This white paper provides an overview of the strategic dimensions of the Holy Trinity and some practical manifestations of how they can be applied in a business environment.

Throughout the paper, the complementary dimensions of the Trinity pillars are illustrated. Supporting this, tactical, practical advice on how they can be applied collectively, rather than as standalone methodologies, is provided.

Individually, the three pillars of the Trinity are a robust means of delivering tangible business outcomes, yet applying them in an integrated manner provides economy of scale. More importantly, however, when connected each pillar will then generate a greater momentum to deliver a collectively-driven result that exceeds the sum of its individual parts being applied separately.

Triple-treat challenges in applying the Trinity, then, and well worth getting right, are ensuring that:

• individually, suitable constituents of the pillars are put in place
• collectively, if applying an integrated Trinity approach, the different elements work well together and are likely to optimise investment
• an approach, or strategy if you like, that ensures the varying characteristics of any single or collective Trinity elements are harnessed and directed to optimise investment.

Holy Trinity PR pillars explained

Thought leadership – the provision of content that is original, thought provoking but, above all in the context of business results, useful for organisational target audiences and, ideally, prompts them to tell others about the value that it has provided them. Ideally, these ‘others’ will either be more target audiences or influencers on target audiences.

3^rd party credibility – provided by non-organisational employees that have credibility and/or influence on organisational target audiences, with their views on issues relevant to the organisation (but not necessarily about the organisation) being made apparent through communication mediums such as the media, social media or events.

Strategic alliances – forming business relationships between organisations to help them achieve their objectives, with primary rationales for the alliances being:

• They expand the reach of communication (i.e. information about each alliance partner can be included in each other’s communication vehicles)
• The credibility of each partner can be enhanced due to its involvement with the other credible partner
• ‘Riding on the coattails’ of the alliance partner’s communication vehicles normally costs either nothing or very little, thus making it comparatively easy to generate excellent ROI on the alliance ‘investment’.

Why the Holy Trinity is good PR = good business

Each of the Trinity pillars facilitate credibility to the organisation being delivered. Sometimes through non-organisational stakeholders (e.g. individuals, companies, non-government organisations such as think tanks) endorsing the organisation, either directly or by insinuation, and sometimes by providing value of substance to organisational target audiences.

The extensively interconnected nature of the Trinity is founded on relationships. None of the three pillars exists without taking into account and dealing with the relationship dimension:

• Thought leadership – to provide content of value, the needs of target audiences must be understood, which is almost impossible without a relationship existing or for there to be a genuine desire for a mutually beneficial relationship to be constituted
• 3^rd party credibility – necessitates a non-organisational stakeholder endorsing the organisation (either explicitly or implicitly), which will not occur without a mutually beneficial relationship existing
• Strategic alliance – one of its characteristics is mutually beneficial outcomes or ROI.

As noted, mutually beneficial outcomes are a consistent necessity and outcome of the Holy Trinity being applied. This is an extension, and application, of two-way symmetrical communication.

Evolving, learning: PR leads to better organisations

A qualitative manner in which the Holy Trinity, and hence PR itself, helps deliver ROI is through the learning and insights gained from actually applying the Trinity. As such, this is a continual improvement process that benefits an organisation’s entire business operations.

The methodologies:

• necessitate working with non-organisational stakeholders
• frequently require challenging organisational orthodoxies
• compel an organisation to adapt to the needs, methods and thinking of non-organisational stakeholders
• will see organisational approaches and content examined and tested; in essence providing a form of focus group or qualitative testing before ‘going to market’.

In each of these instances, the organisation can evolve and improve the way it operates.

Thought leadership for content strategy

Because so much communication, relationship building and reputation enhancement is based on content that is used in social and other digital media formats, the Holy Trinity pillars are a natural means of helping facilitate the development of this content. Of course, they should be integrated into any approach that delivers content to the organisation.

And if the goals of creating content are educating, informing, entertaining and inspiring, then this isn’t so far from what thought leadership entails. Certainly, all four of these characteristics need to be considered as part of an organisation’s content strategy, in itself a 101 pillar of any best practice public relations and/or marketing strategy.

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One dimension of this discussion is the opportunities blogs in particular are providing organisations – through PR-driven brand journalism – to make a proactive, high profile contribution to discussions on key issues, including industry news. Large organisations especially have the resources to gain high SEO rankings because of their relevance to issues and topics of conversation.

They can therefore rival even large news organisations as a provider of content – analysis and thought leadership in particular, leaving the daily grind of ‘news’ to the old school woolly mammoths.

It doesn’t have to be either/or, though. The two paradigms can operate in tandem, just as they are evolving to do.

And why wouldn’t organisations do this (i.e. create reputation-building safe haven sources of information that goes STRAIGHT to stakeholders (i.e. unmediated – getting the message across without media bias)? As long as this is done with credibility, authenticity and with stakeholders’ interests in mind, it will make an impact and is already doing so.

This is taking an issues management approach. Intelligently done, it is an approach that can not only build reputation proactively, it can also provide a bulwark against negative criticism that occurs in a crisis situation, including from the woolly mammoths.

But it’s not just organisational blogs that are at play there. There is the 3^rd party: the independent blogger. We’re coming to the new tiger in the jungle.

Public relations needs to be proactive in issues management

One strategic approach for brand journalism, especially when using a blog platform, is to frequently link to and address issues discussed by and/or relevant to influential, or potentially influential, bloggers (in the context of an organisation’s reputation and/or a specific issue). The organisation should be addressing these issues from its own perspective, providing insights and information that will be unique to it – thus helping with differentiation, SEO and thought leadership positioning.

