What’s behind the bus obsession?

What is it about British buses that makes people all over the world become obsessive about owning one?  I ask having found the One Old Green Bus blog by chance and pointing it out to a couple of friends in MIPAA who have been bitten by the bus bug.

They own a Routemaster - the iconic, double decker, red London bus, which proves very popular at motor industry events.  This is not an isolated peccadillo either, as I am aware of at least two other members who own a bus or a coach.

Indeed, the Routemaster Association was established in 1988 reveals a widespread enthusiasm for owning and attending rallies.  The London Transport Museum details a social history of the city’s public transport, and includes a quote from a eulogy by journalist Jonathan Glancey that:

The Routemaster (RM) bus is not just the most efficient and best-looking double deck bus to have run anywhere in the world, [it is] a symbol of London, in short, a masterpiece.”

This bus was designed exclusively for London - but the last new one was produced in 1968.  Today the buses remain for the tourist heritage route, but after a long process of being phased out, the last regular service took place on 9 December 2005. 

So maybe the emotional connection to the London bus explains its appeal.  One place to buy, or even hire, a classic bus is Ensign Buses in Essex - which claims to have sold 25,000 buses worldwide since 1972.  The company successfully bid for the de-fleeted double-deckers from London Transport. 

Beyond the Routemaster, are thousands of enthusiasts of vintage coaches and buses, attending rallies and visiting transport museums.  There are specialist magazines, websites, forums, Facebook groups and of course, videos on YouTube.  The enthusiasm is global - with bus spotters recording lists and photographs online from the obscurest places. 

I’m still not sure why there is such an attraction to buses and coaches amongst automotive PR practitioners - but it seems a harmless pleasure, although I’m sure it isn’t a cheap one.

Social media is ideal for those with such enthusiasms.  The technology opens up the opportunity to share and converse with like minded zealots - even if the object of desire is specialist, even quirky.

What is also nice, is that such areas seem to lack organised marketing or public relations in the main.  Websites and other communications may look amateur, but that is their appeal. 

Professionally, there seems to be great opportunities here for companies who could build a connection with these enthusiasts.  But it would be a shame to possibly taint the authenticity that is apparent among such special interest groups.

Is BAA looking for a ‘pit bull’ PR chief?

It’s no big surprise to read the headline: BAA PR chief quits.  In fact, the head of corporate affairs and the head of media relations have both resigned apparently over differences with the company’s Madrid-based owner, Ferrovial.

The current media attention on BAA has been intense - not surprising given that the experience of using its airports has become so awful (see: Dante’s Heathrow) and escalating activism over environmental issues.

It is not clear if there is a cultural difference in respect of media relations or if Ferrovial generally has a closed culture.  But the reported strategy of only providing the media with facts and statistics imposed by the men in Spain is not realistic when working with the UK’s often aggressive and critical media.

I expect there’s will be a call from the HQ for more control over these pesky journos - so can we can expect to see the appointment of a “pit bull PR” to fill these vacancies?

PR preparation for Terracotta Army buzz

The Guardian reports that 60,000 timed tickets have been sold so far to see the The Chinese First Emperor exhibition (ie Terracotta Army artifacts) at the British Museum in London (from 13 September to 6 April).

My brother and I were taken by our parents to see the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Museum in 1971 - we were among the 1.7 million visitors.  I also saw the Terracotta Army when I visited China in the early 1990s - another strong memory.

Such glimpses of the ancient world remain a real world, “must see” despite all the opportunities to experience them virtually through television or online.

These highly popular “blockbuster” exhibitions are a massive opportunity for museums and art galleries to engage with those who do not normally venture into such places.  As such they are essential in terms of public relations with all stakeholder groups. 

The Museum’s media relations strategy probably started in 2005, when initial interest was expressed in an exhibition coming to the UK.  The relationship also saw a travelling exhibition from the British Museum to China last year featuring the Rosetta Stone and Renaissance paintings.

Now the Army has arrived and the British media have been given access to witness the unpacking - whilst the world’s media report the news, undoubtedly helping attract visitors.

I’m sure a tight schedule of stories has been developed to maximise the media coverage - stimulating buzz around the exhibition is a major job.

