Distracting PR environment

The first week in March, I'm doing my first public relations assignment and series of events in Kenya -- in Nairobi and on the Laikipia Plateau, at the border of the Great Rift Valley. My advance team colleagues who are working on the staging and video are sending me pics in advance -- their own pictures that they're taking at our event site. Like the ones here. Seems like it may be a textscape to overwhelm the PR. Or, more accurately, a textscape that is the communication.

IPR to drive standards for PR research and measurement

The Institute for PR (IPR) is doing the right thing again. Somebody has to grapple with the discomforting fact that while public relations has been around for a century (at least in the way we know it now), PR research gets little respect from the very people who need it most. IPR has as its motto, "The Science Beneath the Art of Public Relations." Good idea, but the fact is that most of the practice of PR is an art, at best, and a science rarely. So kudos to IPR for getting the ball rolling in the development of an articulation of standards for PR research and measurement.

It's concerning, however, that the effort seems focused around getting a coalition together to come up with agreement in principle (a coalition of IPR, the Council of PR Firms, AMEC, and PRSA). I'd much rather see evidence of the board members of those associations, the PR agency and corporate members, coalesce around their publicly stated commitment to base their PR practice on the proposed standards. Having a group of academics, researchers, and association executives (my friends, all) agree on standards won't, in the end, do much, if the PR agency and corporate PR executives don't walk the walk.

"PR research" -- if it is a science, and if the other marketing disciplines will ever take us seriously -- cannot be a PR ruse for covering the fundamentally unscientific practices that are what most people who work in PR do every day. The IPR effort must be, and I'm confident it ultimately will be, a sound move in the direction of helping PR carve out its 21st century identity (just for one example, see Paul Roetzer's new book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint: The Handbook for Building Hybrid PR, SEO, Content, Advertising, and Web Firms.)

Events worth watching. Hoping for the best.

"Research vs. Social Analytics" --- A Social Media Week panel discussion frames some challenges for PR research

A panel discussion on February 13 at Social Media Week New York 2012 was both eye opening and deeply disconcerting for me and some of my friends who care about public relations and communications research. The topic of the panel was “Research vs. Social Analytics,” and it raised some important issues. Many of the panelists’ comments illustrated the dilemmas that both traditional researchers and the social analytics practitioners are facing. The whole premise of the panel, however, Research VERSUS Social Analytics, posits an opposition that exists primarily in the minds of the silo-defenders, virtually not at all for the decision-makers who just want to manage enterprises more effectively.

Since “Research” has had its day (or its half century), it is not surprising that Social Analytics should have its day in the sun. But if you’re going to have a day in the sun, you’ve also got to expect to be examined in the bright light of day.

One panelist made some observations which, if they represent anything like a large proportion of social analytics professionals, may put marketing – if not scientific method – back a generation or so. When asked about ROI of social media, two responses were offered. The terminology of “ROI” was rejected in favor of ROE (Return on Engagement) – as if that change in terminology provided some enlightenment or changed the frame of reference in a useful way. It does not. The question – the ability to monetize (or value) an activity – is a fundamental of economics (of social organization) and a precursor for making policy choices, and it will not be dismissed with the implication that it is not hip. ROE means the return on the investment into the engagement (so let’s call it ROIE, if we must).

After suggesting that “ROI” is a vaguely pre-modern concept, the panelist then asserted that “If a client asks about the value of social media, then they just don’t get it.” This is a comment coming from a business professional, who represents a major global brand, who presumably has a technology or business education, and apparently is under 40 years of age (so therefore should not be constrained by intellectual rigidity). A sweeping rejection of the possible value to business and strategic decision making of scientific method and critical thinking. Apparently, “getting it” trumps evidence. Is this a mentality to which you want to trust a global brand? (It is certainly a mentality to which I do not want to entrust my root canal or my air traffic control.)

Of course, anyone with policy, management, or communications authority has to take into account the effects of the new, digital communications channels – whether it’s old-fashioned Facebook or Pinterest (everybody’s talking about Pinterest this week, so I will too). But that kind of “getting it” is a far cry from understanding What To Do With It. A question, the panelist referred to here, could not address, because the panelist – despite a sophisticated tech vocabulary – is frozen in the Gee Whiz phase. (When this same panelist was asked about research/audience confidentiality and aspects of bias, the panelist simply noted that if you want confidentiality and lack of bias, then you have to do traditional research. But what if I want both insights derived from the social media channels AND a respect for confidentiality and acknowledgement and accommodation of sources of bias?)

So – We Get It. Let’s move on.

Social analytics practitioners, as evidenced on the panel, are still shocked (just shocked) that there are some Americans (consumers, voters, etc.) who are not traceable via social analytics (some more of those people who don’t get it). Dismay was expressed about that PTA president out there (somewhere in America, presumably not attending Social Media Week events) who only has five Facebook Friends, yet (unaccountably) goes out to the PTA meetings, monthly, and expresses opinions, exerts authority, and motivates 250 or more people at a time. Who actually Do Things. Without leaving a digital trace. What are we going to do about such people! The more reflective panelists were hoping to develop a point of view about those PTA presidents.

A thoughtful, and tough-minded, consideration of research and social analytics also has to disabuse itself of the quaint (and insupportable) notion that social media and social analytics somehow confer moral purity. I’m not making this up now. A panelist described how the organization for which the panelist works eschews conventional research, and hires young people of the “right” demographic, to engage in social media, and to have authentic conversations about the brand. (This anecdote was recounted, in public before an audience, with neither self-reflection nor irony.) Apparently, if your communications channel is social, you can hire authenticity (totally unlike how traditional researchers hire focus group moderators or telephone surveyors who couldn’t possibly be “authentic” in the way someone hired to Tweet can be “authentic.”) (I take it that this is another example of “getting it” – “it” being self-delusion.)