Why should the woolly mammoths have all the exclusives, pray tell?

The recognition of the blogger’s perspective through taking this approach will make them make feel valued and respected, even if the organisation takes an oppositional perspective to them. This will definitely speed up the information flow in a crisis (i.e. potentially stamp out the brush fires of disinformation that can escalate an already explosive situation).

Would you say the same approach would work with traditional journalism (i.e. link to journalist’s stories on either their own blogs or media website)? In my view, it won’t work as well because the journalists are bred and paid to be difficult folk, taking the cynical, uber-sceptical position.

Journalists have egos. Who would have thought?

But there are exceptions to this rule, especially in vertical/B2B media outlets and, let’s not forget, journalists are people too and as such possess egos (often quite colossal ones) that will feel gratified and respected if an organisation links to their online endeavours and accords them recognition and respect when addressing their positions. So, in summary, it can’t hurt!

Non-journalist bloggers – tigers without manners?

Because non-media bloggers aren’t restrained by the same standards and regulation as journalists, they can put unfounded content and utter speculation on their sites, meaning the genie can escape from the bottle (even if the genie is a figment of the writer’s imagination or ego) very quickly. If the organisation has an established blog and possibly even relationship with the blogger, this fire can be doused extremely quickly.

PR content marketing is more than join-the-dots

As social media is such a well resourced and many-limbed conductor of contemporary crises and issues of a reputational nature, it is imperative that an organisation of any size cultivates more than just a ‘placeholder’ presence on a blog and other social media, as well as having a presence that talks not only about positive ‘pretty’ issues impacting on the organisation, but also about challenging and divisive ones.

For brand journalism to resonate with its stakeholders it needs to take this holistic approach, embracing a wide range of issues relevant to the organisation and its stakeholders’ interests, needs and wants.

Independent bloggers influence the media itself, thus giving their presence greater resonance. In an interesting summary articulated in a study in the Journal of Public Relations Research, which has influenced this post itself, it was stated that bloggers:

• Act as ‘watchdogs’ to media by identifying inaccuracies
• Remove barriers to information access that media might put in place
• Upset the once dominant agenda-setting primacy of the media woolly mammoths
• Democratise the sources of information and perspectives available to stakeholders to gather information.

All of this is true, of course. So now we have three sources of news and blogs:

• Media woolly mammoths
• Organisational elephants in the room
• Independent tigers of the jungle.

Care to venture outside?

Stop press: Very soon a new, free whitepaper will be launched on this blog called The Holy Trinity of public relations: thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances. Spread the word! #PRholytrinity

What role do you think organisations should play in the provision of thought leadership, industry information and news – either through social media such as blogs or other platforms? What are your observations on the rapidly evolving tripartite sources of news and insights we have – media, bloggers and organisations? Where are we headed?

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If we don’t use the complementary elements of triple treat, we’ll struggle to have the content to leverage organisations to their potential, no matter what the platform:

• Media
• Speaking engagements
• Trade shows/expos
• But especially – SOCIAL MEDIA.

Of course, there will be situation where the utilisation of every (or any) element of content marketing, inbound marketing and brand journalism in an organisational communication strategy will not be appropriate. But they should always be on the list of boxes to check to see if, in fact, they should be leveraged.

Inbound marketing for public relations

Inbound marketing is not about interrupting people with television ads, print publication ads or cold calling, it is about providing resources of value to target audiences (e.g. through videos that potential customers want to see, business blogs with valuable insights and other forms of content such as white papers).

This leads to prospects contacting us looking for more information and sharing thoughts and observations on our organisations through social media and other avenues. The changing landscapes of media, communication and society are making outbound techniques less effective and more expensive.

Inbound marketing is an incredibly important strategic approach that the clever communicator will integrate into a plethora of proactive issues management and reputation building activities.

Additionally, it is a definitive platform through which to promote thought leadership (a prime approach to achieve organisational differentiation). It is an unmediated form of communication, so target audiences receive information and messaging precisely the way you intended it to be received. And, at its best, it enhances the anthropomorphic qualities (human characteristics) of an organisation, which is an effective way to enhance relationships with stakeholders.

Brand journalism underpinning excellent PR

Brand journalism ramps up to a more credible, values-driven level what PR professionals have been doing since the year dot, writing about an organisation and the issues which are relevant to it and its stakeholders.

Brand journalism has become a fundamental element of public relations:

• People don’t trust the media as much as they once did (due in no small part to its trend towards under-resourcing)
• People are looking online for information before picking up a magazine or newspaper
• SEO is directing people’s enquiry to well optimised sources of information.

Enter the opportunity for organisations to be THE provider of credible information on their organisation, their issues, their industry.

As Brian Solis has said of brand journalism, ““We have to become the resource, we have to become the influencer”.

To be an effective brand journalist, you must:

• be a trustworthy, consistent news source about your organisation and its industry

• provide information that has balance, authenticity and is produced in consideration of what your stakeholders are interested in (balanced with what drives your organisation)
• recognise that an emotional connection is key when it comes to stories and journalism.

Content marketing for stakeholder management

Content marketing is now an integral element of public relations and is an extension of the notion of thought leadership. It varies the thought leadership approach, however, in various ways:

1. It includes content not generated by the organisation
2. It can include content that is not necessarily ‘insightful’ or ‘high-end’
3. It broadens the range of issues an organisation might offer content on
4. It can increase the number of organisational employees who might speak, or represent the organisation, on certain topics.

