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.

The Holy Trinity of public relations white paper is available as a free download from this blog once you email subscribe to it. Once you check it out, if all good, please share news of its existence through your social media networks! Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn buttons are on this web page to make it easy for you to do this.

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?

If you found this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Thanks!

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!

If you found this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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?

If you found this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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?

If you found this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

These suppositions 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.

Two-way symmetrical communication and organisational reputation

The report states that, “…senior practitioners confirm that the [corporate affairs] function has progressed beyond the tactical, execution driven approach of 20 years ago, to an “outside in” stakeholder driven perspective focused on developing reputation. This approach is underpinned by solid research, analysis and robust measurement.”

It goes on to say that senior PR or corporate affairs professionals are moving into a more proactive, reputation-building and issues management ‘space’ with CEOS and boards, thus enabling them to devise and implement  programs to “build sustainable reputation over time”.

Encouragingly, the reports says, “Many report that they are engaged in trying to achieve big changes in organisational behaviour, business processes or practices to signal to stakeholders that their organisations are responding in meaningful ways.”

In other words, two-way symmetrical communication behaviour from the organisation, with no doubt many organisational efforts taking placed based on influencing stakeholder behaviour as well.

“If you’re dealing with the reputation of an institution it’s no longer just about media management and spin. It’s really about taking a range of approaches, such as taking feedback from different stakeholder groups, or changing the way you do business in a certain way. I tell my CEO and management team that meaningful reputation is about being seen as authentic.” [Quote from one survey respondent.]

PR and reputation-driven market research and measurement

The report makes the important observation that…“The senior practitioners we spoke with reveal that their success and credibility in advising management and influencing change on reputation is being bolstered by regularly tracking and benchmarking corporate reputation in the external environment.”

“The link between commercial decisions and reputation is becoming closer. Our board has identified external reputation as a top priority for the business. As a result corporate affairs as a function is being given more and more input into major commercial decisions. So, rather than the business making decisions and then coming to corporate affairs and saying ‘make sure the pathway for this is OK’, they’re coming to us first and asking ‘tell me the what the pathway looks like if we go down this road.” [Quote from one survey respondent.]

Undertaking market research with scientific rigour gives credence to approaches that public relations recommends. It is evidence-based, it occurs over time and it provides comparison between available and/or potential approaches to take – including from a whole-of-business/operational perspective and one more specifically directed at stakeholder relationship and communication dimensions.

When applying a qualitative approach to market research, it is also possible to scope out what reactions may have occurred and the impact on reputation that could have transpired if a certain approach was not taken.

There is no reason that this approach cannot be taken when illustrating the impact to senior management of the positive effect of keeping negative news out of the media, helping to justify issues management and proactive media management approaches taken.

PR being significant to business decision-making

Crucial to any business discipline making a difference to organisations and achieving its potential is being included in the highest level decision making process. PR is no different. It will not make a sustained, profound difference to business unless its input is sought, heeded and integrated.

“From a reputation standpoint, the value of corporate affairs is its ability to see what’s on the horizon across all the different stakeholder groups. In reality for corporate affairs people the key to adding value is being able to anticipate what may be coming around the corner, anticipating the broad range of reactions to a particular decision, and then ask does it matter?” [Quote from one survey respondent.]

Public relations in this context is operating in an issues management capacity, building and protecting reputation:

• Anticipating business decisions
• Understanding decisions’ potential impact on reputation and relationships
• Providing strategic advice and planning – so that those decisions can be modified to achieve the best possible results for an organisation and its stakeholders
• Delivering proactive reputation building actions.

Why do organisations need to take this PR/two-way symmetrical communication-centric approach?

• Society is demanding more from organisations than compliance
• Stakeholders will look for other options to organisations that don’t operate in a manner consistent with their belief systems when an option exists
• Criticism can snowball and get in the way of organisations achieving their vision and fulfilling their remit, underlined by the power and influence of social media-accelerated viral WOM and its archetypal snowballing momentum.

The importance of PR underlined

Two final thoughts to leave you with.

This research underlines that public relations isn’t just about helping achieve business objectives; it is about providing information to help shape what those business objectives actually are.

Taking the two-way symmetrical approach discussed and being implemented here isn’t just about avoiding issues and compromising potential profits or programs, it can also identify options for organisational improvement and business (e.g. profit) opportunities as well as, of course, gaining a more powerful and comprehensive licence to operate from stakeholders.

What do you think about the findings discussed in this post and their relevance to contemporary PR practice? Has your organisation been applying a similar approach? If not, what are the barriers and what can be done about them? Could you use the Salt & Shein research as a credible 3^rd party source of information to perhaps instigate positive change in your organisation, or at least get a meaningful dialogue going on the issue?

