In truth, Brooks may yet go: swept out by the torrent of public moral outrage, the grumblings of the News Corp. board or the tactical business need for appeasement through another public sacrifice as the crisis builds. But what then? The moribund BSkyB deal – booted into the long-grass of regulator reassessment by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt – looks increasingly unlikely to succeed; some predict a News Corp. retreat from the UK newspaper market altogether. A sea-change in the fortunes of Murdoch, the landscape of the press and the entire public perception of the media seems inevitable. And along with it, other power-wielding groups such as politicians, regulators, industry bodies and even the police will increasingly feature in the spotlight of public opprobrium and re-assessment.

As journalistic ethics are scrutinised more closely than ever, how can PR firms, as participants in the way our media function, ensure they maintain the kind of ethical standards demanded by an increasing sceptical public newly armed with instant access to social and digital media? Just as the working practices of journalism and public relations share similarities, so too are our ethical considerations aligned.

But they are not identical. Journalists have a primary duty to serve the public; PR firms, their clients. Sometimes, journalistic duty has to transcend sectional interests, even – as we have seen in the downfall of News International – loyalty to proprietors or business. A PR firm could not, in good faith, act against the interests of its paying customers. Are we to judge one set of working ethics as superior to the other? Cross-sectoral comparisons are of little use; each sector should be assessed on its own merits and record.

Nonetheless, Public Relations cannot function outside the public interest. We are all part of the same society; we all benefit from markets that are transparent and free of distortion, and a public climate of institutional confidence rather than suspicion. On practical professional terms, journalists and PR consultants alike succeed – or fail – on the trust with which they are received by the world at large. They transgress that trust at their peril.

Much of this professional posing is disingenuous. The reality is that in business – any business – you want to show your competitors in the worst light possible. That’s competition.  But overtly negative campaigning can backfire as it clearly has the potential to actually turn off the people who you are trying to convince that you are the good guys.  You need to consider carefully whether to use it as a tactic and always default to taking the high ground, lest you risk getting tarred with your own brush.

But to be effective a marketing campaign has to make its target audience understand the advantages of one product or service and disadvantages of another. Indeed, in media relations this may actually help the journalist understand the competitive ecosystem on which a company is trying to understand, analyse and report. If you are promoting the advantages of Open Source, for instance, it would be remiss not to have a clear explanation of the disadvantages of proprietary environments. The issue is how is that to be achieved?

After all, the UK press loves a bit of controversy not to mention negativity because it sells publications online or offline and so high tech PRs inform the media every day about unsavoury or previously hidden aspects of their client’s competitor’s activities or products. But technology  journalists or bloggers normally know exactly who they are talking to and understand their motivation. These are the `sources` that  journalists have always gone to great lengths to protect and so planting information in this way can get the result you want – copy that plays to your strengths and your competitor’s weaknesses – without the source being revealed. That’s a tradition that works very well for both sides

But in the Burson-Marstellar Facebook vs Google case it was the covert nature of Burson-Marstellar’s actions that was the problem.  Even if the information they were passing on was correct, hell hath no fury like a journalist or blogger misled.

The key issue is that the PRs actions should be transparent to the journalist or blogger – i.e. they know who you are representing so they can judge the veracity of what you are saying before editing it and presenting it to the public.  That’s the power of media relations – it’s based on the assumption that the journalist or blogger is a filter and the Western tradition is that is the filter that delivers truth and accuracy.

So Burson-Marstellar’s big mistake and why they are reaping the whirlwind of both flack and hack opprobrium is that they crossed this line.  They concealed the fact they were acting for Facebook and those they talked to now feel their professional reputations have been besmirched.  And as a journalist or blogger your prime currency is the ability to educate and inform correctly.  If you have been deliberately compromised in doing so by a third party that makes you very mad indeed. As Burson-Marstellar is finding out to its cost…

There is an old adage `there is no such thing as bad publicity`. But I doubt that Toyota, the car firm with a once glowing reputation for reliability and now feared for its defective technology, would agree as its market share plummeted. Remember also Sanlu, the Chinese company that hit the headlines for weeks on end by producing milk that poisoned many consumers in The People’s Republic? Now it is bankrupt and its senior management team are sitting in jail.

But where does this seemingly contradictory phrase come from? It’s easy to point, for instance, to exceptions that justify the rule. William Shatner’s records, the soon-to-be-outlawed footballer’s snood and even Kazakhstan. The country was ridiculed in the film Borat, its officials even complaining to the film producers for the slur on its nationhood. But in fact, although still not top of everyone’s preferred holiday destinations, after the film was released tourist inquiries to Kazakhstan increased four-fold.