This is an example of a product-led communications strategy - of course, the audience interest is there, but it is the art works themselves that are the big draw.  Public Relations helps serve a marketing purpose here in stimulating interest in the exhibition.

But, it also provides an opportunity to achieve other aims.  Internal communications will be vital to the success of the exhibition.  VIPs will be invited to attend exclusive events - future funds, such as sponsorship deals, will be secured. 

Educational outreach is an essential element of the “blockbuster” and in this case, relationships can be developed to extend interest in other works at the Museum. 

When you have something that in itself if of such news value, public relations is one part of an integrated strategy that encompasses the entire organisation.

The exhibition returns back to China via the US next year with stops at the High in Atlanta,  the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, California, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas.

Health & Safety like PR seeks professional status

The Wardman Wire publishes a response to an earlier blog post from Director of Communications, Ruth Doyle, at the Institution of Occupational Health and Safety.

This is an interesting example of a pro-active response to blogging and addressing the issues raised in a post and discussion comments.

I also enjoyed Ruth’s reflections on the way in which the media represents health and safety.  Even more than this, she raises some interesting points about professional regulation, which relate to discussions on the same topic in Public Relations.

As the law currently stands, anyone, with no qualifications or experience whatsoever, can call themselves a health and safety adviser, or make decisions in the name of health and safety. The law requires all organisations to make sure they get “competent” advice on the subject, but gives no specific guidelines on what ”competence” is or looks like. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), as the enforcer, offers no clear guidance either.

The organisation launched a campaign in May highlighting the importance of professional advice - see http://www.iosh.co.uk/files/getthebest/Getthebest.pdf

Could we learn from this campaign which demands government and other stakeholders to:

1. Clearly define ‘competence’ in health and safety
2. Recognise and promote the specific national standards, linked to the right levels of health and safety qualification, experience and skill, for different sizes and types of business
3. Make providing health and safety advice a legally regulated profession
4. Turn directors’ health and safety responsibilities into explicit legal duties
5. Make public reporting on health and safety mandatory for medium and large organisations
6. Include health and safety in vocational, professional and business curricula

If we replace “health and safety” with public relations do we have the same needs? 

We can certainly recognise the elements of the campaign that promote continuing professional development, encourage employers and others to demand the best health and safety professionals for the job and encourage the media to get the best health and safety comment for their stories.

I also identified with Matt Wardman’s initial comment that

Even the Chief Executive of a County Council needs - if he is giving Health and Safety Advice outside his competence - a metaphorical blowtorch holding to his cojones. How many Health and Safety professionals would do it?

There seem lots of parallels here and if this makes sense for health and safety counsel, shouldn’t the same considerations apply for the profession and practice of PR too?

A trucking journo’s view of blogging

Check out Brian Weatherley’s guest post at automotive pr for an insight into the buzz of blogging. 

Brian is a “proper journalist” and author of www.biglorryblog.com (located on the Reed website: www.roadtransport.com).  He is one of the few motoring journalists who really understands blogging - because he has been there and does it.  I love his view that:

blogging has been one of the most interesting, exasperating, liberating, intrusive, (and don’t forget obsessive) thing that’s happened to me in my life of journalism. I can’t remember any work practice that has had such a fundamental impact on my working day since I joined Commercial Motor in 1978.

He also highlights a difference from journalism - people spontaneously tell you that they’ve read your blog.  Even the lurkers are engaged. 

For those in PR who are cynical about blogs - Brian has 15,000-20,000 visitors a month.  This isn’t just an “audience” but people who genuinely enjoy what Brian calls the:

“frivolous, flippant and possibly rude things I’d ever wanted to write before in Commercial Motor but couldn’t get away with. It’s also a great place to extract the yellow stuff out of appalling press releases and crap PR pictures.”

Social Media News Release lacked news

Stephen Davies emailed me a link to a Social Media News Release he has issued at webit PR to announce the results of an online PR Survey.

This is a useful opportunity for me as a blogger to consider the usefulness of this interactive approach to presenting information. 

The facts are clear - although the “opening” seems to lack bite - where was the news here? 

I could click on a couple of graphs - but I’m just not sure that I discovered a great deal from this study - or the way in which it was presented.

Being able to see a pdf of the survey results was useful - but the methodology itself didn’t seem designed to really provide a lot of insight into online PR.

We discover that “99 percent of all respondents said that online coverage is either important or very important to their organisation or clients.”  I suppose that is encouraging - but hardly surprising.

Even the quote didn’t add much depth (here’s the most interesting para of three):

“Although the results are far from doom and gloom, a worrying result received from the survey was the lack of confidence PR people had in their peers’ ability to perform effective online campaigns. If this is a true reflection of the entire industry then it should be cause for alarm as the technology continues to move forward and the tight grip of the traditional media continues to loosen.”

But the question relating to this observation seeks an opinion about others - and as the 101 respondents weren’t experts, I am not sure what is the basis of their views:

“From your own experience do you think most PR professionals are capable of carrying out comprehensive and effective online PR campaigns?”

It might have been more interesting to know if they personally felt capable and what they had done to improve their abilities.

I think the concept of a release that offers more opportunities to dig deeper into a story and use multi-media is interesting.  And I applaud Stephen for his efforts here.  But that doesn’t get away from the fact that any release requires a solid story.

Sorry, Stephen, this didn’t do it for me.

Symbolic gesture

The Barclays eagle symbol has been removed from its offices in Poole in Dorset - according to the company because it reflected “out of date branding”. 

The eagle has been the bank’s logo for 317 years, but there has been media speculation that the company is responding to concerns from its proposed Dutch partner, ABN Amro, about the symbol’s Nazi connotations.

Symbols and their associations can be very powerful.  It is inevitable that these connotations carry more weight than the beauty of the eagle as a natural symbol, indeed one that has a genuine heritage for Barclays.

But do that many people really care about changing it?  From a PR perspective, changing the symbol might generate some short term criticism regarding “political correctness”, but we have become used to meaningless global logos - which are undoubtedly a safer option.

Indeed, the ABN Amro logo has little heritage, hence the usual design agency nonsense associated with it:

In 1990, the logo plus typography and typeface was designed by Landor Associates. The shield symbolises reliability, tradition, protection and security, the colour combination green (turquoise), yellow and grey sets it apart from logos of predecessors and rivals while at the same time being very modern, distinguished and clear.

In reality, such logos carry little actual symbolism - that is their virtue.  It is hard to imagine anyone feeling any loyalty or positive emotion in connection to such bland creations.

PR shouldn’t stop with press coverage

I spotted a story that was clearly stimulated by a press release regarding school uniform company Trutex that had conducted a PR survey regarding the possibility of including tracking devices in clothes so parents could monitor the location of their offspring.

The first coverage came in the Telegraph just before 4am - with Response Source carrying the actual release from 7am.  As of 11am, the release is not in the company’s own media centre.

I appreciate that such stories need to be “pushed” at the media - but why isn’t the release also up on the site too?  In fact, the most recent release there is dated 16 March this year.

The company does have a couple of campaigns on its home page - sponsorship of the Anti Bullying Alliance and a petition against VAT on branded schoolwear. 

I really would like to see companies (and their PR consultants) understand that rather than seeking a short-term hit with media coverage, ideas should work much harder.

Another example - earlier this year, I wrote about the MoneySupermarket story of “wilfing“.  This was featured in PRWeek as a case study earlier this month:

The story gained 160 pieces of coverage, including 20 national newspapers, four national TV stations, BBC News 24, BBC Breakfast, GMTV and ITV’s Morning News.

National newspaper coverage included an article in The Times dated 10 April, headlined: ‘Are you surfing your life away on random searches?’

The story also featured on three national radio stations, BBC Radio Five Live, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and Sky News Radio, as well as 22 regional newspapers and 15 ­regional radio stations. In addition, it was covered in 26 foreign newspapers such as USA ­Today, six international newswires ­including Reuters, and 60 online news sites such as Guardian ­Unlimited.

Evaluation carried out by 3 Monkeys also found that 70 per cent of coverage name-checked money­supermarket.com.

