textscape

Origins of public relations in surprising places

2012-01-06T19:48:00.010-05:00

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?

2012-01-06T19:08:00.006-05:00

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

2012-01-06T02:19:00.005-05:00

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

Winter

2011-12-13T21:19:00.000-05:00

St Paul's Cathedral, London

The textscape we live in: the public realm

2011-12-04T21:28:00.004-05:00

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

2011-11-17T03:06:00.001-05:00

Trinity Wall Street, Churchyard

Autumn

2011-11-17T02:54:00.003-05:00

9/11 Memorial

Reflections on textscaping : runaway horses and Zuccotti Park

2011-11-17T01:17:00.010-05:00

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

2011-11-15T00:19:00.005-05:00

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

2011-11-14T22:58:00.002-05:00

Ulster County, New York

Autumn

2011-11-14T22:48:00.001-05:00

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

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

2011-11-14T21:05:00.014-05:00

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?

2011-11-09T12:02:00.009-05:00

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

2011-10-28T13:58:00.011-04:00

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

2011-10-16T19:57:00.003-04:00

Heian Jingu Shrine, Kyoto.

Autumn

2011-10-16T19:45:00.004-04:00

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

Another kind of textscape: the architecture of consciousness

2011-10-16T19:21:00.004-04:00

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

2011-09-29T13:49:00.008-04:00

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

2011-09-29T13:29:00.002-04:00

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

2011-09-29T11:43:00.004-04:00

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

2011-09-14T09:26:00.006-04:00

[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

2011-09-13T00:46:00.006-04:00

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

2011-09-03T21:47:00.015-04:00

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

2011-09-03T00:25:00.005-04:00

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

2011-08-31T18:20:00.005-04:00

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

2011-08-31T01:33:00.002-04:00

Jardin botanique de la bastide. Bordeaux, France

Summer in the city

2011-08-31T01:20:00.001-04:00

Bus driver on break. Lisbon, Portugal.

Media monitoring is not about technology infrastructure

2011-08-30T23:49:00.015-04:00

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

2011-08-30T19:09:00.004-04:00

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

2011-08-30T00:44:00.003-04:00

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.

Getting more bang for our bucks -- from the Monday Note blog

2011-08-30T00:16:00.007-04:00

As I often find, Frederic Filloux at the Monday Note blog, has an insightful new post about the relationship between public funding for media and media penetration. Filloux summarizes a recent report by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, a research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and Geert Linnebank, a former editor-in-chief at Reuters: Public Support for the Media: A Six-Country Overview of Direct and Indirect Subsidies.

I won’t re-cap the post: read it here. The point, however, that struck me was that the report confirms, across this six-country study, that internet growth does not necessarily decrease print press penetration: the data shows both strong online and print readership in both the U.K. and Finland. Research does not support an inevitable race-to-the-bottom in regards to media quality or quantity.

Summer in the city

2011-08-29T11:33:00.004-04:00

Meadowport Arch, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY. August 28, 2011, morning after Tropical Storm Irene.

Summer in the city

2011-08-24T15:55:00.003-04:00

Valparaiso, Chile

Summer in the city

2011-08-24T15:47:00.002-04:00

Tokyo

Summer in the city

2011-08-24T15:42:00.002-04:00

WTC 1, New York City, August 2011

The Wilderness Downtown

2011-08-23T01:29:00.008-04:00

Video artist Chris Milk and programmer Aaron Koblin have created The Wilderness Downtown, a compelling (and fun) textscape for your home address that you can build yourself, then watch, then email to friends. One of a number of Chrome Experiments projects.

Reclaiming lost images

2011-08-16T02:00:00.002-04:00

Yomiuri reports on efforts to re-unite victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami with their lost images.

Statistical graphic or information visualization?

2011-08-16T01:37:00.008-04:00

Flowing Data had a thoughtful post yesterday on the differences between statistical graphics and information visualization.

