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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dd

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.

Newcastle named friendliest city in the UK

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OF COURSE, we already knew it but Newcastle was named the friendliest city in the UK in a survey last week.

The survey could not have had come at a better time for PR students, particularly when it comes to understanding reputation, earned and shared media.

The survey, which was put together a Travel website, claims to have been compiled by asking its 1.5million social audience.

Lively locals, great nightlife and culture and ease of access were all listed as factors which makes the Toon the land of smiles. Our city was also described as having ‘a homey feel where locals who go the extra mile to welcome tourists’.

It’s great to be in top spot beating much more cosmopolitan cities such as London, Edinburgh and Manchester – although this Mackem writer feels Sunderland deserves to be much higher than a measly 41st!

The survey can’t have come at a better time with thousands of students arriving in Newcastle to start their studies. The article has been shared and commented upon thousands of times by all kinds of Tyneside organisations, from the university, to big businesses, celebrities and of course the genial Geordies.

When we think about reputation, word of mouth is hard to be beat – it’s often based on personal experience and we tend to trust what others say over highly controlled messages coming through advertising or an organisation’s own website and social media channels.

Shared media is great for reaching large audiences efficiently, but it’s also about who is sharing and their credibility. The fact that it’s been shared by the likes of Geordie royalty Ant and Dec will have done no harm at all.

And what’s more, it was picked up by traditional media, meaning it made a big splash of earned media in the city’s much respected newspapers the Chronicle and Journal. Make no mistake, this survey was all about that highly credible contributor to reputation – what others say.

Newcastle should wear the moniker of friendliest city in the UK with pride. But as residents, workers and students here we should all have a responsibility to protect that reputation, through our own communication, whether that be feeding back to friends and family, or through our own blogs and social media profiles.

  • Have your say? Is Newcastle the friendliest city in the UK? What makes the city’s reputation so great and what are you basing that upon? Please feel free to comment

 

 

 

Induction Week – welcome to Newcastle!

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Well, what a week it was. Induction Week has been an gone and now we look forward to  learning all about Public Relations.

Around 150 students have joined the MA programme – that’s more than ever before – and it has been great to meet some of you over the last few days.

Thanks to those of you who joined us for our trip to Tynemouth – the weather may not have been great, but the mist certainly made for an eerie morning!

So, now we are into teaching and most of you have made your option choices. Don’t worry if you are still to choose or if there are issues with timetable clashes. These are common in the early weeks and things will begin to settle down soon.

I look forward to seeing you all again on Friday for the first of our PR Theory lectures!

Jonathan

 

Head in a book? Here’s our suggestion for the essential PR texts

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IT’S that time of year when the reality of teaching and learning starts as students join the PR programme.
Whether you are a student on the Masters PR programme, or joining the Introduction to PR module, which are the key books, texts and articles you should be familiar with? PR@Newcastle has asked the teaching team and some of the UK’s leading practitioners which texts they view as essential to understanding PR and global communications in 2019.
Jonathan Ward
Without a doubt, the book I would recommend is Tench & Yeomans’ Exploring PR. It’s the core text we use through the programme and supports both the compulsory and optional modules. Exploring is written very much with the student in mind, with excellent analysis, case studies and activities to enhance understanding of theory in practice.
There’s a new edition out in the coming months edited by our visiting professor Stephen Waddington and including a chapter written by Jonathan and Ramona. For now, you can pick up a copy at the Uni library or even better, try to get your own copy.
Others to consider would be Rethinking PR by Moloney and McGrath. There’s a new edition that has just been published by Routledge offering a critical perspective of PR and communications.
You should also start subscribing to various blogs and PR news-feeds, for example, PR Week, CIPR website, PR Moment and Stephen Waddington’s blog.
Ramona Slusarczyk
For students new to the concept of strategic planning, Anne Gregory’s Planning and Managing Public Relations Campaigns: A Strategic Approach PR In Practice is an essential 12-point practical guide to effective management of any PR campaign or programme. Published in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and supported by numerous case studies, the latest edition discusses critical aspects of PR planning including the role of PR in organisations; research and analysis; objectives setting; researching target publics; defining strategy and tactics; timescales and resources; evaluation and review.

My second recommendation is Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street, Kara Alaimo (September 2016). To contextualise PR practice within different countries and cultures, Kara Alaimo’s Pitch, Tweet, or Engage on the Street addresses vital cultural differences practitioners have to consider in their approaches to planning and the management of public relations programmes globally. Packed with prominent case studies from Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this book demonstrates how to adapt and implement PR strategies across the private, NGO, and government sectors to deliver highly impactful projects within intercultural context.

Altman Peng 
I recommend Journalism and Public Relations in the Digital Age. London: I.B. Tauris. Lloyd, John & Toogood, Laura (2015).

