PR research is like buying low and selling high: almost nobody does it.

A look at the future of PR research.

I started in the PR business when the height of communication technology was the IBM Selectric typewriter with, omigosh, correction tape built right in! I remember gathering with my colleagues around a different mechanical behemoth, agog that we were now able to send documents to clients electronically, over the telephone! It required encasing a single page in a plastic sleeve and clamping it to a rotating drum. Then in only 30 minutes of so, that whole page would someone appear magically on a matching machine anywhere in the world. My first cell phone had a 15-pound shoulder-mounted battery pack. So when the Philadelphia Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America asked me in October to join several other "seasoned" practitioners on a panel about the future of PR, I felt better prepared to discuss the past. I had to give some thought to the future regarding my assigned topic, the future of PR research. In my blog this month, I reprise my conversation with a roomful of my peers on a subject of intense concern among public relations practitioners. Summary: the past is prologue to the future. This issue of my Update also includes links to a couple of other authors' thoughts on the subject.

In 1983, the year after I was accredited in Public Relations, James Grunig complained about the lack of research in PR practice:

"Although considerable lip service is paid to the importance for program evaluation in public relations, the rhetorical line is much more enthusiastic than actual utilization. I have begun to feel more and more like a fundamentalist minister railing against sin; the difference being that I have railed for evaluation in public relations practice. Just as everyone is against sin, so most public relations people I talk to are for evaluation. People keep on sinning … and PR people continue not to do evaluation research."

A study conducted by Judy Van Slyke at Syracuse University compared public relations to a certain "model of an immature and ineffective science" and concluded that "public relations fits the model."

Dr. Walt Lindemann, with whom I worked at Ketchum PR, did a landmark study in 1988, which concluded that "most public relations research was casual and informal rather than scientific and precise" and that "most public relations research is done by individuals trained in public relations rather than by individuals trained as researchers."

Under any other circumstances, I wouldn't even consider pointing to comments and studies that are 20 or more years old. But in this case, it's perfectly safe — because nothing much has changed. And I don't need a study to say that with confidence; I see it every day. Everyone agrees that research for planning, monitoring and evaluating the success of PR programs is very important. But in practice, it's like buying low and selling high in the stock market —hardly anyone does it. These are the reasons I hear most frequently:

• They don't know that they're supposed to.
  
• They don't have the time.
  
• They don't have the budget.
  
• They don't know how.
  

The truth is that even if most practitioners had the time and money, they wouldn't know how to do either formative or evaluative research. Here's a fair description of what passes of research in public relations in the vast majority of situations:

Formative research is the fact-finding in which we seek to understand the dynamics of our problem, how people relate to it, what motivates then to take the kind of action we want them to take and so forth. In the real world, it usually consists of some combination of unsubstantiated assertions about the way things are, preceded by some form of the phrase: "The boss wants this."

Objectives are set in terms that can't be measured. These are common: "Educate the public," "generate enthusiasm" and "get the word out."

Strategies are skipped or given lip service in phrases such as:"Position the client as a leading provider of end-to-end solutions in the (insert name of industry here) space." Don't get me started on the use of "position" as a verb.

Tactics consist of whatever they always do and have the capabilities to produce.

Results are measured by trumping-up whatever random evidence they see and tying it to the aforementioned objectives such as generating enthusiasm and educating the public. Or they just default to how many clips they got and dollar value if it had been paid advertising.

So what's in my crystal ball about the future of PR research? Well, I don't mean to be a curmudgeon or a pessimist — this turned out to be a big laugh line in my presentation to the PRSA meeting — but in more than 30 years of practice, in all sorts of economic conditions, I haven't seen much change.

However for those who do get this message and put it into practice, there's very good news on the horizon: the tools for conducting research at every stage of a program are better, cheaper — or free —and becoming more plentiful and sophisticated every day.

It's not just the capability of the Internet to supercharge secondary literature research; you can do very sophisticated primary research through polls on forums and Web sites and by using cheap or free survey tools like Survey Monkey. You can discover trends, test messaging and monitor results with tools we couldn't have even imagined 30 years ago such as TweetDeck and Hoot Suite that let you analyze popularity of Tweets; Google Analytics for Web sites; Google alerts; and on and on and on.

This will never change: It will always be true that those practitioners who use research properly to design, monitor and evaluate their programs will sit at the table with the big boys and girls. Those who don't, won't and will forever be doomed to "getting the word out there."

