What It Means to Be a PR Pro in 2016 and Beyond

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How crazy has this year been?

From a PR practitioner’s perspective, we’ve had to:

  • come up to speed with the challenges and opportunities of live video streaming (THINK: Periscope, Meerkat etc);
  • grapple with the ever-decreasing organic reach of our clients’ (agency or inhouse) Facebook Pages, while at the same time try to understand how advertising on the platform works;
  • keep abreast of all the new apps, tools and platforms that emerge with alarming regularity (one of my favourites is Meddle; I’m also a huge fan of Blab – I think it has huge potential);
  • stay ahead of the curve by learning and understanding the finer points of podcasting and audio-on-demand formats (this is a trend we’re going to see and hear a lot more of in 2016 and beyond);
  • become savvy video storytellers so as to tap into a visual medium that continues to grow like crazy;
  • continue to get our heads around the myriad platform changes occurring at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram seemingly on a daily basis; and
  • understand the need to post content where audiences live, for example, blogging on LinkedIn’s Pulse, Medium.com and Facebook Notes.

And I haven’t even yet mentioned SEO, native advertising, online newsrooms and mobile (the latter, of course, is having a profound impact on the communications business) – these are all things PR pros need to have at least a basic understanding of.

Heck, we’re still trying to get our clients to understand the finer points of being on Twitter (be truthful, how many companies and organisations really get Twitter? Indeed, how many have truly become open and connected brands as a result of social media? How many value openness and transparency as core attributes?).

Of course, all of this is against an ever-evolving backdrop of big picture societal themes – fueled by technology but inherently driven by good old human behavior – that continue to force us to think differently (and act more nimbly) as professional communicators:

  • The democratization of information, in which everyone is now a real-time, global publisher.
  • Further to the above, a growing number of content creators are becoming bona fide influencers in their own right, which in turn means they probably should be on the radar of some in the PR industry.
  • Consumers are becoming expert ‘hunters and gatherers’ of information; we’re more than happy to get our news and information from a range of different sources, including brands – as long as we trust the source.
  • Demand for radical corporate transparency is at an all-time high (and at a time when trust in government, business and institutions remains at undesirable levels).

The good news is, the demand for savvy PR professionals is going to go through the roof as the complexity of communicating with one’s constituents continues to increase.

The challenge for communications pros is being ‘big picture’ enough to be able to join the dots strategically, but also sufficiently savvy tactically so any recommendations we make are practical and grounded in common sense, not just ‘cool things to do’.

Of course, there will also be an increased need for tactical specialists. For some of us, this might be a great way of differentiating our professional offering in the PR marketplace.

Lots of challenges ahead, but also heaps of opportunities available for those in our industry who invest the time to understand the ever-evolving new media landscape; not just how it works, but where it makes sense for us to be involved professionally. Concurrently, however, we should not forget the more traditional skills and tactics in our kitbag that when applied correctly in the right situation can still work effectively for the companies and organizations we represent.

Bring on 2016!

Does the Agency Model and Leadership Impact the Future of Creativity in Communications?

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The Holmes Report recently released their fourth annual Creativity in PR Global Study and the results present a mixed bag on the status of right brain thinking in the PR profession. While there has evidently been an uptick in key areas – for instance viewing creativity as a key element in agency culture and more resources being devoted to creativity – there is still work to be done.

The study, conducted in association with H+K Strategies, provides both a snapshot and a somewhat longer view of the profession relative to its creative path.  But as with any study, the real insights are when the results of similar questions are considered together.

This year’s study included the question “Do you think the PR industry is set fair to deliver and lead creativity in the next five years, in terms of …?”. Respondents had four categories to respond to: Talent (hiring, training, diversity of workforce), Innovation, Agency Business Model, and Leadership.

Here’s how the responses netted out:

Unfortunately, this question wasn’t included in last year’s study, so there’s no way to know if there’s been a change. But there are both insights and dichotomies when the responses to this question are compared to the response to others.