Content is more than thought leadership. Not all content needs to be cutting edge, ground breaking etc. But it should provide value to the target audience.

By choosing some core pillars to provide original content (such as thought leadership), then having a ‘satellite’ of secondary topics where a content curation aesthetic is applied, organisations have the opportunity to have their cake and eat it too.

Excellent content educates, informs, entertains and/or inspires – all of which give you the best possible chance of engaging with stakeholders and developing advocates of them.

Other than thought leadership and curated content, options for inclusion into content marketing include:

• case studies
• analysis
• employee, customer, stakeholder stories: a diversity of voices (anthropomorphising)
• 3^rd party/strategic alliances content
• images
• videos.

As effective an approach as content marketing is, it is an insatiable beast. So remember to repurpose content as much as is feasible, customising it for target audience segments, to save time and get better ROI on marketing efforts.

If you’re looking for a great resource on content marketing, then I heartily recommend checking out DavidHenderson.Com.

Stop press: In a couple of weeks a new, free whitepaper will be launched on this blog called The Holy Trinity of public relations: thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances. Spread the word! #PRholytrinity

Do you include the triple treat methodologies in your organisational public relations or marketing strategy? How does your organisation offer insights and value to stakeholders that doesn’t have the explicit objective of turning a buck? Are you a good (make that an excellent) brand journalist? If so, share your secrets!

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Whilst I am an advocate of organisational change – short-term pain for long-term gain – to help create better stakeholder relationships, without the initial important component of listening being applied in an exacting, scientific manner, change and impact in any context will not be fulfilled to its best possible level.

The value of listening pre-crisis for PR and reputation management

In an issues & crisis management dimension there are a range of excellent reasons to have a sophisticated set of organisational listening protocols in place. Listening enables you to:

• pick up on organisation mentions and the context (very important) in which this has occurred
• identify and understand issues
• identify stakeholders, as well as key influencers on your target audiences
• proactively build up database of those who are either fans of the organisation and its issues, have an interest in them or who can positively influence others, enabling you to build programs targeting those receptive to information and giving you a good opportunity to amplify your content across the internet
• identify and develop relationship management strategies for those who are critical of the organisation
• gain fresh perspectives on how organisational and stakeholder change could occur, facilitating continuous organisational improvement (communication-specific or broader business-relevant)
• identify topics and issues of interest to target audiences that an organisation can create communication programs from (including inbound marketing and content marketing approaches)
• put in place planning to address potential issues come crises, including reaching out to relevant stakeholders before issues escalate into crisis territory. These potential issues could have been identified through stakeholder monitoring.

Why listening helps PR during a crisis

If you have an effective stakeholder listening process set up you will hear, and you can react to, the issue and where it came from. You can do this accurately and with speed, thus saving time and helping minimise issue/crisis escalation and negative reputation impact.

PR-driven social media helping organisations post-crisis

Social media is a boon for issues management, crisis management and continuous organisational improvement. This is because once integrated into an organisation’s listening strategy, it can provide deep information to help an organisation:

• understand and assess stakeholder reactions to crises
• determine what elements of the crisis stakeholders responded to most significantly (e.g. nature of organisational crisis management and response; what elements of the crisis generated greatest concern/relief)
• who the most active commenters were (both positive and negative), thus helping determine influencers and programs that can be put in place to leverage supporters and educate/inform/build more positive relationships with negative commenters/influencers
• prioritise stakeholders that could potentially become champions or advocates of the brand
• reach out to stakeholders to further explore their positions
• emphasise post-crisis organisational change that is occurring and continue the conversation
• anthropomorphise (give it human qualities) the conversation and, hence, the organisation
• determine the ROI on crisis actions undertaken, ultimately helping identify opportunities for the organisation to change its operations/crisis communication to create more positive relationships with stakeholders.

All of this information provides a valuable resource for continual whole-of-organisation improvement and, by extension, organisational cultural and – of course – communication change.

Stop press: In a few weeks a new, free whitepaper will be launched on this blog called The Holy Trinity of public relations: thought leadership, 3rd party credibility and strategic alliances. Spread the word! #PRholytrinity

What other activity can take place – communication-specific and more broadly business-relevant – as a result of effective target audience and stakeholder listening? Do you have examples of how an organisation has changed its communication and business as a result of listening to its stakeholders that you can share?

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According to recent data that has come from Nielsen, social media use in Australia:

• is up 127% in 2011 compared to 2010
• increased its share of being a leisure pursuit by 36%
• sees, on average, Australians spend nearly ten hours per week on social networks.

Additionally, a new study from the USA amongst  300 C-suite and senior executives found that companies that fully embrace social engagement are experiencing four times greater business impact than less‐engaged companies.

This is on top of the cold, hard fact that social media provides invaluable help in the field of crisis communication management to:

• identify emerging issues and key stakeholders and influencers
• enable speedy communication during the crisis
• provide information to improve future crisis operational and communication processes (not to mention business operations in the broader sense).

Bearing all this evidence in mind – what’s the problem?!

*This supposition, and a number of others noted in this post, are based on findings and analysis in Trends and issues in Australian corporate affairs 2012, a survey of over 300 of Australia’s most senior corporate affairs professionals, undertaken by leading public relations, communications and corporate affairs recruiter, Salt & Shein.