Happy Birthday to Me

It's time for equal protection for LGBT people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states. It's easy to see why my 9th great-grandfather took-up on Billy Penn's offer to settle near here around 1711; this part of the country has the same rolling landscape and changing seasons that were so familiar to him and other German/Swiss settlers in Pennsylvania. It's especially beautiful here this time of year, as summer gently yields to fall, "The Wood Man" delivers a full cord of Cyprus and I can cut-back on lawn-mowing chores.

October 11, my birthday, is always a special date to me. Around my birthday each year, I sit down and do the requisite soul-searching. I ask myself whether I've made a difference on the planet, if I've been a loyal friend and partner, an honorable businessman and a good citizen.

This year my ruminations have special significance to me: On October 11 my partner of 20 years and I will be joining tens of thousands of people who will descend on Washington DC for The National Equality March. We marchers share one single demand of our Federal government: equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.

According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, people like Randy and me, who are legally married, lose out on 1,049 Federal marriage-related benefits that our neighbors receive the minute they say "I do." These are simple, basic things like inheritance rights, joint ownership of property and the right not to testify in court against your spouse. We've spent thousands of dollars on legal fees to create an inferior collection of documents that barely approximate the benefits that "traditional" married couples receive without question.

A Federal law, the legally enshrined discrimination against a single class of citizens known as the "Defense of Marriage Act," forbids the Federal government from recognizing our marriage and extending those 1,049 rights to us. Despite President Obama's repeated promises, abolishing the demeaning "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy has been back-burnered because he "has too much on his plate." I agree with Jon Stewart who remarked: "Get a bigger plate!"

October 11 is also National Coming Out Day. This annual event has a simple premise: by "coming out" and letting people know just how many LGBT people are in their lives, more people will experience for themselves that we're not so very different than they are. So here I am, here we are. And we're as mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore.

There's a stirring song that has become an anthem in our community, Something Inside So Strong, that expresses our collective resolve succinctly:

The more you refuse to hear my voice
The louder I will sing.
You hide behind walls of Jericho
Your lies will come tumbling.
Deny my place in time
You squander wealth that's mine
My light will shine so brightly
It will blind you.

If you plan to squander my wealth, I suggest very, very dark sunglasses.

From Emergence To Emergency: Don’t Be Caught With Your Tweets Down

This blog is a supplement to my September 2009 Update Newsletter. (To subscribe to my newsletter, enter your E-mail address.)

Using social media is key to effective issues management. I used the recent holiday weekend to labor over long put-off chores around the house. These included tackling that eye-level stack of boxes that contain the paper record my career since 1976. (My grand scheme is to digitize anything of enduring importance and take advantage of my financial adviser's annual Shredder Day at the end of this month.) When I came across my well-worn presentation, How to Manage Issues before They Manage You: the Lifecycle of an Issue, I marveled at the key change that has occurred since the early 90's when I first began delivering this talk: the speed with which issues emerge and turn into full-blown crises. Then, I'd say that an issue can go from emergence to emergency in a matter of months. Today, the same cycle occurs in hours.

It all changed in 1992 when the U.S. government began pulling out of network management and allowed commercial entities to provide Internet access to the rest of us. At one time, corporate executives and managers charged with issues management could build their opinion-leader networks and databases, and prepare their position papers and communication plans in a timeframe that now seems leisurely. Today, that pace would be deadly. When I started delivering that talk, I would shock the audience members into realizing how behind the times they were by describing how I developed the lifecycle of an issue charts in one program and then converted it into another! Those were the days in which executives wrote on yellow legal pads and had secretaries who "typed it up."

Today, while some companies are still struggling with whether or not to blog, micro blogging has eclipsed blogging to become a critical tool in both issues and crisis management, not to mention marketing. While some PR folks are debating over the perfect CEO quote for a good-news release that will start with "We are pleased …," others have come to realize that news releases are fast becoming a search engine optimization tool, not a reliable method for attracting news or blog coverage.

As I say in every presentation to peers of my generation of college-educated communication professionals, we have to break the habit of "writing it up and sending it out" en masse, on paper. Along with the crazy idea that there is such a thing as "the general public" that needs to be "educated," this kind of thinking and behavior and dinosaurs have much in common.

