Corporate Communications – Doing God’s Work 2

Posted on December 1, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged best practice, corporate communications, corporate dysfunction, Crisis Management, External Communications, media relations, people business, Public Relations, reputation management.

Last time, on ‘Doing God’s Work’. A global investment bank – let’s call them Goldman Sachs – breaks the silence of decades and has some of their senior executives interviewed, for a feature piece, by a medium with global reach – let’s call it The Sunday Times (of London). In the course of the interview, we discover that one of the senior executives likes big boats, that all their employees are being paid obscene amounts of money (nothing wrong with that, mind) and that the ultimate boss – let’s call him Lloyd Blankfein – believes he’s ‘doing God’s work’.

The whole thing raised few issues for me. On the one hand, I was impressed that their Corporate Communications head – let’s call him Lucas van Praag – had managed to get the notoriously secretive bank to ‘go public’ (if you like). I think I understood what they were up to – the threat of governments poking their legislative noses into the affairs of the world’s money-machines needed (needs?) to be averted, so what better than to open yourself to the media and demonstrate that, behind the hype and the rumour, you’re simply a business, under the same pressures as other businesses, trying to turn an honest dollar.

On the other hand, I think they (the Corporate Communications advisors) dropped a clanger. Unfortunately – so I thought – this big financial institution didn’t come off terribly well. The big boss wasn’t terribly likeable (and who cares what he’s really like – if he’s going to do media, he needs to pretend that he’s, at the least, human), quotations from employees simply reinforced the preconceptions and, frankly, no-one needs to know that they like big boats. I think we probably assumed that, anyway.

And then the ‘doing God’s work’ quotation. Well, I assumed (and when we assume, we make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’) (now I feel ill) that this was a joke that fell flat. A throwaway comment, made by a man with not too many social skills. However, this piece, from London’s Evening Standard, tells me otherwise. (Here’s another article, again from the Standard, which showed how they tried to spin it. Oooops.)

And so to today’s lesson, dear blog snorkellers. If you are a corporate communicator, and you are parading your top bods in front of the media, make sure that they are a) trained b) on-message and c) understand that this is not the time for off-the-cuffs. If you cannot tick the boxes against these three points, then do not proceed.

As Goldman Sachs has proved – a bad result is worse than no result at all, and, in their case, may have the opposite effect to the one they were (probably) looking for. Their performance has simply given the world’s media an interest in, and an excuse for, forensically examining everything they do. And guess what? There’s lots to write about.

Social Media – Nothing More To Be Said

Posted on November 30, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged corporate use of social media, External Communications, PR Week, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, social media conversation, social media experts, social media marketing, social media policy, tweets, Twitter, twitter usage.

“Fry warns on social media” – yes, it’s PRWeek again. (Or, if you’re in the States, it’s PRWeek – but monthly. Of course.)

Englands most treasured national treasure, the warm, mellow, avuncular and perhaps, even, a little tweedy, Stephen Fry (for all those of my faithful blog snorkellers who are not familiar with this afternoon-tea-and-crumpet of a man – he’s a middle-aged, rather camp, comedian) has pronounced on social media. This is the same man who made a complete Twit of himself – he had a Call-me-Dave moment with a surfeit of Tweets – not many weeks ago, so I suppose he has the experience to back his pronouncements up. Anyway PRWeek pounced on the pronouncement (I’m channelling the spirit of Stephen here) and published it (issue dated November 27 2009 – if you haven’t seen it, go out and buy one for £4.22, or whatever spurious cover price they’re featuring this week, it’s a collector’s item, in that there’s not going to be a print version for much longer). (Apparently.)

Anyway, summarising wildly, dear old baggy, arch, loveable Stephen has (apparently, again) ‘warned communicators of the risks inherent in using social media as a new type of PR channel’. (Welcome to the party Stephen! Better late than never, I suppose.) He went on to say (according to t’Week) “All new means of communication have been derided and decried because they are seen as encouraging demagoguery of the worst kind. It may be that there will be dark days when social media are seen to cause genuine damage and even death by inflaming people wrongly.’

By which I think he means that every new type of communication that comes along gets hi-jacked by the snake oil salesmen and the charlatans, and, if a majority of people continue to insist on using social media as an extension of the nasty, murky dark bit in their heads, then there could be fisticuffs.