PR watches the social media boat sail by

Following are some quotes from the report’s respondents that had me raising an eyebrow or two:

• “I think there are ways and techniques that people will eventually refine that will allow you to control the message in a social media context.”
• “I still think it’s all about controlling the message. Social media is just another channel, but with tighter timeframes.”
• “The market predominantly reads the serious press, watches ABC news and listens to AM and PM. It doesn’t necessarily look at someone’s tweet or Facebook post.”

When PR pros start talking about controlling the message, I wonder do they actually mean controlling reputation? Because I would have thought by now that it is generally recognised as being realistic that reputation and brand are created jointly between an organisation and its stakeholders, with social media being one of the main reasons why this is in fact the case.

Controlling the message is, in many instances, an extension of the reputation control presumption. Messages are translated, modified, re-articulated by stakeholders, with value-adding occurring all the time. Trying to control the message, then, is like saying here is a bottle with a genie in it, but don’t you dare open it!

The report says its respondents are, “over-whelmingly… taking a “toe in the water” approach to social media whilst actively monitoring the medium.” A little bit of bravery here guys! It’s not like we are short on data supporting the need to alter our approach to communication, reallocating resources as necessary.

The response from what I assume is an ASX-listed company’s PR employee in regard to the ‘market’ implies that the market is the only stakeholder they care about. This further implies that the company’s focus is a narrow one. I am sure it has more than one stakeholder to maintain and build a relationship with.

The report further notes that, “Several senior practitioners at top 50 companies were scathing in their assessment of the medium, variously describing it as “pure hype”, “completely oversold” and “a re-run of the internet frenzy in the 1990s”.

This seems to fly in the face of best practice PR that espouses thought leadership and its placement on social media, the critically important approach of inbound marketing and the content marketing that needs to underpin it.

On the other hand, as noted through the rationale of the following report respondent, there can be a sound reason for avoiding social media, at least until you figure out a way for ROI to be delivered:

“In one part of our business we are avoiding social media altogether because it’s a hornet’s nest populated by activists who are well mobilised and organised around a single issue. We have assessed the impact of their social media activities on our reputation as miniscule, as the number of people following and reading the blogs and posts is very small.”

Public relations using social media for crisis communication

“The biggest issue for corporate affairs to manage is social media. It has fundamentally changed the paradigm from managing information to managing information flow. Whatever vestige of control there was is fast being dissipated through the fragmentation of social media and the rise of customer democracy in parallel.”

From a crisis management perspective, it seems hard to justify standing by and just watching and monitoring social media.

This notion is amplified by the findings of survey last year that highlighted brand and image as top of the list of risk concerns for 300 Australia and New Zealand executives, with social media highlighted as a “particular risk to brand, image and reputation.”

Well, here’s a news flash guys, unless you are on the social web engaging and influencing, it is going to be too late come crisis time to play catch up. Do you want to build up the relationship bank account before withdrawals are made, or receive the sort of withdrawal shock to the system that Greece, metaphorically speaking, is going through?

The Salt & Shein report notes, “Social media’s role in escalating negative news whilst compressing deadlines and response times is a recurring theme in our quantitative survey, with nearly 18 per cent of respondents nominating its role in issues and crisis management.”

Is a significant, if only partial, solution to concerns like this not screaming us in the face?

What did you think about the findings flagged in this post based on the Salt & Shein report? Does the level of social media engagement from so many leading Australian companies surprise you? Most report respondents were from the Australian financial services sector, so do you think the report results aren’t a fair reflection of PR practice by large organisations?

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Further dimensions of the above assertions are that:

• the blog should be from the agency or one or more of their employees
• a number of employees should be active, from a business perspective, on some non-blog social media platforms (e.g. Goggle+, Twitter, LinkedIn, new darling Pinterest etc)
• PR agency employees’ thoroughly filled out LinkedIn profiles should include recommendations from those they have worked with/for (not including colleagues!!)

And no, you don’t need to be interested in having an agency undertake a social media program specifically for an agency to be adept in the items listed above.

But, and get this, if the agency can’t tick these boxes then they are not talking the walk when it comes to best practice PR and they are not conversant with the application of best practice PR.

If an agency is not applying and/or cannot speak articulately on why or why not the above approaches are relevant to your business then you are speaking to professionals who are not the best out there – go elsewhere!

In regard to the elements PR agencies should feature listed above, each of them should be a default inclusion in your public relations and/or marketing strategy. Certainly, they may not be ultimately suited to your needs, but it most cases they will be.

You will also find some agencies and/or professionals say that they don’t need to be active in social media, including having a blog, or to be producing their own thought leadership content. What an absolute load of bollocks. Inherent within this argument are the following rationales:

• We are good enough to undertake your social media programs but we don’t spend much, if any, time on these platforms in a professional business sense ourselves
• We are focused on achieving our own business aims and don’t believe in contributing to the advancement of our profession through the dominant communication mechanism of our times, the internet
• We don’t believe that the internet is the best mechanism through which to generate positive word-of-mouth branding and tactical awareness after face-to-face interpersonal communication
• Thought leadership and inbound journalism aren’t very important for differentiation and stakeholder engagement.

If you subscribe to any of the assertions noted above, then you definitely need professional public relations assistance (but not from any who agree with the assertions)!!

This is the second in a series on choosing a Sydney PR agency. The first post discussed the issues of who works on your account (junior or senior employees), quoting and hour allocation, matching agency capabilities with client needs, Chinese wall, customised attention to PR needs and does the supplier need to be based in the same city as the client.