Summer in the city

2011-08-16T01:19:00.000-04:00

Tel Aviv

Idea deficiency syndrome

2011-08-15T00:02:00.004-04:00

Neal Gabler's opinion article, "The Elusive Big Idea," in The New York Times on Sunday provided a stark insight into our information-rich and -- he asserts -- idea-poor era. Much of the discussion I read about our Internet- / digital-mediated environment focuses on the opposition of "information vs. attention." The deluge of information available to us presents the communicator with a challenge of unprecedented proportion: getting the audience's attention. But from Gabler's perspective, I think this "information vs. attention" discussion misses the whole point. The intellectual challenge, the communicator's challenge, is that we increasingly live in a "post-idea" world ("Post-idea refers to thinking that is no longer done, regardless of the style.") Gabler writes, " . . . at a time when we know more than we have ever known, we think about it less." It's hard to dismiss Gabler as a Luddite or Eeyore. Ideas are not the stuff that updates, tweets, talk radio, MSNBC/Fox, reality TV are made of. Those are all items. An idea requires time, re-consideration, testing, fullness.

On the other hand, I'm reading Sarah Bakewell's award-winning 2010 biography of Michel de Montaigne, How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Other Press, 2010). In middle age, Montaigne "retired" from public life (politics) to focus on his property, his family, and answering the question: how to live. His Essais grew to a 1,200+ page answer that remains compelling despite the unfamiliarity of his time and place for most of us. (The success of Bakewell's biography is, if there's any doubt, testimony to Montaigne's interest for us.) The Essais are a textscape of rare sensitivity and comprehensiveness that tempt us to hope that maybe we don't live in a post-idea world. Maybe we're just momentarily (in historical context) distracted.

Summer in the city

2011-08-14T23:21:00.001-04:00

The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, New York

Beautifully documented landscape projects

2011-08-10T23:15:00.005-04:00

Architype Review has posted a special issue on landscape architecture with a large collection of dramatic photos of recent landscape/urban-scape projects around the world.

Dilemma: no global standards for social media metrics

2011-08-10T23:02:00.002-04:00

Angie Jeffrey of VMS blogged on VMS Voice recently about the dilemma outlined in sessions at the AMEC conference in Lisbon back in June. With no global standards for social media analytics, each company offers its own "black box," and there is absolutely no comparability possible -- for the benefit of either CMOs or academics.

Developments in the science behind the art of public relations

2011-08-10T14:29:00.003-04:00

Anyone following professional public relations issues in recent years has to be aware of the debate about PR measurement and evaluation. The Institute for Public Relations (IPR) has been carrying the torch for standards and best practices of PR measurement and evaluation for years. But corporations and agencies have never been able to rally around any common set of definitions or objectives. IPR and PRSA published a Business Case for Public Relations in 2009. This was followed by the adoption by a group of international PR and research associations of a set of principles for PR measurement and evaluation at the AMEC (International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication) annual conference in 2010 (the "Barcelona Principles"). While the Barcelona Principles got attention among the research geeks, acknowledgement and adoption has been slow among corporations and the larger PR agencies.

Today, the Worldcom Public Relations Group issued a press release officially adopting the Barcelona Principles for its network of 107 agencies worldwide. For the first time in the history of the practice of professional public relations, it looks like we are on the way towards real industry standards and a common vocabulary. With the rapid growth of social media analytics, these developments are both welcome and urgent. We will all be watching to see how the Worldcom agencies implement this new commitment and whether other industry leaders follow.

Summer in the city

2011-08-09T11:36:00.002-04:00

Wake by Richard Serra, 2004, and Ginkgo biloba at the Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle

Interesting new cross-channel metric for marketing communications

2011-08-08T23:25:00.006-04:00

The new company, crowdtap, @crowdtappers, has published on Scribd its new white paper on "Brand Influence," a new cross-channel marketing communications metric "developed specifically to allow marketers to understand the estimated output or impact of nearly any type of marketing activity." The new metric takes into consideration Intensity, Proximity, and Length of Exposure of a marketing communications act, compounded by Reach. Featured last week in Fast Company, crowdtap is boasting some new, very high profile customers and $7 million in Series A financing. We may be on the way to a new generation of marketing communications metrics that make sense in the social media world.