And it’s not that he’s wrong – rather that what he’s saying is so dreadfully obvious and has been done to death on fora around the world. As Mr Fry is an enormously clever man, I can only take from this that there is nothing more interesting, relevant or current to be said about social media.

The conversation – which, after all, is what social media is all about – appears to be over.

So, Farewell Then, PRWeek

Posted on November 23, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged External Communications, PR Week, print media, Public Relations, reputation management, traditional media, writing for communications.

Must……..stop…………reading………..PRWeek…………..gnnnnnnnngh………………..

Morbid fascination, that’s what it is. Anyway, there I am flicking through November 20th’s offering, doing my best to suck what little value I can from the less-than-compelling mix of not-news, hagiography and terrifying light-weightedness (tell me it’s not so) and my eye is grabbed by the ‘From The Editor Column’.

“Striking a Balance Between Print and Web” is its title. It goes on to inform me that I will be noticing a few changes to the ‘Week – cutting news pages and and adding extra space for analysis. (Of what, exactly, pray?) They’re also going to dedicate a page in the magazine to content featured online – which has to imply that there’s not that much news or analysis to fill the pages that they have.

In fairness – it all makes sense. The website is rapid reaction, more easily updated and attracts far more viewers. The print version is out-of-date by the time it’s published and has never really contained the sort of thought-provoking, enduring, educational and value-providing content that would justify its existence.

What all this is clearly leading to – especially given Haymarket’s current title rationalisation – is the closure of the print version of PRWeek, although the editorial team are doing their utmost to hide it behind the smoke and mirrors of increased analysis and assertions that the ‘industry’s bible’, which has ‘enjoyed a major redesign’ is and ‘remains the mainstay of our offering’.

Well, no it won’t, beyond, I’d say, January 2010 – unless it genuinely can reinvent itself and become the ‘industry’s bible’ – and by this I mean something that sets standards, leads the way and provides the industry (at all levels) with stuff we can use.

For example, recently it was reported that very few European businesses had crisis management plans in place. In this very issue of PRWeek, there’s four pages dedicated to ‘crisis comms’ -case histories and commentary from industry pundits. Good start. But.

Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to create a guide to creating a crisis plan? Outline the basics, so that everyone knows where to start? Show the differences between plans for global organisations and local organisations? Demonstrate the potential consequences, the signs to look out for and how to counter them? Suggest a process for employing a crisis consultant? Provide examples of best practice desk-top exercises and full-blown crisis plan trials?

Wouldn’t this be significantly more useful? More useful than yet another Thought Leader supplement, but probably attracting a similar amount of advertising? Useful enough to merit a print version, and useful enough to motivate people to keep it on file and share it with others? Hmmmm?

I don’t want to see any print media disappear as a consequence of the rise of the internet and online content. I do understand, however – and PRWeek almost certainly does as well – that unless print media offers something that t’internet can’t (and I’m guessing that this includes in-depth consideration of topics and issues) then disappear it will.

Luckily, the communications industry has a myriad topics and issues that are ripe for this sort of treatment.

Twitter – I Can Do That, Gis A Job

Posted on November 17, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged External Communications, people business, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, social media experts, social media policy, tweets, Twitter, twitter stream, twitter usage.

Came across this, which is a look at the American political Twittersphere – I know, I know, sounds horribly complicated and not a little worthy (and it is) – but actually worth a quick look – if only to see who’s using it. Anyway, it’s not the point of this post, so don’t waste too much time.

While I was looking at it, I was drawn to @schwarzenegger (like a moth to a flame, or a fly to dog poo, or a small child to an unprotected electrical socket) and my morbid fascination, dear blog snorkellers, was amply rewarded. Do, please, have a quick look.

Quite clearly, The Governator is not going to tweet himself. No, he has a team of tweeters – and judging by their performance over the last few days, they have fallen foul of ‘Call Me Dave’s ‘too many tweets makes a twat’. I’m sorry – I don’t know Mr Schwarzenegger (although I am a great fan of his oeuvre) (serious) but there is no way on God’s green earth that he is going to post “in case you missed it, here is a clip from our water press conf. That’s what I call bipartisan.” He’s just not. Sorry.

So, I may have missed the point. 1) Maybe it is him, and I’ve been suckered by his monosyllabic silver screen routine. 2) Maybe he dictates it. 3) Maybe no-one cares what the words actually are – it’s the message that counts.

