The Bangladesh Brand Forum Seminar 2013 at Dhaka Bob Pickard

My thesis today

Social media is revolutionizing the way the world communicates and it is powering the public relations industry’s global ascendancy

In Asia, PR has traditionally been a relatively minor and subordinate part of the marketing mix, but now it increasingly occupies centre stage

Because public relations is at its essence a social networking business, it is well positioned to thrive in the digital domain, especially in a region where mobile communications is the new marketing battleground

Media relations and publicity will always be a key part of PR, but now creating content, building communities, understanding analytics and applying the psychology of persuasion are all part of the picture

PR will always be about the art of relationships, but increasingly it is a measurable communications science

Sigmund Freud had

an American nephew

Edward Bernays

has been called the

‘Father of Modern PR’

Public relations has ‘scientific’ roots

Bernays defined a PR professional as a “practicing social scientist” whose “competence is like that of the industrial engineer, the management engineer, or the investment counselor in their respective fields”

He said that to assist clients, public relations counselors use and apply their understanding of behavioral sciences such as anthropology, history, social psychology, and sociology

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

The PR stereotype

Pre-modern analogue public relations

Based on relationships with face-to-face key

Simple events and publicity

‘Primitive’ technology

Analogue methods

Text was ‘King’

Ample attention span

Deliberate and slow

Enough time to tell stories

We measured media coverage

Communication to fixed locations

Modern digital public relations

• PR becoming more a science

• E-relationships

• Digital methods

• No attention span; distraction is a constant

• People continuously online

• Technology massively propagates pictures, videos, motion graphics, apps, experiences

• Content is now ‘King’

• Scant time for stories

• Communication to people on the move via mobile

• We measure business impact and outcomes

Then and today

PR is telling an organisation’s story to its target audiences

So that those people will do and think

What we want them to do or think

• know of the company

• feel favourable towards its brand

• recommend its products to others

• invest in the stock

• engage in online conversations

• want to work there

What are we looking at?

What are we thinking about?

From its earliest days,

PR has always been

about the psychology

of persuasion

PR is all in the mind…

...and the unconscious mind rules

Our deepest thoughts – the ones that account for our behaviour in the marketplace – are unconscious

“According to most estimates, about 95 percent of thought, emotion, and learning occurs in the unconscious mind —that is, without our awareness” [Gerald Zaltman]

Evidence of how the emotions of the unconscious mind drive human behaviour comes from neuroscience (using advanced new fMRI brain scans), psychology, and is being widely adopted in marketing

Stories tap into the unconscious mind

People tend to remember products when they are woven into the narrative of media content

They tend not to remember brands that don’t play an integral role in the story because people can see them as being ‘just ads’

PR pros know about storytelling

PR people spend their entire careers trying to convince executives that they should invest more in ‘earning’ editorial media coverage of their brands in news stories rather than ‘buying’ paid coverage through advertising

Because people can readily identify ads when they see them – and we tend to think that ads are supposed to be present during times and places we expect them to be – they attach less credibility to their claims

But if they see a product featured in a news narrative, people are less likely to be suspicious and more likely to trust brand messaging that isn’t visibly purchased

The news is a story product

The news is a product which media companies sell, and people have attached a value to it with paid subscriptions a tangible measure

News product has been produced by standards-based journalism that is supposed to be:

• motivated by the pursuit of truth

• resourceful in the use of research

• informed by facts

• governed by standards and edited with balance

News content is still big, but journalism getting smaller

In much of the world, the economic basis of the traditional

news media business is declining, and so is the quality of

editorial product

As a result, people trust media stories less than they did before:

• there are fewer reporters and editors

• battles about editorial ethics versus just going with what a

company hands over for content are less frequent

• money is often the only thing that seems to matter

• now more than ever, speed trumps accuracy

Decline of news story quality

Reduction of news story quantity

Media companies have tried to make the news more

entertaining and opinionated (rise of spectacle and

sensation), and the result of this debasing of journalism is a

further reduction of news’ credibility

Therefore, in many markets here are fewer eyeballs looking

at a shrinking number of trusted news media stories

Less ‘signal’, more ‘noise’: the supply of journalism-grade

news is shrinking; aggregated raw content keeps

expanding

Where PR storytelling is shrinking

OK, so if a brand’s involvement in a story is still the best way

for a product to get noticed...

...then what do PR people do if there are fewer trusted news

sources producing a reduced number of stories that will be

credible enough to have commercial impact even if we ‘earn’

coverage successfully?

Where can PR communicate narratives if the storytelling

zone is shrinking?

Where PR storytelling is growing

Social media,

through creating

brand-centric

communities and

starting

‘conversations’

Martin Sorrell:

“Facebook to my mind is

not an advertising

medium.”

