NGO and Activism

NGO’s and activism are fascinating and growing areas of public relations. Check the slides below to find out some of my thoughts and some interesting points raised in class.

NGO and Activism

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And the spiner prize goes to...



Spin-doctor and Propaganda are terms often associated with Public Relations. And this is certainly an achievement we can give credits to Edward Bernays who worked so hard to have his place in history and be seen as the father of PR. However I ultimately agree with Larry Tye who gives Bernays another title: the Father of Spin.

Some spin techniques can certainly have a positive impact on society by supporting behavior changes or raising awareness of key issues eventually causing change. It is important to remember though that the ethical duty of practioners goes beyond what Bernays observed in our industry.

Alastair Campbell is one of the most iconic communicators in the UK. If in one hand he is seen as a spin-doctor, on the other he has supported Prime Minister Tony Blair through huge crisis and in one point we have to agree, he has done his job - and well done.

Campbell’s career illustrates the fine line to define each professional role in a spin situation. It is our duty to portrait the facts in a favorable manner for our clients and that does not necessary means lie or omission but protect information is crucial to preserve image and reputation. Now let’s think about the media. Despite the efforts to transmit public information in a unbiased manner, journalists are often under the pressure to produce stories that sell.

Recently, I was talking to two financial managers and they were complaining that every time they had been interviewed, for either personal or professional reasons, the article published did not reflect their views. Yes, I am taking in consideration that those were finance professional and they are not used to deal with the media. But how much we, PR professionals have to emphasize, repeat and create context to make sure journalists don’t misinterpret stories – or write them in a manner that sells better…?

It is hard to define Alastair Campbell is a spinner or a great communicator. It certainly depends more on who is judging than his actions. Personally, I can only respect someone who has dealt with the war on Iraq, the death of David Kelly, the extraordinary row with the BBC, and the Hutton enquiry. Therefore he does not get the spinner prize!

On the next posting I will share some thoughts on NGO and Activism.

Sources:

The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernay's and the birth of PR

Alastair Campbell web site

Social Media and Media Relations

Here are some insights on what is happening to Media Relations in the era of Social Media.

(Nevermind the books trying to jump out of the shelf in the last bit!)

Crisis

The Chinese characters for crisis mean two other words: Danger and Opportunities. The wise of Chinese culture is reflected in its semantics, anyone willing to take the risks of great dangers is also risking being highly successful.

Or in the words of Michael Regester and Judy Larkin: “Virtually every crisis contains within itself the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure.” 

The question though is: what is the difference between the ones who come out of a crisis cultivating seeds of success and the ones who come out the crisis with the roots of failure?

The first step to be successful in a crisis is to be prepared. Executives often fail to recognize that we have emerged from an old world with an industrial economy to a new world based in knowledge economy. Therefore in this new world reputation value shouldn’t be underestimated.

In my analyses this is the first challenge to communicators. Assure high management understands the need of a well placed crisis management plan and understand what kind of crisis can rise. According to Institute for Crisis Management (in their 1995 research) there has been a lot of focus in the wrong kind of crisis. “The real problems had revolved around white collar crime, labor disputes and company mismanagement.” The (mis)management can be tricky to tackle as the embarrassment to admit executives can make mistakes often prevent them to plan for this possibility.

Issues not well managed can become crisis in a quick and abrupt manner. So here it is the next challenge. A well planned crisis management plan will foresee and avoid crisis.

The list goes on: Perception versus reality; media support, putting together strategic, incident and communication team, managing all parties involved… are some of the key aspects to plant the roots of success out of a crisis.

There will be more on crisis in the upcoming postings along with some great case studies. 

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 And here it is a great book on the subject which is also source for some of my comments:
Book: Risk Issues and Crisis Management in Public Relations

War Spin

The public perception of a war can become more important than a war in itself. In consequence the control of information is an imperative piece of military strategy critical to win the war. The questions here are how practitioners portrait the information; how much access to information practitioners have and how biased will it be. Lippmann reffer to military as “a group of men, who can prevent independent access to the event, arrange the news of it to suit their purpose” as Sauber and Rampton quote in their book Trust us, we’re experts!