But so much for the laws of unintended consequences and unforeseen results. The fact is that in the age of social media whoever you are mud sticks and sticks around forever. That means a company’s murky history can so easily be retrieved with a Google search or exposed on a customer complaint blog (will we ever forget Dell Hell?).

That means that it’s important to understand the difference between publicity – the random generation of coverage – versus public relations – the management of reputation by the selective targeting of audiences to deliver a measureable result. Nowadays if you want to build a positive reputation it is more crucial than ever to work on a well thought through and executed public relations strategy and don’t think that any old exposure will have the outcome you desire.

Never has the difference been more apparent than in the recent case where the founder of a US online optician tried to generate publicity by replying abusively to dissatisfied customers, and even – allegedly – threatening some of them with violence. He revealed triumphantly to the New York Times that his plan to provoke masses of complaints had pushed him to the top of Google searches for eyewear. I’m sure he thought he’d delivered a classic case of `so bad it’s good`- that is until he was arrested last December.

“A good reputation is more valuable than money.” Publilus Syrus, 1st Century BC

However, Steel clearly highlighted that two of the above brands, American Airlines and US Airways, handled their situations admirably. American Airlines immediately made safety their key message. US Airways responded within minutes of the first footage being posted on Twitter by a guy who happened to be on a passing ferry. It is with no doubt, commented Steel, that if those brands had not acted in an honest, compassionate and transparent way they would not be in business today. On the contrary he continued, BP blamed the contractors, Qantas blamed Rolls Royce and Perrier simply failed to view the contamination as a global issue and went into communication meltdown.

A key point Steel made linked crisis and social media. If US Airways had not built up a following on Twitter it would not have been able to be part of the conversations taking place, globally, about the crash in the Hudson. US Airways would not have been able to provide instant updates on the ground and ensure the public was fully, regularly and consistently informed of the state of play. Social media has changed the face of crisis. If a brand is not engaged, whether it be consumer or business to business, with its audiences via social media channels, when a crisis hits there will be no way to influence trust and reputation. CEOs, Steel concluded, need to rethink their job titles to CROs – Chief Reputation Officer, get connected and put the customer first.

“A good name is like precious ointment; it filleth all round about, and will not easily away; for the odors of ointments are more durable than those of flowers.” Francis Bacon

To the uninitiated in the dark arts of communications campaigns watching Eddie and Patsy in Ab Fab would have you believe that PR in particular was all about swigging vast amounts of `stollybolly`* and talking nonsense.  Well, we’d argue that in tech PR neither of these statements is correct. Well perhaps one, actually, but one thing’s true for sure – we Reptiles are fond of a good Pub Quiz.

And there’s nothing gets our dander up more than a bit of extended question combat with our fellow flacks (that’s “PR people” for those that have found this post accidently). Last night Chameleon PR (accompanied by honoury pub quiz team ringer Chris Mcintyre of Business XL and M&A magazines) was to be found in London’s Covent Garden Grand Connaught Rooms along with 20-odd other PR consultancies at the PRCA’s Frontline annual fact fest.

Not content with not only knowing that Tiger Woods had been dropped as a PR vehicle by Accenture, AT&T, Gatorade, Gillette and Tag Heuer, but that Robbie William’s `Angels` is a modern favourite at both weddings and funerals, The Reptile XL Quiz Machine^TM quickly parked its tanks on a few agency lawns by blasting through solving a series of anagrams, dingbats and identifying supposedly famous faces through truly frightening familiarity with technology-lite subjects such as soap operas, glossy magazines and the X-Factor to be neck-and-neck in first place after the final round.  A tie-breaker ensued.  Trying to banish all thoughts of the performance of England footballers taking penalties in crucial championship matches, and blanking out the white wine fuelled cacophony, we stepped up to the plate and promptly buried the ball.

Shutters clicked, flashbulbs popped and the stewards fought the ensuing stage invasion by adoring fans⁺ and we were promptly rewarded with bling that could upstage Eddie’s Lacroix.  Yes, sparkly gold winners’ medals lovingly hand cast from premium plastic in the People’s Republic combined with a genuine silver effect engraved cup.  Having slept in our medals, the cup now occupies pride of place amongst the other gongs in the reception at Reptile Towers, EC3.

You too could have escaped with this priceless booty if you had correctly guessed the answer to `How long is the Suez canal?` It’s 101 miles and we got there first, so there. And who got the answer on our behalf?  None other than our battle-hardened ’58 vintage crisis communications guy, who parachuted into the fray and made damn sure he didn’t screw it up (unlike the ’56 debacle). Wholly appropriate in so many ways…

*a particularly potent combination of Stolichnaya vodka and Bollinger champagne, sweetie.

