Posts Tagged ‘transparency’

The Media Guardian published an article of mine in yesterday’s Media comment looking at the rise of Google’s SideWiki and what it will mean for the future of PR. To read the published version, click here. For the unexpurgated version, please keep reading!

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Given the amount of fear other Google innovations, like their library project, have caused, it’s surprising that alarms bells have not been heard ringing throughout the PR world since SideWiki’s launch in September. The internet is an evolutionary tool and for the world of PR, its daily use is as significant as the use of the wheel for stone age man. Except revolution has taken the place of evolution as the net brings about change at an astonishing rate.

Few people in PR, it seems, have considered the way that SideWiki will change the lives of beleaguered PR folk. I believe that, in time, this tool will significantly change the way brands strategize, think and exist. SideWiki is going to challenge PR by providing the masses with the tool for the ultimate expression of people power, something uncontainable that will need constant monitoring.

As the name suggests, this is a tool that allows anyone who wants to (and who has the right browser – Firefox or IE) to comment on anything on the web and have that comment displayed in a pop out window alongside for all to see. All they have to do is download the Google toolbar and they’re ready to go. SideWiki will change the way that everything is perceived, especially once it reaches more browsers.

A lot of the PR industry, however, is living like an ostrich with mange; only just summoning up the energy to bury its collective head in the sand. Too many PR folk are too busy pitching half-arsed ideas to see the real threat. The clear and present danger for sluggish PRs is the way that the net continues to develop and construct devices that enable individuals to increase their power. These devices shift as quickly as riptides and, at the moment, it seems that the only people that can survive them are the consumers they cater for.

SideWiki will make it impossible to promote one message and not be held to account. Organisations that have traditionally engaged only in one way conversations or broadcast models will struggle to survive in a SideWiki world. Angry at the latest government wrongdoing? Why not post your grievances next the department where everyone can see them? Find out the ethical practices of confectionary giant aren’t quite as ethical as its advertising suggests? SideWiki is there to help and any PR firm that fails to provide acceptable answers will be open to further public assault by irate consumers.

Brand integrity has to be at the core of brand thinking if the brands are to survive this transparency. Companies will be compelled to consider taking a real position and relate to a set of ideas the marketplace cares about – SideWiki will surely force their hand into a position of fundamental and overwhelming transparency. For fashionable PR execs this transparency will either be terrifying or inspiring. I hope that, thanks to SideWiki, we will see the death of the myopic PR clone and evolve to a position where serious strategic thinkers in PR will challenge the other marketing dinosaurs.

The recession has herded agencies into a pit; they have been humbled in particular by ad agencies who are moving in on proven PR processes, eager to keep making money but who aren’t necessarily experts in that field. The American company Crispin Porter & Bogusky declared in a recent Campaign article that they had asked the agency to stop writing ad script and start writing PR releases instead. Very 1980s. Also in the mix are highly creative and respected agencies like Fallon and Mother, who are taking a firm hand in the PR aspects of campaigns.

PR companies must offer and embrace sophisticated monitoring and tracking devices to keep their clients up to speed, offer solutions and encourage brand bravery and transparency. If they don’t, they will die.

Predictable PR is on the red list of endangered species. The evolution of SideWiki is a seminal moment, when the industry’s destiny is in its own hands. Development forces contributing to the evolution of the web are threatening PR’s demise. PR budgets on the whole bring about reactive, crisis thinking, based on negative responses that threaten their clients’ spot in the market.

The Innocent brand signaled the way forward back in 1997. Lacking bags of readies to spend on traditional marketing, they chose instead to launch a multitude of catalyst conversations around their packaging and experiential events. They were a word of mouth success well before the full web revolution and have paved the way for many more campaigns using the new technology.

Applying the ancient conventions and old codes of conduct of communications to the new world of parallel influence will only accelerate the inconsequence of traditional marketers. The Social Media world encloses our personal and professional actions – the only answer for PR folk is to take a more active role in being brand custodians, representing a higher degree of brands and reputation management.

