100 rpm

What happened to Dave? Five videos to liven up a PR class

I'm jealous of mathematics lecturers.  I'm even jealous of people who lecture in engineering and physics.  As we grind towards the end of term, a maths lecturer can liven up a lecture with some great jokes (especially about engineers).    But PR?   Maybe it's because the subject is too new, or uncomfortable with its status, but PR jokes are few and far between.  I have to rely instead on my catalogue of anecdotes and stories about the world of PR  to raise the tempo in an end-of-term lecture.

Or, I can show a video.   And not just any old video.  These are my top five videos for livening up a PR lecture.  They are all relevant to teaching PR (not just  social media) and all manage to be engaging, humorous (although I appreciate that this is relative), relevant and informative(ish) all at once.

 1.  Research methods.
What better way to explain to students how not to compose a questionnaire.

 

2. Lobbying
Some students find the political process daunting.  This series of videos simplify the lobbying process.  Unfortunately, the series ends rather suddenly , leaving my students desperate to know what happened to Dave.

 

 Free Dave! The series

3. Flashmobs
I haven't shown this is class yet, but I will.   A neat way to illustrate aggregation ... and the "wisdom of crowds?"

 

 4. Reputation
This will usually be the first - and last - time a UK student will hear a country and western song played in class. 

 

5. Viral marketing
I'm feeling all nostaligic now.  When I first started teaching PR I had to explain what a 'viral' was.  And I used this video to illustrate it.  It also  could be used to spark a discussion about alignment of  communication channels/messages/audiences. 

 

Exposing those cv porky pies

CIPR Midlands is running an event You're Hired! aimed at helping interviewers get the most out of prospective candidates - a great idea for a session, since small companies and agencies sometimes lack the ability to coach or train new managers in this area.

Unless there were blatant lies on a cv, it could take until interview stage to expose some of the best works of fiction on a cv:

Interviewer:  "You say you enjoy going to the theatre?  What's the last play you went to see?"

Interviewee:  "Um, I saw some Shakespeare at school ... I like the idea of going though."

Interviewer:  "It's great that you're interested in current affairs - did you hear our client interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme this morning?"

Interviewee:  "No ... I don't watch Channel 4 news" (pause as interviewer scrapes herself off the floor)

However, thanks to Twitter, we don't have to waste our time at interview stage finding out that the candidate we're talking bears no resemblence to the person on the cv. 

You say you're interested in current affairs?  I'll expect you to follow at least a couple of national daily newspapers or online news sites (and not just those recommended to you when you sign up to Twitter).   And since you're working in PR, you must be fascinated by the media in all its forms, so I'll expect to see you following @mediaguardian at the very least.   And while the sort of PR people you want to follow might depend on the nature of PR you're interested in, I'd expect you to follow at least a couple of these PR/social media people or the people they're connected to:  @stedavies, @jangles, @markpinsent, @wadds @emilycagle @mediaczar @armano, @trevoryoung, @shelholtz, @harrietcrosse @behindthespin (these names have been picked at random from people I follow who posted today, in case you were wondering why you were included or missed out).   

If you don't follow any PR people (or journalists) I'll smell a rat straight away - are you really interested in a career in PR, or did it just seem like a nice idea?  And if you say you love politics, I'll expect you to follow at least a handful of politicians.   

And  of course it's not just about following ... it's about how you use Twitter as well. 

Work placements: A lecturer's view

A 1980s TV campaign for the Guardian encouraged us to look at the wider picture before forming an opinion.   Although this is generally a good idea, sometimes this leads you to think too much about an issue, ending up without a clear perspective.

This was how I felt about the ongoing debate about work experience in the media industries (some recent articles are here and here).  My  confusion  was fuelled by having vested interests that pulled me in three different directions. 

My academic research concerns the exploitation of workers in the cultural industries (which doesn't just cover work experience but also homeworking, online work, personal branding, etc. etc.).  However, as a direct contradiction,  I also lead the work experience module on De Montfort University's MA in Public Relations, thus actively promoting placements.  You can see my dilemma. On top of this, I also used to work as a PR practitioner and consequently have met scores of work experience students, who have varied in their quality from the terrifyingly awesome to being a terrifying liability.

All this led to a lot of hand-wringing and soul-searching about where I stood in the debate.   But after listening to the experiences of my work experience students this year, and reading stories from all corners of the industry, I've decided that some of my confusion about the work experience/exploitation debate derived from the fact that I was trying to make PR 'work experience' mean one thing (we'll put to one side 'placements' and 'internships' here, which can have slightly different meanings).  For in PR, the term 'work experience' can span two types of employment - one exploitative, one not.  I will explain:

• One kind of placement is essentially symbiotic.  The organisation feels that it wants to give something back to the industry, but at the same time it needs to remain profitable, and has some minor but interesting jobs that need carrying out.  The placement student spends a lot of time shadowing and attending meetings but also contributing to team activities, sharing their new university knowledge and 'doing' PR - something that my placement students find invaluable.  

• But there's another type of placement.  I'm increasingly being phoned by organisations who have a 'project' and want a 'placement student for three months.'  No, they don't want a placement student.  They want an unpaid resource with few employment rights.  Similarly, I'm hearing stories from placement students (rarely mine, fortunately) who are working at agencies where the placement students outnumber the paid staff.  While some of these students are getting amazing experience by being allowed an awesome level of responsibility at a very early stage in their career, the agencies are simply exploiting goodwill and pocketing the cash from clients.  In one case the placement students had to vacuum the office at the end of the day!  This isn't work experience, and although 'economic downturn' might be an excuse, it doesn't make it right.  There's no mentoring, no support, and no coaching that goes beyond tearing a press release apart.  These jobs should be done by paid staff (and that includes the cleaning).