The good news is that the greater proportion of the Research vs. Social Analytics panelists at Social Media Week New York 2012 actually tried to deal with hard questions that are provoked by the uncertainties of economic and social life, especially as those are disrupted by fast-evolving technologies.

That social analytics can provide incomparable descriptive power about what’s going on Now (and for the last 24 hours) is undeniable. Panelists agreed that if you have to know what an audience/market is thinking today, none of the traditional research methodologies can match social analytics. While there is a certain pious deprecation of short-term thinking, the reality is that many organizations often (not always) need to make decisions in consideration of what people are thinking now. Arguably, we can do this better than ever.

Another panelist at Research vs. Social Analytics offered a simple insight, but one that can be enormously powerful in shaping how organizations learn from the social media channel and use the social media channel for marketing, politics, public health, and other communications. This panelist reminded us of an insight that the social media channel has brought to the fore: The customer experience does not begin with the sale.

We always knew that there is a lot of word-of-mouth going on out there. But until we could listen to and watch the social media channel, we had only the vaguest and anecdotal sense of what that word-of-mouth was. Today, we can know – pretty much in real time – what a lot (certainly not all) of the word-of-mouth/keypad is. Social analytics is providing new and useful insights into the ebb and flow of conversations long before and after the transaction moment. An early benefit is how many organizations can use social analytics and media as an effective CRM tool – effective for its “life-like” spontaneity and immediacy. An evolving benefit is the ability to gain actionable insights from expressed word-of-mouth further away from the CRM moment.

Another panelist, through some traditional research, gained the complementary insight that many people who have been involved and loyal to a brand for as long as five years, will not, after having an atypical bad experience with the brand, complain or communicate to the brand. This consumer is, however, likely to share their bad experience and their damaged sense of loyalty with their personal networks, online and offline. In other words, companies and brands may often not get the opportunity to use the social channel for CRM if they are only prepared to deal with direct complaints and criticisms.

That immediacy of social analytics is its weakness as much as its strength. One panelist told about a client who had made an enormous social media/marketing investment to support an event, and then wanted to know if it was “worth it.” (This client obviously didn’t “get it” – but in any case . . .). So this panelist did what could be done: the organization ran an automated sentiment analysis on all the social media content surrounding the event. Now, my “traditional” research friends, deeply experienced in automated monitoring – and familiar with the many tests for accuracy of automated sentiment analysis – all know that you’re lucky if sentiment analysis is 70% accurate. If the best the social analytics practitioner can do is offer a traditional research tool that is (let us say) not perfect, just how much progress have we made in either research or analytics?

The threshold for common sense and consensus was evident in recurrent observations casting Research and Social Analytics as common, related endeavors on a continuum, not as opposing ideologies. An interesting analogy used a few times was that social analytics is the “tip of the sword” – if you really want a stab at full understanding, you’ve got to plunge into the phenomena deeper with the hilt of your intellectual weapon, that is, traditional research methods (incorporating, but going far beyond social analytics).

Perhaps reassuring – perhaps not – one panelist bemoaned: What you need is smart people to understand what the social analytics are telling you! Yes, indeed.

Still winter, yet . . .

Work in the background

As I am concerned about both texts/writing and landscape/space/environment -- I often find ironic parallels that I don't think are entirely coincidental (hence, of course, "textscapes"). Today two articles crossed my desk that sounded the same theme from very different contexts.

In the wake of the strategic policy fumbles recently made by the Susan G. Komen Foundation (about providing funds for breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood locations), there has been a spate of public discussion about it as a "PR" disaster. Just for example, see Crain's Chicago Business columnist, Ann Dwyer, writing about "Komen's PR miscues provide a lesson in crisis management for every business." The point of Dwyer's, and many others', argument is that Komen executives did not heed or did not follow wise PR advice and practice. There is more than a little of the "Poor PR people! We're under-appreciated, and there are dire consequences for neglecting us."

The most recent ASLA blog, The Dirt, reprinting from the February Landscape Architecture Magazine, includes Duke University's Mark Hough writing "Fredierick Law Olmsted is Holding Us Back (There. I Said It.)" To Hough, landscape architects are under-appreciated and their contributions to environmental health and society welfare, let alone aesthetics, are neglected. (Just like PR people.) Hough goes further though, and writes that landscape architects suffer from a "debilitating inferiority complex" because of all the attention that architects (and Frederick Law Olmsted) get.

(The interesting if not wholly realistic difference in the two complaints: while both professions express concern of being neglected and under-appreciated, it would never occur to the PR profession to feel "debilitating inferiority." A strong self image just goes with being a PR person.)

The serious insight for me in the comparison of these two kinds of views of the professions is that both the professional communicator and the landscape architect have as their material the Background (the "scape") upon which others act/build in the foreground. PR people sometimes talk about "creating a receptive environment" for the well-being of their organizations -- and isn't that what a landscape architect does too?

The full value of the contributions of which PR people and landscape architects are capable is probably often undervalued in our society (each needs a good PR program; but that's another topic). Yet many of the most thoughtful, innovative, insightful, and effective-thinking people I have ever known have worked in the Backgrounds (the spaces, environments, scapes). Many of the problems we face -- the environment, the economy, just being prepared and adapted for the digitally augmented world -- are problems of getting the Background right. That's why we really do need, and appreciate, the PR people and the landscape architects.

Origins of public relations in surprising places

One of the rewards of reading Wade Davis' Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest (Knopf, 2011) is the insight into the role of Arthur Robert Hinks -- not for his acknowledged importance as astronomer and cartographer, but for his role as honorary secretary, and chief administrator, of the Royal Geographical Society's and the Alpine Club's Mount Everest Committee, that conceived, organized, and promoted the post-WWI first assaults on Everest in 1921, 1922, and 1924.