Measuring the impact of PR investment

Whatever path is taken in Sydney PR agency investment, it is imperative that metrics are put in place as part of the strategising and the final plan. This does not mean that an agency should be dropped if objectives are not achieved. There might be very good reasons for this (client dysfunctionality and inability to provide content or sign off as needed for one!) but they need to be discussed and ways to gain better outcomes identified and incorporated.

The rationale behind the metrics needs to transparent.

Agencies are adept at putting forward potential outcomes (media coverage, social media sharing, links to sales etc) that are wildly optimistic and bear little relation to reality. Don’t fall into the trap of accepting sexy looking outcomes without questioning the rationale behind them.

If an agency does fail to deliver on silly objectives, well, they’ve only got themselves to blame if they aren’t achieved. And similarly, clients should not push for ridiculous outcomes that bear no relation to their financial investment in the PR program or the quality of the content they can offer for the various tactical mechanisms they are implementing.

An agreement should be:

• in writing before ANY WORK commences
• pedantic in addressing the nature of the work that it is required be done
• conscious in addressing the issue of activity reporting (and for goodness sake don’t get too anal about this as where do you want your time spent – getting results or reporting on results….?)
• sensibly applied by human beings and not machines as the nature of the public relations service means that the operating environment will change and the PR work will need to adapt to these changing circumstances. This can only be done effectively when the relationships between the PR operator and the client is a positive, mutually respectful one.

Honesty and challenging presumptions by Sydney PR agencies

Inherent in the discussion above is the need for total and ongoing transparency and honesty between a client and its agency. The reasons for this are pretty obvious I would have thought.

To get the best from the PR agency clients should welcome their assumptions and perceptions being challenged. One of PR’s core attributes is to argue the point and dig deeper. This can have strategic and issues management outcomes, but so can it enrich the narratives that will form the central part of client public relations activity. It adds rigour.

I’ve seen it occur where a client wants activity and narrative to occur strictly how they perceive it should be. This always leads to lower quality narratives and less than best-possible outcomes. Don’t do it!

Pitches are for cricket, not for PR

One of my pet hates (and I’m not alone in this) is the tendency of potential clients to want full-on pitches made for their business – what an absolute waste of time and insult to the intelligence!

You only have to look at the marketing/advertising industry where agencies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on pitches only to be knocked back. There might be a cursory payment for the pitch in some cases but this doesn’t come close to recovering costs.

It is an evil system and should be destroyed at the earliest possible opportunity!

A pitch is often undertaken by agencies before they have had a chance to get to know the potential client’s business as well as they need to, leading to pitches which may not be in full alignment with client business and communication needs.

Additionally, I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen the blood, sweat and tears of a winning pitch ultimately end up being ditched. This is because when the agency and the client got down to brass tacks, taking another path to success proved optimal. This means all that time and creativity is wasted. Oh sure, the agency and the client may say we can use it again elsewhere, but that rarely occurs.

Another factor in this process is that the huge amount of effort that is put in a pitch does not necessarily translate into a huge amount of effort put into a client once their business has been secured. Sad but true. You can also be stone cold certain the big agency guns will work on the creative and strategy in the pitch, but that not all of them will be involved in the running of the client’s account in more than a cursory fashion, if at all.

Outcome? To decide on what agency is right:

• Check credentials for experience and capability that matches client needs
• Check with past clients asking the right questions relevant to what your specific PR needs
• Interact with the agency and those who will specifically work on your account – do you get the ‘good vibe’, cultural match and d*#khead-free zone feeling from them?
• Ascertain precisely who is working on the account and what percentage of their time will be allocated to it.

What are your thoughts on the effectiveness and appropriateness of preparing extensive pitches for new business? What is your experience of them and what instructive tales can you tell us? Do you think agencies need to be active in social media to be credible, or be making a contribution to the PR industry through thought leadership on internet-based platforms?

PS. If you’re wondering why I use the term ‘Sydney PR’ or variations of it in this post, the savvy amongst you will have realised I am doing it mainly for SEO reasons, otherwise I’d have ditched the Sydney bit and made it more generic. I’m telling you this in the interests of transparency and also in case you find it interesting I’ve done this. I don’t agonise too much over keywords for search purposes (content takes precedence), but am always conscious of it, as PR certainly needs to be in its approach to content marketing. It seems to be working so far, so let’s see if it leads to client/work opportunities!! Wish me luck.

Groupthink is an insidious organisational and human trait. It destroys both, primarily because individuals did not have the courage to articulate their convictions assertively enough and/or bullies acted to suppress perspectives alternative to the status quo, or what was deemed appropriate by the (enter drums of doom) ‘hierarchy’.

Groupthink characteristics include:

• a desire for harmony in a decision-making group overriding a realistic appraisal of alternatives
• the loss of individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking.

Symptoms of groupthink include:

• rationalisation
• peer pressure
• complacency
• taking the moral high ground
• stereotyping others
• self-censorship (often the result of bullying)
• the illusion of unanimity.

Two of the most oft-referred to examples of groupthink include:

• Challenger Space Shuttle disaster: engineers knew about some faulty parts, but they did not want negative press so they pushed ahead with the launch anyway
• Attack on Pearl Harbour: Japanese messages were intercepted by the US hierarchy; US Pearl Harbour officers were warned; but these officers failed to take heed of these warnings due to, among other reasons, complacency about the perceived intent of the Japanese.

