Skills and professionalism in PR

Again… There is still a debate whether public relations should be a profession, maybe like medicine, law or accountancy. Seriously, is it a craft, technique or profession? How important are specialised knowledge and skills, and personal
competencies to PR practice? What are the main personal and educational skills criteria to work in PR? Writing? Communicating? Good manners? Creativity? Can we measure creativeness? (see my post from December, 2007)

Although many public relations scholars acknowledge the importance of professionalism in public relations (Grunig 1992; Cameron et al., 1996; Stacks et al., 1999; L‘Etang & Pieczka, 1996, L’Etang, 2004), public relations is still seen as a common occupation for a number of reasons. Nevertheless the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) was awarded a Royal Charter in February 2005 due to their significant and robust contribution to the UK’s political, economic and social development.

Global business companies already value the importance of public relations in improving their organizations’ communications. In Kazakhstan, where I am from, education and professional skills for PR practitioners could have been more essential to some factors indicating low recognition of the profession, a shortage of qualified practitioners, a lack of regulation, and a lack of credibility among practitioners and society. Ralph Tench and Johanna Fawkes (www.bledcom.com) argue that 'the majority of employers consider that public relations education makes a positive contribution to the industry, and is an essential component of the drive to achieve professional recognition, as it is for most professions.' Concerning the quality of the competencies of PR practitioners, nurturing PR professionals is vital to meet the growing demands and challenges of the PR industry, which requires the establishment of an exclusive qualification and training school. Although experience and exposure to this field are considered very important criteria, possessing the right academic and professional qualifications as a knowledge base is what I think can enable practitioners to practice the profession professionally.

Challenges of New Media

Recent developments on the Internet are posing serious challenges to the business model of traditional media. Paid circulation of newspapers is declining in most countries and advertising revenue, as one of the main source of profitability, is shifting from print to on-line.

With an increasing number of everyday emerging new cutting edge tools the role and communication channels of Public Relations have been changing. This process is naturally following from era of so called new media.

Do these changes mean that old PR dependant on old media, and new PR is dependant on new media? New media channels can provide with infinite opportunities where each reader can be a writer, an editor and a publisher. There are vast capabilities to distribute information within a very short period of time and to reach maximum readership. Sounds terrific, but it has a bitter taste as well. When a crisis occurs, do we need this information flow with a light speed? Since Internet provides with an instant communication and unfavourable and dangerous comments which can immediately be used by media. Is it controllable? How far we can supervise the situation and information resources?

CSR: fashion, business or goodwill

Having looked through the websites of the most influential corporations in my country I found out that the only Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives they take are sponsorships and rare single philanthropic actions. I guess the reason they implement these initiatives is only because they try to meet “the game requirements” of current international business and not to be perceived underdeveloped. It is sad, especially knowing how many advantages of better communication and trust this PR tool can bring: mutual understanding, credibility, and mostly important, trust and belief that business cares and is accountable for its actions. Probably, their point is coming from theory that organisation’s reputation is considered to be impossible to be quantified? If it cannot be measured then it cannot be managed, and if it cannot be managed, then why invest in it? CSR is about to strengthen reputation, improves media relations and improves company’s image, and as a bottom line , increases sales and market share. Would my country ever look at positive and successful examples of CSR principles and implementation? I think the time is now.

Are women better communicators?

Today we had a debate in class on an unbalanced ratio between male and female employment in top positions within UK PR industry. Personally I found this discussion very subjective. According to statistics, the majority of PR practitioners in UK are female, howerver executive positions are laregely dominated by men.

May we think that this happens because women naturally have a better sense of guiding communication? Do women have attributes which give them a competitive advantage over men?
It can be dramatically different in other countries which historically have a different attitude towards women. Even today, top positions are not given to women, particularly in the communications industries.Although there are some women in executive PR roles we have agreed that this number could have been bigger. "Women traditionally in PR have been held to more of a technician's role, hired and paid to do the work of PR -- the craft, the writing, the media relations, the special events," explains Larissa Grunig, a public relations professor at the University of Maryland who studies the feminization of PR. "Women are over-represented in technicians' ranks, and under-represented in management."
"Companies consider PR as marginal to organization function, not central like finance or marketing. They're not afraid to give women a shot at PR because the risk factor is low," says Grunig. "This is a place where companies traditionally hire women within the executive ranks. If an organization pays lip service to affirmative action and the importance of hiring women, but doesn't trust women to be as effective in management, PR seems like a safe place to put women."
For instance, in my city the top positions are traditionally given to men, although this tendency has been changing. Since PR industry itself is still a kind of a new field women are in executive positions’ minority. I can explain it by fact that traditionally women were not given high authorities.

In years to come, large PR firms will not be able to afford to upkeep a patriarchal employment model. A new paradigm is on the advance and so is a new school of highly educated female practitioners.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4422/is_4_18/ai_77010728

David Hill: " Never lie to media"

Yesterday we listened to David Hill, successor of Alastair Campbell, and former Director of Communications for Tony Blair. He held a lecture at University of Westminster, and honestly, it was slightly strange to observe not so many people shown up there.