More textscapes

2011-08-08T22:54:00.005-04:00

Poet Jeffrey Yang has edited Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems (New Directions, 2011) a collection of textscapes (poems in which writers try to understand the destructive power of nature). Short video here from The News Hour and the Poetry Foundation.

Re-thought work

2011-08-07T00:03:00.002-04:00

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson's book, Rework, provides an enormous relief from the predictable and never-ending business/entrepreneur-advice that seems designed only to make the reader feel how impossible it really is to succeed ("If you're reading this advice book, it's obvious you're not Mark Zuckerberg"). Fried and Hansson offer advice that sounds like they haven't read any of the other books out there (thank goodness). You may not agree with everything in the book, but you have to get the sense that the authors are relentlessly telling the truth (as they see it) and not striving to be nicely positioned among the management experts. From a public relations perspective, the book is so successful through the authenticity that is an attribute of any real, effective brand and communication.

Some of their advice: "ASAP is poison. Underdo the competition. Meetings are toxic. Fire the workaholics. Emulate drug dealers. Pick a fight. Planing is guessing. Inspiration is perishable."

What drives choice and changes behavior?

2011-08-04T14:40:00.002-04:00

The Institute for Public Relations Research & Education (IPR) is re-committing itself to encouraging and sponsoring research that will support the thoughtful and evidence-based practice of public relations. IPR's CEO, Frank Ovaitt, has posted the mandate he has from the IPR board to pursue an aggressive research agenda. See Frank's posts here, Part One and Part Two.

Visual identity case study: vagaries, successes, politics of visual cues shaping the environment (or sometimes, not)

2011-08-04T14:28:00.005-04:00

New book by Paul Shaw, graphic designer and historian, about the history of signage and typography in the New York City subway system demonstrates the practical impact of good design on usability of the urban environment -- and the politics and entropy that confront visual identity systems.

Textscape from space, famine on the ground

2011-08-04T14:22:00.003-04:00

Images from space can now identify and help authorities respond to famine conditions on the ground. ..."None of the many uses of Earth observing satellites is more vital — or has as much potential for prompting timely humanitarian intervention — as famine early warning," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "Remote sensing from space allows USGS scientists to provide rapid, accurate assessments of a broad range of environmental and agricultural conditions." From Brian Thomas' blog, Carbon Based Climate Change Adaptation.

Summer in the city

2011-08-04T09:51:00.004-04:00

View from Brooklyn Bridge Park: The Woolworth Building, New York by Frank Gehry at 8 Spruce Street, and rhus typhina

Social media speeded relief during March earthquake and tsunami

2011-07-25T22:17:00.002-04:00

I met with Kenui Hanaue at Dentsu PR in Tokyo last week. Dentsu is scheduled to publish in October 2011 a report on how citizens' use of social media was used to alert emergency relief providers of urgent needs and locations -- far faster and more effectively than government/official channels. Not a rap on government -- but a cogent case study of organic crisis communications in action that should inform corporate/government official crisis communications planning in the future.

Non-profit (ideological) news rooms

2011-07-20T07:14:00.003-04:00

The Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism this week released a new report on the emergence of non-profit -- and ideologically focused -- newsrooms: "Assessing a New Landscape in Journalism." One interesting finding: the lower the transparency the stronger the ideological bias. The Classical Rhetoricians would not have approved -- what kind of Ethical Appeal can an argument have, when you don't know the source/reputation/identity of the person or organization making the argument?

Aggregator of textscapes

2011-07-13T15:33:00.002-04:00

Visual.ly provides access to designers of infographics, an increasingly important art/science for communications. Infographics have enormous power for both compelling communication and persuasion, but also for deception. TED Talks provides two useful presentations, one from the Guardian's David McCandless and the other from designer, Tom Wujec.

