Category Archives: PR Theory

PR lessons from Euro 2020

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NOW that Euro 2020 has come to a disappointing end for all but the Italians, what are the public relations lessons we can learn from the four-week festival of football?

If it came down to contexts, then clear and balanced communication lifts the trophy after a tense penalty shoot-out with dignified leadership. Misplaced brand synergies and political band-wagoning were knocked out in the group stages.

Public relations is all about reputation – what you say, what you do and what others say about you. It’s a mantra that spans a multitude of disciplines and contexts from fashion brands to football, personal life to political life.

So, who were the winners and who were the losers at Euro 2020?

Winner – a leadership culture

England manager Gareth Southgate has deservedly been recognised as a great communicator and a role model for how exemplary culture at the top will filter throughout an organisation or team. As social responsibility guru Peter Drucker says: ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’.

Southgate’s England are unlike any international squad in my long footballing memory which were largely made up of talented, but often overrated individuals.

Southgate is not just a team selector. For years within his FA roles, he has been nurturing a culture and crop of likeable, positive role models whose values of self-respect, dignity often outshine their footballing talent. These players may be millionaires, but their genuine altruism is far more affecting and effective than that from the leaders we are traditionally expected to aspire to.

Southgate’s leadership can be likened to van Riel’s Elements of Corporate Identity with a clear purposeful culture developed from the top, complimented by what it says and does on and off the pitch. Ultimately, these shared values filter beyond to fans, the media and other stakeholders to create a positive image for the England camp.

Winner – England football team. Not only has the reputation of the team been enhanced on the pitch, the dignified way in which the young lions conducted themselves throughout the tournament was exemplary.

As footballers, the players are part of the production sub-system – providing the services to help achieve organisational goals. But the manner in which they responded to the despicable racist abuse following the final defeat, demonstrated that they were part of an adaptive system, too, responding and adjusting to external threats with dignity and clarity. Let’s not forget, several of these players are still very young.

There were examples of symmetrical communication within the team’s social media responses too with Tyrone Mings’ powerful tweet calling out the UK government’s hypocrisy triggering a heated Parliamentary exchange and stimulating debate over the ethics and declining values of political leadership.

Winner – a crisis managed with Danish dignity

It seems an age ago now, but the first Saturday of the tournament brought one of the most upsetting moments ever seen in sport when the Danish captain and talisman Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch after suffering cardiac arrest. For around 30 minutes, medics attempted to revive Eriksen while team-mates formed a dignified barrier around the player and comforted his wife who was watching at the pitch-side.

For several days, the tournament appeared in doubt as players, fans and commentators correctly opined that football is and never has been more important than life or death. Eriksen’s recovery inspired and unified the Danish team and nation to the semi-final of the tournament.

But the real winner from this traumatic event was increased public awareness and attitudes towards life-saving CPR training and skills. Eriksen’s collapse triggered international media interest in cardiac conditions, particularly when impacting seemingly young and fit people. This has spurred investment in life-saving defibrillators and new processes to ensure communities know where their nearest defibrillator is.

Loser – brand synergies shown the red card

Very early in Euro 2020, superstar Cristiano Ronaldo made his disdain for corporate sponsors Coca-Cola clear by moving aside two strategically placed Coke bottles during a press conference. A few days later, France’s Paul Pogba did likewise with bottles of Heineken during a media briefing.

Sponsorship is an essential part of corporate sport and international tournaments would disappear without it. But global audiences are not the passive consumers they once were; social media means publics have a strong voice and will actively call out mis-matching between brand and tournament leading to huge reputational risk for the mega brands. Ronaldo didn’t get to be the world’s greatest footballer by guzzling Cokes and Pogba doesn’t kick back with a beer after the match. So, don’t make that insinuation that they do – it’s disingenuous, misleading and damaging to the brand as was shown when an estimated $4billion was wiped off Coca Cola’s share value after Ronaldo’s actions.

Far better to take a subtler approach, identifying synergies between tournament and brand or to develop audiences and awareness in emerging regions. Chinese brands Hisense and AliPay were all over Euro 2020’s pitch-side advertising hoardings supporting their global strategy for recognition within sports markets – a clever move which will have brought these names to prominence in Europe and enhanced their reputation in Asia.

Wooden spoon – Own goal calamities and political gesturing

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a long history of saying or doing the wrong thing at the wrong time – after all, it’s how he got to be the leader of the country. But his insincere band-wagoning during the Euro semi-final at Wembley demonstrated once again how out of touch political leaders can be.

The hastily arranged ‘Boris 10’ England shirt pulled snugly over an already dishevelled figure was a desperate publicity stunt which reeked of opportunism of the lowest kind. Let’s not forget this is the same Boris Johnson who has previously declared little interest in football and refused to condemn those who booed England players taking the knee.

Yet just yards away, young Prince George demonstrated his enthusiasm by belting out the national anthem and cheering on the team to victory – and he didn’t have to pull on a mini England shirt to show his genuine passion.

