Publics, audiences and stakeholders

To be honest, this may be the first time that I really enjoy the “theory” section. Because it is useful indeed!

In today’s class, Michaela's presentation introduced several general stakeholder identification and positioning models that can be applied to help me think about the concept of “stakeholders”, which is a new word for me.

Although I learned something similar before in the Marketing model, there are three ways to identify an organisation’s stakeholders in a PR context.

I’m happy that I was in the ‘9 segments’ group when we did our stakeholder analysis exercise, because it was much easier to identify your stakeholders.

These 9 segments are:

Demographic

Psychographic

Geographic

Organisational membership

Covert power

Role in decision making

Influencers

Opinion formers

Decision makers

Ha-ha, I love theories now.

In theory as well as practice, PR can be considered as “stakeholder relations”. Please Mind that the gap between Publics, Audiences and Stakeholders is necessary in order to achieve your target.

In my view, this is especially true in the new media environment, because you need to know your audience as well as your stakeholders.

Though a project or campaign may only target one main segment, the actual base may extend beyond to include friends, family members, associations and other interested parties or only opinion formers (e.g. Bloggers).

Involving stakeholders is a tough task. The more you get key stakeholders to understand involved, the more successful a project will be. Stakeholders should get involved during every part of the program or campaign’s life cycle.

For the sake of love

Everyone knows that debates of ethical issues can be quite boring. However, our module tutor succeeded in leading an interesting debate in our class,especially through an interesting exercise. (My classmate Nathalie Bellanger had a post on her blog Can PR ever be ethical? describe more details about the interesting exercise in class).

There are many ethical issues in PR related to the public interest, such as justice, responsibility, respect and safety. There are often more complicated than you can imagine.

I am trying to compare this topic with my friend’s personal experience. Until recently, she was happily married with a good job as a chief editor of a fashion magazine, while her husband worked as the CEO of a big IT company.

Everything was fine until the husband found that the beautiful wife has been dating another guy.

He said: A family with lies is unacceptable.

And he wants a divorce.

She said: I did it for the family’s interest, and I still love our family.

The fact was that she lied.

Of course she did something wrong, but who doesn’t.

I think that honesty is one of the basic ethical issues in PR. Coming back to the love story again. If she has a short affair, should she tell her husband?

But if everyone tells, kids will lose their mothers, husbands will lose their wives and there will be no happy families. Is this the best ethical result?

I’m sorry but I can’t agree with that.

It is difficult to construct a single solution for all the ethical values. Putting more regulation and legislation into place is better than just following an ethical code. I think that governments will pay more attention and implement tougher PR regulation, similar to the Advertisement law.

In addition to this, different cultures should have different codes and ethical framework. For example, a lot of English people don’t accept why Chinese people don’t believe in god.

I have been asked quite a few times about why I don’t go to the church. My answer is: I do show respect to God and Buddha etc. but I’ sorry I have no religious belief, I just believe in love.

SEO Press Release for PR and New Media Assignment --- Survey Reveals Britons' Top Online Purchasing Lists

my fake press release for new media module, but I love it.

A new study from wedeliver.com has found out that more groceries are sold online than any other product in the UK.

Over 50% of internet users have bought groceries online, according to a survey by wedeliver.com, Britain’s largest online grocery retailer. Other top items include clothes, music, technology and DVDs.

The study also reveals that there is a massive rise in the number of Britons shopping online while work.

About eight out of ten of those surveyed have bought something online during work hours, in addition to nearly half of them worrying about their boss noticing signs of slacking off. The average amount of time spent on shopping while at work equates to 6 hours per week.

The study predicted that the growth of Internet shopping in the UK will continue to grow strong with the advent of technology and gadgets (TVs, computers, music players, etc.), the growing demand of furniture and clothes, and the falling prices for personal computers and increased Web access.

“Online shopping has increased dramatically in these years, compared with three or four years ago, when it was somewhat difficult for consumers to buy their furniture online", says Mark Gray, Director of Interactive Media for wedeliver.com.

“Today, online retailers don't just sell groceries and clothes anymore, we've now added an excellent selection of furniture to our product range combined with a high level of interactivity, excellent customer service and prices that have never been so competitive before.”.

For further information or an interview, please contact the wedeliver team on 020123456 or email wedeliver@x.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

- About The Survey
Wedeliver.com Shopping Survey was conducted by Fly Research from October, 2007 to January, 2008 via email invitation to online shoppers. The total sample size was 10,000 respondents.

- Further information of the wedeliver.com survey can be found at http://w.w.com/

- About The Wedeliver.com
The w.com is Britain's largest online grocery retailer with leading market positions and recognized brands in online marketing operations.

Propaganda – What PR is not

As a student from China, I cannot tell the true difference between Public Relations and Propaganda. Because sometimes, Public Relations ‘is seen as an instrument of persuasion ‘, as Shirley Harrison points out in “Public Relations An introduction”.

But the BBC Correspondent War Spin: the Truth about Jessica really told me something about Propaganda and gave me a very clear understanding about the difference between Propaganda and PR.

