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Agile PR
Expert Messaging in a Hyper-Connected, Always-On World
By Marian Salzman AMACOM
Copyright © 2017 Marian Salzman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8144-3788-9
CHAPTER 1
PR2020: A Media Toolkit
You've probably already come to realize that the business of public relations isn't exactly as it's portrayed in the movies. Hollywood has occasionally given our industry its moment in the spotlight — think Conrad in Wag the Dog, Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, Samantha in Sex and the City, Shauna in Entourage. But those portrayals mostly represent the surface of the actual job. Believe everything on the screen, and we'd all be smart yet calculating, morally compromised, manipulative, frivolous, and/or pushy. It just isn't true. The job itself involves orchestration, big ideas, communication skills, and, as you get deeper into it, true strategic thinking.
Better to look at European TV's idea of what we do — characters such as Simon in Spin and Kasper in Borgen. The drama about this job is amped up, for sure (and why not?), but the essentials of our work are represented in ways that are recognizable and show some resemblance to real life. In those worlds, as in ours, the ground is shifting. The business requires higher-level thinking. Communication strategy is essential, and the PR professionals are depicted as skilled not only in relaying strategic narratives in press briefings but also in stewarding and shaping the narratives. And, most realistically, events unfold at digital speed, driven by text messages, tweets, leaks, video uploads, and the 24/7 news cycle — just as in real 21st-century life.
This book will provide you with the means for succeeding in the actual PR world. It's a real-life how-to about next-generation public relations — the tools, tactics, and techniques of communications professionals thriving in the always-on, hyperconnected, borderless world in which we now work and live — with insider information and stories to show you how this plays out in real business situations.
In our 24/7/365 climate, a constant trialogue among journalists, commentators, and Jane and John Public creates the stories and makes and breaks the news. When you finish this book, I hope you'll feel better able to create or manage public relations strategy and communicate effectively in a world where everyone has a voice and we can all broadcast our views.
I have worked in and around brand communications since 1986. In that time, I hope I have grown wiser, as I have had a decent seat for the commercial launches of America Online, AOL Europe, and China Online, plus the return of Steve Jobs to Apple (full disclosure: my role was often scut on some of these global power launches, but some of the best lessons learned happened when I was notetaker, scheduler, handler, and media monitor), and more. Later in this book, you'll hear more about my relatively recent experiences, such as my weeks in the trenches as press lead for rapper/musician/actor Wyclef Jean's run at the presidency of Haiti (think crisis management).
Back before everywhere-all-the-time technology was the norm (1996, for instance, when I couldn't get call waiting in The Netherlands, where I lived at the time), communication strategy could be planned in advance. The campaign blueprint plotted out a timeline with a series of milestones to be activated and checked off. It was all pretty linear. The whole thing could be set up and executed more or less as planned, give or take a few adjustments to accommodate occasional unexpected events.
But that world is gone. Technology has made the faster pace and increasing frequency of unexpected events a certainty. The raucous multichannel news cycle demands a constant supply of sensational news and either finds it or creates it. In this environment, a linear communication strategy is vulnerable to literally anybody, anywhere, who has a connection. Whether by calculation, stupidity, or plain bad luck, we can guarantee that unwanted news, photos, videos, and text will get into the mix. Think the Ashley Madison data breach, Uber inadvertently leaking the personal data of hundreds of its drivers, or the Panama Papers, comprising 11.5 million leaked files from law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealing offshore tax schemes for a who's who of global public figures.
This is a tough time for anybody who wants certainty in strategic communications, with everything plotted out into the future with spreadsheet precision. No longer can an agency's communication strategy be a finalized set of tactical actions executed with unwavering adherence to the map. In fact, unwavering adherence to any map can be a recipe for disaster when unexpected obstacles drop from nowhere and block the way forward. (Memo to newbies in the public relations space: Get a mental first aid kit ready and grow thick skin. The first truth of agile PR: There is no place to hide.)
More than ever before, public relations pros must be nimble, performing balancing acts and high-wire feats without the safety nets we used to depend on and without looking like we're breaking a sweat. We must get our clients' messages in the news — or even better, as Havas PR's mantra says, get our clients to be the news — while the very definitions of who is making the news and how it's being made are shifting. We must remain ever aware of what's happening in the world and spot potential connections without tripping over our own feet.