If you found this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Each of the six elements noted above can be turned around by the application of best practice public relations, most notably encapsulated by two-way symmetrical communication, the dominant paradigm of effective PR in the workplace.

Public relations is effective communication

Probably the element most people will consider relevant to public relations is that of effective communication. Whether face-to-face/interpersonal or of a broader/mass reach emphasis, the following principle of effective public relations can be applied to almost any situation where communication is required:

• Customise the information to the target audience
• Utilise communication mediums which the target audience finds the most useful and utilises most frequently
• Identify who (e.g. people) or what (e.g. issue or topic) influences target audiences and integrate them into the communication program.

Customising the information has a number of dimensions:

• Be effective (and honest, for that matter) in emphasising the salient information, not the peripheral (i.e. ditch the spin)
• Understand and be assertive in addressing those aspects of the information which will be of greatest concern or interest to target audiences
• To really understand (as noted above), market research amongst the target audience needs to have taken place. This really is public relations best practice 101 as, for one thing, if you haven’t done this how do you know what point there is to communication at all??
• How is leadership being shown through the communication? If there is change or innovation involved, for instance, what rationales are being put forward to support this occurring and what will be the impact on target audiences? If there is ‘pain’ involved, explain how this might potentially manifest itself to target audiences?

Making communication truly meaningful to target audiences

One of the most important dimensions of communication (or public relations in this specific context) is seeking out the views of others and then changing the nature of what the business decision entails. A further dimension of this is changing the nature of the communication itself.

Not only will this give the decision more rigour and give it the power to identify, and/or leverage, threats or opportunities those making the initial decision may have been able to generate it also – and this is extremely powerful – gives those who have been consulted on the decision, and/or had their feedback addressed, a sense of empowerment and motivation that will doubtlessly enhance productivity.

This collaboration is a fundamental tenet of public relations and a means for the organisation and its culture to become enriched through becoming a happy meeting ground of organisational and target audience needs and wants: or “enlightened self-interest”, as it has been articulated by Grunig, Grunig & Dozier.

Public relations doesn’t do dishonesty

This is a sub-head which will prompt chortles in some self-satisfied corners. Well, yes, it is idealistic I’ll admit. All elements of business have their less-than-ideal practitioners. Yet not so idealistic if two-way symmetrical communication and/or straightforward ethics are applied.

The survey said, “Over 70 percent of individuals either agree or strongly agree that a lack of candor impacts the company’s ability to perform optimally.”

Apart from the fact that this is a sad reflection of business and society in the US (where the survey was undertaken, not that I am assuming it is different in any other country, including Australia), it is also a reflection of best practice PR not being practiced.

If you can’t be honest in the decisions that you make, if you can’t be honest in the way you explain them to people, why make them? Is making money a sufficient reason, as I am hazarding to guess this is the implied or accepted rationale?

Even if this is the case, assuming the lack of candour is because there exists of a fear of being found out, because the decision is either knowingly unethical or it is felt target audiences won’t understand the decision, then public relations has two roles to play:

• Counsel the organisation to evolve its decision so it more closely matches the needs and wants of its target audiences, as well as other societal stakeholders that, collectively, provide its permission to operate (i.e. PR should always challenge the status quo as a default characteristic)
• Customise the information so that it reduces the lack of misunderstanding in relation to the decision.

The honesty and integrity, as well as the wise strategic counsel, of best practice public relations is a necessity for any organisation to operate at its optimum level of productivity, as well as to achieve its potential as an important participant in the societies in which it functions.

How do you think public relations can enhance productivity? Are there ever occasions when honesty is NOT the best policy in public relations? Are there shades of grey is this debate? If so, please explain how you think this should manifest itself.

NB. The contents of this survey first came to my attention through an article by Australian business analyst and writer, Peter Switzer.

If you found this post of value, please share it through Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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.

In other words, it is common for more senior and experienced agency representatives to have the initial prospect interaction, but when the client is secured, more junior employees are assigned to do the bulk of the account.

An outcome of this can be that the quality of the work is lower than it should be. Of course, you get what you pay for. Client take out? Check on who and/or what level of professional will be working on your account.

And whilst having a team working on your account that is comprised of a number of different levels of professionals is good in theory, in practice the more ‘hands’ that are active in your account the more compromised the economy of scale, the more time that is spent on it and the less ROI you get.

An unfortunate downside of any multi-employee agency is employee turnover. There is little that can be done about this but younger PR professionals especially move on very quickly due to being offered more money elsewhere, even though they might not deserve the position/salary increase! This will mean reacquainting the new employee with the account, a cost the client should never pay for but it will mean a slowdown in account productivity.

