Hill+Knowlton Strategies

I spoke recently to a group of journalism students at Algonquin College – my alma mater, and a good J-school. The topic, of course, was PR. The intent was to highlight to the students that more than one career path existed for inquisitive, competent, intelligent writers, and to show them that public relations (when done right) is more than what the media often portray it to be.

A couple of questions stood out, the first being: “Is it right for PR people (and the companies they work for) to withhold information from the media?”

My response: Absolutely. Once the shock and moral indignation had passed, I then proceeded to give some context. Bad things do actually happen to good companies. And when they do, people affected — be they employees, families of employees, community leaders, customers, suppliers or others — shouldn’t hear about it through the media (unless, of course, there is a risk to public safety). Rather, whenever and wherever possible, they should hear about it from the source. It is the right and responsible thing to do – and it is what we counsel our clients. That’s not to say the media shouldn’t also be made aware of what has happened. Indeed they should, at the appropriate time. And, in many instances, issuing a statement via the media is legally required. What it means is about taking responsibility and demonstrating respect for the people who really matter the most.

Along the same lines, another student asked why, if a company was so upstanding, did it even need a PR or communications department? (or put more bluntly, why does your job even exist?). How hard is it to tell the truth?

And strangely enough, for a brief moment, I was stumped. It’s an interesting question, particularly given the increasing emphasis clients and stakeholders alike – customers, shareholders, employees, activists, etc - are placing on transparency and accountability, and the dawning realization that in this inter-connected world, bad news can no longer be shoved under the carpet. It will come out.

The fact of the matter is that, because of these very issues, the communications department is more important than ever. An organization’s license to operate is being increasingly driven by its reputation, that being the sum of how ALL audiences view your company — as an employer, a creator of value, a corporate citizen, or as a provider of goods and services. Willingly providing these stakeholders with the information they need to inform their perceptions and decisions is vital to demonstrating transparency and accountability. Communications cannot be viewed an afterthought. Information dissemintation must be managed so as to ensure the right information – authentic, consistent and focused – gets to the right audience at the right time. When you do that, you build trust. And when you build trust, you build relationships. And that is what PR is about.

Sometimes it requires getting back to the basics to remember why we do what we do.

It goes kinda like this…

You’re riding home on the bus, one of those articulated behemoths loaded to the gills during the rush hour. Perhaps you’re staring at the rather nerdy fella drooling asleep in his seat across from you, or you’re doing a crossword or Sudoku puzzle, and minding your own business… and then it begins… a buzz that reverberates in your head because it’s not just coming from one location but is in fact coming from all around you… the student sitting a few seats down the aisle, the lady standing close to the door because god forbid men ever give up their seats these days to a lady, even the elderly statesman reading his Globe and Mail… and at first you can’t make sense of it, this buzz-thumping noise that grates your nerves because you’ve had a rotten day and you just want to relax a bit before getting home to the chaos — wonderful that it might be — that is twin daughters who want to play three versions of tag before bedtime. So you try and shut it out, but then you realize that the buzz actually contains words and sounds that make some kind of obtuse sense, but not enough that you can’t just listen, you actually have to work to understand it and yet you still can’t figure it out because the words and sounds are all inter-mixed with each other since they come from three or four different sources around you…and you realize that this deluge of fuzzy noise and belching bass coming from ipods and digital media players hidden in coat pockets, packages, boxes and bags is in fact worse than if you could actually hear the music being played or the words being spoken whether you hated it or not — kinda like when someone is talking on a cell phone and having an argument that they didn’t want to have right then on the bus but can’t somehow end the call – but you can’t and the buzz just gets more annoying and grating… and you know they know that you can hear it… or you think they know, but then again do they really care because at least they have something to listen to and not just this ever-present buzz… man, I need to get me one of those things

Yeah, yeah… you know it. I know it. And a lot of people in our business are starting to know it. But it’s always nice to hear it direct from the mouths of the people we rely on to pay our bills.

Last week, H&K Canada held its national marketing communications practice meeting in Toronto to discuss trends in our business, identify new opportunities, improve our processes, enhance our creativity and explore new tools and techniques – including social media: the good, bad, and ugly, as presented by yours truly.

Kudos to the conference organizers – Kadi, you know who you are (and all your team) - for including both a client and media panel to discuss – in a frank and open manner - what exactly clients and media expect from us, how we can improve our service to them, and trends that are changing the traditional PR-Media and PR-client relationships. I think everyone in the room – including the panelists themselves – found the exchanges extremely insightful.

And from the perspective of a PR professional with responsibility for helping our clients build relationships with consumers or other audiences via the online channel, I was glad for the opportunity to hear what they had to say about PR and the Internet/social media.