Another textscape -- from Alain de Botton

2011-07-13T15:06:00.004-04:00

". . . buildings are not simply visual objects without any connection to concepts which we can analyse and then evaluate. Buildings speak -- and on topics which can readily be discerned. They speak of democracy or aristocracy, openness or arrogance, welcome or threat, a sympathy for the future or a hankering for the past.
"Any object of design will give off an impression of the psychological and moral attitudes it supports. . . . works of design and architecture talk to us about . . . the kind of life that would most appropriately unfold within and around them. They tell us of certain moods that they seek to encourage and sustain in their inhabitants. . . . they hold out an invitation for us to be specific sorts of people. They speak of visions of happiness. . . . A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of of certain of our ideas of a good life." Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness (Vintage, 2006)

Registration open for North American Summit on PR Measurement

2011-07-08T01:42:00.003-04:00

The Institute for Public Relations and PRSA are co-sponsoring the 9th annual North American Measurement Summit this year, September 18-20 in Philadelphia. Day 1 is pre-conference workshops, a "PR measurement boot camp." Day 2 includes presentations from J&J, Yahoo!, and ConAgra. I will also be moderating a panel discussion exploring how companies and PR agencies are really implementing both output and outcome measurement platforms. Panelists from BurrellsLuce, Report International, VMS, WCG, and H&K. Day 3 presentations from Treasury Department and PwC.

Another textscape

2011-07-08T01:26:00.001-04:00

Every tree in Central Park.

Lady Gaga: the medium that works

2011-07-07T12:09:00.003-04:00

The PR/marketing communications world today has so many more options -- for observing/understanding and for communicating -- that the concept of "the media that matters" has gained new prominence. A telling example: as Los Angeles anticipates major traffic snarls during maintenance of Interstate 405, they chose as one important channel of public communication something most would consider a form of "new media": Lady Gaga's Twitter feed. Here's the NYT story.

PR measurement and analytics

2011-07-07T11:31:00.003-04:00

AMEC's third European Summit on Measurement (in Lisbon, June 8 - 10) assembled a good audience of communications measurement professionals/companies from over 30 countries. (Conference presentation downloads here.) Consensus of the group was that PR ROI is the most pressing issue for PR measurement and analytics. That is certainly consistent with issues percolating in the U.S. -- the Council of PR Firms currently has a task force on just that topic that will be making some recommendations for PR agencies within the year. However, AMEC's conference attendees are mostly from the European (global) research supplier community. It's unclear if their perspective is fully shared by U.S. PR practitioners.

ROI of PR is not a new topic in the U.S. PR industry. NIRI, IPR, PRSA, and academics have been working on the topic for decades. I find that U.S. clients are less likely to ask the global question of Value of/Return on PR, and are much more likely to ask questions about the specific ROI of a communications initiative (an event, a social media tactic, a sponsorship, etc.). The Big Thinkers in the PR world seem to be on the way to providing us with some better answers about the ROI of PR. But there's that next step in helping practitioners (and purchasers of PR services) understand the relative potential impact and value of different categories of tactics/initiatives.

Discussion to be continued at the North American Measurement Summit in September in Philadelphia, this year organized by IPR and PRSA.

New York's next history-making park?

2011-06-15T18:17:00.003-04:00

The Regional Plan Association and the National Parks Conservation Association have issued a report on a vision for a new park and nature preserve at Floyd Bennett Field. It's reassuring to know that New York City continues to value parks and nature as an urban asset. The city that created Central Park sustains it historical trajectory with Freshkills, The High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Floyd Bennett Field. Among other things, media reports touting it as to be the nation's "largest urban campground."

Never enough bridges

2011-05-09T14:26:00.003-04:00

Garden of 10,000 Bridges by West 8.

History of (measurement & evaluation of) public relations

2011-04-19T16:34:00.002-04:00

Tom Watson, at The Media School, Bournemouth University, has posted a 2-part video of his lecture on the history of evaluation of public relations. Very much worth the watch even if the topic might not score big on Netflix. Provides more perspective than professional communicators usually demonstrate. Tom is also the organizer of the annual International History of Public Relations Conference. Here's the lecture: Part 1. Part 2.

Yet another kind of textscape: Flipboard

2011-04-19T16:25:00.003-04:00

Flipboard is amazing (or is it entirely anticipated?). Frederic Filloux at Monday Note provides an instructive overview of the promise/threat that Flipboard presents. The video clip on their website tells the whole story. Combination of tra-digital and social media accomplished.

Not only is walking good for you . . .

