Seat at the Table

Nielsen’s new global consumer survey provides interesting food for though into what people “trust” in terms of information sources. 

For example, from a PR point of view its notable that keyword ads on search engines are lower down on the trust level.  But they can still work well for advertisers.  On the other hand, brand web sites and sponsorships were high up next to consumer opinions and editorial content.  I’ve seen PR use a lot of brand material/web sites and sponsorships (e.g., CSR, trade sponsorships in the B2B world) for getting the information.  It’s may be interesting to note that the trust level of those sources is at the same level of editorial content.  

I recently gave a presentation a the Bulldog Reporter’s Measurement Summit on how to show PR’s contribution to the business’ bottom line to the C-suite.  Here were some key points (the presentation that served as the backdrop is below).

1. Do you want to be seen as drivers of PR campaigns (after decisions are made) or PR counsel (as a part of decisions) – Presenting measurement data is often a historical look at campaigns.  However, it can also be a forward looking process that shows how PR can play a critical role in making better business decisions.
2. Three rules to follow  – Take an audience research based approach to presenting to your CEO (it’s harder to ignore the audience than it is the PR executive’s advice), use business language and provide business counsel.
3. Make your counsel actionable – Don’t wait for the CEO to ask what to do; let your data show what the options are to consider and why.
4. Present data driven business counsel – Valued PR counselors are that because they are presenting business (not just PR) counsel backed up by data (not opinion).   In the idea situations, business decisions consider the PR impact as part of the decision making process.
5. Focus on audience data – Even for CEOs that love to see their name in print, it’s the audience data that is critical to business decision making and, by extension, draws you closer to them as a trusted business counsel.
6. Look forward, not back – Measurement systems and presentations often focus mostly on what has been done.  CEOs, however, are always looking forward.  So be sure to measure what has been done, but then quickly and substantially focus on what the company can learn from the measurement data and how that data can help steer better future decisions (and communications).
7. Let the visuals present a data driven story – Measurement dashboards should not simply be some dials reflecting PR metrics but a series of charts that tell the CEO a data driven story – one that can be used to make business decisions.  As an example, I showed a dashboard that started with news share of voice and ended with data on what search terms consumers were increasingly using.  This showed an upward trend on what topics people were interested in (and what language and brands they used to look for those topics).  This type of information can be used for anything from product development to marketing decisions.

Bulldog PR Measurement Summit_Translating PR Results to Business Results

Researchers at Hebrew University put together some interesting data showing how local social networking can be (article is here).

The research looked at 100,000 Facebook users as well as the location 4,500 e-mail messages received.  As noted by the chart below, the more local the sender-receiver, the higher the density of messages. 

This is consistent with what I’ve seen in every day life.  People connect online with those they know offline – and people tend to know people locally.  Not to say there are not global benefits as the tale of lower density of messages may reflect that valuable global reach we did not two decades ago.  However, this type of data is an important reminder that when reaching many audiences, having a local, geographic focus is an important part of being targeting the demographic.

Today’s New York Times article, “Spinning the  Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley” is a terrific read on publicizing to the Silicon Valley crowd, but only that.  There were several points in the article where I would remind people that it’s simply one example of how to match an audience to a medium, and that what applies in one market, does not work for another.  Here are a two critical topics to keep in mind before this type of hype article impact any PR strategy decision.

Match the message and audience to the medium - The approach outlined in the article is great if you are looking to reach a Silicon Valley centric audience (and Twitter is their platform de jour).  But what if you want to reach the financial or other industries?  In our recent survey of professionals on how they get their news, Twitter and blogs came in last.  What we found is that these are useful tool for very specific audiences and situations (such as reaching the Silicon Valley crowd that tends to focus on the latest platform, but the article fails to make this clear.  Our current best practices survey, to be published this summer, also shows that most PR people clearly understand this.

Confusing publicity with public relations – If the article was titled, “Publicity in Silicon Valley,” I’d have far fewer problems.   Public relations is just that, managing the relationship with the public (or, your specific publics known as audiences).  Publicity, the art of spreading awareness often through hype driven media, is but one tool that is used to manage these relationship – events, direct mail/email, speaking engagements and other approaches are all part of a tactical tool set.  I don’t blame the article, many publicity firms call themselves PR firms thus adding to the confusion.