Strategic power of public relations to stop groupthink

PR should be the master of evidence-based market research within organisations when it comes to reputation and stakeholder relationships. Formal research needs to be periodically undertaken (no less than every five years – and that’s being generous) to identify and explore:

• best ways to communicate with target audiences
• issues and individuals/organisations influencing, and of importance, to target audiences
• status quo of knowledge of the organisation, perceptions towards it and behaviour related to what will benefit the organisation and its relationship with target audiences.

There should also be other, ongoing means of identifying target audience knowledge, perceptions and behaviour in regards to the organisation, both at an overarching strategic organisational level and at a more prosaic program/promotion level.

This information should be more than enough to, paraphrase an Australianism, ‘keep the bastards honest’.

In other words, make it crystal clear to (uh oh, drums of doom again…) organisational hierarchy what is and what isn’t acceptable to target audiences and what may impact on organisational reputation.

This is an example of the ‘boundary spanner’ dimension of the public relations discipline, where PR helps organisations and their stakeholders understand each other and build bridges between them.

Applying this methodology assertively and, yes, with bravery, will help the organisation not fall victim to groupthink.

Narrative building by PR: a tactical anti-groupthink weapon

One of the core strengths of PR is in telling stories, articulating narratives. An excellent organisational narrative will resonate with its stakeholders and, in many cases, prompt them to become organisational advocates. And a profoundly important element of creating narratives, not to mention an invaluable upside of public relations overall, is challenging the status quo by exploring the status quo’s rationale and adding value and perspective to it.

A result of this approach will be thought leadership content, certainly, but part of it is also articulating the organisational story – or manifesto even.

And whilst marketing can do this to a degree, the act of writing and exploring the different dimensions of an organisation – hence its positioning and differentiation – is generally the remit of public relations. I don’t think marketing does this; it essentially identifies opportunities for products and services, develops them then sells them – it isn’t really a profound organisational orthodoxy challenging type activity.

The ‘challenger’ characteristic of PR is an excellent way of enriching narratives. It deepens them and helps foster creativity. It is a fundamental way of building brands that has more meant that ‘logos’ and other such organisational accoutrements.

What other ways can you think of that public relations minimises the likelihood of groupthink taking place? Have you personally experienced groupthink in an organisation and can you tell us something about it? do you have an experience of challenging the status quo when building an organisational narrative and what was the outcome?

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[This is the final post in a six-part ‘case study’ series on devising communication strategy for an infrastructure project, but can also be applied to non-infrastructure-related initiatives.].

For the development of infrastructure that has a major local community profile, it is a default that sponsorship is considered. There are factors to bear in mind, however, in its application.

For instance, in the case of publicly funded infrastructure, the issue of using taxpayers’ money to fund community initiatives needs to be seriously reflected upon:

• Why should taxpayers who will gain no direct (or even collateral) benefit from the infrastructure contribute to the sponsorship of initiatives in infrastructure-specific geographic areas?
• Many of the groups relevant to sponsorship are also able to gain government funds directly themselves – getting sponsorship money from taxpayers can be, in effect, double-dipping.

The purpose of the sponsorship is to raise awareness of the infrastructure and the organisation undertaking it, as well as improving their reputation and brand equity, as well as use sponsorship as a means of being socially responsible. This latter dimension includes doing work in the community that exemplifies the values of the organisation and isn’t necessarily being done for kudos. Yes, a delicate and sometimes seemingly paradoxical practice!

One dimension of communication particularly relevant to sponsorship is the notion of brand vs. reputation.

The two are interrelated, of course, but sponsorship tends to be positive for brand and not do a huge amount for reputation in the ‘broad-reach’ sense. Sponsorship tends to provide a positive context in which the organisation is perceived, or a platform, which provides a favourable setting on which reputation enhancement can occur through more meaningful activity in regards to awareness and relationship building.

In a sense, sponsorship can be a facile communication activity, as it is often ‘buying space’ (not unlike advertising) in stakeholders’ lives in the hope of enhancing brand perceptions. It’s not actually ‘engaging’ or likely to lead to any profound organisation-stakeholder transaction.

To make a really profound impact sponsorship, perhaps more than any other communication activity mentioned here apart from advertising, really needs to be integrated closely into the broader communication strategy.

Ideally, the activity which is sponsored needs to correlate, or be relevant, to the infrastructure itself and the values of the organisation responsible for its development. Sponsoring an activity simply because it exists within the geographical area is not the best reason for undertaking sponsorship. In the case of an infrastructure project, potentially credible and valuable sponsorships might include:

• Science, mathematics, Human Society in its Environment (a NSW, Australia school subject) or environmental science prizes in local primary and high schools
• Local TAFES that provide training in infrastructure-relevant disciplines (e.g. welding, electrician, building, safety)
• Driver training courses, school crossing ‘lollipop’ safety monitors.

As you can see, education and schools are an important theme in what I think are relevant. It is critical that there is no involvement in any activity that cannot demonstrate a valuable contribution to the community and could be perceived as not relevant of the business and/or a waste of taxpayer funds.

I am highly sceptical that undertaking sponsorship of sporting groups, or school fetes or carnivals, would be an appropriate approach to take.