(Occasionally throughout this book, I am going to flag social trends that have a PR effect. I am, first and foremost, a trendspotter, and in this day and age, I would argue that the best PR people are natural trendspotters who recognize that they can get ahead of the news by anticipating it. More on this later.)
That's not to suggest that all our previous methods must be scrapped. They just need to be adapted to new audiences, new media, a new universe.
At my agency, we've been perfecting that adaptation — call it agility — and have put together some guiding principles that our team members can turn to, lest they become dizzy. We'll be elaborating on all of them throughout this book, but here we introduce you to the basics. Some terms may be familiar, others not so much. Taking what you need and leaving the rest is a key to agility, too.
The terminal decline of traditional media, the rise of citizen journalists (a deceptively simple phrase covering everybody from a lucky bystander with a smartphone to dedicated bloggers with a passion for a particular subject), and the future of news coming from anyone and everyone have many implications for PR professionals. First: The sheer challenge of keeping up with who's who — anybody with opinions, an Internet connection, and time on their hands — can grow big quickly. A bigger challenge: figuring out who among all the names really matters to the relevant audiences. Which news sources have profile, traction, and influence? Above all, who has momentum? On one hand, PR runs the risk of wasting scarce resources on cultivating relations with new sources who look impressive but who are on a fast track to nowhere. On the other hand, there's the risk of missing out on small players who have what it takes to garner big influence.
Then there's the issue of whom audiences trust. Do the new players want to be impartial commentators on the brand and its industry? Do they want to stay independent but get scoops from the brand? Do they want sponsorship or some form of privileged relationship with the brand? It will take fine judgment by PR professionals to figure out their potential.
The Ties that Bind: Paid, Owned, and Earned Media
PR is about image — no question — and today's PR practitioner must be well put together. Think of these three types of media as all the wardrobe basics you'll need, not only to cover yourself but also to look good on every occasion.
1. Paid media is just that: ads on media (even social networks) and search engines that you have to pay to place. Sure, it's tried-and-true and somewhat easy to track, but does it have the human and authentic touch we're all craving? Not necessarily. But paid is a great way to drive traffic to owned media and to generate content for earned media.
2. Owned media is a proprietary mix of content created by a company and wholly owned by it. Think, for example, of a website or blog that is crafted by a company and distributed through its URL. It can tell a moving story in a good, strong voice. It's not organic, but it's a great way for the public to engage with your brand.
3. Earned media is that sweet spot where consumers craft the message of your brand or company and spread the word on their social networks — influencing and amplifying it. It's perhaps the hardest to achieve, as so many things worth striving for often are. It drives traffic and is the next generation of that much coveted word-of-mouth marketing. Earned media, sometimes called free media, also includes publicity secured through promotional efforts, aka pitching.
But here's where integrating your wardrobe — call it mixing and matching — comes in. One of the most important tools today is native advertising (once upon a time called advertorials), which occurs when ads mimic the editorial content surrounding them such as articles, videos, photos, and more. It evolved from the concept of embedded marketing, but instead of placing the product within the content, native ads become the content.
Native advertising can be implemented in many ways, from content recommendation engine widgets to promoted listings to paid search ads to custom ads. Marketers benefit from native advertising because it creates one of the deepest connections between a brand and a consumer, precisely in the place where we all live and breathe these days: in content. A consumer might get a Nike ad in her next online search after cranking Spotify's latest running playlist. Whether native advertising is ethical is a whole other question. It depends on whom you ask — and how it's done. Today's savvy consumers know the score. No question, however, it's here to stay, and learning the ins and outs is essential.
Understanding Influence
Influence is the new affluence, as the United Nations Foundation's chief communicator noted in his foreword. From social media to the comments sections of blogs and news sources, everybody has something to say, and they're saying it louder than ever. When it comes to purchasing power, word-of-mouth can be twice as powerful as paid advertising. More and more people are joining the heard-it-from-a-friend trend, basing their decisions on what others are doing, buying, and talking about.
Whether based on peer recommendations, product reviews, or promotional posts on social media, effectively promoting a product is no longer a function of the company's internal actions. It's all about opening up conversations and tapping influence.