2011-04-15T13:11:00.004-04:00

Walking, widely established by science, Buddhists, and everyone in between, is good for you. See my February post. Now we're learning that sitting is lethal.

Prospect Park West bike wars

2011-04-13T11:09:00.003-04:00

STREETFILMS.org has a new video of last weekend's pro-bike-lane salvo in the Prospect Park West bike lane wars.

Pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris)

2011-04-12T22:30:00.004-04:00

Don't rile up the research community

2011-04-05T23:54:00.003-04:00

Ragan's PR Daily posts don't generally provoke many comments or much controversy. But one post did this week. A post by a PR person at a Westchester NY-based agency has sparked a fire in the guts of the usually staid world of PR researchers. There is more than one lesson to be learned from the original post and the trail of comments. I don't want to indulge in too much obvious meta-analysis of all this and the author and Ragan have been taking their hits. (But I have to admit, I agree with comments.)

The Barcelona Principles relating to the measurement of public relations effectiveness got a small flush of attention in the PR trade media last summer, but I have strong suspicions that the principles haven't sunk in much yet among PR practitioners.

Part tempest-in-a-teacup and part tipping point in attitudes to what public relations is and does. This conversation will continue at AMEC's upcoming June conference in Lisbon.

Another great collection of textscapes: perspectives, drawings, photos, poetry

2011-04-05T23:36:00.003-04:00

In reading Paula Deitz's Of Gardens: Selected Essays (University of Pennsylvania, 2011), I've discovered some wonderful colored pencil drawings, photos, and poems/essays by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon. Her collection and publication, Green Architecture and the Agrarian Garden (Rizzoli, 1988) is a fascinating meditation on shaping -- and seeing -- landscape.

The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn

2011-04-05T23:22:00.005-04:00

Suleiman Osman's new book, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York (Oxford, 2011) is a thought provoking study but not just about the post-WWII history of the borough. The book provides many insights into how ideology and values shape land/city-scape and community whether it be Brooklyn or Lincoln Park or Capital Hill or Adams Morgan or South Beach. The contrasts to New Deal Liberalism confidence about big-project urban redevelopment may be too stark, but they create a good frame for understanding this odd progressive/conservative phenomenon of (faux preservation/conservation of urban neighborhoods by 'outsiders.'

Early cherry in bloom, Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Prunus 'Hally Jolivette'

2011-04-05T22:49:00.002-04:00

Witch-hazel (Hamamelis), February 2011

2011-02-24T14:39:00.007-05:00

Keep walking

2011-02-01T14:18:00.007-05:00

The scientific evidence just keeps coming. The New York Times Well Blog today reports another study on the benefits of walking.

Back in 1997, Bruce Chatwin, a great walker, published the essay, "It's a Nomad Nomad World" in Anatomy of Restlessness. A longish quotation:

"In one of his gloomier moments Pascal said that all man’s unhappiness stemmed from a single cause, his inability to remain quietly in a single room. 'Notre nature', he wrote, 'es dan le mouvement… La seule chose qui nos console de nos misères est le divertissement'. Diversion. Distraction. Fantasy. Change of fashion, food, love and landscape. We need them as the air we breathe. Without change our brains and bodies rot. The man who sits quietly in a shuttered room is likely to be mad, tortured by hallucinations and introspection.

"Some American brain specialists took encephalograh reading of travellers. They found that changes of scenery and awareness of the passage of seasons through the year stimulated the rhythms of the brain, contributing to a sense of wellbeing and an active purpose in life. Monotonous surroundings and tedious regular activities wove patterns wich produce fatigue, nervous disorders, apathy, self disgust and violent reactions. Hardly surprising, then, than a generation cushioned from the cold by central heating, from the heat by airconditioning, carted in aseptic transports from one identical house or hotel to the another, should feel the need for journeys of mind and body, for pep pills or tranquillisers, or for the cathartic journeys of sex, music and dance. We spend far too much time in shuttered rooms.

