Public-Relations-2 on Philip Sheldrake

Q&A with CIPR Influence magazine

Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I was interviewed by Rob Smith, Editor, Influence magazine . Published in two parts , May 2016.

What does Influence mean to the public relations business currently? Is it more important since the rise of digital or has it always been at the heart of what it is to be a public relations professional?

You have been influenced when you think in a way you wouldn’t otherwise have thought or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done. Unfortunately, the English language also has us using the word ‘influence’ in terms of something someone might possess.

I always prefer to work with the first meaning here for two reasons: first, the changing of hearts, minds and deeds is the actual object of interest to public relations professionals (reciprocally of course, more on which later); second, we might quantify the former better than the latter, and indeed many of the better attempts to score influence as something someone might possess rely to a certain extent on that capacity being demonstrated (ie, the former again).

What does this mean to PR practice right now? Well that depends on your flavour of practice, characterised rather usefully at this juncture by Andy Green as simply old school and new school.

Marketing and PR and the General Data Protection Regulation

Fri, 22 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My main character in Attenzi – a social business story , the CEO Eli Appel, has this to say over lunch with his chairman:

Good business is about cooperative and interdependent relationships, always has been, yet the humanity was lost when organizations scaled way up during the 20th Century. We want to make those relationships more human again, but the answer can’t be to scale it all back down. We have to scale something else up.

He adds:

… No business can really get to be social in a meaningful and valuable way simply by indulging in social media or by slapping apps onto social devices or by subscribing to a social enterprise network.

Eli is referring here to the visceral difference between ‘doing’ social (bolted on) and ‘being’ social (built in), and you know which one you’re on the receiving end of in any given situation right?

Influence measurement – a contribution to AMEC Measurement Week 2014

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In my last post on the topic of AMEC and measurement , I noted:

AMEC is the Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, not “of Media”

I have taken that as the theme for my contribution to AMEC Measurement Week 2014, which kicks off Monday. Dr. Jon White is another influence who, in a recent exchange, pointed out that the problems of measurement in public relations are largely the result of the approach taken to management in public relations work.

How is PR changing and who's going to do it?

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve had a number of questions thrown at me by students in their dissertation deliberations these past weeks. I’m not going to post them all here as there is overlap as you can imagine, but this one complements nicely the Q&A with Phillip Casey (and here ) at Newcastle University.

[caption id=“attachment_29777” align=“alignright” width=“150”] Silvana Paules[/caption]

Silvana Paules is a post-graduate student undertaking a Masters in Strategic Management of Public Relations at the Higher School of Social Communication , Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa . (I took the main photo here on a trip to the Instituto Politécnico in 2011.)

Here are the answers I offered to some of her questions, and I start with a relevant extract from Chapter 10 of The Business of Influence .

The Chief Influence Officer (CInflO)

The incumbent [of this role] is charged with making the art and science of influencing and being influenced a core organizational discipline – charged with executing the Influence Scorecard . They will be keen to network with peers in other organizations, to share best practice, to identify, refine and codify proven techniques, and to flag up unseen or unanticipated flaws in the processes described in this book [and others].

In my opinion, the role of Chief Influence Officer will be regarded as being on a par with the COO, as CEO-in-waiting.

Ideally, the Chief Influence Officer will have a varied background covering marketing, PR, customer service, HR, product development and operations – just the kind of trajectory frequently mapped out for ‘future leader’ types. They will probably have more experience in one or more of these over others of course, but will set out as a matter of urgency to orient themselves in the areas of the organization with which they have least experience, working hard to establish a thorough and lasting rapport with functional heads and all stakeholder groups. They will excel at interpersonal communication, inspire confidence and a can-do attitude, and know instinctively when to crack resistance one-on-one and when to draft in support from the CEO.

Given the not inconsiderable change management, collaboration and coordination challenges, boards will look in-house for candidates with extant strong organization-wide interpersonal relationships and a reputation for making change happen from both the hard and the soft side of things. Appropriate candidates will recognize that the task is not achievable alone, particularly without unanimous and unequivocal board support – which they will be intent on working hard to secure, if not already manifest by his or her appointment.

The candidates will be highly numerate, probably having taken a statistics or research methodologies component to their university degree.