+ we might be exaggerating a bit here

Following last week’s annual Communication Report from Ofcom, I pulled aside Mo Elnadi, The Reptile Group’s Head of Digital, to talk about the impact of the report and the position of PR and social media agencies in the digital age. Mo is currently completing an MBA on the impact of social media on digital marketing and PR.

Here’s what he thought …

With regards to the report that was published last week, do you feel this information is important to you as Head of Digital?

Absolutely, we still need to further investigate the UK figures that have been given, because in some examples the results are lower than may be expected. I think further analysis and research in to how the survey was conducted will be crucial in helping us to better understand the findings. The results are different to those that we have seen in previous US studies, but this may be due to the technique used to obtain them and how they are measured.

In your opinion, are social media platforms still developing? Does more need to be done by PR companies?

This evolving landscape is constantly developing and social media platforms are now the fastest growing online sector. This is just the beginning, so it is vital that PR agencies follow this trend and embrace new forms of communication channels, after assessing the commercial potential and risk.

What challenges does social media pose to PR companies in comparison to more traditional techniques?

An important aspect of PR is creating dialogue that adds value with the right audience at the right time, in the right tone – so problems that may arise with these new technologies include:

-The real time factor – we have to ensure that we are always on top of the hottest topics that interest the target market in order to engage effectively with our audiences. More importantly, we must understand the dynamics of this new era and adapt our strategies accordingly, which is a challenge to many traditional agencies that are not familiar with those trends.

- Tracking and Monitoring conversations- It is imperative that you are able to keep an eye on what is being said about you or your clients. We use the latest monitoring tools which are able to search the web in real time for any relevant conversations about our cilent’s brands and also to identify key influencers per sector and channel.

- You can’t undo feedback that is written – With the democratisation of information there is far less control for brand image. Therefore in order to turn around any negative feedback you need to be transparent, address the issue and then leverage the opportunity to turn the situation into a positive discussion. One of the interesting facts about social media is how a strong base of fans and followers can jump to defend their favorite brand, or provide support for others on your behalf for low or no cost.

Are all PR operations ensuring they use social media techniques effectively?

While some are ahead of others, when it comes to taking part in this revolution the majority are already aware of the need to adapt to the new “Connective Tissue of the Web”. The problem though is whether they have the right digital strategy, resources and skill level to achieve desired results and to the right quality level.

It’s not a good time to be looking for jobs in PR agencies. It’s rough out there.  As we pass by the announcement of an annual cornucopia of A grade A level passes – and the ensuing arguments about whether students are getting smarter or the exams are getting easier – it’s been followed by constant reference in the media to graduate unemployment.

But the hard facts are that graduate unemployment is nothing new.  It’s cyclical.  Thousands before have graduated into stagnant job markets and still found employment.  Even now there are jobs available; we are expanding and have filled four posts in the last couple of months. Yet the cry from employers that there is not enough skills and talent available is still heard regularly.

So assuming you are a graduate that’s got their heart set on a career in a PR agency, or lucky enough to be in a job already, what are the things you can do to enhance your chances of regular and better pay cheques?

For most graduates entering PR the first job is with an agency, so you need to consider what sort of PR you want to do – there is still demand for those who specialise in technology or medical disciplines whilst those wanting to work in the celebrity or financial sector are finding things more difficult.

If you live in the regions, to increase your chances you’ll need to be prepared to move to London as – with the demise of massive public sector spending on communications – most regional agencies will be contracting if not disappearing altogether.

When you are applying for any job whether it’s work experience, internship or a salaried post consider why a firm should hire you and don’t be backward in coming forward.  No one likes a show-off but you’ll need to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Don’t take your cues from X Factor, but do ‘Auto-Tune’ your skills and experience to demonstrate you can add value to the company you want to join.

Make sure it’s you that’s applying too; having you parents applying on your behalf says all the wrong things about your level of maturity and personal motivation.

Should you get an interview, act like you want the job. In fact look like you have already got it. That means finding out as much as you can about the company and the people that are interviewing you, the clients the firm works with and so on. The web makes this easier than ever, so this is now a basic requirement not a brownie point. Think about the questions you may be asked and prepare your answers. And remember there is no pre-defined starting salary – the market dictates what you can and will be paid.  Your priority is to get experience.

Before meeting a potential employer spend some time on your appearance – invest in a haircut, get a decent suit, clean and repair your shoes or buy a new pair. Go easy on the jewellery and makeup.  Make an effort. Be tidy. If you look like you’ve just got out of bed it says you can’t be bothered, so why should the person that’s interviewing care about you?