Take talent for instance. Responses to a separate question about how agencies reward creativity indicated less than half (45.7%) do so as part of an annual performance review and a third don’t reward it at all. Taking that into account, how then could the industry as a whole be well positioned to hire, train and diversify for creativity into the foreseeable future? How many people – regardless of age group – will want to continue to work in an industry that says it values creativity, but your chances of being rewarded for it are less than 50 percent?

Let’s move to innovation. The greatest percentage of respondents to this question believes that the industry is poised to lead in this area. That’s all good, but when compared to the 50% of respondents who rated the current quality of creativity as ordinary in a separate question, there’s clearly a lot of work that needs to be done to get the industry to a leadership position in innovation over the next five years.

The Agency Model received the lowest percentage of yes votes relative to the long-term view and the highest number of no’s. Should we be surprised? The model has been in question for some time now, yet no one seems to know what to do about it. Unfortunately, when these numbers are combined with the fact that Leadership got the second lowest number of yes votes and the second highest number of no’s to this same question, it’s not difficult to see that the industry may be stymied in its efforts to be more creative.

Clients and agency personnel alike are providing some possible solutions. When asked if they could only do three things to improve their own or their company’s creative capabilities here are the top five responses:

–       Improve use of insight

–       Ability to take more risks

–       Educate clients

–       More budget

–       Clearer client briefs

Three of the above require more direct money and two require more time, which equates to more money. With money involved, change in the agency model and leadership mindset will be necessary to address all or most of these.

In other parts of the report, client input suggests they’re willing to spend the money on innovative ideas, but not if there’s no data to back up the approach. Advertising agencies have never had a problem with this. They create ideas, test them, iterate on the results then present concepts based on data. Brainstorming might have gotten them to the initial idea, but the results of the brainstorm typically don’t go immediately to the client without some kind of data to back it up. That’s a model that PR firms aren’t used to operating within but may need to get comfortable with.

It’s encouraging to see that the industry as a whole is continuing to move toward a greater focus on being more creative. This has been a conundrum that has affected PR for decades. But verbalizing what you want to be and proving it are two different things. Rather than pointing to ad agencies and wondering why they get to wear the creative mantle, PR needs to take a clue from them and mimic what’s allowed them to do so. It’s going to have to start with agency and in-house leadership – their future and the industry’s may depend on it.

Are Newspapers Truly Facing Extinction?

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Are newspapers truly facing extinction? Dominique Delport, Global Managing Director of Havas Media Group, shares an optimistic perspective.

While the newspaper industry is being confronted by profound changes, he predicts a better future for five reasons: the rise of the global middle class; the transition to mobile-first and online platforms; new content and adjusted editorial purpose; data exploitation; and more innovation and agility.

Black and white dailies are not as profitable as they used to be. However, Delport envisions a bright path ahead for the industry, with publications embracing new trends and technology to reshape the old paper model. It is not that newspapers are dead, it is that media organizations are being reborn and must alter how they deliver the news.

To learn more about his fascinating insights, view his slide called “The Future of Newspapers.” Since it was published in June 2014, it has garnered more than 90,000 views and nearly 400 likes. After a year, his points are still relevant and the slide continues to receive comments.

It begins with futurist Ross Dawson’s Newspaper Extinction Timeline and ends with his NewsScape diagram, which shows where value can be created in a post-channel media world.

Image source: Dominique Delport

Social Journalism Degree Aims to Frame Journalism As a Service

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The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism wants to create a new generation of journalists with its recently launched master’s program. Instead of treating audience members as one large mass, the Social Journalism degree aims to teach students how to connect better with communities and individuals.

In a video filmed at the 2014 Online News Association Conference, Jeff Jarvis, the director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY, explains the goals behind the new curriculum.
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“This is really turning journalism on its head. Rather than starting with the idea that we make content, it starts with the idea that we serve communities. And how do we start? By listening to those communities, understanding them, understanding their needs, and then serving them with all the tools we have at hand.”

One of Jarvis’s main points is social journalism goes beyond basic social media practices such as merely using it as another way to spread content. It’s about listening and building relationships with the public—figuring out their particular needs and how to meet them.