Actually, none of this. What we have here is failure to communicate. Governor Schwarzenegger, publicity-hungry, comms-oriented soul that he is (and I believe he is, and for most of the right reasons) has been advised to ‘do Twitter’. So he’s said yes. And he clearly can’t do it himself, so he’s got someone to do it for him.

Nothing wrong with that – I think most people would expect it – but it throws up a fundamental rule of corporate communications which perhaps the social media strategists have yet to learn. It’s a simple one. Ready?

If, in your communications, you take on the voice of someone else – the CEO, or the Governator – make sure that you approximate their usual delivery (either spoken or written). Most people understand that this stuff is written by a ghost writer, but no-one wants their face rubbed in it.

Anyway, based on the Governator’s twitter feed – I could do better than that.

Dear Mr Schwarzenegger, can I be your twat?

Sustainability, Social Responsibility And Social Media

Posted on November 16, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged corporate ethics, corporate social conscience, corporate use of social media, CSR, External Communications, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, social media experts, sustainability.

It’s got to be more than 10 years ago that I was first exposed to sustainable hysteria. I was, at the time, working for a well-known FTSE100 constituent who – it has to be said – had a fairly good (if somewhat misguided) track record in the field of corporate philanthropy (because that’s what it was in those days).

It would have been possible to argue that a literary sponsorship did far much more for the literati than it did for reading in schools, and that the continued funding of a manufacturing plant’s brass band, long after the plant had closed down, was a refusal to let go of the past, rather than an investment in the future. That (rather churlishly) being said, the company tried, and tried to get its workforce involved and on-side.

So, as an exercise in community relations – and this was a company that operated in communities – and as part of building a cohesive internal culture, this company’s CSR programme didn’t do too badly.

But then along came the concept of ethical investing. For the first time, it seemed as if investment decisions – particularly amongst the big investors – would be made as much on ethical track record as on corporate business performance. On top of that, it was suggested that consumer purchasing decisions would be made on the back of the brand’s ethics – so either way you looked at it CSR, sustainability, corporate ethics became the things that would make the difference between success and failure.

And in no time at all, an industry had grown up around it – consultants to advice you on your CSR and your sustainable business model, and organisations that would benchmark you, so that you’d know how you’d performed. FTSE4Good, Business in the Community, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index – all time-consuming, all expensive – but all doing a very good job of selling themselves to the business community to the point where absence was more conspicuous than inclusion.

It’s just my perception – and many would argue with me – but there was something of the Emperor’s new clothes about it all – and I for one, in my next job, told the executive Committee that we would not longer take part in FTSE4Good, or the DJSI as they cost money, wasted resource and delivered no real value. I have a feeling that many communicators felt like me – not dismissive of CSR, rather dismissive of the parasitic industry that sprang up to feed on the corporate social conscience.

Of course, ethics never went away – in the same way that they’d always been there in one form or another, long before someone invented the term ‘ethical investment’ – and a set of corporate ethics is fundamental to all business success. Simply put, if you make your products out of toxic waste, employ slave labour in the manufacturing process, and test the results on children, then you WILL be found out. You don’t need a consultant to tell you that. (I hope.) Business ethics have been around since Dickens’ Christmas Carol – some companies shout about them, others choose not to. No company needs to pay an outside organisation a fortune to judge their ethics for them.

Sustainable hysteria took hold again about two and half years ago. As the icecaps melted, the last few square hectares of rainforest were cut down and (in the UK anyway) there was the threat of a) a change in government and b) legislation in terms of emissions and operating practices, so companies started on their Social, Ethical and Environmental Policies – put something in place to stave off the worst excesses of the legislators. Again, out from the woodwork came the mountebanks and the charlatans – the advisors on sustainability, ready to devise you a plan and relieve you of your budget. A budget, incidentally which hadn’t existed before and which had thus been taken from other areas of your business. A business that was probably already in decent shape.

And then came the Great Recession of 2008/09. Suddenly a lot of people – business leaders, legislators, consumers – all realised that corporate ethics are all well and good, but really, you’ve got to treat business like the grown-up that it is. On the one hand you have to trust that it will behave ethically most of the time and on the other hand, you’ve got to believe that it merits your trust. The recession demonstrated that there are more important things in life. Not that anyone forgot about emissions, recycling, energy saving – they simply stopped wasting time agonising and proselytising.

