TRI PUBLISHING CENTRE

Njegoseva 29a, 1000 Skopje, Macedonia

tel./fax: +389 2 32 456 22
tri@kniga.com.mk
www.kniga.com.mk

THE LITTLE
BLACK BOOK
OF PR:
Mastering Public
Relations in a
Changing World

Edited by: Kosta D. Petrov

and Jonathan A.J. Wilson

With an Introduction by
Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson

© ???????, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or

transmitted in any form or by any menas, or stored in a database or retrieval
system, without prior written consent of the rightsholder.

2 3
 To our customers around the world:

Without you, our mission

of changing PR reality
would have been impossible!

4
 ABOUT P WORLD

P World is an international creative agency, organizing some of

the most innovative PR, HR and marketing events in 30 countries
around the world, including USA, Canada, Norway, Czech Repub-
lic, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan.
The company is the proud organizer of the Global PR Summit
and the PR talks, a series of business events focusing on the latest
trends in public relations and communications, held annually in
20 countries around the world.
For more information about P World please visit:

www.thepworld.com.

6 7
 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Kosta Petrov

Kosta Petrov is the FouNder and Chief Experience Officer at P

World, one of the world’s leading events agencies, organizing over
50 business events annually in 30 countries around the world.
He is the creative mastermind behind the Global PR Summit,
the world’s leading business event on public relations and corpo-
rate communications with annual editions in 19 different countries
in Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and North Amer-
ica.
Kosta is also a bestselling business author and regular speaker
at international events on the topics of public relations, leadership
and entrepreneurship.

Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson

Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson is a renowned expert in reputation,

brand and crisis management drawn from her extensive experience
at senior levels of the corporate, public and voluntary sectors on
both sides of the Atlantic.
Most recently, Mary Jo was Executive Vice President of BP Am­
erica during its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Previously
she led reputation management for Royal Dutch Shell, Lehman
Brothers, HSBC Holdings and Drexel Burnham Lambert.

8 9
 She also devised and executed the award-winning global brand
strategies for Lehman and HSBC, including the first-ever use of
airport jetties for brand projection and thought leadership. She is
a non-executive director of the Weir Group PLC, Mulvaney Capital
Management and Panafsat and a member of the advisory board of
Fink Africa.
She is also a Visiting Fellow of Oxford University’s Centre for
Corporate Reputation. Mary Jo was the first woman to chair the
board of the Ladies Professional Golf Association and subsequent-
ly served on the board of the Ladies European (Golf) Tour.
She is a frequent broadcast commentator, lecturer and public
speaker around the world.
Jonathan A.J Wilson PhD
Jonathan A.J. Wilson PhD, started his career over twenty years
ago in industry, before branching out into academia and consult-
ing. He specialises in the ABCDs of Business and Culture: Advertis-
ing, Branding, Communications, and Digital.
He has spoken at conferences across the globe on over 100 occa-
sions, and published over 200 pieces of work.
Islamica 500 lists him in the Top 50 Global Thought Leaders
for his work in Islamic Economics, Halal Branding, and Muslim
Millennials.
Professor Wilson is also a Halal Tourism Officer in the Ministry
of Tourism, Republic of Indonesia; Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of
Islamic Marketing; an Executive Trainer for Al Jazeera Media Net-
10
work in Qatar; and is an Advisor to innovation and research firm
Stylus, and luxury fashion brand The ISHU.
His research on Inconspicuous Branded Consumption and
Luxury in the Journal of Marketing Management received an award,
and also appears in the Harvard Business Review. He has contribut-
ed to industry projects and reports for: McKinsey & Company, Mid-
dle East; DinarStandard; Thomson Reuters and Salaam Gateway;
Mindshare, London; Stylus; PwC Malaysia; Oxford Analytica; MBA
& Company; Tokyo Institute of Technology and Gurunavi Japanese
Restaurant Guide.
Professor Wilson was born and raised in Manchester and comes
from generations of Scottish kilt-wearing Wilsons. Once upon a
time he was a mean rugby player at University and for England
Schools; and is a retired bass guitarist and vocalist who made it
onto television, radio, and international concerts, before YouTube;
and wrote music for the video game Grand Theft Auto.
Tomas Jensen
Tomas Jensen is currently the Chief Communications Officer at
EIT Raw Materials, responsible for all communications and mar-
keting activities of the worldwide largest consortium on raw mate-
rials, initiated by the European Commission. Prior to this, he was
the Senior Director for Corporate Communications at M&C Saatchi
World Services while also consulting the startup ecosystem in Is-
tanbul, Turkey. He was Director for Corporate Communications for
Microsoft in the Middle East and Africa, overseeing all corporate
communications activities in around 80 markets on three conti-
nents, and also managed EMEA-wide campaigns. Before this he
11
headed, amongst other things, Product Communications, Analyst When he is not working, he coaches the sports teams of his
Relations, Issues Management, and HR Communications at Micro- children, loves to listen to music or read history and literature.
soft Germany. A political scientist by education, Tomas worked in
the publishing and the consulting industry. Currently being based
in Berlin, Germany, Tomas is a frequent speaker at international Thierry Nicolet
conferences on marketing and communications around the world.
Thierry Nicolet has been leading the Business Press Relations
activities of Schneider Electric since 2008, covering 50 countries.
Andre Manning
He interfaces with a network of local Marketing Communications
Managers, PR Managers and over 40 PR Agencies, and made the
Andre Manning is a seasoned and results-oriented, hands-on
company’s world wide impressions triple in the past four years.
communications leader with global experience in traditional and
Prior to his current position, Mr Nicolet led the Press Relations
internet-based – consumer as well as business to business - indus-
tries. He has lived and worked in the Netherlands, Switzerland, expansion world wide for more than 5 years at APC; (until its ac-
Central Europe and the United States. quisition by Schneider Electric) by setting up and analyzing key
performance indicators; engineering robust global processes; and
Currently he is enjoying interim communications leadership
by providing guidelines, assistance and coaching to Marketing
roles, most recently at Amcor where he designed and deployed a
managers and their selected PR Agencies. Mr Nicolet has over 23
new communications strategy and built a new team. Prior to his
years of Marketing Communications experience after graduating
role as the Head of PR and Public Affairs at Booking.com, where
in Business Administration and International Trade from the Eu-
he built a global function and introduced the pro-active “rolling
ropean Business School Paris. Fluent in French and English and
thunder” PR approach, he has held various international commu-
nications leadership positions within Royal Philips. conversational in German, he entered APC as an Sales Engineer
and rapidly expressed an interest for Marketing Communication
During his time at Philips he improved the efficiency, effec-
to become Marcom Manager for France, UK, The Nordics, Middle
tiveness and accountability of the communications function and
East and Africa. He then got involved with product marketing, after
introduced a new company wide PR agency model, including an
which he also headed the Direct Marketing, Email Marketing and
award winning and industry leading PR measurement system. He
Customer Retention activity for the whole region to finally take the
was included in the 2011, 2012 and 2012 Holmes Report 100 list of
role of PR Director for EMEA. This wide scope of responsibilities
the World’s Most Influential Communicators while he was award-
ed PR measurement expert of the year by PR News in 2012. During has given him an extensive proficiency in Marcom demand drivers
his leadership at Philips the company won the award for the best which he now uses to support Schneider Electric’s strategies, mes-
reputation in the Netherlands for six consecutive years. sages and solutions introductions.

12 13
 Piers Schreiber
Piers Schreiber is an international expert in reputation man-
agement with 25 years’ experience in corporate communications.
He currently runs Estragon, a specialist communications consul-
tancy. From 2009-2016 he was Vice President Corporate Com-
munications at Jumeirah Group, a leading luxury hotel company
headquartered in Dubai. Previously he was the co-founder of The
Communication Matrix, an Amsterdam-based consultancy spe-
cialising in communication strategy, change management and
multinational media relations. He previously headed corporate
communications for a listed telecoms company in the Netherlands,
ran the European corporate practice for Ogilvy Public Relations in
Brussels and spearheaded European Commission projects for The
Rowland Company (Saatchi & Saatchi) across central and eastern
Europe. In his earlier career he was PR Officer for the Delegation
of the European Commission in Prague, lectured at Charles Uni-
versity, Prague, and also at the Université de Poitiers, France. Piers
Schreiber studied at Cambridge University and has an MBA from
Strathclyde University.
Donald Steel
Donald Steel is an international responder and trainer in cri-
sis communications and the use of social media in emergencies. A
former presenter on commercial and BBC Radio, he was for 11 years
the BBC's chief media spokesman based in London. During his
time at the BBC he dealt with some of the biggest international me-
dia stories of the decade, including terrorism, murder, serious ac-
14
cidents, kidnappings and serious international editorial, political
and diplomatic issues. He now works with high profile individuals,
corporate and government and NGO clients in London, Europe,
the Balkans, the Middle East and Asia Pacific/Australasia. Clients
include many of the worlds leading airlines,hospitals, universities,
hotel groups, UN agencies, and government departments. He is in
demand as an international speaker, adviser and trainer on repu-
tation and the relationship between crisis management and long
term company value. Recent and forthcoming engagements in-
clude Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Sharjah, Montreal, New York,
Las Vegas, Fiji, Doha, Muscat, Sydney, Canberra, Bahrain, Beirut,
Istanbul, Amman, Oslo, Skopje, Cairo, Paris, Amsterdam, Reykja-
vik and Stockholm. The BBC Academy, Europe’s largest broadcast-
ing training facility, made him its first Associate Fellow in 2010.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2009. In
addition to his own practice, he is an Associate Director of Crisis
Communications at Kenyon International Emergency Services, the
world’s largest commercial responder to incidents involving death
or injury. He is also a director of the leading UK aviation PR com-
pany, Johnston Associates, based at London Heathrow. He is a reg-
ular guest lecturer at the London School of Economics, the China
Media Centre in London, and the Global Leadership Programme at
Coventry University.
Patrick Jephson LVO
Patrick Jephson is founding partner of the Washington DC,
communications, reputation and protocol consultancy Jephson-
Beaman LLC. The firm specializes in high-profile, sensitive and
15
UHNW services. With more than fifteen years’ experience in the
luxury, government and family office sectors, Patrick’s portfolio has
included names such as Ferrari, Harrods, the UK Ministry of De-
fense and Beretta. He has also consulted on reputation and legacy
briefs for European, Middle Eastern and Asian families, including
royalty. He is in regular demand as an authority on corporate and
individual reputation management, from 1:1 personal coaching to
international conferences on his keynote theme of “Forgivability.”
For eight years Patrick was Princess Diana’s chief of staff, re-
sponsible for every aspect of her public life and private organiza-
tion. He travelled with her to five continents, working with govern-
ment officials up to heads of state; under relentless media scrutiny,
his tenure covered the period of Diana’s greatest popularity and the
turmoil of her separation from Prince Charles.
Raised in Ireland, Patrick holds a Masters degree in Political
Science from Cambridge University. As an officer in the British
Royal Navy he served all over the world before being selected for
palace duty. Now a naturalized US citizen, he is a Contributor for
ABC TV News, award-winning transatlantic feature writer and New
York Times bestselling author.
Alex Malouf
Alex Malouf is a marketing communications executive who
has spent the last thirteen years in the Middle East. Alex has lived
across the region, in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria
and the United Arab Emirates. A Chartered public relations and
marketing professional, Alex holds the position of corporate com-
16
munications and reputation manager for the Arabian Peninsula at
Procter & Gamble.
A journalist by training and with a cultural mix that is both
European and Arabic, Alex’s expertise spans communications and
media, public relations and marketing for both multinationals in
the energy, technology and FMCG space as well as several Gulf-
based government institutions. His experience spans corporate
communications, media relations and outreach, content develop-
ment, crisis/ reputation management, and digital and social me-
dia.
When he’s not putting pen to paper, Alex can be found advo-
cating for the region’s media and public relations industry. He is
passionate about promoting sustainability in the communications
sector by highlighting the industry’s potential to Arab nationals.
Alex works in his capacity of Vice-Chair with both MEPRA and
IABC EMENA to shape and support training and awareness initia-
tives for those wishing to pursue a career in public relations.
Hubert Grealish
Currently based out of Amsterdam and Barcelona, Hubert is a
media strategy and brand communications expert in business and
society, with a keen interest in technology as well as social entre-
preneurship. With a broad range of business communications
experience from UK tech and PR agency to in-house global roles
worldwide and his own technology and business ventures, he’s
amassed experience in sectors including travel, consumer tech,
startup and A-brand, close to emergence of innovation and new
media.
17
 Sietse Bakker
Sietse Bakker (1984) is a Dutch media entrepreneur, interna-
tional speaker, writer and Huffington Post contributor. He is the
founder and CEO of the digital agency Scrn, which he started at the
age of 19. He also owns a 40 percent stake in the Netherlands-based
domain name registrar Domaindesk.com.
Sietse was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he also
grew up. After highschool, Sietse continued to study Communi-
cations Science at the University of Amsterdam, from which he
dropped out to fully dedicate himself to the company. In 2009, he
was listed as one of the country’s top-25 young entrepreneurs by
business magazine Sprout.
At the age of 27, he became the youngest ever Event Supervisor
of the world’s biggest music event, the Eurovision Song Contest,
which allowed him to travel to and work with people from more
than 40 countries. He also supervised the production of the Junior
Eurovision Song Contest twice, in 2011 and 2012. He stepped down
from the position in 2016, to fully dedicate himself to running Scrn.
Sietse wrote two books about personal development: How To
Live Wow!? (2011), a practical guide to personal development for
the young generation; and The Sparkle (2015), about the details
that make the difference in life and the world around us. He cur-
rently lives in Amsterdam together with his partner.
18
CONTENTS
1 Kosta Petrov: Acknowledgments 21
2 Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson: An Introduction 25
3 Professor Jonathan A.J Wilson PhD: Psychoanalyti-
cal and Brand-Driven PR Strategies for a Connect-
ed World
4 Tomas Jensen: Communications in Heterogeneous
Markets
5 Andre Manning: Measurement and Accountability:
Be a Master of Metrics
6 Thierry Nicolet: Global PR Processes, Tracking,
Measurement and Reporting – An Insights into
What is Common Sense and Works
7 Donald Steel: Crisis Communications, Social Media
and Snake Oil Salesman
8 Piers Schreiber: Reputation Management in an Age
of Cybercrime
9 Patrick Jephson LVO: When the Boss is the Brand
10 Alex Malouf: Practicing Communications in an
Emerging Market – Lessons From the Gulf
19
11 Hubert Grealish: The New Rules of Social Entrepre-
neurship
12 Sietse Bakker: Events for PR and PR for Events in an
Increasingly Virtual Reality

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In November 2010 we embarked on a mission to bring positive

change to the global PR world. Six years and 50 events later, our
events are changing the lives of PR professionals in 20 countries
around the world.
The book you are about to read is a continuation of our mission
to strengthen the role of our profession around the world.
While some might say that PR is dead, this book and the sub-
missions by our contributors will not just confirm the opposite, but
will also prove that in today’s fast changing world PR is more im-
portant than ever.
This book would not have been possible without the support of
our incredible contributors. I remember sitting with them in Baku,
Azerbaijan and discussing the possibility of putting all of their
knowledge and the amazing lessons they learned throughout their
exciting careers, into a book. It took us four years to complete but
now that the book is finally here I feel beyond blessed to have the
opportunity to work with all of them on daily basis. Mary Jo, Jon-
athan, Tomas, Andre, Thierry, Piers, Patrick, Donald, Alex,
Hubert and Sietse, without your advice and your continuous sup-
port we would not have had the opportunity to change the lives of
so many PR professionals around the world.

20 21
 The Little Black Book of PR and our PR Summits would not I am especially indebted to PR professionals in Macedonia, Ser-
have been possible without the creative ideas and input of our bia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic,
inspirational speakers who have helped us bring global PR exper- Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain,
tise to 20 countries around the world. A big thank you to Bart De Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Iceland, Norway and Canada for
Vries, Noha Bashir, Danny Whatmough, Andrew Widger, Jes- coming to our events and helping us strengthen the position of PR
se Ringham, James A Pearson, Liz Young, Katie Morse, Meli- in their respective countries.
sa Fleming, Sophie Ponet, John Shield, Elizabeth Stokoe, Finally, I would like to especially thank all of my colleagues at P
Abi Laughton, Maxim Behar, Malena Cutuli, Richard Ste- World for their hard work and dedication. Thank you making the
phenson, Sheikha Dana Al Khalifa, Talal Alrashed, Joyce Baz, impossible, possible, every single day.
Kirsten Colombier, Jumanah Anter, Sarah Walker Kerr, Alex
Malouf, Scott Hicks, Ali Sabkar, Simon Jenkins, Hussein Da- Let’s all continue to change reality.
jani, Tomas Matesanz, Steffen Ruebke, Gudjon Arngrimsson,
Milorad Ajder, Figen Isbir, Egmont Philips, Tom Webster, 12.8.2016 Kosta Petrov,
Jamal Al Mawed, Rose Bambi, Karim Seiffedine, Irina Pashi- Skopje, Macedonia Founder and Chief
na, Omneya Fawzy, Colleen Harris, Mawuko Afadzinu, Tina Experience Officer, P World
Boadi, Esra Erkal Paler, Heather Mitchell, Mohamed Al Ayed, kosta.petrov@thepworld.com
Patricia Yates, Sara Hunt, Charlie Taylor, Shaima Murtadha
Al-Lawati, Saba Al Busaidi, Piers Schreiber, Lorne Riley, Wen-
dy Gold, Maha Nagy, Noha Hefny, Noha Saad, Anoek Eck-
hardt, Catherine Ladousse, Josje Van Der Meer, John Mclar-
en, Hania Tabet, Jonathan Wilson, Nick AndrewsMohammed
Rahma, Amjad Tadros, Jumana Twal, Jonathan Woodier,
Anass Allouch, John Neilson, Hubert Grealish, Robin Ham-
man, Fadl Al Tarzi, Marc Langendorf, Sanja Cengic, Ben Lev-
ine, Mike Daniels, Eb Adeyeri, Alan Oliver, Annemie Ress,
Stephen Jolly, Zoe White, Assel Karaulova, Philip Dewhrust,
Jeroen Coenen, Thomas Groendorf, Richard Davies, Dr. Sa-
bine Schauer, Yoghesh Chauhan, Medard Schoenmackers,
Ingmar de Gooijer, Nick Sharples, Elizabeth Musmano, Paul
Thompson and Peter Vogt, for believing in us and for helping us
make our vision a reality.

22 23
 AN INTRODUCTION
by Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson

Probably like you, when I have time to spare in an airport I

spend a few minutes in the book store checking the latest arriv-
als in the business section. And perhaps also like you, I’m often
amazed by the variety of titles about Public Relations. If you in-
clude the broader topic of communications, the choice becomes
positively bewildering. You might even ask how all these PR experts
have time to write books: shouldn’t they be too busy amazing their
companies and clients with their super-skills?
So I wouldn’t be surprised if you never actually buy one of these
“how to” books, perhaps due to the belief that they’re unlikely to
teach you anything you don’t already know. All too often, when we
do hand over our hard-earned cash for such a beautifully-packaged
volume, it’s only to suffer buyer’s remorse soon afterwards; and as
any marketer will tell you, failing to satisfy hyped expectations is a
sure way to lose customers. As the reputation risk expert Oonagh
Mary Harpur says, “Reputation equals experience minus expecta-
tions.”
The book you’re now holding is different from the others. For
a start, I have been privileged to share speaker stages in many of
the world’s great cities with all of the contributors, a group that
constantly amazes me with their professional insights, wisdom and
fresh perspectives. Forty years in the communications and public

24 25
relations industry have taught me how to spot a genuine expert and measurement and metrics; tracking; the opportunities and haz-
each member of this stellar cast of contributors is individually the ards of cyber communications; the impact of big personalities on
real deal. Together, they are a treasure house of first-hand experi- brand management; social media entrepreneurship; and building
ence and practical advice that you won’t find anywhere else. a reputation through memorable events.
As experts, they are all busy people, busily multi-tasking cor- Just when I thought there was little left to learn, The Little Black
porate or client demands, leading strategic brainstorming sessions Book presents a whole new PR world to explore.
and managing backlogs of requests. It’s a big ask to persuade them
to share with readers their jealously-guarded professional insights
by writing chapters for this collection. The fact that this volume
exists tells you a lot about our editor, taskmaster and Macedonian
muse Kosta Petrov.
Kosta started producing his international conferences in 2010.
He named the series “Global PR Summit” to demonstrate that this
is emphatically his global show. Perhaps unconsciously, he thus
demonstrated one of the first rules of successful reputation man-
agement: be authentic.
Kosta’s authenticity lies in his ability to attract disparate but
demonstrable talents and give them the freedom to engage audi-
ences in styles that are personal, spontaneous and collegial. Live-
ly interaction between presenter and audience is a feature of all P
World events and we’ve endeavored to recreate those entertaining
and informative exchanges by bringing you the P World in Print.
Kosta’s perceptive light touch has assembled and held together
the most remarkable collection of PR experts it has been my good
fortune to call colleagues and friends. I thought I’d seen and heard
nearly all there was to know about PR and communications, but
from this talented crew, I’ve learned a whole lot more.
Be prepared to quickly expand your knowledge of every as-
pect of the PR world: crossing borders through global approaches;

26 27
 Chapter 1

PSYCHOANALYTICAL
AND BRAND-DRIVEN
PR STRATEGIES FOR
A CONNECTED WORLD

Professor Jonathan A.J. Wilson PhD

28 29
 We live in a world that is gripped with trying to answer com-
pelling questions, which aren’t disappearing with globalisation and
the information age. Race, religion, employment, no jobs for life,
over-industrialisation, under-industrialisation, community cohe-
sion, societal meaning, and equality and justice for all - are big is-
sues that Public Relations professionals can’t avoid, and are having
to tackle head on. Plus, how can we connect the global and the local
with real-time, responsive, authentic and compelling messages?
Many practitioners would argue that the best course of action
is to avoid tackling matters linked to race, religion and politics. My
response is that this is where the most skilled in our field should be
focussing – as we have no choice. If you want real authentic com-
munications of value that moves people: then you have to address
peoples’ real and deeper needs.
In this chapter I will be focusing on the landscape today, and
the necessary components of a Brand-driven global Public Relations
strategy, underpinned by psychoanalysis, which embraces, culture,
consumer engagement, personal branding, and social media.

30 31

INTRODUCTION
Increasingly, Public Relations activities involve interactions via
virtually free, and therefore cluttered, social media platforms. 21st
century marketing has put Public Relations and Branding in the
driving seat – as the story tellers, meaning creators, language shap-
ers and game changers. This is the dawn of an age that embraces
and celebrates more human traits - beyond simple industrialisa-
tion, commerce and structuralism. Financial and economic trans-
actions are the culmination of human transactions in the widest
sense - and these begin with transactional exchanges of thoughts,
emotions, experiences and social activities.
With these in mind, I am going to focus on the theatre of com-
munication, offering some building blocks and principles behind
what makes for compelling, dynamic and social stakeholder en-
gagement.
The Birth of Public Relations as a Science and Art
Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays is considered by
many to be the father of Public Relations; and in 1928 he published
a book called Propaganda. In it he shed light on the technique that
he had pioneered of shaping and manipulating public opinion,
32
which he called ‘engineering consent’. This art and science of per-
suasion, which attempts to connect with the unconscious in order
to influence behaviour and transactions, has become the blueprint
of modern marketing communications.
Interestingly, in a revised version of Bernay’s book, published
in 2004, Mark Crispin Miller provides an introduction in which he
cites how the term propaganda was coined in 1622 by Pope Greg-
ory XV and the Vatican. Their mission was to establish The Office
for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de propaganda fide)
and to spread Christianity throughout the world. Bernay’s work,
Max Weber’s book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capital-
ism; and the strategic galvanisation of public opinion during the
First World War signalled the migration of Christianity into the
engine room of business, driven by Branding and Public Relations.
Heaven on earth and success in the hereafter was to be achieved
through the creation of global brands and corporations, as vehicles
of worship.
The Tipping Point
Having signalled the dawn of Freudian psychoanalysis and be-
havioural psychology driving consumerism and people manage-
ment, almost as a ‘new religion’ decades later, this was also a con-
cept that linguist, intellectual and political activist Noam Chomsky
revisited with a much more chilling appraisal – in his documentary
and book Manufacturing Consent. Similarly, in Edward Said’s book
Orientalism, they and other scholars present compelling treatises
in which they express concerns on the effects of Western foreign
policy on perceptions of the East.
33
 It is under the shadow of these widely expressed concerns that I
reflect upon the challenges faced by public relations, branding and
marketing professionals when trying to break free of these invisible
handcuffs and increased consumer cynicism – in response to their
sophisticated and effective communications that have previously
delivered success.
A Western and Religious Hegemony?
• Asia Pacific = 11 (7 Japan, 3 South Korea, 1 China – with only 2
in the top 10: No.7 Samsung, Korea; and No.8 Toyota, Japan).
CoolBrands 2014/15
(CoolBrands, 2014)
72 Brands – all Western, with the exception of Sony Music,
which nevertheless is owned and operated by Sony Corporation
of America, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation, Japan.

The framing of corporations, and their branded identities and AdBrands

messages, according to boundaried national identities, Marxist (AdBrands, 2014)
thought, and capitalism in many ways plays into the hands of the The top Consolidated Agency Networks in 2013 by estimated
West – as the East tends towards communities rooted more in trib- worldwide revenue in the Top 20, that fall outside the West:
al origins. • Dentsu, Japan No.3
Furthermore, whilst a Christian belief system has influenced • Hakuhodo, Japan No.13
post-industrialised societies globally, this is largely a Western per- • Cheil, Korea No.18
spective on religion. Whereas, the major monotheistic Abrahamic
religions originate from the Middle East and East Africa, and these 2013-2018 Share of Global Media Advertising Spending
regions’ influences seldom feature in branding, other than accord- (Marketing Charts, 2014)
ing to consumer consumption. • 35.6% North America
When reviewing a selection of tables and secondary data, West- • 27.9% Asia-Pacific
ern origin and controlled brands and thought leaders dominate the
rankings: World’s Best Business School Professors
(Poets and Quants, 2012)
Marketing takes numbers: 1, 2, 6, 16, 26, 27, 29, 34 - two of who
Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands
are ethnic (Asian origin, North American educated)
(Interbrand, 2014)
• The Americas = 56 World’s Top 30 Brand Professionals 2014
• Europe = 33 (with only 1 in the top 10, No.10 Mercedes Benz) (Global Gurus, 2014)

34 35
 Two of who are ethnic (Asian origin, North American educated)
Whilst religion is not necessarily linked to ethnicity, a cursory
glance at ethnicity yields interesting findings, which perhaps indi-
cate an appetite for a new world order:
Forbes
World’s most powerful celebrities:
• The top 10 are all North American
• 7 out of 10 are African American, and nominally Christian,
taking the top 4 spots.
Furthermore, with 60% of the 7 billion world’s population hail-
ing from Asia, notably with Indonesia being the most populous
Muslim nation, alongside other widely practiced religions through-
out Asia, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, a sim-
ilar pattern is observed. In short, the majority of the world draws
from religious guiding principles that are underrepresented in PR
and Brand theory, development and practise.
Branding is frequently imbibed with Christian proselytism.
Terms such as resurrection, or icon, used in Holt’s 2004 book on
How Brands Become Icons; and de Chernatony’s 2009 paper on
Holy Grail of Branding, highlight this. Also, descriptions of the
messianic presence of Steve Jobs and Apple, amongst others give
this observation further credence.
This compelling vision of extending and linking the transient
with the transcendent in a very spiritual way has been used to bring
meaning to even the most basic products and activities.
More recently, we can also see similar incarnations by billions
of people in the Muslim world with Islamic finance and Halal in-
36
dustries; in China with their own version of Confucian capitalism
and ancestor worship; and there is also evidence to suggest that
there is scope for further pluralistic perspectives - with the Hindu
term Avatar used for social media personal profiles.
For me, the purpose of a brand is less about a restrictive defi-
nition according to a name, logo, colour, and legally defensible po-
sition; and more about the brand fulfilling the role of storytelling,
transmitting signals, packaging meaning, connecting communi-
ties, generating interest, galvanising value systems, and the crea-
tion of social capital. At the apex of this by the strongest brands, is
the quest to elicit an emotional and even spiritual experience.
If we look to other religions then there are further opportunities
and possibilities for new approaches. For example, a Koan is a par-
adoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate
the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.
In a globalized age of social media, and promiscuous or pol-
ytheistic branded consumption – due to increased accessibility,
product lines, and consumer spending power especially in the East:
I’m suggesting that brands which elicit worship will be afforded
greater success where they draw more from Eastern and pluralistic
principles. Strong brands rely on intricate and sophisticated Public
Relations as their oxygen.
With increased economic migrancy, population growth, educa-
tion attainment, and wealth in the East, alongside a rising interest
in the role of faith in business and marketing and influences of
the East will continue to become more significant. My argument
is that future competitive advantage will result from authentic
brands that resonate more with the attributes of different religions
and notions of spirituality, explicitly from guiding first principles.
Data and analytics are important, but we should not forget that
37
humans are first and foremost emotional beings, and faith has
underpinned our existence of civilisations since the dawn of time.
Furthermore, this has to be about appraising theory and practice
linked to culture and emotions – as opposed to an upstream con-
sumer targeting and advertising according to their rituals.
How to Build a Brand
Over the years in industry, during my PhD studies, and in the
classroom as a lecturer I’ve read a lot, spoken to a lot of people,
and tried a few things out. I drew from my love of culture, sport,
music and art; my science degree; and even went further back to
study the work of classical scholars like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates,
and Al-Ghazali.
Building on these, this is what I came up with:
38
Powerful brands are those that are iconic, charismatic, authen-
tic, effortlessly cool, and take you on a journey. These brands cross
the Rubicon into becoming meaning creators, language shapers
and game changers. They seek to engage with everyone that they
come in contact with in as human a way as possible. They trigger
emotional responses that guide your thinking and actions.
The Sixty-Four-Thousand-Dollar Questions
Just like with people, your brand and PR campaigns will be
judged by the company that you keep. But don’t be fooled into
thinking that it’s just about sharing content and getting your brand
everywhere. Keep a handle on the bigger picture – why are you do-
ing all of this?
• What do you want to win – eyeballs, likes, shares, authentic-
ity, loyalty, sales? You need to be strategic and balance being
responsive in your messaging with a long-term mission.
Now, unless you have a meaningful and intimate relationship
with consumers and clients; or your message is bang-on – be-
ing in the right place, at the right time, in the right tone: it’s no
longer cool to mass broadcast and tell consumers what to do.
So:
• What do you think people will sense and piece together from
all of the images and information that you’re pumping out?
The most important views are going to be tacit and you may
only get glimpses of them – so you need to be reflexive, intu-
itive and connected.
39
 What you can do is group all of these into answers that form
the foundation of all of your strategic communications. If you take
a step back – is it clear to everyone else:
1. What is it that you do, and do differently to everyone else?
2. What your overarching story is – that builds credibility, curi-
osity, intimacy, and likeability?
3. What you have to offer them?
4. What you want from them, or want them to do?
I call these four questions your elevator pitch – the answers you
can deliver on your website, in a corporate or personal profile, in
a pitch, on a package, in a campaign, at a job interview, or whilst
exchanging business cards.
Surprisingly, when many people are put on the spot, whether
that’s representing a brand or themselves, they can’t. Most people
can comfortably answer half of the first question: ‘what is it that
they do’, and then they trust that their name or branded existence
will offer them enough differentiation. If you were then to ask the
other three questions, then these same people tend to repeat the
same answer they gave for question one.
If you think that you can answer all four questions, then still
keep your eyes open and an open mind – because there’s probably
someone out there doing it better than you that you could take
some inspiration from.
The more you think, practise, and share; and the more that you
do this in such a way that you can still be yourself, a better ‘self’ –
then the better chance you have to succeed and cut through the
noise. Don’t do this alone in isolation – align yourself with con-
sumers, stakeholders, and other brands by creating a network. Also
40
look outside of your immediate reference group, competitors and
industry.
Trending
Understanding consumer behaviour, segmenting and targeting
audiences; service quality delivery; social network analysis; native
and programmatic advertising; user-generated content and co-cre-
ation; sponsorship and branding; product design and aesthetics;
and personality tests at job interviews: are just a few of the areas
where marketers and communications professionals are looking to
the ‘ologies’ [anthropology, psychology, and sociology] for insight
and to steal a competitive edge.
I am going to focus on the theatre of communication, offering
some building blocks and principles behind what could be de-
veloped eventually into a form of game theory – which embraces
the playfulness and dynamic emotions that influence our deci-
sion-making.
Designed Innovation and Creativity
Innovation and creativity in products, services, management,
and individuals are hot topics. But innovation and creativity simply
for the sake of it, or to signal market differentiation aren’t enough.
With so much competition, noise, reduced production costs, and
speed to market; things can easily be forgotten or swamped.
Innovation and creativity have to be built organically and con-
sensually, so that at every stage there is a broad base of supporters
and evangelizers who can take things to the next level. This means
that innovation and creativity have to demonstrate and commu-
41
nicate a real value proposition, which can be understood and con-
sumed by a diverse group of stakeholders. This is the dawn of de-
sign thinking in every facet of business functions.
Precocious Consumer Power
The role of the consumer, shared power and decision-making,
strategic alliances, and diversity of networks, are critical and be-
coming much more fluid. You don’t know which way the market
is going to shift in the future – and so too much protectionism, or
a desire to control may well backfire. This is very much an open-
source mind-set of giving, and giving being defined in the widest
sense; in the hope that you will receive. In doing so the horizon is
extended towards a more long-tail economics approach. Also, copy,
content and multimedia now live forever – sitting and waiting to be
accessed and curated through increasingly intuitive searches.
A challenge that exists is how to appeal to several target audi­
ences and segments at the same time, and hopefully attempt to
bind them together eventually – in order to cement market di-
versity and stability. The key question is whether this is achieved
through one clear consistent and compelling message across all
platforms, which end-users interpret differently, according to their
own viewpoints and frames of reference; or instead through inte-
grated marketing communications that uses different creatives for
each platform.
For example in some conservative societies what may work on a
smartphone shopping App. for private viewing may not be well-re-
ceived on a billboard campaign. Conversely, with social media con-
necting us all, if there is a perceived disconnect through too much
localisation, then this may undermine the universal values and
brand promises in the minds of consumers.
42
HOW COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY BUILD
OUR WORLDVIEW
The Dichotomy of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are German words, used in soci-
ology to categorise social ties:
Gemeinschaft [community] – This is an ascribed status; com-
prising of a fundamental shared set of values, beliefs, norms,
customs, rituals, kinship, behaviours and artefacts that individ-
uals possess, and which binds them to one another – from the
sacred to the profane, and through to the mundane. The bonds
of Gemeinschaft represent a community of fate, where both
good and bad fortune are shared.
Gesellschaft [society] – This is an achieved status built on sec-
ondary weaker relationships, where larger associations never
take precedence over an individual’s rational self-interest. Glo-
balization, business, organisations, employment, and citizen-
ship are examples of these societal relations.
In practice, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft work together,
forming a blended reality, which changes according to time and
context. Both are open to abuse: and over-engineering, or the cre-
ation of artificial and fictitious qualities run the risk of eroding ei-
ther category, or swinging the pendulum the other way.
43
 KNOWLEDGE OF SELF - LINKED TO OTHERS