Whereas Google knows where he lives and works, said Jarvis, his newspaper doesn’t know anything about him as an individual. Social journalists will be trained to use data to identify unique people and communities, but also to measure their success in reaching them.

Next Steps

Could social journalism become the new standard for newsrooms? According to CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the demand from media companies for reporters trained in its practices is high throughout the industry.

Instead of simply waiting for new graduates to fill these open spaces, agencies can act now by reframing how they view news production—as a two-way interaction rather than a one-way conversation. In fact many media outlets already place a high value on engaging readers before publishing a story.

This is often done through crowdsourcing and taking a different approach to social media. Here are some interesting and successful examples to learn from.

Crowdsourcing

In the digital age, it’s easier than ever to access a large audience. In hearing input on events form a mass of people, it helps increase accuracy with multiple accounts and raises community connection with stories.

ProPublica used this method with its project on the patient safety in the United States. In 2012, It offered an online contribution form for people to share their stories and received more than 1,000 responses. Another recent example of collaborative journalism is from The Guardian, which launched a crowdsourced project on police shootings called The Counted.

Rethinking social media

Most media companies view article clicks and shares as the main measures of engagement, says ProPublica’s senior engagement editor Amanda Zamora.

However, growing an active community of people who will discuss issues important to them is crucial to the publication’s success in crowdsourcing. For example, ProPublica’s Facebook group on patient harm has more than 3,000 members, two of whom were speakers at last year’s U.S. Senate hearing on preventable deaths in hospitals.

Jersey Shore Hurricane News, a Facebook page with nearly 230,000 members, was applauded by the White House for doing what traditional news organizations cannot. It connects residents so they can receive and share developments in real time. Beyond simply offering a service to communities affected by storms, it provides news from a multitude of perspectives and from areas many reporters won’t have the resources to access.

Is social journalism the future of news in our constantly evolving digital age?

Image source: Online News Association

The Exciting Potential of Virtual Reality Journalism

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We are at the threshold of virtual reality becoming part of our everyday experiences.

Affordable head-mounted displays like Google Cardboard are already available to the public, giving widespread consumer access to people with smartphones. The consumer version of the Oculus Rift, a highly anticipated VR headset, is slated for release in early 2016, with competitors like Playstation’s Project Morpheus also waiting to make their debuts.

For the news industry, virtual reality’s impact on storytelling and media consumption could be transformative. Instead of just sharing a story, journalists can digitally plant viewers into unfolding events, giving them truly immersive experiences.

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Below are some noteworthy projects embracing VR journalism and how they are impacting this emerging field.

The New York Times – “The Displaced”

This month, The New York Times mailed its subscribers more than one million Google Cardboard VR viewers so they could watch its film “The Displaced.” Created with virtual reality production company Vrse, the 10-minute feature explores the stories of children forced away from their respective homes in Syria, South Sudan, and the Ukraine.

To watch the virtual reality film, viewers must download the free NYT VR app available on iOS and Android. This move is being considered a major milestone is bringing immersive journalism to the masses. Instead of only giving access to the few people with pricey VR developer headsets, it is offering inexpensive tools to the everyday person at no cost.

USC School of Cinematic Arts – “Project Syria”

Covering the plight of refugees with virtual reality is becoming popular. According to writer and director Nonny de la Peña, the medium evokes a feeling of presence and an emotional understanding of what the subjects are going through. With this form of storytelling, her aim is to encourage people to think about how they can help bring about change.

Her film “Project Syria”, which premiered at the 2014 World Economic Forum, is a digital recreation of an explosion on a busy street and of life inside a refugee camp. de la Peña built the scenes based on actual audio, photographs, and videos captured at the events.

Los Angeles Times – “Discovering Gale Crater”

“Discovering Gale Crater” is a virtual reality audio tour of the Mars landmark that was explored by the Curiosity rover. It is available on Google Cardboard, an Oculus Rift developer kit, or a standard computer. The 3D project allows viewers to explore the crater on their own or be guided by NASA geoscientist Fred J. Calef III.