Davis writes: "Arthur Hinks was a complex and difficult man. A fellow of the Royal Society, he was a brilliant mathematician and academic cartographer, a world authority on map projections who, ironically, had little interest in exploration and no experience whatsoever of life on an expedition. Before coming to the Royal Geographical Society in 1913, he had spent much of his career sequestered at Cambridge on the staff of the University Observatory, calculating the mass of the moon. Born in 1873, he had a codger's disdain for modernity. . . . disagreeable, intolerant, sarcastic, utterly lacking in tact or discretion, he was parsimonious and priggish, enamored of his own genius and convinced always of the infallible wisdom of his opinions. His letters suggest an individual imprisoned in a state of contempt and indignation.

"At the same time, he was ferociously hardworking, meticulous, and exacting, with a bureaucrat's obsession with process and control. From the outset he would orchestrate virtually every aspect of the expeditions, from the raising of funds and the recruiting of personnel to the purchasing of supplies and the design of equipment. No detail escaped his attention, whether the comparative costs of the passage to India or the proper brand of chocolate, the engineering of high-altitude stoves or the appropriate modifications of cameras, fuel supplies, oxygen cylinders, alpine boots, sun goggles, or chemicals for developing film and printing photographs at high altitude. He choreographed all interactions with the press, oversaw all travel arrangements, and negotiated for the publication of expedition reports, the production of documentary films, the sale of photographs and botanical specimens, the drafting of maps, the bookings of the international lecture tours that would play an essential role in fueling public interest in the expeditions. Every decision, conflict, debate, and controversy passed over his desk, and though he never left his London office, he was without doubt the nexus for the entire enterprise, the glue that held everything together. His correspondence fills some forty boxes, scores of files, in the Royal Geographical Society archives. He was liked by virtually no one, and yet without his irascible and indomitable will the expeditions might never have happened."

(That description makes Steve Jobs -- control freak/marketing genius -- look like a slacker.)

Hinks is a supporting character in Wade Davis' compelling story of the Mallory-generation Everest expeditions, but he nonetheless comes across as a fascinating figure -- and, I would argue, one of the founders of modern public relations (as well as the person who calculated the mass of the moon and the distance between the earth and the sun). Arthur Robert Hinks understood that the public interest and enthusiasm for the Everest expeditions made possible both the ability to raise the funding for the expeditions and the pressure on the politicians and diplomats that opened up Indian and Tibetan borders. Hinks implicitly knew that the "success" of the Everest expeditions was a complex conjunction of scientific enterprise with public perceptions and clamor for celebrity, heroic efforts, and national pride. A scientist, Hinks' ultimate goal was information about geography and geology, but he excelled in creating a public sentiment and demand -- which brought money and political clout.

Hinks was a contemporary of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), another early twentieth century Brit who intuited how personal reputation and public enthusiasm could create political power. Lawrence's complicity with the American journalist/promoter, Lowell Thomas, is well documented by Michael Korda in his Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (Harper, 2010). Lawrence and Thomas (like Mallory and Hinks) offer another instance and insight into how public relations created itself -- in spite, sometimes, of the motivations of the actors -- in the early years of the twentieth century. Needless to point out, Hinks, Mallory, Lawrence, Thomas are all contemporaries of Edward Bernays. All of these men consciously used "crowd psychology" for political, commercial, and scientific ends.

I cannot help but note (as author of this "textscape" blog), without surprise, that modern public relations emerged hand-in-hand, at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the modern, scientific era of mapping the earth -- the poles, the highest mountains, and European/Western-forced political boundaries on much of the globe.

What Makes PR So Darn Stressful?

Yesterday PRNewser posed the question, "What makes PR so darn stressful?" Neither the post nor the immediate comments acknowledged one fundamental answer to that question that's obvious to the PR research community.

Public relations people have a very meager body of research to consult at any time when they are faced with a challenge -- determining a strategy or just selecting a tactic.

Every PR task may be different -- but that's a cop-out. Every tooth a dentist faces is different, too. But the dentist has a body of research evidence -- anatomy, biology, pharmacology, etc. -- that he has learned or can consult before applying a procedure. With science behind the decision-making, you can approach an action with a high level of confidence about likely results -- and with less personal stress.

Most PR people in most PR situations have only their 1) knowledge of "principles of PR" (rarely or thinly tested and verified), 2) past (idiosyncratic) personal experience, and 3) intuition. All of which sometimes works. Sometimes doesn't. (This also explains why PR/communications "experts" are often kinds of celebrities/shamans and not scientists.)

The PR person is less like that trained dentist with centuries of scientific method backing him up, and is more like an unsophisticated gambler -- with little knowledge of the odds of success and failure and no clue as to how to improve the odds. No wonder PR is stressful (and sometimes rewarding -- as there is that rush that comes from good PR outcomes, like a lucky spin at the roulette table).

Someday (let's be optimistic about 2012: starting this year) PR will get serious about research. Organizations will objectively document and scrutinize PR strategies and tactics and honestly assess what worked and what didn't. And in all transparency, they will share that knowledge with other PR practitioners. The goal -- within an individual organization and within the profession -- should be to accumulate data, draw objective observations and inferences, and share the insights openly, honestly, transparently.

Just think of all the stress PR people will avoid when research begins to give us a higher level of confidence about what works.

Winter

Reclining Figure (1965), Henry Moore,
at the Hearst Plaza, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts,
New York City

Winter

St Paul's Cathedral, London

The textscape we live in: the public realm

This weekend's New York Times has an insightful piece, "Treasuring Urban Oases," by architecture critic Michael Kimmelman focusing on Alex Garvin and his view of the "public realm."

Garvin (I confess to being a fan, and I worked for him for a while) has long been among the most public champions working today for both the concept and the reality / building of the public realm: the shared spaces (no matter who "owns them") that residents and transients of the city pass through in their daily lives (and "occupy," both in the traditional definition and in the new political perspective).