Take a look at the requirements and baked-in assumptions of a PR course at Georgia Southern University. Here's the age-old assignment to interview a professional in the business — "and then write about it at your blog." Or this one, "Creating a profile in LinkedIn is a requirement in my PR Practicum class and is recommended for ALL my PR students." Or read this advice from the Philadelphia Inquirer's OpEd page on how to communicate with college freshman: "warm up your thumbs and start texting." Or ponder the fact that, in May, America's paper of record, the New York Times, appointed a social media editor, whose first acts included a 100-character introductory Tweet. The newspaper's Twitter feed (@nytimes) now was 1.7 million followers.

If you're a professional communicator and you want to provide wise and useful counsel to your employer or clients, you simply can't afford to be heard in public saying any these phrases:

"I just don't get Twitter. Who wants to hear about what people had for lunch?"

"There's no good reason for our organization to have a Facebook page."

"I don't participate in social networks because our IT department has all of that stuff blocked."

"Video, schmideo. YouTube is for stupid pet tricks."

Any organization can be damaged by a poorly managed issue that explodes, in minutes or hours into a full-blown crisis. Don't be caught with your Tweets down.

Sue Me, Sue Me, Go On and Sue Me.

This blog is a supplement to my August 2009 Update Newsletter. (To subscribe to my newsletter, enter your E-mail address.)

When Nathan Detroit's relationship with Miss Adelaide's starts to fall apart in the Broadway chestnut, Guys & Dolls, they resort to threats of lawsuits. That doesn't seem so remarkable to American audiences. But try to explain to Europeans how a litigious society like ours works and they're left mystified. I recently had occasion to speak with the CEO of a startup company in Germany that is planning to open an American HQ. As I learned more about his plans, it was patently clear to me as a born-and-bred American that his first purchase needed to be a Directors and Officers insurance policy. He couldn't get his mind around the concept and asked me, "Who would sue whom for what reason?" The answer, of course, was "anyone, anyone else, anything." So I did my best to explain it to him in an E-mail.

Here's how I explained it:

"The problem with the American litigation society is that there is neither rhyme nor reason for many lawsuits — except that people feel entitled to be compensated for every single bump in the road of life. [My CEO friend had heard of the case in which a McDonald's customer sued the restaurant because she spilled coffee on herself that was — heaven forefend — hot!] As a result, our society changes to reflect that. For example, the safety warnings and precautions that are required everywhere are ridiculous: yesterday at the gym, I saw a warning label on a small bucket of sanitary wipes that read, "Warning! Children may fall into this bucket and drown even in a small amount of liquid. Keep away from children! Injury or death may occur." On a bucket! Another: property owners are required to give advance warning even to trespassers of any potential hazards on their properties. But how you give that warning could come back and bite you in a lawsuit. So if you have a dog that might jump on or bite people and you put up a sign that says, "Beware of Dog," that sign will be used as evidence in court that you've admitted to having a vicious animal! So as a consequence, you must put up a sign that says simply "Dog in Yard."

By the same token, over-zealous safety precautions are everywhere such as railings, guard rails, anti-slip materials and so forth. By comparison, I remember being on the glacier outside the observatory at the top of the Jungfrau in Germany [a 14,000-foot mountain in the Swiss Alps.] The only barrier to falling off into the void was a single rope strung between ski poles stuck in the ice with a sign that essentially said, "Don't go past this rope." In Europe, people expect to take responsibility for their own behavior. A person stupid enough to go beyond the rope and get injured would not get any sympathy in court. Not so here.

So how could you be sued? Someone else had your idea first. Your office address is in the U.S. but you're really in Germany. Your business plan will be seen as "restraint of trade" or "unfair competition." Or someone believes that have a legal right to [your intellectual property.] And on. And on. That's why having adequate D&O (Directors and Officers) insurance is so important in an American enterprise."

Sadly, I think the guy has a great idea, that his business plan is solid that he could have a great success here. I wish him the best. But I hope he finds an excellent insurance agent first.

Rants, Not Raves

Expressions That Make My Blood Boil

This blog is a supplement to my July 2009 Update Newsletter. (To subscribe to my newsletter, enter your E-mail address.) If you read the original, click here to skip to the new rants.

Finishing up a call with AT&T wireless, the call center rep summarized my transaction by saying that she had "educated" me about several topics. I know she was saying what her script required, but it made my blood boil. Public Relations programs, too, often set out to "educate the public." Why does this phrase send me running for the blood pressure cuff? Because it demonstrates sloppy thinking and arrogance of the highest order. First, there is no such thing as "the public," one great huddled mass yearning to be set free by our corporate wisdom. Any professional communicator knows that audience segmentation is one of the first steps in planning a communication program. But worse is the unspoken message of these would-be "educators." What they're really saying is "If only those uninformed and ill-informed fools hear our message, then surely they'll support our issues and buy our products." A statement like that is not only arrogant, but it also belies a fundamental misunderstanding of how ideas are bought and sold in the marketplace.