If you are already in a job much of the above applies but the key issue for this employer, at a minimum, understanding and articulating what your clients do, why they matter and being able to explain the competitive and regulatory environment in which they operate.  It would seem like PR 101 and the reasons clients hire agencies but you’d be surprised how many candidates, even at a senior level, are unable to do this.

For those of you still studying the outlook will be tough for a few years yet, so get your heads down and come out with a 2.1 or better and consider a Master’s degree – if you are numerate graduate, get a literate Masters; if you are good at telling stories learn to count.

Failing that, get a job, any job, and succeed in it so that your potential employers know you are a grafter who is mercifully free of the Generation Y belief that the world rotates around you.  Learn a new language or polish up what you have, PR is increasingly a global game. Understand the digital world extends further than your page on Facebook and be careful what you post online – your potential employer will be looking and, like tattoos, what might have seemed like a good idea at the time may not look so good later.  You don’t have to do all the work yourself, find a good recruitment consultant who’ll understand your strengths and work hard on your behalf.

If this all sounds a bit grim there is some good news.  PR and communications whether – online or offline – will be a career that will challenge you afresh every day of your working life and constantly test your stamina, creativity, management capabilities and many other skills.

If you really want it you can go very far very quickly; that’s something worth fighting for.

At the end of a recent technology PR pitch the prospective client asked how much value we could deliver in our proposed relationship. Our answer was “that pretty much depends on you.” This response was met with a momentary silence, a raised eyebrow and a face that said: “Typical – yet another slippery PR consultancy that won’t commit to targets!”

Then we explained. The ensuing discussion was very interesting as the potential client started to appreciate the real rights and responsibilities of the client/consultancy relationship. At the most basic level, clients have a right to expect a stream of agreed results but it’s their responsibility to enable the consultancy to deliver its best work.

From the agency side, where you live or die by hitting targets, it’s obvious that the effectiveness of the service delivered is directly impacted by the efficiency of the client. Yet from the client side, it isn’t always so clear.

Ever faithful to the maxim ‘keep it simple, stupid’ in getting across an apparently contrary point, we deftly avoided the usual over-blown consultant spiel that involves copious magic quadrants, inverted pyramids, normal distribution curves and so on. We even sidestepped discussion of measurement models, but, guilty, we did grab a Nobo pen and draw a couple of concentric circles on a whiteboard.

An electronic version of the resulting minimalist masterpiece accompanies this post. You’ll notice that one circle is very much smaller than the other. What the areas of the circle in our model represent is the time and effort taken to achieve a single CEO interview in a major publication.

The small circle represents the estimated resources needed to create a pitch for a CEO profile piece for hypothetical client A.

The process is this: Agree target media; ring an appropriate journalist; pitch story; secure a face-to-face interview; set a time and place; produce a briefing document and host it. Communicate with client all the way through. Allow for post interview follow up, analysis and agreeing next steps in the PR strategy. That’s it.

The large circle represents the estimated time taken to create a pitch for a CEO profile piece for hypothetical client B.

The process is this: Spend days to agree the media to be targeted; get the original pitch approved after endless versions as client announces stream of strategies de jour; ring an agreed journalist; pitch story; secure a face-to-face interview; set a time and place; uninvite the originally-secured journalist because of a change of heart at the client about who the CEO is prepared to meet; secure a second interview; change the agreed venue for the interview; and then later alter the time of the interview at the client’s behest. Produce a longer briefing document than originally agreed, at which the CEO will not even glance because they don’t have time and care even less; drop out of hosting the meeting because someone in-house wants to host it, but feels they need an in-depth briefing so they can brief the CEO about the briefing that they are now hosting; conduct briefing over the phone and supply complete summary of what you just said. Ring journalist to explain you won’t be there as expected.

Reluctantly, call the journalist again after the interview to find out how it actually went as the client appeared to star struck by their proximity to the CEO to take note of the conversation and when the article will appear; order multiple copies of the magazine at client’s request; and then raise the number of magazines pre-ordered as client changes their mind. And then revise down the number of magazines pre-ordered because the number of magazines ordered is now way too expensive, despite the client accepting the original estimate. Chase the publication house because the magazines haven’t been delivered, only to find they have arrived and were signed for days before but have been lost in the client’s internal post.

Having seen the copy, create an email ‘selling the results’ of the coverage so that the in-house team can copy and paste it for internal use, with a PowerPoint detailing just how important the coverage is and with an accompanying montage slide of the coverage itself. Then get a quote for a large coverage board dedicated to the coverage. And then produce the artwork for the coverage board, and two or three different versions of the coverage display, and then go through a tortuous related approval process whilst the client vacillates over corporate power structures. Subsequently discuss the number of copies, in endless size variations that are required, with quotes for every option. Of course, the final decision is changed at the last moment. Lastly, chase up the coverage board production company because the coverage boards haven’t shown up in time; only to find out they were signed for days ago, but got lost in the client’s internal post.