As champion of the public realm, Garvin has taught for many years at the Yale School of Architecture and has led or been associated with the development of some great public spaces throughout the country, both as a city official and more recently as a private consultant. He also has written some of the classic texts on the topic.

But as Kimmelman's piece unintentionally suggests, focus on the public realm seems almost quaintly old fashioned. The New York City zoning law is 50 years old and not much of a vibrant challenge to enlivening new spaces. The majority of successful spaces that Kimmelman notes are classic, authentically successful and admirable achievements, but hardly "new" (Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, Bryant Park). The most recent example cited is noteworthy: the pedestrian-ization of Times Square -- an experiment that seems to be working (and not yet in its final form). But Times Square is an improved re-purposing and adaptation of what was previously already a great space (for many obvious reasons).

Most talk about the public realm, by Kimmelman and others, seems to be elegaic. I appreciated the focus on Garvin in Kimmelman's article, but I wish Kimmelman had written more about the places in which the future of the public realm is being shaped -- places and situations where the stakes are high.

I think that the concept of "the public realm" just hasn't sunk in (or maybe, it has sunk in too much; not dangerous anymore). It's hard not to think of the public realm as streetscaping after the architectural concept is in place. In fact, the public realm is a kind of skeleton, not a skin, of a truly successful space. One almost yearns for a new belief in a feng-shui-ish sensibility. The public realm is actually a kind of spatial-social network -- a flow of energy that can be constrained or empowered -- into which the physical infrastructure gets fitted.

Autumn

Trinity Wall Street, Churchyard

Autumn

9/11 Memorial

Reflections on textscaping : runaway horses and Zuccotti Park

Since the clearance by New York City of the occupiers of Zuccotti Park earlier this week, the media has juxtaposed the commentariat with the protesters in both predictable and troubling ways (just one example from WNYC). At times like this, it is striking how "real" life, media frames, and literary/philosophical narratives echo each other. I just finished reading Yukio Mishima's Runaway Horses (1969), the second novel in his The Sea of Fertility tetraology. Mishima's young patriot/idealist, Isao Iinuma, seems to have been reincarnated (again) in the OWS zealous. Mishima's global investors and merchants are their generation's hedge fund managers. And the lawyer, Shigekuni Honda, and teacher, Shigeyuki Iinuma, are the classic survivors/compromisers -- just like those NPR commentators who feel the occupiers' pain but who also despair about the impracticality of it all, especially in light of their list of historical analogies.

I certainly hope that over the next few days (OWS announced it is moving on from occupying Zuccotti Park to occupying the subways and the City) things don't play out in real life New York City they way they played out in 1930s Tokyo for Mishima's characters. Like Isao and his co-conspirators, the OWS protesters do have more than a little of that runaway horses muscularity and dubious purposefulness.

Textscapes (like Runaway Horses for OWS protesters) give ephemeral and contingent experiences the resonance of significance, permanence, and meaning. Not literally, but suggestively, the reincarnation Mishima's characters discover. That's the work of writers (novelists, PR people): when we're doing our job well, we're writing meaning and transcendence to other times and places in to today's experience.

The textscape of crisis: revisited

In my post of October 28th, I wrote that "so many organizations have shown the remarkable ability to rehabilitate themselves (although the record isn't nearly so good for individual executives)." Tamar Lewin in The New York Times on November 13th applied that same thought to the recent situation at Penn State. We rarely see individuals come back from an epic fail, but it is uncanny how the imprint of individual malfeasance is not indelible for organizations. Corporations [organizations] really don't seem to be "people" -- they're much more resilient, malleable. And the public forgets and forgives organizations quicker than they do for real people. It should be some comfort for crisis communications managers.

Autumn

Ulster County, New York

Autumn

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Reimagining our profession, PR for a complex world -- with an imperative assist from PR research

Richard Edelman's lecture last week at the Institute for PR's 50th Annual Distinguished Lecture and Awards Dinner at the Yale Club raised some interesting challenges for the practice of PR -- but, more importantly, demonstrated the role that PR research will have to play if those challenges to the PR practice are ever going to be met.

Many of us were relieved and reassured that we did not have to hear another PR agency leader telling us we live and work in a new digital world. The Edelman agency has authentically been an innovator in the use of digital media -- and they also, obviously, have kept good perspective on that fact that digital, for all its disruptive creativity and cool factor, is, after all, just a tactic and technology.

Edelman quite rightly reminded us that the biggest challenge for the practice of PR is keeping PR in the realm of strategy development and operational relevance. He noted, correctly, as far as I can see, that "PR has been at the far end of the continuum [compared to the category of consultants involved in analysis and strategic direction], often using creative we are handed and explaining policy that has been set [by others]."

This situation is not just a reflection on the relative low status of PR in many organizations; it is a well-documented problem of management decision-makers not having a clue about relationships, engagement, and audiences that are the expertise of thoughtful and effective PR people. Edelman's speech cites an array of examples from recent headlines of corporations who have suffered greatly -- including in their revenues and equity value -- because of faulty or non-existent PR forethought.

Edelman concludes by formulating four principles, which he calls the Nielsen Principles (named after Bill Nielsen of Carl Byoir and J&J) which, if pursued, could "make public engagement the standard for our industry." Principles 3 and 4 make sense ("Take full advantage of a democratized media" and "Attract and develop talent with broad skills"), but they fall under the category of Competence. His first two principles, however, ("Drive operating strategy" and "Practice radical transparency") fall under the category of Excellence -- and are more radical recommendations than the tone of Edelman's speech first suggests.

PR people will rarely be included in the team that drives operating strategy as long as PR practitioners build and shape their careers around being order-takers. PR will remain an order-taking function as long as its outcomes and impact cannot be expressed in a mission-critical value. The paucity and superficiality of the research conducted by most PR agencies and departments reveals how inadequate PR people can be to participate in driving operating strategy. Why would a CEO include a PR person in the management team, when the work product of PR is described as counted up clips, tweets, and likes? PR people are welcomed as operating strategic thinkers when they can document changed minds and new behaviors.