Education and community outreach for relationship building

For an initiative such as the one in question, a communication strategy that utilises avenues presented by school education is one that should, at the very least, be considered:

• Students’ views are proven influencers of their parents’ views
• There are plenty of themes within school subjects that material relevant to the infrastructure can be developed for that will help with students’ learning. The infrastructure provides a valuable, immediately accessible case study
• Engineers and other employees from the project can visit schools and engage with school children, whilst site visits are of course possible
• Schools are always appreciative of resources that provide additional resonance to their efforts to educate and engage children
• The resources should include elements which necessitate the involvement of students’ parents to help ‘push’ information about the project into the home environment.

There are challenges, of course:

• Education departments and authorities need to be liaised with. They move slowly…
• The ROI of education resources and initiatives need to be considered, especially in the context that the project will have ‘in your face’ resonance for a relatively small section of the broader state or national community (thus ensuring the education materials’ resonance beyond the local being imperative)
• It is a multi-layered and time consuming approach to produce the materials and communicate to/engage with relevant teachers and schools
• The relevant subject’s teachers’ association needs to consulted with.

The nature of the education initiatives need to be customised to the commercial and political realities of the project, but that can be said about every tactical element considered for the communication strategy.

Community presentations and forums; site visits, events

Just as with presentations at school, presentations and site visits for community groups – including groups of the elderly, NGOs and school parent bodies – are a default communication mechanism.

Open Days, community fairs and site walk-throughs tried and proven means of generating engagement, but whether the amount of engagement generated is sufficient to provide ROI is a moot point indeed, just like setting up a stand at a shopping centre and handing out leaflets to bored shoppers…

Budget, evaluation, advertising and more…

This has not been an exhaustive discussion of how to approach communication strategy for infrastructure. Budget and evaluating impact speak for themselves. Just do them! Hopefully it has provided some useful information and provides something of a model on which communication approaches and programs can be built.

Thank goodness – I’m finished! Now, over to you. What are your thoughts on this six-part series? What have I missed? What key points haven’t I made? Do you work in infrastructure or engineering comms – share your experience with us and, particularly in the case of sponsorship and communication through schools, what value can you add to what I’ve outlined in this specific post?

This is the final post in this six-part series talks about sponsorship, school education and community communication programs. Previous posts talked about approaches to public relations, market research and target audiences; the listening, conversational and adaptive characteristics of excellent communication strategy; the Holy Trinity of PR; media relations and strategic alliances; social media and other aspects of digital communication.

Identifying and applying an appropriate approach to media relations will be close to top of the list for communication directors.

How needy, for instance, are senior stakeholders (e.g. organisational hierarchy, government ministers, ministerial staff etc) for extensive media coverage, whether this coverage is beneficial for reputation, community stakeholders or getting the job done?

The reality of some stakeholders’ needs may not reflect communication best practice. It’s not an issue of whether this is good or ‘not good’, it is a question of adapting to the political situation in which organisation and, hence, its communication exists.

[This is the fourth of a six-part ‘case study’ series on devising communication strategy for an infrastructure project, but can also be applied to non-infrastructure-related initiatives.].

Elements that PR media relations activity should include

1. The creation of a database of journalists, including information on individual journalists’ informational needs, the history of their perspective on the project and potential future angles and information that may be of relevance to them. Ideally, a record of all interaction with individual journalists will be kept, but often this sort of information moves too quickly to capture. In many cases, a media enquiry/interaction log can be kept.
2. The cultivation of relationships with specific, strategically important journalists and editors, and those with a great interest in the project should be undertaken on a consistent basis.
3. Ensuring site visits are provided for the journalists and they are given fresh news angles and content to run with.
4. Recognising that conflict is of key interest to metro media in particular. Relationships are critical here. Gaining balanced coverage is often the best one can hope for. Seeking supportive coverage all the time is not viable. It is important that these messages are consistently hammered home to internal stakeholders.
5. Radio will be key in many contexts due to its reach and utilisation by commuters in the morning in particular. Radio will often also leverage off morning print coverage, early which enables multiple placement of positive news, whilst also providing an early warning of further critical questioning. Conversely, if incorrect, unbalanced or problematic information is included in morning print media, the organisation can proactively seek out radio presence to put its perspective on the record and undermine the claims of the print outlet.
6. Generating guidelines for interaction between organisational employees and the media, including notification to the communication teams when the possibility of such interaction may occur and not undertaking media interaction without communication support and guidance (if at all!).
7. On the other hand, open and willing communication with the media is a default and it may be appropriate non-‘official’ media spokespeople to speak on certain issues and for certain opportunities, especially if this helps create connections between stakeholders and the organisation (i.e. humanise the edifice!).
8. Identify and cultivate spokespeople relevant to the strategy. This may well include a corporate overarching spokesperson, an engineering spokesperson and possibly a social/society spokesperson who talks about benefits of the project to local and other communities. The latter area will ideally be covered by the corporate spokesperson, but this may not always be possible. Potentially the head of comms could cover off on these issues but it is best if the PR person isn’t the spokesperson except for media and events and media of lesser importance (always a difficult call).

Strategic alliances: PR or marketing communication?

When cultivating strategic alliances, identify BIG organisations – business, sporting, community, councils –that have much to gain from the infrastructure, or are somehow involved in its development. They will provide 3^rd party credibility to the organisation.

Have a plan in place to integrate the alliances’ own activity/content into the communication, especially the digital content strategy. There also needs to be an approach put in place that has the organisation’s content syndicated through whatever comms mechanisms the alliances have – a mutually beneficial outcome.