Talking about effective communication, Hill thinks that it requires discipline, which is central to political communication success. He said there is a tendency on sensationalizing of media stories towards politics.

He outlined two main issues: strategy and delivery of the message. A clear strategy, he said, is a way to pursue clear sense of direction to goals and is very essential. Relationships between government and media are very important and should be equal and balanced.

Talking about national media, Hill mentioned its attitude to “the best news is bad news” and that a perception gap between individuals, services they have received and how it was delivered and reached. Indeed, it is enough to listen to any news program to be convinced: all is bad. He said that national media tries not to pay attention to any positive issues while emphasizing negative aspects. But he believes that change will come.

He mentioned “segmentation of communications” as a sign of changing processes within the society. Today more communication tools and channels than ever are needed to deliver the message.

Probably, future communicators will find a way to monitor the stories. He thinks that in the future political comments will become more personal.

I really liked his lecture; it was interesting, meaningful and very professional.

Ethical = Professional?

Having worked as a personal assistant to ambassador of my country to one of the far-eastern states I have been given various gifts, sometimes precious, and souvenirs from local companies who tried to call for a favor. On the one hand, this gesture of gaining goodwill was against ethics of my embassy, on the other hand there was a certain risk to offend very specific cultural characteristic and local business mentality by refusal. So, it was a hard task for me to deal with this very delicate diplomatic issue. I used to send expensive presents back to addressee with polite excuses. Sadly, some of them were offended considering my actions as impolite and even unprofessional.

“Right”, “true” and “fair” are ethical issues. They indicate an evaluation of person’s behavior which is considerable to be ethically good. The problem is in complication of barrier definition of what is right or wrong and what is profitable or not. Certainly, there is a certain relativism since moral and ethics are quite subjective and are constantly been changing, sometimes it is a matter of cultural difference as well.

Ethical dilemmas are crucial since they are representing a conflict between organization’s economical activity and social reflection of this activity.
There are various disputable moments in PR activity. Its attitude directly approaches the ethics. For instance, PR campaigns for tobacco corporations and manufacturers of alcoholic drinks are regarded differently.

PR practitioners are concerned with the effect that behavior can cause consequences on reputation. A company’s reputation can be seem as a sum of the public’s beliefs about it, which follow from their experience of communicating and using products and services, what they have read and heard. PR can apply this framework by consulting with publics and leading a dialogue. Practitioners’ ethical behavior is fundamental to the professionalism and credibility.

Weapons of Mass Communication

Recently I visited an exhibition in Imperial War Museum, called Weapons of Mass Communication: War posters, comprising time period from the British recruitment campaign of 1914 right up to 2003 with a poster from the coalition in Iraq warning against terrorism. It is an amazing exhibition giving an insight of how posters, as one of the most popular “weapons of mass communication”, in this case, propaganda, are different in approaches and similar in objectives. In WWII, this tendency is even more remarkable. While the Nazis used powerful Art Deco Aryan-eulogising approach, the Soviets exploited images of the worker and the Red Flag. East and West, communism and fascism, Cold War…History is full of examples of propaganda. Centuries ago it was used to influence opinions and beliefs on religious issues, particularly during the split between the Catholic Church and Protestants. In the 20th century propaganda’s role dramatically increased with the growing number of communication tools and political conflicts and gained more negative shade. Propaganda has become more common in political context, in particular referring to certain efforts sponsored by governments, political groups and parties.
In its attempt to manipulate and influence propaganda is negatively compared with PR more than often. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda is often deliberately misleading, using logical fallacies, which, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid. Theorist Sheryl Tuttle Ross argues that propaganda should be considered as a threefold communication model of Sender-Message-Receiver. “Propaganda involves the one who is persuading (Sender), the target for such persuasion (Receiver) and the means of reaching that target (Message).”There are four conditions for a message to be considered propaganda. Propaganda involves the intention to persuade. As well, propaganda is sent on behalf of a sociopolitical institution, organization, or cause. Next, the recipient of propaganda is a socially significant group of people. Finally, propaganda is an epistemic struggle to challenge other thoughts.” I think this is exactly what sets propaganda against to Public Relations.

Media, as one of the strongest communication tool, along with other forms of art and literature can dramatically change attitude and perception of the public. During the Gulf war journalists criticized the way in which access to information was controlled by the Coalition Forces. And if any controlling of the media's activities can be related to propaganda, does it mean that the reported and documented facts may not be objective or untrue? In connection with this there are many other raising questions, as, for instance, is any untruth a deception and lie? Could untruths have good intentions? Finally, how far can we go to persuade and change public’s perception?

Crisis management is crucial for any organization. Organizations who waste precious time at the beginning of a crisis can expect to see a loss in revenue and dropping stock prices. The organization's most vital asset – its reputation - is at stake. However, public perception of risk appeals a constant threat to an organization's reputation. In the case of a poorly handled crisis, it may take years to reestablish a company's reputation.