The Los Angeles Times took on the project to determine how journalism can benefit from telling stories with virtual reality. The publication found a serious setback is that even when the tour ran smoothly, people using VR devices often felt dizzy and disoriented. There is clearly more work to be done to improve user experience. However, the interactive also represents a hopeful future for sharing remote, natural environments most people will never visit.

The Future of VR Storytelling

Television screens have separated us from the scenes of news stories, but virtual reality is making the audience part of them. There is immense possibility for journalists to create more engaging and stirring films with this medium. There is also a huge potential to attract younger audiences, many of whom may be interested in gaming and emerging VR technology.

There have also been words of caution about virtual reality journalism. In a letter to The New York Times, former managing editor of The Washington Post Robert Kaiser warned it is vulnerable to tricks and deceptions in how camera people choose to weave images together. This can distort how unfolding action is presented, and suit what the reporter wants the audience to see.

Laying out other potential ethical issues, The Associated Press Standards Editor Tom Kent suggests creating a code of ethics to overcome challenges and ensure fair and accurate reporting.

With the age of immersive journalism newly upon us, there is no better time than now to begin having these conversations. As consumer VR devices become more affordable and mainstream, there will likely be increasing demand for compatible content. The media organizations that can work out the kinks and streamline a set of best practices in advance will have the most to gain.

Image source: Nonny de la Peña
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The Final Decade of the Single-Practice Agency

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Everyone’s talking about it. The end of the marketing silo. The rise of the full-stack marketer. Buyers expect a seamless experience from a brand, which means online, offline, mobile and social all converge under a single marketing strategy. Paid, owned and earned tactics all complement and reinforce each other.

But what does this all mean for the client-agency relationship? How do we evolve in the era of integrated marketing?

Set business goals, not channel-specific goals

As a starting point, we all need to be better at focusing on the end goal. What is the business impact we are aiming to achieve? Too often this intention gets derailed at the RFP process. We still see a surprising number of RFPs in which the stated goals are tactical at best. So the objective is to increase awareness. Among which audience? Why? What is the desired business outcome? Driving demand by getting a seat at the table more often? Or addressing a perception issue among shareholders to improve valuation? While it is the agency’s responsibility to ask these questions, it is the client’s to be able to answer them. Too often the answers show a lack of internal understanding about the objective. The reason? Usually it’s because the in-house communications team is not connected enough to the sales and marketing groups.

It is also becoming increasingly important for agencies to understand their clients’ customer journey. At every stage of the journey, what are the likely preconceptions, concerns and objections? Campaigns need to be developed to address each stage. For example, top of funnel awareness can be improved with a campaign designed to reach customers as they experience the problems your client solves. Using keyword analysis you can anticipate the issues they are most concerned about and develop relevant content. A multi-channel approach allows you to syndicate that content through traditional media placements, your own social channels and paid social and mobile media. You might also use this content for webinars or physical events and, of course bring it all together with a targeted email campaign. This single example requires SEO, content, media relations, direct marketing, events and advertising teams to collaborate at every step.

Customer-centric replaces channel-centric marketing

Of course, the changing nature of marketing means in-house teams are evolving too. Where marketing teams may have been segmented by product or channel in the past, they must now be organized by customer. The idea that each marketing group could have its own agency, is quickly becoming redundant. How will you ensure a handshake between the thought leadership campaign targeting your C-level customers, and the paid amplification of that content? You do it by bringing it all under an agency that has both multiple skills and focused domain expertise relevant to your customer base.

The challenge for agencies is how to balance the need for specialist skills with a generalist approach. Full-stack marketers are rare, so clients need to complement their own in-house capabilities with skilled expertise within their agency. Yet, for efficiency’s sake, they also want strategists and account managers who can lace complex multi-channel campaigns together into a cohesive whole.

Specialists are from Mars, generalists are from Venus

Meanwhile, in agency land, specialists need leadership from someone who understands their field. They want career paths that allow them to go deeper rather than broader. Different specialists may flourish in different working environments and charge different day rates. Try managing a graphic designer, analyst and crisis comms specialist in the same way and the results will be interesting to say the least.