During the week following the campaign launch, moneysupermarket.com saw the number of hits to the site rise by 270,000. This exceeded expectations as it coincided with a period of uncharacteristic good weather when internet use can often take a dip.

Since April, wilfing has now become a widely accepted term, appearing in Wikipedia, mentioned by AA Gill in one of his Sunday Times restaurant ­reviews and it was used as a question asked on BBC TV quiz show University Challenge.

3 Monkeys has also highlighted more than 500 blogs that reference the term, many of which include a hyperlink to moneysupermarket.com.

But there does not appear to have been any follow up action since the April release - and the company has not secured its linkage to own the phrase.

Having a good idea to gain media coverage should not be a short term activity.  You need to work this across all possible media and think long-term to ensure commitment to a topic or issue - indeed, such ideas should be derived from the company’s values and then be owned by them.

Can I see your PR licence?

There are some very interesting views expressed as a result of Toni Muzi Falconi’s  Leader’s Perspective at Strumpette, where he argues for professional licensing of PR practitioners.  Further reflection takes place at PR Conversations.

The discussion has spread to my 2 cents covering both ethics, and distinguishing PR from marketing.

I’m always reminded of Edward Bernays in this matter - who called for licensing in the 1992 when he was 100 years old.  In many respects, Bernays’ argument has merit - but his views highlight the challenges too.  Ewan cites Bernays as critical of the fact that anyone can say they work in PR, countering:  

“Whereas, by my definition, a public relations person, who calls themselves [sic] that, is an applied social scientist who advises a client or employer on the social attitudes and actions to take to win the support of the publics upon whom his, or her, or its viability depends.”

But Bernays was seeking differentiation to underline that those working in PR should be “a member of that intellectual elite which guides the destiny of society”.

This might sound like working in the “public interest”, but in practice, acted to protect the interests of a select few - primarily government and big business.  No wonder that PRWatch (citing from Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton) says:

Bernays’s celebration of propaganda helped define public relations, but it didn’t win the industry many friends.

I think the starting point for professional public relations is a recognition that we already are regulated - by a wide variety of laws.  Secondly, we need to take personal responsibility and not only adhere to ethical values, but to stand up against things we feel are wrong.

Between the societal and personal levels of regulation, PR has a role in ensuring organisations act responsibly, and then there is the professional level of responsibility, in relation to representative bodies and our commitment to our chosen career.

Although you don’t need to be licensed to work in PR, you can certainly be professional in your practice.  I would like to think that gaining a licence might help improve the reputation of PR - but there will still be poor practitioners with licences (like bad drivers, unethical lawyers and unskilled doctors).

There is certainly much to debate on the topic - what do you think?

Job opportunity

I had a phone call today from a MIPAA member at BMW Group Plant Oxford.  Kimberley is looking for someone to fill her role whilst she is on maternity cover.  The main criteria are an ability to write and an enthusiastic personality - this is more important than experience, so recent University graduates are welcome to apply  

This is a great opportunity to gain excellent experience with a respected company.  Here’s the job description:

We are looking for an internal communications specialist to cover maternity leave to be based in our Corporate and Associate Communications department at the MINI plant in Oxford/UK.  The main responsibility of the internal communications function is to inform the 4,700 strong associate workforce about plant, brand and company related topics and to motivate them with a high quality, open communication culture based on trust.

The function comprises conceptual and editorial responsibility for the different internal communication media (eg the plant, newspaper, corporate TV and intranet) and the planning and organisation of internal communication events.  Working as an ‘internal journalist’, part of the communication specialist’s role is to maintain a reliable network with all areas in the plant and the BMW Group internal communication departments in the UK and Germany.

The successful candidate should have a university degree in either Journalism, PR/Communications or Business Administration or equivalent.  They should have broad journalistic and editorial skills and experience in events organisation and internal communication would be desirable.  A broad knowledge of office and electronic media IT application is also required.  We are looking for a reliable, flexible and open minded team worker, interested in people and modern automobile manufacturing.

Curriculum vitae to Kimberley Ragousis - kimberley dot ragousis at bmwgroup dot com