Likewise, Edelman's Nielsen Principle of practicing radical transparency presents a transformative dilemma for public relations and for business. He says "business must explain how and why decisions are made. This is not a strategic opportunity; it is a necessity." That assertion flies in the face of what many in business consider the basic concept of competitive advantage (in product, process, and culture). I think Edelman is right: lack of transparency (indirection or misrepresentation) may increasingly be a friction in the business process, a cost of doing business, as increasing numbers of consumers and stakeholders focus skeptical attention and express (accurately or unjustly) influential opinion through social media. But there certainly are many companies and many industries that are not about to begin practicing radical transparency in the near term.

Edelman just glancingly touched on the relevance for PR people: "We are the last line of defense for the truth, because our material is increasingly used as primary source data. We also must be scrupulous about policing our own behavior and even what we pass along in social media." This is the 21st century Catch 22 for PR people. The public, the market, customers increasingly demand that radical transparency. Organizations define transparency as a cost, and therefore, understandably, want it controlled and minimized.

Edelman seems to be just scratching the surface of what may really be a radical principle. If radical transparency is good for business, it becomes the role of PR person to describe and demonstrate the value -- the competitive value -- of that radical transparency that engages the audience. Which brings the conversation back to PR research.

PR research isn't done for the finance guys or the procurement department. PR research may, if Edelman is right, be the definitive means by which public relations does finally firmly and consistently establish itself among the strategic decision makers and the creators of value throughout the marketplace and society.

So, if content is king, what do we do next?

The MediaPost blog Online SPIN has a post today by Cory Treffiletti of Catalyst S+F, "Content Beats Targeting -- 'Nuff Said" that is well worth the read and a second thought. "Content is king" is one of the verities of 21st C marketing. I also had to be impressed by Cory's reference to the science/art trope. (Cory writes, "It [marketing creative] is the art behind the science [data-generated 'production' -- analytics, targeting]. Science is certainly important, but science without art is useless." For some years, one of my professional commitments/enthusiasms has been the Institute for PR, which has had the mission: "Delivering the Science Beneath the Art of Public Relations.")

Cory's blog, however, raises a provocative issue beyond the verity.

In a sense, the science of marketing, including PR, mostly focuses on the "easy" stuff -- the analytics that are designed and designable through the digital analysis and logarithms that we didn't have ten years ago. (Is the "work" done and the wisdom gained only if we can build a dashboard?).

Myself, being more of an artist than a scientist, I'd never claim that marketing scientific method could isolate the characteristics of good creative in a predictive way. But there is so little effort in exploring the characteristics of good creative in even a sufficient way. In my experience, in the classroom (in front or in the seats) or in the PR agency, I've never had a creative session backgrounded with research that asserts: sufficient characteristics of a successful creative strategy for this kind of challenge are A, B, and C. (Some of that is implicit -- it's why there are always a few grey-haired types in the creative session; intuitively they have a feel for "what works." Like the recently popularized Steve Jobs persona, they know it when they see it. All that makes a nice Mad Men episode, but I'm sure glad my dentist doesn't operate on such fundamentals.)

Especially as we write, teach, and set examples for young professionals, we are limiting our potential and our ability to serve clients when we don't turn the scientific lens on content as well as on audience/production.

There is some good research on content analysis that has clear predictive (and proscriptive) implications: see David Michaelson and Toni Griffin's IPR research paper, "A New Model for Media Content Analysis." Also, take a look at the work of Marianne Gobeil at Leading Communicators for research-based content effectiveness. There is provocative research going on in neuromarketing (see the Neuromarketing blog for just some examples), but I don't know of much connecting-of-the-dots going on between neuroscience and day-to-day marketing practice. I find that the more sophisiticated folks working in infographics have some deeply useful insights about how content can be created, perceived, and internalized (for example, see the work of David McCandless and Tom Wujec's work on Visible Innovation; reflect on all the infographics-of-the-day in the media). Finally, the cultural studies folks, linguists and semioticians, text-analysts remain for the most part uninterested in marketing, unless they are providing a political critique of marketing's sins.

So we've settled it. Content is king. Let's assume this isn't the end, just the beginning of the discussion.

Too soon to tell: The textscape of crisis

On October 25, the Tri-State District of PRSA held a "mock trial tribunal" at the SUNY Global Center in New York City. With the perspective of more than a year after the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill, the topic of the event was the PR "successes . . . . achieved and mistakes . . . made" in order to help PR practitioners' future crisis communications work.

The panel was impressive and thoughtful -- much better than many comparable events: Paul (typically irascible) Holmes from The Holmes Report; Ben Cohen from Conclave Strategic Communications, Michael Schubert from Ruder Finn, David Kalson from Ricochet PR, and Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz of the Boswell Group. The audience was mostly young -- as typically found in these professional development/networking events.

The informal audience poll at the beginning of the evening was the most telling moment. The vast majority of the audience thought the oil spill was a PR disaster (surprise). That opinion, combined with much of the following discussion, revealed some striking things about PR people and the practice of PR.

1. For all the criticism communicators give to financial/corporate types about being short-term oriented, PR people are often staggeringly short-term and narrowly focused. (It's as if last night's headlines on Fox/MSNBC "matter.") The discussion revolved around the BP oil spill as a series of media relations blunders that provoked negative headlines. (All true. All blindingly obvious from which we learn almost nothing.) The audience and some of the panel (all PR people) fixated on those headlines from spring/summer 2010. As if the story ended there.

2. Most of the audience (again, all PR people) were not aware of: The Guardian (no friend to Big Energy) reported that same day that "BP profit rise marks turning point." On October 28th Marketwatch's "Sentiment on BP" indicates strongly Bullish from both Analysts and the Marketwatch Community (though slightly Bearish from Hulbert Interactive/investment newsletters). As panelist, Michael Schubert noted: just google BP and do a content analysis of the messages/memes that come up on the top pages.