The Great Recession, however, by some strange twist of fate (and this cannot be coincidence, can it?), has been accompanied by one of the greatest social shifts of modern times – the global embracing of social media. And, as I’ve posted here before, the rise of social media has created – mostly in America, but I fear for the UK – the cyber-hippie, who believes that all people are equal under the blog, that everyone should be free to have a voice, that the very fabric of capitalism will change as the inherent contract between consumer and brand becomes a contract between consumer and brand employee, via the social medium.

This is both frightening and infectious – the idea that business as we know it will change, become more embracing of its stakeholders, accept and act upon feedback and suggestions – to the point where products and services will not be created by the companies who manufacture and supply them, but by the consumer. A Utopia where the consumer simply has to blog that they want a frozen pizza with banana and limestone, and a brand owner will make one.

The Great Recession, and the misery that’s gone with it, has made this a very attractive proposition. Everyone wants to believe that we can make a better life with what we know now and that the post-Great Recession world will be focused more on ethics and social responsibility than it will be on capitalism and the creation of profit. People-driven, rather than profit-driven.

Clever people have been suckered by this. Some, such as Robert Phillips writing in PRWeek, have been so taken in by it, that they’re actually setting the communications profession up as the next set of charlatans, mountebanks and snake-oil salesmen who will advocate this way of operation at the highest level. (Sorry, can’t link to the PRWeek article, which is a shame.)

Until the pain of the Great Recession fades, and we re-enter the ‘Good Times’ phase of the cycle.

Corporate Communications – Make Dictionaries Mandatory

Posted on November 16, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged best practice, External Communications, PR Week, Public Relations, reputation management.

Opinion piece in PRWeek, issue dated November 13, by Robert Phillips, UK CEO of Edelman. He uses the word ‘mandate’ twice, both times incorrectly.

Is it just me, or is the word ‘mandate’ getting an increasing amount of use amongst communicators currently? Often, as far as I can see, being used to supplant the tried and tested ‘brief’ or ‘account’ or, heaven forbid, ‘service contract’.

Well – here’s the news. It’s an incorrect usage. Getting a mandate does not mean being contracted to provide a service (PR or otherwise) for money. Just a quick look at t’internet reveals the definition here reproduced:

mandate

n [ˈmændeɪt -dɪt]

1. an official or authoritative instruction or command

2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) Politics the support or commission given to a government and its policies or an elected representative and his policies through an electoral victory

3. (Historical Terms) (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) (often capital) Also called mandated territory (formerly) any of the territories under the trusteeship of the League of Nations administered by one of its member states

4. (Law)

a. Roman law a contract by which one person commissions another to act for him gratuitously and the other accepts the commission

b. Contract law a contract of bailment under which the party entrusted with goods undertakes to perform gratuitously some service in respect of such goods

c. Scots law a contract by which a person is engaged to act in the management of the affairs of another

vb [ˈmændeɪt] (tr)

1. (Law) International law to assign (territory) to a nation under a mandate

2. to delegate authority to

3. Obsolete to give a command to

[from Latin mandātum something commanded, from mandāre to command, perhaps from manus hand + dāre to give]

mandator n

Nowhere in the definition can I see the meaning that Phillips and others within the industry would attribute to the word mandate.

Doesn’t make us, as communicators, look very clever, does it.

And as for the rest of Phillips’ article – well, I’ll post some comments when I’m feeling slightly more objective.

Internal Comms/Social Media – Addenda to Social Media Policies

Posted on November 13, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Internal Communications, Internal Communications and Engagement, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged best practice, corporate use of social media, employee use of social media, External Communications, Facebook, Internal Communications, media relations, people business, people management, Public Relations, reputation management, Social Media, social media experts, social media marketing, social media policy, Twitter, twitter usage.

The whole social media space is a minefield littered with UXBs and especially so for a company’s employees. Social media are growing and changing and influencing behaviours far faster than most people can keep up – it’s got to the point where a corporate use of social media policy is not only a business necessity, it’s actually part of the corporate ‘duty of care’ to employees.

Here’s a thought – educating employees in the use of social media may be seen, in the future, as an employee benefit provided by the company. Possibly those more forward-thinking companies, without exposing themselves to the free-for-all that is open employee access, might actually be seen to be taking a lead on the issue, simply by ensuring their employees are social media savvy in a semi-formal fashion. Brown-bag training sessions, interactive intranets. Who knows.

