One country's ad is another country's poison — Crisis management in a new global environment

It really surprised me today that our course leader Pam used the Chinese word “危机”meaning dangers and opportunities to start the lecture on Crisis management.

Pam also said: “One person's nightmare can be another person's everyday life”.

In the same way, one country’s ad may become another country's poison.

In a recent Citroen advertisement, it shows Chairman Mao’s picture frowning on Citroen’s new car, with a tag line "…but at Citroen the revolution never stops." The purpose of this advertisement was to show off Citroen’s technological prowess and make it the focus of their success.

Although this advertisement was shown in several Spanish newspapers, it caused a huge stir in the Chinese market. Soon after, Citroen decided to release the following statement: “French car-maker Citroen has apologised to China for running a full-page advertisement in several Spanish newspapers featuring a poster of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong pulling a wry face at a sporty hatch-back. “(Source: Reuters)

It is too complicated to explain the relationship between Mao and the Chinese people to a Western country, but according to BBC’ s research, the Chinese people believe that “it is not only insulting Chairman Mao, but the whole Chinese nation”.

In light of this PR disaster, I believe Citroen responded in a very professional way, dealing with the situation in an efficient and reasonable way. However, according to a Chinese news survey, 76% of participants will not buy any Citroen products.

What’s the next step after cleaning the mess up? I think that time goes on and campaigns need to be developed to mend the wounds. How do you put a price on the reputation lost and is there a set way of carrying out crisis evaluation and management?

With the gloablisation of information, multinational companies must take into account that information spreads faster than before. Cultural sensitivity is a key to developing a successful crisis PR plan in different cultures.

I’m sure that Citroen has their own PR teams, however their internal communication is neither global nor any good between the PR and Marketing teams.

Finally, it seems like Citroen is still having no luck with the Chinese people, although Chinese people supposedly have a good relationship with the French.

Good luck Citroen…

Who can’t live without whom?

Who can’t live without whom?

There are so many good optional modules in the second semester, which makes it very hard for us to choose only two of them.

I feel quite sad that we couldn’t take the Fashion PR module, because not enough people enrolled for it. Instead, I chose New Media and Marketing.

In the first Marketing class, there was a debate between the importance of PR and Marketing.

In our tutor’s opinion, when it comes to Marketing concepts, Public Relation is just about communications. It is a tool that is used like promotions or advertising.

My classmates however, had opinions which sounded like “Marketing cannot live without Public Relations”.

To me, it depends on which side you take.

Do you work in a PR agency? Are you in the marketing department of a big company? Or are you an in-house PR?

Obviously, in the PR word or in a PR practitioner’s world, Public Relations is everything.
How can you judge if Marketing or Public Relations is more important?

This Venn diagram can explain why Public Relations belongs to the School of Media, Arts and Design, instead of the Business School.

It is true that a company may not have a PR department, but you cannot imagine one without a Marketing department.

If you try to find a job in the Guardian, both categories are listed together as “Marketing & PR”.
In China, this would be strange to see a job advertisement listed in such a fashion.

In the world, I think that it’s more likely that a PR practitioner turns into a PR Manager than the other way around.

What’s next? - The Challenges for Cross-Media

This book brought me here: the Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR

Let me introduce you to a book first: The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.

This book brought me here, London, England, put me in a classroom where I learned more information than I had ever before.

When I wanted to transform my career, I asked my friends for advice, and one of them showed me this book. I thought that its Chinese name is much more attractive: PR first, advertising second.

It sounds so interesting, who wouldn’t want work in an industry with a golden future? So I chose PR as my major.

The authors credit PR, not advertising, for the marketing successes of Starbucks, The Body Shop, Harry Potter etc.

It created plenty of debates, although half of them are about advertising, but I do agree with the author’s view that PR is about building the brand.

How do you build a Cross-Media brand?

What are the Challenges?

First of all, this landscape provides challenges and opportunities.

• Structure

Some old-fashioned organisational structures still exist, but some have changed already.

From the picture below, you can see that BBC attempts to build its Cross-Media brand.

One and a half years ago, BBC launched its Creative Future content strategy and announced significant organisational changes.

These changes were aimed to ‘enable 360 degree commissioning and production and ensure creative coherence and editorial leadership across all platforms and media.’

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said:

"We need a BBC ready for digital and for 360 degree multi-platform content creation, which brings different kinds of creativity together – in technology as well as content – to deliver what we need in this converging world.”(BBC) http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/07_july/19/future.shtml

From this example, we can see that companies like the BBC have recognised the challenges in a changing industry and have made changes to its structure to operate more efficiently in a global world.

• The Creative Power

The Creative Power is another big issue. It's easy to talk about a “Big Idea”.

But how can we inspire an exchange of storytelling practices?

How can we use media creatively to reach our audiences?

And how can we unleash the creative talents to building the Cross-Media’s brand?

This is one the beauties of Cross-Media.

If you want to be creative using the Cross-Media, it is necessary to change your way of thinking. Not only do you have to come up with a big idea, but you also have to think how it applies to different types of media and how they interact with each other.

• Measurement

How do you measure the success of a Cross-Media campaign?

It is a new challenge to an old problem.

The solution is to develop Cross-Media research tools.

Yesterday, the latest news of The World Association of Newspapers was that they have 'launched a new website to support and promote the use of cross-media audience measurements that will allow publishers to provide a more complete picture of their reach than print circulation alone.' (Editors Weblog) http://www.editorsweblog.org/news/2008/01/web_site_launched_for_crossmedia_measure.php


What's next?