Elsewhere amongst the political elite were examples of ministers and MPs trashing the knee-taking as political gesturing then weeks later lining up to condemn the racists. Both literally and metaphorically, PM Johnson clearly believes he can have his cake AND eat it and needs to be relegated to the subs bench soon.

All in all, Euro 2020 was a successful tournament for football, particularly for beleaguered fans starved of the thrill of an international spectacle. But again, the tournament served as a valuable reminder that reputation is earned and public scrutiny means that what is said, what is done and what others say needs to more in balance than ever before.

Images courtesy of You Tube, UEFA, independent.co,uk, talksport.com, indy100.com

Corona conversations – the great and the good of comms analysis

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Seven weeks into lockdown and I appear to have developed something of a routine. It goes something like this – wake up, mint tea, think about what’s for tea, do some work, think about tea, walk dogs, make and eat tea, chat with friends and family, watch TV  or listen to music, go to bed. Repeat.

Of course, the days when I get to walk the dogs in the morning are like little victories, flicking two fingers at the pesky virus and its lockdown rules. I’ve also been able to exercise more, get out on the bike and even a few 5k runs – great when I have miles of largely deserted beach and dunes at my doorstep.

Social media has, of course, become even more of a dominant influence cementing its reputation as a two-faced security blanket/anxiety trigger. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) has largely disappeared, as really there’s nothing to miss out on anymore, I’ve even forgotten all about football.

What has been encouraging is to see how the PR/comms community has come together to share insight and perspective on the good and bad of how the crisis is being managed and strategized. There really is a treasure trove of analysis, case studies and secondary sources that all PR students should have in their search engines on speed dial!

Of course, our very own visiting professor Stephen Waddington is leading the way with his regular analysis and lockdown letters on the Wadds blog. Stephen’s output has been impressive over the last few weeks with his posts not only acting as meaningful and important analysis but also a pause for reflection over what we can learn as people and society. Stephen’s reflection on Covoid brand conversations should be one of the first stops for any PR dissertation student looking at how brands have used the pandemic to manage reputation.

I continue to be impressed by PR Academy, edited by Richard Bailey, with its more scholarly tone and useful guides to the theories and concepts which guide comms. Richard’s briefing on the PESO model was a go to teaching tool for me this year. Recently the Academy’s content has understandably focused more on crisis – check out these crisis book reviews – and its league table of student blogs #bestPRblogs is always a timely reminder that I need to encourage our Newcastle students to blog more. Watch out PR Academy, Newcastle is coming for you (that’s really hard to say as a Sunderland fan!).

I’ve always enjoyed PR Moment for its blend of light and dark industry perspectives from those working at the coalface of comms. In particular, its regular Good and Bad PR feature is a great source for practice case studies and campaigns. And of course, there’s PR Week which offers the latest UK industry news, albeit behind a paywall.

On Facebook, the marketing, media and PR community of practice has emerged in the past few weeks as the go to resource for engagement and conversation, particularly around Covoid comms and messaging. Again, it’s been developed by Stephen Waddington, with some impressive metrics – more than 300 members and dozens of topics on everything from Captain Tom’s fundraiser to mainstream media distraction. The group is helping to shape how practitioners and academics are making sense of the strategy as we emerge into new ways of living and working – which leads me to my closing thoughts.

I’ve had a number of conversations with colleagues this week, including with the parent of a prospective student, about how PR and comms. will fare from the crisis. There’s a strong sense that the sector could emerge stronger and with new found respect. Perhaps even with New Zealand president – and PR graduate – Jacinda Ardern as its knight in All Blacks armour!

Generally, PR and comms was ‘relatively’ thriving pre-Corona compared with other media sectors, particularly journalism. The pandemic has, however, put an immediate dent in that with commercial organisations understandably putting a hold on budgets and recruitment.

But one of the positives is that clear comms. is coming to the fore during the pandemic and is what people value. That’s being recognised widely, and while not practiced by the UK government, my hope is that the sector will emerge with increased credibility as organisations recognise the importance of clear and consistent comms and messaging.  Ultimately that may translate to greater recognition for PR with organisations supporting within their teams internally and externally.

Chinese PR students tackle Corona anti-racism campaign

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In a time, long, long ago – well January to be truthful – I was approached by a group of our PR students about Corona Virus.

As Chinese nationals, some of whom had recently returned to the UK after spending the Christmas holidays at home, they were concerned about the impending crisis and particularly the impact on the large international student body here in Newcastle. You may recall that disturbing media reports emerged at that time which suggested that Asian students in the UK had been targeted in incidents of racist abuse.

In an effort to dispel myths and build relationships with other students at Newcastle and the wider community, the group devised and then implemented a campaign over several weeks – using guiding PR principles at its heart.

The campaign was as simple as it was effective with PR and communications strategy as its anchor – raise awareness and change attitudes and behaviour via two-way balanced communication. Once the campaign was over, I interviewed the students for a podcast which I have shared with the cohort. If you would like to listen to that, then please send me a comment (the file is too large to post on here!).