"I prefer the cosmopolitan scepticism of Montaigne. He saw travel as a 'profitable exercise'; the mind is constantly stimulated by observing new and unknown things… No proposition astonish me, no belief offends me, however much opposed to my own… The savages who roast and eat the bodies of their dead do not scandalise me so much as those who persecute the living.” Custom, he said, and set attitudes of mind, dulled the senses and hid the true nature of things. Man is naturally curious.

"'He who does not travel does not know the value of men', said Ib’n Battuta, the indefatigable Arab wanderer who strolled from Tangier to China and back for the sake of it. But travel does not merely broaden the mind. It makes the mind, Our early explorations are the raw materials of our intelligence, and, on the day I write this, I see that the NSPCC suggests that children penned up in “highrise” flats are in danger of retarded mental development. Why did not nobody think of it before?"

Public, political, personal -- landscape/nature is good for you. And the lack of it may be killing us.

2010-12-31T03:10:00.014-05:00

Earlier this month, the ASLA blog, The Dirt, reported on an essay by Thomas Fisher, dean of the College of Design, University of Minnesota, on the influence of Frederick Law Olmsted's early career in public sanitation/health on his later work as a landscape architect -- and as a public intellectual. The essay,"Frederick Law Olmsted and the Campaign for Public Health" (detailed, fascinating and nicely illustrated), was published in November 2010, at the Design History Foundation's Places. Professor Fisher provides good background on Olmsted's lasting concern with public health as a strong motivation in all his work. Fisher also brings the topic to the present with this question:

". . . almost a century and a half after Olmsted left the U.S. Sanitary Commission, we find ourselves, once again, in an era when the larger issues of public health intersect the practices of landscape architecture, architecture and urbanism. And we might well wonder: What would Olmsted do, were he alive today, and facing such paradoxical threats, arising from scarcity in some places and from abundance in others?"

Fisher's answer is that Olmsted would be an aggressive and fearless advocate. "Olmsted would bring a sense of high professional purpose to the work; throughout his ife he pursued larger social goals, regardless of cost, as opposed to the politically expedient or personally beneficial course. . . . The low-density development that contributes to our obesity, the air and water pollution that contributes to our cancer rates, and the systemic impoverishment that contributes to our pandemics -- all are traceable to political decisions and cultures that favor property owners, developers, and landlords, and the banks and shareholders who benefit as well. We will never confront our contemporary public health problems in any meaningful way unless we question the prevailing power structures -- unless we make a powerful case for long-range social good and challenge those who skew the rules in favor of short-term gain . . . . Olmsted's career as a landscape architect foretold where the field would go for its first century and a half in America. His career as a leader of the Sanitary Commission may foretell where the field needs to go in the next century. The health of all of us may depend on it."

Moving from the political to the personal, within a week of Professor Fisher's publication at Places, Jane Brody, in her Personal Health column in The New York Times, wrote about Americans' "outdoor deprivation disorder." Brody cites a variety of studies and publications (including Richard Louv's The Last Child in the Woods) about how our indoor, sedentary lifestyle contributes to a panoply of afflictions. Brody provides a round-up of the public policy initiatives (ranging from the National Wildlife Federation's "Be Out There" public education program and The National Park Service's "park prescriptions" campaign, among others) focused on getting us outside and into nature (and into the sunshine) -- and to get us moving/active.

Environment/landscape/public realm policy, public health initiatives, personal health -- the issues are coalescing. We can expect more in 2011, and, hopefully, better outcomes in the public and private spheres.

Torii

2010-12-31T02:49:00.000-05:00

Snow

2010-12-31T02:28:00.003-05:00

Winter

2010-12-31T02:13:00.003-05:00

What social media does for us -- we now have more in common with the Duchess

2010-12-30T19:28:00.004-05:00

Last week, Oxford Univesity evolutionary anthropology professor, Robin Dunbar, wrote in The New York Times about how "Facebook and other social networking sites allow us to keep up with friendships that would otherwise rapidly wither away." For most of us, our (on average) 150 or so friends are geographically dispersed, frequenty around the world. Social networks provide a mechanism (technology) that keep us linked over time and across space. In some ways, we are always sharing, linked, and together. And these "friends" in our social networks are mixed groups -- family, neighbors, people we grew up with and went to school with, work colleagues, people we met last summer, people we sold something to or bought something from . . . etc.