Ad agencies once proactively shaped vision but now PR is demonstrably just as capable at understanding and cultivating future thinking, if not more so. PR has always engaged in a two-way conversation and should be capitalising on this to earn their clients’ trust. SideWiki is a call to arms – there is no excuse for complacency, as failure in today’s landscape is public, searchable, and enduring.

Bearing in mind what I wrote in yesterday’s post about transparency and trust, it doesn’t really help that there are still PR firms out there who will go to any lengths to be popular.

Seventy Seven PR recently put up an adhoc poll to find out which PR firm people admire the most. A nice little NB on their blog site calls for honesty – “if you can AVOID voting for your own agency, it might make it a bit more interesting. We can’t police it, of course, but go on, give it a go…”. Sadly, iit seems that this has been ignored in some quarters.

If you can’t even trust some people to vote for companies other than their own, then what’s the point of the poll? It’s going to be a difficult world to live in, from anyone’s point of view, if it’s not even possible to tell what’s real and what’s merely a bit of desperate spin.

To see the poll, or even take part in it (honestly, of course) click here.

Neal’s Yard have committed a grave PR error by backing out of the Guardian’s You Ask They Answer debate on homeopathic treatments and going into hiding. Twitter has been in a twirl about it all morning.

In an age when there is a need for transparency in all things, Neal’s Yard have to fight to support their brand – and part of that fight is in online debates with informed, and often critical, consumers.

If they can’t deal with the fact that people demand a conversation, the Neal’s Yard brand risks going further into meltdown than it has already; just look at the scathing comments all over the net and at the Twitter maelstrom.

People are fed up with lies and evasion and all brands must address this. The response of Neal’s Yard to probing questions is a salient lesson for other brands in what not to do.

I was asked by the Guardian to comment on the new trend in contrite adverts, from the Marks & Sparks ‘We Boobed’ campaign to the Evening Standard’s resetting of standards adverts.

“Over the years the public have become sick and tired of being ripped off and misled and as a result we are now in an age of brand transparency,” I told them. “Trust has gone – look at the government and banks. Where we are now, brands have to admit their mistakes.”

To read the full article, click here.

Every new head of a public institution leaps up to sit at the head of the table humming a new tune and Sir Paul Stephenson is no exception. The new ‘super-cop’ who is taking on the poisoned Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police chalice, spat in so publicly by the bumbling Sir Ian Blair, has given an inaugural press conference setting out his stall.

The media takeaway is that he is no celebrity cop. Unlike his predecessor, he claims that he is going to get on with the job. There’ll be no TV appearances, just the old, traditional values of public office.

Wake up my friend, this is the 21st century!

You have to be in the public eye and win their confidence. You might have hopes for anonymity but–neat PR sound-bite aside–surely you realise that the 24/7 news churn demands more? We don’t expect the three-ring Blair show, but we need transparency, a chief who can communicate with the media and the masses and can offer up a valid presence in a city that faces some major challenges for the constabulary in the coming years, especially as the prospects of civil unrest in the next couple of years look ever more likely.

I was interested to read the latest Bare Feet Studios blog by Roxanne Darling on the need for transparency and new, big, clear thinking in advertising; it chimes in rather neatly with my views on the way PR should work in the coming years.

“This post is part of my desire to both shine light on discrepancies in advertising and to attract people who want to use advertising as a genuine tool to build better customer relationships, products, and long-lasting brands,” she writes.

She is clear-eyed on what has brought about this need for transparency; the internet. She is part of the burgeoning conversation on the web about transparency and empowered users of brands. 

“A powerful global conversation has begun,” she says. “Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

“So we have this rich, conversational internet happening, and the bloom of social media and social networks almost everywhere I turn. There are incredible opportunities for brand-building and even transactional results. Dell has sold over $1 million worth of refurbished computers on Twitter. More than ever people want to tell their friends about the things they love.”

The more this type of conversation can be encouraged the better, I say. It will be interesting to see what comes of it in the coming months, when recession will make it all the more necessary for people to feel they can trust the brands they are being sold and the people who are selling them.