Advertising agencies have traditionally addressed this by separating creative, planning and account management teams. PR agencies have favored a more vertical approach with generalists handling strategy, content, media relations and account management all at once. In the brave new world of integrated marketing, a dominant model has not yet been found.

At LEWIS, we’re favoring a networked model. We have teams specializing in PR, digital, marketing and advertising. Then we are developing the account manager level across all units to oversee fully integrated campaigns. Our Marketing Services group was recently expanded to give clients and teams access to broad marketing strategy for any campaign. Project teams are organized around clients and work as one, to deliver results across every channel.

We predict that we will see the end of the single-practice agency by the end of the decade. Holding companies, which have promulgated the specialist agency model for years because it allows them to maximize revenues across multiple agency brands, will find it the hardest to change. The new normal will be agencies that are organized by client, be it by sector (technology, consumer) or by stage (emerging companies, global companies). These agencies will have a flexible, single P&L structure that allows seamless collaboration between teams without revenue or turf wars getting in the way.

It will take an investment in training and significant organizational shift. But it is the right thing to do for clients, their customers and the future of communications.

Virtual Reality is Here To Stay, Now What to Do With It

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A recent communication trend study released by Hotwire PR, indicates virtual reality (VR) could begin playing a more significant role in the coming year as companies use it to bridge the pervasiveness of increasing amounts of data with the desire by customers to experience a brand before buying. While the study identified several other trends – for instance, how advertising will be forced to change with the popularity of ad blocking and how Millennials can no longer be treated as a single demographic – its point of view on VR was the most interesting.

For the uninitiated, VR didn’t recently come to fruition with Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift or the popularity of role playing games. Jaron Lanier, considered one of the earlier pioneers of VR, gained notoriety in the 80s and 90s by introducing the first VR gloves and goggles. But the company he had co-founded to commercialize VR products eventually went bankrupt. The patents for the products Lanier helped develop were eventually bought by Sun Microsystems, and Sun was eventually bought by Oracle. Lanier now works for Microsoft. Who knows what Oracle has done with his patents today?

Since then, VR has continued to have fits and starts. More recently, 3D TV was supposed to give us a more immersive experience. How many people watch 3D TV. But the Hotwire study points out that the hardware issues that have stood in the way of greater mass adoption of VR seem to be rapidly working themselves out. Entertainment and gaming are what will evidently drive the pervasiveness of the hardware.

But as the study points out, there will be more to VR than play. The travel industry is already experimenting with ways to use it to provide travelers with a virtual look at a destination, a hotel or even a mode of transport. Earlier this year, Marriott experimented with a 4D experience that allowed travelers to be able to see, hear and even feel what it would be like to be in various destinations.

The non-profit industry is another potential VR adopter. With prospective donors suffering from “donation request fatigue,” non-profits are being forced to find more ways to move people to give.  According to the Hotwire report, Amnesty International used VR to give people a more realistic experience of the crisis situation in Syria. The result was not only an increase in donations, but also an uptick in online chatter about the experience and the crisis.

What’s evidently driving all of this is not an increased fascination with VR, but the fact that companies are finally seeing the potential for VR to bridge the daily onslaught of data with the desire to experience a brand before committing to it. In other words, developing emotional connections in the absence of physical presence.

There’s a slippery slope here, though, because just as social media has been targeted as being as much a bane as a boon for society, VR is bound to be at the receiving end of an even greater potential backlash. After all, it is removing the end user even further from the physical present than a text, post or shared photo ever will. Communicators and content creators who contemplate using VR will need to keep this in mind and not treat it as one more communication tool to tick off a list of others that have come before.

For the public relations industry, this also means getting even more comfortable with the idea that emotional connections are driven by providing consumers with immersive experiences. The more immersive the better. Any type of service or product demo is essentially an immersive experience and an opportunity to bond with a prospective customer.

What VR can deliver are experiences that are even more immersive and reveal aspects of a company, service or product in ways that have never before been available. In an age when consumers are also demanding even greater transparency to go with their immersion, this can only be a good thing for everyone involved.

