Before altering their practice, companies should ask themselves a few simple questions: What is the problem and is it really a problem?, Where does this problem come from?, how will the envisioned changes help resolve the situation? What is in it for their customers? Doing this could save them from taking decisions they may regret.

Dean Markadakis from Fast Company cleverly exposes a situation where precipitated changes didn’t actually solve a problem, in this video interview produced in association with Google and the Wharton School of Business. Enjoy!

As Andy Marken states in the Public Relations Quarterly, when facing consumer complaints and questions companies should aim to: “Calm that individual down, help him get the right assistance/answer and the company has not just saved a sale but more frequently has gained another company/product advocate who will speak favorably about the firm and experience with others”. Remember that every consumer they convert will potentially help the PR team do their job by praising the company’s actions. And knowing that consumers place so much trust in what they hear online, companies should capitalize on the situation. There was never any good reason not to listen to customers!

Last but not least, I firmly believe that public relations should increasingly become part of the management strategy. It has too frequently been used to resolve problems instead of preventing them. Having a PR counsel work as a part of the management team would help companies make the appropriate choices and decisions to maintain a proper image and preserve stakeholder trust. Edward Lordan states in one of his Public Relations Quarterly articles: “Public relations should be integrated into the strategic decision-making process in an organization, not exclusively as a reaction to events inside and outside the company.” I must say that I totally agree. Many scandals could have been prevented if their management system had been organized in such a way. In fact, The PR counsels could have helped the companies take appropriate ethical decisions, maintain high levels of transparency and preserve employee and stakeholder relationships.

Blatant misconceptions of the field, plummeting consumer trust and the new media ecosystem should all be reasons for companies to readapt their PR goals and strategies. Although it is already late, it’s better to reform now than never. Moreover costs shouldn’t be an issue because it will cost less to adapt now than to compensate for the failure to do so. As Gerald Kane states in The Harvard Business Review: “companies as diverse as Kaiser Permanente, Comcast Domino’s and Amazon have learned that not having a social media team can cost far more than having one [...] each learned it’s lesson the hard way.” So here is my advice to companies: embrace the new media landscape, listen to your stakeholders, build your corporate practice and guidelines off of their advice & opinions and remain open to suggestions. You will rapidly see the return on investment, as you won’t be on your own anymore. You will be a better company backed by better customers. Do yourself a favor, and take the opportunity while its still here!

The new media landscape has created huge PR opportunities for companies and organizations yet many have failed to recognize these. One of the great advantages is the simple shift from a media landscape based on control to one based on openness. This situation is caused by the unique fact that consumers can now cheaply and effortlessly create content. In the past the high costs of production forced the content to be produced by large and specialized media companies. They subsequently had the final word on what they wanted to distribute. But, in a world where anybody can produce content at minimal cost, the gatekeepers are bypassed and companies can independently decide what they deem to be newsworthy. This valuable opportunity enables them to keep their publics informed day-in day-out and increases their ability to react rapidly in the event of a crisis. More significantly though, this shift has enabled them to be directly connected to their audiences.

Some will argue that this is not beneficial to PR, as skipping the gatekeepers also does away with the opportunity to benefit from “3^rd party credibility”. While this might seem like a valid point, I tend to believe that the shift in the landscape hasn’t completely altered the phenomenon of credibility and that the benefits brought on by the changes firmly outweigh the disadvantages. Remember that any new medium also brings new producers, and that it is inevitable that some of these producers will become more trusted than others. Hence, contrary to public belief, organizations can still benefit from 3^rd party credibility in new media platforms on the Internet. The credibility just doesn’t belong to the same people they used to deal with. Chris Brogan, a media consultant, author and respected marketing expert calls these new sources of online credibility ‘trust agents’. He defines them as: “people who use the web in a very human way to build influence, reputation, awareness” (Brogan, Smith) While they can take many forms, trust agents are most commonly bloggers that gain high amounts of authority & trust on the Internet and subsequently develop a huge community of readers.

Engaging with and using such new sources of credibility is part of the changes companies must make. As a matter a fact, in some cases it may be more beneficial for organizations to get online ‘trust agents’ to preach their message than to use traditional large-scale media outlets. This is due to the fact that their (trust agents) communities are extremely targeted, specialized and dedicated to the subjects they follow. This relevance is crucial. In other words, speaking to 1 million people is useless if only 50 are interested in your cause. Ultimately, the goal is to get these dedicated followers to preach the organizations messages as well. It becomes a virtuous circle of word of mouth.

