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The End and a New Beginning…

This is my last post for this blog assignment, the end of a very ‘assignmentful’ (please pardon the English here) second semester. As is my usual practice, it is time to take stock not just for this module, but for course as such and my own assessment of what I have learnt.

 Let me try and put this in the form of the basic ‘H’ and the 4 ‘Ws’.

How? Through a mixture of lectures, seminars, role plays, case studies, group exercises and practical assignments. We now have a portfolio of work we can showcase to the world! I enjoyed the case studies and practical assignments the most.

Why? Though I have been working in the communications industry, it has not been in the field of PR. This formal education and ensuing degree will, I hope, help me become a more effective communicator. 

What? I have learnt that PR can be subtle and in your face, creative and run of the mill, simple and complicated — all at the same time. One just has to find his or her own niche.

I also learnt to sucessfully distinguish and help others as well to distinguish PR from marketing and adverstising. As for defending PR tactics to journalists, I’m getting there.

I learnt that certain PR tasks are best done alone, like blogs, while some others can just not be done alone, like campaigns. You need to sit and brainstorm (read: break your heads) with other people to be able to crack the briefs.

I learnt that I had quite a lot to say about some topics, like feminisation and political communication, and had to struggle quite a bit to even put together a coherent post, like the one on IPR.

I also learnt that I had the knack to pick out the most difficult or complicated topics/briefs for essays and assignments.

I discovered a liking for technical stuff and for any creativity that called for use of technology. Conversely, I discovered that I am a complete no-starter with campaign planning.

When? The last 6 months have been a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows in PR learning and the next few months will see the culmination of my learnings in the in the form of a dissertation. Help!

Who? My tutors, Pam Williams and Michaela O’Brien who were very brave, I think, to take on such a varied bunch of students on this journey. Susan Fearn, who taught us English for PR purposes and who co-taught the disseratation classes. My social media teacher, Matthew Holland, for his patience with the inanest of questions. And to all the guest lecturers for opening a whole new world — Benedict Southworth, Martin Clarke, Adam Garfunkel, Euan Semple and Sean Kidney.

And to all my fellow travellers/classmates on this journey, from whom I learnt so much through hours of informal discussions.

Thank you all.

Put People First !

The historic ‘Put People First March’  held earlier today in Central London was a fantastic experience for me. It was my first ever march/rally. And the feeling is indescribable. The adrenalin rush. The support for a common cause (in this case, many common causes) with so many other people, the actual march… Wow !

The march route was from Victoria Embankment to Hyde Park, a distance of approximately 3 miles. The organisers of the rally expected some 30,000 people to participate, but I think there were many more. I was near the head of the march and when we reached Hyde Park, a friend who was also participating in the march but was near the tail, said that they had just left Trafalgar Square, almost 2 miles away ! 

Some photographs taken at the march are presented here as a slideshow. I have deliberately not given them any captions as I want you, dear reader, to feel as being part of this march !

Education or Experience?

Education or Experience (and contacts). Which is more important for PR? This was the topic of the last in the series of debates in class. A kind of chicken and egg question, actually.

Gruning and Hunt (1984, p.81) in their book on Managing Public Relations have said that “public relations will never reach the status of a profession as long as people can get into the field and prosper without having completed a fairly rigorous course of study in the field.” But having said that, a degree in PR is worthless if it is not supported with excellent communication and inter-personal skills at all levels.

The importance of education cannot be stressed enough, why else would at least 5-6 of my classmates, including me, be taking a mid-career break to pursue a Master’s degree in PR?

Ideally, theory should support practice and practice should feed into theory. Some of my classmates who interned with various PR agencies, while pursuing the MA in PR course would probably be able to explain this better than me.

For me, the best classes were when Pam or Michaela or Matt or even the guest lecturers talked about their own personal experiences. The insight and learnings that I gained about PR from those classes is invaluable; something that books could never have taught me.  The true worth of education can only come into light when you are actually working in the field.