I couldn't help but realize how similar this world of social media "friends" available to us today is to the network of people and places that revolve around the life of Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire -- someone with whom I usually have fairly little in common. I had just read Mitford's engaging and fun memoir, Wait for Me! (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010). Being the Duchess of Devonshire (her husband, head of the Cavendish family, one of the richest and most influential families in Britain since the 16th century) means that she has a network of family, employees, tennants, and a social set that is widely dispersed and enormously varied. This network has its own self-perpetuating communications channels, calendars, schedules, and traditions -- with established, reliable mechanisms (technologies) for interaction (sharing, keeping in touch). A lot like my Facebook page.

The rich are still not like the rest of us. But wealth is no longer a necessary condition for establishing and maintaining a widely dispersed and varied network of personal contacts, intimate and businesslike, across time and space.

Scarlet Oak (Quercus coccinea)

2010-11-14T23:33:00.000-05:00

Scarlet Oak (Quercus coccinea)

2010-11-14T23:30:00.000-05:00

News from the forest canopy

2010-11-14T20:36:00.008-05:00

Great report on American Public Media's "The Promised Land" series: botanist Nalini Nadkami on her work on the forest canopy in Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, the Amazon, and the Olympic Peninusula. Bringing totally original discoveries about trees/forests/the canopy. 'For generations we've been looking at the roots. We've ignored the canopy -- a unique ecosystem to itself.' AND how Prof. Nadkami also works with Washington State correctional facility inmates on botanical research and production of mosses for the horticultural trade. "When we come to understand nature, we are touching the most deep and most iportant parts of ourself."

Texts about places: evocations of place and time

2010-11-13T23:21:00.006-05:00

Over the past few days I've read two short books, which could hardly be more different, yet both evoke their meaning and insight from writing about place. Each is better in reflection of the other.

Ted Kooser's Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of a Place and Time (University of Nebraska Press, 2005) provides vignettes from the lives of Kooser's parent's, grandparents', and great-grandparents' generations in and around Guttenberg, Iowa. Kooser mourns and celebrates the lives rooted there, along with the irises that have been dug up each generation and moved from house to house over the generations: "An iris offers its beauty and fragrance as if nothing has changed, as if no one were gone."

Alain de Botton's A Week at the Airport (Vintage International, 2009) provides a different set of vignettes about people and place -- but in this case the place is the newly opened Terminal 5 at Heathrow, the time span is just one week, and the focus is not the passing of the generations but the passing of people, products, and technologies through one of busiest, most concentrated geographical points on earth. "We forget everything. . . . And so we gradually return to identifying happiness with elsewhere: twin rooms overlooking a harbour, a hilltop church boasting the remains of the Sicilian martyr St Agatha, a palm-fringed bungalow with complimentary evening buffet service. We recover an appetite for packing, hoping and screaming."

Kooser offers us the horizons, the cornfields and gardens, and those irises. de Botton offers us flying behemoths, the luggage and freight logistics infrastructure, passenger security procedures, and first-class airport lounges. Both with awe and authentic reverence for the lives passing through the place.

Policy recommendations for digital and media literacy

2010-11-11T00:05:00.003-05:00

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, a project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. James L. Knight Foundation, has published its report on "Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action." A provocative analysis and challenging recommendations.

Insights into eBooks

2010-11-10T23:49:00.003-05:00

As is often the case, I found a new post by Frederic Filoux of the Monday Note blog insightful and challenging. The very existence of eBooks challenges our concept of what it means to own a book. Filoux pushes it to the next logical degree -- to our future ability to own the right to access of a book (no matter the physical/virtual format).

Gold nanoparticles could transform trees into street lights

2010-11-10T23:38:00.005-05:00

A post today on inhabit.com has an amazing report about some scientists in Taiwan who have implanted gold nanoparticles into street trees -- turning them into evening street lights with attendant electricity cost savings and CO2 emissions cuts. Fascinating implications. Thanks to Richard Alomar, The Landscape blogger, for passing this story along on FB.