They will be ‘digitally native’. They will be curious and indefatigable by nature, and able to identify and exploit opportunities as rapidly as they identify and learn from failure.

They will be comfortable living simultaneously in both the extreme, unrelenting real-time, and the future two to four quarters hence.

[…] They will particularly relish the harsh, unflattering light thrown on previously opaque and unconnected aspects of the organization, and the boardroom accountability this allows them to enjoy and demands they live up to.

Brand, PR, non-profits, and responsiveness – Q&A by Phillip Casey

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Having put my two penn’orth out there over the years I’m occasionally approached by students at this dissertation time of year. This week, Phillip Casey and I struck up conversation on Twitter. Phillip is a post-graduate student undertaking the MA in Media and Public Relations at Newcastle University (pictured) and his dissertation is titled Brand Image: PR in the UK non-profit healthcare sector.

[caption id=“attachment_29730” align=“alignright” width=“150”] Phillip Casey[/caption]

I enjoyed responding to Phillip’s questions, so, with his permission, I thought I’d make our Q&A public here. (It migrated to email in case you were wondering about a 140 character count.)

Where a reference consists of just a page number, it refers to The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age .

1) Is a strong brand image important for a non-profit organisation? Why?

A brand used to convey ownership of livestock. Then it was an “our name’s on it” quality assurance. This century, with product quality (defined as fitness-for-purpose) increasingly a given, a brand represents a nexus of values. If our values align with a brand, then I’m part of that brand. If they don’t, I look to take my time, attention and money elsewhere. [Attenzi ]

Organisations need to communicate their purpose and values in order to attract and assemble the right mix of people and resources to live up to its mission and pursue its vision. So brand, defined like this, lies at the heart of things.

The Future of Organization – a video presentation on the major themes and some new provocations

Fri, 23 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to the future of organization, and plenty to be optimistic about. Saying that, like any and all topics worth grappling with, it takes a bit of time to get up to speed on the depth and breadth of things. As a member of the advisory council for the Future of Work community, and part of the steering group for The Responsive Organization community, I know I’m not the only one looking to communicate these ideas effectively.

Mike Grafham and I talked about compiling a three-minute explanatory video, and I failed woefully at such brevity. This 42-minute video presentation aims to provide a relatively speedy immersion in some of the main themes, spanning human rights, complexity science, the death of heuristics, the six influence flows, personal knowledge mastery, social physics, trust, the digital nervous system, Web 3.0, performance and learning, public relations, collective intelligence, sociocracy, Holacracy, podularity, wirearchy, emergent civilzation, self-organization, organized self, socioveillance, the middleware corporate, Bread incorporated, distributed autonomous corporates, and the Mozilla manifesto.

[embed width=“960”]http://www.vimeo.com/96201589[/embed]

Big data. Big trust.

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This morning, my colleague Hector Arthur pointed me to a new report from Ovum’s Mark Little knowing I’d have a few comments to make. In the corresponding blog post – “Big Trust is Big Data’s missing DNA ” – Mark kicks off with:

In the rush to monetize customer data, companies risk diminishing the trust people have in services and brands. Sustaining and growing people’s trust in services is not just about “doing the right thing,” but also makes commercial sense.

As I like to say in other words, big data is worth more when wielded with customers rather than at them. Ovum calls this approach Big Trust.

Big Trust strategies are designed to build “trust equity” with customers as a basis for making core services stickier, for selling new services, and for brokering personal data to commerce under a new set of trust principles.

Public relations

The outlook is informed, directly or indirectly I know not, by the excellence theory of public relations presented by James E Grunig more than twenty years ago, which champions the two-way symmetrical PR model. This model uses communication to negotiate with the public, resolve conflict and promote mutual understanding and respect between the organization and its stakeholders. My Six Influence Flows model from 2011 extends this work for the digital / social / big data age, and you can find out more about PR models in my post here if it’s your thing.

Of course, this is not how the majority of practitioners practice PR, deferring instead to publicity and ‘spin’, which may be associated more closely with distrust than trust. But excellent practice is championed if, as a shrewd procurer, you know where to look.