Ego and Transactional Analysis

If we accept that we behave differently from time to time: how

does our communication change?
Looking in the field of psychotherapy at structural analysis,
people are seen to change and shift between patterns of behaviour,
states of mind, and psychic attitudes – known as ego states. These
can be reduced to three main categories, which any of us have the
ability to enact:
• Parent – those traits that resemble controlling parental fig-
ures, which are either nurturing or critical
• Adult – a neutral and objective appraisal of reality
• Child – still-active archaic relics, which were fixated in early
Figure: A Transactional Analysis framework of different communication states
childhood – ranging from natural free, rebellious creativity;
to adapted, conforming and submissive.
“Adidas – Impossible is nothing” [Parent]
These states are dynamic and become apparent when two or
“Carlsberg, probably the best beer in the world” [Adult]
more people communicate. There are two levels of communica-
“HSBC – The world’s local bank” [Adult]
tion: the social level, and on the psychological level. And this ex-
“Nokia – Connecting People” [Adult]
plains for example how an adult can behave like a child. Within
“Audi - Vorsprung durch technic” [Adult]
one conversation, it is possible that someone can switch between
“Nike – Just Do it” [Free Child or Parent]
states. Communicating is seen as being engaged in a form of recip-
“L’Oréal, because you’re worth it” [Free Child or Parent]
rocal transaction and for communication to continue, it needs to
“L’Oréal, because I’m worth it” [Free Child]
be complementary, and there needs to be a stimulus.
“Virgin Airlines - Your Airline’s Either Got It, Or It Hasn’t”
Now think about how you would classify the following pieces of
[Free Child]
communication and advertising slogans:
“Virgin Airlines – Hello gorgeous” [Free Child]
“Sprite – Obey your thirst” [Parent]
Each slogan conveys a certain personality with its message, but
“Apple – Think different” [Parent]
it’s also important to remember that depending on who conveys

44 45
the message, the context, and the style, then the path of the trans-
action can change. Some of the most iconic brands have used par-
adoxes, and humour to create a unique and compelling message
– especially when eliciting parental or child states.
Eric Berne’s 1964 book ‘Games People Play’ goes into this in
more detail, and it’s clear that more games can be played when
people adopt parental or child states. One example he cites is of
the salesman who says, “This one is better, but you can’t afford it”.
Finally let’s consider online conversations: adult communica-
tion tends to be forgotten or ignored. Everyone seems to be telling
people what to do using language with exhibits parental or child
states. So the key challenge for a company is not to respond in a
critical parent state, even in the face of provocation – it never goes
down well. The internet is full of people empowered to be free and
rebellious with their communication. Similarly, there are plenty of
consumers who are ready to step in and adopt a more parental and
critical position than the organisation – where the organisation
traditionally was thought to be the parent, possessing all the power
and legitimacy.
Figure: iCommunications 3.0, Jonathan A.J. Wilson

creators, architects, agents and facilitators. This model presents

THE ART OF LEADING COMMUNICATION -
WITH PURPOSE
The Importance of Speaking to the Individual
as an Individual
Following these guiding principles and the idea of champion-
ing sociocultural imperatives, I would like to drill down further
on the role of the individual within geographies – as collaborative
the attributes, skills and activities of individuals within this social
landscape.
Also, my thinking is that the term ‘individual’ can be used in-
terchangeably; by being applied figuratively to brands, a corporate
identity, or a product – that is if the human bonds and characteris-
tics are strong enough to facilitate this.
We have moved beyond Theodore Levitt’s 1983 Harvard Busi-
ness Review classic on globalization. Globalization has not made
us all the same – we are seeing evidence of emotional duality even

46 47
where there is evidence of consumption-based singularity. On one
level there is a convergence, but we are also becoming more cul-
tural as a mechanism of coping and maintaining a unique identity.
Social media affords consumers the ability to engage with each
other across geographies, and with economic and business issues
much more. We can also now manage meaningful one-to-one
commu­nication at scale. This has expanded the net of stakeholder
engagement further away from narrow-based perspectives of stake-
holders being defined as people on whom a business relies upon for
survival, towards broad-based views where a stakeholder is some-
one who has an interest and a voice. More so that ever, consumers
have a voice on various platforms, which gift them power, legitima-
cy, and urgency. Furthermore, there has been a democratisation of
information that allows individuals and collectives the opportunity
to debate, mediate, collaborate, create, and adjudicate.
Once we have established an understanding of person-to-per- Figure: Dynamic Brand-centric Stakeholder engagement, Jonathan A.J. Wilson
son communication, then we can build a dynamic stakeholder
model, where we accept that people move between roles fluidly – this we are seeing a convergence between Public Relations and
and encourage it. Branding – and these are the building blocks behind what makes
for compelling, dynamic and social stakeholder engagement.
In a landscape governed by social media, more so than ever
we converge around brands. Brands are easy to identify in a clut-
Key Issues Facing Professionals
tered landscape; they facilitate communication, carry stories and
pull people together – with collaborative meaning and an intend-
I’ve also reflected on the age of ‘Mad Men’ mavericks being re-
ed shared purpose. What this also means is that the role of Gate-
placed by those who formally study the discipline. The idea is that
keepers has become diffused and weakened. More people than ever
with such large organisations, geographies, and markets – this ne-
have access to channels, platforms and information - which allow
cessitates professionals with subject specific skills, formal qualifi-
them to engage, express and influence.
cations and training.
Brands are no longer just reflective of an architecture made up
If I was to be cynical or critical, then there’s a real risk that this
of a corporate identity and portfolio of products and services. They
produces butlers and engineers. People in many ways designed to
are driven and humanized by the employees and consumers. With

48 49
fit in and serve like butlers, and tinker around with existing pro-
cesses, like engineers.
However, with so much disruptive innovation, global compe-
tition, and increasing cross-sector extensions – being agile, lean,
lateral, and hyper-responsive have become the mantras of large
and small organisations. Plus, with the advent of social media plat-
forms, tablets and smartphones – work/life balance is a blended re-
ality. iPhones not so long ago weren’t serious business phones, they
were toys and a work distraction; and Blackberry was the default
instrument. Now, Blackberry messenger can fuel Arab Springs;
iPhones and others are your remote office, research tool, media
broadcaster, and a whole lot more.
Figure: Strategic Motives of Communication, Jonathan A.J. Wilson
50
What else has changed: avatars, social media, and concision
as a result of democratized information overload have pulled us
further into a branded reality. Employer and personal branding
are also in vogue. Strong Theory messaging has given way to Weak
Theory – it’s about incremental gains, and long-tail economics that
are achieved through the sum total of nudges, shares, and reciproc-
ity as an opening gambit. That’s: ‘I’ll help you to be great in the hope
that you’ll help me to achieve greatness – somewhere, somehow, and
to someone’.
So brands are attempting to resonate and embed themselves
into our psyche by being more human, like the puppet Pinocchio
– an identity, personality and all the rest. And humans are attempt-
ing to become more like brands. There’s never been a greater call to
stand out, whilst fitting in – collective individualism. That means
being liked by diverse networks and connecting them, so that they
see your Gestalt reality.
And, if Professionals are Brands, then Should we
Measuring this?
So, how can we make this blended multi-layered reality work
for us? My suggestion has been a concept of singularity and sur-
rogacy through branding and transformational leadership, illus-
trated in the C.H.A.N.G.E.S model. This means one emotive and
cogent offering, decoded from the sum total of experiences and in-
teractions. But most importantly, delivers cultural authenticity - in
a way where adoption results from demonstrating a willingness to
stand side-by-side, as a native and equal.
With all of this in mind, should we be applying and extending
brand thinking in the same way to professionals and leadership?
Brands are no longer just reflective of an architecture made up of a
51

Figure: C.H.A.N.G.E.S model, Jonathan A.J. Wilson
corporate identity and portfolio of products and services. They are
driven and humanized by the employees and consumers.
Having said all of this, if it was this easy, then studying and
following the rules would work, right? So what about those that
break, reshape and make the rules? And are these rules actually
just too nuanced and perishable?
For example, Metallica are a brand that wasn’t cooked out of
an agency. Not so long ago, I can also remember colleagues mark-
ing assignments wrong, where students suggested that Jay Z was
a brand; and billboards in car video games, or YouTube user gen-
52
erated content videos were not considered adverts. “Jay Z is not a
brand, Coca Cola is – he is a celebrity endorser”… “an advert is a paid
for piece of communication in a pre-designated space”… or at least,
that’s what the text books used to say.
If companies acknowledge the value of employee branding; and
professionals are serious about seeing themselves as brands too:
maybe we should be moving towards a new system and brand ar-
chitecture - where we actually calculate the brand value of more
professionals, and then incentivise and reward their social media
network activities?
Also, entertainers have raised the bar for us professionals. Have
we all become performers? There is pressure on staff across an or-
ganization to be intuitive communicators and decision-makers -
with the speed of wit of a stand-up comedian and the ability to
present every pitch like a TED talk.
And, like rock and rap stars, the argument stands for controlling
your professional image to present a ‘corporate’ cool - as everyone
is Googling, checking and searching for authenticity.
Logically, we should be encouraging people to improve their
LinkedIn and other social media profiles, giving employees train-
ing in this. The aim being that they become more active on social
media, for the benefit of the organisation. It’s good cheap promo-
tion, and the days are gone when professionals can separate their
private social media lives completely from their professional iden-
tities – everything is in the public domain.
Also, as companies are on LinkedIn they should be pushing the
profiles of their staff, as part of their corporate branding and pro-
motional activities - because LinkedIn is doing this, making links
and presenting network bonds anyway. This would give a boost to
existing branding activities, attracting business, raising the corpo-
rate profile, and attracting new talent.
53
 However, there is a perception/guilty secret/fear here: that this
gives too much power and ‘brand value’ to the people, which they
may cash in on and take elsewhere. If we apply relationship-mar-
keting theory to our staff, as we have to consumers; then this
healthy competition and these brand exchanges should be em-
braced and encouraged.
So what does this mean? In order to fulfil personal and corpo-
rate obligations – it’s about focusing on the individual. We should
be doing more to create our own brand architecture, and to bring
and embed that into an organisation’s. That’s more time commu-
nicating and practising both the spoken and written word; and
not being afraid to stand beside our professional activities and of-
ferings – because professional and corporate authenticity will be
demonstrated ultimately through real people.
The difference now is that this isn’t just the domain of board
members; it extends throughout the organisational hierarchy. For
example, I encourage my students to create YouTube short doc-
umentaries and presentations, to rework their assignments into
magazine style pieces and whitepapers on SlideShare – to stand
out, claim that space, and demonstrate authenticity beyond a de-
gree certificate.
THE THEATRE OF SPEECH
Rhetoric – the Mode of Persuasion
Rhetoric is the art of informing, persuading and motivating
audiences through arguments. Aristotle held it to be the tool of
logic and politics - categorising it according to three appeals to an
audience:
54
Ethos – How well an individual is able to convince an audience
of their authority, honesty and appeal on a particular subject.
These are the relevant aspects of an individual’s character that
have the ability to enhance the appeal of an argument. Ethos
can be broken down further, into three categories:
• Phronesis – wisdom and practical skills
• Arete – goodness, virtue and excellence
• Eunoia – goodwill towards an audience
Pathos – A communication technique used to appeal to an au-
dience using emotion, passion, stories, hooks, and figures of
speech – such as analogies, allegories, hyperboles, and similes.
Logos – The logical reasoned argument, which makes things
clear. Logos also enhances ethos. In addition, a simulated argu-
ment, where data is manipulated and re-contextualised, could
in fact be used to enact a pathos effect.
The Big Five Personality Traits
Psychologists have attempted to describe our personalities by
grouping them into five broad categories, which form the acronym
OCEAN. This means assessing whether or not we possess qualities
of:
• Openness – intellectual curiosity, creativity, imaginativeness,
independence, a preference for novelty and variety, open to
change and new experiences
• Conscientiousness – self-discipline, dependability, thought­­­
fulness, ability to control impulses, and manage expectations
• Extraversion – assertiveness, energy, emotional optimism,
55
 sociability, leadership tendencies, dependency on others and
a breadth of experiences and stimulation
• Agreeableness – compassion, cooperativeness, harmony
seeking, and trusting
• Neuroticism – emotional instability, anger, anxiety, depres-
sion, and vulnerability

Not possessing any of these qualities points to an individual ex-

hibiting an opposite trait. So for example, introversion is the oppo-
site of extraversion, and may mean that someone prefers to spend
time alone, needs less stimulation from his or her social world, or
is shy. Equally, in a certain setting, introversion could be temporary
and as a result of neuroticism. The key lies in identifying what is
the most common tendency of an individual within a given com-
munity or society.

How Stand-up Can Help us to Step up

The bar’s been raised for public speakers and lecturers – in a

world where we crave more and more punchy, informative, and
entertaining 3 minute video content. How many of you now sit Figure: Strategic Communications Objectives, Jonathan A.J. Wilson
through a talk and feel the itch to reach for your phone after 3 min-
utes? Now if the speaker is lucky, it’s because you want to snap
1. They don’t take themselves too seriously, but they do take
a photo and share a quote — but whatever the reason, if the live
planning and rehearsing seriously — no scripts or notes and
experience can’t top video, your talk is a flop.
they are at one with their content.
Here are 6 reasons why I think stand-up artists top-trump —
2. It isn’t all about PowerPoint — they can riff and handle
and us in the business world have to step-up, if we want to stand-
comments in real time, in a way that enriches their delivery,
out:
rather than disrupting their flow.
3. They work in chunks, and on crafting their own style and
hook, rather than bland textbook Business 101.

56 57
 4. They paint pictures and tell stories that make you see every-
day life differently — turning clichés on their head.
5. They aren’t afraid to share mistakes and problems — and
this doesn’t mean losing face; it’s a form of grace.
6. They make you want to share their content with others.
Chapter 2
Let the Games Begin

This is admittedly in many ways a brief vignette into something

that we all do – which on one level is so simple and natural; but as
we all know is actually the tip of an iceberg of what are a complex
COMMUNICATIONS
network of dynamic transactions.
The final strategic model brings all of these communication el-
IN HETEROGENOUS
ements together – proposing a balanced Public Relations approach
that requires excellence in each of these areas. MARKETS
For those of you who want to raise the bar, set the agenda and
engineer communication consistently: then it takes practise, ex-
perimentation, and the construction of a style that is both attrac-
tive and infectious – so let the games begin! Tomas Jensen

58 59
 For communications professionals with a background in sat-
urated markets moving into more dynamic, potentially smaller
markets, their first inclination is often to rethink the way they used
to approach communications – and scale down on planning, ex-
ecution, and expected results. Yet, and this the main hypothesis
of this article: communicators should apply the same standards
and expectations in emerging markets as they do in saturated, less
dynamic markets. As I will lay out, there are significant differenc-
es – but they mainly have an impact on the executional level, not
when it comes to planning, analyzing, integrating or measuring.
And, as it is so often the case: Many of the perceived challenges are
actually opportunities to establish leaner processes, to take new
positioning angles, and to drive different audience approaches as
well as identify great talent and help them establish world-class
communications disciplines in their respective markets.
No matter how we call them and what markets we look at –
most emerging markets face comparable macroeconomic and in-
frastructural factors: Rather young populations, high unemploy-
ment rates, low internet bandwidths, centralized and/or immature
media markets, etcetera. Also, on a micro economic level, commu-
nications departments in emerging markets usually have to deal
with little resources.
And then – at least for organizations that on any level operate
internationally – is it possible in today’s world to not think in in-

60 61
tegrated and global dimensions? One message being driven in any
market can pop up in any other market in a blink.
Because “challenges” are usually being pointed out as the main
differentiators between more saturated, less dynamic markets on
the one hand and emerging markets on the other hand, let me
describe the main challenges from a communicator’s standpoint
I have perceived in various communications roles – but also point
out how they can be turned around and used as opportunities.
• It is hard to find good talent. Educational programs and fac-
ulties for corporate communications hardly exist anywhere,
no matter if we look at Africa, the Middle East or Asia, so
young, entry-level candidates have to be trained on most
things of our profession since they are not ready to hit the
ground running. And logically, more senior level is heavily
fought for as the talent pool is small.
• The allocation of resources dedicated to corporate commu-
nications does not match the growth potential. Many com-
panies today stress the strategic importance of emerging
markets as “the next big thing”, the core area where growth
will come from. Yet most marketing and communications
budgets are defined as a percentage of the present’s revenue
– which in comparison still is rather small in most cases com-
pared to the average European market.
• Media often lacks the expertise and maturity to develop their
own stories. Many media representatives, even “Tier 1” me-
dia, mostly copy and paste press releases. Our profession
struggles with perception issues. In many markets, “Public
Relations Professionals” are being seen as some sort of super-
ficial customer service – for example the front of desk staff at
62
gym. A strategic approach to “Corporate Communications” is
mostly unknown, the idea that public relations is the driving
force behind building a brand’s reputation is being perceived
as somewhat esoteric.
One of the virtues communicators in emerging markets should
be equipped with: to not accept the status quo. Meaning, that
every challenge can be used as an opportunity. This might require
creativity, stamina, conviction – but any of the before mentioned
challenges can be turned into the opportunity to have an impact
on short and long term external and internal perception changes.
Let me share some of my experiences that can be generalized and
applied in many scenarios across emerging markets communica-
tions:
• Become an educator and nurture your own talent from the
ground up. Identify the right talent and help them grow. Bring
key stakeholders of emerging markets communications, from
different markets and backgrounds, together regularly – and
create communication platforms to foster exchange, joint
message development, best practice adoption and a platform
for connecting emerging markets stories with the rest of the
world. Create a virtual team that regularly gets together. This
group will be a catalyst to leverage, use synergies and make
stories grow outside of their natural habitat. But do not stop
there – foster exchange across the whole organization, help
communicators from small markets learn how to drive big,
international campaigns. And teach colleagues from well-
equipped markets how to turn small stories into big success.
• Ultimately, the goal should not only be to build capacity
63
 amongst the (internal) corporate communications commu-
nity – but also empower media to become more familiar with
research techniques or partners to understand integrated
marketing tools better. At Microsoft in the Middle East and
Africa, for example, I initiated an “Information and Commu-
nications Technology University for Media” as well as a “Part-
ner PR Academy”. In both cases, my team was able to build
better relationships with the audiences mentioned as well as
build their capacity on the topics delivered.
• On another dimension, owned media has become increasing-
ly important for brands. In larger markets, there has been a
splintering of audiences as media outlets become more niche
in focus in order to survive. Plus, editorial space in print and
broadcast has shrunk too as their own resources have con-
stricted in the past several years. In emerging regions, the
media markets are often not mature, so owned channels are
alluring for very similar reasons. And, smart syndication of
content via a company’s own social channels is a must.
• On the earned media side, there has been buzz around the
potential impact of creative, digital content in the past sev-
eral years – namely video or infographics. For emerging mar-
kets, we see the impact of creative assets in an especially pro-
found way: as media often lacks the expertise and maturity to
develop their own stories, they genuinely appreciate, and use,
this type of pre-fabricated content. With an audience-led ap-
proach that guides content so that it is useful and interesting
to targeted end audiences, getting editorial placement is not
unusual.
• Tightening budgets are generally a challenge for communi-
cations leads in any market – but the constraints in smaller
64
territories can seem prohibitive at first blush. However, tak-
ing an integrated approach can cut costs by ensuring assets
are shared and overlapping efforts are eliminated. Again,
coming into an emerging market or region with more limited
resources can actually serve as positive forcing function to-
wards driving integration.
• Another tangential benefit of looking to drive efficiencies
through integration – a benefit that addresses a challenge
known to all public relations professional – is helping to en-
sure the discipline is fully appreciated as a vital component of
the marketing mix. Landing the same messages to different
audiences, using different channels, adopting content ac-
cordingly is one of the most challenging, but also most re-
warding jobs we need to get done. The result – one consistent
perception being built and ensured across stakeholders – is
what we need to aim for, nationally and globally.
• No matter what stories we tell, in the end they need to reach
the audience by addressing their specific needs and wishes.
Following Tip O’Neill’s quote “All politics is local”, it is key
to drive global messages by supporting them with local evi-
dence, spokespeople and stories. In my current role, address-
ing decision makers all over Europe, I need to make sure that
local stories are just that – local. When thinking about the
effects of mining in a certain region, nothing is more relevant
than getting the social license to operate from stakeholders in
the region. And this can only be achieved by convincing them
with the positive local and regional effects, not me talking,
for example, about the relevance of a certain rare metal for
the European Union.
65
 As developments over the last few years have shown, societies
in emerging markets are for better or worse prone to drastic change
within a short range of time. Obviously, this also has an impact
on our profession – amidst changing environments, we still need
to ensure to drive short term demand generation and long term
reputation build up for the entities we communicate for. From a
communications perspective, dimensions we usually assume as
given, at least as only slowly changing over time, can be breaking
away and changing rather quickly. Amongst other things, some of
the core developments I noticed during the political changes in the
Middle East in the beginning of 2011 that had an immediate impact
on the corporate communications functions were:
• The awakening of previously relatively irrelevant audiences,
for example the rise of the enlightened, well-educated pro-
tester on the streets of Tunisia, Egypt and in other places
during the “Arab Spring”. Not surprisingly, these new future
building, powerful stakeholders wanted to consciously and
openly distance themselves from established processes and
partnerships;
• The disappearance of long-term partners and customers, es-
pecially from public sector decision making entities – a power
vacuum that lead to dissolving audiences;
• The growth of new channels, including broader social media
usage, but also the rise of new global broadcast players like
Al Jazeera; and,
• As much as social media channels grow, they are not neces-
sarily embraced by all societal elements to the same degree.
The former regime in Egypt decided to shut down the internet
completely when the protests came to a peak (which, ironi-
66
cally, gave the anti-government movement another big push
by giving the oldest of human communications form a trans-
formational role in driving people to the streets – mouth-to-
mouth communication). The on-and-off availability of Twit-
ter and Youtube in Turkey in recent years is another example
of a situation challenging corporate communicators.
No matter how dramatic the situation is – once immediate is-
sues are being cleared out of the way we need to continue integrat-
ed, strategic communications – which should, in order to adapt to
new situations, include:
• The maintenance of existing/pre-change media relations: the
political landscape might change. But media outlets and es-
pecially individuals representing those outlets – journalists
– stay the same. Representatives of communicating entities
need to maintain and nurture relationships through turbu-
lent times;
• Ensure that international communications teams hit the
right balance between national and transnational commu-
nications channels: topics relevant in one market can often
be just as relevant in neighboring or similar markets as well.
Best practices – customer case studies, CSR projects, execu-
tive visits – can be used in transnational outlets to leverage
across markets. Taking a broader, if not global perspective is
a trait that all communications leaders should acquire. The
is key is to identify local stories that might be of interest to
international audiences and working with the regional or
international communications team to amplify with their
pan-regional press and owned channels. In addition, being
67
 able to look broadly across a region, can help identify broader
trends related to a sector and help lead to bigger ideas that
hub teams can seize upon. Of course, highest attention needs
to be paid to ensure adaptive consistency to maintain close
messaging and positioning alignment across all available
channels, local, national, regional, international – and over
time;
• Many decision makers especially in markets going through
societal change do not only care about the immediate impact
of a buying decision on their organization – but are usually
also much more interested in the role societal elements play,
including national and international companies. The positive
impact of the presence of a company on the economy should
always be taken into account when working on communica-
tions plans. Plus, in many markets and industries, the public
sector is the biggest individual purchasing entity. By driving
sustainable storytelling through the inclusion of long-term
macro-economic challenges as communications platforms
the economic impact of an organization can be turned into
impactful, perception-changing outcomes;
• High flexibility in terms of new channels – and integration
with existing ones. I am not a big friend of differentiating
between “traditional” and “social media” channels – as we
should always thrive to start with integrative approaches ver-
sus trying bring channels together ex post. There is another,
well-known challenge though when it comes to social me-
dia: working with and around how certain global channels
can face local restrictions. A very recent example: as widely
known, although Twitter and Youtube have been banned in
Turkey since April of this year, experienced internet users find
68
ways to access the sites by using VPNs or tunneling websites.
Still, they are very tricky channels given the current situation
as communicating entities need to ensure they are compliant
with national law. At the same time, multinational commu-
nicating entities need to think about their responsibility as
active members of a more and more globalizing society; and,
• Unfortunately, “less mature” often also means that internal
stakeholders want to focus on success, on driving revenue,
on a bright and positive future. It can take a lot of effort to
evangelize the relevance of constant crisis communications
readiness. Usually, the time that business partners really un-
derstand why they had to go through extensive training is
once a crisis hits and they need to apply what they had pre-
viously learned.
In summary: corporate communications in emerging markets
is different – but not really. There are similar challenges across
emerging markets around the globe. Yet – they can be worked with,
they can be worked around, and, in many cases, they can actually
be turned and used as opportunities to position an organization, to
expand new channels and audiences, and to set up more efficient
processes. Generally, communicators should never look at markets
as “underdeveloped”. Markets are different from each other – so
let’s ensure we respect diversities, plan accordingly, and aim for
impactful and perception-changing results, whilst always driving
business-supporting objectives. No matter which market com-
municators work in, they need to ensure they set and manage the
right expectations, based on the same standards that apply across
an organization, no matter at what maturity level a specific market
might be.
69
 Lastly, here are my top four pieces of advice to present for future
communicators in international roles:

• Identify similarities between markets and leverage. This may

includes messaging around shared macro-economic chal- Chapter 3
lenges (strategy dimension” and cultural backgrounds or the
same language being spoken in a region (culture dimension).
At the same time, always ensure to respect diversity.
• Understand resource-scarce and virtual managing – and use MEASUREMENT
it to your benefit by driving integrated campaigns, by identi-
fying great talent, by building a team where individuals en-
rich each other.
AND ACCOUNTABILITY:
• Be smart. Leverage. Use synergies. Integrate.
• Again, first and foremost: strategically, approach communi- BE A MASTER OF METRICS
cations in the same way, no matter where.