“I think [Twitter] is a PR

medium…it’s very

effective word-of-mouth.”

Harvard Business Review

March 2013

The rise of peer-to-peer communications

MO

NO

LOG

UE

“They can’t hear

me and I feel

insignificant”

“They must

listen and I will

be heard”

PASSIVE CON-SUMERS

DIALOGUE

ACTIVE

PRO-SUMERS

C O N V E R S A T I O N

C O

N T

R O

L

Advertising versus PR?

Advertising has dominated the ‘commanding heights’ of the old one-way controlled monologue

Public relations has always been about social networking and building two-way ‘public relationships’

PR professionals come pre-equipped with humility and an engaging approach that solicits feedback

[If anything, PR people have lacked ample self-confidence; “I’m just the PR person” has been a depressingly frequent refrain over the years]

Knowing with whom to communicate, in the right sequence, with the compelling content to ‘earn’ thoughts, sharing and action is the province of PR, whether with traditional or new media communities

Daniel Edelman:

“Advertising is like the wind and public relations is like the sun. The wind blows hard and goes away and the sun is penetrating. PR builds credibility. PR is very stimulating and demanding and takes a different type of person and creativity than advertising does. PR can create the stir and attention and advertising can come in and hammer it home”

B2C PR

THEN why can’t organizations fill the void themselves

telling stories directly to the public?

IF a declining media business can no

longer generate an ample supply of

compelling story content...

IF, owing to its resource constraints,

media is becoming an automated

and uncritical B2C conveyor of pre-

packaged marketing information

passed to them by PR people

(which may not be a good thing!)

Richard Edelman:

“Every company is a

media company”

ZDNet

February 13th 2013

C2B

Does this mean that PR will increasingly ‘go around’ journalists

and bypass the traditional media?

The smart targeting, proactive relationship-building, story

ideation and content provision of ‘analogue PR’ are more

relevant than ever in the ‘digital PR’ era

The PR skills that ‘pitch and place’ coverage now build

communities, earn friends, attract followers, foster sharing

Publicity’s power is amplified when ‘liked’ or shared on

social media platforms

Corporate content factories

Which network for what?

United States data from

Harris Interactive, 2012

Birds of a feather flock together

A social network is a social

structure made of nodes

(which are generally

individuals or

organizations) that are tied

by one or more specific

types of interdependency,

such as values, visions,

ideas, financial exchange,

friendship, sexual

relationships, kinship, dislike,

conflict or trade.

Trust for those with no apparent stake

in the outcome of their advocacy

Source: TNS

The digital Trojan Horse

Persuasion 1.0

Going back to Dale Carnegie in 1936, we know that making people feel important is the precursor to persuasion

Once PR-driven interactions make people feel important (‘someone is listening to me’), then stories are told via conversations

“Make the other person feel

important and do it sincerely”

Communication starts with listening

‘You are important to us’

‘We need your opinions to help inform our actions’

‘We are listening to you and you will be heard’

Carnegie’s other astute observation

“When dealing with people, remember you are not

dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures

of emotion, creatures with prejudice and

motivated by pride and vanity”

Emotions

Whether or not there is listening, of course social media

increases the demand to be heard, regardless of merit

[Ironic that those demanding to be heard can often seem

least interested in listening!]

‘Me’ and ‘I’ narcissism, lack of attention span, rampant

impatience, toxic anger and abuse abounds

Crowdsourcing intelligence versus mob rule?

Asian emotions are shared socially

The seven deadly digital sins

1. Lust ‘I want this’

2. Greed ‘I need this’

3. Gluttony ‘I must have more’

4. Sloth ‘I haven’t thought about it’

5. Wrath ‘I am angry about this’

6. Envy ‘I want what s/he’s got; I am worth it’

7. Pride ‘I am better; I deserve this’

The power of metaphor

Lots of work is now being done in the area of ‘conversation communication’ and ‘trans-media storytelling’

Where the two meet allows persuasion marketers to tap into the massive PR power of metaphor

Conversation communication enables the easy application of metaphors used in everyday language for the development of marketing narrative – e.g. ‘word pictures’ – to convince consumers about a product brand with story ‘frames’ that already exist in their unconscious minds

Metaphor elicitation

Research is key, asking people before starting a PR

campaign things like:

• When you think about [company], what is the first thing

that comes to mind?

• What do you feel when you see this [product] image?

• Can you share some of your past experience in dealing

with [area where product offers some benefit]?

