Communications Strategy

Just a few thoughts on the dark art of corporate communications and how one should approach it – and when you’ve approached it, whether you should embrace it with open arms, or simply walk away. Quite quickly.

PR’s Groundhog Day

Posted on by in advertising, Communications Strategy, Marketing, media relations, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Here’s a piece from PR Week. (What do you mean you don’t read it, blog snorkellers mine? Go out and buy a copy immediately. This week’s cover price is – for the sake of argument – a highly reasonable £32.57.)

It’s about integration – and lest anyone be unclear – that’s the integration of communications disciplines through the creation of what used to be called ‘one-stop shops’.  PR Week see fit to grace the front page of their organ with this story, so they obviously regard it as ‘news’.

But – hold on, and correct me if I’m wrong, hasn’t this happened before (twice, as far as I can remember) – and then sort of un-happened, sort of dis-integrated, if you like? (And I do.)

Doesn’t it prove that the old adage ‘PR – it’s a young person’s game’ is fundamentally wrong? It’s not a young person’s game because young people can’t remember the hideous fuck-ups of the past and thus cannot learn from them.

Mind, as long as the clients are young as well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. They can all repeat the same errors together. Again and again and again. It’s like Groundhog Day, but it will never sort itself out and it’s somewhat less amusing without Bill Murray in it.

And the final bit of the ‘story’ just underlines what cack it actually is. “It’s not as simple as being in the same office” – no, you’re right, sunshine, it’s not – “there has to be a willingness…..to work together to understand…….” Yes, nail, head.

There has to be a mutual respect, an acceptance that the ‘idea’ can come from anywhere, and an innate ability to recognise what makes a good idea. These three things do not come from making the poor, hapless drones sit together and share the same canteen. Didn’t work in the late eighties, didn’t work in the early noughties, won’t work now.

Oh, and for the record, PR Week has been around for much, much longer than a lot of agencies and most account execs. Why, then, is PR Week slavishly reporting this, rather than working from its years of experience and pointing out that ‘integration’ is not new, not big and definitely not clever.

ZUBAR

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

(Which, of course, is an homage to the seminal late-eighties meisterwerk of cinematography, ‘Tango & Cash’ – and obviously you’ve spotted how clever I’ve been in adapting it to suit my own ends in introducing yet more musings on privacy and Facebook.)

For yes, dear blog snorkellers, we are all Zucked up – some many millions of us more than others. The nasty, odious geekwipe who decided in his own grubby mind that privacy was no longer a social norm, has taken note of the groundswell and has – apparently – done something about privacy on Facebook.

What he’s done, I have no idea. I don’t understand. I don’t have a clue whether what he’s done will work or not and whether it even addresses the issue. If it was me, I would stick with May 31 (Quit Facebook Day) and just have done with it. You see, the horrible Zucker has more to share, in regard to his philosophy around what people should and shouldn’t be, think or do.

Here is a post by Danah Boyd, a fellow (athough she’s clearly a lady) (this is a gag that my US snorkellers may not wholly ‘get’) at the Harvard Berkman Center (sic) for Internet and Society. Which impresses the living hell out of me. It’s worth a read, you lazy, lazy snorkellers and no, I am not going to paraphrase it for you. The bit I am going to reproduce here – and careful before you read it – it may make you feel queasy – is another quotation from the boy-demon, Zuckerberg. He said, last year:

“You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity?

I’d say that sticking with one is – at best – an example of an Aspergers-like inability to function properly in society and – at worst – an example of the lazy attitude exhibited by the Northern (English) nouveau-riche – “take me as you find me, that’s what I’m about, say what I mean, mean what I say, spade a spade” etc etc etc, as if it’s some kind of virtue. No, you nasty fuck, it’s just intolerant rudeness.

Problem is, the hard-of-thinking that populate Facebook are having their ability to adopt seperate identities – which we all do, to relate to people, to get on in life, to avoid getting arrested – taken away from them. It’s actually, now I come to think about it, a real threat to society as we know it. And I don’t think I’m being overly alarmist.

The last word goes to a Daily Mash article – read it in full here:

“I’ve got an idea for a website. It’s called How’s About We All Just Leave Each Other the Fuck Alone for Five Minutes.

 “Book.”

The Devolution Of Language Part 2

Posted on by in Communications Strategy and tagged , , .

Yes, yes – as I’ve already said, I know that devolution doesn’t mean de-evolution. So what? Let it go, blog snorkeller minor, let it go.

Today, for your delight and delectation, I have two words that should never have existed and yet – somehow – do.

  • ‘Electronification’ – the rendering digital of a previously analogue process
  • ‘Ideation’ – the taking and developing of an idea

Which has led me to ideate the concepts of ‘literacization’ and ‘verbification’, which both describe the taking of linguistic vandals and shutting them in a small room full of scorpions and centipedes with only a copy of the Oxford English dictionary (abridged) for protection. I’d have thought that, after an hour or so, they’d appreciate the real value of said reference aid.

May 31 – Quit Facebook Day

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Does exactly what it says on the tin – no explanation necessary.