While some might want to stick solely to traditional media, I would argue that developing relationships with ‘trust agents’ is a compulsory part of corporate public relations in this new media landscape. Not engaging with these agents and their communities could very well be fatal. Consider the following: “A recent PEW study found that nearly 40% of Americans say they have doubted a medical professional’s opinion or diagnosis because it conflicted with information they’d found online. If users put that much faith in what they learn on the Internet, what will they be willing to believe if members of a social media forum start trashing your organization?” (Kane, Fichman, Gallaugher, Glaser) The reality of the current situation is that people will be talking about brands and companies online whether they like it or not. Chris Anderson, a bestselling author and the chief editor at Wired magazine comically expresses this idea when he states:  “Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is.” (Anderson Chris) Consumers have been voicing their ideas, thoughts, concerns, worships and complaints over these online media channels for years. It is now up to companies to do the same. Doing so will ensure that they remain in control of their image and reputation while portraying engagement. In the end, this will also enable them to develop better relationships with their stakeholders; which was the goal of public relations in the first place.

Brian Solis, author of "Putting the Public Back In Public Relations" presents this brilliant graph that exposes the multitude of new media channels available to PR in this day and age, while giving some quick insight on how to use them. Creative Commons photo courtesy of briansolis.com

]]> http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/2010/01/companies-public-relations-and-the-new-media-landscape-part-2/feed/ 0 http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/2009/12/companies-public-relations-and-the-new-media-landscape-part-1/ http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/2009/12/companies-public-relations-and-the-new-media-landscape-part-1/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:35:05 +0000 alex http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/?p=144 This is the first of a series of posts on the changing face of public relations. As I firmly believe that the profession has had a hard time adapting to the ever-changing media landscape, I decided to analyze the ways in which the field could reform. In the following posts I will:

1- analyze the problems that the profession has encountered in the recent past and evaluate the changes in the environment in which it operates

2- Reflect & offer insight on the opportunities provided by the new media landscape

3- Assess how both companies and consumers could benefit from updated public relations

Problems Encountered by PR in the Recent Past

In my opinion PR faces four major problems, the first of which is the lack of trust in the profession. According to a study conducted in Sweden in 2007, PR practitioners where amongst the least trusted professionals in all industries confounded. This has lead the public to describe the practice with terms such as: ’spin’ & ‘manipulation’ consequently inciting them to refer to the practitioners as ’spin doctors’ and ‘flack’s’. When we consider that PR  depends on the trust of others to communicate its messages this seems to be a considerable problem. Remember that PR is “earned media” and thus is about earning sufficient awareness, trust and respect to engender positive press and word of mouth. In other words, a PR practitioner has to maintain trust with the media outlets he uses (so that they talk about him) but also with the public he is trying to reach (so that they listen to him). If the public doesn’t trust him the purpose is defeated.

Secondly, the common misunderstanding of the practice cannot be helpful. In fact, James Grunig co-author of the book ‘The Future of Excellence in Public Relations‘ found that advertising, propaganda and public relations are three distinct fields that are frequently confused. If the public doesn’t understand the true purpose of the profession and assumes that it is about ’spinning’ and ‘manipulating’ it seems normal that they will be criticizing it. So, what is PR really about? Ivy Ledbetter Lee (often considered as the father of PR) defined it as: “a two way street”. In other words, he believe that the profession was about helping companies listen to their publics so that the companies could communicate and act appealingly & effectively with them in return. Thus it can be understood that in its most literal sense, PR is about effectively managing the relationships between an organization (often a company) and its stakeholders (often consumers).

Thridly, the profession has had a hard time adapting to the new media landscape and remains trapped in archaic notions of an outdated media model. In fact, the arrival of the web created a significant shift from a media model based on control to one based on openness. This is fundamentally due to one reason: anybody can now cheaply and effortlessly create content. Hence, the sources of trust and credibility have shifted and PR professionals are finding themselves stranded an reminiscing the ‘good old days’. Not only are their audiences constantly scattering, they now have the ability to talk back. As Clay Shirky (Best-selling author and NYU Graduate Professor) would say: “we are now in a media landscape where the consumers are also the producers.” PR needs to account for this shift.

Finally, we come back to the notion of trust. Remember that it has been shown that PR professionals lack the necessary trust from their publics. Unfortunately though, the problem goes much further than just practitioners; it affects business in general. Edelman, one of the worlds largest PR firms annually analyses the amount of trust displayed towards business across the world (Edelman Trust Barometer). They have found 2009 to be: “a catastrophic year for business” because “trust is down in established economies”. They continue on to explain that we have hit “10 year low’s” in consumer trust. It appears that people don’t trust companies anymore! PR has to compensate and adapt to the fact that public faith in organizations is continuously slipping.

In my mind, these substantial problems are all more than valid reasons for PR’s necessity to reform. Simply denying the new circumstances and refusing to adapt to the changes is not a plausible option for the future. Stay put for the following post, which will analyze the opportunities provided by the new media landscape and will help us understand how PR could potentially take advantage of the new realities.