The Most Creative Agencies Inspire Purpose and Empower Consumers

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A couple of weeks ago, the Holmes Report issued their fourth annual Global Creative Index and the results found Weber Shandwick on top of the overall agency ranking after placing third last year.

The Holmes Report analyzes the entries and winners of more than 25 different award programs to determine agency placement in their index. Weber had a plethora of awards, including three top-10 campaigns that included ‘World Hunger Relief’, ‘Danone Nutricia Crisis’ and ‘Who Framed Master Kong.’

Here’s a list of the other agencies in the top ten this year compared to last year. The global agencies dominate if for no other reason than the sheer volume of awards they can enter.

The Holmes Report also indexed agencies according to head count or what they referred to as a “pound for pound” calculation of the most creative agencies in the world. The result is that none of the big names on the list above ended up on the list below, and the list is fairly diverse when it comes to geography. That may or may not be proof that size and location influence an agency’s level of creativity. However, it does suggest that the resources of a large agency don’t necessarily guarantee a creative bent.

Campaigns themselves were also indexed and Always #LikeAGirl developed by MSL Group and Leo Burnett took top honors by a significant margin. It’s core message of girl empowerment “...aimed to turn an insult into a movement for confidence among teenage girls.” The Holmes Report developed this particular ranking by using a formula that emphasized the Best in Show winners of the awards programs it incorporated into its overall index.


The results of the indexed campaigns reveal a few trends in the combination of content and execution of the winning campaigns:

  •      Inspiring social purpose aligned with disruptive creative
  •      Consumer empowerment
  •      Integration of earned, owned and paid media

It will be interesting to see who ends up in the index next year and just how many campaigns will continue to reflect these trends. In the meantime, anyone who believes that creativity and PR are not aligned, need only look at the index to be proven otherwise.

Why Flexibility is Key to Retaining PR Talent

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One of the great things about working in PR is the variety. No two days are the same and if you’re working with the media, let’s face it, anything can happen. It’s also a competitive industry. There seems to be no shortage of PR graduates looking for jobs and the numbers of journalists wanting to move across to PR is increasing.

The problem the PR industry has, is retaining that talent. When I started my career in 1998, PR, at least in agency land, was very much about ‘climbing the ladder’ – from account executive, to senior account executive and so on. It was about money and status.

Today and in the future, talent retention has got to be about flexibility. In your early 20s, you don’t mind so much putting in the 12 hour days, heading into the office five days a week. Your work life and social life blur together. Once you get into your 30s, the novelty starts to wear off.

Forget the ‘duvet days’

Agency HR teams can come up with as many duvet days, cakes on your birthdays, or free massages as they like. Having worked in a number of agencies both in the U.K. and Australia, what many are failing to provide is true flexibility and accountability.

Yes, the media cycle today is 24/7. Yes, editorial teams are shrinking and journalists have to write increasing numbers of stories every day. If your job involves working with the media, social or otherwise, you need to be putting in those hours, chained to the desk. Right? Wrong.

Focus on outcomes

The problem, as a female dominated industry, is even more acute after women have had children. There is a reason why there are so few people in PR agency land after the age of 35. They’ve either burnt out, gone freelance looking for flexibility or in-house, choosing to work for companies that offer more than a few weeks paid paternity leave.

As an industry, we have to get better at making flexible work, work. The focus should always be on the deliverables, rather than the hours spent in the office. In PR agency land, you’ve no doubt seen the following: PR goes on paternity leave to come back ‘three days a week’, which as we all know, is four or five, just squashed into three days, to find she (let’s face it, it’s usually a she) is not ‘allowed’ to do client or media facing work. ‘What if the client calls her on her day off?’ So she’s left to write case studies and media releases. She gets bored. She leaves. She goes freelance or finds herself a job in-house.

Scrap the hierarchy

As if coming back to the PR industry isn’t hard enough. Already a tough job, being away from the industry for even six months, journalists have moved on, publications have folded, new ones started, clients have come and gone, existing ones have changed their focus – it’s so incredibly hard to get back into. You can’t just rock up and start rolling out the lesson plan you delivered last year.