Paul Holmes makes some painfully important points about a McKinsey Quarterly analysis on corporate reputation that goes to the very heart about why the PR function often does not get a seat at the table.

McKinsey makes some key points about what companies need to do on the reputation side.

"As a result, responses to reputational issues can be short term, ad hoc, and defensive–a poor combination today given the intensity of public concern. And therein lies a problem that companies must solve quickly: even as reputational challenges boost the importance of good PR, companies will struggle if they rely on PR alone, with little insight into the root causes of or the facts behind their reputational problems."

But Paul Holmes picks up on the unsaid theme – that it’s a management consulting agency, not a PR agency, making these important points:

I wish I could push back more aggressively against this–the idea that public relations is about "spin" rather than "changing business operations and conducting two-way conversations" is particularly offensive–but the reality is that the authors seem to have formed a pretty accurate impression of how most corporate communications departments actually work.  (This is where I would ordinarily go into a rant about the inherent problem with naming public relations departments "corporate communications," which is that public relationships are defined not by communications, but by actions, but you’ve all heard it a hundred times before.)

Finally, he pulls another solid quote that outlines what the most effective PR counselors do (hint, communication is not at the top of the list, understanding audiences and recommending actions is).

The authors’ conclusion: "Companies should emphasize three priorities. First, they need to assemble enough facts–most important, perhaps, a rich understanding of key stakeholders, including consumers–and not only the product preferences but also the political attitudes of consumer groups. Second, companies should focus on the actions that matter most to stakeholders, something that may call for an exaggerated degree of transparency about corporate priorities or operations. Third, they must try to influence stakeholders through techniques that go beyond traditional PR approaches, with an emphasis on two-way dialogue."

Core to communications is getting information out to the public.  Traditionally (as in, pre-Web 1.0), that was the domain of professional news organizations.  However, with the growth of UGC content in blogs, Twitter, podcasts and other Web-centric properties, you might often hear the argument that news organizations are losing control of news distribution.    While an interesting theory, so far, people’s news surfing habits are not backing it up.   For example,

We recently conducted a series of polls on LinkedIn to determine how professionals read news.  You can download the full report here.  The key findings showed that while news sites continued to dominate, search engines and aggregators were a major source of news.  On the mobile side, news specific mobile applications (such as the WSJ app on the iPhone) were even more important than a mobile web browser.    Our bottom line finding, based on these polls and third part research such as Hitwise’s list of top news web sites (which found both news sites and search engines in the top ten), is that major news sites along with search engines and aggregators still need to lead the way in distributing information.  Social media then provides a measurement of how well the news was received as well as an amplification effect.  Key findings included the following:

Professor Louis Lowenstein, a former (now deceased) Columbia University business law professor had a line every senior public relations counselor should remember: “You manage what you measure.”

To those public relations professionals that see themselves as lead reputation counselors – do your measurement reports analyze media relations and social media measurement or do they measure reputation?   If the former, then you are a media relations or social media (or both) professional.  if the latter, then you are a reputation counselor.  Do you measure it all?  Then you are probably a well informed senior corporate communications / public relations professional.

I raise this as I regularly hear public relations professionals talk about managing reputation but then have measurement reports that focus on media or social media measurement.   Measuring media has never been a substitute for measuring reputation.  It has always been a good measurement of the effectiveness of the media relations function, but that is but one function in a communications department (even if it is a central one). 

Lately, companies have tried to use social media to measure reputation as social media is heavily driven by user generated content, meaning it has the voice of the audience.  However, only a small segment of the popular is actively engaged in the conversation (see slide 20 of Accenture’s research which includes how many people are not regularly engaged in the social part of social media – click here).  As a result, if you rely on social media measurement to measure public attitude and reputation, you may be getting a skewed portion of the population and one that does not represent broader sentiment (see an example in this AdAge article on the Twitter outcry to a Motrin campaign here).

So what should those who see themselves as reputation managers do?  Look to measure sentiment wi th the broader audience.  Ideally, companies would regularly conduct surveys.  This can be cost prohibitive so, in that client situation, we look at solutions that at least give us a voice of the audience – small virtual focus groups, short surveys, analysis of search engine data and so on.  This does not replace other forms of measurement but we’ve found it is a good start in knowing, directly, what the reputation of a company is with our key audiences.