An introduction to Web 3.0 for Social Data Week

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Next week is Social Media Week . That’s well known. What’s less well known is that this is Social Data Week , and this facet of social underpins a lot of the stuff on next week’s agenda. Nevertheless, many people with social in their job description, from public relations to marketing to ‘digital’, are not yet fluent in the data foundations.

One aspect of social data that particularly excites me is the Semantic Web, often referred to as Web 3.0. According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Web 3.0 describes the web as a universal medium for the exchange of data, information and knowledge. It’s an awesome vision that’s playing out right now.

What, exactly, is social business?

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’m kicking off #SCRM13 in London this morning. SCRM stands for social customer relationship management, and my role today is to get some energy into the room and, hopefully, encourage delegates to look up from simply slapping “social” onto business as normal.

Unfortunately, that’s precisely what many have been charged with doing. Those with appropriate powers of persuasion will effect organizational change I’m sure, but more to the point I feel that more chief executives need to attend Luke ’s conferences, a sentiment I’m sure he’d endorse.

Measuring Public Relations – a presentation

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I was invited to kick off the CharityComms “Made to Measure Communications” event today. Being a fan of measurement, or business performance management more widely, I’m always excited about meeting new people and sharing ideas and insights, but given that many find the topic a little dry to say the least, I’m grateful for any and all interaction and enthusiasm event attendees might muster. And today’s audience didn’t let me down, so thank you for that.

'Masterclass' at Bournemouth University

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Professor Tom Watson (@tomwatson1709 , @historyofpr ) invited me to deliver a ‘masterclass’ lecture at Bournemouth University on Friday. (When asked about PR higher education in the UK, most people would mention Bournemouth and Leeds Metropolitan.)

Student elections were at fever pitch, and there was a real energy about campus. The students at The Media School were on top form – in fact, I usually only get the calibre of questions they threw at me days or weeks after someone has digested my book or a presentation. So thanks to everyone who attended and participated.

GREAT (PR)ODUCT

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I have asked six people with senior positions in techie professions who they thought “does great PR” in the tech sector. Now these individuals are not in marketing and PR functions, so you’ll forgive my casual turn of phrase I hope.

You might know I detest the idea that you might “PR something”, as if PR is as tactical and atomic as picking up the phone or putting a release on a wire, but I deliberately didn’t wish to infect them with my view of public relations excellence. I wanted to hear what they’d say unprompted, unguided.

Each proffered two or three companies. Samsung and IBM were mentioned twice. Google thrice. But out front with four mentions was Apple.

Now anyone who follows the world’s first or second largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization (it swaps places regularly with Exxon Mobil) will know that they’re actually quite a secretive bunch. Steve Jobs infected the company with the idea that it knows what’s best for the customer, and any idea that it should work with the rest of us in defining future products and services appears plain counter-cultural.

If you, like me, define public relations as pursuing mutual understanding to build goodwill , the PR function at Apple appears quite asymmetric. As and when it suits its agenda, they’ll tell you. Otherwise get back in line. End of. I always feel a reluctance on Apple’s part to discuss its contractors’ labour practices , its own environmental and business practices, and the occasional product mess up .

Influence - the use and abuse of the word in social media

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

http://www.slideshare.net/Sheldrake/amec-2012-dublin-european-summit

View more presentations from Philip Sheldrake

The AMEC European Summit is taking place this week in Dublin. It’s a really vibrant event, a credit to AMEC’s Barry Leggetter and the delegates’ enthusiasm. (Actually, perhaps it’s a little less vibrant this morning after the visit last night to the Guiness brewery!)

I’m here representing the CIPR in a couple of sessions, and this morning I’m speaking in my own capacity… my slidestack is embedded above.

CIPR TV on ethics

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This week’s CIPR TV addressed the topic of ethics, and ‘spin’. Joining me in the studio were Eliane Glaser, Guardian columnist and author of Get Real: How to tell it like it is in a world of illusions (Amazon , Waterstones ), and Dr Jon White, PR consultant, strategist, and author of the CIPR’s PR2020 report (PDF) .