Each of the client panelists — representing the mobile telecoms, beverage and not-for-profit space — emphasized the growing importance of the Web and social media in particular, both as a tool for outreach as well for ‘listening’.

Equally interesting was their acknowledgement that, as the lines of distinction between traditional PR, advertising, and interactive agencies blur in terms of roles and responsibilities, no one department or vendor has a lock on good ideas. Our clients want good, creative, and strategically sound ideas. And they don’t care where they come from. That’s something that we in PR need to consider more so now than ever, as we often find ourselves either cut out from everything but media relations, and rarely at the table when the brainstorming actually happens.

Of the media who attended the next day’s panel and who represented both the national daily print, local daily print, and network television, and when the question of blogging was asked, each of the panelists acknowledged that blogs were, without question, changing the landscape and nature of traditional journalism – both as an outreach vehicle for themselves and as a tool for listening for stories.

These are the kinds of exchanges that we need to do more often.

Every now and then the good folks at H&K Canada receive notification from our HR team that they’re looking for a few good PR men or women who can handle the challenge of doing work on behalf of some of Canada’s biggest and most demanding clients and issues… and usually they tempt us with a tasty little referring bonus to help them out…

And so while this might be stretching the letter of the law somewhat (as I’m not sure that my eligibility for the bonus extends to the blogosphere, though I guess we’ll find out), I’m putting the job description up here so that I might be able to convince you, faithful reader, to submit your employment application and, should you be hired, allow me the pleasure of actually enjoying this small reward for working for a firm like H&K.

So here it is… and if it fits, go ahead and send an email to careers@hillandknowlton.ca and tell them Brendan sent you.

Bonne chance!

Posted March 21, 2006

“Opening for an Account Director in the Toronto office Technology Communications Group.  Candidates for this position will have a minimum of 8 years experience in communications much of it in an agency setting.  The position requires a strong consumer technology background including experience with wireless technology.  Candidates will have developed trusted advisor relationships with clients, shown creativity in achieving client objectives and led large complex projects that produce results.  We are searching for a proven leader, team builder and mentor.”

So, in the most recent edition of Ampersand, H&K’s global newsletter, Peter Walshe of WPP sister company Millward Brown speaks to the notion of brand attraction vs brand satisfaction.

Says the article: “Brands that stand for something and deliver a great product or service are more likely to get talked about. User endorsement is an extremely powerful and credible force. Frederick H. Reicheld¹, Director Emeritus at Bain & Company, has carried out work that suggests services that inspire their users to recommend them to others are ones that will grow and produce superior profits. He goes further and claims that ‘satisfaction’ is a poor predictor of success and that the one number you need is that of ‘Net Promotion’ – the positive balance of recommendation against detraction.”

This is an interesting concept, further accentuated given the growing influence of social media.

But what about the flip side of the equation: the dissatisfied customers who go beyond being merely dissatisfied to actively communicating their negative experiences more broadly — or what could be termed brand dissatisfaction vs brand detraction?

A recent “Retail customer dissatisfaction” study by the Wharton School of Business’ Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative and the Verde Group explores this side more deeply.

The Study was aimed at seeking to “better understand the effect of problem experience and negative word-of-mouth on the retail shopping experience.” And while this study was not aimed specifically at bloggers or the Internet, the implication for this channel is clear.

According to the study, ”shoppers experiencing problems are more than five times as likely to tell a friend or colleague about it than to contact the company.”

Additional findings highlighted by Wharton in its article on the study’s findings “Beware of dissatisfied consumers: they like to blab“:

• only 6% of shoppers who experienced a problem with a retailer contacted the company, but 31% went on to tell friends, family or colleagues what happened.
• Of those, 8% told one person, another 8% told two people, but 6% told six or more people.

“Even though these shoppers don’t share their pain with the store, they do share their pain with other people, apparently quite a few other people,” says Wharton Marketing Professor Stephen Hoch.

Paula Courtney, president of The Verde Group, is quoted in the same article as saying that ‘the exponential power of negative word-of-mouth lies in the nature of storytelling. “As people tell the story the negativity is embellished and grows,” she says. For example, the first time the story is told, it might be about a customer service representative who was rude. By the time the third or fourth person hears the story, the customer service representative becomes verbally abusive. “To make a story worth telling, there has to be some entertainment value, a shock value,” says Courtney. “Storytelling hurts retailers and entertains consumers.”‘

And these stories carry weight:

According to the study, “almost half of shoppers have avoided a particular store in the past because of someone else’s negative experience. A similar proportion say they will avoid buying a similar item at the store, or visiting the store altogether, in the future.”

So while much of this simply reaffirms what many of us have already believed, it behooves us to continue to evangelize the growing capacity of social media in removing barriers that prevented one customer from talking to other customers…and so on, and so on…