Stick with the glue that holds diverse industry together

29 July 2010 | By Maeve Hosea

When an estimated 40,000 barrels of oil a day started to spill into the Gulf of Mexico earlier this summer, energy giant BP’s response was anything but slick. Indeed, the communications team’s performance has been held partly responsible for BP’s 40% decline in share price.

Part of the criticism came from the slow response on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The lack of online information about the environmental disaster did nothing to reduce public outrage as BP showed no urgency in resolving the issue.

When BP finally broadcast on YouTube a stilted apology from Tony Hayward, who this week stepped down as the company’s chief executive, it was widely lambasted. BP is now battling the effects of a satirical Twitter account @BPGlobalPR, which boasts 175,000 followers.

Public relations - the discipline that fundamentally manages reputation - used to work within a framework of delivering a one-way dialogue. The rapid rise of social media has now turned that conversation into a two-way dialogue, which is resulting in many businesses having to rethink their PR strategy.

Collette Ballou, founder of technology specialist Ballou PR, which integrates social media into everything it does, argues: “Social media is the big thing in PR right now. Every company should be thinking about whether to engage in social media or not. It has caught a lot of people unaware.”

Businesses have to consider how online is transforming the way that consumers engage with them. Stakeholders now have new platforms to share their views and to amplify their discontent.

The challenges facing PR are increasing for brands across all sectors, says Gennaro Castaldo, head of press and PR at HMV. “There are so many channels now, particularly online and via social media, beyond the control of companies or their marketers.”

However, digital channels aren’t all bad news for a company’s reputation. Online has been key to some of the best PR campaigns of recent years and social media has proved to be a valuable tool for communicating with customers.

PR executed well can result in positive branded conversations on news, blogs and social media sites, adds Castaldo. “Just as new channels present new challenges, the accompanying opportunities are also getting bigger.”

Last year, PR agency Fishburn Hedges took advantage of social media trends to help insurance provider Legal & General position itself as the expert on home insurance in the digital age. The agency identified how Facebook and Twitter users posted their holiday details on their pages and feeds. It used this insight as the basis for creating the Digital Criminal report, which revealed that many people unwittingly give away vital information about themselves on social media sites, such as when they are going on holiday, which could be used by criminals to create a list of targets. Within 24 hours of the launch of Legal & General’s report, Digital Criminal became one of the highest trending subjects on Twitter.

It sparked significant interest in both social and mainstream media, demonstrating that, when used properly, social media can enhance awareness and the reputation of a company.

The power of social media requires businesses to develop relationships with consumers. As social media becomes more prominent in the marketing landscape, PR emerges as the discipline that could best leverage the opportunity, argues Jay O’Connor, president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).

Debate about “who owns social media” is raging within the marketing community. However, O’Connor argues: “Rather than ownership, the discussion needs to be about an integrated approach, led by the development of a voice for the organisation and the building of trust and credibility.”

The building of trust is at the heart of a BAA campaign that has been created by Mischief PR. Heathrow Airport, previously thought of as secretive, unfriendly and criticised for the environmental impact of its newly opened Terminal 5, is putting itself in the spotlight. It wants to give the airport a younger, more dynamic personality.

The airport brand is working on changing people’s perceptions of it, explains Malcolm Robertson, director of communications at BAA. “We want Heathrow to be less grumpy old man and more of a friendly character that listens and responds to the needs of its passengers. To do that, we have to be more imaginative and creative than ever before, and use traditional and new media.”

Mischief’s campaign saw Heathrow appoint its first writer in residence when philosopher Alain de Botton spent a week in T5 observing what was going on around him and recording his thoughts.

Alongside this, social media feeds via Twitter enabled people to monitor the writer’s progress. Extracts of a book produced as a result of the exercise were read over the airport’s public address system. Some 10,000 exclusive copies have been given out to Heathrow passengers and the publication is now on general sale.

“The end result is not a marketing brochure, which a marketing-savvy public would not have responded to, but a piece of cultural content that has made people stop and think about the airport, helping to generate thousands of positive branded conversations around the world,” Robertson argues.

With such bold ideas coming from PR departments, the lines are blurring between disciplines, notes O’Connor at the CIPR. “We are seeing advertising agencies develop and launch PR offers that combine the advertising heritage of research and planning with the PR heritage of dialogue and engagement and vice-versa,” she says.

Rapid advances in technology, an increasing number of television channels, digital radio coupled with the internet have all led to a 24/7 cultureand a public that has an insatiable appetite for information and entertainment, says Mitchell Kaye, managing director at Mischief PR. “The better content delivered by PR the better consumers react.”

This presents an opportunity for a widening of PR’s remit, says Kaye. “The future is about big ideas working across lots of different levels and that could come from a PR agency as much as an ad agency.”

Brands have to win the hearts and minds of customers, and effective PR that helps to shape the way consumers view a business can play an increasingly key role in this relationship.

“We encourage our PR agency to be as integrated with our business as possible,” claims Kevin Peake, marketing director at energy company Npower. “Great ideas can come from anywhere and to get the best out of a PR agency, you shouldn’t limit its involvement and its potential to add value across the business.”

Recent Npower campaigns include the No Power Hour, which won a Marketing Week Engage Award because of the way it changed behaviour and attitudes, and talked to children outside of the school environment.

“Talking about energy efficiency in an engaging way has been key to garnering cut-through,” says Peake. “It is important to be open to ideas and let your PR agency challenge you and push you.”

Npower encourages cross-agency interaction by inviting its PR agency to all agency meetings. Understanding all elements of the mix is now important for PR’s remit, particularly with the pressure on budgets, argues Laura Mahon, director at Iris PR.

She says: “Innovation and ideas can come from contact with all the client’s business functions.” Following this principle, Iris works with the category managers and trading teams of its client Home Retail Group, parent company of Argos, to see what valuable PR opportunities are available.

“The agency/client relationship is closer than ever, not just with the in-house PR team but also with other key contacts in the business,” according to Steve O’Brien, head of corporate affairs at Home Retail Group. “These wider relationships are crucial for understanding our business objectives, digging out stories and creating the campaigns and assets that deliver the right PR coverage for the brands.”

But PR needs to have a genuine business impact for clients, he adds. The discipline is ditching its reputation for fluffiness with dynamic outfits proving that they can offer return on investment.

Facilitated by the move to online, there will be more sophisticated measurements applied to PR in future, believes Brendon Craigie, UK managing director at Hotwire PR. “In the past, we were limited to crude forms of measurement such as the advertising value equivalent of press coverage.

We can now provide clients with similar analytics capability seen in the online advertising world, allowing us to work with brands to manage and track how well we are connected with customers online and then feed this intelligence into planning and campaign development.”

PR has come of age and is now fundamental to a brand’s strategy, argues Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) chairman Francis Ingham. “A tremendous amount of work went in behind the scenes with the media to keep the public onside during Willie Walsh’s battles with the unions at BA,” he says. “PR has never been more highly regarded, though too often great communications take place under the radar and only get brought to people’s attention if things go wrong.”

With all businesses operating across more channels and having less control over each one, the ability to instinctively understand your audience and react quickly is key. Whether it’s a corporate crisis, a reputation management issue or a product launch, quality, tone, messaging and response are paramount, says Anne Gregory, professor of public relations at Leeds Metropolitan University. “The experience of dealing with a wide range of stakeholders is a real insight that PR can bring to the table and contrasts with the customer-focus of marketing.”

In these times of reduced spending and budget cuts, PR has a golden opportunity to demonstrate its value and impact in an ever more complex and fragmented communications landscape.