It's Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. Everyday people can become top bloggers or video vixens in seconds. Brands are adapting to the trend by seeking top real-life influencers who are a good fit for their brand. Official title? Brand Influencer.
Today's influencers are generally social media mavens with large numbers of followers and highly curated points of view. They have the ability to make or break a brand, so is it any wonder that so many of them are strolling red carpets, sitting in the front rows at catwalks all over the world, and creating lines of everything from shoes to lipstick?
Another key point to understanding influence: Think about the way we learn about brands today. Gone are obvious advertising and beating a brand's message over someone's head. Brands now have to be in service to consumers. The brands that understand that rise to the top. In today's curated world, consumers can choose to learn about brands and even become advocates for those brands.
So, really, it's about aligning a brand with the right influencer and figuring out ways to talk to consumers — just not at too high a volume.
Social: Opportunities and Risks
You might be sick of people talking about social media, but no agile PR campaign happens without a heaping helping of social in the mix. Sure, the popularity of Facebook could wane and Snapchat — or WeChat, if you're in China — may be the network du jour, but the whole notion of social has become a huge part of how we communicate, and it's here to stay.
Some businesspeople have decided to avoid social media, thinking of it as a waste of time. They are probably the same people — mostly men who couldn't type — who, back in the nineties, thought that the Internet was a waste of time. Now they are kicking themselves for not investing in Apple and Facebook when they could have.
As a PR and branding professional, opting out of social media is not an option (as much as I would sometimes love to snap my fingers and be back in the very private 1980s, when the Internet was the domain of academics and the military and when media people enjoyed long lunches, face-to-face communication, and press releases — the death of which we'll discuss later on). When you build your brand — personal or corporate — you can't afford to disregard social media. Wary of the commitment? As a successful businessperson, you've cultivated good work habits such as managing time, filtering email, and tracking metrics. Using social media effectively requires those habits.
And, of course, because mistakes are amplified exponentially in social media, we'll be discussing how best to avoid them.
A Culture of Crisis
Some communication challenges involve events that might not exactly be predictable but are in effect caused by "unexploded bombs" that could go off at any time. The sneering comments from Abercrombie & Fitch's CEO that went viral seven years after a magazine interview published them. Volkswagen's emissions cheating, which had been going on for years. In Britain, the BBC is still dealing with the aftereffects of a celebrity presenter's sexual abuses that were an open secret dating back decades. When a Missouri court found against Johnson & Johnson for damages totaling $72 million in a case charging a link between talc and ovarian cancer, the jury said it was clear J&J had been hiding something.
Others involve events in the "random" category: unpredictable mishaps and disasters. How will Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In affect her image as a widow getting on with work, life, and parenting? How can Malaysia Airlines program its messages (and actions) following the disappearance of MH370 and the shooting down of MH17? And how in the world will we be able to keep up with the communications needed for the increasing number of deadly and expensive natural disasters?
Between the "unexploded bombs" and "random" categories, there's a third category of event that can ambush communications professionals: category risks. These involve the risks inherent in a particular type of enterprise. Any organization, for instance, that holds large amounts of personal information about millions of people is at risk of a data breach. Any organization with a business model that involves celebrities is at risk of celebrity scandals encompassing any combination of drinking, drugs, sex, racism, violence, and other forms of deviance. Any enterprise involving athletes is at risk of doping scandals coming to light. Any organization dealing with hazardous chemicals runs a whole host of contamination risks.
Put this all together, and you get four certainties for communications professionals in this uncertain world:
1. Negative PR events will strike any client sooner or later.
2. The events will happen quickly, and there will be no limit to how far they can spread.
3. The more prominent the client, the more opportunists there will be looking to take advantage of the situation.
4. Moving quickly and decisively with balance and agility in real time is an increasingly essential skill.
Not even the smartest communications professionals can know in advance exactly what negative events they will be dealing with — in much the same way that first responders have no idea what they will face on their next call. But plenty of opportunities exist for strategic communications planners to generate what-if scenarios and agree on principles for responding to them.
The storm of crisis communication is definitely a key area where agility is needed to get ahead of events and shape the narratives. But we need agility and a nose for the narrative even when it's smooth sailing too.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Agile PR by Marian Salzman. Copyright © 2017 Marian Salzman. Excerpted by permission of AMACOM.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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