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PR

DIGITAL

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide |Ged Carroll |November 18, 2008

2PR:

• What is PR

• Changing nature of media

• Why PR online?

• Monitoring

• Online PR opportunities

• Case studies

• Questions

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3WHAT IS PR?

"Public Relations is a management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures and interest of an organization followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.” - Edward Burnays

"Public Relations is a set of management, supervisory, and technical functions that foster an organisation's ability to listen strategically to, appreciate, and respond to those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organisation are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values." - Robert L. Heath, Encyclopedia of Public Relations

“Public relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.” - CIPR

4WHAT IS PR? PART 2.0

PR in practice

“Public relations takes many forms in different organisations and comes under many titles, including public information, investor relations, public affairs, corporate communication, marketing or customer relations.

Number 26 (out of 95 theses): “Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.” - Cluetrain Manifesto

“To add to all the confusion, not all of these titles always relate accurately to public relations, but all of them cover at least part of what public relations is. At its best, public relations not only tells an organisation's story to its publics, it also helps to shape the organisation and the way it works.

Through research, feedback communication and evaluation, the practitioner needs to find out the concerns and expectations of a company's publics and explain them to its management.” - CIPR

5WHY ONLINE PR?

• Changing media landscape• Changing audience reach• Changing control• Changing timing

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BBCMEGASTAR

LOADED

FINANCIAL TIMES

ECONOMIST

GUARDIAN

BLOGGERS - SOCIAL NETWORKING USER GROUPS - FORUMS - WIKIS - PHOTOS CONSUMER-GENERATED CONTENT

VOGUE

DAILY TELEGRAPH

7CHANGING CONTROL

• Consumers are becoming the media

• People are engaged by stories but want to participate in the conversation

• Companies have to turn themselves inside out, embrace transparency and brand consumer collaboration

• Marketers need to become systems analysts:– Construct stories from modular

elements– Channel energy: stonewalling and

ducking are lethal

8CHANGING TIMING

• Weekly and monthly publications are left behind:– Wired is still a monthly magazine but

also publishes a plethora of content every day

– Sections are user-generated such as Found: ‘Artifacts from the Future’

• Daily publications now publish several times a day through different media:– The Times is one of the largest audio

content providers in the UK media

• The news cycle lasts longer – online news sources act like an echo chamber:– The most linked-to site by US blogs is

the New York Times online

9CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

• Reputation and dialogue with peers and other stakeholders no longer needs to be conducted solely via the broadsheets

• Online content makes it easy to form an opinion on a company’s reputation

• Protests no longer need to happen at shareholder meetings to have an impact

• Media no longer has to carry a press pass

• Whistleblowing is a lot easier• A fluid fast-moving environment

requires a flexible fast-moving response

10REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

• The principles of reputation management and crisis comms have remained the same

• The media landscape has become more complex

• Things move a hell of a lot faster• The internet is the canary in the

coal mine• When you lose control it’s a lot

harder to get it back• Online is both a source of criticism

and a platform to disintermediate a hostile media

11MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGIES

• Customers and consumers use online as a valued source of information

• Consumers don’t differentiate between offline and online media consumption

• Tighter targeting is available by going on online

• It has never been cheaper to distribute branded content direct to your target audience

• Peer communications (such as blogs and social networks) are as influential as the word-of-mouth role of real-world friends

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MONITORING

13MEASUREMENT: SILVER BULLET (OR NOT) 13

• Cision

• Attentio

• Market Sentinel

• BuzzMetrix

• Cymfony

• Biz360

• Factiva

• Brandimensions

14MONITORING

Measurement tools often don’t have the speed of near real-time updates and you have to go back to basics–Google alerts:

• Ongoing monitoring–Google news alerts–Google blog search

–Technorati:• RSS-fed buzz with authority meter

–Yahoo! Site Explorer:• Inbound links

–Website analytics–Radian6 – commercial offering that many major brands like

Pull this all together with RSS

15LEVELS OF ONLINE PR ENGAGEMENT

• Monitoring: no engagement but active listening to what is being said about the organisation and its peers – any related issues

• Low-level engagement: as Monitoring plus response-led online presence

• High-level engagement: as low level engagement, but proactive approach, integration with other marketing and customer services activities

16TOOLS & TECHNIQUES FOR ONLINE PR

• Online news sources & RSS:– Mainstream media– Personal blogs and sites– Press releases

• Business blogs

• Podcasts and video

• Virtual worlds

• Social networks

17ONLINE NEWS SOURCES & RSS

• Mainstream media:– Modify existing PR approach to match the new media that the

organisation is using – Expect more fluid deadlines– Do offer exclusives– Only think about stories in an appropriate media

• Personal bloggers:– Engage10-20 carefully picked blogs– Read these blogs– Plan ahead: establish relationships by commenting on their blogs

and linking to them– Don’t pitch them– Remember this isn’t likely to be their full-time job– Be inclusive– Make allowances on etiquette

18MAXIMISE THE REACH OF PRESS RELEASES

• Brevity• Hyperlinks• Supporting content• RSS feeds (think about the

licence on the feeds)• Facilitate bookmarking and

‘curated’ web services:– Distribution

– Newswires (vertical and general)

– Company blog inbound links

19PERSONAL BLOGS & SITES

• You already probably have staff who blog:– Empower them by putting together a set of

blogging guidelines:• Covers in simple language the obligations

they have under their contract of employment

• Good etiquette• Conveyed in a tone-of-voice that fits with the

company– See if you have any product or industry

mavens– Think about whether you want to provide

them with a blogging platform

20BUSINESS BLOGS

• Don’t start a blog without a commitment to maintaining it

• Do have an understanding of the target audience and how they interact online

• Think about the tone of voice

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22PODCASTS & VIDEO

• Tends to be one-way rather than two-way communications

• Dynamic delivery• Audio is portable and flexible

to consume• Video requires captive

attention – need to be respectful of the audiences time

• Content needs to be: original, interesting, humourous

• Two’s company – have a sidekick

• Succinct

Audio blogs

Q&A interviews

Executive speeches

Panel discussions

Storytelling

Self-guided product tourOnline learning

23VIRTUAL WORLDS

• Virtual worlds, like all communities, have rules

• Activities within the community need to respect the rules

• Pick a community that your brand will fit in with and work with in the long term

• The most important thing is to think about engagement rather than generating coverage

24SOCIAL NETWORKS

• Think about your target group:– Their motivations– Their location– Where they are in their life– Be respectful of their personal space– Think about how you can add value– How do you engage beyond becoming a

friend

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CASE STUDIES

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27JET BLUE CASE STUDY

• Valentines Day 2007: – 130,000 customers trapped in bad

weather conditions– JetBlue fliers were trapped on the

runway at JFK for hours, many ultimately delayed by days

– Only 17 of JetBlue's 156 scheduled departures left JFK

• What JetBlue did– Communicated directly with its

audiences– Admitted that things had gone wrong

• Explained what had gone wrong• Explained what they were going to do

about it

28ALPO / PURINA PET FOOD RECALL CASE STUDY

29ALPO / PURINA PET FOOD RECALL CASE STUDY

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© Waggener Edstrom Worldwide 2008