New Rants

Any phrase that includes the word "spin," as in "Spin the story this way," or "Oh, you're a spin doctor!" Using this word in the presence of a professional, ethical communicator is roughly the equivalent of calling an accountant a "lying, cheating bean counter." Spin is not a good thing. In common parlance, "to spin" means "to lie."

Being asked my telephone number/account number after I've already entered in using the keypad on my phone. (Wasn't that exercise supposed "to better assist me?") If you know that this issue exists in your fancy schmancy telephone system, cut it out! You're wasting my time and telling me that you are not paying attention to the impact your systems have on your customers.

Voice mail options that are organized around the way you are organized, not what I am trying to accomplish. When I call your business, I want to do something — get information, update my account information, complain. So when your voice mail system gives me options based on your structure ("For accounting, press one") it's clear to me that you don't know who I am.

Slavish adherence to call-center scripts. I swear I was in Oz the other day when I was trying to resolve a problem with one of my accounts. (Not my fault, by the way.) Three times I was transferred through a four-step sequence of people. On the third time, when I told the robot masquerading as a human being that she was about to transfer me to a department that I had had already been to without success, she said, "At your request, I will not transfer you. Thank you for calling." Aaaaaaarrrrgh!

People who make that damnable, high pitched "Wooooooo!" sound, which is possibly appropriate at a sports event in which people are sweating and/or bleeding but absolutely not appropriate at a Broadway show, a symphony concert or any other event that does not involve visible bodily fluids.

The phrase "comprised of."
It is never, ever, ever accurate, under any circumstances whatsoever and I may go insane if I ever hear or read it again. (I'm starting to feel much better now!)

Signs in check-out lanes that read, "10 items or less."
Didn't anyone go to Catholic school?

People who contribute to a discussion by saying, "The bottom line is …"

Retail clerks who interrupt an interaction with a live human being to answer the phone.

Out-of-control corporate jargon.
For example using "around" to mean "about" as in "Let's have a discussion around …" Or "space" to mean market segment or industry. Or "solutions" to mean "products." Or "a leading provider of …" to mean anything.

Please use the "Comments" link below to add your raves. You'll feel better. I sure do.

If You’d Rather Twist Than Tweet …

PR Pros must embrace social media.

This blog is a supplement to my June 2009 Update newsletter, which is devoted to social media. (To subscribe to my newsletter, enter your E-mail address.) Since "old fashioned" E-mail newsletters don't allow the space for much storytelling, I'm telling a few here to make the point that even old dogs like me can learn new tricks and to share some insights into how I learned them. For example, I have been doing some very intensive research on Web site structures and optimization recently. In the process, I acquired an analytic tool that allowed me to study several of my own Web sites to learn how I could improve their Google search rankings. I was, frankly, surprised to see how highly the Google search algorithm favors incoming links from social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn and to links with sites like YouTube and Google Video. So I made some very minor changes to the sites including improving my links to and from social networks. In the past month,
I've increased traffic to my corporate Web site by 15.18% and to one of my other sites by 34.89%.

Another: On Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, we hosted our best friends for a small gathering, which included the 17 year-old son of one couple. He dutifully appeared and had his burgers but was eager to be with his friends. So mom soon took him home and returned. As we were all engaged in rousing games of Croquet and Dominos, mom silently kept in touch as her son asked permission to change locations through text messages. (Why didn't he just pick up the phone and call? Because kids don't want their peers to know that they're talking to "the 'rents.")

And yet another: last week, I had marked my calendar for 1:00 on May 26, 2009, when the California Supreme Court was to announce its ruling on Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to take away the right of same-sex couples to marry. It was a much anticipated ruling that, sadly, allowed the constitutional amendment to stand while, happily but incomprehensively, also allowed to stand the marriages of the 18,000 same-sex couples who had married after the Supreme Court initially ruled that the majority does not have the right to deny the rights of a minority. I was hovering over Google News and, shortly after 1:00, read the first reports in national and international press. But then I went to Twitter I was mesmerized by the feed from one guy who was reporting, minute by minute, how street protests in San Jose were forming, how the police were massing in response, how the crowd was reacting and feeling, what they were chanting, what their signs said and what happened when arrests began. The carefully edited and crafted news reports I read conveyed nothing compared with the raw emotion of a guy protesting in the streets for his civil right. Imagine if, twenty years ago, the students massed in Tiananmen Square had the same technology available to them. We'd be remembering a very different set of events.

