Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Hey, BMs have been working well for the 'resident monkey-boy... and that's a lot of kaka.

What we need to do is educate ourselves, esp. our next generation, to recognize kaka where it craps.

An excellent book came out in the early '80s (?) called: Persuasion: 10 common [?] methods/tactics/strategies... something like that (sorry, Dr. D -- I loaned the book and it was so popular it never came back). Very readable, funny, and still relevant essays on how to recognize sales/scam strategies. It's a top-ten list (oversimplified), but it gives simple principles w/real-world examples, ranging from annoyances to the criminal. Anyone know this book? I haven't been able to find another copy.

I've been in agency PR for the last decade in Australia and I can't for the life of me see the point you and Richard Edelman are getting at. Perhaps Edelman does PR differently.
For the past decade my company has defined pr as being about building relationships with employees, customers, citizens, investors and so on. We have never thought brand or reputation management was what we do. I've always believed that brand m is nonsense no-one has a relationship with a logo. Usually Brand value is just a reflection of the advertising spend.
In fact, we distinguished what we did from advertising etc because we were about relationships not smart slogans etc. As to edelman's prediction that PR companies will make money from producing factual material for clients, d'oh, we see this as 101 of PR.
At the start of every substantial project we put together an advocacy document that draws together issues (conflicts between us and others), our viewpoint and our factual substantiation of those viewpoints. The documents are not long or wordy but they avoid rhetoric as well. They are a good discipline on clients and agencies to test / validate arguments and facts before we start spraying them about
We distribute these advocacy documents either directly to audiences and / or in a variety of appropriate and accessible formats (speeches etc) We see these documents as the basis of discussion and a better undertanding between our clients and their audiences. A lot of my own practice also involves in helping clients prepare other materials (submissions etc) in ways that are likely to maximise effectiveness.
Again we do not see a dichotomy between fact and spin. We want to make our communications relevant and engaging, we want people to notice and talk to our clients, we want to play our clients into the game. We have alwys known that speading misinformation or worthless assertions is the anathema of good public relationships
When people talk about old PR I think they often talk about PR as practiced by advertising or marketing types. We see it as dialogue as a process. Over the years the differences between the way we see PR and the way advertisers see it (eg free editorial) have meant that we have rarely had successful working relationships with advertising agencies and why we have stayed independent and not sold out to some giant global advertising business.
I've hitheto seen our approach to PR as the norm, but if blogging helps take more PR people and agencies away from advertising / marketing, BM & RM then so much the better.
But please don't assume that all PR people are just advertisers by another means.
BTW, gramatically I doubt that there is any actual difference between 'relations' and 'relationships'

Trevor, we agree that not all PR is about brand management and spinning. That's the point of my fifth paragraph, the one about reputation management.

The difference between reputation management public relations and public relationships is that public relationships are about relations not just WITH the public but IN public. The relationships themselves become visible. That's why blogs are important: They are relationships built and maintained in public. Further, it is the nature of blogs that: 1. They are written by real, named individuals; 2. They are not about changing market behavior but about engaging in conversation on topics of real and mutual interest because that's how real realationships are built. As a result, they are likely to be written by people the company otherwise might not put in public view, without much more control than what a policy of "stay legal and use your good sense" provides.

Blogs are only part of building public relationships. But if that's what's happening - and Trevor, I don't assume you agree - then what is the role of the PR agency?

I still think this distinction between 'public relations' and 'public relationships' is artificial and based on comparing a 'straw man' and an implausible ideal.

It seems to me that pr has always been done IN public as well as WITH the public. (Of course, its easy to point to a few episodes like ketchum and say 'oh that's the real nature of pr)

As to the 'true nature of blogging', who decides what the true nature of anything is. This sounds like something the guardians, priests etc do. Blogging is so diverse, I think, that it has no true nature. The whole cluetrain thing is just a passing fad. You could say something like true nature when there's just a handful of geeks in a pizza restaurant somewhere in the USA sitting around deciding what the true nature will be. (I went to Bloggercon last year and there was a lot of this 'true nature' nonsense going on). Did you see the recent research that showed that two-thirds of blog readers don't even know what a blog is, let alone its true nature?

As to blogs 'by people no normally on public view' - sometimes, some place. But you have to recognise that companies are not just collections of individuals they have a separate legal and financial identities. For instance, in Australia, as in the US, there are very strict rules about disclosure of market sensitive information, as well as the broader issue of 'maximising shareholder value'. "Stay legal and use your good sense' doesn't sound particularly strategic and co-ordinated to me, it might make for great relationships and a lot of fun but how does it add to my value as an investor?
Why pr agencies? Simple, not many people are good at communications and a lot of them also have other jobs to do.
I smiled for instance when I read Russell Beattie write on his blog that he doesn't respond to all the comments because he doesn't have time - well, exactly

Trevor, which part of Cluetrain is a passing fad? Markets aren't conversations? The Internet isn't inspiring people because it allows them to speak in their own voice? The importance of the Internet isn't exhausted by its commercial possibilities?

Your point about the "true nature" of blogging is a good one. (Notice that I talked about the "nature" of blogging, not about its "true nature," a stylistic nit that actually matters.) But I think you should be careful in writing off all discussion of the nature of X or Y. I am not attempting to legislate the nature of blogs and declare some unworthy. I am trying to understand why so many people are blogging. If we are forbidden to talk about the nature of X or Y, then how can we talk about X or Y? How can we try to understand them? Your anti-elitist complaint I think really doesn't hold in this case. But, I do agree that complex social phenomena such as blogs don't ever have one simple meaning. It's good to keep that limitation of thought and language in mind even as we try to understand social phenomena. IMO.

I certainly recognize that corporations have legal identities. I worked in corporate marketing departments for ten years, as marketing vp for several of those years. But I think you'll find that some very large, successful corporations that encourage blogging have guidelines very similar to what I blurted out; ultimately, you have to rely on the good judgment of your employees (plus their awareness that you can fire their asses) just as you do when employees talk to visiting customers/suppliers or when they talk about their business over franks and beans at the PTA cookout.

Notice that I didn't point to Ketchum or any other bad apple examples. So, you're in fact arguing against a straw man in that regard.

Finally, to the main point you raise: Is there any difference in public relationships vs. PR. It's reasonable to say that PR has always been about relationships done in public, yet I still think there's a difference, and I don't think it's only one in emphasis. I'd point, again, to the disintermediation of PR and the giving up of (some) control...which is exactly what seems to bother you most about blogs.

(Thanks for the public conversation - the public relationship - Trevor.)

Trevor brings up a good point about the necessity of strategic communication. The SEC has very strict communications guidelines for publicly-traded companies. These guidelines include what can be said, where it can be said, and when it can be said. Violate those guidelines at your company's risk. Even privately-held companies must have communication guidelines to limit the disclosure of sensitive/competitive information, or they will quickly find themselves trumped by competitors and smeared in the marketplace. Think the corporate communication solution is public, unmediated forums? Think again.

David, regarding your point on PR being about control, this is necessarily so. PR professionals are supposed to be experts in communication, which should include a deep understanding of the impact of public messages. Communication oversight and control serves the purpose of creating a voice for the organization which is coherent, cohesive and understandable, and aware of impact. This is a big part of the brand. If you have a hundred publicly-visible unofficial spokespeople in the organization, the result is confusion and cacophony. On the other hand, if your communications department has the 'bunker' mentality and is afraid of public scrutiny, your messages will be disregarded as overly contrived.

The creation of a concise message that represents the viewpoint of the organization and takes into consideration the impact of the message is a task best not left to amateurs.

That said, there is definitely value in letting individual personalities and perspectives shine through the crafted 'party line.' I think there is a balance that can and should be struck between creating a candid public forum (with some guidelines) and managing official communications.

hello all, I was just wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time, i would like to undertake public relations at uni and i just wanted to kno the adv. and diasdv. of pr from someone in that field. It is hard to get professional advice, so if you could post a blog it would be muchly appreciated!!

Sorry to take so long to get to this.
If you go down the relationship management route... The worms go way beyond the can...
I went there last spring ... http://www.managementclarity.com/towards_relationship_management_may_2005.pdf
Then worked at it and now blog it.