Andre Manning

70 71
 Measurement and accountability are two topics that are close to
my heart, and always have been since I started my career in com-
munications. I believe that using research and measurement in my
day to day work has made me a better professional. It has given
me the right tools and ammunition to become a better partner in
discussions with my internal stakeholders and more importantly,
it gave the communications function more credibility that I could
have imagined. But it is hard work as we’re still in the early stage of
applying the right measurement metrics and data to become suc-
cessful professionals.
From the early days of Public Relations measurement, research,
evaluation and accountability (both performative as well as deci-
sional accountability) have received well deserved attention. I ad-
mit, they are not the most light-hearted topics but I’m convinced
that by embracing them our profession will benefit from it because
we as communications practitioners will be much better in demon-
strating our added value to the businesses and organizations we
support. Secondly, it will also help us to move from output towards
much needed outcome-driven activities and as a result get rid of
false multipliers such as AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalent).
Measuring the effectiveness of PR activities is one of the most
debated areas of our profession. Consensus on methodology and
tools is being sought through efforts of the Coalition for Public Re-
lations Measurement supported by the Institute for Public Rela-

72 73
tions (IPR) or the International Association for Measurement and
Evaluation of Communication (AMEC)
The Barcelona Principles
I think we all can agree that measurement and evaluation of PR
are increasingly receiving more attention. Historically when many
agencies pitch new business to prospective clients, the Public Re-
lations priorities are usually in this order: credentials, strategy, tac-
tics, budget, and then, only maybe, measurement of the results. In
the Public Relations new business pitch, usually, as time is running
out, someone tells the measurement person that he or she will have
to make that part of the pitch fast and create slides on the spot.
However, 2010 saw what leaders in the Public Relations industry
hope is the beginning of a change. Public Relations and communi-
cation managers from all over the world gathered in Barcelona and
adopted seven principles for Public Relations measurement. While
these principles do not solve every Public Relations measurement
problem, they do specifically refute using advertising value equiva-
lents (AVEs) and other false multipliers — until now common Pub-
lic Relations practices that equate the value of public relations with
the cost of advertising — and the notion that the value of earned
media is always at least twice that of paid media. Neither is true.
The Barcelona Principles on Public Relations
Measurement
As said, the year 2010 has been a crucial year for the thinking
about measurement in Public Relations as PR professionals from
across the globe joined forces in Barcelona and agreed on the seven
measurement principles listed below:
74
Principle 1: Clear goal setting and measurement are funda
mental aspects of any public relations program.
Principle 2: Measuring the effect on outcomes is referred to
measuring outputs, and should include positive
or negative outcomes.
Principle 3: The effect on business results can and should be
measured where possible.
Principle 4: Media measurement requires quantity and quality.
Principle 5: Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) are not
the value of Public Relations.
Principle 6: Social media can and should be measured.
Principle 7: Transparency and replicability are paramount to
sound measurement.
(source: http://amecorg.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Measuring-the-True-Val-
ue-of-Public-Relations-based-on-the-Barcelona-Principles-11-11-12.pdf)
The Value Metrics Framework
In my view quite an impressive list and as an immediate fol-
low-up to the Barcelona Principles, PR leaders gathered in London
later that year to attempt to answer the following question: If we
don’t use AVEs, then what are the right metrics? And, since social
media is the hottest thing going on in the world of PR, and the
Barcelona principles specifically address its measurement, how are
we going to find out which of all of the hundreds of social media
measurement suppliers are moving into the direction we want?
At the same time, the International Association for the Meas-
urement and Evaluation of Communications (AMEC) produced
the so-called Valid Metrics Framework, a measurement planning
75
framework and template. This framework was designed to be flexi-
ble enough to address multiple aspects of Public Relations within a
consistent measurement framework and approach.
Another Push in Madrid
After the launch of the key measurement principles in Barce-
lona, another event (again in Spain) spurred the adoption of these
principles. With a record number of attendees from more than
30 countries, speakers from so many different types of organiza-
tions, workshops and discussions that helped progress the issues
this field faces, the PR measurement summit in Madrid met and
exceeded every expectation. It was an important confirmation for
the need of new standards for measurement approaches, all lead-
ing to unlocking the business growth enabled by communications
through smart measurement. Madrid was another milestone for
our industry; Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of AMEC, right-
fully described it as “the day measurement grew up as a business
tool.”
Barcelona Principles 2.0
And since then things have moved even faster in the right di-
rection. It’s now more than five years since the industry rallied
around the Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles,
agreeing to the first overarching framework for effective public re-
lations (PR) and communication measurement. And we all know,
the original goal was straightforward and far from rocket science:
provide guidelines to measure the effectiveness of communication
campaigns; provide a basis to enable the replacement of outdated
76
program measurement models and ultimately to end years of de-
bate as to whether metrics such as AVEs and multipliers should be
used. Since its launch in 2011, PR agencies, companies, non-profit
organizations and governments across the globe have adopted the
Barcelona principles, even though the original principles weren’t
meant to the final solution. They served as the base for further de-
velopment under the charismatic leadership of one of the previous
chairmen of AMEC and a lifetime advocate of measurement and
research in the PR industry, David Rockland, and resulted in the
Barcelona Principles 2.0. Or to use his own words: “if the original
set of Principles focused more on ‘what not to do’, the updated Bar-
celona Principles of 2015 provide more guidance on ‘what to do’, in
order to unite the ever-expanding media landscape into a transpar-
ent, reliable, and consistent measurement and evaluation frame-
work”. Under Rockland’s leadership and in close consultation with
the original partners and involving AMEC Regional Chapters, the
new-look Barcelona Principles 2.0 has been launched. The group
represented the original partners involved in the Barcelona Prin-
ciples of 2010: the International Association for Measurement and
Evaluation of Communication (AMEC), ICCO, Institute for Public
Relations, PRCA, PRSA and The Global Alliance.
What is New?
The Barcelona Principles 2.0 go beyond the PR sector and out-
lines applications for communications measurement overall. The
revised Principles include greater attention to the role of qualitative
methods alongside quantitative methods. The Barcelona Principles
of 2015 also acknowledge the realities of working in an increasingly
integrated field with a much bigger focus on digital channels and
77
different metrics such as reach, engagement (retweets, comments,
average time on site, bounce rate, clicks, video views, white paper
downloads and anything else that requires the user to engage), sen-
timent and sales conversions and other statistics to gauge the size
of your community. While the detailed overview of the Principles
2.0 can be found on AMEC’s website, the main differences are listed
below:
Principle 1:
From: Importance of Goal Setting and Measurement to
Goal Setting and Measurement are Fundamental to Com-
munication and Public Relations
While the Barcelona Principles were intended to provide a
foundation for PR programs, the updated Principles recognize
that they can also be applied to the larger communication func-
tion of any organization, government, company or brand glob-
ally. In fact, measurement, evaluation and goal-setting should
be holistic across media and paid, earned, owned and shared
channels.
Principle 2:
From: Measuring the Effect on Outcomes is Preferred to
Measuring Outputs to Measuring Communication Out-
comes is Recommended Versus Only Measuring Outputs
While the original Principle stated quantitative methods of
measuring outcomes were “often preferable,” the updated Prin-
ciple recognizes that the use of qualitative methods (along with
quantitative) should be used as appropriate. The updated ver-
78
sion also specifically calls out advocacy as an outcome that can
(and should) be measured.
Principle 3:
From: The Effect on Business Results Can and Should Be
Measured Where Possible to the Effect on Organizational
Performance Can and Should Be Measured Where Possible
This updated Principle emphasizes that communications im-
pact more than just business results; rather communications
can impact the overall performance of an organization. To do
this, organizations must have, and practitioners must under-
stand, integrated marketing and communication models. It is
important to stress that within organizations Public Relations
does and should not exist in a silo, nor should PR measurement.
Principle 4:
From: Media Measurement Requires Quantity and Quali-
ty to Measurement and Evaluation Require both Qualita-
tive and Quantitative Methods
As it is stated on the AMEC website, this updated Principle rec-
ognizes that qualitative measures are often needed in order to
explain “the why” behind the quantitative outcomes. It reminds
us that to be truly objective, we need focus on measuring per-
formance (be it positive, negative or neutral), and avoid making
assumptions that results will always be positive or “successful.”
79
Principle 5:
From: AVE’s are not the Value of Public Relations to AVE’s
are not the Value of Communications
In my view this is an important one that cannot be stressed
enough. In the absence of real metrics I understand that AVE’s
became so popular and widespread, but I’m really happy that
this Principle continues to underline that Advertising Value
Equivalents (AVEs) measure the cost of media space or time
and do not measure the value of PR or communication, media
content, earned media, etc. I have been speaking on many in-
dustry conferences and I will continue to be vocal on getting rid
of AVE’s as there is no link to the actual outcome of communi-
cations activities and there are much better (though more cost-
ly I have to admit) ways to measure the reputation of a business
or organization.
Principle 6:
From: Social Media Can and Should be Measured to So-
cial Media Can and Should be Measured Consistently with
Other Media Channels
It recognizes that social media measurement tools have evolved
really quickly in recent years, to a point where there is great-
er potential for consistent measurement on social platform
related engagement (retweets, comments, average time on
site, bounce rate, clicks, video views, white paper downloads
and anything else that requires the user to engage) along with
quantity and quality. And needless to say, we should merge the
measurement of both traditional as well as non-traditional (eg.
80
social media channels). Integrated measurement and reporting
should be our ultimate goal.
Principle 7:
From: Transparency and Replicability are Paramount to
Sound Measurement to Measurement and Evaluation
Should be Transparent, Consistent and Valid
In the spirit of integrity, honesty and openness, the updated
Principle includes more specific guidance valid quantitative
and qualitative methods in an effort to ensure quantitative
methods are reliable and replicable and qualitative methods
are trustworthy.
Measurement Recommendations
Since the launch or the original Barcelona principles and the de-
velopment into the Barcelona Principles 2.0 – together with many
peers around the globe – I have tried to accelerate the initiatives on
measurement of Public Relations and/or Communications. Both
within the companies I worked at, and more importantly at many
industry platforms, I have used a diverse range of platforms to act
as an advocate of measurement. Not because it is my hobby horse
but because I really believe that a focus on measurement and ac-
countability will help us to do a better job and add more value to
the organisations we support via our communications plans and
activities. And by doing so, I have made mistakes and learned my
lessons, which I’m happy to share:
81
• Budget for measurement up front.
o Don’t budget for measurement at the back end of campaign
planning. How much? Figure 5% of your total public rela-
tions or communications spending, including fees and pass-
through costs. Many think that measurement costs a fortune.
It doesn’t. But if you can’t spend 5% of your budget to get an
honest assessment of how you are doing — and to improve
programs in the future — then how serious are you about try-
ing to get results from your public relations initiatives?
• Speak the language of the business.
o This is the way to ensure that executives believe that public
relations have a business value. Many companies keep track
of how they are doing with customers with a Net Promot-
er Score. In one of my previous companies, Philips, we kept
track of our media results in exactly the same way, converting
media coverage results into an NPS-type metric. Public rela-
tions measurement has to speak the language of the business:
silly terms such as impressions, hits, and AVEs have gone by
the wayside.
• Use one approach.
o I’m a strong advocate of using a single global measurement
system for your communications activities, be it earned
media, Public Relations or Integrated Communications. In
many organisations, every business and location seemed to
have its own metrics and vendors. I would recommend us-
ing one approach across your organization. Will this be easy?
No way. It required intense effort at the outset, and a bit of
command and control, with lots of convincing thrown in
82
and ongoing maintenance with continual improvement. Via
this approach, your public relations or communications staff
can look at the performance of any campaign, location, or
business sector in the same way, and make smarter decisions
about what works.
• Adopt a new mindset.
o Probably the hardest part of transitioning into a new system
is getting away from the mindset that more is always better
— or that the bigger the stack of clips, likes or retweets, the
better the results. I strongly believe that outcome is more im-
portant that output and I always embraced the 80/20 rule,
where 20% of the (social or traditional) media is at least 80%
of what is important. This is an ongoing transition.
• Align your objectives.
o The shift from more to less is also a shift to align measure-
ment with organizational and business objectives. Start with
business objectives, include the vision for the organization
over the next five years, and from there build a measurement
approach and system. As mentioned before, it’s not about
seeing how many clips, likes or retweets one can get and then
figuring out how to measure them.
Last of all, organizations such as IPR and AMEC have played
a leading role in supporting the adoption of measurement since
they released their Barcelona principles in 2010, which I believe
have been an accelerator in communications measurement. I have
always tried to act as an ambassador of these principles and I will
continue to do so. It still motivates me to help spreading the mes-
83
sage: measurement and accountability in communications is a
need to have and not a nice to have.

Chapter 4

GLOBAL PR PROCESSES,
TRACKING, MEASUREMENT
AND REPORTING:
AN INSIGHT INTO WHAT
IS COMMON SENSE
AND WORKS

Thierry Nicolet

84 85
 In this chapter I will be sharing my personal views and expe-
riences on what are the essential steps to take in order to set the
grounds and implement a global, efficient and effective Press Rela-
tions activity. We will be covering the following:
• What is the purpose of Press Relations?
• PR, just one of the jigsaw puzzle pieces of a more holistic
strategy to support a campaign.
• The moment of truth or what drives demand and purchases
of your products.
• A world-class Press Relations Organization.
• Standard methods, processes and policies.
• The 7 steps Approach:
1. Define your PR Budget
2. Define your battlefield
3. Arm your troops
4. Define your PR plan
5. Monthly activity tracking
6. Monthly or quarterly KPI reports
7. Sharing and communicating on your results
• Sentiment – Word clouds
• PR Agencies, Network or cherry picked?
• A program to help you boost your performance for literally
almost no extra investment.
• Best PR performance yearly award

86 87
 Disclaimer: in this section PR will exclusively refer to Press Re-
lations. Press Relations is a specialty of Public Relations. Public
Relations manages the flow of information between an organisa-
tion and its public. Press Relations on the other hand, specifically
focuses on Editors and professional Bloggers (which since the past
10 years have reapped a significant audience which I believe com-
petes with traditional media outlets, depending on the industry
your organisation operates in).
So What is the Purpose of Press Relations?
In reality and this is true for any company, one of your main
objectives of doing PR is first to position your organisation as a
thought leader in its field and versus competition. It is important
to make sure that when a topic/market you operate in is covered
by the media, you are listed as one of the reference brands in that
field.
On the contrary of advertising, where all you need to do is to
buy some real-estate in the pages of various publications to get
your (tailored) messages across, with PR, you cannot just expect
editors to cover your brand and solutions and say the things you
want them to say just because you exist. You’ll have to get known
and respected as an active player in the competitive landscape, but
you’ll also have to raise the editor’s’ interest. They need to under-
stand what you do and why it is they should cover your story for
their readers over someone’s else’s.
The second objective is to align your media presence with the
strategic initiatives of your organisation through campaign sup-
port in order to drive brand awareness, preference and drive sales.
88
Because we are all here to generate sales, we are all in sales, and
yes, even the PR team.
PR is just one of the jigsaw puzzle pieces of a more holistic strat-
egy to support a campaign. It is important to step back a couple of
minutes here to cover a very important point: too many companies
consider PR as being the sacred graal, which it isn’t. A PR activi-
ty (i.e. Press Release, press tour, press conference, press desk visit,
customer testimonial, contributing or by-lined article etc...) is only
one of the different puzzle pieces which architect a full campaign.
Defaulting to having just a press release sent out when you
launch a new product or solutions will not do the trick, and yet, too
many organisations make this very mistake.
When you architect a campaign for a new product for instance,
you need to make sure that all customer touch points will be taken
care of. Here’s a non exhaustive list of what needs to be done for a
launch to be successful:
• The Press Release – not much to be added here.
• Product pictures to allow for illustrations in the articles (too
often then not overlooked).
• Unboxing and/or step-by-step “how to” videos posted to your
own website of Youtube Channels. You’ll notice that if you
don’t do it yourself, some of your fans or even detractors will
take care of it, choosing the messages they’ll want to convey…
you might want to have some control here.
• Your website’s product pages need to be up to date with the
new product details on the day of launch. No rocket science,
but look at your own organisation and tell me that this hasn’t
ever been an issue...
• Customer Care Centers/Call Centers need to be trained and
89
 educated on the new product. Interested customers will want
to call/online-chat with your customer support teams for
more information. They need to be ready.
• Training your sales teams on the new products and making
sure they have the appropriate supporting collaterals when
going on sales calls, for example, PowerPoint Presentations,
Cheat sheets, Spec Sheets, Head-to-head comparison charts
with competition as well as confidential SWOT analysis to
arm them correctly.
• As well as training your channels if you aren’t in a direct sales
model.
The Moment of Truth or What Drives Demand
and Purchases of Your Products
“How hear, why buy” studies and why you should be smart and
shy away from AVEs! It is the question that dominates many in-
dustry conferences but in reality, it is pretty easy to step away from
“classical” Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) and get a real feel
for PR efforts value by looking at “the moment of truth”.
Any organization needs to be able to understand if their com-
munication campaigns have had a positive impact and achieved
the goals they had set for themselves. In the communication world,
a pretty common metric is the AVE. Advertising Value Equivalency
is a value of what your editorial coverage would have cost you if it
were advertising space (or airtime for TV and Radio) you would
have purchased.
One of the issues with using AVE is that it only gives you a meas-
urement metric that can help you navigate your communication
campaigns. And although it resonates well with C-Level managers,
90
as it seems to show a “Euro Value” of equivalent publicity, in reality,
it is only showing you a value of a ‘cost’: how much would it have
cost you to book these many pages, these many minutes of airtime
if this coverage had been actual advertisements and not editorials.
The two other issues with AVE is that firstly, it doesn’t evaluate
if your campaigns appeared in the proper publications (the one you
had set yourself as targets); and secondly, it doesn’t give you any
sense of how you compare yourself to the universe you evolve in:
your competition.
So, How Should You Measure Then?
First of all, by looking at your Share of Voice (SOV). In a com-
petitive environment, you’ll always need to compare and position
yourself to your competitors in terms of visibility.By consistently
clipping your own, as well as your defined competition’s editorial
coverage, you’ll be able to compare how many articles, impressions,
and total ink space you’ve achieved versus the universe of brands
you compete with.
Suggested Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): In a highly com-
petitive environment, a decent position to be in is to achieve at
least a 33% share of voice. Aiming for that 33% will give you and
your PR strategies, clear plans, objectives and goals. Secondly, by
looking at whether your activity has had an impact on the aware-
ness of your brand and/or your sales volume. You can then map
activity type to actual sales.
“How hear, why buy” studies are the first step to carry out, and
are called “The Moment of truth”. These studies will help you un-
derstand how your targeted audience has heard of you, what action
did they take (purchases) and for how much (average order size).
91
They are pretty simple to carry out. More often than not, a simple
run through your own customer database, customer care center
listings, tech-support call logs etc. will give you easy access to a
fresh and active customer base list. It’s now just a matter of asking
them the questions of how they have heard of you, your solutions,
your messages, and why did they take action?
The right tip here is to carry these surveys out consistently, and
over several quarters. This will give you perspective and allow you
to track trends. As for any statistical analysis, the absolute value of
a specific data point is of lesser importance than its variation over
time: “What have I done for this 5x increase to have happened in
why-my-customers-purchased-my-solution? And can I repeat it?”
There are several reasons why your customers do business with Actual illustration of a “Why-buy? study” on a specific product SKU. X axis is time,
you (or support your ideas). It could be push, through your sales y axis is percentage of responses.
force or your channel. It could be pull, through advertising, or PR.
Repeat-buy (customers know you, like you and purchase your solu- versus the quarter before that?
tion again) or peer recommendation (your current customers are After having looked through the editorial coverage of that time
advocating your solutions to peers, friends or family). period, it turned out that this product had been featured in a com-
All these demand drivers are of the utmost importance in any parative review of a very popular publication with a very high cir-
integrated Marketing campaign you do. But to understand the culation and had received an Editor’s choice from their lab, in May
impact of one over another will help you prioritize, and sequence 2008 (Q2).
your campaign efforts on one or another demand driver, at a certain By looking at the sales figures, the impact was extremely clear.
point of time, to optimize the outcome, and finally increase the It is also important to notice that both Units shipment and Reve-
business impact of your campaign. nue lines are in synch, which means that the sales increase wasn’t
In the illustration above, check the dark line with circle (big due to a promotion in the likes of buy 5 units, and get one free. The
dots) markers (Press Review – which is editorial coverage) and no- impact was clearly due to the positive review.
tice the 3X jump in responses in Q2-08 over the previous quarter By mapping your “Moment of Truth” studies to your sales num-
on why customers purchased this specific solution. So here’s the bers in order to evaluate your impact and therefore what your ROI
question: what has happened in that specific quarter, for 3 times is, you’ll guarantee yourself a seat at the board table. PR isn’t a cost,
more customers to go to the store and purchase that specific SKU it’s an investment, so you’ll want to show some ROI.

92 93
 A World-Class Press Relations Organization
If you are in a global organisation or if you operate in 2 coun-
tries or more, you will want to deploy standard global PR processes
to allow for consistent tracking and reporting. The benefits are very
clear as this will allow you to compare one country’s performance
vs. another. Thus identifying what works and duplicate it, or what
doesn’t work and make sure you don’t repeat the mistake whether
it be in the same country or elsewhere.
Global standard processes will ensure a high level of meas-
urement and tracking quality regardless of the country and/or
employees’ proficiency and professional background. A common
shared view on how to execute and track PR performance will also
allow for key priorities and objectives to be understood and poten-
tially met.
Standard Methods, Processes and Policies
Taking all the guesswork out of how to go about deploying
and animating your PR activity and adopting tested and approved
methodologies.
Let’s list some of the different process and policies which should
follow these rules.
Global processes defined:
• To hire a new PR1 agency or consultant.
• To implement a structured, efficient and effective measurable
PR Activity in all you local entities.
• To have a global and standard media training practice for you
spokespeople.
1
Make sure to check the section on Global PR agency network versus country
based cherry-picked agencies at the end of this chapter.
94
• To manage production of PR content and ensure messages
and brand positioning consistency worldwide.
Global competencies requirements and trainings:
• Published policies: once defined, a policy needs to be shared
and posted in a central repository.
• Standardized learning paths for all local Marcom Managers,
new hires, PR Managers, PR Agencies consultants and your
own Key Spokespeople.
Global KPIs (Key Performance Indicators):
Company PR Objectives
• SOV2 levels (i.e. 30% SOV).
• Comparative performance achievement versus competition
(i.e. twice the SOV of your nearest competitor).
Individual annual PR objectives
• Obtain x number of cover stories in the year.
• Secure 1 C-level interview per month.
• Support for tradeshows.
The 7 Steps Approach
This section will cover the Seven steps you need to take in order
to have a comprehensive approach to deploying, tracking and re-
porting on your PR activity.
2
Press Relations Share Of Voice (SOV) definition : The Press Relations Share Of
Voice expresses your brand’s/product’s/solution’s visibility in a defined universe
of media and within a context of a specific subject or business segment as com-
pared to your own competitors. It is aimed at tracking impressions, number of
articles or even ink space. But the PR SOV is not an exhaustive study on brand
visibility or awareness in the media.
95
 Preparation
Step 1 : Define Your PR budget
Based on your desired level of activity define what you PR agen-
cies retainer fees and mechanicals will be. Don’t forget to add any
activity which would bear an ad-hoc element such as Special Pro-
jects, Press Conferences, Trade show support etc. which typically
aren’t constant but opportunistic.
Step 2 : Define Your Battlefield by Tiering Your
Media Landscape
It would be great to be able to target all the publications out
there. But reality is that we all have resources constraints in the
likes of people, time and money (budget). So you will want to un-
derstand which publications you have to be in (tier 1), you want
to be in (tier 2), or in which it would be nice to be in (Tier 3). It’s
a pretty straight-forward exercise which is actually lots of fun to
do. However, it needs to be a collaborative approach: if you use an
agency, then start with them. Have your agency give you a recom-
mendation of which publications or blogs you should go after and
have them tiered in 3 groups as described in the previous para-
graph.
Then ask your sales teams to tell you which publications or me-
dia outlets they follow and read on a regular basis to keep them-
selves up to date with where the industry is going. Ask them to add
to that also the publications that their customers read. They should
simply ask them which they are and report back to you. Same here,
ask them to separate them into 3 tiers. Consolidate both lists and
96
then submit to your country general manager for review. This is the
best time to validate, remove any, or even add those publications
which the general manager would want to target and which would
have been on nobody else’s radar screen. These are simple tasks,
but they will allow you to set expectations with consensus.
Step 3 : Arm Your Troops
Although you are the PR professional within your organisation,
you’ll notice that most of the time, you might not be the one (PR
Manager) whom the journalist will want to interview. Your gener-
al managers, your business VPs, your channel VPs are most likely
to be the ones whom a journalist will be happy to talk to. And al-
though it is not really their specialty to speak to editors, it is impor-
tant that they provide you with all the support they can. For that
you need their buy-in.
Based on your specific business units, key market segments or
specialized topics (IOT for instance), identify who within your or-
ganisation will be the go to person and whose role will be to sup-
port you and be the face of the company with the media.
You’ll notice that for many topics, your company’s general man-
ager will not be the right spokesperson. So it’s really okay to have
a technician, a sales representative or a customer care person to be
your designated spokesperson.
Once identified, get that list of key speakers validated by your
management and make sure that their contribution to supporting
PR is valued in their annual bonus plans. As we are talking about
bonus plans, it’s also a good idea to negotiate for some bonus
schemes to be built for the sales representatives for each happy
customer testimonials they would bring to you. Customer testimo-
97
nials are great content for the media. It gives them easy access to
users who will talk about their experience with your organisation
and your solutions in an unbiased way. It’s pure gold.
Execution
Step 4 : Define Your PR plan
In order to drive strategic execution of your PR activity, you
need to build a coherent tactical PR Plan which will take into con-
sideration the budget, your organisation’s priorities and your past
PR results.
Tracking, reporting and sharing
Step 5 : Monthly Activity Tracking
This is the “What We Do” piece of the measurement process.
It’s important at all times to track which press releases went out
and when, which are still in validations mode, which spokespeo-
ple are available and have been media trained, which interviews
took place, with which speakers and with which publication … has
the article come out yet etc. It should also bear sections on which
tradeshows did we support with PR, which product tests have been
followed-up on, which contributing articles and customer testi-
monials have been worked on and if they have been placed in the
media yet.
Finally this report should bear a whole section on budget track-
ing where agency retainer fees, mechanicals, out of pocket expens-
es, special expenses (photo shoots, translations, studies, surveys
etc.) and the cost of producing the clipping booklets should be
logged.
98
Step 6 : Monthly or Quarterly KPI Reports
After the “What We Wo” report above, this is the “What We
Get” report.
Again and as previously said, it is of paramount importance
to produce reports on your performance within your competitive
landscape.
Tracking only your own press cuttings is like an athlete who
would be going to the gym to exercise but would never take part in
any competition to evaluate his performance: irrelevant.
In the same way, it would be totally unprofessional to be sat-
isfied with a 10x increase YoY in your number of featured articles,
for example let’s say from 20 to 200, if your biggest competitor
achieved to be featured in 2000 article. You’re still invisible!
Over the years and in all organisations I’ve worked in, the 4 fol-
lowing metrics are those which I was looking at in each KPI reports:
1. Number of articles: this is pretty straightforward, it really is
the number of times you were featured by being in an article.
Important to notice however that you can be featured in a
multi-brand article. In that case each cited brand gets one
article.
2. Number of pages: here we are looking at how much ink you
achieved in that article. So if an article is just about your own
brand and is 3 pages long, then you get 3 pages of ink. How-
ever if the article is about you but also covers in the same
way another brand in an equally long second section, then
although each brand gets an article (as explained above) then
each brand only gets 1.5 pages of the 3 pages total. And only 1
page each if there were 3 brands equally covered etc.
99
 3. Impressions: impressions is the number of “copies” printed
of a specific publication, or unique readers of a blog. If you
are featured three times in a very niche publication with an
impression of 10,000, that’s 30,000 impressions. Also if you
are featured only once in a 1,5 million impressions publica-
tion, well that’s 1.5 million impressions in one shot – that’s
actually much better don’t you think? Especially if it’s a tier 1
publication for you.
4. Exposure or prominence: this one is a bit more tricky. This
metric has been created to allow to evaluate the space devot-
ed to each brand in an article, the brands’ visuals, the visibil-
ity of each quoted brand, where the article is featured in the
publication (front page, table of content etc.) and finally the
position of the article on the page. This Exposure KPI is an in-
dex which describes the audience weighted by impact factors.
This last KPI is really powerful but requires a lot of manual
and human intervention. When setting-up your PR measure-
ment process, you can start without this 4th KPI which you
can decide to build in later or not at all…
Step 7 : Sharing and Communicating on Your Results
It is absolutely a good idea to share your PR results with your in-
ternal stakeholders. It will help you demonstrate your impact and
value in the race for brand awareness and preference.
Also allowing your sales team to have access to your clipping
booklets will help them in their sales calls. It’s important for your
sales team to be exposed to the same editorial pieces their custom-
ers are.
100
When you are featured positively in a publication, your sales
representatives can also use this article and share it with their cus-
tomers to show third party endorsement to their own claims.
Also and almost more importantly you will want to share your
competitors’ good reviews as well as your own bad or poor reviews
(if any). A sales representative can then be prepared to face, and
respond to, customers who would reference these articles, with-
out him being corned or blindsided. Think about it, it makes total
sense. Not to mention that nobody ever got any professional re-
spect from not describing the full picture.
Sentiment – Word Clouds
This section won’t be covering any sentiment analysis. The rea-
son for this is solely because many automated systems allow you
to measure just that, specifically on digital-based sources. They all
need to be setup at a regional/language granularity as expressions,
technical vocabulary and angles need to be set by your local teams
who master the topics you’re interested in measuring.
In most cases in my career, all editorial pieces were positive to
neutral. The editors taking the stand that if they didn’t think the
news was relevant or interesting, they would simply not cover it.
Sentiment tracking adds significant costs to your measurement
system and should be looked at on an ad-hoc basis, for example if
your campaigns are aimed at changing the perception customers
have of your brand. Otherwise, in many instances, it’s overkill.
PR Agencies, Network or Cherry Picked?
Depending on your global PR objectives and goals, you might
be tempted to go for a big name network of agencies instead of
101
selecting an agency per country based on local requirements and
leaving much of the selection process to the country itself.
Whoever got fired for selecting a big shot agency out there you
might think? Well the reality is that in most instances, if you aren’t
a huge account with these big names agencies, you’ll end-up being
a priority Z when any of their top accounts will require full atten-
tion for campaign launches or other cornerstone projects … it’s just
the way it is although they will tell you the contrary.
Also, you’ll notice that these networks have “Rock-Star” pitch-
ers. And these are the ones that will pitch for the account. They’ll
do a great job in showing how much they understand your world,
your environment and how great an agency they are as a whole.
They’ll certainly also spend a lot of time showing you what they
have done for other accounts with fancy storyboards, videos, flyers,
social media pushes, drop offs etc. and spend much less time on
what they believe you should be doing considering where you are
and where you told them you’d like to be. And guess what – this
“Rock-Star” pitcher will not work on you account.
You’ll also notice that they’ll show you how they track activi-
ty through their very well-built internal systems so that you can
be sure you only pay for the hours you’ve actually benefited from.
However, little to nothing will be said or shown about how they’ll
be measuring their impact and performance on your brand versus
the competition.
The reason for this is twofold: why would you share impact per-
formance of a specific campaign and allow the customer to be able
to compare it to the following campaign? Secondly, why show that
although they’ve increased your visibility, your competition is still
outperforming you?
102
Finally, experience has shown that regardless of which network
of agencies you pick, your local Marcom and or PR managers, more
often than not, will argue that they aren’t the right agency in this
part of the world.
This is why I recommend the agency selection to be done at
a country level, by the local Marcom Managers and PR manager,
with the implication for the final round, of the country general
managers. They are the ones who will be working with the agency
on a daily basis and have to interact with them. They need to feel
ownership of their results and responsibility for their performance.
Also demand that the pitch be made by the team who will actu-
ally be working on the account. Make sure you have everybody on
the team present ranging from the account executive to the person
who will be your daily contact. And if the selected agency happens
to be from a big name network, before they make the final deci-
sion, warn them of all of the above.
In general, it’s always a good idea for someone from the global
PR team to be on these agency pitches to play devil’s advocate and
bring these elements to the table, although pushing for the final
decision to actually be made by the local teams. Other program
to help you boost your performance for literally almost no extra
investment.
In this section I’ll be sharing with you a program which I’ve
been implementing with all my former and current organisation
for over 7 years now, and I will share the positive impact it has had
on our PR campaigns.
Best PR Performance Yearly Award
This program takes place in Q1 each year and is aimed at recog-
nising your top performing in-house PR people and their agencies.
103
 Grading Principles • Business knowledge (market players, technology trends)
• Access to the trade press
The process is pretty straightforward. You ask each of your par- • Access to the end user - consumer and end user - business
ticipating countries to self-evaluate themselves and their agencies press
on a variety of criterias. Grades should range from 1 to 5: • Autonomy
1. poor • Follow-through
2. needs improvement
3. meets expectations 3 – Reporting (30%):
4. exceeds expectations • Timely delivery of monthly reports and clipping booklets
5. role model • Quality level of the monthly reports
• Quality level of the clipping booklets
Important: for each grade 4 and above, participants will have to
give an example which illustrate/justifies this grade. This should be 4 – KPIs (40%)
produced in a simple PPT format and presented to the central PR • SOV averages
team for validation purposes. • Yearly cost per article trends down
• Cost per thousand impressions
Grading Criteria • Cover pages
1 – Agency value (15%)
• Strategic input The internal evaluating team could be your local PR manager
• Creativity solo, but it’s a good idea to have this evaluation be a group exercise
• Proficiency in understanding your different businesses with your local field marketing manager and why not your gener-
• Proficiency in your corporate messages al manager? They will be in charge of grading and justifying their
• Usage of white papers/case studies grades for the 2 first sections: agency value and agency ease of do-
• Dedication ing business with.
• Use of the KPI reports to identify and address areas of im- As you can see, these two sections add-up to 30% of the value
provement of the final grade. The 70% remaining are focused on the reporting
• Number of cover pages achieved discipline (30%) and the actual performance through KPIs (40%)
and these grades will be determined and provided by the central
2 – Agency ease of doing business with (15%) PR team who guards the processes and centralises the activity and
• Responsiveness KPI reports. 70% might come across as being pretty harsh, but it is

