100 rpm

My fantasy PR reading list

What books do PR lecturers use and recommend?  If I had to name the most-thumbed PR books on my shelves I'd probably list Tench and Yeomans' Exploring Public Relations, Freitag and Quesinberry Stokes' Global Public Relations, Coombs and Holladay's PR Strategy and Application, Cornelissen's Corporate Communications and Kelleher's Public Relations Online.

The global library of books about PR is growing, but there are some that I wish existed  - either because they would would help me in my work, would complement those listed above, or simply because I'd like to read them. And as I'm not going to have the time in the next five years or so to remedy this by writing a book, here's a list of some that I would love to see appearing in library catalogues:

• A critical case study book.  This should have an international focus and be written by someone not involved in any of the campaigns.  As the saying goes, 'history is written by the winning side,' and this is the situation with case studies; only those deemed a success ever seem to be considered worthy of publication.  I'd like to see a book which also exposes campaign failures and analyses where campaigns went wrong.  Even when detailing successful campaigns, I'd like to see a book where the authors talk to everyone involved in the campaign - including the hapless account assistant who spends a week selling in a story to get one or two pieces of coverage.  This would help us understand what we really mean by 'success.'
• A collection of academic essays which looks at issues facing practitioners as individuals.  There is so much potential for further research on areas such as gender, communication, diversity, class, ethical practice, exploitation, education and the like. There has been some fantastic work in these spheres and I'd love to see some of these topics given more space.
• A really thorough book on strategic PR planning which addresses the subject from an organisational perspective and contains lots of examples of 'real' plans as well as a critique of their content.  Some students really struggle with writing a plan, and find past plans an invaluable resource.
• A PR lecturer's handbook featuring ideas for seminars, workshop topics and discussions.  In common with other lecturers, I've got a store of workshop and seminar material, but it would be fantastic to pool the knowledge and ideas of other PR lecturers together.
• A book on law for PR practitioners.   McNae's Essential Law for Journalists is brilliant, but a PR practitioner also needs to know about aspects of consumer and corporate law - for instance, how many PR practitioners setting up their own consultancies or working freelance really understand contract law?   Kolah's Essential Law for Marketers fills most of the gaps, but to have everything in one title would be preferable.

Some of these books might exist already - if they do, let me know.  If they don't ... I'm not precious, please borrow these ideas, I'd love to see these books in print, rather than in my head.

A walk on the {client} side: Twitter and transparency

A couple of days ago I noticed that a PR friend of mine, Aaron Huckett, digital manager with Publicasity, was suffixing all client-related tweets with this:  {client}. I thought that  this was a great step forward in terms of Twitter transparency (I’m often confused as to whether a PR practitioner really, really loves a new product or is just tweeting on behalf of a client) and asked Aaron to tell me more about his reasons for adding {client} to client-related tweets. A flurry of Twitter DMs and emails resulted in Aaron kindly agreeing to be my guest blogger so that we could find out more. Here’s his take on transparency and Twitter. Thanks Aaron!

Aaron writes:  Transparency and covert promotions are a major issue in online public relations.  In the USA the FTC recently announced that it wants to start fining bloggers and twitterers who fail to disclose information about payment for endorsements . In other words, you could get in a lot of trouble for saying how much you like this particular cake if you don’t say that you are being paid by Mr Kipling! Working in PR, this can be a big problem. Seeding is a big part of getting the message across, and while I am more than happy to flag up any interesting product/client updates on my personal Twitter account (aaronhuckett), after reading this article I thought it would be wise to think about how to go about this with transparency.

Simple solution – whenever I mention or refer to a client in my tweets or retweets I simply type {client} at the end of the tweet. This makes the tweet totally transparent and lets the reader know my intention with that tweet – and this is something I have noticed a couple of PR agencies doing in their Twitter accounts.

I have also been relayed this into my company’s (Publicasity) Twitter accounts (@publicasity and @digicasity) which usually feature updates on the industry or about things going on in the office – but where we are openly promoting a client, I think it is wise to use the {client} tag.

What do you think? Reckon there is an easier way to put it? Got a good argument for still being secretive about these things?

Potential blog topics – the list that PR students won’t need after a month

For PR lecturers, asking students to blog is an effective way of assessing their engagement with social media, public relations theory, public relations practice, current media issues, etc., etc.  However, for students new to PR, the prospect of writing the dozen or so posts needed for a blogging assignment can seem a bit daunting: “What should I write about? I don’t know enough about PR!”      

 You do.   Here are some ideas.

1.  (If you’re on Twitter) Would any of today’s tweets be useful to media or PR students?  Why? (tip: follow @digicasity and @mediaguardian for useful ideas).
2. Find an article on a media-related theme in (for instance) The Guardian or on the BBC website.   What are your views?
3. Think about the last five films/gigs you saw.   How did you find out about them? (Poster? Newspaper/magazine advertisement?  Word of mouth?  Email newsletter?   Facebook fan page?  Via other social networks?   Trailer or clip emailed to you by a friend?)  Many media commentators have heralded the death of conventional advertising, but what’s your experience?
4. The five (or more) bloggers every PR student should follow … and why.
5. The five (or more) things I’ve done to secure a job in PR … and the five things I must do.
6. Review of any of your PR textbooks (without peeking at other reviews!) – if it was published in 2009, so much the better.
7. Interview with anyone who works in PR (no matter how junior or senior).  How did they get into PR?  What advice would they give to others?  What does their job involve?
8. Why I will/will not use Twitter/Posterous/FriendFeed/Typepad/(insert platform of your choice)  … and why.
9. Interview with a PR lecturer.  Well, why not? (first come first served on this one though!).
10.  How (unpopular sport star of your choice) is represented in the media.  What could they do to redeem their reputation?

 The beauty of this list is that #2, #6, #7 and #10 can be repeated frequently … you may even be able to turn #5 into two posts if you do enough jobhunting to merit an update.  Likewise, #8 can be repeated several times by discussing different platforms.  Suddenly you have a dozen or more posts for your blogging assignment.  But the beauty of blogging is that the more you do, the easier it gets – both in terms of the actual writing and thinking of things to write about.   So after a couple of weeks you probably won’t need this list any more.  I hope so.

 (I’m sure that others can add ideas for blog posts … contributions welcome!)

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.