Sunday 31 May 2009
Engine oil and the viscosity of the web
Tuesday 26 May 2009
Big budgets for London - what credit crunch?
According to PR Week, the UK capital is set to try to lure big sporting and cultural events to its environs. There's even talk of the Super Bowl if it ever moves outside of the USA. That's quite a pitch for some agency to pull together...
While all of this is fine, I suspect most of us are working with much tighter budgets and having to try to squeeze a lot more out of a lot less.
Surely the tools that social media offers might gain us a foothold for much less spend. I'm certainly looking at online petitions, gimmicky campaigns (the puppy webcam was one such...) that get visitors to the website, then we hope they'll see some of the strategically positioned personal safety and crime prevention advice when they're on. We all have to get a lot more creative!!
And, wait for it, we have to depend on the tools becoming so ubiquitous that people accept and use them (in the way that mobile phones are now de rigeur, not so long ago they were an oddity). As Clay Shirky says, the most profound effects of these tools will lag their invention by years and we have in place what he describes as a critical mass of adopters.
Friday 22 May 2009
Perfect symmetry - very hard to achieve
Without doubt, the feedback and involvement capabilities offered by social media should be better aiding the 'excellence' model of public relations (Grunig & Hunt, 1984). Here, the theory advises, organisations should consult with and possibly change their behaviours according to the reactions and feedback provided by their key publics.
How often, though, is this just an aspiration, or, at worst, a box-ticking exercise?
Recently, Glasgow City Council ran a long consultation exercise regarding the closure of several primary schools and nurseries. There were roof-top protests and sit-ins at some of the schools and tensions were running high (see BBC footage ). Following the decision to close the schools many angry parents said that the consultation had been pointless and little more than a sham as the decision was taken before any consultation with key publics.
So, in this situation, where did the excellence approach fall down?
There were commercial factors which are quantitative and it is hard to reconcile buildings in poor structural state with falling repair budgets. The sums don't add up.
For parents, though, the main qualitative factor is what matters - their child's education - which is non-negotiable, from their viewpoint.
There was never going to be a solution to this which would result in both sides of the argument coming together to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
I think there are very few situations where symmetry is really achievable. Even high profile campaigns which have had a result (Joanna Lumley's fight for Gurkhas' residency rights in the UK), came after a climbdown by the Westminster Government, coming on the back of a lot of negative headlines for No 10.
Monday 18 May 2009
An interested audience
Some horses I know all looking for the feed bucket: always guaranteed to get their attention!
If only it was as easy for we, as public relations practitioners, to achieve the same level of interest in the audiences we seek to engage?
Grunig's Situational Theory provides some pointers here. People will engage depending on high problem recognition (being concerned enough to engage with an issue), low constraint recognition (the need to feel that the action they take will actually make a difference) and high involvement.
New technologies are assisting this engagement, particularly as activist groups can use them to build on involvement and empower people who may want to engage but think it's too much effort to do so. As practitioners, we have to make it as easy as possible for people to engage. I like the approach Amnesty International takes to helping anyone become an activist. We can all learn something from this campaign and many similar.
Thursday 14 May 2009
Blogging - now a bridge too far for some
Monday 11 May 2009
Blogs - the quest for quality
That's got me thinking.
What makes a good blog to you, might be a complete turn-off for me. A friendly, informal writing style which informs or poses questions seems to bring people in. That is certainly what I want to see on other blogs and I'm can't be bothered to read those that are mainly composed of links with little other substance. That's a portal, surely.
I welcome debate on this blog and I've already had some great comments and discussion. How would I convert these comments into a campaign, though, or use for research around client/customer viewpoints?
Also, does quality beat quantity? Much of the reading suggests we've not yet solved the conundrum of measuring the feedback received through blogs for effectiveness or engagement. Since research increasingly tells us that blogs are the most popular and influential social media tool, I can see the need to harness them a lot more effectively (and to start using them as a business tool).
References:
http://www.instituteforpr.org/research_single/new_media_new_influencers_and_implications_for_the_public_relations_profess/
Friday 8 May 2009
On-line news but pay-as-you-go?
The bloggers are going bonkers with this story and the comments are flowing in.
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/903901/Rupert-Murdoch-charge-online-content/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-internet
General consensus is that he's completely barking to even make the audacious suggestion. I can't see it working myself. There are too many places you can get your news today. In the past, some websites required you to register (The Guardian, for example) and even that was a pain. They've since dropped that idea. There is simply too much competition for sources of news and news groups have to face up to the fact that sales of newspapers are dropping and they have to build a website that complements the hard copy, then they have to raise cash in other ways.
Desktop RSS feed anyone?