104 105
important that any PR activity is flawless in these 2 sections. Agen-
cies can then make a difference and stand out from one another in
the 2 first sections.
Implication of a 3rd Party in the Jury
This following initiative is optional but it’s always a good idea to
not be judge and party. So for the past 3 years, I’ve build-in the fol-
lowing step, where after selecting the top performing countries, I
provide their PPT appendix in which they share their best practices
to an external jury of PR professionals.
In the last years, I called on one International PR association
contact I know of (IPRA) a PR professional in the field of repu-
tation management (Reputation War Conferences) and finally a
international PR conferences organiser (The PWorld). They then
pick their top 3 and give a short justification paragraph.In the case
of no consensus (they don’t talk to each other) you might then
come out with ties for the 1, 2nd and 3 place.
Each winning countries receive a 600€, 500€ and 400€, (for first
second and 3rd position), business expense allowance to spend on
some fun and quality time of their choice with their agencies con-
tacts. They are also provided with a gold, silver or bronze plaque
which we ask them to give their agencies with some kind of an “of-
ficial ceremony” which we ask pictures of. Agencies love plaques
which they can display in their lobby.
Behind the Scenes
You’ll understand that this isn’t just an exercise to be done to
give some spending money to employees who are actually just do-
106
ing their job right. First of all, this exercise is really all about forc-
ing a yearly evaluation of your PR agencies by the local country
Marcom professionals and challenging the status quo. Should I be
getting more from my agency? Am I really satisfied or actually com-
placent? These are the questions they should constantly be asking
themselves. This exercise forces the teams to actually sit down and
go over the year’s performance and identify and discuss the areas
of improvement. Secondly, it also provides you with an inexhaust-
ible source of best practices from across the globe which you can
and should then share with the countries and for the benefit of all.
Finally, the impact on the awarded agencies is priceless. Here’s for
example the feedback from one winning agency in Italy some years
back:
“This is not the first time we receive this award, and we’re hap-
pier than ever as it shows we’re continuously improving the way we
work, showing results. We appreciate working with xxxxxxxx, with
its complex environment and the different lines of businesses, which
pose us new challenges every day to find creative ways to succeed.
We’re already at work to be at first place next year!”
So in short, although they admittedly describe the environment
of their customer to be complex and challenging, the agency ex-
presses:
• Happiness to work for the customer,
• Search for increased efficiency and effectiveness,
• Increased appreciation of result tracking and sharing,
• Increased creativity; and,
• Motivation and willingness to remain at the top!
Priceless!
107
 Chapter 5

CRISIS
COMMUNICATIONS,
SOCIAL MEDIA AND
SNAKE OIL SALESMEN

Donald Steel

108 109
 A recent New York red carpet picture went viral on social media
not because of the celebrities walking on it. A careful look revealed
that every person in the picture was looking at the celebrities
through their smartphones. All except one. An elegant lady was
leaning against the crowd barrier, taking it all in. She was actually
looking directly at the artists. She stood out not just for this fact.
She also had a look of serene pleasure on her face whilst all around
her looked frenetic. Many were trying to post the pictures and vid-
eo while it was still going on. Perhaps they wanted to be first. If the
lady had a smartphone, it was stowed firmly in her purse.
It was a stark demonstration of how technical innovation is
changing human behaviour. People now view remarkable events
through their smartphone, not directly through their eyes. They
are, as Americans say, “in the moment”. But the moment is a very
narrowly focussed one, and they see the wider picture less and less.
This fundamental change in instinctive behaviour is affecting
many aspects of life. The iconic singer Kate Bush famously asked
her fans to leave their phones at home for her first major tour in
decades. She told fans she wanted to perform directly to them and
she couldn’t do that by looking into thousands of lenses. She was
bucking the trend. Many artists don’t mind the smartphones, in
the knowledge that it’s free promotion on social media. But for
Miss Bush, the smartphone has become a barrier to forming a re-
lationship with her fans. All families know this from their everyday

110 111
experience at the dinner table. Smartphones are changing human
behaviour.
Crisis communications professionals have been seeing this for
several years. The smartphone, combined with social media, en-
ables citizens to record and disseminate what they are seeing “in
the moment” – be it a celebrity sighting, an air crash, or even, as
was the case in Jakarta at the start of 2016, a terrorist attack. This
phenomenon is enabling citizens to seize control of the narrative
of many crises.
One of the starkest examples of this was in London in May 2013.
Fusilier Lee Rigby, a young British soldier, was brutally murdered
by two armed terrorists on the streets at 2.20pm, in full view of hor-
rified shoppers and passers-by. Faced with armed and dangerous
terrorists, the best – and safest – course of action would be to run
away as quickly as possible. Faced with an attack, governments now
advise citizens to run. If you can’t run, hide. Instead, many mem-
bers of the public stood round and filmed the horrifying event.
Many posted pictures on social media. Some British newspapers
published pixillated versions of the pictures the next day on their
front pages. Thinking it disrespectful of Fusilier Rigby, some in-
censed shoppers reacted by turning round the newspapers on the
news stands so the picture was not visible.
The phenomenon of the public instinctively getting out their
smartphone when something happens is now normal behaviour.
We have hardly seen a major urban incident in the last three years
which isn’t broken first social media – within 60 seconds. Televi-
sion news doesn’t break news stories anymore. You’re seeing on TV
what you’ve already read on Twitter.
112
It’s likely that the psychology underlying this trend is more
complex than we think. It’s becoming a rich seam for social an-
thropologists, who study human behavior. It may be that those
who stood around the scene of Lee Rigby’s murder were using the
smartphone as a mental and physical shield against the horror of
what they were witnessing. They were used to movies on Facebook
which aren’t really part of their lives. Therefore, they were creating
a feeling that this was not really happening. It may alternatively be
an example of what’s called automatic behaviour, an unconscious
phenomenon which can happen at a traumatic event.
When Asiana Flight 214 crashed at San Francisco International
Airport in July 2013, the news was broken by Google manager Krista
Seiden (@kristaseiden), who was waiting to depart at another gate
and saw it outside. She grabbed her smartphone, took a picture
and tweeted: “OMG, a plane just crashed at SFO on landing as I’m
boarding my plane”. Ms Seiden tweeted it 60 seconds after impact.
This time frame has become the norm.
Ms Seiden suddenly had a lot of new friends. Journalists were
quickly making contact with her in the hope that she might give
them a live interview on a story that was “breaking” across the
world. They were not there, but Ms Seiden was. In other words, she
had become the voice of the Asiana 214 accident. By tweeting the
news she had witnessed to her followers, she had, by default, taken
control of the narrative of the accident. Her early words defined the
accident – a story of shock and disbelief.
Soon pictures and videos would appear on social media from
passengers who had survived the crash. Some were injured. It was
a startling and candid example of how the smartphone is changing
behaviour. Even when on the grass minutes after running out of a
burning aircraft, people’s instinct was to take a picture. And tweet.
113
In many cases, it was a way of quickly saying to their folks “I’m
alive” – in the knowledge that news of the crash would soon be
on everyone’s TV screens. But each time a citizen witness (I pre-
fer that term to citizen journalist) appeared on social media, they
were adding to the narrative of the accident, and of Asiana airlines.
When you tweet, the world – and the media, is looking on.
The word “narrative” should be on the lips of every public rela-
tions professional many times daily. It is the most underused word
in the PR profession. The Oxford dictionary defines ‘narrative’ as:
“a spoken or written account of connected events; a story”.
If you speak first, you can use the opportunity to define and
frame the discussion – for example, in a debate in the legislature,
or in a courtroom. But on social media in a crisis by speaking first,
before the company concerned has spoken, the public are often in-
advertently taking control of the narrative that should be owned by
the company. This is often benign, such as the case of Krista Seiden
and the many customers on board Asiana 214. Their accounts were
largely factual, though often extremely moving.
But in different cases, the narrative, as defined by the public
on social media, can sometimes tell a different story. It could be
of slow response, lack of concern for victims, disorganisation, ne-
glect, etc. That is not the narrative we want for our clients. It leads
to an obvious conclusion. “Company X is poorly organised. They
only care about money. They are bad people. I don’t want their
product”.
In a crisis many companies surrender control of their narrative
without realising. And it’s easy to do. You just follow the old rules
of crisis communications. You have an hour, the old and tested
rule told us, to make your first statement in a crisis. The so-called
“Golden Hour”. The Golden Hour is now the Golden Minute.
114
Of course, it would be ludicrous to suggest that you can make a
statement in 60 seconds when a crisis hits. But if you wait 60 min-
utes, thousands of contributions will have been made by credible
people. The contributions may not all be benign. And suddenly,
you realise you have lost control of the narrative. Once you’ve lost
control of your narrative, it’s very difficult – and often very expen-
sive – to gain back control.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five
minutes to ruinit. If you think about that, you’ll do
things differently”.
Warren Buffett
We advise clients that, in the age of instant communications,
it is now necessary to say something within 15 minutes of a crisis
hitting the company. Three years ago when we said this to compa-
nies they smiled, but really they were thinking “they’re crazy”. Now,
many global companies are changing the crisis plan to reflect the
need for such rapid communications.
What can you say within 15 minutes? Maybe in the middle of
the night when facts are hard to come by? Surely you are only be-
ginning to investigate what has happened?
One of the rules of crisis communications is – if you don’t have
much to say, issue a short statement. It’s not an essay writing com-
petition. And secondly – every crisis statement is an opportunity
to restate the values of your company. I write this in the hope that
your client’s company actually has some core values worth pro-
mulgating. A crisis which has cost the lives or wellbeing of your
115
customers or the public is not a great moment to focus-group test
some new values better than the ones you actually have.
In a crisis, your core values often shine through to the public.
You demonstrate that your core values are true by the actions you
take as well as the words that you speak. Tony Blair’s former Press
Secretary Alistair Campbell was an expert in narrative. “The public
are much more reasonable than the media”, he said.
The public understand bad things happen. They even under-
stand bad mistakes are made. But often, it’s not what happens to
you that will define your reputation. It’s how you deal with it. And
if you don’t tell the public how you’re dealing with it, how will they
know? Instead the narrative of the crisis will be defined by the pub-
lic and commentators on social media.
How is it possible to make a statement in 15 minutes of an event
which is so serious, it triggers the company crisis plan? I’m refer-
ring here to incidents that have caused death or injury, have put
lives at risk, or perhaps put customers at risk with a faulty product.
Your first statement enables you to put your voice into the
“room” on social media. If you are a reputable and trusted com-
pany, the public will be willing to look to you as an authoritative
source of information about the crisis. Your first statement can do
this with little information, but is also an opportunity at the start
to state the values which will guide your company during the crisis:
“We’re getting reports of a serious incident at our x factory. We are
urgently investigating and will come back with more information as
soon as we have it. Our first priority at the moment is for the safety
and welfare of our staff and the public”.
If the reports turn out to be false, you can say you investigated
and are glad to say that it’s not the case and everyone is safe. The
116
story will be forgotten. If it is true, in 30 minutes, the target time
for a second statement on social media, should be: “We can con-
firm there has been a serious incident at our x factory. The emer-
gency services are in attendance. We have activated our emergency
plan. Our priority at this time is the welfare of our staff and the
public. Further information will be issued when it is available”.
If lives have been lost or people injured, you should consider
appearing on television within 60 minutes, and holding a press
conference in 90 minutes. These are sensible and achievable tar-
gets if you want to retain control of the narrative. I call it the 15-30-
60-90 crisis rule. It’s a speed and rhythm of communications in the
first 90 minutes that can guide your decision making.
It’s only possible to respond this quickly if you do two things.
Firstly, write the statements now. All crises are predictable. If they
are predictable, they can be planned for. If you choose to, you can
sit down today and write a list of all the things that could happen
to your company. If you care to do so, you can also write the state-
ments you will issue within 15 and 30 minutes. You will find that a
small number of statements will fit a wide range of issues. You are
describing your response to a reported incident, not analysing the
cause.
By writing the statements now, there is an opportunity for the
executive and your lawyers to approve them with time for con-
sideration and discussion. This is a difficult, but not impossible,
journey. Secondly, you need to short circuit the approvals process.
When something happens, just one senior person in the compa-
ny (with a nominated deputy should that person be unavailable)
should have the authority to authorise the release of the statement.
This avoids delay and avoids the inevitable chopping up of the cri-
117
sis statement as it goes up the chain, often resulting in anything
meaningful being removed.
Companies in the age of instant communication have a clear
choice: to invest now by preparing and rehearsing to enable them
to respond rapidly in a crisis, or to carry on scrambling around in
the old ways as if social media wasn’t there, and risk the reputa-
tion of the company. It is their choice and their reputation to throw
away if they want to. The bad news is that it’s not going to get any
easier. New applications like Periscope allow witnesses to “report”
live from the scene of an incident. We can either say “we just can’t
compete with that”. Or we can take some time now to make sure
we are ready.
I haven’t used the words “social media crisis” yet. That’s because
I don’t believe there is any such thing. You either have a crisis or you
don’t. A crisis is not defined by the medium on which it is reported.
In the early days of 24 hour news, no-one talked about having a “24
hour news crisis”. It’s a ridiculous notion put about by those who
seek to make their living by convincing you that you don’t have
enough expertise to handle a big issue. Or that an issue on social
media warrants the term “crisis”. They are the modern day equiv-
alent of snake oil salesmen, looking for people to mesmerise with
their magical tales of rapid cures if you will only buy their product.
Of course, there is a place for technical expertise when com-
municating through social media. But if you are in a true crisis,
news will break on social media. Then it will quickly spread on ev-
ery kind of media.All of the world’s major media outlets have 24
hour UGC (user generated content) desks, scouring social media
for breaking news and genuine stories.It’s how the BBC and others
are sometimes able to report on what’s happening in areas far too
dangerous for reporters.The experienced journalists on the desk
118
have the skills and technology to determine what is true and what
is fake. There’s a lot of fake out there, and that’s also true in a crisis.
A story that exists only on social media is not a crisis. It is an is-
sue. It might be a big issue, but it’s still an issue. Don’t be seduced.
The word “crisis” is applied when events meet pre-determined cri-
teria. The word “crisis” is not used because of the type of media
through which the events are being manifest. The word “crisis” has
only one real purpose in public relations. When used correctly, it
triggers a major set of carefully planned and rehearsed actions de-
signed to deal with a major incident. It alerts and involves the most
senior people in the organisation. News of an incident will break
on social media, that’s certain. But that does not make it a “social
media crisis”.
When your company is hit by a crisis, you may well find that
your reputation is enhanced, not damaged, when it is all over. The
public knows bad things happen. But how you deal with the inci-
dent, and the values you show, will define whether the public trust
and admire your brand, or otherwise. You maintain and enhance
trust firstly by your actions, and secondly by what you say. That is,
the story you tell of all that you are doing, and your guiding princi-
ples. In other words, the narrative. Taking control of the narrative
in the early minutes of a crisis will make it possible for you to retain
control through to the recovery phase. Sure, your detractors will
make attempts to seize control of the narrative along the way, but
once you have established control, you’re in a strong place to retain
it. The battle for control of the narrative begins in just 60 seconds.
119
 The Golden Rules of Crisis Communications
All of your actions and all that you communicate will have at
its heart a simple objective – to restore and maintain trust in your
brand, organisation or individual. But everyone in the crisis team
must understand two vital premises. Firstly, you cannot communi-
cate your way out of a crisis. You must manage the crisis. Then you
communicate your actions and your values. A crisis needs leader-
ship. Communication is one of the most important things a crisis
leader does.
“I am the leader of this company; I take responsibility ... the
passengers were on my aircraft, and I have to take responsi-
bility for that. We are prepared, and we will not be running
away from any of our obligations.”
Tony Fernandes, CEO, Air Asia Group, widely praised
for his honest and victim focused communication after
an Air Asia aircraft crashed into the sea in 2014.
Tony Fernandes, CEO of Air Asia Group was widely praised for
his humane and victim focused response after the tragic loss of one
of his aircraft after departure from Indonesia. His approach is per-
haps best described as “human being first, then chief executive”.
But he public don’t want to see a CEO who isn’t in control. They do
want to see humanity. Patrick Jephson, the best-selling author and
reputation guru, and former Chief of Staff to Princess Diana, says:
“The danger at the highest levels of a very successful company is
120
the development of hubris. That is to say, the belief that the normal
rules of life no longer apply to you.”
This clearly did not apply to Mr Fernandes, who took to social
media and television in an honest way making it clear that his
main concern was the victims of the tragedy. He was defining the
narrative of the accident and of Air Asia. The narrative that came
through was that the company was humane and people focused.
Your narrative in normal business is influenced by three things:
• What you do (for example, the quality of your product or ser-
vice, and the experience customers have of it)
• What you say
• What others say about you. The “others” are not always be-
nign
The global reputation guru Mary Jo Jacobi has been a major
influence in my thinking on reputation. It is so appropriate that
she has introduced this series of essays. Mary Jo likes to keep it
simple: “Your brand is what you say about yourself”, she says. “Your
reputation is what others say about you”. But in reflecting the role
of your actions in defining your narrative, she also tells it straight:
“If you’re a bank”, she says, “you’re only as good as your worst teller
in your poorest performing branch on its worst day”.
This couldn’t be more true than in a crisis for your organisation.
All of the effort that your company puts into caring for those affect-
ed by the crisis will often by defined by the one failure in your crisis
operation. “My son was badly injured”, a mother might say, “and
nobody from the company bothered to call”. You have to get it right.
121
 The second premise is that your company has a crisis plan. And
that you have taken the time and trouble to rehearse it. “If your
business is involved in activity that could involve human injury or
the loss of life”, says Mary Jo Jacobi, “having a crisis plan is not op-
tional. Rehearsing your crisis plan is not optional”.
“Having a crisis plan is not optional. Rehearsing
your crisis plan is not optional.”
Mary Jo Jacobi
Almost every business and organization comes into this catego-
ry. Whether a chain of corner stores open to the public, or any com-
pany with employees, could have a crisis involving injury or loss of
life. A fire, a building collapse, as in Istanbul in February 2016. An
armed robbery, as happened recently to a UK charity. Food poison-
ing (more common than is reported).
Kevin Johnston is the highly experienced and respected MD of
Johnston Associates, a leading UK aviation PR company based at
London Heathrow Airport.   He’s advised on countless major in-
cidents over many years. He puts it like this: “All crisis are pre-
dictable. If they are predictable then they can be planned for”. A
crisis, says Mr Johnston, is not a moment to make it up as you go
along. “You follow the plan, and you make sure that you implement
it, staying focused on ‘doing the the right thing’ for those affected
and for the company. The minute one part of the company starts to
deviate from the plan, you could face trouble”.
Robert Jensen is the CEO of Kenyon International Emergen-
cy Services. It is the world’s leading independent responder to
122
incidents involving death or human injury, with bases round the
world. Kenyon’s clients include hundreds of leading airlines, hotel
groups, cruise companies, oil companies and civil authorities. He
puts it like this:
“I often find the media describe a crisis or accident as “unprece-
dented”. If Martians invade Los Angeles and take over the city, I will
accept it that nothing like this has ever happened before. Other-
wise no crisis is unprecedented. It’s always a version of something
that has happened before. All crisis are predictable. We just don’t
know when or where it will happen”.
“All crisis are predictable. If they are predictable,
then they can be planned for.”
Kevin Johnston, MD, Johnston Associates
The term “unprecedented” is often written by journalists to in-
crease the sense of importance and drama of an event (as if that
were needed). It’s also sometimes used by companies to try to cover
the fact they had no crisis plan, or the plan was not rehearsed.
A crisis plan is insurance for the future reputation of the com-
pany when trouble hits.
123
 The three Cs
In a crisis you should be guided by the three Cs:
• CARE – care about every detail of the management of the cri-
sis.
• COMPASSION – for those affected, whether it’s loss of life, a
data breach, or a product recall.
• CONTROL – you are either in control of a crisis, or out of con-
trol. Those who think they are partly in control are in truth, of
course, out of control.
Your crisis statements in the early hours will be easier to write if
you are guided by my second rule:
The two Fs
All crisis statements must contain both of the following ele-
ments:
• FACTS – What you know about the incident and what you
are doing:
“We are receiving reports of an incident at our store in x and we
are urgently investigating.”
or
“We can confirm that at 11.32am, an incident took place at our
store in x street. A robbery attempt by armed individuals oc-
124
curred. Our understanding at this stage from the police is that
no shots were fired and no-one is injured. We have despatched
a senior team from the company to assist those affected, includ-
ing our customers and staff.”
“No crisis is unprecedented. We just don’t know where and
when it is going to happen.”
Robert Jensen, CEO, Kenyon
International Emergency Services
and
• FEELINGS – A statement of concern for those affected, or a
restatement of your values.
There is a great deal of anxiety about the latter. Especially from
your lawyers, who rightly anticipate likely litigation, or even
criminal proceedings. A “feelings” statement is not necessarily
an apology, although it could be. In the early moment, it might
be a statement of your values:
“Our first priority at this time is for the safety and welfare of our
customers and staff.”
or
“We are concerned to learn that customers have experienced a
loss of service. We understand the inconvenience this will have
125
 caused and are very sorry this has happened. We’re working
hard to restore normal service”.
If you’re stuck on what to write with the “feelings” statement,
start with “Our first priority is …” Journalists often criticise this
kind of statement as being “same old” and of not telling them any-
thing. Ignore them. In a crisis, your role is not to be entertaining
or innovative, nor is it to follow the journalists’ agenda. You are
speaking to the public and most especially to those most directly
affected by what has happened.
15 - 30 - 60 - 90
The crisis timetable
Keep it simple. And stick to the plan. Where should we put our
crisis statements? The answer is everywhere. On our website, on
social media, to the media, and where appropriate, read to the me-
dia.
In this chapter, so far we’ve covered how we can respond to the
first two deadlines of our crisis timetable in the social media age.
In a single chapter, we can’t cover every aspect of crisis communi-
cations and we’ve focussed on some clear principles. But two dead-
lines still loom.
60 minutes – the Media Interview
If the incident involves human injury or harm, or even death,
you should aim to appear on television within 60 minutes. This
126
will help you to retain control of the narrative of the crisis. The
interview should normally be given by the most senior person in
the company. In many leading companies, the CEO, like Tony Fer-
nandes of Air Asia, insists on taking this role. The seniority of the
CEO demonstrates concern and control. At this point a public re-
lations professional should only appear in front of the camera in
highly exceptional circumstances.
Crisis interviews need training and rehearsal. The purpose of
the interview is to restate what we already know about the crisis
and what we are doing about it. It is rarely to announce anything
new. The agenda of the journalist will be to discover something
new. And in the absence of new facts they will begin the process
of speculation. “We need to train our executives that we are not in
the business of speculation”, say Kevin Johnston of Johnston Asso-
ciates. “In a crisis, we are in the business of communicating facts
and showing concern”.
Jens Stoltenberg, was the Norwegian Prime Minister when a
right wing extremist bombed Oslo and then attacked and killed
young people on a Norwegian Island. Norway was under attack and
there was a sense of fear and tremendous grief. Mr Stoltenberg, an
inspirational communicator and now Secretary-General of NATO,
told the media as he began to speak to them that he would nev-
er break a fundamental rule: “We will not speculate”. We will not
speculate. We deal in facts. We will triple check the facts. If we
are not sure about a fact, we will not issue it, however severe the
pressure.
127
 90 minutes – the Press Conference
I have a confession to make. When I was at the BBC, I did not
hold many press conferences. I disliked them. They are very dif-
ficult to control. I have been accused of taking the term “control
freak” to a new level. I plead guilty. Crisis management and com-
munications is about control. If I had my time again, I would do
things differently. Press conferences can be an efficient way of dis-
seminating information, and of taking control of the agenda. But
they require advance preparation and rehearsal.
Press conferences, of course, are really media interviews. Media
interviews with many interrogators. They must be managed with
the utmost care by highly trained people. They should be chaired
by the Director of Communications, whose role is to maintain or-
der and dignity. In my crisis workshops round the world, we always
have a press conference simulation. It is always an extremely chal-
lenging exercise.
Through this exercise, I demonstrate that again, without plan-
ning and rehearsal, a press conference, like a media interview, is a
very high risk event. You mitigate the risk by rehearsal and plan-
ning. The press conference deals in facts and in the consistent and
repeated expression of concern. In a crisis, it is seldom the moment
when news is broken. And it is never the moment when something
is said that you did not plan to say before the press conference
started. Do not use press conferences for breaking news in the so-
cial media age.
During one press conference following the loss of Malaysia Air-
lines flight MH370, a piece of paper was handed to the minister
during a live press conference. He read it out. It purported to be
new information about a possible location of the aircraft, some-
128
thing of enormous importance, and something that would give
relatives hope. It turned out to be incorrect. It was an exceptionally
unattractive and completely avoidable moment. Don’t do it.
Inevitably, it is the moment for questions you cannot answer.
Or for constant invitations to speculate. Both must be resisted at
all costs. “I don’t have the answer to that at this time. What I can
tell you is ….”
or
“We simply don’t have this information. I don’t think specu-
lation is useful or helpful to those who have been affected by this
incident.” One of the critical elements of crisis press conference
planning is determining how you will control who is the press con-
ference room. It is a media event, and those who are affected by
the event should not be in the room. There are respectful and car-
ing ways of securing this. Relatives who have burst into press con-
ferences sometimes subsequently say that they wish they hadn’t
done it. In many cases, it is part of the outworking of emotional
shock. By this time, their intervention has been broadcast round
the world.
But you must rehearse the possibility that this will happen. And
how you will deal with it. If an individual who has been affected
comes into the room, the focus changes to them. It is usually no
longer appropriate to continue with the event. They become the
most important person in the room and your actions must ac-
knowledge this. And by the way, security staff must be carefully
briefed on how this eventuality must be handled. Victims must not
be touched and they must not be dragged out of the room on live
television.
129
 Crisis Communications in the Social Media Age

I’ve addressed in this chapter what you must do and say in a

crisis in today’s social media age. I haven’t addressed the techni-
calities of social media. That is because I believe that all of your
communications should be disseminated through all platforms. Of Chapter 6
course, the key word in social media is “social”. But in an emergen-
cy you will normally need to revert to “broadcast” mode. As cir-

REPUTATION
cumstances allow, you can revert to being more social.
The key driver in your crisis communications planning and re-
hearsal must now be speed – the 15-30-60-90 rule. But we must
never sacrifice accuracy on the altar of speed. Where we are short
of facts, it is okay to say so. Crisis communications that are victim
MANAGEMENT IN AN
focused will normally be successful. In a crisis, there is an oppor-
tunity to demonstrate the true values of your company. Leadership AGE OF CYBERCRIME
comes first. Then communications. But leadership without great
communications is doomed. Check your crisis plan. Update it for
the social media age. Rehearse it hard. By doing so, you have invest-
ed in the future reputation and value of your organization.
Piers Schreiber

130 131
 Reputations, it is said, can take decades to establish and min-
utes to destroy. In the age of social media and hyper-interconnec-
tivity, think seconds rather than minutes. This lays a fresh set of
challenges at the feet of those charged with promoting and pro-
tecting reputations, be they corporate, brand or personal.
As ever in the world of reputation management, best practice
evangelism is focused on prevention rather than remedy. The re-
ality however is that experts are generally summoned when crisis
has already hit and the organisation is in panic mode. In this brief
paper we are going to look at a mid-way scenario: if organisations
find it difficult to invest in prevention, then how best can we build
potential remedies into the existing structures?