It appears the world of public relations has a reputation problem. It’s almost schizophrenic, with one camp entrenched in persuasive ‘spin’, or perhaps publicity, and the other in working towards open, transparent, mutual understanding between the organisation and stakeholders. Max Clifford for example, whilst often introduced by the British mass media as a PR consultant, is actually a publicist; a distinction indeed that the Wikipedia community is able to make at the time of writing.

Reputation and Wikipedia, part II

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The public relations profession and Wikipedia community have not enjoyed a productive relationship to date; antagonistic may be a more accurate adjective. For a quick overview of this situation, do take a look at my January 6th post, Reputation and Wikipedia .

For my part, I think I understand both parties’ points of view and see no reason why good public relations practice (the planned and sustained effort to influence opinion and behaviour, and to be influenced similarly, in order to build mutual understanding and goodwill) shouldn’t be employed to build bridges here.

CREWE

The Facebook group, Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement , has quite rightly stirred the pot, raising the profile of the issues involved. For those who practice public relations according to the definition in brackets above, Wikipedia can appear a frustrating community to work with. One asks: “Why, if I know facts on Wikipedia entries relating to my organisation / client are incorrect, can’t I jump in and correct them?” There are two answers to that, but firstly an update on that process of building bridges.

CIPR Guidance

PR Week’s Editor in Chief, Danny Rogers, called on the CIPR to clarify its guidance to members, and the profession more widely, on 18th January 2012 ("CIPR must set bar high on Wikipedia code "). Fortunately, the CIPR Social Media panel had already got its heads together to review the situation.

PRSA, defining PR

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup .]

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

And so concludes the PRSA’s Public Relations Defined (#prdefined) initiative. Launched 30th October last year, the initiative has garnered considerable interest, both positive and negative.

On the positive front, I have seen considerable interest from practitioners, predominantly but not exclusively in the US as one might expect given the PRSA’s geographic domain, grappling with the question of how to define what they do for a living with sincerity. No bad thing, particularly when some practitioners’ perspective turns out to be, well, a little far off the mark.

Reputation and Wikipedia

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup ]

What does the Wikipedia entry for your organisation / client / brand say? What about brand references in other entries? All cosy on the Wikipedia front? And recognising that a neutral point of view (NPOV) is one of Wikipedia’s “five pillars” , you have resisted editing anything where your neutrality is questionable. Right?

Let’s face it, Wikipedia is amazing. I had the pleasure of attending the Wikipedia 10th birthday party in London last year and I wasn’t the only one there who admitted to not appreciating Wikipedia’s potential back in the day. Seriously? A website anyone can edit?! Yeah right, that’ll work. Not.

And yet today Alexa ranks Wikipedia the sixth most popular site on the web. Search for a company or brand in Google or Bing and there’s the Wikipedia entry tempting you with its neutrality, familiarity and ease of use. The Wikipedia community plays a significant role in brand reputation.

This week, one of my favourite Conversation contributors, Stuart Bruce, spotted Member of Parliament Tom Watson’s interest in Wikipedia and PR practice . He found Watson’s contribution, Wednesday, to a Wikipedia talk page:

CIPR TV with Howard Kosky on Broadcast PR and with Dr. Jon White on PR 2020, the future of PR

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

CIPR TV goes from strength to strength. As part of the hosting team, I had the pleasure this week to host an extended show – sort of a two-for-one.

CIPR TV is only possible courtesy of the team at Markettiers4dc , and it was about time we invited Howard Kosky, Markettiers4dc founder and chairman, on the show. Howard walks us through how the broadcast landscape has transformed over the past decade and a half, and gives viewers some tips for the top and pitfalls to avoid. In fact, when you consider the role broadcast plays in the public relations mix, I can’t believe we haven’t addressed the topic before!

Why the meaning of PR shouldn't be left to circumstance

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post specifically responds to a post by Eric Bryant , Director of Gnosis Arts , “an experience-driven public relations firm focusing on tech, social media & nonprofit PR” in the US. In the post, Eric addresses the PRSA’s Defining PR initiative (see my last two blog posts) and asserts that the definition of anything is simply a function of how the term is used.

He writes:

“We chose this definition because we think it expresses what is both essential to public relations practice, as well as what distinguishes it from other management functions. Our definition also takes into account what most PRs do, most of the time, in carrying out their job duties.”