Anyway – here’s an article from The Guardian that deals with the specific problems of colleagues following you on Twitter, or friending you on Facebook. Particularly senior colleagues. The implication – and it’s correct – is that social media are blurring the lines between work life and personal life. There is no such thing as a personal life anymore – what you’ve got is a work life and life when you’re not working. Use of social media – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, et al – means that anyone can find you at anytime. Nothing that you post to these sites is private. There is a record of all you have written and uploaded. If it sounds a bit Big Brother, that’s because it is.

There is, obviously, a solution to the dilemma. It’s taken a lot of thought. It’s not popular. It flies in the face of current thinking. It’s this. DON’T USE TWITTER OR FACEBOOK. OR ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIUM. If you want to organise a party, send out invitations via email (still trackable, but not available to everyone). If you fancy getting in touch with someone – meet them for a drink. Give them a call. Write a letter. Go on, give it a try.

But no. You want to be free, to get LinkedIn, to have a good time. And this why – as the boundaries between you personally and you professionally blur and dissolve – it’s more and more important that there are not only corporate social media policies, but corporate social media etiquette statements also.

It pains me, but we’re here (how? how?) and now we have to deal with it. So, in the spirit of understanding and sharing, here’s something that I stumbled across earlier. I should say now that these are the thoughts of one Bristol-based managing editor (mid-thirties, apparently) who makes it clear on his blog that monkeys like me are not to steal his thoughts without due attribution and permission. I haven’t got permission, but consider this attribution. These are not my thoughts – I am simply passing on the wisdom of another.

(NB The guidelines that Mr Bristol sets out here are, actually, quite corporately focused. But they work equally well for use of social media on a personal level. You could adapt them. But I’d ask Mr Bristol for his permission first. You never know.)

Internal Communications – Solving The Sidewiki Issue

Posted on November 12, 2009 by jeremyprobert in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged best practice, corporate use of social media, Crisis Management, employee use of social media, External Communications, media relations, people management, Public Relations, reputation management, social media policy.

Oh dear. Much Fuss in the Wold. Google launches Sidewiki at the end of September and in reasonably short order – well, a matter of weeks – the blogosphere is givin’ it all that about how a) anyone can post anything about your website and b) your employees (if you’re a business) can get all disgruntled and post stuff about your website. Aaaagh – we’ll all be ruined!

So, let’s get this straight. You’ve got a website and – for those people who’ve downloaded Sidewiki – they can now see visitor comments on your site, in a side bar. These comments are posted by both randomers visiting your site, and regulars, so they may – or indeed may not – be positive or negative or neutral. Those with Sidewiki can, obviously, post their own comments.

And the hysterical rationale from those who’ve ‘embraced’ social media is that, of course, everyone who’s on social media will all get jiggy wid de Wiki and it’ll be the end of corporate web presences as we know it. Well, no. Bollocks.

1) In order to use Google’s lovely Sidewiki, you’ve got to download it. And in downloading it, you tacitly allow Google to track your internet usage. And you have to have the IQ of an Eccles Cake to do that

2) Those people who do have the IQ of an Eccles Cake are, obviously, not people about whose opinion anyone actually gives a shit

3) Those fine folk at Google have the final say on what’s posted on Sidewiki and they’re interested, obviously, in the thoughts of those people who’ve given them the most trade/traffic/personal information. The average (and most dangerous) Eccles Cake-head does not figure in the Googlisation of the world and thus their comments won’t get posted

4) What are you doing anyway? Why are you worried about your employees (those who are Eccles Cakers anyway) posting to Sidewiki – they shouldn’t be able to do it from work anyway. And they should be dissuaded from doing it at home by a binding contract that will see them skinned alive, rolled in salt and then parboiled should they decide to get all clever on your arse

5) What are you doing anyway, Part 2. Why on earth should your website attract unpleasant Wikiness? Are you not the model of a business? With a luvverly corporate culture, and employees who believe in you and a demonstrable set of ethics and – hopefully – no instances of toxic waste and smothering children in your past? Of course you are and therefore – why should you be bothered?

6) No company is wholly able to tick the point 5) box – get (and enforce) a Use of Social Media Policy, quick-smart, choppy-chop

Oh – and please, please, can we stop panicking. How have we – perfectly sensible people – come to this?

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