Reputational Hot Potato

Think for a moment about where responsibility for reputa-

tion management sits. Ultimately the buck stops with the CEO or
Chairperson. However, there are a number of other key functions
that play a role: risk management, security, compliance, investor
relations, legal and corporate communications, to name the most
obvious. However, it can equally be argued that the reputation of
the company is in the hands of every employee – as each individual
has the potential to undermine that reputation through a simple

132 133
rash act and each individual contributes to the proof points that
underpin that reputation in their daily work.
Having worked in the luxury hospitality sector, I am keenly
aware that a coffee spilled on a woman in a Gucci original repre-
sents not a $100 dry cleaning bill, but a potential $100,000 in lost
future business if the ‘recovery’ of the guest experience is not man-
aged well. This principle applies across all sectors: to the call centre
worker in a remote office 4000 miles from the caller misjudging
the nature of an inquiry, to the disgruntled employee disclosing
damaging details to an eager reporter or even a careless commuter
leaving sensitive documents on a morning train from the suburbs.
And yet there is an area that that is significantly more corrosive
to a brand’s reputation and more inevitable than any of the above
– and that is cybercrime. It most cases it is a question not of if, but
when; and most organisations are poorly prepared for the fallout.
But before we look in more detail at the very specific case of
cybercrime, let us consider the standard practice for crisis commu-
nications.
What the Manuals Tell You
The core message in crisis communications manuals revolves
around pre-planning. On the one hand this requires you to have the
right systems and tools in place; on the other it requires a mindset
among staff that is intensely aware of the potential of things going
wrong and well trained to engage in crisis procedures when they
do. Perhaps the greatest development in the latter is the emergence
of scenario planning as a core discipline at Shell in the 1970s. It
effectively created a culture in which a system of well-informed fil-
134
ters allowed the company not to predict what was going to happen,
but to have thought through and prepared for a range of scenarios
that could have long-lasting effects on the strategic direction, the
profitability and ultimately the reputation of the company.
This approach is well documented in the likes of Kees van der
Heijden3 in ‘The Art of Strategic Conversation’ (2005, 2nd edition)
and in Pierre Wack’s4 series of articles in the Harvard Business
Review, including the seminal “Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids5”
(1985).
On the practical front, modern manuals will tell you how to or-
ganise yourself in the event of a crisis; to follow the time-honoured
sequence of:
• Identifying and defining the crisis
• Getting the initial research right – establishing the who,
what, where, when and how
• Identifying and briefing a spokesperson
• Developing key messages
• Communicating, monitoring, evaluating and following up
At the same time, there is a sequence for establishing your cred-
ibility in the rush of a crisis, which is centred around two key pa-
rameters: being perceived as a caring organisation that puts the
fates of others above any potential financial hit to the company;
and being perceived as a responsible organisation that is in control
of its destiny and takes into account the perceptions, needs and
expectations of its key stakeholders. The credibility sequence is
therefore built around presenting the organisation as:
3
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470023686.html
4
http://www.economist.com/node/12000502
5
https://hbr.org/1985/11/scenarios-shooting-the-rapids
135
 • Compassionate – putting people first
• Confident – owning the conversation, in charge of the mes-
sages
• Competent – able to manage through a crisis and ensure ap-
propriate follow-through
Of course, it helps if that credibility has been established in
advance, that the organisation has a reputation for looking after
its people and the community well, for supporting causes that
are close to them, for intervening in times of need. However, in
the majority of cases, a crisis will be the first time that the public
has experienced a company’s behaviour beyond the delivery of its
products. It goes without saying that if people perceive you as cred-
ible, they are far more likely to hear and believe your messages.
Prevention vs Remedy
Prevention is generally built into the systems and processes that
govern the way in which the company operates. These will always
be examined and challenged in the post mortem of an incident.
Not the Gucci trauma, but something more catastrophic like a fire,
a power failure that knocks out air conditioning systems in 500 C
heat, a massive data loss or a hostage situation.
But what we know from the majority of crises is that the repu-
tation of the company is not overly impacted by the fact that some-
thing bad has happened, but by how it behaves and how it commu-
nicates in the immediate aftermath.
The key word here is ‘immediate’, as we are no longer talking
about hours and days, but about the first tweet, the first post or the
first video upload; and how the company responds, how it estab-
136
lishes authority and how it sets the tone for all follow-up commu-
nications.
What is certain is that facts will flow, rumours will circulate
and, if the organisation is not on the front foot, the control of the
messaging will be taken out of their hands and into the hands of
third parties – generally the amorphous mass known as social me-
dia. And that mass can be unforgiving. It is certainly undiscerning.
And has the potential to be undermining.
Controlling the Narrative
So, take a step back and look at what people think about the
organisation, about what its brand stands for and what narrative
currently determines its reputation. It may be that people love the
products but despise the outsourcing practices; they may invest in
the stock, but abhor the leadership; or they may recognise the com-
pany’s value, but despise its values. In making a purchase they will
consider the first; in judging the brand following a crisis, they will
latch on to the second.
And here is where the mid-way scenario kicks in. What if the
company was already renowned, not for the quality of its products
(because that should be a given), but for the way it behaves towards
its people, the way it scrutinises its overseas business partners,
the way it addresses issues that are relevant to the people who are
judging it as a responsible corporation. What if the public persona
of the CEO is built around commitment to a cause that actually
means something?
This does not mean a grand philanthropic gesture towards a
charity, however worthy. They should be supporting good causes
137
anyway. But to be known as a body that supports the families of the
people who work for them, wherever they are in the world; to stand
up against corruption, however tempting the short-term gains and
however ingrained the practices are in the market that requires
them to conform to ‘the way business is done here’.
Data Loss Need Not Spell Disaster
What we have established so far is that everything happens at
speed, the public demands transparency from the very beginning,
personal dialogue and behaviour is as important as carefully craft-
ed messaging, your enemies have the same tools at their disposal
as your friends and that people care as much about your attitude to
the people affected by the crisis as how you protect the commercial
fundamentals of your business.
However, data loss or cyberfraud presents a more complex sce-
nario.
Most organisations hold a large amount of data about their
customers and their employees. That data has been entrusted to
them on the understanding that it will be protected and used to
make their engagement with the company or the organisation as
seamless and relevant as possible. It represents a social as well as a
commercial contract.
Online logs6 are kept of the most significant cases of cyber-
fraud, including massive data losses at Adobe Systems (2014),
Anthem (2015), AOL (2004, 2006 and 2014) and Ashley Madison
(2015) – and that is just a small selection of the ‘A’s. Consider the
6 Examples include https://www.privacyrights.org/data-breach and http://www.
idtheftcenter.org/id-theft/data-breaches.html
138
most high-profile cases of 15 million T-Mobile US customer profiles
being hacked from Experian in 2015, 24.6 million player details be-
ing illegally accessed from Sony Online Entertainment in 2011 or
the details of 70 million customers being compromised at Target
Corporation in 2014. Even governments7 are not immune.
Each corporation managed the crisis in slightly different ways.
However, it is worth noting that all these organisations exist to-
day. They took a hit, but they recovered; and they are busy re-
building the trust that was undermined by the event. Most signif-
icantly, they are aware of their vulnerability, that no organisation
that holds customer data online is truly safe and that the lessons
learned from the experience have to be built into the culture not
only of the leadership, but throughout the organisation – that they
are only as effective as the weakest link in the chain.
Consider for a moment the consequences of a data leak on the
consumer. For many it could be a minor inconvenience, requiring
the rejigging of passwords, but for a sizeable proportion it could
represent the risk of identity theft for the rest of their life. At a cer-
tain point it becomes a numbers game. If, say, a large retailer with a
detailed database of 80 million customers finds that its system has
been hacked and the intelligence gathered from the database has
been sold on the black market, it is highly likely, using the 80:20
rule that some 16 million people will have a serious grievance with
the retail brand (the other 64 million remaining inconvenienced).
Faced with such an enormity, what could the company do to ad-
dress the anger of its consumers?
One strategy is to tell the truth quickly, openly and frequently –
however painful the initial consequences: to acknowledge the fact
7 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/07/09/hack-of-se-
curity-clearance-system-affected-21-5-million-people-federal-authorities-say/
139
that what had been entrusted to them was not just personal data,
but the wherewithal to hijack an identity. Trust was at stake, so the
company tackled this head on in their initial statement – along the
lines of ‘You trust us with your information and we take your trust
extremely seriously. We realise that in the digital era, a data breach
or hack is a risk that leaves every organisation vulnerable. So here is
what we have done to keep your information as secure as possible.’
With this statement in place, the company was able to suspend
judgement for a period of time, while they mobilised forensic ser-
vices to understand the root cause of the breach and the extent of
the damage. The suspension of judgement at this stage is critical as
it allows the consumers (or indeed the general public) to give the
company the benefit of the doubt.
In effect, the company is trying to establish a narrative in the
consumer’s mind that goes as follows: ‘The company messed up.
My data has been compromised in some way. They have admitted
the possible extent of the problem and explained the risks. At the
same time they have told us what they are doing to minimise the
risk. Yes, it happened, but I am prepared to trust that they will re-
solve the problem as best they can and that they have understood
the potential impact on my life’.
Taking Responsibility
As with any crisis situation, the key is to establish authority in
the earliest stages – not only being clear about the facts that are
available and updating those facts as the situation develops, but
also being transparent about what is not known, being careful to
point out how the organisation is setting about establishing the
veracity of updates and when.
140
At the same time, the recovery is just as important as the be-
haviour during the crisis and a crucial part of that is taking respon-
sibility for the elements that you can control. This is all the more
sensitive when several different parties are involved and the temp-
tation to pin the blame on third parties is palpable.
Take the case of T-Mobile US, who in 2015 discovered that the
records of around 15 million of their customers had been acquired
by a hacker targeting the databases of credit-checking company
Experian. This had been going on for a period of over two years and
the information that had been compromised included the names,
addresses and birthdates as well as encrypted fields with Social Se-
curity number and ID number (such as driver’s license or passport
number) and additional information used in T-Mobile’s own credit
assessment.
It is interesting to note the tone adopted by the CEO in re-
sponse to the situation. At every turn, it is very clear that he has
put his customers first, shares their anger and expresses his un-
compromising commitment to resolve the issue.
The background to the breach can be found on cnet8 and the
CEO’s statement can be read in full on the T-Mobile site9.
To summarise, here is his statement of intent: ‘I’ve always said
that part of being the Un-carrier means telling it like it is. Wheth-
er it’s good news or bad, I’m going to be direct, transparent and
honest.’
Here is the statement of fact: ‘We have been notified by Exper-
ian, a vendor that processes our credit applications, that they have
experienced a data breach.’
8
http://www.cnet.com/news/data-breach-snags-data-from-15m-t-mobile-cus-
tomers/
9
http://www.t-mobile.com/landing/experian-data-breach.html
141
 Here is the statement of emotion: ‘Obviously I am incredibly
angry about this data breach and we will institute a thorough re-
view of our relationship with Experian, but right now my top con-
cern and first focus is assisting any and all consumers affected’
Here is the statement of action: ‘Anyone concerned that they
may have been impacted by Experian’s data breach can sign up for
two years of FREE credit monitoring and identity resolution servic-
es at www.protectmyID.com/securityincident.’
And finally here is the statement of commitment, designed to
start the process of winning back the trust of consumers: ‘At T-Mo-
bile, privacy and security is of utmost importance, so I will stay
very close to this issue and I will do everything possible to continue
to earn your trust every day.
Not All Data Breaches Are Equal
Of course there are many examples of good practice – and the
T-Mobile response is an excellent one as it focuses directly and
without reservation on the fears and emotions of the consumers.
There are equally many examples of poor practice, with pusillan-
imous executives hiding behind legalese, misguided pandering
to short-term shareholder interests rather than investing in long-
term reputational robustness, or management simply refusing to
acknowledge the impact of a given scenario.
It is not without irony that Experian publishes an annual sur-
vey10 on the very issue that it fell prey to. The survey issued in 2014
and carried out independently by Ponemon Institute LLC, is enti-
tled: ‘Is Your Company Ready for a Big Data Breach? The Second
10
http://www.experian.com/data-breach/2014-ponemon-preparedness.html?
142
Annual Study on Data Breach Preparedness.’ This is worth read-
ing in conjunction with another survey, commissioned by IBM11 in
2015, on the cost of data breaches.
A previous Ponemon survey from November 2011 on the repu-
tation impact of a data breach concluded that not all data breaches
were equal:
• if records containing confidential customer information were
lost or stolen, the impact would equate to 21% of the brand’s
value and it would take almost a year for the brand to recover
• if records containing confidential employee information were
lost or stolen, the impact would equate to 12% of the brand’s
value and it would take around 8 months for the brand to
recover
• if records containing confidential business information were
lost or stolen, the impact would equate to 18% of the brand’s
value and it would take an average of 8 months for the brand
to recover
These estimates are borne out by the case of the British tele-
coms operator Talk Talk, whose recovery from a major data breach
in October 2015 prompted its CEO Dido Harding to say in a state-
ment quoted in the Financial Times12:
“Being open and honest from day one is one of the best things
we have done. TalkTalk was not a highly trusted brand before the
cyber attack but customers now say that we looked after them in
difficult circumstances,” she says. “Being honest pays dividends.
My fellow CEOs are in danger of concluding the opposite. Don’t
take it into the dark.”
11
http://www-03.ibm.com/security/data-breach/
12
https://next.ft.com/content/1e03001c-e22b-11e5-96b7-9f778349aba2
143
 Since then the UK government has announced the creation of a
National Cyber Security Centre13, which is designed to ensure that
the people, public and private sector organisations and the critical
national infrastructure of the UK are safer online.
Experian also publish a regularly updated Data Breach Re-
sponse Guide14, which highlights the ‘growing data breach epi-
demic’, proposes preventative measures and most relevantly for
our discussion here, proposes ways to ‘safely navigate the resolu-
tion process’. The key learnings they share are firstly to ensure that
communications is integrated into planning, including the devel-
opment of a communications incident response process, the crea-
tion of media response templates, the execution of a data breach
crisis communications simulations, customised media training for
key spokespeople and the appointment of a PR company or advisor
with specific expertise in data breaches. Secondly to keep the crisis
management team as lean and integrated as possible. Thirdly, to be
prepared for a fluid situation and to resist the temptation to share
unverified numbers or, worse, inaccurate diagnostics. And fourth-
ly, to manage the message, putting customers front and centre of
the communications.
However, it is worth remembering that trust in a brand is built
up over many years. Consumers tend to be more forgiving if their
previous interaction with the brand has been positive – and this
need not be through the products and services; but it does need
to be closely related to the underlying culture of the organisation
and the choices it makes. An organisation that gets this right en-
13
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-national-cyber-security-cen-
tre-set-to-bring-uk-expertise-together
14
http://www.experian.com/assets/data-breach/brochures/2014-2015-data-
breach-response-guide.pdf
144
ters more challenging situations already armed with a carapace of
goodwill or forgiveability.
Forgiving Arbiters
The arbiters of the organisation’s reputation will be far more
forgiving in the event of a crisis if they have a set of reference points
that encourage them to believe the company has integrity. So how
genuinely do you go about establishing that ‘forgiveability’ among
your audiences?
Here are some ideas:
• Ensure the values articulated by the company are embodied
in a series of meaningful actions that are understood and ap-
preciated by the most influential audiences
• Build messaging and communications around 2-3 of these
actions and reference them in as many CEO communica-
tions, social media posts etc as appropriate
• Educate those responsible for engagement with other influ-
ential audiences (e.g. security, investor relations, sales) on
the actions taken and why they are important
• Filter any controversial decisions through these values to en-
sure they do not undermine or contradict the organisation’s
integrity
• Make these actions as easy to discuss and repeat as possible,
so they can be shared among employees, their families and
their circle of friends
145
 More than anything, it is critical to ensure that your organi-
sation has a mindset or culture that is open to addressing crises.
Scenario planning is one very effective way of both surfacing po-
tential issues and raising corporate consciousness to the risks and
opportunities ahead. Beyond black swan events, there are very few
scenarios that are unimaginable – and the very act of taking time to Chapter 7
articulate and think through those scenarios generates an appetite
for planning, at least for the inevitable, such as a data breach.

Why is This a Communications Issue? WHEN THE BOSS

Because what we communicate to our audiences must be based IS THE BRAND
on facts. There is an opportunity to marshal those facts in such a
way that they reflect a set of core values that are ideally aligned
with the interests of the key stakeholders. Where that alignment
exists and is reinforced by repeated examples of actions taken that
reflect those values, there is a well of forgiveness. People believe
Patrick Jephson LVO
that you will act with integrity, with the right motives – and this is
what gives you the head start in any crisis.
Your forgiveability has set the tone for the public’s attitude to
you as you face the challenge of managing the crisis. It frames the
narrative fairly. It suspends judgement. It allows you to be listened
to. It grants you the chance to preserve your reputation.

For now, at least.

146 147
 People make great brands … but there’s a cost

“The Boss as a Brand” sounds like a bit of a contradiction. The

great brands of the world – Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Nike, Volkswa-
gen – seem the very opposite of “individual.” In fact, despite their
efforts to humanise themselves, I suspect in our hearts we think of
them as great faceless giants. They are everywhere in our lives and
although they spend billions on trying to get us to love them – in
the end we know they just want our money.
People are different. We can relate to individuals on a human
level. Unlike say a multinational investment bank, we might actu-
ally love them. Without a penny being spent on a sophisticated TV
ad campaign.
But people can be brands too. In fact, we are all the reputation
managers of our own individual brand. We see this most clearly
in the case of those people we call celebrities. And the feelings we
have for them certainly can include love. I myself spent much of my
teenage years in love with half of the pop group ABBA even though
sadly the ladies concerned never knew it.
It’s said we live in a celebrity-obsessed society and this presents
us with quite a challenge when we’re trying to pass on enduring
values to the next generation. A colleague of mine is mother to
the most perfect thirteen-year old daughter but she told me all the
daughter’s friends were obsessed with becoming celebrities when