From my own experience, I can say that my educational qualifications and the area that I work in have nothing to do with one another. Though my first Master’s degree is in Geology, I have worked in the area of social science and humanities. I am doing my second Master’s in Public Relations with a specific purpose. But whether I will work in the field of PR or move on to something else, only time can tell !

Knock, Knock. Crisis here

While some crisis situations can be seen building up (like the financial crisis), some others give warning signs. Most catch us unawares (like natural disasters). Whatever the case, it is essential for organisations to have some kind of a crisis management plan as last week’s class exercise on the same theme demonstrated.

I am going to share with you a crisis situation that the University I work in faced some years back and how it dealt with the crisis. A little background here: the University had no communications department then (it still does not have one) or dedicated personnel for any kind of external communications.

About 8-9 years back, 4 students of the University committed suicide over a 2-week period. All 4 students left behind suicide notes, which were seized by the police and whose contents were not made public.

The University was deeply affected and barely had time to recover from the first suicide, when the news of next suicide came in. The student community grew increasingly agitated with the suicides and by the time the third suicide occurred, the media was out in full force on the University campus.

The media had a field day with even the national television and newspapers picking up the suicide stories. Journalists were roaming around the campus and talking to students, staff and faculty alike. It was a lose-lose situation all around. If anybody spoke to them, they were quoted out of context and if they refused to speak, the University was labelled as hiding something. A couple of statements were released by the University after the third and fourth suicides, but were ignored by the media.

Things could have gone worse, if two things had not happened. The first was a constant dialogue with the student community through various means — emails, classroom meetings, address by the deans and other top officials of the University.

And second, the more important one, was the memorial service held at the University, wherein the parents of the deceased students were also present. The media were present in full force at the memorial service. After the service, one of the parents got up and read out a resolution prepared by them in which they categorically stated that the University was not to blame for the suicides and that the suicides were not connected with one another. The timing of the suicides was nothing but a ‘horrible coincidence’.

This unprecedented show of solidarity by parents made the media and the students stop in their tracks. That same evening, the police having completed their investigations, released relevant parts of the suicide notes. The notes only reiterated what the parents had said in their resolution. The media did a complete turn around in its reporting, with a couple of newspapers actually praising the University for its ‘restrained response in the face of such public condemnation’!

The reason why I chose to write about a real case rather than discuss crisis management in a purely theoretical context is bacause the class on crisis management made me think about the way the situation was handled and what could have been done to prevent the media circus that happened.

A communications office and dedicated communications personnel could have deflected quite a bit of the negative press. Not proactively dealing with the media and waiting for the media to start reporting before acting, was a mistake that the University made. I also believe that some amount of the crisis could have been lessened if an effective crisis communication plan had been in place.

Global PR is Cross-cultural Communication !

Source: Microsoft Clipart

Today’s debate in class was on ‘International PR’ (IPR) and it was one of the most boring debates that I have ever attended or participated in. I was part of the debating team and I think all of us, including me, missed the crux of the topic. Somehow the debate veered into the territory of CSR (?), PR agencies, the Middle East, rather than on the practice of IPR. The debating team also failed to stress on the importance of cross-cultural communication, which is so integral to any kind of communication at the international level or even across mixed and diverse communities.

This is stressed by Krishnamurthy Sriramesh and Dejan Vercic in their book on The Global Public Relations Handbook: Theory and Practice, who identify cross-cultural communication as the driving force of IPR. They also acknowledge that the body of literature on IPR was very young; whatever existed had a strong Western bias; and that there was ‘very little empirical evidence on the nature of public relations from regions across the world’.

I fully agree with them on this count. Let me give you an example. As I have mentioned in one of my earlier posts, my classmates are from 18 different countries and the place where I stay, the International Students House, is even more representative.

