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.