148 149
they grew up. They all wanted to be famous. My friend was hor-
rified by this evidence of a society condemned by its inability to
celebrate anything of true worth. Yet she was encouraged by one
difference – her little darling wanted to be both rich and famous.
In the unlikely event that that young lady does achieve her
ambition, I hope she enjoys the experience. The reality of life as
a celebrity can be notoriously stressful for reasons that are a good
indication of the hazards faced by communications professionals
as they manage a brand represented by an all-too fallible human
being. As I unexpectedly discovered at first hand.
Some years ago I found myself in the unusual position of being
both a journalist covering news stories while simultaneously be-
ing the subject of temporary but quite intense media interest. One
memorable day I was door-stepped by a Sunday newspaper report-
er and when I disappointed her with the message that I had noth-
ing to say to her or her editor she let loose her paper’s considerable
powers of persuasion: my rubbish was tipped out and examined,
my credit card account was hacked, my friends (some of whom I
hadn’t seen in thirty years) were interrogated about my reputation
at school and the workmen at a neighbour’s house were handsome-
ly paid to spy on my comings and goings.
As you can imagine, it was not a pleasant experience (in the
lexicon of British tabloids the process is very accurately known as
“monstering”.) Worst of all, a pack of paparazzi encamped at the
end of my street and every time I emerged from my front door they
would stampede in my direction. It was little comfort that several
of them apologized even as they shoved their lenses in my face.
And though I was glad when the news cycle moved on and left me
in happy obscurity, the experience has turned out to be invaluable
in my later career as a consultant on individual reputation manage-
150
ment. Without it, I could never have achieved a true understand-
ing of what it means to be a media target. Next time you see an
embarrassed executive fumbling with his car keys while a fearless
reporter yells questions, remember that could be your boss or –
heaven forbid – it could be you.
It’s All About the Relationship
Of course, I’d had some practice. Being chief of staff to Prin-
cess Diana for eight years had given me a wealth of up-close media
experience. Through a welter of rumours, scandals and downright
constitutional crises, I learned the hard way that when your boss
is a brand, the pace can be hectic. Of course Diana wasn’t con-
scious of being a brand – she was just the most visible and well-
known representative of the world’s most famous family. But when
the Economist magazine referred to me as the “brand manager of
brand Diana” the label didn’t seem so far-fetched. The Princess –
with some help from me – walked the high wire between celebrity
and royalty and managed to combine the best of both.
In working for Diana I met some very famous people, a fasci-
nating random variety of human brands – from Luciano Pavarotti
to Mother Teresa, Eric Clapton to Hosni Mubarak, Ralph Lauren
and Clint Eastwood, Rupert Murdoch to Margaret Thatcher, Rob-
ert Mugabe to Henry Kissinger – and formed a pretty clear set of
criteria to decide which qualified as brands and which were just
transitory media phenomena.
Most brands worthy of the name have established themselves
over an extended period of time. The same is true of human brands
– longevity is a characteristic that distinguishes between brand sta-
tus and mere celebrity. But do bear in mind what that great histori-
151
cal brand the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte said: “Glory is fleeting,
but obscurity is forever!” Your shot at glory may be brief, but it’s
better than the alternative.
My experience is not unique. Anyone who’s set up their own
website – let alone set up their own business – or appointed an
agent or, God forbid, woken to find a TV news crew lurking by their
front door, has walked the line between celebrity and brand. It can
be a very risky line to tread – but properly handled it can be money
in the bank.
Brands account for about one-third of the value of Fortune 500
companies so wise executives recognize that brands are among
their most valuable assets. It follows that individuals who become
brands in themselves or become figureheads for brands are a vital
part of the marketing process.
During a networking break at a recent marketing conference I
took the opportunity to carry out an informal survey of opinions
among the assembled experts. Among other questions I asked who
in their opinion was the ultimate personalised brand. Very few
knew my background with Princess Diana but among those who
did not, more than one cited her as their top example. I was se-
cretly rather pleased that so many years after her death her status
as brand icon still obviously persisted. In trying to analyse why,
I identified one over-riding reason and luckily it’s directly trans-
ferable to non-glamorous, non-royal and thoroughly commercial
instances of individuals-as-brands. In a word it’s about the rela-
tionship.
Consider this study from Mistaking People for Brands (Brand-
ing Strategy, which underlines the natural human tendency to
form opinions of even inanimate brands as if they were person-
152
al acquaintances. As consumer culture evolved, the vocabulary
of branding became increasingly anthropomorphic. Consumers
‘adopted’ brands, built brand ‘relationships’ and eventually be-
came branded ‘loyal’. Words once reserved for personal relation-
ships were increasingly applied to material goods. Consumers grew
adept at identifying directly with brands.
Today, not only are consumers comfortable relating to brands,
they have now begun to use the language of branding to help them
relate to themselves and to others. Where once consumers needed
fictional people to help them form relationships with a brand, now
brands help us define how we relate to ourselves and others.
This perhaps most obvious when people choose a new car. Most
of us famously devote a tremendous amount of time and effort to
research the best brand and model, primarily perhaps to identify
the optimum technical specification but – crucially – to get an an-
swer to the most intimate question of all: what does this brand say
about me?
This tendency to treat brands as a shortcut to an idealised
self-image is particularly apparent among the names chosen by
parents for new babies, perhaps in an unconscious association be-
tween their offspring and a fabulously desirable and precious new
product. A study analysing Australian birth registries. In the past
decade there has been a significant increase in new-borns chris-
tened with brand names. The British racing driver Jensen Button
might be seen as a forerunner of the trend, and so too a lady at a call
centre I spoke with recently who was very proud to be a Lexus. So
look out for a generation of Chanels, Bentleys and Armanis.
In America a whole industry has sprung up around ‘personal
branding’, in which consultants apply the theories of brand man-
153
agement to career planning and life goals. In Managing Brand Me:
How to Build Your Personal Brand, authors Thomas Gad and Anette
Rosencreutz observe that in this ‘increasingly transparent world it
is becoming harder to grasp who you really are. It’s time to brand
yourself as you would an exciting new product’.
Well I don’t know about you but when I look in the mirror I
don’t always see an exciting new product. In fact, most mornings
I resemble a product that needs to be returned to the factory for
a major overhaul. So anybody embarking on a project to create or
refurbish “Brand Me” should be aware that brands associated with
individuals invite an exaggerated emotional response. And while
that can be a drawback, more often it’s the key to the brand’s suc-
cess.
Control Your Feelings
Brand emotion is always stronger when the brand is an individ-
ual. Think of the mixed emotions sparked by the following individ-
uals, all of whom are trying to sell us something….
That perennial favourite – the clueless husband who can’t be
trusted by his brilliant wife to buy insurance, book a holiday or boil
an egg. Or how about the cleverer of two housewives who always
chooses a certain brand of soap powder for her perfect family’s per-
fect laundry. Such narratives create consumer response by encour-
aging emotions such as superiority, inadequacy, resentment, guilt
and anger. Not very elevating perhaps, but wonderfully reliable.
There are plenty of more positive emotional associations, such
as a famous action hero actor or sports figure wearing a certain
brand of wristwatch/aftershave/underwear. Or the honest depend-
154
ability of a favourite TV host as living testament to the irreproach-
able credentials of a certain brand of life insurance or funeral sav-
ings scheme. Or a pouting TV domestic goddess stirring up lustful
thoughts of her new line in pasta sauce. The advertising industry’s
appetite for tweaking our emotional appetites is infinite and in-
finitely-inventive because it works.
Sometimes, of course, the emotions ignited are inadvertently
damaging – even catastrophic. Predictably, politicians (and their
wives) are eager recruits for magazine covers but if the intended
effect is trust and admiration, the consequences of an unforesee-
able but badly-handled government crisis can be doubly harmful.
Over- exposure can be equally destructive, sometimes more so for
being cumulative. And with an image such as Princess Diana – syn-
onymous with the virtues of royalty, duty and compassion – I was
always alert to the risks of public image-indigestion. Interestingly
though, the risks of even saturation news coverage were less than
the hazards of publicity that was seen to be mere self-promotion.
It all goes to prove that an individual as a brand can be a lia-
bility as well as an asset – and if the individual is intended to be
the beneficiary then the harm is doubled. For instance, the Ameri-
can household design guru Martha Stewart caused an almost-fatal
crisis to her own brand when she was imprisoned for fraud. Even
more notoriously, the scion of the Ratner family jewellery business
Gerald Ratner publicly trashed his own product at a shareholders’
meeting, with immediate and fatal consequences for what had
been a flourishing brand – not to mention the livelihoods of its
workforce. These are the kind of human brand-assets might make
you wish you’d stuck to a nice safe inanimate brand representative
like the Michelin Man or even (much better) an Andrex puppy.
155
 Can You Trust the Boss With Your Brand?
Which brings us to another aspect of the Individual as Brand.
Not celebrities this time but people who sometimes think they are.
What happens when The Boss is the Brand? They might save your
brand and make it prosper … or they might kill it. Dead.
This is a subject about which I have gained quite a lot of ex-
perience, not through a conventional public relations or advertis-
ing career but rather by learning many sometimes painful lessons
through hands-on experience, much of it under remorseless me-
dia scrutiny. I therefore hesitate to call myself a personal branding
expert (that suggests years of theoretical study) but instead you
might think of me as more of a personal branding survivor.
My story begins more than 25 years ago. I joined the British
Royal Household in 1988 as an equerry – a military aide – on a two-
year secondment from the Royal Navy where I had been happily
enjoying what I expected would be a lifelong career in a profession
I loved. Suddenly finding myself chosen to work in the rarefied at-
mosphere of royal palaces, closely involved in delivering a faultless
royal “product” was a fantastic privilege and opportunity
I worked for Prince Charles and Princess Diana during what
turned out to be the last years of their marriage … a time, as I’m
sure you can imagine, of quite traumatic events. Of great stress for
them and for the people who worked for them. At the end of year
two, the Princess asked me to leave the Navy and set up her own
independent office within the royal organisation. As her first and
only Private Secretary or Chief of Staff for the next six years I was
in charge of all aspects of her public life and her private adminis-
tration.
156
Only since I joined the media do I truly understand the real
power of the Diana brand that I managed and, through my daily
work, helped to define. Back then, I thought I had the best job in
the whole world – even if it did give me a few anxious moments.
But despite my occasional anxiety, and some occasional criticism
from jaundiced royal traditionalists, Diana was always an asset to
her causes. Just consider the transformative effect of her patronage
on difficult charitable causes such as mental illness, drug and al-
cohol abuse, AIDS, eating disorders, leprosy, children’s hospices,
domestic violence, homelessness and many more.
It was a long list of challenging, self-imposed philanthropic
assignments, of which very few could have been described as un-
controversial standard royal material. Add a beautiful, dutiful and
obviously vulnerable princess and really you’re beyond brand or
celebrity – you’re into icon territory. What other Bosses are candi-
dates for icon status? There are perhaps a few – people who have
made themselves the personification of their brands.
Richard Branson at Virgin, or property tycoon-politician Don-
ald Trump; entrepreneurs like Jamsetji Tata or Suichiro Honda; or
celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver … or any number of fashion de-
signers from Dona Karan to Coco Chanel. And let’s not forget Enzo
Ferrari or Henry Ford or Mr William Fox of 20th Century Fox. All
have their name “on the door” of the company. It can be an uncom-
fortable place.
In the previous section, I mentioned Gerald Ratner who,
through one slip of the tongue, practically destroyed his own brand.
Mr Ratner was Boss of one of the biggest jewellery chain stores in
the world and his name was on every single door. At an AGM where
he was announcing record profits … in a moment of madness or
perhaps arrogance he held up one of his own company’s products
157
and said the words that passed into marketing history. Please for-
give the language but it’s an exact quote:
“Ratner’s has got very little to do with quality. ... because it’s
total crap.”
Jewellery is supposed to be synonymous with quality – and it
was his damning verdict on his own product rather than the use of
offensive language that caused the damage. Trust in his company
and in him as its Boss was destroyed. That’s the kind of icon you
can do without. “Doing a Ratner” is a cautionary tale for any Boss
who is also the brand. When the Boss uses such language to de-
scribe his own company, trust is the first casualty. The share price
usually quickly follows.
High Stakes – High Rewards
These days there’s another danger waiting to ambush your
Boss-as-brand. Unless they are personally fully committed to prin-
ciples of good practice such as corporate social responsibility, one
day sooner or later they may accidentally, by a single careless re-
mark or moment of thoughtless behaviour, destroy a reputation it’s
taken you years to build up.
So when an individual is perceived as being the brand –
everything he or she says carries great impact and potential risks.
But of course it also carries opportunities too. As the communica-
tions expert Steven Cone says, “There is nothing more powerful
than a company spokesperson who is an integral part of your USP.
Finding the right person or animal or animation is critical … it’s the
number one way to give your product the best chance to succeed.”
158
So I suppose alongside their real-life counterparts we should
include such legends of the individual-as-brand as McDonald’s
clown Ronald McDonald or that famous chicken-frying military
gentleman Colonel Sanders. The behaviour of your brand figure-
head is crucial, but for us as communicators what really matters
is how our audience perceives that behaviour. If your person-as-
brand is Ronald McDonald, then hopefully you have a fair degree
of control over how he behaves and therefore how he’s perceived.
If he can be linked to a children’s charity, for example, so much the
better. But if he or she is your Boss then you have a real rollercoaster
to ride.
As Patricia Nicolino writes in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to
Brand Management: “The power of the personal brand is entirely
driven by the perceived ‘brand equity’ of that person and what it
can stretch to include. [The key is to] match the person up with
the right product ... How do we judge brand equity?” Rumour has it
that if you ask 5 marketers you get 6 different answers. Well here’s a
7th: one way is to think of the qualities people expect to see in their
favourite brands … this is a list from surveys conducted in the US in
the wake of the Enron scandal:
It’s quite a long list so please stay with me:
• Trustworthy
• Authentic
• Reliable (“I can always count on x brand”)
• Admirable
• Appealing
• Honest
• Stands for something (specifically, something important to
the customer)
• Likable
159
 • Popular
• Unique
• Believable
• Relevant
• Delivers high quality. Well performing products and services
• Service-oriented
• Innovative
If the Boss is the brand – he or she has to be perceived as the liv-
ing embodiment of these superhuman virtues. It’s a very tall order.
But the bottom line is that if you’re a professional communicator, it
is often your job to portray your Boss as all these things. They and
we are the brand custodians. Sir Richard Branson’s balloon adven-
tures, high-profile philanthropy and informal, fun-loving persona
directly benefit the Virgin brand.
But any fall from grace – such as Martha Stewart’s imprisonment
for securities fraud – will damage the brand disproportionately. It
may of course recover, perhaps stronger than before because of the
way the individual was seen as having handled the crisis. For exam-
ple, airline CEOs live with the daily possibility that they may have
to go on TV to explain why their company has apparently just killed
a plane-load of customers. Some of you may have heard about the
inspired brand damage control achieved by Michael Bishop, Boss
of BMI, after the Kegworth crash in England in the early 1990s.
The magazine Management Today said: “Michael Bishop is still
best remembered as the man clearly devastated when a BM plane
went down at Kegworth in one of Britain’s worst air disasters …. It
is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the Kegworth crash,
and the dignified, sensitive way in which he and his company han-
dled the catastrophe, catapulted Bishop into public life. Bishop ad-
160
mits as much privately, though obviously it is awkward for him to
acknowledge that he personally benefited from it.”
Genuine, dignified, sensitive. Just the qualities you need to
tempt nervous passengers back onto your aeroplanes. And it
worked. The Boss saved the brand because the Boss took respon-
sibility for managing the crisis. Other personal qualities can help
rescue a brand. See how the Bill Clinton brand prospered thanks
to a trembling-lip and a carefully calculated confession of past mis-
judgements. Owning up can be irresistibly attractive to a market
– it turns a remote figure into a real person. But a word of caution
from Patricia Nicolino: “That person is the product and the brand.
The equity that the consumer ascribes to that brand is assumed
to be 100% genuine what-you-see-is-what-you-get. High risk, high
reward.”
The Hardest Word
So before you let your Boss try the “Please forgive me – I have
sinned” option, make sure they and the product actually do possess
those real qualities. When they look straight at the camera and ad-
mit a misjudgement or a personal lapse, they stake their own credi-
bility – and often the company’s future – on whether the customers
believe them.
With some people it just doesn’t work. Consider Richard Nixon,
or any other politician who comes to mind who has staked their
reputation on success as the figurehead for an ideology or set of
policies. Ultimately what determines their fate will most likely be
beyond their control – but they weight the odds in their favour by
establishing an image in the public mind that is credible, authentic
and attractive. Don’t forget, in the television age, politicians be-
161
come in effect extra family members as they join us in our living
rooms night after night for years on end. A few winning personal
qualities that are mostly believable are therefore an essential asset
in the fight for votes.
A willingness to admit mistakes can be one of those qualities.
For some people, inviting forgiveness can be a source of strength
not a sign of weakness. You may find that surprising. Let me ex-
plain: my boss, Princess Diana, had remarkable reserves of “for-
givability,” a word coined by the film producer David Puttnam to
describe the public’s willingness to give her the benefit of the doubt
when her good name was on the line.
Among politicians it’s a gift they’d love to have. A lot of the
time, Ronald Reagan and Tony Blair had forgivability – though
in the latter case, it ultimately ran out when the Chilcott Report
on the Iraq War revealed that it had been built on falsehoods. Bill
Clinton achieved forgivability, but whether that transfers to the
Clinton brand generally is now open to doubt. If your Boss has that
quality, count yourself lucky. But don’t let it cloud your profession-
al judgement. The advisors have a duty to make sure the bosses
don’t start to believe their own PR.
As Diana’s most senior advisor, I constantly tried to keep my
advice as objective as possible. The whole world might think she
was a paragon of style, beauty and compassion – but my job was
to keep her grounded in reality. That authenticity, combined with
a sustained record of credibly-commendable activity, is the indis-
pensable core of the successful individual-as-brand. Big talk won’t
cut it. As Henry Ford said, “You can’t build a reputation on what
you’re going to do.”
162
When Perrier admitted that its famously pure mineral water
had been accidentally contaminated and might actually poison
you, the management pulled all the bottles off the shelves and
then successfully persuaded customers that a fix had been found.
Sales and profits recovered. But that was only because customers
believed that the product had passed rigorous, scientifically-prov-
en tests. Unfortunately for us in the reputation business, no such
scientific tests exist for people. That’s why we should pay attention
when Michael Bishop says: “It’s absolutely essential in business
that you have substance, and not spin.”
Being Human
If that’s true of an organization, it’s doubly true of people who
are brands. There has been a lot of research into how brands fall
into various archetypes … idealised versions of particular person-
ality types. Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson in their book, The
Hero and the Lover, identify Ben and Jerry Ice Cream as an example
of the Jester archetype; Bill Gates as a Ruler, Henry Ford as a Hero
and so on.
Some people as brands prosper because they are the opposite
of their archetype. Princess Diana fits the Ruler category – almost
by definition royal people are Rulers, being theoretically remote,
infallible and all-powerful. But Diana’s unique branding attribute
was that she reversed the archetype. She is perceived as having giv-
en away her power, swapped remoteness for personal contact and
convincingly proved herself fallible. So the result was that to many
people she acquired the same sort of vulnerable appeal that has
benefited Bill Clinton: it made her more human, more admirable,
more emotionally articulate and accessible. Human and accessible.
163
 But wait a minute. To be human is to make mistakes … and to be
accessible … suggests weakness. Two qualities that should make us
feel less trusting of a product, not more – surely? Funnily enough,
the opposite seems to be true. You probably know about the Edel-
man Trust Barometer – it’s a tool for measuring people’s faith in
organisations. Among its other findings it discovered that in mod-
ern consumer society, above the trust people felt for academics and
doctors was the trust they were prepared to give to “a person like
me.”
In other words, “an average person” is perceived as being more
trustworthy than a big corporate Boss. If the “average person” is the
new definition of the most trustworthy person … where does that
leave an organisation like the British Monarchy which, by defini-
tion, owes its thousand-year successful product run to being the
very opposite of average? This is where I learned some of my tough-
est lessons – often by making mistakes.
The answer seems to be that the Windsors face a difficult task:
to be human enough to be trustworthy but to be royal enough to
merit their place at the top of British society. Proving themselves
to be human is easy – in view of the matrimonial problems of the
last thirty years you might almost say it’s been too easy. Heroes,
Lovers, Jesters, Rulers and all the other brand archetypes are well
represented in the House of Windsor – at least as it is perceived by
outsiders. And, as we all know, how a brand is perceived is abso-
lutely what it is.
For most of the time that I worked for Princess Diana, it seemed
that millions of people all over the world believed that she was
worth their support and even affection. They thought that she was
true to the image that they saw – and they liked it, wanted more
of it, believed in it and – crucially – usually gave it the benefit of
164
any doubt. Millions of them still do – me included, even though
in 1996, more than a year before she died, I had resigned from her
service, believing that we no longer shared the same vision of her
future. Think of that global reaction to what Diana represented:
people liked it, wanted more of it, believed in it and crucially usually
gave it the benefit of any doubt. What reputation manager wouldn’t
love to have a brand that triggered that kind of emotional reaction
and attachment from a global audience?
Two vital tasks of a brand are that it adds value and gives mean-
ing to its key elements. By that definition, Diana certainly was a
powerful brand … everybody shared a common mental image of
her. It didn’t necessarily follow that everybody had the same posi-
tive reaction to that image – though an impressively large and de-
voted majority did – but there was absolutely no doubt that her
recognition levels were phenomenally high.
That of course put her in a special category when it came to try-
ing to claim ownership of her brand. Since her death we have seen
the dispute between the Diana Memorial Fund and the Franklin
Mint, culminating in a judgement that images of the late Princess
could not be protected by the same sort of rules as a corporate logo.
Even now, control of her legacy is disputed between her former
husband, her sons, her family, former staff and assorted peripheral
figures, all wanting to share in that brand’s enduring strength or –
like her husband and a few others – wanting to limit its lingering
potential to detract from their own less resilient brands. Because
of the way her brand value was created, it is the public who own
Diana’s intellectual property rights. Diana belongs to the world. Or
in the words of Nick Shore of New York’s The Brand Agency, “She is
the consummate brand, available to everybody.”
165
 The inspired reference Prime Minister Tony Blair made to her
as “The People’s Princess” effectively rebranded her from the rather
directionless jet-setter she seemed in danger of becoming in her
last few months. “The People’s Princess” is what she will remain – a
brand held in common ownership. When she was alive the brand
was hers. She claimed it as hers through a high-risk but success-
ful campaign to establish herself as an independent royal opera-
tor. Her brand ambassadors were her charities, patronages and her
staff. There weren’t very many of us, but that was also part of the
brand. As an organisation we tried to be accessible, responsive and
inclusive in style.
Brand Essence – Hard to Find, Easy to Lose
We had to be responsive internally as well. I’ll give you an ex-
ample of one piece of brand crisis management. In 1994 the Prin-
cess felt that she wanted to make a public announcement about
her wish to reduce the large number of her public engagements. In
effect it was a kind of re-branding. But perhaps like some corpora-
tions, we couldn’t be entirely sure how the new brand was going to
differ from the old.
So I worked very hard with her, first to define what she intended
to achieve with the speech. Then I carried out a major consultative
exercise with stakeholders including the Queen, the Prime Min-
ister, even the Church of England. I then informed some of our
key customers – such as the charitable patronages – under strict
embargo.
Finally, I drew up a media strategy for the day of the speech,
including prepping the Princess herself, checking stage directions
for the venue, circulating her prepared statement and providing a
set of questions and answers to be used by the Buckingham Palace
166
press officers. At last, as the Princess stood to give her speech, I
simultaneously briefed the main news agencies and court corre-
spondents. It worked.
In many respects, Diana’s repositioning in 1994 was a conscious
attempt to put a more human face on the “royal” style. But as an-
yone who met her will tell you, despite her “average person” ap-
proachability, Diana retained all the poise and breeding of her very
aristocratic lineage. She provided the royalty people expected of a
future queen – but with a human fallibility and frailty that made
them love her.
So much so, in fact, that a humorous article in the Economist
magazine in 1992 highlighted the potential threat that the emerg-
ing Spencer brand posed to the established parent brand House
of Windsor. The magazine described the House of Windsor as a
fairly typical British firm whose management has “diversified into
younger brands and raised the firm’s profile through a new empha-
sis on public relations.” The management was hoping to increase
customer awareness and prevent the possibility that customers
might switch to the cheaper Presidential product. However, “high
brand awareness can cause problems when quality is in doubt.”
It rather unkindly then suggested that the Windsor “Charles”
product had been delivered with a bug in its software. But about
Diana it goes on: “Current difficulties with the Princess of Wales il-
lustrate a different problem created by the dash into the entertain-
ment business. The Princess was promoted so heavily that many
customers transferred their loyalty to this one product at the ex-
pense of the rest of the range. If she were ever to leave there would
be trouble for Windsor. She has outperformed the rest of the range
so dramatically that she could carry the customers with her …”
167
 It wasn’t just the entertainment or glamour factor that made
the Diana brand so successful. There was the sense that the Diana
brand was truer to its core values than the Windsor brand, which
seemed to have lost confidence in its ability to embody certain val-
ues. This was largely because the image of the Princess that the
world saw – with an AIDS patient, a sick child, a landmine victim –
perfectly fitted the “product” she was selling: a decorative, dutiful,
compassionate princess whom you could trust to live up to or even
exceed your expectations of a future queen.
As Diana’s programme director I always tried very hard to en-
sure consistency in her public engagements so that everything she
did reinforced the central personal qualities that the public expect-
ed of her, her brand essence. And I can tell you, those perceived
personal qualities were a genuine reflection of the woman I knew.
We see her former husband’s rehabilitation in a similar way to-
day as he focuses on a handful of clearly-identified causes – the
environment, youth opportunity, religious tolerance, architecture.
As with Diana, in his own life, he tries to follow a key principle of
being a Boss-as-brand: he lives his brand. And when he doesn’t –
such as when taking a private jet to a climate-change conference
– the brand damage is correspondingly toxic.
The lesson is clear: with high brand awareness comes high
risk … the special sick feeling in your stomach when you see your
Boss (and hence your work) splashed across the front pages of the
world’s press. That’s what I mean when I say, when your Boss is the
brand, life can get scary.
Conclusion
When your Boss is the brand, ultimately you may have to face
the fact that they’re human after all. Today, reputations are more
168
than ever at risk from the proliferation of global media … and in-
creasingly unpredictable new media as well – phone cameras, Per-
iscope, Facebook, for example. The lesson is the same: individual
human being or global multi-national – their brand essence and
values must be guarded more carefully and more vigilantly than
ever. Eventually, even Diana’s brand was at risk of becoming dilut-
ed. Ironically, her death shifted attention back to her core values
and it’s fair to hope that it will be for these that she is remembered
by history.
People-as-brands can achieve a kind of immortality – Steve
Jobs lives on in his chic, desirable and ubiquitous consumer tech
products, as well as in a feature film and popular legend. If your
boss is the brand you may not exactly want them to live forever –
but at least I hope they give you lots of reasons to think, as I did
with Diana, that in the end they were worth all the hard work.So to
sum up – how might we ensure that the individual-as-brand is an
asset not a liability – to themselves and to any entity of which they
are the figurehead or ambassador? There are just three key rules
when the Boss is the brand:
Rule 1 – They must define the ESSENCE of the brand.
As Patricia Nicolino writes in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to
Brand Management: “The power of the personal brand is entirely
driven by the perceived “brand equity” of that person and what it
can stretch to include. [The key is] to match the person up with
the right product …” Hence the useful rule of thumb that a brand’s
equity is that special quality which makes customers choose it in
preference to the competition.
169
 This perception should fit on one PowerPoint slide. And its
effectiveness should still be felt a thousand slides later. Success-
ful personal brands are invariably successful as images and draw
much of their power from instant recognition. That recognition
must convey what the brand stands for. As an exercise, try asso-
ciating key qualities and values with images of humans as brands,
for example:
Princess Diana: Dutiful and decorative. Royalty and glamour.
Exactly what a princess should be.
Mother Teresa: Saintly, Embodies the spirit of charity.
Richard Branson: Risk-taker and innovator.
Pilot John Travolta with Breitling. Proven, precise, stylish.
Oprah Winfrey: Individual opportunity, especially for disad-
vantaged women.
Steve Jobs: Design, independent thought.
PoliticiansL More than ever, their success depends on a simple
message that responds to the electorate’s needs, combined
with authenticity.
Rule 2: They must build the KEY MESSAGE
“Less is more.” In other words, keep it simple: “The Ultimate
Driving Machine”, “Make America Great Again”, “It’s the Real
Thing.” Then use every promotional tool you can to reinforce the
message: “The more the better.” Diversify the celebrity image –
demonstrate its effectiveness in multiple settings. Use every me-
dium, every channel and every opportunity consistently. Should
explain issue in 50 secs and excite interest.
170
Remember history’s great one-liners: “I Came I Saw I Con-
quered”, “We Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself”, “We Shall
Fight Them on the Beaches.” But beware: mixed or contradictory
messages are disproportionately damaging. Bosses who represent
brands have power of life and death over those brands.
Rule 3: They must LIVE THE MESSAGE
It’s a very tall order. Look at the 2008 banking crash, made
worse because financial institutions didn’t live up to their brand
essence of trustworthiness. When it goes wrong, personal qualities
can help rescue a brand. See how the Bill Clinton brand prospered
on the strength of a trembling-lip and a well-judged admission of
past misjudgements. Owning up can be irresistibly attractive to
a market – it turns a remote figure into a real person. But if as a
brand celebrity you’re going to invite people’s sympathy for your
very human weaknesses you stake your own credibility – and often
the company’s future – on whether the customers believe you.
“I screwed up.” Never a long-term solution. Far better to create,
reinforce and safeguard their “Forgivability.” Even if they’re born
with it … like Princess Diana. Crucial point: don’t let the Boss even
start to believe their own PR. As Diana’s most senior advisor I con-
stantly tried to keep my advice as objective as possible. The whole
world might think she was an icon – but my job was to keep her
grounded in reality. And, to my eternal regret, in the end I failed.
Finally, never forget ...
Advice from airline Boss Michael Bishop of BMA: “It’s absolute-
ly essential in business that you have substance, and not spin.” If
171
that’s true for an organization, it’s doubly true of people who are
brands. You can’t spin mediocrity. In the end, the truth will emerge
– either seeping out gradually through stakeholder disenchant-
ment or in a sudden dramatic explosion of bad publicity. The In-
dividual as Brand is the nitro glycerine of marketing. Handle with
care! Chapter 8

PRACTICING
COMMUNICATIONS
IN AN EMERGING
MARKET – LESSONS
FROM THE GULF

Alex Malouf

172 173
 The allure of far off shores, of a country that is developing rap-
idly and which can offer incentives and perks to match can be an
attractive prospect to many in the communications industry. And,
more often than not, the attraction of working in an-up-and-com-
ing emerging hub such as the United Arab Emirates has worked
its charms. In Dubai, where I’m based, it’s more common to come
across a communications professional from the United Kingdom,
from continental Europe, or from Asia – specifically India or Paki-
stan.
It’s a similar story when it comes to our media; many of the jour-
nalists, at least on the English side, are from different parts of the
world. For those who are new to the Gulf region, the appearance of
so many foreigners may suggest that the communications practice
in the region may not be too dissimilar to what one would find back
home, say in London, New York or Paris. However, that couldn’t be
farther from the truth. Let’s start with the basics of what we do in
the region, media relations.

Media Relations in an Emerging Market

For many years – and until recently – public relations meant

media relations. Be it in-house or agency side, our job was to get
coverage in print (mainly) and occasionally on the radio or televi-
sion. Unlike in the United States or Europe, print has never really

174 175
gone out of fashion in the Gulf and many other emerging markets.
Our daily job was to develop press releases and then get as much
coverage as possible into the dailies, the weeklies and monthlies.
While times may have changed with the popularity of digital
and social media as well as the promotion of communications spe-
cializations, particularly in-house, media relations is still the main-
stay of the media industry in the Gulf. The traditional approach to
media relations has changed little, with a focus on developing a
press release which is then shared via email to a media list. On
occasion, the agency’s junior public relations executives will follow
up over the phone with the journalists to ask if the release has been
received and if the release will be published.
It sounds simple enough, but when one considers that on any
given day a journalist will receive upwards of fifty to sixty press
releases, the fight for coverage, particularly in the dailies, can be
intense. The usual rules should apply: getting material to the jour-
nalist early; providing a release that is well written, and ensuring
that the material is newsworthy are the rules by which public rela-
tions professionals around the world go by to get their press releas-
es into the papers.
However, in an emerging market such as the Gulf it’s not the
quality of the press release which truly matters but rather the
strength of the relationship between the public relations profes-
sional and the journalist. Those with the strongest relationship can
often win out over those who have the more newsworthy release.
The importance of the PR-media relationship cannot be stressed
enough, particularly when it comes to the non-English press.
It can be hard to comprehend for those who don’t know local
culture, but in the Arab world there can often be little distinction
176
between one’s personal and professional life. The closer one is to an
Arab journalist, the more effort that is put into building a relation-
ship on a personal level by talking about topics such as the family
and individual interests, the easier it becomes to work with that
person on a professional level.
Do bear in mind that you have to be careful not to overstep the
mark however when it comes to building a personal relationship.
Buying a coffee for a journalist or taking them out to dinner is dif-
ferent to offering gifts in exchange for a quick win. I’ve heard of
journalists receiving anything from manila envelopes to cars. And
I’ve been asked for cash as well. Do the whole industry a favor and
steer clear of this path.
Once a personal relationship is established, getting news pub-
lished can be as easy as picking up the phone and telling your me-
dia contact you have a press release to publish. And sure enough,
it’ll be laid out in the paper, with few to no questions asked. Trust is
everything in an emerging market; once you are personally trusted
(and note here that it is the individual who is trusted, not the or-
ganization he or she works for) then anything is achievable when it
comes to media relations.
Pay for Advertising, Get the Editorial
There are other ways to get coverage in media in certain emerg-
ing markets. By and large, many (but not all) publications will pro-
vide free editorial space when an equivalent amount of advertising
is bought. Note that this is different to the concept of native adver-
tising which is being pioneered by the likes of The Guardian. This
transaction is simple enough, but the accompanying editorial isn’t
identified as an advertorial.
177
 The concept has been in play for years and explains why major
advertisers get so much coverage. The practice may not be so much
different in more developed markets. However, it’s the extent of
the practice which is so concerning, with the idea being extended
to supplements and inserts. With some publications, the habit is so
widespread that an organization’s editorial is printed right next to
their advertising. And it really doesn’t make a pretty sight.
While the allure of easy editorial may initially appeal, especially
to those practitioners who don’t have strong personal relationships
with the media, the practice of buying advertising for print space
does us all a disservice. Sales decisions supersede editorial. Print
which doesn’t deserve the ink and the paper it’s printed on gets
coverage. And, the news which should be printed falls by the way-
side.
If you’re looking for long-term media relations with publica-
tions in an emerging market, then invest your time and effort in de-
veloping relationships with the editorial team rather than the sales
team. You’ll be helping yourself as well as the rest of the industry.
The Advent of the Digital World
To this day, I still remember faxing press releases and, on oc-
casion when I was a journalist in Saudi Arabia, being handed a
floppy disk. Looking further back, I recall my first dial-up connec-
tion back in the UK and how I’d hog the line for hours trying to
download a couple of megabytes. My first digital memory was of
me plugging in my Toshiba MSX computer and of loading up pro-
grams on my tape deck.
These are distant memories, and I doubt few today could live
without a mobile and a data connection. The digital transforma-
178
tion is even more pronounced in the emerging world. Take for ex-
ample Saudi Arabia, where residents watch more hours of YouTube
content per capita than anywhere else in the world according to
Google’s own research back in 2013. Or Kuwait, which has the most
Twitter users per capita as revealed by researchers from Northeast-
ern University in 2014.
This relentless technological march is even more pronounced
in Africa; take for example Kenya, the world’s unlikely leader in
mobile payments. M-Pesa, Kenya’s mobile payment system, has
revolutionized mobile technology for millions. M-Pesa (the M for
mobile and Pesa is Swahili for money) provides the majority of the
country’s citizens with banking access, no matter how isolated they
are.
Digital media such as social platforms like Facebook and Linke-
dIn, instant messaging services including BBM and WhatsApp, mi-
croblogging sites such as Twitter and multimedia sharing services
from Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Keek and others are changing
how people communicate. The rapid rise of smartphones and tab-
lets, combined with high speed mobile data overage, are changing
when people communicate. In a sign of how quickly the change
has taken hold, in 2013 the UAE and Saudi were the first and third
respectively when it came to smartphone usage; every three out of
four people in the UAE had a smartphone.
The Social Media Transformation
I’d go so far as to say that social media has revolutionized how
people communicate in the emerging markets that I oversee. Here
are a couple of examples for you. First, we have the power of many
as demonstrated online. Consumers have come together for causes
179
which they believe in, both to support when engaged and attack
when threatened.
We’ve seen many examples of consumer-led action over the
past couple of years. There’s been the widely publicized #Qtelfail
campaign which highlighted how unhappy both foreigners and
Qataris were with Qatar’s government-owned telecommunications
firm Qtel. Then there was the #VodafoneShokran hashtag which
was used by Egyptians to criticize the global telecommunications
giant for its decision to turn off its network during the Egyptian
uprising.
Saudis have also gotten into the habit of flexing their consum-
er muscles online. Five years ago the largest dairy producer in the
Middle East Almarai raised the price of a two-liter bottle of fresh
milk from seven to eight Saudi Riyals and reduced the size of its
one Saudi Riyal drinking yoghurt from 200ml to 180ml. The com-
pany had justified the price hikes by pointing to increasing costs
for raw materials, packaging and higher wages.
Saudi consumers went online to protest at the price rises. Those
on Twitter used the hash tags #mara3i, #StopMara3i to voice their
concerns, noting that other diary companies had not raised their
prices. A Facebook page calling for a Gulf-wide boycott also attract-
ed hundreds of followers.
Boycott-related images posted on Twitter internet included a
photo of Almarai-branded milk bottles in a store overlaid with text
reading “Let it rot.” Another picture, from a Saudi Twitter user, fea-
tured a bottle of Almarai drinking yoghurt with the caption, “Go to
Hell My Friend – Saudi Citizens.”
“Usually, companies raise their prices if it suffers losses,” said
statement written on a Facebook page set up to boycott Almarai’s
180
products. “Well, this is absolutely not the case for Almarai, one
of the biggest Saudi companies in terms of revenue. Why does it
want to raise profits? Is it willing to form an economic empire at
the expense of the crushed citizen?” The outburst and consumer
backlash was so pronounced that the Saudi Ministry of Commerce
stepped in. The Minister himself issued a decree to force Almarai
to revoke the price rises which the company duly did a couple of
days after the price rises.
Social media has filled the information void, particularly during
times of crisis. An example is from Kuwait, when the country was
overcome by the horror of a terrorist incident at one of its mosques.
On that day, twenty seven people inside Kuwait’s Imam Sadiq
Mosque, a place of worship for Shia Muslims. Two hundred people
were injured. What was telling was the speed and amount of infor-
mation which spread via social media, particularly WhatsApp, in
the Gulf. I was receiving messages about the bombing two hours
before the news had made it onto websites such as Al Jazeera Eng-
lish. Not only were written messages being shared via WhatsApp,
people were also sharing both images and video thanks to the pro-
liferation of smartphones as well as the availability of high-speed
mobile data services.
What was fascinating about that day and how social media was
being used was not just the speed of information, but also the ac-
curacy of that information. When Al Jazeera Arabic made a mis-
take with the name and picture of the suspected bomber an image
was shared on social media of the correct suspect. In addition, the
amount of information was remarkable. While global networks
provided a couple of minutes of coverage about the bombing, the
images and video shared via WhatsApp built up a comprehensive
picture of the incident, including video footage of the scene as well
181
as interviews with witnesses and survivors. Unlike the news net-
works, many of whom don’t have correspondents in Kuwait, this
was amazing, in-depth reportage of the Imam Sadiq bombing.
The Imam Sadiq mosque bombing was an example of citizen
journalism working at its best in the Gulf. If so, the question that
must be asked in how can media outlets catch up to ensure they
have access to this information at the same time as its distribution
through both private messaging networks such as WhatsApp as
well as open platforms such as Instagram and Twitter?
Are Organizations Failing to Keep Up Online?
While it’s obvious that consumers have taken to digital like a
duck to water, everyone else is struggling to catch up. With some
exceptions, governments in emerging markets have yet to catch up.
But businesses are faring even worse. While there’s little in the way
of research on emerging-world businesses and their online pres-
ence, anecdotal evidence would suggest that client-side commu-
nicators and their executives are missing out on the opportunity
to effectively use social media to benefit not only their own organ-
izations, but their customers, suppliers, partners and other stake-
holder groups.
Emerging markets are replete with brands who have failed to
connect with consumers. Take for example a Facebook post from
Subaru Emirates which went viral for all of the wrong reasons back
in 2013. The post, which related to a recent accident that claimed
the lives of four people, offended both women and a specific na-
tionality. While this isn’t enough, not a single positive piece of ad-
vice was given to drivers to help avoid such a tragedy in the future.
The post was titled ‘Women drivers at it again’. To fan the flames
182
of outrage further, the admin person didn’t apologize but rather
sought to fend off the criticism. This single post garnered cover-
age worldwide, particularly in the United States and the United
Kingdom with Buzzfeed, the Daily Mail and Al Jazeera among a
selection of those who harpooned Subaru’s local distributor for the
social media faux-pas.
Even brands which are digitally-savvy have been challenged
online by both the public’s desire to engage as well as how to best
handle those with nefarious intentions. Take for example one of
the big stories of 2013 and which is still with us in one form or an-
other till today. Two of the world’s largest airlines, Emirates and
Etihad, had to deal with the issue of social media brand hijacking.
Numerous fake accounts piggybacked on two of the UAE’s most
established brands. Essentially, the fake campaigns offered those
who followed the chance to win free flights with Emirates Airline
and Etihad Airways.
The promotion launched on Instagram and stated that the first
20,000 people who would follow each account and would share
the respective campaigns with a specific hashtag would receive
free tickets for themselves plus one to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. The
Emirates Instagram account was named EMIRATESPROMOTION
while the Etihad campaign ran under the hashtag #EtihadPromo-
tion. Too good to be true you may think, and the campaigns were
fake. However, that didn’t stop 10,000 people following the false
Emirates account which featured the company’s logo and photos
skinned from the company’s website. While Emirates and Etihad
both put out statements warning people not to fall for the fake
campaigns, it hasn’t stopped copycat concepts springing up on a
regular basis.
183
 This and other similar stories underline two points. The first
is the desire that consumers have to engage with their favorite
brands, on any social media platform. The second is the challenge
that even the largest brands have in terms of meeting consumer
expectations. Communicators, who are experts in promoting and
sustaining dialogue, need to be front and center in terms of social
media to help brands meet and exceed these expectations. Part of
the issue today is that social media isn’t owned by communicators,
but by different functions including marketing, creative and media
buyers. This needs to change and soon if corporations are to make
use of the opportunities that social media provides when it comes
to reputation management, stakeholder engagement and crisis
communications.
The Rise of Influencers
Social media is the latest and greatest thing at the moment in
the world of marketing and communications but how do we in an
emerging market make the most out of what we’d call influencers,
people on the web who are followed and listened to by others. The
challenge that we face in a market is the Middle East is a lack of the
mainstream online influencers, the bloggers. Compared to Europe
and the US, there are fewer bloggers in the Middle East (with the
exception of certain topics such as food and fashion), especially in
countries such as Saudi Arabia.
While there’s few bloggers, the contrast with the number of
social media influencers couldn’t be greater. The Gulf is a region
of social media celebrities, of people who have made their names
through their online lives. And brands are flocking to use these
social media influencers. What they’re learning is a simple truth
184
– consumers react better to social media influencers than they do
to brands.
While 2015 was the year of social media influencers for most of
the brands in the region, both local and international, there are
challenges when it comes to working with influencers. The first is
to understand who best to work with – most brands are reaching
out to influencers who have numbers instead of asking if these in-
fluencers actually reach the right audience.
Secondly, ask what is the number of true followers or followers
who are real people rather than fake accounts. While one can get an
overall idea of true followers on the likes of Twitter, platforms such
as Instagram don’t allow for a breakdown of active versus inactive
or fake accounts. When Instagram last removed millions of fake
accounts at the end of 2014, some Gulf-based Instagrammers lost
almost half of their followers. It’s not as easy as it used to be to buy
followers on social media, but it’s still possible. Have a good look at
engagement rates, at the number of likes and comments, to get an
idea of someone’s worth to their community of followers, and how
much they talk with these followers. I’d much rather have some-
one who has higher engagement and fewer followers than someone
with a greater reach but who rarely talks with their followers.
Thirdly, understand that if you’re to work with social media in-
fluencers you will need to adapt your brand voice to theirs. There
needs to be a compromise in terms of the narrative. These people
have followers because people enjoy their style and find it inform-
ative. Superimpose the brand’s voice and their followers will not
want to engage. Even worse, they’ll lose followers.
Fourth, both brands and social media influencers need to re-
alize that if they’re going to make the most of their partnership,
185
they need to work long-term. Some influencers will switch from
one brand to another in the same category simply due to the money
on offer. Others will only commit to one or two posts as they believe
that it will otherwise hurt their revenue stream. Likewise, brands
are still looking at social media influencers as a tactical play, and
not a strategy that is long-term. Social media influencers are no
different to any other type of ambassadors. The best play is to work
with up-and-coming stars, align with them for an extensive period,
and leverage off their rising equity just as they will leverage off the
brand’s established equity. Short-term agreements don’t make any
sense for anyone.
What also concerns me in my emerging market, as well as oth-
ers, is the issue of how paid work with social media influencers isn’t
being clearly labeled as such. What I value more than anything else
when I communicate with an audience is transparency and cred-
ibility. When I place an advertorial, that advertorial is labeled as
such. Similarly, we all know that an advert is an advert. And yet,
the same isn’t happening when it comes to paid social media work
with influencers.
Alongside our social media celebrities we have witnessed the
rise of paid posts. Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed
how many celebrities online have become more commercial, and
have begun to share updates, images and videos promoting brands.
There’s nothing wrong with promotional advertising. Using paid
influencer marketing is a common tactic to spread awareness, pro-
mote a brand, and to engage social media users across the globe.
Online advertising can be more cost effective in terms of measure-
ment and reach.
However, there’s no distinction between an advert and paid-for
content. Both involve a payment of some kind by a company for a
186
promotion of its brand or services. Regulators across Europe and
the United States have essentially ruled that if money is changing
hands, obvious disclosure must occur in the advert itself. Their rea-
soning is simple; consumers have a right to know what is an advert
and what is not an advert.
While European and American consumers are benefiting from
crystal clear regulations on sponsored social media content, there’s
little to no clarity here on the same. Consumers here have no au-
thority to turn to or no regulations to guide them on what is and
what isn’t sponsored. There seems to be little eagerness for brands
or social media celebrities to advertise what is paid-for content ei-
ther. This is understandable, as their followers may be less inclined
to engage with a post if they know it is sponsored, or even follow a
person who they know accepts money for posts.
While this lack of disclosure may appeal in the short term and
help to maximize revenues (paid-for posts in Kuwait can fetch up
to three thousand dollars per posting), it does nothing to build-
ing goodwill and trust with consumers across the region. A lack of
honesty and transparency on what social media celebrities are paid
to post will negatively affect trust in both the sponsoring brand
as well as the celebrity who is accepting the payment in return for
sharing the content.
In the US the burden is on brands to ensure that their endors-
ers, such as bloggers and online influencers) are in compliance in
terms of disclosure. Paid-for posts have to include language such as
#Ad, Ad: or Sponsored. Even brand posts and shares by a compa-
ny’s employees have to be clearly labeled to account for the bias. Ei-
ther brands can take action and begin to self-regulate, or they can
wait for regulators to finally step in and possibly take a harder-line
approach to sponsored influencer endorsements. Is risking a rep-
187
utation and trust, built up over years of marketing, worth risking
over a lack of disclosure? I hope the answer is no.
The Need to Understand Local Cultures
As you’re probably aware, the public relations industry devel-
oped in both the United States and Europe before other regions.
Their approach to public relations has become the standard for
much of the wider world, including emerging markets. While this
is understandable, especially when considering the success of cap-
italism and the multinational corporation, the usage of a Western
public relations model has significant drawbacks when it comes to
communicating to stakeholders in emerging markets.
Let’s start with the first challenge that emerging markets face
– the over-reliance on the English language. English has become
the lingua franca for the business community; global trading isn’t
possible without a certain level of fluency in English. Nearly all of
the multinationals that I’ve worked with have an overreliance on
English, even between those who aren’t native speakers.
What does this linguistic dominance mean for communica-
tions? Often, other languages don’t receive the attention that
they deserve. They become an afterthought to the English media
outreach, and even then the translation is often more literal than
semantic. To give an example of this in the Middle East and the
dominance of English, as of 2014 less than 1% of total global online
content was in Arabic and less than 0.2% of global digital content
was hosted in the Middle East and North Africa, although native
Arabic speakers represent about 4.5% of the world population.
188
This disparity is no different on the corporate side. Despite the
growing Arab Internet user base, the number of localized Arabic
sites and sites with original Arabic content and remains low. Re-
search conducted in 2012 by the CSA found that only 1 in 20 For-
tune 500 websites had Arabic content, and only 1 in 4 top 100 global
brands offered Arabic versions of their sites.
If you think the Arabic language is under-represented, give a
thought to the hundreds of other languages which are spoken by
billions and yet are often ignored in the vast majority of commu-
nications plans. Even for those in the elite and middle class who
speak, read and write English to a certain level, the message may
not be fully understood as you’d expect (non-native speakers filter
language differently to native speakers). Or, for nationalistic rea-
sons, even those who can converse in English as fluently as they
can do in their mother tongue may feel very differently when asked
if they’d prefer communications in their own language or that of
English.
And then there’s how one communicates. There’s probably not
a single country out there which doesn’t employ the same tradi-
tional media channels, be they newspapers, radio or television.
However, countries in emerging regions also employ different tra-
ditions and are adopting various technologies when it comes to
communications. In the Gulf, the Majlis or Diwaniya is the typi-
cal setting for men to gather in and has been so for decades. In a
country like Egypt outside Cairo, the preferred location for many
women to gather in is the salon. And the list goes on for the dozens
of emerging markets out there. Each one has its own traditions,
which many communicators either don’t know of because they
lack an understanding of the local culture, or which they’re failing
to leverage because of an insistence on following what is done by
the corporation.
189
 When it comes to the new generation and their technology us- These are just some thoughts on the need to understand local
age, it’s a similar story. In Saudi, young people use Keek, a video cultures and the implications for our own approaches to communi-
platform that isn’t nearly as well-known as YouTube. In the UAE cations in developing economies. Corporations need to think dif-
and Qatar, Snapchat is one of the most popular social media plat- ferently when it comes to emerging markets. Instead of a top-down
forms. What’s even more interesting to me is technology usage approach dictated from their headquarters, communication lead-
across the different generations (we often focus exclusively on the ers need to start listening to and take lessons from their local teams
youth when it comes to tech). For example, WhatsApp is the most on the hows and whys of communications in each and every mar-
popular application in the Gulf and is used by almost 90 percent of ket the organization is present in. Similarly, the communicators on
the population here. What’s striking is how WhatsApp is not just the ground who execute global strategy locally need to understand
the most popular application, but how it is also changing media the overall company narratives and how to transform these narra-
consumption. tives into a meaningful story for their own stakeholders.
Many of my friends and family no longer watch television but Let’s think about how we can best communicate in an emerg-
rather use WhatsApp to share content that they’ll enjoy. Instead of ing market in a sustainable fashion. While knowledge transfer
sharing via Facebook or other platforms, WhatsApp is their content
can only be a good thing, we need to get away from shipping to
aggregator choice. Are brands missing an opportunity use these lo-
the front lines the typical Western identikit communicator, who
cal insights to communicate on a personal basis with their consum-
doesn’t know the language, understand the culture and who can’t
ers, to communicate on a personal, one-to-one basis or through
identify with the stakeholders on the ground. These in-country po-
groups? If we’re going by the corporate playbook, I’d say yes.
sitions require a new breed of communicator, a third culture com-
It’s the same for the messenger, your spokesperson. The con- municator who understands both their own culture as well as the
vention was to roll out the biggest person in the company, the most company’s overall culture. These people are the key to the future of
senior individual to speak to the press and various stakeholder
communications in emerging markets, and we need more of them
groups. More often than not when in an emerging market, that
if we’re going to make what we do crucial to the success of our op-
person would be a foreigner. What social media influencers have
erations globally.
proved is that local audiences want to hear from a local figure, a
personality they can relate to. Digital has truly opened our eyes to
what we should be doing, and when brands have compared their
own online messaging with that shared through a local influencer,
the results show time and time again that local makes a difference
when it comes to audience receptivity and engagement. This is why
social media influencers are proving so cost-effective, and it’s why
we need to think local when it comes to who the spokesperson is.