One of the reasons I left my agency job in Australia was because I couldn’t work one day every couple of weeks at home. ‘You have a team to manage’ my boss would say. And there I think lies the problem. Not only do we have to embrace flexibility in our industry and give people the tools they need to work from anywhere they choose, but we need to scrap the hierarchy.

Trust is key

We have to get away from the ‘what you can’t see you can’t manage’ mindset. If we had more trust in the PR industry, between ‘employer and employee’, we wouldn’t need ‘managers’. We don’t have them at BENCH. We didn’t have them at an agency I worked for in the U.K. We had a flat structure. And it worked. It does work, extremely well.

Companies in the U.S. such as Zappos have scrapped their managers. Australian companies such as Atlassian and Canva are following suit. It’s a bold move for PR agencies which have structured themselves this way for decades, but it just doesn’t work. Staff churn remains too high and the client suffers. They have a new ‘account manager’ to bring up to speed every three months. And pity the journalist who has to try to remember the PR’s name.

Finding good PR talent is always going to be a challenge and that won’t change in the future. What we need to stop is the ‘burnout’ and offer flexible roles (and decent paternity leave) to enable both men and women to continue working in the PR industry or be able to come back. We have to trust that the people we work with, will do their jobs to the best of their ability and it’s up to us, as employers, to provide them with the flexibility and tools they need, to do just that.

Business Leaders Debate: Are Corporate Social Responsibility and PR Necessary?

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A recent UK PR Week headline article, PR and CSR departments? Ditch them, says former BP chief Browne, raises an interesting question.

“Businesses are there to co-operate, to work with society. Businesses have to be engaged very radically with everybody who is affected by them – [and] tell the truth,” Lord Browne stated.
But who will do this?

Lord Browne headed BP when there was a fatal explosion at the company’s Texas City, Texas plant on March 23, 2005 that claimed 15 lives and resulted in fines and awards. It was under his tenure that BP’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico received five citations for non-compliance (safety and pollution). That’s the same well that in 2010 caused one of the world’s worst environmental disasters.

Did BP think crises like these would hurt its business? The simple answer is yes. That’s why BP carried out costly, multi-year brand communications and public affairs campaigns to win back the trust of consumers, business partners and other stakeholders.

However, those are the same CSR/PR programs that Lord Browne called a ‘prop’ which he says has “allowed a lot of companies to detach the activity of communicating and being involved with stakeholders almost into a side-pocket.”

So are corporate social responsibility programs important?

In a recent post How brands can change the world, Keith Weed, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Unilever, appears to believe integrating brands with issues can make a difference.

At the launch of the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development, Mr. Weed said:

“Brands can play a vital role in bringing the message of initiatives like the Global Goals to the masses. They offer the opportunity to reach an audience in a different way through how they are rooted in a person’s day-to-day life. Every day, for example, two billion people use a Unilever product. Brands’ familiarity and ubiquity afford them a massive advantage in engaging and informing a high volume of people to make a positive change. And that can only be a good thing.

“The more widely known these Global Goals are, and the more widely they are understood by everyone, the more politicians will take them seriously, finance them properly, refer to them frequently and make them work.”

So, while Lord Browne sees

“. . . there’s obviously some sort of interface needed [with the media] . . . there’s too much which is unrelated to the reality of what is actually happening and too little understanding of how companies are affecting the different bits of society they are involved in.”

What he might really be saying is that CSR and PR need to be at the ‘table’. As Mr. Weed put it,

“They [brands] can be a voice for change, for exposing truths, for championing good. One of Unilever’s brands, Ben & Jerry’s, is a fantastic example of this process in action. Their very public support of climate justice, marriage equality, and peace-building places the brand at the heart of the debate in a way that connects with people in an authentic way.

“A brand’s most important role on this issue is arguably how they can help people connect to a political process that will impact the world they live in, that their children will inherit, to act as citizens themselves, not simply consumers. That is a brand’s role as a citizen, to help consumers be citizens too.”

So, should CSR and PR be “ditched” as Lord Browne suggests?

No. If CSR and PR are fully integrated with the business, they play a critical role connecting a company to its stakeholders.