Cipr

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup] There will be an economic recovery and best practice public relations will play its part. Economists may not agree on the how, but they are agreed on the what – we need economic growth. And economic growth comes from organisations that are more productive, and productivity is partly driven by improving mutual understanding between the organisation and its stakeholders – ie, the excellence model of PR. An organisation that better understands all stakeholders will be more sensitive to its market and more agile and appropriate in its response. Last week, the UK government announced an initiative with twenty six major organisations “working together to deliver a new era of consumer empowerment”. The programme, midata, “will give consumers increasing access to their personal data in a portable, electronic format.” This is a world first as far as I know, although the prospect has been discussed for several years. It’s often referred to as vendor relationship management (VRM), the other side of the CRM coin if you like. Will your organisation join this revolution in customer data? Will you play your part in the economic recovery? Best regards, Philip and The Conversation team. ...

I had the honour and pleasure of hosting the Presidential Debate on CIPR TV yesterday – the annual show giving the Presidential candidates the opportunity to set out their stall, and for members to ask them questions live via Twitter and the CIPR web form. You can watch the video here and you’ll find the candidates’ election statements on the CIPR website . Voting for the President-Elect 2012 / President 2013 closes midday Friday 18th November. ...

An interesting start to the day today… over to CIPR HQ in Russell Square to deliver a training course on social measurement in the Freshly Squeezed series. I had just 45 minutes with 15 minutes Q&A, and this time constraint combined with the state of best practice in the profession meant I was aiming simply to leave attendees knowing the right questions if not the right answers per se. After all, as the slidestack below teases out, if your organisation, marketplace, stakeholders, marketing and PR objectives, marketing and PR strategy and execution are unique, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that your metrics will be unique too. ...

Regular readers know that social analytics is a subject close to my heart. And would you believe it, my ebook on the matter, The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008, still gets downloaded a thousand times a month. I also made sure to include a section on social analytics in my book of course (out this month in the UK and shortly in the US), listing twelve primary characteristics of the services to assist in your organisation’s tool selection and procurement. ...

The CIPR has just announced that it will be launching The Conversation this coming Monday, during its social media conference . The Conversation provides the facility to aggregate the best PR related blogs from members and non-members, in the UK and further afield. And it goes live under a full head of steam because The Conversation is the new face of MarCom Professional, the network I’ve been running for the past four years. Here’s what the CIPR has to say: ...

The AVE (advertising value equivalence) approach to PR measurement and evaluation was simple. And utterly wrong. It’s a specious sum based on false assumptions using an unfounded multiplier and only addressing a fraction of the PR domain – a greater waste of time and effort you couldn’t hope to find. Measurement and evaluation is essential, but requires real strategic understanding, diligence and perseverance. For me, it represents yet another distinction between the 21st Century PR professional and the 20th Century practitioner. ...

This week’s CIPR TV focused on the formation of the Public Affairs Council in response to the Public Administration Select Committee’s recommendations in its December 2008 report, Lobbying: Access and influence in Whitehall . We’re delighted that Elizabeth France, UKPAC’s chair, and Keith Johnston, CIPR and UKPAC board member, could join us to explain what’s going on, who it affects and how. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlL4w1i _4WA

I enjoyed having the opportunity to grab a couple of minutes with the CIPR ’s new CEO, Jane Wilson, prior to putting members’ questions to the two candidates for CIPR President-Elect 2011, President 2012. Thanks to Rob Brown and Sally Sykes for accepting the invitation, and thanks once again to the Markettiers4dc team for making it happen.

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to ask Robert Phillips (@citizenrobert ), CEO Edelman UK, his opinion on the state of the PR profession. Robert believes that public relations is at a pivotal moment when, confronted by the brutal transparency of social media, the profession has the opportunity to embrace the public information and two-way symmetric models as the default rather than the exception, ditching the spin and persuasion attitudes and connotations. Resigning them to history, or at least to publicists. ...

Thanks for your permission to email you with the Friday Roundup today. It’s been over a decade since Seth Godin published Permission Marketing and as the Wikipedia entry for the book and the term says, the undesirable opposite of permission marketing is interruption marketing. In short, if you have to interrupt me without my permission in order to attract my attention, then all you’ve done is distracted me from what I was otherwise interested in. And if you do that, you simply risk putting your brand on the back foot as a result. I’ve been interrupted a lot this week. Firstly there was the first episode of this season’s must-watch period TV drama on British TV (I know, but what can I say, I like them!) Downton Abbey has the perfect stoneware pudding bowl full of characters and plot lines, but it also had something else in abundance, and to a saturation uncommon for Britain, adverts. The Guardian was none too pleased either. Second, how many of you enjoy those ads that take up your entire browser when all you want is the content? I’ve been counting… 9 this week. Third, I followed a link to a video a friend said I’d like. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I do because I had no intention waiting for a 60 second car advert to show, particularly as I’ve just bought a car and I wasn’t interested in the marque interrupting me anyway. Surely there must be better ways to connect marketers and content. I know the adverts pay for the dramas we love, but I won’t be watching any of the ads now; I’ll ’time-shift’ episode 2. Better four classy, memorable one-minute adds in the hour than seven bundles of hectic 30-second rubbish. I’d watch it live then. And this all goes to show that I can empathise just a little with those poor journalists on the receiving end of so-called PR spam. Non-relevant interruptions to their day caused by the spray-and-pray practices of the lesser practitioner. If this matter concerns you, if you don’t want to be annoying the very people you hope to influence, do check out the Media Spamming Charter published this week by the CIPR, PRCA and IRS. If you know what’s good for business, do make sure your PR team subscribes to it and has the discipline to stick to it. Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team. ...