190 191
 Chapter 9

EARTH MATTERS:
THE NEW RULES
OF SOCIAL
ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Hubert Grealish

192 193
 No more lip service, no more time, no space. It’s time to open
the books, move the middlemen – transparency is driving change
in comms and mandating more positive action in public relations.
It’s even becoming more automated. Business now has a window
of opportunity to work better and help more, as a cause in itself
for social good. There’s a new intelligence finding its way into the
marketing mix. That of helping the world more broadly, offset-
ting the imbalance of overly capitalist or industrial interests. The
unchecked New World Order will no longer be left to its own de-
vices as consumers and their organized bodies turn the stones of
accountability and responsible business practice. It’s being Occu-
pied. The middle men of old will no longer manage the message,
they will be held account to it. We’re waking up to the hangover of
our forefathers, sure, yet the onus is on us as we know more and can
do more, day by day, decision at a time. That’s the view on the fu-
ture I put forward here, aiming to ignite a few ideas and assure the
hesitant marketer there’s business to be done in good practice and
Earth concern, for the environment and the people who live off it.
Around the world now, there are increasing middle classes
emerging, which are no longer taking business as it comes. Yet
they’re being squeezed, really hard in fact. They expect more of
their world and the brands of business making it turn. They are
awakening to global causes and challenges we face, as the macro
messages of climate and human concern filter through. The new

194 195
generation is raising the bar for humanity and the various ways to
minimize impact on our world whilst still functioning profitably
and responsibly within it. Looking back, we have seen some clear
ways we need to get better: the environment, our supply chains,
etc., and our stories around them.
Back in the 50s, we had but few good men ruling the roost when
it came to business stories. It was a time of rebuilding, rebooting,
hope and growth. Commerce and especially marketing, was more
detached, unruly, yet largely unquestioned assumed to always be
good. People were received without question their messages of
mass promotion accepting them at face value. And why not? Life
was simpler then, at least in terms of truths and what we were led
to believe. Words and ideas of ‘profession’ suggested implicit trust
and faith. Then the Marlboro Man died. Yet as recently as just today
I read yet of rampant sexism and racism in the Boys Clubs of Mad-
ison Avenue. We don’t need them!
With the emergence of the global media consciousness via
the internet, the plights of others are increasingly the plights of
ourselves. Governments and corporations are being brought to ac-
count, their actions scrutinized in more public fashions than ever.
An increasing number of peoples are organizing themselves cre-
atively and efficiently, creating and living by values in new ways
beyond just money alone. Starting businesses and sharing inno-
vations which help generate good livings for the founders and em-
ployee groups, yet deliver some social good and willingness to give
back. The big tech events to me now are more exciting for the far
flung countries coming to these events, the Sri Lankan startups,
the Spanish school friends hatching out on their own.
196
In this text, I’m openly reflecting as a marketer, though as an or-
dinary citizen too. Times are a changin’ and I hope to unlock more
thoughts and practices for you too if you’re in business or market-
ing, though also in your daily life. There’s always something we can
do smarter and better.
So I offer some social minded and business observations, relat-
ing to communications and PR as well as society generally. They are
as much personal reflections as any, intended to feed into discus-
sion and action I hope, in this era of faster innovation for the sake
of our greater good. Truth is the ally and action is the way.
Introduction
Declaring my own interests, I’m not representing any non-prof-
it organization or commercial interest here, NGO or non-profit ei-
ther. Just myself and my thoughts. I’ve no deliberate product or
business plug, nor axe to grind either, for that matter. Well, per-
haps a bit with the old school sitting on change, but that’s another
story. I am just, like many, a professional with some media skills,
with a worldview based on both. Yet like many of you, I harbour
some responsibility and feeling of interest in giving back and doing
the right things is growing all the while. Maybe it’s a middle age
thing though I know it’s not. My earliest childhood memories of
the future, at least when I saw it on TV, were of a world filled with
technology, yet with no real ‘Earth’ left. There were nuclear wars,
fears, far away regimes. It was scary being a kid in the 70s and 80s
sometimes.
Back then, all we had was the TV and other news, no social
space to check or connect, we had to take ‘fear factors’ as truth. I
was also amazing how we used to share innovations and technolo-
197
gies before the two world wars, showing we were all the same really,
railways, science and even weapons. I thought why are we fighting
when we actually seem kind of the same. Yet somehow we ended
up blitzing each other to bits later, for of course different reasons.
I would hope though that we can identify patterns of best practice,
to prevent wars of course, though also to get to work on promoting
positive innovation in our own worlds. It will be the legacy of our
generation, our century. How well we will make it … transparently
and conscientiously.
In my time, we’ve seen a lot more access to positive influence
and change with tax-efficient initiatives for projects of good worth,
marathon fundraisers and many more social schemes too. It’s good
to see as it’s often people mobilizing for themselves. People are
inherently good. In these pages I’ll draw upon my experiences in
communication, public relations especially, and naturally also in
life. I hope you’ll join the conversation and connect online. I’m con-
stantly impressed with what’s happening now and keen to keep
learning more too.
Like many a relative ‘outsider’ to the many organizations prov-
ing the case for social business and entrepreneurship, I want to
show that as the issues impact us all, we can each have a say and
begin to play a role. Perhaps we all need to. Social thinking is now-
adays by no means exclusive, nor are you a ‘treehugger’ if you care
or act. After all, who doesn’t like trees?
Certainly in this era of aggregate income streams and increas-
ingly unstable corporate agendas and careers, we don’t have to con-
sider or that you need to spend your whole life working on a great
cause. It is by its very nature open and accessible to all. And we can
198
each play a part. In this case how we will report on an discuss and
promote our new clients as causes, to some greater or lesser degree.
For the most part, most PR practitioners will, over the course
of their careers, work across several sectors and causes, thus their
influence will be broad. Indeed the notion of doing good busi-
ness whilst being a good corporate citizens is not at all a new idea.
There’s plenty of Corporate Social Responsibility ideas out there
already. We’re talking about a higher initiative than any piecemeal
‘CSR project’, often deflecting attentions away from the real issues,
worse again creating senses of security when there are more causes
for concern.
Instead, good societal input and contribution needs to be built
into the business, not activated as parallel campaign or bolt-on ac-
tivity to woo stakeholders or the press. I’m not going to sell or tell
you what and why you should be doing it. You’ll be doing it for
yourself. You and your good conscience at the right time and place
to act. It’s precisely that ‘right time and place’ I’m most interested
in, in fact, as I feel more people wish to do good than currently have
the opportunity or clear way to, with minimal required input from
themselves.
In PR and business, there will be no ‘new’ rules on social or
any entrepreneurialism, that’d be far too convenient, and rather
self-limiting. Instead, whilst it’d be handy to draw up my top-ten
tips, I don’t want to caption the ideas. And far be it for me to decide
or set any so-called rules anyway, for what folk should think or do.
We need things to be open for discussion and not closed. The re-
ality is there will only be the rules that we set … no outside the box
thinking. No box!
All said, you’ll see there are deep and universal guiding princi-
199
ples here, from which you can extract ideas as you wish and as you
read through. The ‘rules’ are woven in, to pull out and add to for
yourself. It’s as much a philosophical case on my part, so see what
jumps out and what could work for your company. In any case, so-
cial entrepreneurship should remain an open-minded discussion
aimed at prompting good practice and ideas. Maybe they will teach
it in school one day. And I am always learning too.
Cool Dudes and Influences
As a kid of the late twentieth century, I learned in many ways to
‘educate myself’, through various school experiences, as John Lyd-
on, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of punk founders the Sex Pistols said well.
This is what stuck with me as this is what I felt I did. Same thing
applies yet today. Aristotle must’ve had a mohawk.
When it came to history and geography, we need to know who’s
been tinkering with the history books and who’s behind the head-
lines. Growing up we’ll have all had a few folk influence us that we
looked up to. Bob Geldof and Live Aid was another where he raised
millions to help in the Ethiopian Famine in the eighties. You just
knew he was hell bent on creating a crusade to save lives. These are
the characters who’ve inspired millions and played direct roles in
paving the way for future social projects and leaders too.
Who else could come to mind. Bono? Ricky Gervais? Michael
Moore? John Pilger? At least in the so called ‘first world’. Jon Stew-
art? Naom Chomsky? These are important people to look at. Like
them or not they have no real agenda other than ‘truth’, to help
us. It’s been said ‘once upon a time we laughed at our comedians
and trusted our politicians. Now we laugh at our politicians and
200
trust our comedians’. The rule books are changing and we’re look-
ing more to independent voices than the spokespersons of party or
other interest.
Such heads like to take a stand at least, to dare to get involved.
In their own ways they are the new influencers, helping us get our-
selves mobilized in easier ways. If we’re smart enough we will list
and act. Have a look at Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United
States documentary series and you’ll soon learn how important the
truth is. In his way too he’s seeking to break the patterns of conflict
and control, building on facts and history as clear as we can make
it.
Democracy needs to be open, debated and critiqued, to protect
the truth and keep our lines of sight clear for where and how to
get involved. It’s dangerously not always allowed. This openness is
the hallmark of the ‘social’ part of entrepreneurship we’re looking
at. Maybe they are even the new media outlets too, with specialist
information coming directly from the source organizations, rather
than intermediary or other layers. The 30 Forbes Under 30 Social
Entrepreneurship listings show some amazing projects and vision,
from a briliant emerging new youth.
Likewise, U2’s Bono gets a little ‘shtick’ sometimes, an active
humanitarian, in for the long haul. So what if the artists are ‘all talk
about Africa’? We all need to ask ourselves what have have done,
in any little way we can, before judging anyone else. So fair play
to anyone spending their fame well, why not? Some causes really
warrant all the attention they can get.
Positive activism of any form beats armchair whinging, so full
credit all the social projects and initiatives any artist supports. Like
201
Bono’s campaign with RED, a simple yet direct social competition
to win a bike ride in Central Park with him, for a small donation.
A simple social-minded lottery for the chance to have a little fun
along the way, and all for a good cause. Celebrities by their nature
are role models for our world, thus will continue to be really impor-
tant for all forms of conviction especially when their hearts are in
it too. But if you’re using celebrities make sure and start your mar-
keting plans from a place of awareness, pointing towards action.
Awareness alone carries no change, when not activated upon!
Corporate Controls Shifting to the People -
Social Platforms as Hotbeds of Good
‘People are good, regimes are bad’ – seems the more I travel and
see, the more this is apparent, depending on your definition of a
‘regime’ of course. For the purpose of this I would consider it an
organization, government or even activist group that might consid-
er itself somewhat above reproach or accountability. The Ku Klux
Klan considers itself an activist group after all remember, as much
as any social nationalist party was, only recently accusing Anon-
ymous as ‘pathetic’ for threatening to out over 1,000 members in
2015. So the rules and the teams can compound and confound, let
it be known! I was just in Iran and they were the warmest and most
educated people I’ve met in years, at least that of most European
cities I’ve visited, and also the US of course. Great intelligent peo-
ple!
So when we talk about intelligently managing the world, we can
to see that it’s never going to be easy, nor should it be. Yet, on the
same point we’re seeing ample scenarios of where active, organized
individuals and groups can get more done, more inventively too.
202
Look at all the great and quick fire innovations on Kickstarter and
other crowdsourcing platforms. It’s incredible. Social platforms
can be and need to be considered as amazing super-computers of
solutions with ideas and intention to solve more problems than
ever. The issues are no longer ideas itself. It’s the political and in-
dustrial support for open-source solutions, which may or may not
become profitable in their own rights.
So in that sense we need to look at our whole world differently.
We need to make more use of our technology, talents, dreams and
hopes. Broader discussion and more creative ways of inclusion. I’m
optimistic, though do recognize we need to be determined and
creative to solve our global issues, such as how we tackle energy,
pollution and the environment, as well as all the people we’ll need
to feed, house and protect in health. Traditional processes need a
whole revision as well. Lean and Agile business models abound in
our new tech startup circles, as the race is on to activate and iterate.
Yet how can governments also avail of their benefits?
Bureaucratic measures are in themselves noble, yet are the
gates open enough to allow sure-fire social plans through, in time
to capitalize on their zeitgeists? For sure some of them aren’t going
away anytime soon, such as the environment as the most obvious
cause for concern, with all its socio-geographical considerations.
Communication Now From Ground-up –
Not Top-Floor Down as Before
The guiding principles of good will have been in place since the
first bones bartered and breads exchanged way back when. We re-
lied on the mad-men to tell us what was good. Now though, we can
see what your earlier customers are going to say, before we barter at
203
all. The ‘triangulation of truth’. Cross checking of the facts. Testi-
monial of track record.
With the arrival of mass marketing the general good will of
men and communities has become somewhat distracted, by the
scale of opportunity, through finessing of the message. Greedy guts
capitalists became bloated by the disconnect between the age old
traditional pound of butter value with the presentation, promotion
and eventual packaging of such commodities. Phrases as ‘brand
equity’ became precursors to pricing plans, ways to massage the
public mindsets towards justifying higher spends. The great ma-
jority remaining unquestioning anyway, for reasons of general faith
mixed with familiarity and habit, the general households of the 70s
and 80s being more controlled. With less of the products in the
typical homes of that time coming from another continent than
now, there was, in fairness, a lot less call for supply chain concern
or brand values and fairtrade practices. The typical consumer was
certainly not needed nor encouraged to seek further details beyond
the product shelf. We were only emerging then.
With all the noise of this new millennium, connected peoples
are redressing this power imbalance and bringing the heart back to
the heart of business. Concerningly, the rich are getting richer, not
only in cash stocks but also in percentages of top ends of markets,
monopolizing and creaming away more percentage points of profit.
It’s okay though to be rich. Bill and Melinda Gates are doing great
work in their own ways. I’d love to know about the Rothschilds and
others too though, not meaning to single anyone out, just those
who are loaded and who seem to be stockpiling away all the while.
Media alone doesn’t give us the facts. You’ll see some wealthy
families operating above the media. Google wealthiest families
and Rich Lists separately and you’ll notice different sets of results.
204
That’s the biggest challenge, keeping good things interesting, when
set against a rolling news agenda.
There are some brutal corporations out there, edging their ways
to complete ownership of the seeds in the soil, holding us to a leash
of control again. These monopolies are already charging farmers
for the seeds they have used for centuries, as ‘licenced product’ they
in effect pay a tax or rent on. We’re in danger of industrial interests
stringing those more vulnerable along, and at what price? This is
the closing door we need to step into to save not only the farmers
and ordinary decent folk of the world. It’s what we must do to save
ourselves. For surely, the ultimate climax of any corporation, taken
to absolute abstraction, will eat itself. That is of course if the world
is still clean and we’re free enough to read about it.
Of course that maybe an exaggeration. Yet so is science fiction,
till it’s here. We need to call out those ‘treehugger’ labellers, who
use their influence and powers to discredit the honest voices of
those wishing to save simple forests. And, retain our right to hug
a tree. What’s so ‘funny’ about someone who cares for the earth?
Maybe they’re trying to keep a park or the labellers build a car
park? We need to be sharper to recognize the references and in-
fluences being plugged into our heads. Make your own minds up
when it comes to what’s important to you, your organization, your
crew, your creed.
If you want a cheat-sheet crash course on how to hook the
masses, never mind sex and drugs, get them hooked on hate. See
the Daily Mail (a.k.a. ‘Hate’ Mail), a tabloid in the United King-
dom. That’s a great example, selling that special form of class and
race potion aimed at feeding distrust and fearful paranoia for the
future, enough to keep you worried and hooked. It’s an open for-
mula, just have a look at the front page on any day. All the regimes
205
use it to some greater or lesser degree, that includes quite a lot of
organized religions and politics too naturally. It targets less critical
or informed readers with stories of race, fear and emotion, mag-
netizing them towards a lower, more divisive audience. Herded like
literate sheep. For those that choose fear and the hate that guides
it. Didn’t they lower the voting age in Scotland from eighteen years
to sixteen, when seeking to pass a ‘Yes’ to leave the UK? That was
surely to win over the teenage middle class? Not a suspect political
play to over more naive and in effect childlike votes?
In business and in life, we all ultimately have to choose our own
personal ‘love or hate’, one purchase decision or endorsement at a
time. One critical brand evaluation or donation, petition or pro-
ject. No one else will that’s for sure, and from the above example
it seem the pessimists have an edge in terms of winning the hearts
of the broad and masses. Don’t leave nor outsource your critical
faculties to chance.
But of course it’s never as easy or as clear cut as that. The no-
tion of ‘good’ and ‘business’ were not always easy bedmates. That’s
why this topic is so important. Once we get over the fact that gov-
ernments alone and big business for sure cannot take care of our
world unchecked, then we can focus on realising all the great ideas
we once perhaps had a kids, teenagers, students. The innovation
is increasing around, so perhaps now more than ever we can make
the best of our fighting chance to do good.
For the old chestnut ‘public relations’, this has not easily sat with
‘good’ and ‘business’ either, yet the times are a changin’ there too.
As a one time PR undergraduate, my lecturer remarked his defini-
tion of PR was ‘doing a good job, then working to get the credit for
it’. Always struck me as fair enough, right? Yet at the time some folk
thought he was a ‘hippie’, not just going for the gold, the big bucks.
206
He wasn’t the president, after all. Social media is transcending a
lot of those powers of old now to be the real barometer or truth as
people access each others’ ideas not being filtered by the few.
Since then I’ve carried that with me, as a good measure for me-
dia and marketing narratives and stories. It’s been an important
way for me to ensure the actual benefits of what we’ve talked about
in products of businesses, were aligned to the stories. You might
say now that ‘good communication is good product’ in the sense
the product needs to be worthy, before you can present it as such.
If it’s good anyway, the customers will endorse and recognize this.
Do your best in product then the good stories will follow too. Espe-
cially for ‘millennials’ and the new generation.
“Millennials are now the biggest segment of the US la-
bour market (Pew Research) ... pushing back on ‘business
as usual’ in corporate America.’’
Forbes
What are ‘millennials’ anyway? Only young people! Young peo-
ple with all the dreams and worries and fears we all did once upon
a time. Yes we need and seize upon new demographics, lingo of
the times and yes I’m all for that, of course. Yet worry when ‘all’ our
thinking becomes focused on these confounding creatures behind
the ‘Millennium Wall’ of words that blocks them up away from us
as much as shows who they are.
Whereas they world is incrementally finding it’s niche in the
global psyche, we need to be mindful of the folk selling some form
of ‘access to’ youth or whatever millennial is in those types of chats.
Yes as with all bandwagons, there’s a lot of Millennial Medicine
207
Men out there. The good news we don’t have to worry about sug-
ar-coating things too much, they’re young people like you, once
were. Even higher too in their exposures to the world, thanks to
us. They can handle the truth, we’ve seen to that with decades of
destruction amidst all the X factors. Don’t let anyone tell you dif-
ferent. It’s just their technological habits we can learn from as the
digital natives we’ve cut them out to be. We don’t need to molly-
coddle the millennials, which does no good at all. Give it to them
straight, if it’s a topic of importance at all. We will count on the
more than we know.
We live in a time of intense change, news and noise. For all the
‘PR’ of old there’s been a lowering of the level of trust overall for
the true intentions of business. The new generation has has been
not only raised into a world of digital savviness, though moreover
raised with an almost innate sense for what is true and what is not.
They will continue to educate us, yes educate, not only tolerate, I
hope.
The important thing here is that pure greed, or ‘money without
meaning’, isn’t actually doing any good on it’s own anyway, with so
many and increasing proportions of people falling ill to corporate
stresses in more and more countries. The new kids are no longer
inspired by money alone, they way their time and purpose. The
modern world needs new meaning. In the US alone such stress re-
lated ills are costing the corporations up to $200bn (billion) in lost
productivity. Something’s seriously wrong. We need to change the
record and play to a tune that’s more meaningful and less obsessive
about growth for it’s own sake. The people and the planet need it
and the new kids won’t necessarily take it.
208
Paris Climate Treaty Dec 2015 - Global Political
Cohesion
On a global level, perhaps the recent milestone of commitment
towards a more cohesive and workable government agreement, was
the recent Paris Climate Treaty. This is monumental in it’s grasp of
climatic change and the collective agreement to unite. Our chal-
lenges are no longer defined by borders alone, instead by temper-
ature and climate too.
This will over time have a cascading effect on rallying up inno-
vation at every level. The landmark deal which was signed by all
192 United Nations countries. The deal perhaps was in no small
way influenced by the huge turnout of festive, yet peaceful dem-
onstrators over the course of the conference. This is important, as
the first ever truly unanimous joining of all political wills to try and
resolve our collective issues as a species, beyond borders and local-
ized geographical or economic agendas. At the very top we are see-
ing increased interest in coming together to resolve our own issues.
Indeed, by coming together we will see an even faster rate of
innovation that we have ever seen before. The shortening of inno-
vation cycles, as we’ve seen more and more of in recent years and
perhaps best summed up with Shumpeter’s Innovation Waves of
Innovation and Entrepreneurship (See above chart).
Now we are becoming wholesale, digitized innovation will grow
even more red hot. We heard of the child boy who came up with the
idea to generate power from the oceans. There’s loads more coming
online too with the crowdsourcing sites like Kickstarter and oth-
ers offering their fundraising platforms whilst sharing ideas more
widely, fuelling further innovations. The greatest tests of our world
brains are being solved by crowds in the cloud. We’re on the brink
209
of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, keeping some of our
best minds as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk preoccupied. It’s
going to get hairy.
News goes social - broadsheets to specialist
titles & community
We’ve never seen so much news content, as we know. Yet where
is all the quality going? To the specialist titles, actually. The aver-
age person in Europe digesting less direct broad news a day now,
compared to a decade or more ago. Certainly since the dawn of the
Internet Era yet even going back to the 80s and Anchorman-like
rolling news. News and communication are the lifeblood of PR,
thus we should also take a look at these channels too, as the places
our messages and good news stories will go, if we’re good and work
hard.
We’ve seen a decline in the circulations of broadsheet newspa-
pers which has oft been lamented. Yet the real growth in specialist
titles, fiscally and in content too, as consumers will happily pay for
quality content in their favourite trade or hobby title. So the aver-
age news digest isn’t shrinking, it’s just changing. We no longer sit
down with our pipe for a broadsheet to only browse over the tea,
we’ll also subscribe to our specialist or hobby title or jump to the
tablet or smartphone to get our news. We may jump in a few times
a day then spend an hour reading the paper, in line with our lives’
pace.
Recognizing this, online and print media has been working to
innovate it’s channel approaches to serving and engaging news,
through more audience and readership engagement, to showing
the ‘most popular stories’ and all with full ability to share and espe-
cially comment on the top stories.
210
Citizens are the new journalists, at least setting the media di-
rection more than ever before, shaping news and political agendas
new co-creative ways. So what’s that news to do with social entre-
preneurship? Well, everything, really. At least in any public or so-
cially useful way. Just as sites encourage post from user reviews and
testimonials for shoppers to see, shoppers increasingly looking for
signals that production processes and best practices are being ad-
hered to as well. A triangulation of trust, as such, a check that all’s
good and as it should be in any real open society.
After all, that’s ultimate notion of a ‘brand’: to signify a set of
values that we as consumers will identify with and buy into. Not all
brands however are created equal and we rely on them to reflect our
own values as persons. We don’t have the time to vet every single
company, thus we have to rely on their good names and reputa-
tions. To get on with our lives.
In terms of multinationals and corporations, things were all
well and good till we started to get news about ‘sweatshops’ and
the like over the years, reports of child labour and manufacturing
centres deliberately targeted for their cheap labour and lax employ-
ee protections. The world, it transpired, was not the rosy garden of
the white washed fenced the typical American family aspired to in
the ‘50s. That was only the world certain first world countries sold
on. Others in the east had a different vision. But we have learned a
lot since and things are changing for the best. It’s far more exciting
now.
There’s been slow, consistent growth of awareness for brands’
behaviours ‘over there’, with the news media recognizing consum-
ers caring more about where their goods are coming from. The dy-
namic of communication is moving from top-down in the C20th,
to more an engagement factor-led approach, where companies
211
start to realize there’s fewer carpets than before to hide under. In-
stead putting plans in place for fair pay and ethical workplaces,
which they can use proactively then to show their best practice.
Consumer groups and social activists are creating their own
blueprints for change, including corporates too, tackling big ticket
items and innovations one at a time. Such as Fair Trade and coffee
for instance. Though there is also an innovative need too, as the use
of such new technologies as well like blockchain and Bitcoin are
said to become the mainstays for Africa, beyond currency alone,
and which is likely to happy without much government leadership,
if any at all.
There’s an urgency to not have to wait, as governments debate
and corporates negotiate. Certainly the consumers and new gen-
eration of business leaders aren’t going to wait. ‘If money was go-
ing to change the world, money would have changed the world’
as Sharad Sagar, a young India social entrepreneurs says. Indeed
Sharad himself, but a 24 year old CEO and founder, has started his
leadership and entrepreneurship training in Indian schools, has
just been listed in the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 new social
entrepreneurs list, training more women than men this last year it
is reported. Thus there’s a great amount of interest and access to it
is getting easier. This type of new thinking which for the first time
shows business need not only – or even – be about money alone, in
the context of our world’s needs and limits today.
We’ll continue to see this changing landscape with consumer
buying power and opinion being swayed by more sustainable good-
ness, than say traditional billboard ad. Too long have large scale
brands been allowed ‘make it East, sell it West’ without scrutiny,
while their beloved bottom lines get chased up higher and higher.
212
Consumer society is realizing we have a duty and role to play there
too. This is our journey for the greater good.
Brand values and hoes – redefining the roles
of icons we support
It’s nothing short of brilliant to see the sways of engaged peo-
ples in the new world, the students, the youth, the emerging mid-
dles classes. We’ve had massive discussion around high profile
whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. The Occupy and Anony-
mous movements also demonstrate the emergence and coming of
age of increasingly globalized organizations, around shared sets of
values and the internet.
Indeed, you might say anonymous, non-governmental organi-
zations are mobilising around important causes, doing the govern-
ment’s and even media’s roles for them. Anonymous for instance in
late 2015 declared war on the Islamic State, something unheard of
yet which by all accounts promises to be complex, with software,
propaganda and public opinion being the tools of engagement.
Meanwhile, cultural and artistic activists such as the British art-
ist and provocateur Banksy are doing their bit to break the head-
lock of advertising on culture and society. His rocketing success
showing amount of people around the world identify with his out-
look … seem a lot of worldly folk buy into his ethos, wholeheartedly
too:
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into
your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at
you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flip-
pant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and
that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV mak-
213
ing your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most
sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully
you with it.
They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You,
however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual
property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what
they like wherever they like with total impunity. FUCK THAT. Any
advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it
or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do
whatever you like with it.
Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone
just threw at your head. You owe the companies noth-
ing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe then any
courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to
put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your
permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
Banksy
Brands will try and outwit the consumer, yet consumers will
always consciously and more joyously outwit these same brands.
Other brands see this and invite them in for tea, like Red Bull, in all
it’s brilliant guises. We do have a right to react to the environment
around us, perhaps even a human right. Either way, no matter what
regulators and industries like advertising will do, the genius hu-
man spirit will always find a way to punk up the next installation.
That’s the joy of it. The free world and the internet is up for grabs
and social activism.
Whilst an anonymous loner artistically, Banksy’s certainly not
alone. With street art in itself seeing many more social minded
214
sprayers cropping up all over the world now. The inevitable by-
product of an ad saturated? Or the inner human voice seeking to
call out to the world in the only place left, the local blank brick
wall.
Mimics or not, they are united in a certain discontent and call
for action. They don’t call for any given brands to keep selling of
course, do they? That’d be ridiculous. Though the same folk would
say advertising is ridiculous. So regardless of individual motiva-
tions or alliances, such visual social activism, is fascinating in its
urban expression. As the voice of our new city youth and their
views, certainly at times a sort of entertaining brand mayhem too.
Look at Brandalism in the UK for instance, hijacking advertisers’
work at the bus stops of Britain, a favourite playground of Banksy
as well.
Brandalism’s ethos bounces directly off Banksy: ‘Taking the
piss with a point’, a conscious ‘revolt against corporate control of
the visual realm … drawing inspiration from the anti-advertising
movements’. But there’s a point here. These expressives may be
‘marginalized’, yet their representations are most always positively
motivated and reflective of the overall zeitgeist amongst informed
folk. That’s possibly why so many get behind the Banksy’s, now
being even cut out of walls for millions of dollars are the works
become more mainstream, at least to the art world.
The global poster boards of the C21st, reflecting the broader
masses, as you can see from the growing engagements on social
platforms. All pointing to a disaffected view and lack of confidence
in the brand’s ethics of those they target.
There’s been a lot of fools’ gold in some areas of the internet
gold rush, with businesses running to win as many ‘hits, shares and
215
likes’ as we can, quick as they can. It’s understandable too, with all
the pressures on brands, economic, etc. A sort of digital obsession
with the digital version of the same ‘growth’ which takes everything
and gives nearly nothing.
As we explore and define our new rules and media, we have to
be mindful that the technical pursuits of ‘clicks’ are in the end dis-
tractions, if they are the be all and end all. As I’ve said in business,
our aim as marketers is not to ‘raise awareness’, it needs to start
with awareness and end at a sale at some point. It’s the hard real-
ity of business, you can’t live on Likes and Likes alone. We need
to convert at some point, to feed the business and continue to
sustain itself. That is unless of course you’re getting a bursary or
similar based purely on social engagement alone, which will be for
the most part unlikely. We will use to glorify our roles and prop up
parts of marketing’s industries to generate a client marketing buck
or to get that promotion.
The good news for new brands or thinkers is that consumers
can still be entertained, if they show to represent the real values of
the people they wish to court. Baiting for Likes on Facebook will
not be enough, at least outside the company in the real world. After
all what is the true social value of a ‘Like’? What’s a like anyway?
Isn’t it something I’m actually fond of, or is it now a gesture to the
brand I’m at least ‘open to suggestion’, that is if not just endorsing
my friend’s new bakery or beautician that is. In reality it means
nothing, but somewhere along the line is packaged and sold as
an advertising metric, to someone probably just like you. See my
Slideshare talks on that for more info on that.
Thus as the chickens come home to roost we’re setting we real-
ize the so called ‘Like Economy’ is at best stepping stone to an even-
216
tual more meaningful engagement such as a sale or something, or
at worst a brand manager’s self-congratulatory evidence the good
job is done, with more or less no shift in spend or engagement from
the end-user or buyer.
Speaking of the Like Economy, I used it as a tongue in cheek
opener to a talk of the same name at the Dublin Web Summit a few
years back, which was quite fun for me. There basically is no such
things the so called ‘Like Economy’, yet we could all so easily be
seduced into thinking so. To test waters of the power of suggestion
… I basically made the case that folk will have heard of the Like
Economy, yet I’d just coined it, to show the amount of lingo-led
noise in the market at the time. My point being that we need to,
as marketers, more effectively map onto things that matter, to the
consumers if not to ourselves. My caution being that I felt some of
us were in danger of being sold on a little bit of the emperor’s new
clothes, Like, and why not, though that we shouldn’t distract our-
selves too much from the eventual pursuit of some sort of higher
goal, even if only to sell something at some point?
In fairness, things have moved on a lot since, as we’re witness-
ing. The global economic crisis brought with it a lot of consumer
activism and digital engagement, with impressive and fascinating
results for society and business. Noam Chomsky writing about Oc-
cupy with the proceeds going to the cause, Mens’ Sheds collabora-
tion projects got unemployed men to come together around tasks
and to share their skills. MeetUps and such hobby or topic-based
get togethers of all manners and forms.
Serendipity too is also increasingly useful, as folk offer ‘social
currency’ of their given skill or service, in return for access to oth-
ers’. Such highly lateral forms of collaboration join the dots on the
ground and in workplaces, societies and sectors they work in. And
217
are proven to be often at least as effective as ‘constructed’ or overly
structured set ups. Fiscally, fundraising sites as JustGiving are help-
ing consolidate the online fundraising efforts of charities, non-gov-
ernment agencies and individuals raising monies for worthy caus-
es, even courting tax-deductable add-ons.
There’s some truly amazing networks as well, to look and learn
from. If only for the ideas and abilities to organize and mobile busi-
ness and innovation. Like the Swchab Foundation, with over 320
both for and non-profit social enterprises worldwide. This is key as
we’re able to use current systems to generate revenue and business,
yes, though moreover energy and funding for positive change in so-
cially responsible and smart ways. It’s also independently ratified,
adding further absolute truth and transparency to the mix. This
form of arrangement will be great really exciting to follow in this
century for sure.
GOVERNMENTS AND REGULATING
Communications and Public Relations
In my earlier career days, I studied to both journalism and mar-
keting, public relations and advertising techniques, online pub-
lishing to be specific. Something at the time some colleagues on
both sides found a tad curious. But to me, I‘ve always felt the chan-
nels of communication and media were in effect different ends of
the same stick. We all collectively have a role to play in creating
interesting newsworthy stories, that would be useful to the peo-
ple we asked to read them later. That we would in some way add
some value to everyone’s lives, through some pertinent new item of
knowledge in business, or tech gadgetry.
218
I thought there were plenty of armchair economists and com-
mentators, yet never enough folk with ‘skin in the game’, doing
their best and getting involved. My PR inspirations were few and
far between and I was never – and still never – use the word ‘spin’,
as a word that bugged me for all the ways it encouraged disaffecta-
tion and disillusionment that say, discourse and solutions. Perhaps
a bit close to a ‘lying politican’, yet some or more of them have good
hearts and intellects to make the world a better place.
Mikhail Gorbechev’s Glasnost and Peristroika initiatives were
and remain an inspiration. I thought rather than argue or whinge
about anything, I’d alway try and join and change something on
the inside where I could, with reason and good communication
cases. I felt that was more relevant and impactful a professional
philosophy to carry and act on, getting closer to the boardrooms
themselves, than say the company gates.
One such early anecdote representing the everyday decisions
we often inadvertently make was where the global business lead
for a leading spirits brand asked me in early days in my role there,
to devise a marketing strategy to sell more product, by donating a
‘% to water in Africa’. Naturally, I was asking immediately what any
minimum cash commitment would be, that the intention wasn’t
at all enough. Yet there wasn’t anything really concrete in place.
My stipulation being we’d need to earmark ideally tens of millions
over say three years, to make sure we actually made some good.
Not borrowed on poverty to push forward our profits cause. We
didn’t go ahead as I couldn’t be sure there would be a copper fas-
tened commitment to big money going in. The director in fairness
admitting he’d just learned a bitter lesson in being overzealous to
a point, having learned something, thanking me for calling out his
inadvertent seduction by the capitalism of it all. He simply hadn’t
219
considered it properly till then. Yet was thankful of the learning.
It’s too easy these days to allow ourselves just to run at the money,
yet as that case shows, with a little counsel or good sense to consid-
er, we can consider the real bigger pictures beyond only the bottom
lines.
Lead an Honorable Life – Make it Your Business Too
As individuals, we all normally want to do good, at least pas-
sively. So why not ask your business to consider this approach too?
We’re no longer the brute capitalists of old, the world doesn’t ap-
prove anymore. Thus have a look at your company mission, see
where’s the commitment to living well in the world it does. It’ll
surely add the right forms of business success too as good folk en-
dorse your good PR around any initiatives you sponsor.
Personally too, opening your higher self to the simple practice
of saying ‘yes’ to the good things already happening. This will feed
the good initiatives already happening around you. Invest even
pennies and social support in the causes you believe in. Both at
macro and micro levels.
Peristroika and openness – take on your own glasnost – take on
a guerilla pirate aspect to your work. You can help influence a few
meetings and talks, think global and act local. Everyday decisions,
with the right frame of mind you can help the business deliver as
per usual yet also encourage positive decisions towards the better
workplace and world. Few companies will absolutely disagree to
such intent, if there’s a way to bridge to business as well. Social
cause can become part of the new family day the old companies
used to have. This is the best way to protect any organization and
also to ensure good news stories too!
220
Everyday decisions – don’t be ruled by cash metrics only. Look
out for little opportunities to feed the greater good, in your own
way and own circle of influence. You can be the poet warrior with-
out having to leave the tribe. These protect the business from crit-
icism and ensure things move forwards and never into ‘grey areas’
or poor judgement.
Punk DIY innovation
Maybe we need another era of do it yourself ‘punks’, taking their
generations’ and the world’s interests back into their own hands,
another round of extreme innovations and ideas. We need these
bold ideas anyway, if we’re going to thrive tackle our challenges.
Perhaps a new world anarchy in innovation, could become our new
rules of social entrepreneurship. There’s always another way and
internally organizations can find their own ways to reward good
social innovation. With more PR credit and business to be won.
Work with government and other agencies
You don’t have to run for president to care or especially to vote.
Like celebrities we may approve or moan for the leaders we elect. No
longer can we whinge all the time if we’re not prepared to sign-up
and add even our name to the things that count. There’s a myriad
of good causes you can support which won’t even cost you a dime.
Think human rights, business ethics, sustainable supply chains.
All these areas are opportunities to open the door to better busi-
ness world and increase your company’s standing on societal issues
of relevance. They are all there and asking for your help. Business
has to step up here anyway to remain competitive and increasingly
compliance wise too.
221
 Plan to adopt goodness in all your usual efforts
As we know the best programs will work when they are part
of our daily grind. Thus go through your calendar and even your
past, for ideas what you can use as corporate springboards for social
action, to innovation itself on what products could help play a pos-
itive role in the future. Even if it’s small percentages from sales to
partner social plans, to all-out new startups, you’re never far from
some great minds and hearts that’ll join in, especially where you
are today. Champion the goodness and it’ll attract new endorse-
ments and energies too.
Draft a company social code or charter –
starter policy for positive change
coming through. Same goes for agency or other partner work. Se-
lect Fair Trade products for your workplace. Recruit support from
teams. You can even add prerequisites to your client briefs, inviting
partners to also live up to and practice a certain social code of con-
duct. Likely your industry body too has some links and intentions
for good, if not policies already in place. Thus investing your indus-
try influence in social good will, amplifying your effect. The same
goes for money too of course.
And so we go on. I hope that you can find your firm’s inner cause
to serve, as well as your higher self’s. Look at your most inspiring
campaigns and leaders for ways to join the force. Or start some-
thing small with your friends as well. So what will our history books
say? Who’s going to write them and better yet who’s going to be in
them? Educate yourself. Take a stand. Lead your good life.