Ginkgos, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

2010-11-10T00:45:00.001-05:00

Dandelion

2010-11-10T00:41:00.000-05:00

Time lapse video posted on Gawker.com.

Landscape architecture reasserting its voice

2010-11-09T20:36:00.003-05:00

It's a pretty much an "inside-baseball" controversy (but it's inside urban design/planning). At the time of the 50th anniversary of Harvard's Urban Design Program, Graduate School of Design, there's a lively discussion going on about the increasingly high-profile roles of ecosystem-thinking and landscape design in urban planning/design. Most recently, Harvard GSD's Alex Krieger provides a Metropolis magazine POV. I like Krieger's comment: "Why should not the landscape architecture profession re-assert its voice, as concern about ecological footprints gains broad public notice. It has been the design discipline that has most consistently retained consciousness of humanity's impact on land and evnrionments. We at the GSD even recall that the birth of American urban planning, as a serious academic discipline, begins with the lectures at Harvard of Fredick Law Olmsted, Jr. in the 1920's."

Threats to iconic American trees

2010-11-09T20:00:00.002-05:00

The most recent e-newsletter from The Cultural Landscape Foundation has a good slideshow about some endangered iconic/historical trees throughout the U.S.

Torii at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, October 31

2010-11-02T21:41:00.002-04:00

"Natural History," detail of Peter Dougherty's stickwork sculpture at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, October 31

2010-11-02T21:29:00.003-04:00

Be fore-warned

2010-11-02T21:15:00.002-04:00

Interesting review today in The New York Times of Ben Goldacre's new book about junk science and how media reports it, Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks.

Another dilemma for mainstream media figuring out the new textscape

2010-10-18T23:50:00.002-04:00

In last Sunday's New York Times, public editor, Arthur Brisbane, tackles the question of whether Times writer/blogger, Jacques Steinberg, and his editors, overstepped some frontier of journalistic propriety when he included in his blog a link that offered, for sale, an online educational course taught by Steinberg. Just goes to show how the new media forms have broken down the personal/professional -- with uncertain boundaries of journalism, education, and commerce. This won't be the last word on the topic.

Yet another textcape

2010-10-07T22:23:00.003-04:00

Cooper Union student, Andrejs Rauchut, did his senior thesis on a series of diagrams and images which trace the character movements within Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. Then he overlays the character paths onto contemporary Staten Island, providing a choreography for a public event. Looks like a fascinating, creative play of text and place. See the BLDD BLOG post for October 5.

Another textscape

2010-10-07T21:56:00.004-04:00

The Thursday, October 7 blog on A Daily Dose of Architecture has an interesting post reflecting on the various uses of language, imagery, and architecture -- all have powerful political resonance. The example is the Park51 ("Ground Zero mosque") project.

The city

2010-10-05T22:36:00.004-04:00

The Fall 2010 issue of Lapham's Quarterly (Volume III, Number 4) has a great collection of essays and excerpts -- from Herodotus to Samuel Pepys to Luc Sante on the topic of "the city."

Youth and media

2010-10-05T21:37:00.002-04:00

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard announced today that it's organized all its research on youth and technology under a single project and web page, the Youth and Media Project.

Private gardens of Connecticut

2010-10-05T21:31:00.003-04:00

Book signing tonight at the Horticultural Society of New York, author New York Times garden writer, Jane Garmey and photographer, John M. Hall, for Private Gardens of Connecticut (The Monacelli Press, 2010). Beautiful glimpses into gardens most people will never see.

CUNY offers MA in entrepreneurial journalism

2010-09-24T00:35:00.002-04:00

CUNY and Jeff Jarvis are bringing greater focus and resources to "the business of managing media, and the study and creation of new media business models" according to The New York Times Thursday. Seems that it's about time, especially in New York City, for enabling students "to study media across all platforms, including digital, broadcast and print."

Dirt!

2010-09-23T23:16:00.004-04:00

Screening tonight at the Horticultural Society of New York of the film, Dirt!, directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Roscow, based on the book, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, by William Bryant Logan. Great film -- disturbing, but gives us a bit more optimism that we got from Inconvenient Truth. Both book and film present fine analysis and challenges for agricultural, urban design, and you & me.