3. When PR people reflect back on events such as the Deepwater Horizon/BP incident, you can barely breathe for the smugness in the room. Maybe it's an occupational hazard, but a PR person so often seems to work hardest when he is demonstrating that he is the smartest person in the room. You would've thought, last Tuesday night, that the 200 people in the room were communications geniuses who could never have been so shallow, unprofessional, and clueless as to have made any of the decisions made by the BP people at the time. The analysis and the audience (and rarely in such PR conclaves) did not approach the topic dispassionately and impersonally. If you can't approach the topic dispassionately and impersonally after 18 months of data/facts to observe and un-pressured reflection, then when can you?

It's hard to approach PR with research, analytical rigor if scoring points is a large part of the agenda (and I'm not just reflecting on one panel discussion). And how about considering what it must actually be like to walk that mile in somebody else's shoes? Not to give somebody else a break -- but not to give yourself too much of one.

Some organizations have an epic fail to which their public communications contribute. But so many organizations have shown the remarkable ability to rehabilitate themselves (although the record isn't nearly so good for individual executives). The facts -- 18 months out -- don't clearly argue that BP is down for the count. And I wouldn't count out Bank of America either, despite recent headlines. PR people should not underestimate the lasting power of big organizations and the malleability of public opinion (otherwise, who in the U.S. would buy a German or Japanese car or coffee grinder?).

Finally, PR researchers need to cut through "the PR" and look at enduring patterns of verifiable facts. We're in business for the long(-ish) term.

-- 2 footnotes

Kerry Sulkowicz from the Boswell Group provided one welcome piece of advice not routine in the crisis communications handbooks: Sometimes, don't immediately do or say anything. Stop and think/reflect. A crisis is not the time for Ready, Fire, Aim. (My words, not his.)

The event was put together by Emmanuel Tchividjian -- a sometimes lone (and all the more valued) voice for both common sense and ethical perspective in PR.

Autumn

Heian Jingu Shrine, Kyoto.

Autumn

Maya Lin's "Wave Field" at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York.

Another kind of textscape: the architecture of consciousness

The New York Times architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, has a news analysis piece today, "In Protest, the Power of Place." Kimmelman makes the point, convincingly, of the power of physical place both to create and nurture community and to become a powerful emblem of an idea. Zucotti Park may not be Tahrir Square (or the Bastille or the Parthenon) but it works as an icon that resonates with complex concepts and emotions and that will affect politics, policy, and maybe even history.

Seeing data

Zabisco Infographic's short video shows why infographics have taken off in the past year or so with PR and media.So much data available -- and graphic representation so much easier than it has ever been. PRNews recently summed up the topic for public relations.

What nobody is struggling with yet, as far as I know, is best practices and guidelines for marketers, PR people, and research companies for understanding and using the potential of infographics. There are as many ways to misrepresent as to communicate. It looks like another instance of the technology getting ahead of the thinking.

Some good observations on best practices in this SlideShare from Nicolas Garcia Belmonte: Principles of Analytical Design.

Still living in the analog world

Don Bartholomew's recent post on Metricsman, "Measurement 2020 and Other Fantasies," is a nice summary of where PR metrics and analytics are likely evolving. I'm glad, however, he's kept things in perspective. He points out that we still live mostly in the analog world and word of mouth is still more pervasive and important than word of mouse.

Making the case for sustainable streets

ASLA's The Dirt blog in a recent post summarizes the many efforts of NYC to improve quality of street life and sustainability. The post leads off with a nice "before" and "future" photo comparison of Times Square before the pedestrian-ization and the planned re-design by Snohetta.

Expect more from PR research: Don't just measure something -- do something

[This post also appears on the PR Cafe blog at CommPRO.biz, September 14. Join the discussion next Sunday - Tuesday, September 18-20, at the 9th Annual North American Summit on PR Measurement.]

Culture critic and USC Annenberg Fellow, Neal Gabler, wrote in The New York Times on August 15, 2011 in his opinion piece, “The Elusive Big Idea,” that “at a time when we know more than we have ever known, we think about it less.” Gabler’s analysis is disconcerting in many ways, and it should be no less a warning signal for PR.

For documenting the impact of PR work, we may be living in the best of times. The technologies for monitoring media and social media are increasingly improving and more economical. One good result of the digital revolution is a decreasing fear of the algorithm. A decade ago, PR people would confidently assert that you just can’t measure PR. Today, it is clear: you can.

Gabler’s insight also suggests we may be in the worst of PR times: with more information than we ever had before and thinking about it less. A current marketing truism asserts that the problem isn’t information, it’s getting attention. That characterization, however, does not think the situation through even half way. Kim Kardashian can command attention. The challenge is not attracting attention, it is getting people to do something. To buy, to vote, to believe. PR cannot be about getting attention; it has to be about changing the world.

If the goal is changing the world, not getting attention, then the value of public relations to organizations now and in the future is tied to the fate of its often neglected step-child, PR research. But maybe not for the reason you would, at first, suppose. Much depends on how PR research is positioned, and how PR practitioners and researchers approach their work. A lot is being written about, and discussed at conferences recently, relating to the impact and the ROI of PR. Important as ROI is, it is more important to reconsider the aspects of PR research that do not focus on information and attention and help us think more about the future.

Monitoring may be the hardest PR task. That is why it is so often done thoughtlessly and on the cheap. Like most things that are hard to do, we mostly don’t do them. Yet I would assert that the PR enterprise that does its monitoring thoughtlessly and on the cheap is providing its public relations services exactly the same way.