I’ll tell you one thing, whilst PR sole operators like myself may not have the extensive resources of a large PR agency, when you work with a one-person operation you certainly know who is going to be doing your work!

And at the end of the day, PR is about strategy, creativity and technical skills. If a one-woman or one-man show can provide that capability, why do you need a phalanx of professionals to do the job?

Quoting and hour allocation from Sydney PR agencies

Agencies are experts in underquoting and are generally loathe to ask clients to spend more money in addition to what has been quoted. This means that clients tend to get excellent value for money. Agencies frequently don’t charge what the account is actually costing, simply to get the business in the door or keep them ‘within the doors’!

Clients can be their own worst enemies in this regard, expecting the world but then not being willing to pay for it. Of course, this isn’t actually articulated too often in case a client is offended by the truth.

Personally, I think an estimate of time/cost should be provided but, in most cases, the client should ultimately pay for the time spent on the account. That’s my Sydney-based PR approach and it works well due to mutual client-PR supplier integrity.

What are your Sydney PR needs?

One of the many challenges in choosing the right PR agency is determining what PR agency can meet your specific needs. Unfortunately, there are very few PR agencies that don’t say they are experts in every sub-set of PR that you can imagine: social media, B2B, events, sponsorship, industry-specific experience etc.

If it is media relations alone that you require, then does the agency have experience in your industry? Media relations is not rocket science in its application, however, so this may not even be that important. The media relations approach is transferable across industries.

More important is the proven creativity of agency-driven media programs and the success they have had in the past – and you need to consider whether those individuals responsible for the media program are still with the agency and, in fact, working on your account – does this matter to you? I think it might…

And as for ‘resources’, well, media lists can be bought and refined very quickly and having media contacts is a vastly overrated characteristic. Journalists are interested in the quality of the story, not by who they had a beer with at the pub last week. Focus on the content and the coverage will come, as long as you have someone who is of course adept at working with the media once they have that content in their armoury.

To use the example of social media, there are a plethora of different platforms out there. Whilst it is often difficult to know what platform(s) you will need prior your strategy/approach being defined, one agency might have excellent runs on the board using Facebook but be inexperienced in blogs or content marketing in general. And with the rapidly evolving nature of social media, this is an area I’d be particularly careful in.

Chinese walls and customised attention in PR

It is not uncommon for PR agencies to be working with clients that are competitive with each other. The immediate reaction to this from a prospective client is that this is not a good thing – and understandably so.

The issue of IP being either deliberately or inadvertently shared is a nebulous area. This might relate to actual confidential whole-of-business issues or specifically in regard to communication/stakeholder engagement issues. Ideally, the risk simply wouldn’t exist.

In reality, however, the reason the issue comes up is because obviously one agency has had success in a particular area of public relations (e.g. investor relations) and that’s why a client is interested in using them.

Agencies will set up ‘Chinese walls’ between different teams working on accounts, but despite best intentions, the integrity of these walls can be questionable. Another methodology in very big ‘umbrella’ type agencies is giving the competitor to a ‘sister’ agency so the profit stays within the group. This is a more viable outcome but it can mean the actual specialist agency suited to your needs isn’t actually working on your account.

Going back to reality again, I fail to see how the advice and insight from the specialist agency wouldn’t be sought in some circumstances, but even when applying a ‘no names, no pack drill’ and absolute best intentions type approach, I fail to see how the 100% integrity of client-separation can be maintained.

This isn’t an argument not to proceed with a particular agency which clearly has industry and specialist PR expertise, but it is a ‘slow down and think through the ramifications and options’ yellow light.

This issue wont’ come up for sole operators as there is no way to keep clients separate. For instance, I’ve worked extensively with BlueScope Steel, so whilst I am doing that there is no way I can work with OneSteel, a competitor in many regards, for instance.

Does Sydney PR need to be in Sydney?

Hello, are we familiar with email!

The answer is no, your PR agency or service provider does not need to be based in the same city as you. Sure, face-to-face meetings every month or so after the initial interaction is standard, but even this can be adapted to needs.

Technology like telephone, email, Skype etc negates the need for the PR pro to be living next door, Alice. It’s results that count, not geography.

Have you encountered any of the issues flagged in this post in regard to choosing a PR agency, or pitching for a client? What anecdotes or thoughts can you share on this discussion?

This is the first part of a two-part series. The next post will discuss, in relation to choosing a PR agency or operator, the relevance of how active and professional an agency is on social media and on the internet, measuring PR investment, the importance of honesty, the ‘challenger’ role PR plays and why pitches are a waste of space.

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?

If you liked this post, let others know by Tweeting about it or sharing it through Facebook or LinkedIn.