It has been a great, and sometimes challenging, experience to interact with people from so many different countries, both in the class and outside of it. Even though communication has been in English,  the different cultural backgrounds that we come from shape the way we understand an perceive the language. This has led to some very funny and some not very funny incidents of cross-communication.

If this kind of cross-communication can happen within a language, one can imagine what would happen to communicating across different languages! PR practioners have challenging times ahead indeed.

I feel that within the next 5 years, PR will have a strong body of literature on IPR, which will also feed into the discourse on cross-cultural communication.

CSR: Genuine Concerns or False Pretences?

It is now a common practice for organisations in certain industries and in the more industrialised parts of the world to behave responsibly. They install environmentally friendly machinery, use recyclable raw materials, rehabilitate sites which may have been damaged by their previous actions, treat employees equally, respect the conventions on human rights, and make donations for charitable purposes, among a host of other socially responsible actions to demonstrate corporate social responsibility or CSR.

CSR has become a phenonmenon today. Every large business or corporation around the world wants to be perceived by their stakeholders/publics as being socially responsible. Why are we seeing CSR activities being written or spoken about so much? Well, PR is definitely one of the reasons, but I feel that it goes much beyond that.

On skimming through the vast literature available on CSR (too many to mention here), the following reasons for CSR activities can be identified: (i) corporate reputation, (ii) stakeholder pressure, (iii) to derive positive PR benefits, (iv) mandated by the law of the land, as in the case of the UK, and (v) genuine concern.

Genuine concern for society is rarely the real reason for most corporations to carry out CSR activities. This generalisation is unfair on those corporations who do CSR for the ‘right reasons’. While I do not know the UK industry well enough to give concrete examples, I can cite some examples from India: the Tata group of companies, Infosys, and Wipro.

Whatever the reasons, genuine concerns or false pretences, CSR is growing and there may be a day when a CSR department of a corporation may compete with NGOs for social change !

Sometimes it is good to dream!

Should NGOs be exempt from CSR?

Source: Microsoft Clipart

I admit that the title of my post is a rather strange question. I mean, why would NGOs need to do CSR when all their activities are geared towards larger soceital benefit?

Let me tell you about the genesis of this question. Last week’s guest lecture on CSR by Adam Garfunkel was very good and like most good lectures answered some questions and helped raise many more.

In the course of my readings on CSR and for my module on NGOs and Charities, what comes out very clearly is massive increase in the number of NGOs which are interested in different aspects of our lives, for example Friends of the Earth (FoE), Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and the World Wildlife Fund, just to mention a few of such organisations. They represent a range of interests (human rights, child labour, forced labour, trade, environment, and social) and consider CSR as part of the broader context of sustainable development for corporations.

These NGOs operate on a global level and are run like corporations themselves. Just because they work for the ‘greater good of the society’, does that exempt them from their own CSR initiatives?

Dear reader, I am going around in circles on this topic. I would love to know what your views are on this issue.

New Media PR Mirrors Industry Trends: Social Media Press Release

London, UK: 28 February 2009

A path-breaking study conducted by Zoom Communications has found that contrary to current perceptions, the PR industry in the United Kingdom has kept pace with developments in new media.

The key findings of this study are:

• Communication tactics cannot be generalised across the different branches of PR and certain tactics work better for one type of PR than another type of PR.
• As technology revolutionised and changed different sectors one at a time, PR tactics kept pace with them and adapted their tactics to reflect this change.
• Therefore, certain sectors adapted to new media techniques before the others. Agencies doing PR for the financial, technology, telecommunications, litigation, and consumer sectors were the first use new media techniques. On the other hand, government and political communication, lobbying, the public sector and the corporate sectors were slower.
• 80 % of PR agencies in the UK offer online or new media services for their clients
• New media communications has brought about a paradigm shift in the way PR communication happens. It has transformed communication from a monologue into a dialogue with its audiences.

This study was conducted over 6 months and involved surveys of 500 PR agencies in the United Kingdom and interviews with leaders from different sectors and well as communications professionals.