Be aware, that whilst the forming of strategic alliances and the sharing of content has multiple upsides, the organisation needs to be self-conscious about maintaining its point of difference and positioning. Alliances should enrich the difference by providing a bedrock of context, relevance and support that allows this to occur with greater impact and resonance than would otherwise have been the case.

For some, media relations IS public relations (and that’s pretty much it). What are your thoughts on this? What can you add to the points about what approaches should be applied in a media relations program? What business area should look after strategic alliances – are there specific occurrences when PR should be responsible for them, but not others?

The next post in this six-part series talks about the website, social media, digital and database tactical elements of the communication strategy. Previous posts talked about approaches to public relations, market research and target audiences; the listening, conversational and adaptive characteristics of excellent communication strategy; and the Holy Trinity of PR.

PS. If you got something out of this post, spread the word with a Tweet or Share!

Strategic alliances will enhance the credibility of both alliance organisations, expand the footprint of communication and providing excellent ROI, not least because it should not cost anything to create the actual alliance itself (other than employee time). They should also provide content for little cost and be relevant to organisational target audiences (precious in this content-hungry world).

Thought leadership is almost a tactical, rather than strategic, manifestation of an approach/desire that sees the organisation helping and/or providing unpaid value to its stakeholders, thus helping build loyalty, positive WOM and enhanced reputation.

3^rd party credibility comes from being associated from non-organisational people and entities – their ‘good vibe’ rubs off on the organisation. This can occur through positive editorial media placement, independent market research, and supportive comments from experts.

[This is the third of a six-part ‘case study’ series on devising communication strategy for an infrastructure project, but can also be applied to non-infrastructure-related initiatives.].

Content marketing by public relations

Content marketing needs to be an integral element of the strategy.

Really, this is a tactical outcome of thought leadership and providing proactive, information of use to stakeholders. But its recent social media-driven evolution is so profoundly important that it needs mentioning in a strategic context.

The content provides a reason for stakeholders to both visit and gain value from the organisation, as well as proactively share it with their peers, thereby potentially prompting it to go ‘viral’. A very strategic sub-text of this (hello, holy trinity!) is that the sharing generates 3^rd party credibility (from the sharer) towards the content and, hence, the organisation (sort of win-win-win outcome, really).

PR is well placed to undertake content marketing, despite some understandable misgivings by some, as PR is fundamentally dialogic, as it listens (that word again) to stakeholders and adapts communication accordingly. There is plenty to get wrong with it, however, such as expecting an immediate and sudden ROI. It takes time, as any relationship does, to make an impact,

Mediated, non-mediated and the public relations ‘holy trinity’

Incorporating a mix of mediated and non-mediated communication mechanisms into the strategy is imperative:

• Non-mediated (e.g. social media when it is used as broadcast, email marketing, website content, advertising) is a bridge. It facilitates direct communication with messages being delivered in precisely the way an organisation wants them to be delivered
• Non-mediated is critical in today’s business world as a hedge against organisational loss of control over their reputations due to the dialogic, viral and extensive user-base aspects of social media (which is heaped on top on general word-of-mouth and coverage in the media): ‘customer’ recommendations rule, remember!. The building of email databases and subscribers/followers to social media platforms, therefore, is an absolutely critical element of any contemporary communication strategy – yes, believe it or not, email is still bigger than Facebook
• Mediated (e.g. editorial media) often boasts the 3^rd party credibility of the medium itself

More on PR strategy: don’t be a control freak!

Further strategic approaches to be applied include taking an approach where ‘control’ is not paramount. This will help engender a sense of shared project ownership. Sometimes this will mean not stamping up and down on non-complimentary messaging about the project that may be disseminated by stakeholders. They would have appeared anyway and a recognition of the right of supporters, critics and infrastructure potential users to have their say will reflect positively on the organisation.

This mindset is equally relevant to working with stakeholders. It should be about negotiation and a recognition of difference rather than a closed, negative, bunker-down approach, which will only come across as ‘spoiling for a fight’, or non-cooperative at best

Recognising and leveraging WOM (word-of-mouth) is likely to be the most credible form of communication for stakeholders. This will manifest itself through both WOM mediums as face-to-face social media.

Further strategic approaches to apply include:

• Anticipating that there will be criticism of the project and building up the reputation bank as much as possible to provide insurance against those occasions when issues do arise
• Looking at ways to benefit the local community through the construction phase. For instance, using local suppliers whenever feasible and local people for employees in the construction of the project – is this possible, or even legal?
• On the back of the fact that the infrastructure will benefit the community, use this as a reason for engaging with school children, partially as they will be infrastructure users, partly because they may have an interest in engineering aspects of the infrastructure and partly because they can act as a conduit of information to adults and because of their influence over them
• Address the potential misfit between who community stakeholders perceive to be credible people or organisations to be associated with the project and who political stakeholders want to see associated with it (e.g. themselves!).This is a difficult issue to resolve and often there is little that can be done about it, other than ensure the spokespeople have the most positive, relevant and stakeholder-useful communications content possible to utilise.

Where have you found the letting go of or, conversely, attempting to retain, reputation/communication control has worked or not worked in organisations you have been involved with? What is your experience and/or view of the holy trinity I have outlined? Do you think PR is skilled up and intelligent enough to run the content marketing for an organisation?

The next post in this six-part series talks tactical elements of the communication strategy, including media relations and building strategic alliances. Previous posts talked about overarching approaches to public relations, market research and target audiences; and the listening, conversational and adaptive characteristics of excellent communication strategy.

PS. If you got something out of this post, spread the word with a Tweet or Share!