At the end of the day companies are communicating good

will and attempting to attract positive endorsement and support
through communications. Not all investments need be so directly
linked to profit, just as not all brand communication activity needs
to be overly branded. Such as charity work or noteworthy endeav-
ors. If it’s in the right place people will know and you’ll retain a
good humility by not overstating or bragging about your good so-
cial work.

Spend wisely – time and money

Spend your PR budget well and start to consider how to get

some good social discussions into the mix and planning, then of
course onto your partner and media radar, when the evidence is

222 223
 Chapter 10

EVENTS FOR PR
AND PR FOR EVENTS
IN AN INCREASINGLY
VIRTUAL REALITY

Sietse Bakker

224 225
 Some time ago, I was having dinner with a great bunch of peo-
ple from around the world. All being PR professionals, I thought it
would be fun to ask a slightly provocating question: ‘What is pub-
lic relations?’ As soon as I finished my question, the folks around
the table turned silent. During these few short seconds of void, I
wondered what they were thinking. ‘Did he really ask that?’ ‘Is he
even one of us?’ ‘Is he even serious?’ The silence was only broken by
confused uttering: ‘What do you mean?’
The answers were as diverse as they could be. Spin. Influence.
Free publicity. Generating earned publicity. Personally, I prefer to
stick as closely to the term as possible: public relations is about
managing relations with the public. It is, deliberately, a broad defi-
nition, as it allows PR professionals to use as many of the tools they
have at their disposal to serve their needs.
This chapter is about events. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fas-
cinated by people coming together for a common purpose, emerg-
ing themselves into togetherness. I have always felt slightly awk-
ward when actually doing that myself, but to actually create such
bubble has proven to be slightly addictive. In 2008, at the age of 24,
I became responsible for public relations of the largest televised
entertainment event in the world, the Eurovision Song Contest.
With a reach of over 200 million people from over 45 countries,
more than 1,500 journalists and thousands of fans coming together
every year, it was not only a great PR challenge, but also an amazing

226 227
opportunity to learn about cross-cultural communications and PR
in the increasingly interconnected world of the 21st century.
First, we will dive into using an event as a tool to manage
public relations. Next, we will turn things upside down and dive
into managing public relations of an event.
The Event as Tool to Manage Public Relations
It is one of those questions that may pop up ahead of a birthday
party, a wedding or some sort of holiday; ‘What would you like as
present?’ This is a great question, particularly when you are a kid.
But as you grow older, and your buying power grows, you can buy
those things you desire for yourself, rather than having to wait for
someone else making their way to the store. As I grew older, I start-
ed to ask for experiences rather than gifts. While gifts often only
give temporary satisfaction, an experience can make an impression
that lasts a lifetime. I find that invaluable.
Events can have a profound impact on the reputation of a brand
or organisation. That certainly applies to unexpected events, that
can easily spin out of control into reputation-damaging crisis.
Managing the communication around a crisis is a specific area
within the field of public relations, which is covered elsewhere in
this book. This chapter is about planned events as tool to influence
stakeholder relations.
Why does an event – essentially an experience – have the power
to make an impression? Events have the power to make a lasting
impression for one reason: they provoke emotions for a sustained
period of time by appealing to multiple senses. That may sound
like hot air at first, but just stop and think about it for a moment.
There is light, sound, visuals, human interaction and sometimes
228
even taste and smell. As you emerce deeper into it, you start to for-
get about the world outside the event – I call this the bubble effect.
Being in that state allows your mind to experience the event with-
out distraction and quickly make new synaptic connections. It is
so much more powerful than seeing an ad or reading a news story
online, and it explains why PR is so much about creating experienc-
es through events.
The first type of events I would like to look at are so-called me-
dia events, or pseudo-events. The term pseudo-event was first
coined by historian Daniel J. Boorstin in his book The Image: A
Guide to Pseudo-events in America (1961). Boorstin wrote: ‘The cel-
ebration is held, photographs are taken, the occasion is widely re-
ported.’ The point he was trying to make is that pseudo-events do
not have any other purpose than to generate publicity with some
sort of purpose. They appeal to the appetite of the media for con-
tent their respective audience wants, regardless of whether it ac-
tually has any value. No one died, no lives were saved, no history
was made.
There are several types of media events.
• A press conference is an excellent way of sharing relevant
news with journalists and at put key executives in a vulnera-
ble yet powerful position in which they receive their undivid-
ed attention.
• A red carpet event, ideally filled with camera-hungry celeb-
rities, is a great way of getting through to the entertainment
press and their audience, especially when premiering a movie.
• Award ceremonies are helping an industry to put them-
selves on the map and pat themselves on the back. Think of
how the Oscars promote the moving picture industry, how
the Webby Awards promote outstanding digital work and
229
 how airlines eagerly promote their status as “Skytrax airline
of the year”.
• Product presentations are primarily relevant for industry
media and early adapting customers, who eagerly follow the
release of a new product. Apple, mainly thanks to the pres-
entation style of its late CEO and founder Steve Jobs, is fa-
mous for its sophisticated product launches, which are said
to attract millions of online viewers every year.
• Organising these kind of events is not for the faint-hearted.
Not only are they generally costly to organise, they also re-
quire an experienced and stress-resistant crew to organise.
One needs a good venue, well-equipped for the respective
purpose. Two aspects are often overlooked and they are the
very reason why events fail:
• The lack of good content. What is a press conference worth
without real news? What is the point of a red carpet event
without celebrities walking it? Why bother to host an award
ceremony of the awarded work isn’t truly remarkable? Media
need an audience. The audience wants good content. Yet, so
many events fail to return on investment because the impor-
tance of good content is not understood by their organiseres.
• The lack of flawless organisation. You have been there
right? Great speakers, but poorly cleaned toilets. Great mu-
sic, but way too hot inside due to inadequate airconditioning.
Or everything is perfect, until you realise you are paying a
small fortune for food, drinks and parking, leaving you with a
bad taste. A good event is a flawless event.
230
The rise of social media and citizen journalism only added to
the potential impact of media events. A great event easily gains
traction on social media, while the smallest of flaws can easily
reach a large number of people.
This book is meant to offer both theoretical frameworks as well
as applicable practical advice. Having been involved with and re-
sponsible for the organisation of some of the biggest events in Eu-
rope – I was Event Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest from
2011 to 2016 – I feel more competent to share some of the most
valuable experiences and lessons learned with you.
You must have a very, very, very detailed plan. That
may sound like common sense, but I have seen over and over again
how events either fail or do not deliver the desired outcome be-
cause of too little planning. Where construction work can be de-
layed, or project deliverables postponed, events can hardly ever
be postponed, especially when many people are involved. When
overseeing the event organisation of the Eurovision Song Contest,
I often jokingly said to new host organisers: “Don’t worry. Next year
will come, all these artists, delegates, journalists and fans will ap-
pear on your doorstep and somehow it will all magically happen.
It does every year!” The serious message hidden behind that joke
is the inevitability of the event – it will take place, no matter what.
You better have a good plan describing in great detail what has to
be done, when it has to be done and by whom. Although there is no
magical formula for planning, I have learned that planning, before
execution, often takes up 20 to 40 percent of the time. If you spend
less time on planning, you better have a very good reason for it.
Health, safety and security always come first. At
mega events, like the Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup or large
231
political conventions, security is always the main concern as well
as the biggest expense on the budget. Hundreds or even thousands
of security and law enforcement staff, and even military and intel-
ligence service, are involved to assure a safe event for all who visit.
Fortunately they are there, unfortunately it is necessary. We live in
times where large gatherings may attract people with not-so-good
intentions and it is the duty of the organisers to make sure they
stand no chance. What event organisers must never forget, is that
they also bare that responsibility when hosting much smaller gath-
erings. You may not have to worry all too much about the odds of a
terrorist attack at your event. But making sure the exits are clearly
marked, that there is first aid support on site and that there are no
loose cables lying around – just to name a few examples – are im-
portant too. Regardless of the size of your event, I recommend you
appoint a person who is specifically responsible for health, safety
and security within your organisation.
No one should be irreplacable. Event organisers are
often highly engaged people, working increadibly hard to make
things happen. After all, event organising is anything but a 9-to-5
job. As a result, those who are part of the core organisation team of
an event are becoming increasingly hard to replace as the event ap-
proaches. Someone dropping out in the final stages of preparation
or even during the event, for example because of health problems
or family issues, is then catastrophic, especially in a small team. To
tackle these challenges, always make sure every key position has a
‘double’ – someone else in the organisation who could, in theory,
take over the other person’s role. Make sure they have access to each
other’s contacts, correspondence, action lists and planning. If each
key person has a team, make sure they know each other’s teams. It
certainly is a bit of extra work, but it pays off in the not-so-unlikely
scenario that someone drops out.
232
Get your technology right. I am 99 percent sure you
have been the witness of the following situation: at a conference,
one speaker ends their talk and the next one jumps the stage. He –
women usually manage to do this with much more grace – takes the
microphone, taps on it a few times, puts the thing virtually in his
mouth and shouts into the room: “Hello, does this thing work? Oh
yes, it does,” seemingly scared by his own voice over the PA set and
slighly embarassed for damaging half of the audience’s ear drums.
Then, he takes the clicker to move to his next slide which, by the
way, is composed of seven bullet points, a stock image, an unread-
able graph and a grainy company logo squeezed out of proportion.
The clicker of course doesn’t work, so he points it at the screen. As
if the screen has a receiver! Someone from the back of the room
then yells: “The other button!” Finally, he gets the thing going.
Until there is a video with audio. Which then is not being heard,
because some clown forgot to plug in the audio jack. By then, the
wifi connection in the conference room has turned incredibly slow,
because – let’s be honest – cleaning your inbox is so much more
appealing. In other words; get your technology right. Hire a pro-
fessional company. Rehearse with your speakers or artists. Explain
them how technology works before the event. Have back-ups.
Get your content right. A speaker who cannot speak. A
host who thinks it’s all about him and doesn’t know to pronon-
ounce your guests’ names. A deck of slides made to torture. Made
for 4:3, while your screen is 16:9. A backdrop with your sponsor
logos lined up on standing height, while they are in fact seated.
No name signs at your press conference. A singer who cannot re-
ally sing. All too often, event organisers spend too much time on
solving problems, without getting the content up to the level your
audience expects.
233
 Run multiple budget simulations. Ambitions are usually
more expensive than you would think at first. When you organ-
ise an event on someone else’s behalf, keep a substantial buffer of
20 to 30 percent compared to your most optimistic budget sim-
ulation. In case you are hosting an event where guests pay, run
multiple budget simulations. Rather than the usual ones – pessi-
mistic, moderate and optimistic – you may as well want to run a
highly pessimistic scenario, as well as a totally devastating scenario.
Have a plan for when those scenarios start to unfold. For example,
if you organise a conference, make sure your delegates’ payment
deadlines are just before your cancellation deadline for your venue.
Agree with your speakers that you can pull out up to that moment
without paying their full fees. If a substantial number of delegates
cancels or doesn’t pay – believe me, it happens – you are much less
screwed than you would be if you hadn’t taken these precautionary
measures.
Think of everything else. Put yourself in your visitors’
shoes. Ever year, days before some 1,500 journalists would arrive on
site, I would take the entire team on a walk through the press cen-
tre of the Eurovision Song Contest multiple times. I would imagine
to be a journalist and ask myself (and the team) the questions they
would ask themselves. How to get the wifi going? Where can I print
something? Where are the bathrooms? What time is lunch? How
to get through security as fast as possible? Can I take that exit? We
would do the same role play with artists, staff and ticket holders.
By doing this, we would sort out tons of issues before they would
unfold.
Understand culture. I once attended a small event with
numerous international guests in the Netherlands, where I live. At
some point, it was time for lunch. For the Mediterranean guests,
234
lunch at 12:30 pm was a little early, but not necessarily problematic.
The Dutch are notorious for their light lunches, consisting of noth-
ing but a couple of sandwiches with ham or cheese. I will never for-
get the face of one of the Spanish folks attending after he finished
his sandwich: “So, what’s for the main course?” It took a bit of effort
to convince him that this was it, and he was in no way offended, but
definitely hungry for the remainder of that afternoon.
If I learned one thing during my time at the Eurovision Song
Contest, it is that understanding cultural differences is critical to
successfully host an event with international delegates. You may
have organised a top-notch event from the comfort of your own
cultural frame, but from a different cultural perspective you may
have failed terribly. On the contrary, showing your international
guests that you have considered their expectations and preferences
could add up to your event’s success a great deal.
Managing Public Relations of an Event
Hosting an event for PR purposes is one thing, manging the PR
for an event is an entirely different discipline. Events often have a
large amount of different stakeholders that all need to be taken
into consideration when developing a PR strategy.
When developing a PR strategy, we often tend to look at peo-
ple’s roles, the media, the neighborhood, attendees, performers,
etc. Although there are definitely benefits to working this way, it
comes with two flaws: It doesn’t take into account that people my
fulfill multiple roles and it doesn’t consisder the fact that eventu-
ally, we are all human beings, governed by the same psychological
laws.
235
 To tackle this challenge, I developed a framework called Stake-
holder Engagement Levels (SEL) to build your PR and communica-
tions strategy upon. It looks like this:
By developing specific strategies for specific target groups and
their engagement level you will be able to empower each and every
one of them to help you spread your message and solidify their
roles as influencers. It also helps you to draft better communica-
tion for different stakeholders. For example, one media strategy
may not take into consideration that you have ambassadors and
anti-fans amongst journalists. This model helps you to address
that challenge. This model also idenfies your biggest potential; the
non-audience. They are not against your event or brand, they just
236
don’t bother because they don’t know about it, don’t find it impor-
tant or chose alternatives.
Overall, the Stakeholder Engagement Level helped me to clar-
ify what drives different stakeholders, what their views are, how to
draft communication that fits their profile, which channels to use
to reach them, with the purpose of engaging them further with the
event (or your brand, for that matter).
Although there is much more to be said about doing PR for
events, I would like to wrap up this section with one more key rec-
ommendation: get a coat rack. I don’t mean one for coats, but a
metaphorical coat rack; a basis to build your communications
upon. The Eurovision Song Contest has a theme slogan every year,
which allows the organisers to streamline their communication
around a particular message. We Are One (2013). Building Bridges
(2015). Come Together (2016). Such a coat rack is an extremely help-
ful tool to simplify decision-making. I even applied this to my own
wedding, which has the theme Love to Share. The slogan helped
me and my wife-to-be to make choices about how to entertain our
guests, what the invitations should look like and what to serve for
dinner.
The Future of Events
Also in the next few years, large events are going to see the costs
of security going up. So much perhaps, that organisers will have to
compromise in other areas. But what does the future hold for most
of you, when you organise events of smaller scale?
For your audience, the future beholds the incredible opportuni-
ty of a more realistic virtual presence at your event. And that makes
237
it an opportunity for you, to reach out to more people than ever cannot teach you how to be creative, but I hope that raising your
possible. As virtual reality equipment is becoming affordable for awareness will challenge you to find new ways of engaging people
the masses and production capabilities more accessible to event with the events you organise in ways that truly appeal to their soul. “M
organisers, both in terms of video as well as audio, the experience is p
becoming more worthwhile for those who are not physically pres- In closing, I hope to inspire you with a simple, deeply person-
ent. Although the psychological impact doesn’t come close yet to al thought. What PR event organisers often aim for, is for people
the impact of having all your senses tickled, it is a great step for- to make noise about their events, and thus the brands they work
ward from live streaming as we know it today. for. To stand out from that noise, many often try to be even louder
In the next 3 to 5 years, we will see virtual presence developing, and more visibly present across all the different channels our au-
up to the point where people are paying for virtual access to events dience has at their disposal. However, research has shown that in
they cannot attend physically. Think of pop concerts, sports events the Western world especially, our days are increasingly saturated
or live TV shows. As event organiser, it may not be on top of your with information. As PR professionals, we have a social responsib-
agenda at the moment, but it certainly is a development to careful- lity to appeal to people’s attention wisely. If we deliberately choose
ly monitor. to make less noise, yet aim for a more meaningful engagement with
At the same time, the increasingly virtual and digital world we others, we may eventually achieve a lot more.
live in makes people long for more real human interaction. More
than ever, people spend money on concerts and festivals. Simply
put: people love to experience events! This didn’t go unnoticed in
the PR business, which resulted in an avalanche of events. Who
hasn’t been to an event of some kind and left the place with a goody-
bag, of which the contents are utterly disappointing? It’s not that
we are spoiled people, the challenge is that more and more people
understand the trick. You don’t get that bag full of stuff because the
organisers just wanted to be nice – you got it because the producers
of these products want you to try their products, love them and do
so for the rest of their lives. They want you to post something on
Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Unbox the bag on YouTube – even
better! As more and more people start to understand the PR tricks
from the book, the more they will long for and appreciate genuin-
ity. From PR event organisers, that requires creativity and guts. I

238 239