Here. A piece from mashable.com.

Also see my previous post – You’re Zucked!

A small step, I would say, in the right direction.

You’re Zucked!

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Proof, were it needed, that Facebook is eeeee-ville.

Well, OK, it’s not actually proof, per se, and it’s not actually Facebook, per se, it’s more a bunch of opinions about the loathsome whelp who started it all, Mark Zuckerberg. Who, incidentally,  sounds like a genuinely unpleasant nerd with few ethics and a touch of the pulling-the-legs-off-flies Asperger’s about him. 

(But that’s just my tuppence worth and I am happy to state – for the record – that it is in no way based on fact or personal experience and is merely a conclusion drawn from available material and thus only probably bang on the money.)

Anyway, if, lazy, slothful, comatose blog snorkellers mine, you were (for once) to follow the link that I’ve posted, you’d find yourself inside the head of one Jason Calacanis, who definitely has a downer on the Zuckerbergster. And, if half the things he’s saying are half true, then perhaps he’s right. (Although he does go on at quite some length, implying that he may have an axe of a personal nature to grind.) 

I was taken with the term ‘You’re Zucked’ which appears to describe the state of having had your ideas stolen by someone, or having been screwed over by a business partner. Apparently, his behaviour has been so bad that those in the know are now calling for a boycott of ‘book, and have decreed that ‘book is seriously uncool.

(Mind, if ‘book really has 400 million users and is the third largest country in the world by population, I think it may take a little time for this uncoolness to filter down. I also cannot help but thinking – what did you expect? His Zuckness is an entrepreneur and a businessman and you don’t get anywhere by being nice and holding the door open for people. But maybe that’s me.)

My worry is that if ‘book goes down – what hideous creature will rise in its place? See – I don’t believe the social media hippies and I don’t believe in the inherent goodness and niceness of all and sundry. There’s always someone who wants to make money and screw everyone else – and if it’s not the Zuckerburger, then who (or what) is waiting in the wings?

Maybe we should be careful what we wish for. (Or, as I’m speaking for myself, what I wish for.)

Quiet in here, isn’t it?

Brand Standards? Be Tolerant Of Social Media

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, corporate reputation.

A word of warning. I’m posting this link in the spirit of acknowledging my sources and admitting that I have plagiarised content, rather than letting you, faithful blog snorkellers mine, believe that it’s all a product of my fevered imagination – however, for once, I strongly advise that you do NOT click on it. (Not that there was ever much chance, you lazy bunch of surfers, but just in case.) If you do click on it, you will find yourself transported to the homepage of Digital Transactions magazine, a wilderness in which your horrified screams will never, ever be heard.

Suffice it to say, it’s a publication that services the needs of the digital transactor, those involved in online payments – banks and so forth. And it is a sign of the malign growth of the social media cancer that even this benighted outpost on the media frontier has been tainted by it. Here’s a quotation:

“Banks and others scratching their heads over the exploding popularity of social networking and its close cousin, social gaming, can harness the online phenomenon for payments but will likely have to jettison decades of settled thinking, experts say.”

I know – sounds like the sort of thinking that was doing the rounds 18 months ago – but it was published yesterday. Welcome to today’s horrifying reality, banks and others!

Anyway, I didn’t come here to poke fun at the financial services industry, easy though that would be. No I come here to highlight an opinion provided in this piece which, for me, sums up the insanity and inanity of the whole social media thing and how it is supposed to work (to our benefit, apparently). Have a read:

“For example, people who use social media are accustomed to changing things on the sites in ways that suit them individually – and that can include corporate designs, said George Warfel at Fiserv Inc. He advised banks to be tolerant of this, even if it horrifies marketing officers. ‘Let people on MySpace change the color of your logo,’ he advised. ‘That’s not vandalism. It’s customer acceptance.”

What George is blithely advocating is ceding control of your brand identity to any Tim, Darko or Barry who wants to appropriate it for his or her own ends. Apparently customers will be more accepting of your expensive, hard-won identity if they are free to do what they like with it. Who knows, maybe they won’t just stop at changing the colour. Maybe they’ll include a couple of rude words and a lewd illustration and then post it on a Facebook page entitled “(your name here) Sucks!” Or maybe they’ll just change the colour of your logo, print it out and stick it on a counterfeit product.

This is, and remains, the problem with social media. From a commercial point of view, it cannot provide the reassurance and control that is necessary to make it a valid comms, marketing or sales tool.

And as for the bankers – well, I sincerely hope their attitude to looking after my money is slightly less laissez-faire than their attitude to their own brand identity.

Embrace Social Media Or Die!

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, Public Relations, Social Media.

Well, that’s the only conclusion I can draw from this set of statistics collated and published on socialnomics.net by Erik Qualman, an evangelist.

I cannot argue with them or dispute them. They seem to come from a variety of reliable sources. The only conclusion I can draw is that the world and the bulk of people in it live for their social media. When social media becomes more popular than porn (which, as any fule kno, is what the interweb was invented for), then you know that momentum has grown into an unstoppable tsunami of Big Conversation.