In my June newsletter, I promised bonus links to more great items about social media. Here they are:

Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Why the FaceBook "Whopper Sacrifice" Was So Murderously Successful

Social Media Can Boost Trust

Social media optimization (SMO) is gaining momentum in SEO Consulting

Most Web Video Is Unwatchable: Follow These PR Best Practices to Make Sure Yours Gets Seen. Seven questions to ask.

Companies are scrambling to silence errant messages while exploiting social networks.

Attention, Kmart (& Sears) shoppers: Your sites are ready.

Octomom and my friend, Joann

Octomom's PR firm's resignation points out the need to reform public discourse:

I was not surprised to read that the PR firm representing the California mother of octuplets had resigned because of numerous death threats the principals had received.  I've had similar, though not life-threatening, experiences in my own career and walking away has been a tempting option. On several occasions, opponents of clients I have represented have drawn my firm into the battle as "evidence" that my clients were guilty as they charge because they had engaged a PR firm aka "a spin doctor."  (Using the word "spin" to describe the work of a legitimate public relations professional is akin to calling an accountant a "lying bean counter.") So when I read that my friend of some 20 years, Joann Killeen, was the target of these threats, my interest in learning more about the new mother of 14 children grew. 

Joanne is a past president of the Public Relations Society of America; ethics is her middle name.  She and her partner, Michael Furtney, took the mother's account on a pro bono basis.  Both are accredited in public relations and members of the PRSA College of Fellows.  So it was immediately apparent to me that I was not getting the whole story through the media accounts I'd seen and heard. I admit that until I had a personal interest in the story, I was leaning toward the prevailing wisdom that the mother is a selfish, irresponsible leach on society's precious resources and that the physician who "did this to her" ought to be drawn and quartered in a public square. But it didn't take much investigation to see another side to the story.

Joanne, a grandmom and former professional photographer, took some photos of mom and kids, for which she was offered "lots of money." She signed over copyright to a photo agency so that if they were ever sold, the mother would get the proceeds. Joann and Michael turned away, among other enticements to stray from their standards, an offer from a news medium to pay-off their mortgages in exchange for identifying the sperm donor.  (Read this transcript of their interview with a local paper.)  Yet, for their good counsel and generous support, they received so many death threats among 88,000 E-mails that they had to hire personal security guards. When they were threatened with lawsuits and boycotts of their clients' products, they ultimately chose to resign.

There's a lesson here for all of us and, I say with all due pessimism, I doubt that we'll take it to heart. Our public debate has become course and cruel. We have forgotten that there are living, breathing human beings on the other end of our facile and fluid opinions about everyone and everything. The anonymity of blog posts and comments, forums and all other manner of "modern" public discourse has unleashed the basest and meanest of our humanity. We all have an opinion — a very, very strong opinion — about everything, about most of which we have precious few facts and even less expertise from which to form an opinion. But darned if won't express that opinion, no matter how ill-informed.

I'm reminded of the wisdom of the founding principle of Wikipedia, which points out the need to change the nature of our public dialogue: assume good faith. "Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it. If criticism is needed, discuss (the) actions but avoid accusing others of harmful motives without particularly strong evidence."

As Wikipedia asks, I will remind myself to "assume the presence of a belly-button" each time my lips are poised to opine. Join me, won't you?

Chinese Cyber-Thieves

If you use the same user ID and password at multiple Web sites, you're could be in a heap o'trouble: Recently, Chinese cyber-thieves cracked a poorly secured Web site and lifted my user name and password.  In what I've learned is a common practice, they then hit major financial sites to see if I had been foolish enough to use the same user name and password with any of them.  Of course, probably like you, I have used the same password at scores of sites.  I learned of the scam when PayPal called me about a string of suspicious purchases in Germany made from my account.  So I spent one frantic afternoon getting ahead of the thieves by changing my password at all sites linked to my finances.  The passwords I generated from a random password generator are inscrutable and a terrible pain to type. But that's a small price to pay to protect the 60% of my assets that weren't lost to the market crash.  Please, take heed.