When crisis strikes, most companies are unprepared and poorly lever the situation. They might try handling the situation, toughing it out or pretending the crisis will pass. It is hopeless to mask the truth from the public because finally someone will start a fire. For instance, Firestone continued to sell defective tires when they knew there was a problem with the product. After numerous deaths, Firestone recalled millions of tires, and the public wondered how long Firestone knew about the problem. Now Firestone is on the edge of announcing bankruptcy and going out of business because they made poor crisis management decisions.

Crisis management planning enables organizations to be better prepared to handle unanticipated events that may cause serious or irreversible damage. Scenario planning is a strategy that companies are implementing to help plan for unforeseen events.

Judy Larkin and Michael Regester in “Risk Issues and Crisis Management: A casebook of Best Practice” (2005) give us a whole depiction of how a crisis can be dealt and how to ensure the survival and continuity of the business enterprise. Having a successful and continuous experience in crisis management practice, they think, that the key to crisis management is crisis prevention, whether the vigilance and preparation is self-motivated or enforces by legislation. But if a fire does break out, comprehensive contingency planning can minimize the catastrophe; and a policy of open communication can minimize damage to corporate and individual reputations.
Here is a plan to be considered while managing a crisis, outlined by Judy Larkin and Michael Regester:

• Ensure all key players keep a copy of the crisis management plan with them all the times
• Have background information prepared
• Set up a press centre
• Ensure executives are trained to manage successfully press conferences, television, radio and print interviews – against crisis scenarios
• Establish trained telephone response teams to cope with media and relative calls
• Keep news releases coming thick and fast; time and number them
• Don’t forget employees – they are the company’s ‘ambassadors’
• Coordinate the response of the company and third parties
• When it’s all over, review the organization from top to bottom in the light of lessons learnt- lightning can strike twice

Al Tortorella, Managing Director, Crisis management at Ogilvy, offers a set of principles to be considered when dealing with a crisis: to understand media interest in your story, define the real problem and determine strategy accordingly, manage the flow of information, assume the situation will escalate and get worse, remember all your constituencies, measure results in real time.
http://www.ogilvypr.com/expertise/crisis-management.cfm

One of the best blogs I found on the net about Public Relations' Measurement is http://kdpains.blog.com. Katie Paine from KDPAINE & Partners has many years of experience in Public Relations' measurement. You can find news, techniques and development of Public Relations' industry's research and evaluation as well as many useful links to other blogs. I found numerous quotations of her while browsing other blogs on this topic and some of her colleagues call Katie "guru of PR measurement".

Katie admits the fact that more and more companies realize their need for PR metrics and that this field is becoming increasingly competitive. In one of her interviews she gives her SUPER SIX STEPS TO EFFECTIVE PR MEASUREMENT:

• Define your objective(s)
• Define your audience(s)
• Define the metrics you will use
• Benchmark this against yourself or your competition
• Pick your measurement tool
• Analyze the results

Although it looks quite simple it is obvious that this technique requires an extensive research to obtain a detailed picture of market perception of the company or products and services.

Katie Delahaye Paine gives another simple advice which I like: "If you are under the gun, research can help you: understand what your target audience is reading about you, learn how they are responding, find out if your messages are getting through and track those messages you don't want to see in print".

Following this advice, I looked at what some agencies specialising in PR measurement can offer to their potential clients concerning media coverage research and found many. These below are some of them:

• Incidence of editorial coverage and story pick-up
• Breadth, depth and positioning given to stories
• Circulation, reach and influence of media carrying stories
• Effectiveness of message integration and news packaging
• Accuracy/quality/favorability of editorial generated
• Volume of online coverage generated by PR news
• Competitive PR activity and media play
• Overall comparisons and success ratings on a quarter-to-quarter basis

Among the resources they track there are not only traditional and electronic clippings, but also business monitoring services; newsletters; audience data furnished by media houses like Arbitron, Nielsen, Standard Rate&Data to measure publicity in broadcast and print editions; and monitoring cyber surveillance of online communities.

Exploring the tools and techniques of Public Relations measurement is quite challenging and perspective. There are dozens of special tactics which can be used as criteria in evaluation of PR effectiveness. But most of PR practitioners are agree to follow a certain scheme as a pattern. This scheme was presented by Dr. Walter K. Lindenmann and approved its reliability. According to Lindenmann, in the short-term, PR measurement and evaluation involves assessing the success or failure of specific PR programs, strategies, activities or tactics by measuring the outputs, outtakes and/or outcomes of those programs against a predetermined set of objectives. In the long-term, PR measurement and evaluation involves assessing the success or failure of much broader PR efforts that have as their aim seeking to improve and enhance the relationships that organizations maintain with key constituents.

Along with this widely accepted model there are many new tools appearing in industry. For example, PR Week has published an article about PR tool invented by Procter&Gamble called PREvaluate. It was developed during 18 months of research into brands where marketing-mix modeling could be applied, said Hans Bender, manager of external relations at P&G, who was also involved in the research. It measures PR efforts in the context of other marketing efforts such as advertising.
Bender added that the tool incorporates detailed analysis, including information on cost, scope, audience, geographic markets, and possible synergy with other marketing tactics. It was outlined that according to successful PR campaigns of P&G it proved its effectiveness.