Many practitioners view monitoring as “watching” or “listening”; fair enough. But watching and listening are not the same as generating a list of links and maybe a set of charts off the dashboard. Watching and listening require the hard work of attentive analysis and review. (Think CIA intelligence agents and financial analysts.) Watching entails persistent, sustained analysis. Looking at outlier opinions to understand why they happened and if there is anything significant. If patterns of coverage and attention are not changing, why is that? Don’t you have an intended outcome for the PR program, and shouldn’t the coverage and attention be trending the way you want?

If your monitoring report suggests nothing new to you, then either you are really not thinking about what is monitored or the PR program is failing to have impact. Monitoring is the search for evidence and significance; it is not cutting and pasting this week’s Google Alerts. Every monitoring report should answer questions. How has the communications environment changed as a result of this PR initiative, or because of other external events? What are the newly presented opportunities or obstacles? How should the PR program change? (In Gabler’s perspective, it’s about ideas, not information.)

Monitoring should be done with options in mind. You should be monitoring with an intended intervention at the ready. When your share of voice compared to competitors’ slips below a certain threashold, have an action at hand to implement (or at least to recommend). A doctor does not monitor vital signs out of idle curiosity; vital signs are signals as to when there should be an intervention. The public relations researcher has to be fearless in the organization; the PR researcher has to be able, empowered, and courageous enough to sound an alarm when things are not going well. Thoughtful attention and analytical monitoring check for vital signs and provide context about the implications of any change. (Expect ideas, not just information.)

PR monitoring and research shouldn’t be archaeology. PR research should solve problems.
Many organizations today pay PR agencies or assign internal staff to monitor and measure PR programs to justify dollars spent in the past. That is an accounting function. It is not creative, intellectual, nor supportive of sustainable, future business. Several initiatives are underway in the PR profession today to address the issue of ROI (the Council of PR Firms has a task force looking at this issue and the AMEC conference last May identified ROI of PR as a priority). Within the year, productive clarifications about ROI of PR will be articulated – and let’s get that behind us as soon as possible. The PR industry needs to come to grips with the ROI question, but we have to get beyond it. The ROI of PR is a backward-facing enterprise; it will never help answer tomorrow’s questions.

Fox TV’s “Bones” series should be the favorite television show for anyone thinking about PR research. The series’ premise is that a team of archaeologists recruited out of a national historical and scientific institution (based on The Smithsonian) is tasked to work with the FBI to solve the murder of the week. The evidence-based, details-oriented, data-centric orientation of the scientists (brains) contribute at least as much to solving the murder mystery in each episode as does the derring-do of the FBI agent (brawn). The focus of the scientists’ work is never focused back on last week’s mystery to prove how well the previous mystery was solved at so little cost (no drama, no interest there). The scientists focus not on the past but on this week’s corpse (the bones) and reliably tease out through immense knowledge and persistent attention to the tiniest factual detail or the pattern of unanticipated evidence, the clue that solves the mystery. (This is the paradigm for worthwhile PR research.)

If your PR research team is not applying state-of-the-art technologies, evidence-based processes, and objectivity to solving communications problems, you probably do not really have a research team, or you are kidding yourself about the benefits of research you offer. Such PR operates in the worlds of information and attention and does not do the hard work of ideas required for changing the world.

Inner textscape: heartbeat drawing

For over fifteen years, the artist SASAKI, has been extending his Heartbeat Drawing project -- now over 300 art works, including installations and monumental. The "subject" is the heartbeat: "the proof of living in the 'now' and the bond 'shared' by most forms of life." No surprise that I learned about the Heartbeat Drawing project from Last Word / Nonomura Kaoru. SASAKI's project resonates Zen discipline, as Nonomura describes in Eat Sleep Sit (Shinchosha, 1996 and Kodansha International, 2008).

Perspective from the High Line

To say that the High Line was made possible by Robert Hammond and Joshua David is not hyperbole. While the money -- lots of private and some public -- came from elsewhere, and while it can't be disputed that in some ways Robert and Josh were at the right place at the right time, still Robert and Josh provided the the vision, commitment, and rhetorical force that won over the funders, the regulatory agencies, the property owners, and the neighbors. The High Line was the right place, but Robert and Josh made the right time.

They had no relevant background or professional experience before they took on the creation of the High Line as their personal crusade. Not architects, or landscape designers, or urban developers, just two guys in the neighborhood with an idea and an extraordinary ambition and confidence -- and ability to tell the story of what the High Line could be. Telling that story over and over again, in person, at events, at presentations, at parties -- and telling the story to neighbors (some of which, admittedly, influential in the city and in New York City culture) and anyone else who would listen. They successfully sold their concept over and over again, and the powers that be trusted the administrative and creative process to Robert and David to make it happen. (You can't help but remember that Frederick Law Olmsted had never worked at or designed an urban park before he took on the concept and the creation of Central Park.)

The latest version of Robert's and Josh's story is their just-published history / memoir, High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2011). Earlier tonight, NPR's All Things Considered profiled Robert and Josh, the High Line, and book in a thoughtful and entertaining profile that won't hurt either the flow of High Line tourists or the book sales.

Like every other successful public space -- and all the great, historical ones including Central Park, the Tuileries Garden, Ueno Park -- the High Line brings together public and private assets and interests. The High Line makes the most cherished urban values physical, lived experience.

Easy as that is to observe, it is just as difficult to know what exactly to learn from the High Line case study. Though it shares common virtues with other successful urban spaces, it is hard to reduce the story to a template. We can identify the conceptual ingredients (the textscapes) within the physical space, but each of those spaces is a distinctive and irreplicable story.

Bigger picture: measuring what matters

Many of us who have interest in public relations measurement and evaluation have been talking in the past year about "measuring what matters." This comes from a realization that the new algorithms and monitoring technologies make it possible to identify, select, and count many actions and features of the communications ecosystem -- coupled with a second realization that just because you can count something doesn't mean that it has significance or meaning. (Baseball metaphor: you can count how many times the pitcher pitches the ball during the course of game. That count is meaningless without factoring in significance: how many of the pitches were strikes, balls, hits, etc.)