And his company’s definition is:

“Public relations is the practice of producing publicity (excluding promotional materials and paid advertising, which typically fall under the purview of Marketing); managing media relations and communications (typically among members of the Fourth Estate); and managing reputation.”

First up, let me thank Eric for tweet-alerting me to his post. I particularly appreciate his diligent explanation of the definition, too often omitted by the more slapdash.

His firm’s definition melds two ‘what’s and one ‘why’, reputation, justifying it on the basis of Wittgenstein’s notion of “meaning as use” (ie, definitions are lent simply by the way a word or phrase is commonly used). While Wittgenstein’s approach to language has its advocates, I’m not entirely clear it’s helpful here, for two reasons.

Public Relations Defined – the anatomy of a candidate definition, ver 0.2

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

[Written for the CIPR Friday Roundup]

Following the momentum the PRSA’s #prdefined initiative is achieving, and the CIPR’s statement of support , I thought I’d take a deeper dive into current definitions, and throw one in the mix myself.

I reproduced the section of my book that addresses the definitions of marketing and PR in my last post , and since then I’ve been able to have some insightful conversations, on- and off-line, with Jay O’Connor, Jon White, David Phillips and Terry Flynn.

Is it worth it?

There has been some valid criticism of the PRSA initiative pivoting around the question: shouldn’t we invest time and energy in improving practice to live up to current definitions than review those definitions we already have? The counter to this argument is apparent for those tracking the thousands of comments on line; it appears that more than a few practitioners indirectly criticised by those holding this point of view are actually questioning their own appreciation of public relations, if not actively revising it.

CIPR definition

PR is the discipline that 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 organization and its publics.

My favourite definition, no word of a lie! I obviously love the reference to influence, but also the apparently unique and skilful avoidance (intended or otherwise) of communication, thereby emphasising the objective not the means. But when ‘reality is perception’, as is increasingly the case with the radical transparency lent by social media, reputation is built by everything an organisation does (or indeed does not do), not just what the PR team does; every one must be involved in “looking after” reputation.

Public Relations Defined – The PRSA invites you to help set a new definition of PR

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s how the corresponding blog post by the PRSA describes its “Public Relations Defined” initiative:

As part of its mission to advance the public relations profession and professional, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has introduced a new initiative to modernize the definition of public relations and increase its value. As the digital age has caused significant shifts in how organizations communicate internally and externally, a question frequently asked by the public, media and practitioners is, “What is public relations?”

The PRSA explains the initiative in these simple terms:

Recent discussions, blog posts , tweets and mainstream articles have suggested that (1) public relations professionals (and, thus, the audiences we serve) continue to struggle with the question: “What is PR?”; (2) many industry professionals are unhappy with the current definitions; and (3) no one definition is considered “the” de facto industry definition.

What more justification do we need?

While my book The Business of Influence sets out to be a rethink of the ‘influence disciplines’, it starts by reviewing current definitions of marketing and PR. “Well, this book wants to map out a journey from A to B, and navigating to B is so much easier if we’re all at A to begin with.”

In hoping to contribute to the renewed debate, I’ve reproduced the book’s definitions section here. Now all I need to do is work out if the PRSA will be open to a definition leaning on the Influence Scorecard and the role of Chief Influence Officer. What do you think?

What our publics are telling us

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Public relations is about influencing and being influenced, right? You know, the two-way symmetric model to affect mutual understanding . Right?

Well, from my experience, the vast majority of practitioners are looking to exert influence but invest considerably less time divining insight from stakeholders and feeding that back into the organisation to improve decision-making.

For the best part of this week I’ve been in Miami hanging out with the members of ESOMAR who invest their entire time trying to work out what’s going on in the minds of customers and prospects.

ESOMAR describes itself as “the essential organisation for encouraging, advancing and elevating market research worldwide”. With more than 4,800 members from over 120 countries, ESOMAR emphasises its members’ contribution to effective decision-making.

This particular conference series is focused on how social media has transformed market research. There have been two main thrusts so far…

Firstly, consumers have become increasingly reluctant to participate in ’traditional’ marketing research approaches. Seriously, why should they bother? And if we’re all egged on with the promise of some kind of reward or prize, how interested are we in responding accurately, diligently?

