Can you measure PR’s contribution to society?

Last week’s World PR Festival in London took as its theme: “The public benefit of public relations”.  I wasn’t able to attend (for cost and personal reasons), but caught up with the thoughts of Paul Mylrea (in PRWeek), Toni Muzi Falconi (at PR Conversations) and Liz Lewis-Jones (at PR Voice).

Sadly the papers from the Festival aren’t readily available, but I have requested a copy as I believe they should be a useful resource for my CIPR Diploma and Advanced Certificate students.

It is interesting to reflect on whether PR does provide a public benefit.  Toni recently summarised a US argument regarding media criticisms of the PR “profession” – with a link to a fascinating personal reflection from Harold Burson.  Burson refutes claims that all PR practitioners are liars, but argues “we are the paid advocates of clients who have a point of view that may be questioned by affected parties”.  He presents PR as “a neutral discipline that can be used for what’s good for society and, from time to time, what’s not so good.”

One of the problems with thinking about the public benefit of PR or its role for social good is one of perspective.  Do we need another movie?  Is society happy with the role of government in citizens’ lives or the power of companies simply in exchange for them paying taxes, providing jobs and CSR programmes?  Even when employed by charities, can we always say the motives of PR are for the benefit of all publics? 

Looking at the experience of PR through the eyes of a BBC reporter on the red carpet circuit, the view of PR as supporting advocacy or dialogue is questionable.  Of course, one can argue that in the case of film promotion, PR is simply seen as press agentry where supply and demand of the product (and its human components) are used to enforce a “command and control” approach to achieving positive media coverage.

The Independent noted a Media Evaluation & PR Benchmarking Report by Metrica (full report available on request) claiming that:

In daily national newspapers, 90 per cent of articles are designated “favourable” to the organisation mentioned, rising to 97 per cent for items on local radio and local television stations. On average, a UK organisation will enjoy 492 mentions across national and regional media in a typical month, reaching an audience of 16.6 million (35 per cent of the population). Metrica judges less than 8 per cent of all coverage to be “strongly unfavourable”.

Is this a result of PR’s increasing influence – the Flat Earth News syndrome?  Metrica reports:

the proportion of “unfavourable coverage” has doubled from 4.3 per cent in 2001 to 7.8 per cent in 2007 – a trend that Metrica assigns to “the increasing competitiveness of the media in the last few years”.

It may not really matter whether your view of PR is that it involves achieving positive press coverage, advocating a partisan viewpoint, or acting as a force for public good.  Indeed, to act as a force for public good, may well involve PR professionals in the advocate role seeking favourable reporting.  But not necessarily.

Here the question is one of motive and how PR is being used.  The focus on simply counting media mentions or otherwise assessing coverage does reflect a one-sided view to communications.  Has the PR person been successful in getting a message across?  Whether or not this message is beneficial to society is another matter.

If that is the aim of PR (rather than helping society benefit simply as a consequence of “good business” – see Harold Burson’s thoughts on CSR), then it must be defined as an objective to be measured.

Apparently, the media evaluation companies are (according the Independent article cited above) “challenging the traditional PR measure of advertising value equivalent (AVE), which compared a piece of editorial to the cost of a similarly-sized advertisement”.

That may be good news itself as only this month I’ve been told several times that AVE is a good way of measuring PR (although I don’t follow the logic since you don’t measure the effectiveness of advertising by what it costs).

But then I note that Claire O’Sullivan, Metrica’s associate director, says: “The appropriate way to measure PR is to assemble a dashboard of measures relevant to an organisation’s communications objectives – for example, which key messages are reaching which audience and how many times.”

Reaching people with your message is simply one step – but what do they do with that message, does it affect their knowledge, attitudes, or behaviour even.  Do they believe the message is genuine or self-motivated (and do they feel this matters)?  Are they motivated to engage in the dialogue that some claim is the goal of PR?

Or if we are looking at PR as a force for social good – have we considered measures to reflect this?  If we take Burson’s argument that PR is simply a neutral tool, should we look at a balance sheet of effect and assess if the sum of PR activities makes a positive or negative contribution?  How well are we doing as an industry on this measure and should we take action if we fail to live up to our claim to be a force for good?