Let's wait and see…

I believe that the future of PR must be cross-platform and multi-platform, and PR practitioners should take full advantage of the new range of platforms. As I commented on my classmate Ha’s blog:


“After all, it is people and not technology leading PR trends.”


By the way, because all BlogSpot blogs are blocked in China (which is another political PR problem of Google in China), so I will post my entries on my Chinese Blog (www.yitingxu.com)

I will try to keep it alive and post in English as well as Chinese.

What Makes Cross- Media Cross? --- Let’s Talk Facts on the top news of 2007

What makes Cross- Media cross?

How mainstream is Cross- Media?

Let’s take some time to review the top news of 2007 and exam the Cross-Media trends again.


1. The New Economic Opportunities

First of all, money is the most important factor. The emergence of new media provides a broader audience, which translates into more money.

Let’s look back at May 15, 2007, when it was announced that Canadian news and information groups Thomson Corporation agreed to a merger with Reuters group, a deal valued at US$ 17.2 billion.

Source: ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=3174768

This creates one of the world’s largest providers of financial news and information and as part of this plan ‘they are expected to liken the sector to the music industry, where the rise in online sales has quickly created new competitors’ (The Telegraph).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/05/14/cnthom14.xml

On one side, there is the merger of traditional media groups, whereas on the other hand companies like Google have built a Cross-Media empire across different platforms.

2. The Concentration of Cross-Media Ownership

Ownership and control of media are changing every day and Cross-Media ownership is becoming more common. An increasing number of Media Groups have restructured and established Cross-Media department to grasp the opportunities.

One of the most important news in media industry last year is ‘Rupert Murdoch Buys Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal’. In August 2007, News Corporation reached an agreement to purchase Dow Jones for an estimated $5.6 billion, adding the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) to its worldwide media empire.

The concentration of Cross-Media ownership provides the possibility and conditions for Cross-Media.

Source: ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=3105688&page=1

3. The Rise of Social Media

New media provides technological tools and a community environment, which makes social media one of the hottest things in 2007.

Facebook, The Second Life, MySpace and Youtube

According to Forrester Research, these social media companies double their impact and reach every six months.

From a Cross-Media perspective the continued growth of social networking provides a broader audience, an effective tool and a new platform for building business.

Undoubtedly, 2007 is a Facebook year. By the end of the year, the company was said to be worth $15 billion. So it’s not a surprise that ‘Microsoft beats Google to Facebook shares’. Microsoft has beaten Google to be the first to invest in social networking web site Facebook, paying $240m for a 1.6 per cent stake in the company in Oct 2007.

Now, Facebook was supposed to be a PR practitioner’s dream.

It is said, 'A picture is worth a thousand words'. I think that the proverb for Facebook should have been 'one group is worth a thousand press releases'.

The key to reach the Cross- Media: Integration

Today is my birthday, and what I learned is how to cook egg fried rice well. It sounds easy, but for a terrible cook like me, it is not such a relaxing experience. But today, I found that the secret is to dry the rice first, before frying it.

That is it! Only use dry rice, which is the reason why I failed thousands of time.

Coming back to my topic ‘Cross- Media’, I think that the key to reach Cross-Media is integration.

Change or Perish：

The new role of PR agencies In the past, traditional PR agencies had a clear role: do research on the mass audiences, create attractive campaigns, and use their influence to get television and newspaper coverage.

But this simple solution doesn't exist anymore. Television and newspapers have lost their once so dominant position in the media market. A whole new world of new technologies, new media, new clients and new consumers means that PR agencies must devote more time to media evaluation and selection.

This means that they will be able to produce more effective media coverage, provide what the client wants and more answers to their marketing problems.

The integration of Cross- Media is not only to get media coverage of different media platforms, but also to make communication interactive to achieve win-win results.


Integration: Both Content and Corporate

In July 2007, Google launched the Expands Print Advertising Program in the USA. This is an expansion in size and scope of its existing Print Ads TM advertising initiative, covering more than 225 newspapers from an original 50 newspaper publications.

Recently, according to The Sunday Times, Google plans to expand its newspaper print ad business in the UK.

In general, advertisers can search for newspapers through Google’s system using a number of criteria, including their circulation and geographic region. They can then make an offer for a certain ad size and wait to see if the ad is approved or the publication responds with a counter-offer.

See, new media and old media are getting closer every day. Even Google as an icon of new media, the search giant also wants to integrate its technologies to be able to reach traditional media.

New media cannot just be seen as a cold-blooded killer for old media, the integration is the future.

New media is not a cold-blood killer for old media, the integration is the future.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello- The best New Year's Eve Event in the world

Last night, I celebrated the New Year by attending a spectacular fireworks display organised by the Mayor of London, on the banks of the Thames.

From a PR view, it was a very successful campaign.
The objective of the event was very clear: to gain a worldwide reputation for London as being the place to be on New Year's Eve.

The campaign targeted Londoners and tourists, with an estimated attendance of 350,000 people for the fireworks display in Central London, as well as many millions of viewers over television in the UK and the rest of the world.

I guess the biggest winner is BBC One, with millions of viewers, although the campaign has generated a tremendous amount of print, online and broadcast media coverage.

According to the Daily Telegraph‘Olympic imagery was projected on to the Shell building, near the London Eye, marking the fact that 2008 is an Olympic year and that the Olympic torch will soon pass into London's hands.’

I thought of projecting imagery onto a building by the Thames for my PR Pitch, but I realised that it is impossible with a £40,000 budget, not to mention that it’s already been done before.

Anyway, I wish everyone a happy new year and best wishes in 2008!