This book is the outcome of research by Lloyd and Toogood in the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. It provides an overview of the history of PR and the contemporary PR industry, focusing on its changing practice in the digital age. However, the book is primarily based on the interviews of experts and does not engage with much existing literature. It should be read in conjunction with other key authors’ works on PR.

Stephen Waddington

Business of Influence, Philip Sheldrake (April, 2011). Philip Sheldrake sets out an innovative model of organisational communication as a result of the internet and online networks based on six primary influence flows in his book The Business of Influence. Sheldrake’s influence model plots six flows of communication between an organisation and its various publics. It overlays neatly onto Grunig’s Excellence model.

The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger (November, 1999). We continue to be surprised by the changes that the Internet is having on the business of public relations and organisational communication. We had plenty of warning. The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger foretold everything we know today. It is organised as a set of 95 theses organised and put forward as a manifesto, or call to action, for organisations operating in Internet-connected markets.

Anne Marie Lacey

Award-winning practitioner and CIPR Young Communicator of the Year Anne Marie name dropped our own visiting professor Stephen Waddington with her choices. Both of Stephen’s books with Steve Earl – Brand Anarchy and Brand Vandals – offer an insight into the impact social media has had on PR and marketing communications. She also agrees Wadds on Sheldrake’s book – I always refer to his ‘Six Flows of Influence’ when teaching.

 

Join us on our trip to Tynemouth

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INDUCTION Week can sometimes feel quite overwhelming with so information to take in and sessions to attend.

There’s friends to make, societies to sign up to and even some dancing to get down to (if you wish)!

That’s why during this year’s Induction Week we have arranged a day at the seaside for all of our MA Media students. Join us on Tuesday, September 24, for a trip to Tynemouth – a beautiful beach village just 20 minutes from the campus by Metro.

This year, we have free passes for all who attend to visit the ancient Tynemouth Priory – and there’s also a competition for media students to get you in the habit of becoming content creators (see below).

To whet your appetite (let’s hope it stays dry), here’s an amazing video about Tynemouth made by some of our students at Newcastle.

https://www.facebook.com/newcastleuniversity/videos/2386004658334926/?t=18

 

The PESO model – understanding media for public relations

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AS we progress through the PR Theory module in semester 1, terms such as the Excellence model, Jefkins’ transfer process and Moloney’s reputation bank will become familiar themes.

But arguably it is the PESO model which has had the biggest impact on PR since digital media fragmented traditional media’s stranglehold on communications and reputation management. The model – widely credited to Gini Dietrich’s Spin Sucks book from 2014 – had actually been developed several years earlier to assist with the measurement and evaluation of communications activity in an increasingly digital world.

The PESO model is an essential tool for practitioners but it is of equal value to PR scholars, particularly when building an understanding of how media planning and strategy contributes to protecting and promoting reputations.

That’s why Richard Bailey’s excellent insight into PESO on the PR Academy blog came as such a timely reminder of the variety and value of media channels to communicate and persuade.

Here is Richard’s PESO insight in full. Please read and return to this throughout the year – it will prove invaluable to making the most of your understanding of PR themes and concepts.

Politics’ reputation is in tatters. What does that mean for PR?

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IF you have just arrived in the UK, it can’t have escaped you that the country is in a state of political turmoil. To put things mildly!

Brexit has dominated the agenda for years and now goes way beyond politics, to dominate almost every aspect of British life and culture.

But what does this mean from a PR perspective? How does the questionable performance of our leaders and lawmakers impact on the reputation of themselves, the UK and ultimately, the reputation of democratic processes.

This is a topic that has been analysed, dissected and poured over by all kinds of commentators and communicators. Just take a brief glance at Twitter to see how #brexit dominates online discourse.

Here’s a selection of some of the excellent perspectives on Brexit and pol comms that have caught my eye this summer. The first, from Stephen Waddington, offers an insightful profile of PM Boris Johnson’s chief strategist and comms director Dominic Cummings, a divisive figure who for many is seen as the power behind the PM.

They say a week is a long time in politics and as I write this, it strikes me that Boris may no longer be PM by the time I click publish post. Just this week, he failed to turn up at a press conference with the Luxembourg premiere for fear of the flak from a baying crowd. Nevertheless, PR Moment’s insight into how Mr Johnson might change PR is fascinating and scary all at the same time.

It seems an age ago now, but former PR Theresa May had a fair share of PR gaffes. Here, PR Week rounds up some of the best and worst from Theresa’s tenure.

 

Top 5 PR crises of 2019 (so far!)

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This is an interesting post from US PR agency Solomon McCown.

From celebrity to corporate, political to pharmaceutical, these are some of the most damaging reputational crises of 2019. Be aware these are from a US-perspective, but the short clip does illustrate what happens when things go wrong and how they have been managed – to some extent.

Let’s see what the remainder of the year holds for us!