In discussing public relations counsel, I often hear discussions focus on reputation over understanding the public.   However, some of the best reputations are earned by taking a PR approach that relies first on understanding the public, then by making business decisions around that understanding, and, finally, communicating those decisions and related actions.   An article on M&T Bank Corp in Fortune focuses in on this approach:

In the article, M&T Bank Corp. Chairman and CEO Robert Wilmers is quoted with the following take on public relations:

Bankers should do what he calls "public relations" – not burnishing an image but actually relating to the public and its needs. At M&T, regional banking heads live in their communities (vice chairman Michael Pinto is based in Baltimore, New York Metro head Kevin Pearson in New York City), and their employees get involved in everything from volunteering at a bake sale to schmoozing the local pols. Every area has its own advisory board made up of merchants who weigh in on key loans. President Mark Czarnecki, who started as a bank manager in 1977, says the bank has learned that the closer a customer lives to a retail branch, the better he performs on his loans and the more bank services he is likely to use.

There are a few very notable points about M&T Bank Corp’s approach to public relations:

1. Mr. Wilmers takes the time to understand his business’ audience in order to make the best decisions for his company and customers.  The result is a positive consumer reputation.  One could look at their local approach to management (placing senior executives in the markets they oversee) as a business move driven by both business and PR considerations as management understands that just locating executives near customers drives a reputation that results in more business.
2. Business decisions drive reputations.  This is a redundant point but it needs to be hammered home.  If you read the whole article, you’ll find that the result of a key business decision is, in fact, the desired image (a local bank that understands customers) and reputation (a solid business approach that others should consider emulating).   This is not a bank that makes business decisions then  wonders how to achieve a certain reputation and image. 
3. Research research research.  Understanding an audience takes research.  It can be a in-depth survey or having executives meet and talk to the public/audience (I tend to recommend both but, if only one, do the latter).

On a recent call with Wall Street analysts, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz dropped the f-bomb while talking about the frustration of getting things done at Yahoo.

There were engineers in almost every country, and way too many product people. We had one product management person for every three engineers,We had a lot of people telling engineers what to do but nobody fucking doing anything. Excuse me. I knew that would slip out one of these times. (click here for the audio)

Her honest approach to communications (talking the way she talks, not the way someone trained her to talk) seems to simply reflect her approach to business – no one doubts her sincerity and seriousness because she’s honest to a f***ing fault about getting things done.  Here’s a good outline of her style at GigaOm.

I’m one of the (few? many?) public relations professionals cheering on this style of communications.  While it’s often not appropriate, it is how people (including executives) talk in the real world and that needs to always be kept in mind.   When an executive doesn’t use their natural language style but instead gets caught up in PR speak (yes, I said it), audiences detect and that affects the trust factor.  People are more likely to believe someone they can relate to and people easily related to people who talk like they do.  

So have I actually told an executive it’s OK to curse?  Actually, yes (ping me as I’d rather not call out that executive…but they took my advice and it f***ing worked).   While executives should stay on message, they should also communicate messages in their natural, honest style.  And if that f***ing means dropping a lot of f***cking f-bombs, then f***cking do it.  You’re more likely to be believed.  And from what I’ve seen, no one doubts that Carol is seriously focused on fixing broken things f***cking fast.

You can find more examples of Bartz’s “real world communications” style at Alley Insider here.  

If a CEO does not have a reputation for bottom line honesty, then he or she doesn’t have a reputation needed to be CEO.  As Carl Bask, CEO of Autodesk, shows, a sprinkle of humor on a platter of cynicism maybe the fastest route to a reputation for bottom line honesty (just read the articles about his quarterly call).   His reputation will pay off with a higher level of trust when Autodesk starts reporting better news.

In a recent earnings call with Wall Street analysts, Mr. Bass was reporting a lousy last quarter for the last year and a murky, at best, outlook globally.  When an analyst, fishing hard for good news, asked what regions were immune to the global slump, Mr. Bass made it clear he would not try to spin bad news into good:

Well, I think Antarctica has been relatively immune, maybe Greenland, as well, although not Iceland, as we all found out.

Enough said.

(note: I first picked up on this in Fred Hickey’s High-Tech Report and you can get the full background from Barron’s).