As a result of this, I've made a decision.  I'm happy to promote and encourage students to apply for the first type of internship.  After all, they enjoy the placements, apply their prior learning, find out more about PR, and acquire valuable experience and contacts - and the host organisation gets something out of it as well.  As for the second type ... I'm not going to promote their 'opportunities' to my students or retweet their vacancies via Twitter.   And if I have the chance, I'll privately explain why.  Simple as that.  It's not a particularly active stance, but it's a start.

Action needed like fish need scales

I usually write about social media, PR or education.  This is a more personal post ...

"We don't need feminism - we've got equality" is something I hear a couple of times each year. And it's always a struggle to persuade the (female) speaker that feminism isn't something  irrelevant practiced in darkened rooms by men-hating women with hairy armpits.

This week I've received three links which demonstrate all too vividly why, when you scratch the surface, there's still a long way to go before women get anywhere close to equality of opportunity or status.

A deconstruction of Disney Princesses (thanks to Karen Russell for alerting me to this)

Gaby Hinscliff   on why she's resigned from being Observer's political editor to spend more time with her son.  I'm not taking issue with Hinscliff's decision here, which is obviously carefully and intelligently considered.  What is troubling is that the tricky question central to this debate is barely mentioned by the writer:  Why do men's careers  tend to suffer less than women's when children come along (yes, I know there are exceptions)?  And no, I don't think that legislation will change a thing. 

Still unconvinced? Even if you still think that things are hunky-dory in the UK, life isn't so sweet elsewhere:  Guinea's rape horror

(If anyone is wondering about the headline, it's a bastardisation of a 1970s feminist slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" -  one of the most memorable political straplines of the 20th century).

iPhone apps, Gaye Tuchman and news selection

PR consultancy Lewis  has just launched its first iPhone application Lewis news 360, which aims to "provide a tailored selection of the best breaking stories direct to your iPhone."  I'm not exactly sure why Lewis has created this application, given that it's free (my guess is that it's to do with Lewis's positioning) but hopefully this will become more clear over the coming months.

I'm playing with the application at the moment.  In terms of design and usability, it's great - but doesn't give me anything more in terms of UK/social media news than I'd get by following a handful of key news channels via Twitter.   

News is arranged by 11 country-specific channels (with social media being a country in itself - well, I guess that makes sense) with headlines linking to either the original news story or an edited version, with a reference.  I'm finding the non-UK stories particularly interesting - there's a lot I've missed.  Unfortunately, I can't (easily) let anyone know what they are as there is no facility to share stories via Twitter, Reddit, Del.icio.us etc. 

What I was left wondering (apart from why Lewis has invested in this application) is how the country list was selected.    At first I thought it was G8 members plus some - but it's not. Russia and Canada are missing, while Benelux, Singapore, Spain and Australia are on the list.  However, the country selection  bears a strong resemblance to Lewis's global office network, albeit with a couple of omissions, which makes me guess that the news is collected and edited by local offices

And this takes us to a neat illustration of news selection.   Gaye Tuchman (1978) wrote of the "news net" - media organisations set up networks of reporters, agents and stringers to 'catch' news when it happens at specific locations, but events at locations not covered by the 'net' rarely get reported.  Likewise, Lewis has a network of offices which can bring us news from around the globe.  However, since not all countries have Lewis offices, we don't see so much on this application from places where it's more difficult for Lewis or its affiliates to gather news.  Importantly, this doesn't mean that news isn't happening there (it is) -  and what I'd love to see is for this application to stretch its net more widely and gather world news that would otherwise fail to reach conventional news channels. 

 

Comparing apples and elephants: Why (good) methodology matters

A recent First Direct (bank) study claimed that over half of the UK population are actively creating content.  (I must credit Richard Bailey and his PR Studies blog for alerting me to this report).

Pretty uncontentious stuff?  Well, maybe.   Having a mildly obsessional interest in research methods, I was curious as to how how the researchers had framed the 'creating content' question.  (I asked some students if they had ever created content online - most of them said 'no.'  Then I asked if any of them had ever written an online review, posted videos to YouTube, used a photo sharing site or even written a Facebook status update - they all said yes.)

While I hunted for the answer to my question, one table caught my attention.  It compared the 2009 First Direct survey data with a  2007 Forrester Technographics survey.    The comparison of the two surveys demonstrated, for example, that while the number of people posting reviews and ratings online has doubled over the past two years, posting content to video sharing sites has halved.

Hold on!  This might all sound very credible, but let's look at the methodology.  The two sets of data were collected in different ways:

First direct "undertook research with 2,095 adults between 16-18 September 2009.  This survey was carried out by YouGov plc among GB adults aged 18+.  Data is weighted to be representative of the GB population."

But

 Forrester "surveyed 4,475 US adults in December 2006 and 4,556 youth in October 2006 and to learn about their use of Social Computing technology adoption."

Whoa!    The age of the groups of the two groups are different, and from what I can gather,  the research took place in two different countries.  I don't know how the samples were selected, or how the data was collected, but these two surveys are as comparable as apples and elephants.

I don't know who at First Direct thought it was a good idea to take two credible research projects and compare them, but the comparisons are meaningless.  We're simply not comparing the same sort of people, and possibly aren't even asking them the same questions in the same way.   So how can a comparison demonstrate anything?

Jacquie L'Etang has argued that the "main gift that education can offer public relations practice is that of social scientific expertise."  Although she was discussing the evaluation of PR campaigns, her comments apply equally to practitioners faced with survey data to communicate.