Hotelier Chip Conley spoke last year at a TED Talks about counting what's worthwhile. His frame of reference is much bigger than measurement and evaluation of communications, but his talk forces the same kind of re-consideration of purpose in the "measuring what matters" discussion.

Evolution of PR monitoring: lessons from VMS

Mark Weiner of PRIME Research provides insight at commPRO.biz on what the shuttering of VMS may mean in the PR services marketplace.

Summer in the city

Jardin botanique de la bastide. Bordeaux, France

Summer in the city

Bus driver on break. Lisbon, Portugal.

Media monitoring is not about technology infrastructure

PR Newser on Tuesday morning had an odd guest post, "The Evolution of Media Monitoring," by Sean Morgan, CEO of Critical Media, which provides the Critical Mention monitoring product, a competitor, until last week, of VMS until VMS announced its bankruptcy filing. I do not know much about why VMS owners decided to fold. From the little I do know, I don't much credit Morgan's perspective. My own experience leads me to believe that Morgan is mostly wrong about his conclusion: "At the end of the day it all comes back to the fact that the only media monitoring companies that will survive are the ones whose core business is as a technology infrastructure company. Otherwise, as media continues to morph and change, more and more companies will be left behind."

The core business of a monitoring service (its value proposition) isn't technology infrastructure; as sophisticated as the technology must be, it's only incidental. The core business of a monitoring service has to be providing insights into the communications environment and answers to clients' questions. Thoughtful marketers and media planners acknowledge that "all the media" is just Noise. They want to know 1) about the Media that Matters (individually identified to the particular need and occasion) and 2) the pertinent memes being conveyed that have an effect on the value of the marketers' product/proposition.

In my work over the past several years, I have met with most of the media monitoring companies, large and small, emerging and established. The technology infrastructure, even as it grows more complex and rich, is also at the same time inclining toward commodity status; and the pressure is for costs to come down. The vast majority of my PR clients remain unimpressed by media monitoring technology (rightly or wrongly); they buy a company's product grudgingly (because the CMO or a procurement officer insists). I do not know of one client who holds on to their monitoring company and service out of loyalty to its technology infrastructure. To the small degree there is loyalty to monitoring companies, it is to those that provide insight, perspective, thought, and relevance to the client's purpose. The monitoring companies' AI, on its own, hasn't come near to providing that kind of relevance yet.

The shuttering of VMS may portend more shake-ups in the media/social media monitoring industry. But technology infrastructure will only be a supporting player in that shake-up. I'll go further -- monitoring itself is only a supporting player. The shake-up in the PR and the monitoring industry is here, because our clients are organizations that want to participate effectively in the marketplace of products and issues. They want the edge for success that emerges only from timely, original insights and distinctively articulated ideas. They don't want "counting up lots of media stuff," and at the end of the day they really don't care about dashboards or any other front- or back-end of the technology infrastructure. On top of it all, these clients, like all of us, want to pay as little as possible for technology.

Clients do, however, consistently pay a premium for insight and ideas. The media analytics companies that will survive will be the ones whose core business is finding pertinence and significance. As media evolves, companies that only have technology to sell will be left behind.

PR ROI revisited, not yet resolved

Professors Tom Watson of Bournemouth University and Ansgar Zerfass of the University of Leipzig have published in PRism the results of their study of how public relations practitioners understand and apply the term ROI / return on investment to public relations in the U.K. and Europe. The article, "Return on investment in public relations: A critique of concepts used by practitioners from communication and management sciences perspectives," provides a useful overview and literature review on the topic. But it also clearly demonstrates how far we are from applying the ROI concept in a meaningful way. There still is no consistent rigorous use of the term that an accountant, lawyer, or securities analyst could live with. As PR people continue to use the ROI language without definition, we only continue to look like we're just believing our own BS and not providing our clients and peers with a meaningful or transparent descriptive methodology. The Council of PR Firms has a task force grappling with the topic of ROI of public relations, and I hope we resolve some issues in the report we expect to issue later this year.

Genius of place: Frederick Law Olmsted

I've read a lot by and about Frederick Law Olmsted. I am among those who are continuously spellbound by his accomplishments and influence on the intellectual and physical spaces of America. Olmsted is one of the inspirations for this modest blog of mine about textscapes, "The spaces we inhabit and what we communicate within those spaces are the shape of our lives."

Most people know Olmsted primarily for Central Park -- and his role in conceiving and building the park is extraordinary. But those who have looked back at his full career can't help but be awed by the varied and far-ranging impact he had on ideas (abolitionism, social progress, egalitarianism, urban development, urban design, conservation, biophilia) and the physical environment (a small selection of his design and preservation projects include Central Park and Prospect Park in New York, the Stanford University campus, the Emerald Necklace of parks and the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Yosemite Falls, Niagra Falls, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, Mount Royal park in Quebec, and the Capital Grounds in Washington, DC).

The latest biography, Genius of Place: the Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, Abolitionist, Conservationist, and Designer of Central Park, by Justin Martin (De Capo Press, 2011) is more forthright, but matter-of-fact, about Omsted the man than are some of the other more hagiographic biographies. Omsted was not always the most pleasant character, and didn't have a sunny disposition. He probably suffered from depression, and he didn't suffer fools gladly. Yet through it all he demonstrates uncommon resilience and a firm resolve to create (a very unsentimental) better world.

A convincing, and encouraging, theme of the book is the attitude, attributed to him by Martin, of carpe diem -- his belief that he and his generation lived in a unique if difficult era, but always with energetic confidence that improvement (self, society, the physical world we live in) is possible. And that improvement comes from nature first, but is achieved only through our respectful, informed, and determined stewardship. Olmsted did seem to believe in the genius in the place -- a genius that did not just emerge into pretty scenery, but into physical, emotional, and social health, sustainability and abundance in nature and ourselves.