The Iraq war was an interesting example of how media can be controlled by the military forces. The term embed journalist emerged from the Iraq war with many questions about the way the war was reported.

What kind of news can be produced from journalists placed in an extended basis with limited access to information? Even the most ethical journalist will have an option to uncover or cover up information?

Most interesting though is the fact that those reporters were fed and protected by military. Does it result in bias? Journalist Gordon Dillow describes his experience as follow:

“But the biggest problem I faced as an embed with the marine grunts was that I found myself doing what journalists are warned from J-school not to do: I found myself falling in love with my subject. I fell in love with "my" marines.

Maybe it's understandable. When you live with the same guys for weeks, sharing their dangers and miseries, learning about their wives and girlfriends, their hopes and dreams, admiring their physical courage and strength, you start to make friends - closer friends in some ways than you'll ever have outside of war. Isolated from everyone else, you start to see your small corner of the world the same way they do.”

I cannot stop myself relating this topic with the most amazing spin fiction I have ever seen: Wag the Dog. I want to share a piece of this war produced to uncover presidential sex scandals. After all nobody better than Dustin Hoffman to make us think about how far people can go to manipulate and control our perception of reality.

Next week we will put war aside but there be interesting talks on crisis. 

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Here are some of my sources and further reading:

Book: Trust us, we’re experts! Sheldon Rampton and John StauberThe "Grunt Truth" of Embedded Journalism: The New Media/Military Relationship

The Embedded Life by Gordon Dillow

The correspondent War Spin

Alastair Campbell defends every word of Iraq Dossier

Just what Iraq needed: More Propaganda

Social Media

The internet first emerged in the 60’s when it existed only in academic circles. From Bill Gates and Bill Joy¹ to Mark Zuckerberg², we cover almost half a century of development that deeply affects our profession.

Some may argue that all those changes make public relations work more difficult. However I agree with Rob Brown who believes that despite the complexities social web brings to us, it makes the work of practioners more transparent getting rid of unethical practioners – but this is a subject we will explore in a later post when we talk about ethics.

In Consumer PR, instead of companies telling people what to buy, people can start to tell companies what to make. This is truly two way communications. Also there is a new trend due to social web. B to B and B to C, are not the only relevant business formats but C to C – consumer to consumer - is very significant in our days.

In NGO, social media has transformed even more all aspects of campaigning. On-line petitions have been highly effective and gathering incredible amounts of supporters. The high use of creativity and low costs involved has made possible campaigns like the Girl Effect - just to mention one of the campaigns that raised awareness among millions of people.

Shall we mention the changes in the Political scene and Obama’s presidential campaign? Yes, public relations in politic has been reshaped with new and social media. Whenever governments or politicians decide to use social media to listen and dialogue with people it becomes a huge success. Too bad, most politicians still believe it is a tool for one way communication.

On the down side, the misuse of social media can create significant damages to reputation. If before there was a risk of saying anything inappropriate in front of a camera accidentally left recording, today there are cameras in everyone’s hands and videos can quickly become hits on social web sites. Media training and PR advice is therefore indispensable.

Those are just a few examples of social media effects on Public Relations field there is so much more to talk about… we will return to this subject. But next week there will be more on…

Notes

1 - Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and mostly known for his contribution on BDS UNIX from which emerged many systems including MAC OS X from Apple.

2 - Creator of Facebook

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If you want to know more, here are some of my inspirations:

Book Public Relations and the Social Web

Book Outliers

Doodle Communication & Technology

During the design of this blog, much thought was given to its objectives and how is it sending a memorable message to readers. According to Alan Liu from University of California, Santa Barbara “networked digital media do a poor job of balancing focal and peripheral attention.” Given that so much of our reading nowadays is online, how is it possible to stand out?

Here it is one solution: Doddle Communication!

Contrary to general belief, doodling does improve concentration. According to Jackie Andrade’s study at University of Plymouth people who were doodling while listening to names of people and places were able to remember better than people who were just listening. So I hope you enjoy the reading and prepare yourself for a good sketch!

More on media technology on next post.

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You can read more on the study: "What does doodling do?" By Jackie Andrade. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Feb. 26, 2009

or on the following articles:

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/does-the-brain-like-e-books/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/doodlerecall/#