And yet. I STILL don’t know of any company that’s making money through social media marketing. Mr Qualman includes this point – “the ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years” – which sounds like a bit of a bullying threat to me. Try telling that to Rolls-Royce, Marks & Spencer, Garrards and Cheney the Bootmaker. I’m in no way involved in the social media ‘phenomenon’, yet somehow I still seem to be able to function perfectly well in today’s society. Apparently products and services and news are now going to find me – well, if it’s OK with them, I’ll stick with the old way of doing things and choose which ones I want, in my own time, on my own terms.

Finally, apparently, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest, after China and India.

Better than that, I wouldn’t have to live there. Or even visit. And I would no longer have to put up with the endless wittering about social media being my future.

How good would that be?

How Language Devolves

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , .

Yes, yes. Before you start – I know that devolution is not the opposite of evolution and that devolving language is not the black to evolving language’s white. However, as we saw in a previous post, when the American nation attempted to convince me that ‘bulletize’ and ‘big-businessification’ were words, language does appear to be quietly decaying, and this is because we have devoluted its care to those who are, quite obviously, not up to it. (See n. American.)

(Yes, yes (again). Devolved. I know.)

Anyway, today, in the course of my day job, I was sense-checking a quite technical document. One to do with measurement and encryption. One in which a – I assume – normally quite sane person had used the not-word ‘zeroise’. As in ‘after generating the result, zeroise your machinery’. I think it is probably intended to mean ‘reset’ or ‘return to zero’.

Three points, if, dear blog snorkellers, you can be bothered.

1) Zeroise is not and never will be a word. If it used, however, it will pass into language. Use it and it will be spoken

2) The person who used it was not an American. So maybe I’m being a bit harsh on Americans. Or maybe it’s that they’re trying to idiotize the rest of the world

3) It was used in a PowerPoint presentation so, yes, it was bulletized

Let’s try and hold out against the nonsense, people.

Serving Mammon In His Communications Department

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, corporate reputation, Corporate Reputation Management, media relations, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Yesterday I praised Lucas van Praag, Spinmeister-General at the Vampire Squid, for his audacious strategy of actually instigating an FSA investigation to shift the focus from the bank’s nausea-inducing profits and bonuses.

I was wrong – according to this piece by Jason Karpf (a four-time champion on the game show ‘Jeopardy!’) (which is, I can only presume, where the hapless contestants have to escape from a cage full of hungry jeopards? No?), this truly epoch-making piece of lateral communications thinking comes from Texas-based PR firm, Public Strategies.

So well done to them.

Mind, lest Mr van Praag be diminished in our eyes, here’s a piece from something called New York Magazine which compiled a list of the Praagster’s best rebuttals. I will leave the last word to @manic_impressive, who commented on the article:

“Dude, Goldman is just so much better than all of us.”

Doing God’s Work – And Serving Mammon

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, corporate reputation, Corporate Reputation Management, Crisis Management, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , .

Goldman Sachs, after a bit of a PR disaster last year (‘doing God’s work’, they were, apparently, according to that nice, humble and eminently charming Mr Blankfein) has taken what I consider to be the correct course of communications action – kept its head down, kept schtum and got on with its raison d’etre, which is the making of frankly obscene amounts of wonga. I’m not going to talk about its first quarter results – do the light clickdango here – but suffice it to say that amongst other little frissons was the figure of $5.5bn that they’ve given to their staff. Equivalenting to some $100k per employee, including the blokes who clean the loos. (No of course they didn’t – you figure it out.)

One of the recipients of some of the Goldman’s cash fallout – quite a lot, I am told by unreliable sources – is one Lucas van Praag (apologies to Mr vaan Prag if I got his name wrong), Director of Corporate Communications of the Sachs Parish. It should be said that, following last year’s PR shambles, some did wonder whether he’d actually earned his money.

So did I – until I read this. It takes a genuinely skilled exponent of the spinmeister’s art to come up with the idea of leaking the suspicion of fraud in order not only to initiate an investigation by the FSA, but also get none other than Gordon ‘Wingnut’ Brown lobbying for it.

It’s a stroke of genius. So Goldman Sachs gets investigated – worse, it’s found guilty of misleading investors in the area of toxic stocks. It gets fined. It has to lose the middle-ranking member of staff that (apparently) landed it in the mess in the first place.

But – but. The fine will be but a fraction of its profits. One gets the feeling that the middle-ranking member of staff is persona non grata anyway and is already washed and in the laundry basket waiting to be hung out to dry. The loser in the whole toxic stocks issue was RBS – hardly the most popular or stainless of financial institutions.

No. On balance, all this investigation will succeed in doing is making people see that nice Goldman Sachs as the underdog, unfairly pursued – nay, scapegoated – for something that could have happenend to anyone. And while people are thinking this, they won’t be thinking about the telephone number profits and fat bonuses that have never stopped being a part of the Goldman’s culture.

Mr van Praag – there’s another big sack of money waiting in your office for you. Enjoy.