This is a story of Jessica Lynch, an icon of the Iraq war in 2003. On the US side, she was captured by the Iraqis and rescued by US Special Forces, and the whole Hollywood style story boosted American morale during the Iraq War.

But on the other side, a reporter from the BBC exposed that the whole story was just like a made up movie. The fact was that the US Special Forces rescued Lynch from the treatment in an ordinary Iraqi hospital.

In addition to this, almost all journalists from around the world gathered in a warehouse to listen to this story fed to them by the US military.

The question is ‘is this propaganda or public relations’? Almost our classmates including myself agree that this is typical propaganda.

Propaganda, which is often confused with PR, has an equally long history as PR and can be best described as a means of gaining support for an opinion or belief.

Propaganda is defined by the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), quoted by Philip Taylor, as

‘any information, ideas, doctrines or special appeals disseminated to influence the opinion, emotions, attitudes of behaviour of any specified group in order to benefit the sponsor either directly or in directly’.

Another useful thing I found is Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model (1988), quoted by Johanna Fawkes in Exploring Public Relations.

They suggested 5 “filters” including the size and concentration of media ownership, the role of advertising in providing income for media organizations, the “official” sources, the ‘flak’ as a means of controlling media content, the ‘anti-communism’ as a ‘national religion’ and control mechanism.

I personally think that in this model, Jessica’s story is absolute propaganda.

The question that our course leader asked us to think about is “What do you feel after watching this video? Do you feel comfortable or uncomfortable?”

To be honest, I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all, because things like this happen every day. Everyone knows that propaganda and governments work hand in hand. In addition, I am quite familiar with this type of stories in the mass media.

My main concern from War Spin is that the journalists and media just pick up the official story and create and twist it to generate publicity and money.

During a US Army news conference in the Iraqi desert, a reporter from the New York magazine asked General Vincent Brooks, “Why should we stay?” he answered with “that is your choice”. In the end, it is the American media’s choice to accept propaganda instead of gathering their own information in the middle of a war.

Reference: Shirley Harrison Public Relations An introduction

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!

My Cross-Media Image

This graph I drew shows my opinion of what Cross-Media is. As you can see, Cross-Media is different from multimedia, new media or social media. In other words, Cross-Media is at the intersection of new media and traditional media.

But as a new way to deliver messages, Cross-Media is also about communication, strategy, storytelling and much more.

My Cross-Media Map

What is a Cross-Media deal?

A typical example of a Cross-Media deal can look like Michael Franzini's One Hundred Young Americans. According to the Publisher’s Comments, the purpose of the book is to capture ‘first-hand accounts of youth culture in America from 100 teenagers in 50 states’, although the key is that this generation is the first to have ‘grown up with unprecedented access to media and information’.

It combines a book publication with a gorgeous web site containing elements such as image galleries, video elements and blog articles, from which you can get an in-depth account of their story, as well as participating in the community through social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

Through this case we can tell that a book is not only a book anymore, when it is enhanced with other media to become a kind of social network.

Press releases, advertising and PR campaigns are all about telling a story. Cross-Media is a new way to telling your story and a big opportunity in the PR industry can be found in the emergence of Cross-Media storytelling using different platforms.

Visit 100youngamericans at:
http://www.100youngamericans.com/

A very interesting video'The Break Up'

In the short video ‘The Break up’ (available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3qltEtl7H8), a man and a woman meet up in a restaurant, where the woman announces that she wants a divorce from him, although he has no clue what the reasons are for the divorce.

It shows the relationship between the advertiser who has gone off and done his own thing and the client who is not impressed that the things he is doing doesn’t seem to be in the best interest to her.

In my opinion, PR practitioners and agencies need to be careful to take into account the client’s view of things in a Cross-Media world. The quote ‘I’ve changed, but you have not’ sums up the fact what the PR industry needs to be able to adapt to client requirements as well as keep up with new media, otherwise it will end up just like in the video.

It also reminds me of Mark Borkowski in his talk last month. He claimed that a ‘generation of PRs will die if they do not accept the new media’.

This leaves us to think about the importance of new media in the PR industry, as well as what clients want and whether it is possible to sell them ideas using the Cross-Media way.

The Break Up Video sent by geertdesager

Welcome to Cross-Media – A new way of thinking!

With the emergence of new media, people may say that ‘TV is going to die’ or that ‘newspapers will disappear in 20 years’, but in my opinion, the information contained within traditional media can be combined with new forms of media (Web, Streaming Video, E-mail, Instant Messaging, Social Networking etc.) to enhance the value of PR campaigns through the effective use of Cross-Media.

A definition of ‘Cross-Media’

According to Wikipedia, Cross-Media (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_media) ‘is a media property, service, story or experience distributed across media platforms using a variety of media forms’.

The part that relates directly to PR is that the effective use of Cross-Media ‘invites the receiver to cross-over from one medium to the next’ and that it can enhance the value of communication through targeted and personalised distribution of a message or campaign.

In my opinion, using traditional and new media in any combination allows the content and meaning of work to be transmitted in one form.

As a term, it did not exist several years ago and came from the publishing industry using the motto: ‘Produce once, publish everywhere’.

This blog aims to explore this trend and expand on it by exploring the different areas that it might develop into.