Is it enough to focus on the case studies where PR has been shown to reflect the role of a good corporate citizen?  What about those examples where PR plays a role in harming the public or wider society?  Or where its effect is of little social or public value, good or bad?

What about individual PR practitioners?  Can we truly say that our actions contribute to the benefit of society?  And, if they don’t – for example, if we work for legal concerns that may be socially unacceptable (and that may include my colleagues in the motor industry), what does that say for our role in the PR fraternity?

PR job that doesn’t mention PR

One of my CIPR students has just circulated details of a job vacancy with the Visit Surrey Partnership.  What’s interesting about the position is that it doesn’t mention PR at all, but is clearly a role that is all about public relations (although the job description title is sub-regional manager).

The focus is entirely on developing successful relationships with a “diverse range of stakeholders” and skills include “excellent diplomacy, persuasion and presentation skills”.

If you think PR is all about media relations, you might not see this as a relevant career move – but I believe PR is more about promotion within a relationship perspective.  So this is a PR job – just a shame it doesn’t say so.

Orange balloons target bloggers

When writing about Motor Play, I noticed the Racoon logo from the Orange phone company appeared on the blog.  I wasn’t clear if it was simply sponsorship, but when you click on the logo, you are taken to a site for the world’s first internet balloon race. 

This appears to have nothing to do with Motor Play – but a bit of digging found Laura’s Useful and Funny Stuff blog where it was revealed that blogs can sign up to the week long race and feature the animal logos.  The race then involves participants following the balloon across signed up blogs/sites.  This is an interesting concept as self-interest re the possibility of more traffic and new readers, encourages bloggers and site-owners to get involved.

I expect it cost a fortune, and I found the set up rather complex – I couldn’t get the logo onto this site at all (but I’m not very good with widgets).  It also seems to rely on participants having lots of time to fly about www – when most of us struggle with the sites we do wish to read (I haven’t visited my bloglines account in months now).

Would be interesting to see what Orange expect the initiative to achieve – although I presume it is part of the ongoing marketing experimentation with new media.  I felt it could perhaps be or more useful or engaging than simply a race, but worth knowing about anyway.

Is Motor Play the future of motor magazines?

The press release for the launch of MOTOR PLAY – WORLD’S FIRST DIGITAL AUTOMOTIVE MAGAZINE – NOW ONLINE! claims to be the “next wave in motoring media, being the first digital magazine that features text, photography, videos and sounds in a unique format capable of bringing a brand new, entertaining experience to users”.

This is a “monthly publication” which you are expected to download and read onscreen (I couldn’t see a print option). Okay, so I’m not target market, but I found this a less interactive experience than a printed magazine in many respects.  You could click to any article from the contents, but then it was a linear process of page reading – or click back to the contents (which is over two pages).

The promised benefits of sound were frankly irritating rather than adding to the experience – being monotonous “elevator music” rather than related to, or changing with, individual stories. 

It does looks great – and clearly a lot of work has gone into this 1st edition – but another benefit of online is lost as this is only produced monthly (with a pretty standard blog giving some immediacy). 

Video is included of the new BMW X6, but it didn’t excite me much (but I’m not a geeky petrolhead getting turned on by shots of cars down windy roads or close ups of the steering wheel and dashboard).  It wasn’t exactly something I’d expect to find on YouTube being more corporate video in style.

Although the first two issues are free, Motor Play will subsequently cost 1 € per issue to download (or 10 € if you subscribe for 12 months).  The question is will anyone pay?

Despite the claims that you can “flip through the pages of the e-zine just like with a normal printed magazine”, this isn’t really the same type of experience you get with real paper magazines. Admittedly the likes of Car magazine would set you back a few pounds a month (with a current offer of 3 issues for £3).

Motor Play is an interesting development and one no doubt PRs in the UK motoring world will be monitoring closely.  The traditional motor mags already have established presences online where they set out to provide up to date news, as well as blogs and community building activities.  Does the Motor Play concept offer anything new beyond a page turning e-zine?  I’m not convinced.