By this time, of course, the client CEO, couldn’t care less about the results of some interview they did in some country on their world tour weeks ago because it’s now ancient history and they are focused completely on the end of quarter results. Similarly their executive assistant doesn’t think some press cuttings stuck to a bubble-wrapped piece of board that has loitered behind their desk for days is important enough to interrupt their boss’ schedule in order to show them…

So, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry “a client’s gotta know its limitations.” The question is which client do you most resemble and which client is getting the most value out of their consultancy?

Answers below please…

Now, of course, public relations is a fairly blunt sales tool. Its main role is that of building awareness, credibility and positioning. Direct sales lead generation is more the role of telemarketing, direct mail, email shots and the like. Advertising, too, can easily carry a call to action; it’s paid for space.

But, on occasion, sales generation is possible with tech public relations. A few months back, Siemens Enterprise Communications asked us to create a PR campaign for its security consulting service.

An often neglected aspect of technology-related security is social engineering or, for sake of quick understanding, confidence tricks to blag one’s way into an office and, once there, to get employees to divulge confidential information such as log-in details. No technology is involved in the blagging, but the aim is to get access to the IT network.

Given it’s a little understood phenomenon, it’s an ideal stomping ground for a white paper. And given it’s security, it’s a media friendly story. Combine the two, and you’ve got a slew of excellent coverage much of which carries a link to a white paper on the Siemens Enterprise Communications website for extra information.

A little data capture prior to download and that’s a semi qualified sales lead database. It’s certainly one example of how PR can tangibly drive sales leads.

Chameleon PR went over to see Damon Jones, director of comms for Obama’s Democratic Convention this morning. He was in town to share lessons that he learned from Obama’s campaign trail. I’ve summarised his ten key learnings below, but before we jump into them, here are two things we found most interesting:

- the use of online community tools. Obama actually hired one of the co-founders of Facebook to build a community website to empower democratic supporters to reach out, engage and donate. Check out http://my.barackobama.com for a shining example of a very good online community site.

- the willingness to let people run with their own messaging. They basically gave people the tools to build their own comms (video clips to ‘mash-up’, key messaging which people were free to tailor, logos to play around with and personalise etc..). In Damon’s words, these ‘made millions of people feel like they had a stake in the campaign’.

So here are Damon’s lessons:

1.) Begin with the end in mind – start by recruiting supports and get them to buy into the brand promise. After you’ve developed a relationship with them, motivate action (donations, campaigning etc.)

2.) People adapt messaging to what works for them – the Democrats they gave every state tools to adapt campaign messaging to make it more relevant to their own situation

3.) From information to empowerment – they created the tools so that people could become their own brand ambassadors. These were available on my.barackobama.com. After registering, others from the new joiner’s ZIP code were alerted. These people were encouraged to email the new joiner and start a dialogue. People engaged with people, not systems or brands.

4.) The internet is one big glass house – total transparency. You can’t hide from critics – sites like factcheck.com and politifact.com will pick you up on any inaccuracies. These need to be monitored all of the time and people need to be empowered to engage with them (more below)

5.) The web of influence – a) Bloggers are incredibly influential. At the Democratic conference, bloggers were given the same access as the likes of Fox News and CNN. B) If you want to get news out there quickly, a press release doesn’t cut it, a blog post does.

6.) Entertainment matters – no matter who you are, entertainment media is very influential e.g. Sarah Palin parodies

7.) You are the company you keep – be transparent with all of your dealings and prepare for the worst

8.) Everything is an opportunity – they created a website called fightthesmears.com which gave people information to fight the opposition’s smear campaign. They gave people the facts and encouraged them to fight with them – on forums, in bars etc…

9.) Time is not a luxury – the days of a the structured news-cycle are over. The media needs to be monitored constantly and a rapid response team needs to be in place to react and capitalise on developments

10.) Execution, execution, execution – ensure staff have clear responsibilities and ensure they understand their place in making the campaign work

One final point to make – what makes Damon’s work even more impressive is that he worked for free, as a volunteer. He took six months off from his job as director of external affairs with P&G for this role on Obama’s campaign. How did he justify this?.. Damon left us with some parting words that made us wonder what we’d like to achieve in our lives ‘Some people dream worthy accomplishments while others stay awake and make them happnen’.

Thanks to the PRCA for putting this on.