Communication Director Magazine book review – The Business of Influence

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My book, The Business of Influence , has just been reviewed in Communication Director .

The magazine is billed as the professional specialist magazine for Corporate Communications and Public Relations in Europe. It documents opinions on important strategic questions in communication, discovers transnational developments and discusses their relevance from a European perspective. The publication is associated with the European Association of Communication Directors .

The review

Page 90, Communication Director Magazine, September 2011

“If you’re in business, you’re in the business of influence”. So begins a typically thought-provoking chapter from The Business of Influence that explores the concept of the Influence Scorecard and the non-tangible results of new communication tools.

The ROI of Public Relations – Friday Roundup

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The AMEC European Summit of 2010 is famous for killing anyone’s lingering hopes that advertising value equivalence (AVE) represents any kind of measure of the value of PR. As I like to say, AVE is a specious sum based on false assumptions using an unfounded multiplier, only addressing a fraction of the PR domain. Apart from that, it works just fine!

This summer, the European Summit delegates set AMEC’s top priority as determining an approach to measuring the return on investment (ROI) of public relations. Sounds a most admirable ambition, but should this be interpretted in the way I think it might, I fear we may be at risk of having dethroned one false idol only to pursue another.

Why? Because investment in public relations is investment in strategically important intangible assets, and such investments cannot be designed, executed or analysed in isolation. As Drs Kaplan and Norton put it in their 2004 book Strategy Maps:

“Economic justification of these strategic investments can be performed, but not in traditional ways. The common approach is on a stand-alone basis: ‘Show the ROI of the new IT application’, or ‘Demonstrate the payback from the HR training program.’ … But each investment or initiative is only one ingredient in the bigger recipe. Each is necessary, but not sufficient. Economic justification is determined by evaluating the return from the entire portfolio of investments in intangible assets…”

What does this mean? Well consider the hypothetical instance of two organisations designing, executing and analysing exactly the same public relations strategy delivering precisely the same results for the same investment.

Not PR – Friday Roundup

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

“CELEBRITIES, blue-chip companies and tourist attractions are using a new breed of PR company to hide their secrets and damaging press stories in Google search results. Online ‘reputation management’ agencies promise to suppress negative search results by driving them down the rankings.”

So opens an article in The Times on Wednesday this week. (I can’t provide the link to The Times as I’m not a subscriber to its paywall, but it’s syndicated here , sans paywall, to sister publication The Australian.)

On reading the article, part of me recognised this sort of capability at the same time another part of me felt very uncomfortable with it being associated directly with PR. And then I winced some more…

“[These agencies] typically use thousands of social networking profiles - set up using false names and operated using computer software to simulate the behaviour of a real person - to talk about and link to more positive results, pushing them above the negative stories.”

This is NOT public relations. This is not two-way communication aspiring to foster mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics. Such activities clearly breach the CIPR’s code of conduct , specifically its references to integrity and honesty. A PR professional never knowingly misleads about the nature of their representation.

Real-time PR demands rigorous strategic alignment

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Real-time PR is a hot topic.

This is nothing to do with fashion, but the unavoidable pressures of modern PR. David Meerman Scott’s November 2010 book, “Real-time Marketing and PR ” is already a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and with Twitter responses frequently meaningless after an hour’s delay, if not minutes, and many conversations requiring a response within the hour or two, awaiting the Monday meeting to debate possible responses is now simply unrealistic.

The Marketing Century – a compilation of expert insight

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

You can now get your hands on The Marketing Century – out this week – a compilation of expert insight across a wide gamut of marketing and PR related topics to celebrate the centenary of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). The chapter outline here is based on the book’s introduction.

I’m delighted to have authored the chapter on digital marketing, and I’m more than happy to answer any questions you may have on reading it.

Buy at Amazon / CIM / The Book Depository / Blackwell’s / Waterstone’s . And more info at Google Books .

1. Strategic Marketing (Martha Rogers and Don Peppers , Peppers & Rogers Group)

The Marketing Century opens with a clear statement from Don Peppers and Martha Rogers: it is vital that organisations put customers at the heart of what they do, both in the long-term and the short-term. To create value, firms must lift their sights from the typical focus on current profits and instead start seeing customers as the company’s long-term resource – looking at each customer in terms of the long-term return they generate. A long-term strategy for marketing – one that focuses on customer equity and not solely on current profits – can provide marketing with the context and objectives needed to maximise the overall value created by each customer.

