net.mentor

…or honesty is the best policy.   I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about customer service and customer communication - generally in the UK it’s crap!  However, the other day I experienced some of the best of both in a wonderful exchange with a waitress in a local restaurant.  Out for a relatively rare ‘power lunch’  - OK a bit of a gossip with a PR mate - we ordered some food.  I had arrived early and already had a drink.  My friend ordered a drink when the food arrived. All pretty ho-hum so far.

About 10 minutes later, the drink hadn’t arrived and the waitress was duly reminded and she disappeared.  Two minutes later she re-appeared, went bright red and started giggling.   “I’m  really sorry”, she said, “I drank it and we haven’t got any of this left.  I’d completely forgotten you’d ordered it and it looked so refreshing, I drank it myself.  I’m really sorry, can I get you both something else on the house?”

Apart from the drink itself, the most refreshing thing was her total honesty and immediate apology and offer.  We all had a laugh about it, had a round of drinks and even gave her a tip at the end of the meal (and it wasn’t just “don’t chug the punters’ drinks”)!  Not only does this get a good rating on my customer service list (maybe I’m just weird), but  it also reinforces what I’ve always said in crisis management and customer communication training - “No comment is not an option and honesty is the best policy”.

Frank Oviatt has picked up on a useful source of PR academia, with the new Essential Knowledge Project from the Institute of Public Relations in the US. As much as the articles are interesting in themselves, the bibliographies are equally, if not more useful. It also led me straight into some great reading.

Timothy Coombs’ paper on Crisis Management and Communications presents some fascinating, and at times surprising, research. There are some very helpful lists of best practice and an excellent bibliography. However, I do question the blame response as the best method of reputation repair, even though several of these strategies appear to be high on the Master List of those used in real crises. I can’t question the research, or that these strategies have actually been used on many occasions. What concerns me is that so many organisations in time of crisis turn to, or turn up, the ‘blame culture’ rather than taking responsibility and being open in crisis.

Professor Denis Smith, now at Glasgow University, is one of the UK’s leading authorities on crisis management and talks about ‘crisis incubation’ - i.e. issues that are left un-managed which incubate and eventually manifest themselves as apparently unrelated crises. One of the main reasons he cites is an inflexible management structure and a corporate ‘blame culture’. In Sjoberg’s recent article in Risk Management, he clearly shows that antagonism erodes trust faster than even competence or honesty.

So why on earth would any organisation hoping to protect its fragile reputation at the most critical time, choose a blame response to repair the damage?  is this a culture that is being encouraged or unsuccessfully combated by their public relations advisors?

The reflection on strategies from Liam at Black Belt Dojo made me chuckle. And then it turned to a nervous laugh as I wondered which paragraph of the article in the glossy business mag we fit into. Net.Mentor Creative - one of the three strands of our business - offers advice in creating communication strategies for those organisations that either think they have something to say (but actually are saying the wrong things to the wrong people), or have something to say (but don’t know who to say it to).

Our fabulously named business mentor, Emmanuel Aharoni, starts to turn very strange shades of differing colours when the words ’strategy’ or ’strategic’ are mentioned in his presence.  “WHAT DOES IT MEAN???” he yells as we cower, pitifully, in the corner, thinking desperately of an educated reply while whimpering “it’s OK, our potential clients will know!”

The Merriam Webster dictionary definition is :

1 a (1): the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war

(2): the science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions b: a variety of or instance of the use of strategy 2 a: a careful plan or method : a clever stratagem b: the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal

3: an adaptation or complex of adaptations (as of behavior, metabolism, or structure) that serves or appears to serve an important function in achieving evolutionary success <foraging strategies of insects>

Hmmm, based on this, we’d have our clients’ Boards marching up and down, issuing edicts while adapting their behaviour to forage for suitable snacks in the canteen.

PR guru and academic Anne Gregory in her chapter on Public Relations Management in Alison Theaker’s Public Relations Handbook states: “For many public relations professionals, a sign of having ‘arrived’ is obtaining ’strategic’ role signified by having a seat on the board.” OK, so far so good - strategy is obviously important. She continues: “There is growing evidence to suggest that public relations is a vital tool for strategic management“. Yes, I’m keeping up so far…She then goes on to talk about systems theory and organisational structures, which is fine, but I’m still not sure about the strategic bit. Ah, hang on, here’s something under the section “Public relations in strategy-making” which says “…suffice it to say that strategy-making involves a great deal of information gathering, analysis and decision-making.” Right, so actually, going back to Merriam Webster and the foraging strategies of insects, we may not be so very far away…I’m starting to turn a very strange shade of something.

As a relatively recent blogger, I found the NakedPR blog a refreshing, if acerbic, means of bringing a sense of reality to some of the blog hype. So I was sad to see that Jenn Mattern is hanging up her blogging trousers for a while. I was, however, more saddened by the way she signed off. Her last blog was a truly scathing attack on the whole of the PR blogosphere: the final set of comments, a bitter postscript to some clearly personal online spats. I’m sure she won’t give a toss what I think, but her present and future clients might recommend a more dignified exit.

Which makes me wonder: if blogging is such a bitter experience, why do people do it? DaveDorm, not unsurprisingly, took personally someone’s desire for Schadenfreude (pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune) in reading his blog. His response only serves to reinforce my thoughts that perhaps social media should actually be re-defined as ‘anti-social’ media. Dave asks “is that why you people really come here? To revel in my pathetic life? Is that what this is? Enjoyment in my misery?” - which, of course, raises the obvious question - why would you lay your misery out for others to read? In fact, Dave’s blog has a lot of fun, left-field, ‘you really couldn’t make it up’ stuff which helps lighten the day.

He goes on to say “Being on my list is an extension of my trust. Don’t violate it.” But doesn’t that miss the whole point about blogging? In putting yourself out there and poking at issues, whether it’s NakedPR, DaveDorm, Net.Mentor, Greenbanana, Strumpette or Uncle Tom Cobley and his carthorse (sorry, couldn’t find a link to that one), we’re constantly being told that the beauty of blogging is that it’s personal communication rather than corporate puff. If that’s true, then I think we all have to be prepared to get our hearts broken once in a while and try not to feel bitter about it.

Not new, but an interesting way of defining a news story. It’s business focused, fairly commonsensical, and American - but none the less valid for all that.

It was picked up by Brendan Cooper - very Relevant and Timely!

The old chestnut - who depends on whom, PR or Journalist - has been repackaged, re-spun and reprinted in a new book by Nick Davies. “Flat Earth News” has engendered massive current debate in the UK and beyond. An entire edition of BBC’s You and Yours was devoted to the subject, and included Nick Davies on the programme. By their own admission, the BBC had themselves succumbed to Chatto and Windus’ PR machine in devoting an entire hour to the subject.

So is reproducing media releases without checking the facts lazy journalism? Yes. Is it the way all journalists work? Unlikely.

According to UKwatch.net the research behind the book from Cardiff University’s media boffins is a depressingly true reflection of current journalism. I’ve been both a broadcast journalist and a PR (apparently I’m supposed to be a Flack, whatever that is). On occasions I’ve been both at the same time (the worst of all worlds)!

I’ve worked in local radio newsrooms in recent years and received the “are you mad?” looks when I’ve suggested actually stepping outside the office to go on a story, rather than settling for a 20 sec clip on the ‘phone. Yes, journalism has changed. There are is less money, fewer staffers and double or treble the amount of content required. That’s Nick Davies’ point. Quality of journalism has to suffer. But is it the journalists’ fault?

PRs hold a precious commodity - news - and good PRs know how to create news and make their story more attractive and newsworthy than someone else’s. Does that make them bad people? Does it prevent journalists from using their editorial judgement and whatever investigative skills remain open to them to look beneath the surface? I don’t think so.

Naked PR’s Jennifer Mattern turns her guns on bloggers who now seem to be demanding more relaxed and ‘promotional’ releases to be issued by newswires because this is the kind of stuff bloggers want. I’m with her and PRWeb. If bloggers want credibility, they should work as hard as any other journalists, regardless of the style or medium. In fact, looking at some of the PRWeb releases, if this is the kind of stuff they want - and the kind of things PRs believe is news - then they deserve each other.

At the end of last week, I gave a lecture to a group of young PRs on briefing spokespeople. The keynote speaker was Gito Harri, who had just delivered his last piece to camera for network BBC TV news before becoming a senior media strategist at PR giants Fleishman Hillard. The money certainly had an influence, but I wonder how long it will be before his carefully honed journalistic skills become blunted by the constant chipping of unrealistic client expectations and under-resourced journalist contacts.

It’s not often that I’m stopped in my tracks by creativity, but as a content writer I was genuinely moved by a simple piece of writing that became a TV advert. Highlighted by the Blackbelt Dojo team, this advert for Argentinian Presidential candidate Lopez Murphy is simple and obvious for the first half, and with a blindingly obvious but cleverly revealing and powerful second half.

Most importantly it has made me stop, think and consider perspective. The art of good writing is still alive.

I couldn’t let this one pass by without comment. No, it’s not a complete U-turn from my comments about online radio being the future, it is, in fact, the ultimate in multimedia usage. I saw this on ResponseSource and had to think long and hard about whether this was clever, funny or downright morbid. In the end, I couldn’t make up my mind, so I’ll let you decide whether you think Sayitwhen.com (Say it when You’re Gone) is the ultimate in the use of audio or not.

It gives people the chance to leave a message in case the 777 they are boarding suffers catastrophic malfunction at 30,000 feet, or the mild heartburn suddenly manifests itself as a terminal miochardial infarction. The message can then be heard by their loved ones after the event.

A really touching idea, or something disturbing? You choose.

And just when you need support for your last blog posting…along comes the pan-European online radio initiative by some of Europe’s bigger broadcasters which was launched yesterday. Euranet only serves to reinforce the fact that radio stations are only too aware of the power of the internet. Even more positive is the net’s ability to bring out the collaborative gene in big media organisations. Bring it on.

It seems that Nokia are keen to get in on the radio act according to Radio Today.  They’re asking online radio stations to register and be put on a pre-loaded directory on their latest phones.  It’s certainly good news for the smaller community stations - I’m involved in Radio Salaam Shalom, the UK’s first Muslim/Jewish Radio station, for example.  What interest me about Nokia’s move is whether (and how) they might prioritise the list.  I can’t believe it will simply be an alphabetical, worldwide list.  If it is, the “main reason to be listed in order to let the audience discover and enjoy your station” seems, in fact to be just another list lottery.

Will they categorise, for example, or regionalise, or base it on link volumes once the list is up and running?

The other interesting point is Radio Today’s comment that  “it seems the future of radio could be online”.  Is this a misprint, do they mean “mobile”? I think the online future of radio arrived about two years ago and that radio is settling into an exciting blend of terrestrial, online and mobile (through listen again/podcast features).  In addition the rise of DIY radio and music mixes - thanks to Brendan Cooper I recently discovered Musicovery which is a revelation - makes me think that radio is alive and well and more exciting than ever.  There speaks the haggard, unbiased radio journalist.