Concrete words for abstract concepts

Affection is warmth (“John is a warm person”)

Important is big (“That’s a huge job you have”)

Difficulties are burdens (“What a heavy workload”)

Actions are motions (“He’s a mover and shaker”)

Purposes are destinations (“Light at the end of the tunnel”)

Life is a journey (“Marching to the beat of a different drummer”)

“The abstract way we think is really grounded in the concrete, bodily world much more than we thought.” -- John Bargh, Yale psychology professor

We’re wired for stories

Scientific American Mind

(August/September 2008) Source: Hoffman

The modality of storytelling

Zaltman contends that while marketers tend to

consciously think in terms of text, ‘real’ people

unconsciously think in terms of images

As eyeballs migrate to the Internet, even ‘word

picture’ text will not be enough as multimedia –

videos and pictures and sounds – are being

programmed by PR people for persuasion

Persuasion 2.0

When people commit themselves in public to something, they have created a new ‘image template’ of themselves...

People will do and say whatever is necessary to conform with their new public image...

Digital PR applies the ‘six principals’

It’s ‘like’ signing a public confession

The death of deference

‘The rebels’

used to take

over the

radio station!

Applying search insights

Using tools like Google Trends, PR people can mine search

results for key words, and inject compelling metaphors into

online content by combining Search Engine Optimization

(SEO) tactics with conventional PR approaches

The ‘natural language’ words people are using to search

can be discovered, the results of which can be used to

tailor a narrative’s messaging elements.

Keywords can be crafted as metaphors, which can be

integrated into media messaging, news releases, speech

content, ‘elevator pitch,’ etc.

Will attention spans sustain stories?

• Continuous partial attention (multitasking) has been debunked, and we now know that people can rapidly switch between mental channels with ‘the executive mind’ deciding what we pay attention to

• “The internet is there for snacking, grazing and tasting, not for the full...feast that is nourishing narrative. The consequence is an anorexic form of culture. Plot lies at the heart of great narrative: but today, we are in danger of losing the plot”

-- Ben Macintyre

Where data meets design

Source: We Are Social

Social media is all over Asia

40%

80%

Asia

Global

Source: Global data from Burson-Marsteller Global Fortune 100 Social Media Checkup 2010

Asia data from Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific Social Media Study 2010

Source: Global data from Burson-Marsteller Global Fortune 100 Social Media Checkup 2011

Asia data from Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific Social Media Study 2011

80%

84%

40%

81%

Asia

Global

2010 2011

36%

37%

39%

42%

47%

52%

53%

55%

83%

Chemical

Materials

Constuction

Banking

Consumer Durables

Transportation

Capital Goods

Technology Equipment

Trading

of the world’s top 2000 companies

are headquartered in Asia

Source: Forbes Global 2000 list

The digital opportunity for Asia

1800s

1980s

2000s

The rise of America

The rise of the Four Tigers

The rise of Japan

2010s The rise of China & India

The rise of Britain

1900s

2020s The rise of ?

Corporate Achilles’ Heels

Not-so-new

Product safety

Lay-offs/closures

Environment

Human rights

Nationalism

Terrorism

Pandemics

New, and growing

• Customer service

• Advertising claims

• Greenwashing

• Marketing conduct

• Smart mobs

Professionalism of NGOs & activists

Speed to command the news cycle

Apology communications

Asia’s PR export to the West?

http://www.slideshare.net/bmasia/bursonmarsteller-digital-crisis-communications-study

12 months away from a digital crisis?

http://www.slideshare.net/bmasia/bursonmarsteller-digital-crisis-communications-study

Companies unsure what to do

What about countries?

“Troubles in Bangladesh are

beginning to spoil its reputation

among foreign companies that had

flooded into the country—and are

highlighting risks to investors

looking for new manufacturing

bases cheaper than China.”

80 major problems identified

debt crisis • food prices • climate change energy supply • the digital divide nuclear security • youth unemployment

Governments cannot do it alone

Old systems and institutions simply cannot cope with new complexity and speed

These challenges require the engagement of an entire society of stakeholders

The role of public relations is therefore key

Klaus Schwab, World Public Relations Forum 2010

The relationship imperative

Collaborate with stakeholders for success today and sustainability tomorrow demands:

Governments need to engage corporations, NGOs and ordinary citizens in their work

Corporations must show profund accountability to all stakeholders

“Public relations in the public interest” – relationship brokerage to help bring about economic recovery, political freedom, technological advancement & social justice

Source: Dan Tisch, Global Alliance for PR and Communications Management

Harold Burson:

“PR is often regarded as synonymous with communication, but communication is actually only one facet of the art of public relations”

“The task of PR is actually to improve ‘relationships with society’”

“PR’s key role is to advise top officials of companies or organizations about how to act in an ethical or socially correct manner when making a decision on a course of action. In a sense, PR acts as an organization's ‘conscience’”

Asahi Shimbun

January 29th 2012

Thank you !

The Bangladesh Brand Forum Seminar 2013 at Dhaka Bob Pickard