Ironically, the day this release is issued is one where most of the auto PRs are out of the office as it is the Western Group of Motoring Writers’ Driving Day at Castle Coombe.  This offers the PRs the opportunity to drive competitive models on the road and track and the weather today is ideal for such “hard work”.  I’ll be joining the guys later (as there’s a dinner and we’ve a Meet the Media meeting tomorrow morning).

Surprisingly, neither the Motor Play blog nor the magazine carries any details of real people involved in the project – and I couldn’t find anything about the publication via Google – although I’m sure the auto PR world will know who is behind the initiative.  But why so shy?

Is this you? PR profile in Independent

I’ve just caught up with a feature in last Monday’s Independent: Make an impact: PR is a popular profession for both graduates and career changers.

I can’t knock it for proposing a professional approach in respect of qualifications and commitment to CPD, but it is a shame that the focus seems to be predominantly on media relations – or at least, journalists switching into PR as a career route (something that I think is actually declining). 

Interesting also that a friend of mine who is quoted in the article emails that she never said what the journalist quotes her as saying. 

Still it makes a change from the usual PR bunny type of profile.

Back to the future

Generally we age day by day, but there are times when you take a giant leap, like yesterday when I felt I’d gone back to the future.

The occasion was a celebratory service for my dad in Great Yarmouth (where I grew up), which was attended by dozens of friends, contacts and even family members I had not seen in ten, twenty or even more years.

The odd thing was that everyone was clearly the same person, but they’d just aged.  People of my parents’ generation were now old people and my own contemporaries have spread into middle age. 

As one woman said to me: “I wouldn’t have recognised you; you used to be such a skinny little girl.”  Of course, I am no longer the seven year old schoolgirl that she pictured – but I don’t remember her as an old lady either.

Babies are now teenagers or have grown up and have babies of their own.  That’s how life is.

We know this and generally accept, or don’t even notice, how we and those around us age.  But when confronted by giant leaps back to the future, it is quite a shock.  It feels as if some conveyor belt is shuffling us along without our knowledge and we are replaced with newer, younger stock.

These new shoots see only how you look today and ask “who are you” in voices that show they don’t really care.  You can only answer “I used to be…” whilst wondering to whom they belong.

I know that once we’d told the story of my dad in memories and music, many of these young people were crying as much as us.  We had made that old man come to life.  He was the boy who used to ride a bike and get into trouble, the young man who fell in love with my mum, the proud father, the man who worked hard and helped make the lives of others better through his charity work with Lions International. 

He was the man we all loved – and they could see he was worth caring about, if only for a few moments.  In looking back, we can see our own future – in looking at the young people, we see our own past.

In life we come across so many people who may inspire us or contribute a fleeting memory.  But then we move on and don’t really find time to think about them.  Our paths cross, our family trees entwine – and sometimes we find a place where we can look forward and back to who were were, and who we yet want to become, before the conveyor belt moves us along another generation.

This is really junk online communications

The Motor Industry Public Affairs Association (MIPAA) website admin has received an email from a US-based healthcare PR firm (Airfoil Public Relations) asking how it could gain exposure via the site (“best value for the dollar”) and develop a long-term advertising relationship.

The request seemed very odd – it was pushy and asked for information regarding the number of visitors we would get etc.  We do not offer the MIPAA website as an advertising medium and since our membership is primarily UK-based, and entirely automotive (hence the name), why would we be interested in promoting this company that clearly doesn’t have an effective communications strategy itself?

I see from the firm’s website that it does have automotive clients – but no mention of these in the pitch to MIPAA.  The email stated: “I am ready to start ASAP, so a quick response would be appreciated” – we don’t generally bother responding to unsolicited emails, but this time I felt the junk approach deserved some recognition.  Our answer is “no thanks”.

UPDATE: See Airfoil PR comment to the post – it appears that someone is spamming sites using the firm’s name.  From email correspondence, I gather the firm is looking into this, but it is unclear how they can stop their name being misused in this way.  For the record – I should like to confirm my understanding that Airfoil PR was not behind the original junk email to the MIPAA site.