The next big big thing: it's happening now

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Marketing and PR as we know it today have been transformed by two massive technological revolutions. The first was the Web, when the Internet became user-friendly, and its subsequent social morphings. The second was the mobile phone and its current zenith, the smartphone. These are the two giants to which most everything else that’s changed relates.

The vast majority of marketing and PR strengths and weaknesses, and associated opportunities and threats, stem from the Web and from the smartphone. And yet another giant has emerged to which the vast majority of marketing and PR professionals are mostly blind in my experience: the Internet of Things.

Everything is being connected to the Internet. Cars, dishwashers, air conditioning, power supplies, clothes, animals, bottles of whisky, public transport, medicines, joint replacements, your front door, your training shoes and your bicycle. It is happening right now.

If you’re an innovator on the lifecycle / adoption curvy thing, then you were thinking about the Web in 1995, about mobile in 1998, and smartphones in 2005. You started scoping the Internet of Things in 2008.

Now it’s the end of 2010, it’s the time for the early majority to embrace the Internet of Things, and that’s you if you want more of that opportunity to come your way than the competition’s. Join me at Internetome, the Internet of Things Conference , in London, November 10th. Sponsors include Intel, Qualcomm and the Consumer Electronics Association, and my own company.

And as the Internet of Things impacts all aspects of business not just marketing and PR, I’d urge you to get on the front foot and let the rest of your organisation / your clients know. Today.

Hope to see you on the 10th :-)

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

CIPR TV featuring the High Priest of Publicity, Mark Borkowski

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Wadds and I benefited once again from the excellent work of the team at Markettiers4dc and another great guest this show, Mark Borkowski, MD of the eponymous Borkowski . Not exactly renowned for being a wallflower, Mark tells it how he sees it. We had some great questions submitted live via Twitter, and to be honest we could have chatted for twice the time!

My favourite comment relates to the attentiveness of advertising account managers to their clients needs. The quote won’t pass you by :-)

Intro to Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things at the CIPR Social Summer session

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Intro to Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things

View more presentations from Philip Sheldrake .

@dewilded summed up one of the key conclusions we reached at the CIPR this evening in his tweet:

Companies thought they were laid bare by Web 2.0, they’ll feel positively naked w/out reputation mgt set for RDF & the semantic web #CIPRSM [link ]

My role was to act as tour guide and polemicist; to introduce the Semantic Web and the Internet of Things in just 90 minutes; and to leave the session attendees with considerable food for thought.

The Web of data is a Web of influence

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a fan of Web 3.0. Perhaps obsessed is a more accurate description.

Web 1.0 is the Web of documents. Web 2.0 is the social and user content Web. Web 3.0 is the point at which the Web itself understands that content and social interaction. Some call it the semantic Web, and some call it the Web of data, but regardless of naming conventions, it’s going to mess up a hell of a lot of business models, and create some fascinating new business and public-benefit opportunities. And it’ll transform reputation management too.

If you think ‘atoms of influence’ trickle far and wide courtesy of human expressions and understanding with social media acting as loyal conduit, just wait until machines understand these contributions too.

An interview with Seth Godin - PR not publicity

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_27421” align=“alignright” width=“250” caption=“Seth Godin - www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4035933108/" ] [/caption]

Seth Godin is a perceptive individual. He spots things the rest of us are too busy to see, and then lets us know about them in an easily-digestible format. Sounds like a cracking formula for a best-selling author if you ask me… and of course he is.

With a dozen titles to his name, including Tribes, Meatball Sundae, perhaps most famously Permission Marketing, and most recently Linchpin, interviewing Seth was always going to be both entertaining and insightful.

Interview with Seth Godin

An interview with Brian Solis

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Image by affiliatesummit via Flickr

I interviewed Brian Solis for the CIPR’s website recently. Brian is one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist and futurist, Solis helps practitioners get to grips with the effects of emerging media on marketing, communications and publishing.

His perspectives are well worth a listen: