executive, as we know it, is becoming extinct. Dead as the friggin’ dodo.
The reasons I say this are, perhaps, cold comfort for agencies that have not yet confronted this, but at least should give some encouragement to account execs who have already figured this out and are taking steps to address it. They are:
1. The account exec is the backstop who is a relatively cheap resource, so agencies throw them at problems (“just go and make the calls and get some coverage”) in the absence of more experienced people being applied to come up with solutions to those problems.
2. The account exec typically does too much manual and laborious PR support work, which is now simpler and cheaper to automate. Press clippings books, detailed reports that nobody reads, shipping things from A to B and completing errands that have little or no purpose (and could be avoided by simply being brave enough to question why they’re being done) are the sorry stomping ground of the account exec. That needs to change.
3. The burden of admin and support work (that nobody values and is a bitch to do) means that account executives can take longer to learn about the media, learn how to represent their clients’ brands to the media and gain the experience required to become a good counsellor. There’s a Catch 22 though – no clients want execs let loose representing them until they’re house trained to do so, yet agencies don’t just want execs non-chargeable while they learn the ropes. This is the crux of the account exec dilemma, and if we’re honest it always has been.
The reality is that the traditional account executive job specification is a tough launchpad into a career. You start with bags of enthusiasm but no experience and little practical knowledge. You are focused on becoming an account manager, so beaver away gaining expertise and experience despite never really being trusted by clients and colleagues to do so, at least not under your own sole steam. Then when you finally become an account manager you are thrust into the fray of managing everything day-to-day, even though you’ve often been working in a shadow capacity as an account executive.
So if account executives are soon to be no more, what should replace them, and how can agencies make that role pay? I don’t have all the answers yet, but my thinking is we need a new kind of account executive, one that is media-savvy (albeit to a lesser level than more senior colleagues), can develop the right content and contribute ideas, understands the basics of campaign planning. And most important of all, understands and has a genuine interest in the changes happening in the media – and wants to develop the skills that will be necessary for working with it in the future.
I have some thoughts about how agencies can fast-track executives better, and make the training and development input required commercially viable. It doubtless needs better collaboration with academia as well. But I’ll save that for another blog post.
To finish off this one, a few thoughts on what skills and aptitudes account executives, or whatever the role is called, will need in the future:
1. Media-savvy: an interest in, and knowledge of, all relevant media. Including reading the daily newspapers, blogs and being active on social media platforms. Meet journalists, read their work, know what’s on the front pages each day.
2. Editorial nouse: understanding what contents works and why, and being able to recite examples of best practice and creativity that have been really effective.
3. 360-degree planning: you may not be developing or running plans solo yet, you need to understand how the whole PR lifecycle works, from the up-front insight through to ideas generation, content delivery, results that influence reputation and how the effects can best be measured.
4. Write and develop other content: if you don’t enjoy words and images, you’re in the wrong job. Not everyone will have great written English skills and the ability to make ideas and messages come to life through what they type, but they have to be keen to learn and have a thirst for it.
5. Be interested in PR: not just in your next job move or what other agencies do as little perks, but how PR is modernising, examples of really powerful PR, forming a view on where it fits into the marketing mix as things modernise and meet as many other PR people as you can.
Get all of this right, and the role as we currently know it will become far more interesting, far more beneficial for careers long-term, and an integral part of modern PR, rather than a bit-part bystander.
Account executives of today should not fear the changes that are coming to their job roles, they should tackle them head on. Challenge themselves, challenge their employers, ask lots of questions, snack and feast on media, learn how to make great content, see the bigger picture.
These are changes that will see the best rise up faster, and the can’t-really-be-arsed brigade fade away. But they beat the hell out of clippings books.
A new media coalition too?
Yes we have a new Government.
Forget all that though. What have the past few weeks meant for the future of media in the UK?
Given the down with Brown barbed vitriole of yesterday’s print media front pages and the broad yet tepid ‘dawn of a new era but with a big pile of stench to deal with‘ headlines this morning, it looks like the press has had a nervy and uncomfortable time of covering the UK’s General Election.
As Peter Kirwan’s excellent article in Wired illustrates, even The Sun, the infamous swinger of the polling stations, has had to do a lot of soul searching over who it backs and how it does it (and how it does it plausibly). Gone, probably, are the days of the election being the ultimate muscular demonstration of the so-called power of the press.
There was, inevitably, much online chatter during the campaign about the role social media would play in determining the new Government, ranging from analysis of what was most Twittered during the keyboard frenzy of the televised leader debates to some frothy hype around quite how influential certain online influencers might be.
What does this mean for the media in the future? Well, I’m sure the national newspapers will do an internal post-mortem of their stance, their main headlines and their editorial/leader columns today. And whatever conclusions are reached, one thing is clear: the sway they have commanded over previous elections is diminishing.
New forms of media are gaining influence – that goes without saying. What conventional media needs, in my view, is not to go all-starry eyed over social media but realise that the expectation of many readers is now that there will be some kind of meaningful dialogue with them. In social media terms, the papers must join the conversation rather than trying to dictate it, albeit that it will always both form a view and needs to ensure that its editorial is respected.
Conventional media, as the election highlighted, needs to get to grips with online conversation. It’d be like a coalition with new media: maintaining its brand equity, editorial integrity and publisher priorities while at the same time engaging with readers directly.
Proper engagement too, rather than pictures of attractive teenage ‘readers’ giving their gushing views on a leader, or a few terse letters to the editor that may not have been generated externally.
National deficit: spin worn thin yet markets dim
Many media commentators pointed out throughout the UK’s General Election build-up that none of the main parties talked much about the pain that would result in the coming years from slashing spending to cut the national deficit.
There is, of course, a reason for that: misery is not the world’s best sales message.
Any voters with half a clue knew that that sort of drastic action was and still is inevitable; it just wouldn’t have won votes to rub our noses in it during the election campaign. Instead, the whole issue was neatly sidestepped as the leaders focused on other issues, parking the issue of the Age of Poo for the post-victory era. A sound PR approach, if winning the election is your objective.
Now, with the election done and the parties playing a waiting game, issuing holding statements to fend off nervousness while the formation of Government is eeked out behind closed doors, it is clear that the spin over the deficit has worn more than a little thin. Austerity is staring us in the face.
Which makes the way the markets have responded to uncertainty over who will govern look even more fickle.
Media coverage over the weekend about the tumbling pound and why the markets won’t wait for an election outcome just makes the financial markets look juvenile.
Yes the electorate also wants decisive Government to get on with tackling the deficit. But we haven’t had one for months, so what does an extra few days matter?
Yes the new Government needs to crack on straight away with tackling the deficit and not enough was said about that during the election campaign. But City people, wake up: that was the PR (not) talking.
Yes Government will have to suffer massive unpopularity to get all of this done. But we voted them in, kind of, more-or-less, in a round-about way. Subject to contract.
Already today, the looming likelihood of a Conservative/LibDem coalition is seeing the pound recover slightly. Good news, but yet more fickleness from markets swayed like toddlers with information taken at face value, rather than pausing to think about the bigger picture.
Stories you can guarantee press will write around elections: a PR guide
I’m probably a day late with this. Or a month.
All the jizz about to what extend social media would influence votes at the General Election made me think that not enough PRs think about how conventional journalists approach covering an election. Of course they’ll cover it, but typically PRs take the fairly simplistic approach of weaseling a message into newsdesks in the hope that ‘it’ll get picked up somewhere’.
A better approach, I reckon, is to understand some of the old-as-the-hills ground rules for how UK journalists, print and broadcast, cover elections. So here are the 10 Commandments of election journalism:
1. Balance: legally, you have to give a fair shout of column inches and airtime to the parties in the running. Obvious point, but it impacts how the papers and bulletins will be filled before the polls open. Let’s move on.
2. The candidates in pictures: there’s finite scope for writing words about them while keeping the product (e.g. the newspaper) appealing. So you need to get snaps of them in newsworthy positions, if you will. For PRs, this means less opportunity than usual for other picture stories, as a general rule.
3. Memory lane: a handy tactic for writing about elections generally without repeating the same old points about the current one is to rake up stuff on elections past. Older people, who typically buy more papers than younger people, like this. It’s a nostalgia trip. Smart PRs could get into stories by turning back the clock, or coming up with yesteryear-linked story ideas.
4. Extreme voters: the first thing a news editor will say to reporters on any local paper a week before an election is ‘find me the youngest voter and the oldest one’. A bit like the first baby born on New Year’s Day story, but less interesting. Saying that, I did once interview a 103-year-old who dragged himself away from making things with unused matchsticks to shuffle to the polls by zimmerframe. That’s the spirit.
5. Polling station porn: pictures of what polling stations look like. Most look like village halls with big signs in front saying Polling Station, but for some reason the media goes mad for this. There’s always one constituency where the polling station is a caravan. Arf arf. No PR opps here mind. Unless you make caravans perhaps. Although if you have premises near a key polling station, consider something in the streets outside (product giveaways, for instance) as they may get onto telly in those murky hours after the polls close.
6. Hotspots of potential change: national media will always scrutinise the key marginals and the areas where shocks may lurk. They will send in the troops to interview locals on the streets. They will do the ‘I went out of London for the day to talk to these people’ thing. Ample opportunities here for PR is you work out where these places are and either provide relevant information that helps your cause or, if relevant, field someone to talk. Example: your crisp brand is a big employer in a key marginal area. Call press well in advance of their inevitable visit, invite them onto the factory floor to film and field the MD to talk about how times have changes around here, as have our range of now lower-fat snacks. You know what I mean.
7. The skills angle: every section of the paper wants to get in on the election action. The careers pages are no exception. The ‘why do people want to be an MP?’ feature is a dead cert. And a field day for people-based businesses, consultancies, recruiters and major employers to get a bit of corporate spotlight.
8. The count. They may look excited (always wondered how hacks stay up all the way through election night? Perhaps the sheer adrenaline) but journalists who’ve done it before know that the count is the most boring part of the election to cover, yet their job is to make it look and sound exciting. All they can say, beyond speculation, is “they’re still counting the votes here”. Call in with any snippets at this point, it is journalism at its weakest point editorially.
9. ‘Makers of ballot boxes for 200 years’: as the big day approaches, the politics have largely got extremely repetitive and journalists look for those softer stories. And, pretty much, any old shit goes. Does your brand supply thousands of paperclips to polling stations the length and breadth of East Anglia? Get in on the action.
10. The what if story: as exemplified this time around by the what if there’s a hung Parliament story. This is pure media speculation of course, and needs views and opinions from as many people as possible in order to reinforce it. Field spokespeople proactively and you stand a fair chance of airtime.
There are probably more, but you’ve probably heard enough about elections recently.
Lonely voter seeks any primitive digital engagement from candidates
The most digital General Election ever, they said. Social media mobilised by politicians as they seek to engage over opinions on key issues. Twitter alive with debate and opinion during each of the leaders debates. Candidates wired to the latest information by portable devices as they tour constituencies and further afield.
A shame, then, that when I asked candidates in Islington North a simple question by email in order to decide how to vote, I largely got silence.
I have always voted largely on the strength of local candidates and their approach to local issues. So I sent an email to Jeremy Corbyn (Lab), Adrian Berrill-Cox (Con), Emma Dixon (Green) and Rhodri Jamieson-Ball (Lib Dem) asking what they’d do (if anything) to change the tax self-certification system. A system that, selfishly, I find a complete pain in the arse.
That was a week ago. So far only Emma has replied, to say it’s not a party issue but her personal opinion is that it is overcomplicated.
I appreciate all are pretty busy at the moment, but it’s an email. A really easy proposition: send me a short response, and one of you will get my vote. You don’t have to track my social media movements, you don’t have to understand my cares and dreams. You just have to send me an email.
Twenty four hours, and the clock is ticking.