MULTIMEDIA ELEMENTS: Slidecast on ‘Has PR been Slow to Adapt to New Media?’(6.33 minutes)

Download: Has PR Adapted Slowly to New Media Techniques

QUOTES

Blythe Spirit, Chairperson, CIPR
Zoom Communications has taken a 360⁰ look at the PR industry. It is a report by the industry, about the industry and for the industry. The CIPR endorses this report.

Brandon Solaris, Marketing and PR Expert, CEO, Solaris Communications

At last, there is a study which is conveying the true picture of the state of New Media in PR. I had despaired of ever coming across a study which would present the positive and symbiotic relationship between the two. Zoom Communications must be congratulated for conducting this study

 

Ruth Silverman, Professor of Public Relations, University of Westminster
This is a study which is going to make people look at PR with new eyes – as a dynamic industry, an industry which keeps pace with trends. Zoom Communications has taken every care to bring out an objective research study with sound methodology and results which reflect the paradigm shift in communications.

Deborah Soletti, CEO, Zoom Communications
We are proud to present this exhaustive report on the relationship between PR and new media. We are confident that after reading this report, nobody will ever have any questions about the adaptability of PR.

 

 Please contact Patrick Konnoth to arrange an interview and/or for additional quotes.

  

Technorati Tags: Communication | New Media | Online PR | Political Communication | PR | PR Agencies | Public Relations | Social Media | Social Media Services | Internet | Media and Communication | Financial PR | Consumer PR | Litigation PR | Technology | Telecommunications | Lobbying and Public Affairs | Government Communication

Zoom Communications was set up in 1999 and was the first PR agency to offer new media services. Today, we are the No. 1 New Media Agency in the United Kingdom. With a staff of 100 new media specialists, we create tailor-made services for each client.  

Has PR been Slow to Adapt to New Media?

If you are not there on the Internet, you do not exist.

Public relations has arguably never enjoyed a position of greater prominence than it does today, and yet it has been accused of not adapting to changing technology or incorporating new media techniques in its services.

The following slidecast or video presentation addresses this ‘accusation’.

Length of Video: 6.33 minutes

The presentation looks at the views of some communication professionals like David Henderson and David Benvie, as well as some recent research studies by Big Mouth Media and the Society for New Communications Research.

I feel that while communication is at the heart of all PR, communication tactics cannot be generalised across the different branches of PR. Therefore, it is unfair to say that the entire PR industry has been slow to adapt to new media.

The sectors which were influenced by technology had ripple effect on its communications strategy as well and those which were slow to use technology, were slow to use media techniques as well.

For example, agencies doing PR for the financial, technology, telecommunications, litigation, and consumer sectors were the first use new media techniques. On the other hand, government and political communication, lobbying, the public sector and the corporate sector were much, much slower.

New media communications has brought about a paradigm shift in the the way PR communication happens. It has transformed communication from a monologue into a dialogue with its audiences.

Today, there is no branch of PR that does not make effective use of some new media tool. Though PR may have been a late and,perhaps, cautious entrant to the new media club, it has definitely caught up with the rest of the communications industry.

It’s tough going for women…

Source: Microsoft Clipart

 A couple of months back, BBC’s Radio 4 aired a programme on whether there have been changes in perceptions towards women in the workplace. One of the participants interviewed in the show was a 65-year old woman. When she had announced her pregnancy to her (male) boss in 1973, instead of congratulating her, had asked when she would be tendering her resignation !

Have things changed much today? Not particularly, if one were to read the article by Kim Cochrane on how women are discriminated at work if they are pregnant, published on 23 April 2008 in The Guardian. The responses received to this article also served to reinforce the stereotypes that I have discussed in my earlier posts dated 19 February and 21 February 2009.

The point I am trying to make here is the attitude and stereotypes that are prevalent all around. It does not matter which part of the world one is in, stereotypes exist.

I rest my case !