I have summarised below the campaign plan. Reading it back again, several months later, fills me with both admiration and pride at what these young people were able to achieve.

Background：Many cases of xenophobia against Chinese and other Asians recently across the world

Objectives: 1.Improve students’ motivations of engagement in anti-racism campaign  2.Raise awareness of conventional differentiation of mask-wearing between east and west. It is a major root of the prejudice and misunderstanding.

Aims and Strategy: 1.Use social media and brochures to promote our campaign.2.Attract as many passers-by as possible to sign our banner and book ,or to be interviewed by us and by other reporters.3.Negotaite with NUSU actively to let our fully signed banner and book be collected by history room of Newcastle University.

Tactics:1.Make a team in our PR class(eight people) and allocate following tasks 2.Make brochures promoting the mask-wearing difference and the discrimination cases 3.Take portrait posters of our classmates from different nations 4.Make banners ready to be signed.5.Engage with NUSU and StandUpToRacism Society to gain financial support for printing and use their social media to promote our campaign.6.Get media access to display our posters on NUSU screen.7.Engage in the rally held by StandUpToRacism to have a speech and be interviewed by Global Radio 8.Invite journalists of CNN London and Channel 4 to report 9.Request to Chinese Association for promoting our article 

Outcomes: 1. 700 messages and signatures that truly goes beyond our expectations. 2. Media coverage on CNN London,Global Radio and Channel4. 3. The NUSU anti-racism society wants to cooperate us continuously 4.It’s the first time I saw a numbers of Chinese students who dared to have a speech or other forms about anti-racism publicly. 5. Via brochures we made and interviews,many Westerners firstly learnt the conventional difference of mask wearing.

It was truly an inspiring effort by all those involved, a glimpse of hope and light in otherwise dark times.

Finally, a name check for all of those involved – a huge congratulations to Jason Jiao, Emma Ma, Sherry Liu, Chelsea Zhao, Shan Xiong, Jayden Zou and Shawn Zhang. Apologies to any I have missed!


Are we engaged yet? A view of Grunig and Hunt’s 4 models of PR

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IN LAST WEEK’S LECTURE AND THIS WEEK’S SEMINARS, WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT PERHAPS THE BEST KNOWN THEORY IN PR – GRUNIG AND HUNT’S 4 MODELS.

Since 1984, PR scholars and academics have been citing and debating the merits of publicity, public information, persuasion – and whether we have reached the best practice of mutual understanding and engagement.

But while a trawl through any newspaper, magazine or online news outlet will reveal plenty of examples of the first three models, finding the pinnacle of model 4 – two way symmetrical engagement – is trickier.

That’s why, the last model is often seen as an ideal rather than a reality and why Grunig’s concept is often referred to as as the excellence model. It’s about excellent communications practice and on that basis we can understand why the model can have its detractors.

This article from the CIPR produced Influence website called time on the 4 models while our guest lecturer Stephen Waddington has explored the relevance of the excellence idea in the digital age.

While some organisations claim to have balanced, mutual understanding and engagement with their publics, surely in a commercial context at least, they exist to make a profit and therefore communication will always be geared towards achieving that goal. Yes, they’re listening, they’re even responding, but would they really risk profit at the expense of appeasing the conflicting demands of many different publics? We can’t really knock organisations for taking that stance and certainly there has been research which suggests that publics want to take the lead from brands, particularly those they trust and are loyal to.

Social responsibility, or the idea of being good corporate citizen, is where organisations can perhaps take the biggest strides towards excellent balanced communications. A business that makes a profit while genuinely seeking to adapt and meet the needs of its publics, is surely acting in a more balanced manner, with focus on mutual understanding – it’s a win win situation. But as we will find out in a few weeks, much CSR activity is little more than empty statements dressed up as goodwill with the primary goal of securing market advantage.

The truth is, there has not really been a better model developed in the last 35 years to plot the development of communications behaviour of organisations. Perhaps the best way to think about Grunig and Hunt’s 4 models is to consider what they are trying to achieve with stakeholders – for publicity, think the public be fooled or damned; then the ticky box of keeping them informed; using unbalanced persuasion to contact and convince or even control; through to conversations and engagement.

And as we have witnessed in the last few years, the fake news propaganda of our political leaders and campaigners, has actually taken us further and further away from genuine engagement. But for every Trump, there’s a Thunberg, and for every Cummings, a community champion champing at the bit to influence and engage – sometimes the biggest and most impactful social change comes bottom up activism, for example, the ban on fox hunting, same sex marriage and now climate change. Excellent communication and engagement is alive and thriving, but it’s not necessarily coming from the traditional sources we have trusted to lead and guide us – big business, government, politicians and celebrities. It’s now at a much more local, micro level – influencers, opinion leaders and activists – and that should give us all some hope that 2-way comms is not an unachievable ideal, but a real opportunity for authentic engagement driving societal change for all.