Download how to modernise a public relations agency or communication team

how to modernise
a public relations agency
or communication team
BY STEPHEN WADDINGTON BENG(HONS),
CHARTERED PR PRACTITIONER, MCIPR, MPRCA
how to modernise
a public relations agency
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»» how to modernise
a public relations agency
or communication team
This paper tackles the opportunities and challenges for our profession as we face up to
modernity and the role of public relations in organisational management leadership.
There is much said at conferences and events, and written on blogs and in traditional
media, about the fundamental shifts taking place in the media and the impact on the
business of public relations.
These conversations focus on who (practitioners, agencies and communication teams),
what (modernise public relations), why (media change and opportunity) and when (now)
but very rarely how. This paper explores the how.
It started out as a blog post ahead of speaking opportunities at the World PR Forum in
Madrid, and the PRSA International Conference in Washington.
I developed the themes more formally in a bid to publicly explore best practice and
kickstart a conversation around the topic.
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»» twin challenges
driving change
Public relations faces two fundamental challenges to its future: firstly adopting the
rigour of a profession in a bid to improve our reputation, and second modernising the
application of practice.
I’ve written lots about professionalism in my role as President of the CIPR. In my view it’s
the single biggest aspect of practice that we need to tackle to address our reputation.
In this article I want to tackle the modernisation of public relations and explore the value
of the services that we provide to organisations.
The majority of public relations agencies and communication teams have been built to
focus on a single audience, namely traditional media.
“
The pace of change in the public relations industry
is driven by digital and, more specifically, by the
lowering of barriers to entry and the increased
importance of integration. It has never been easier
to run paid campaigns or direct-to-consumer
communications,”
Danny Whatmough, Chair of the PRCA Digital Group
and Head of Digital, Consumer EMEA, Weber Shandwick
When combined with a need to integrate, the race to change and
broaden expertise is understandable and natural. But there are
challenges too as we scramble to find new skills and educate.”
In my view the public relations industry took a wrong turn in the 1950s or early 1960s.
The leadership and vision provided by early professionals throughout the first half of the
twentieth century has since been squandered.
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In Two-Way Street, published in 1948, early public relations practitioner Eric Goldman
describes the three stages of the development of corporate communication during the
period from 1900 to the time of the publication of his book.
Mr Goldman’s contention is that communication between an organisation and its
audiences developed through three stages during the first half of the twentieth century:
#1 Initially, spin aimed at duping the audience;
#2 Secondly, publicity that aimed to build awareness through hype, and;
#3 Thirdly, two-way communication aimed at building engagement.
It’s uncanny how these same stages can just as easily be applied to public relations in the
second half of the 20th century and the 21st century: spin, publicity or media relations,
and most recently direct audience or public engagement.
Shortly after the publication of Goldman’s book the public relations industry became
obsessed about communicating with the public via the proxy of mainstream media rather
than direct public engagement.
The rise of mass media, radio, television and print, in the 1950s, and its ability to provide
a shortcut to mass audiences, brought about a fundamental change in the style of
organisational communication.
Only now, more than 60 years on, are changes in citizen and consumer behaviour, enabled
by the Internet and the fragmentation of mainstream media, forcing organisations back to
Mr Goldman’s so-called two-way street.
“
The perception of public relations has the potential
to significantly hold back growth and the
maturation of the profession. Most clients only
start to think about PR at the point at which they
want their name in lights. PR is often seen as a
bolt on service and PR professionals are brought in
to sell the story rather than help create it.
At this stage budgets may have already been assigned to other digital
disciplines making it hard for us to up sell our services or get clients
to reallocate their budgets.”
Gemma Griffiths, Managing Director, The Crowd & I,
and Chair, CIPR Social Media Panel
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Other public relations theorists such as James Grunig celebrate the ideal of two-way
symmetrical communication between an organisation and its publics. The Excellence
model is taught as best practice in the US and much of Europe.
I have yet to work with an organisation that truly engages with its publics in a twoway dialogue. It’s an issue that is explored in a paper in 2012 to achieve Chartered PR
Practitioner status.
That notwithstanding we are shifting beyond the use of traditional media, as a means
to influence publics through third-party earned influence, to use a variety of media and
networks to engage with publics on behalf of the organisations.
Data points that talk to the massive changes in our business are everywhere.
DIGITAL DATA REVEALS GROWTH
The PRCA reported this month that half of public relations (PR) agencies are currently
responding to the significant client-side opportunity in paid digital and social media.
The PRCA Digital PR Report 2014, produced in partnership with The Holmes Report and
YouGov, revealed that agencies take between 11 per cent and 20 per cent of their revenues
from social media and digital production. A quarter expects this to rise from 1 per cent, to
30 per cent over the next 12 months.
The research also revealed that almost two-thirds of organisations have seen digital
budgets rise over the past 12 months, and the same percentage expects them to rise again
in the coming year.
The motivation for companies to use social media is primarily for marketing and brand
awareness (87 per cent), followed by customer service (50 per cent).
Twitter ranks highest in campaign usage (98 per cent), followed by LinkedIn (89 per cent),
and blogs (88 per cent). However, there is expected growth in usage of Google+ (78 per
cent), Instagram (72 per cent), and Pinterest (63 per cent) in the next year.
The issue of digital skills within agencies was also raised.
The main source (69 per cent) of social media education for agency staff are expert blogs,
and 70 per cent also stated that the proportion of digital training they receive is limited.
YouGov surveyed 228 agency and in-house public relations professionals in the UK.
Source: PRCA’s Digital PR Report 2014 (September 2014)
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»» four business propositions
for public relations
So how do we transform our agency and communication teams to engage with these new
forms of media?
The challenge, as with any business transformation, is how you tackle organisational
changes while limiting the impact in terms of organisational or financial performance.
I created this chart in my job at Ketchum to describe the shift we need to move through as
we work with clients to tackle the new opportunities that the Internet offers our business.
Each stage of this evolution builds on the past and provides new opportunities for the
agency, or communication team.
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#1MEDIA RELATIONS
The first area of transformation to consider is where traditional media relations
programmes can be modernised. This doesn’t require radical change to the workflow,
systems or processes within an agency or communication team. Instead technology is
used to enable practitioners to work smarter and offer new services.
I’d urge teams to breakdown media relations workflow and consider how each area can be
modernised.
Use search tools for basic research, Twitter for journalist research, optimise press releases
for search and social sharing, use new forms of media and networks to create content and
pitch journalists, and analytics to track results.
At this basic level of modernisation the investment requirement is often low.
A growing third-party market has emerged in every area of this supply chain. There are
new technology-led solutions for almost every aspect of traditional media relations from
planning and contact management to content development and publishing.
#2INFLUENCER RELATIONS
Media relations is a form of influencer relations whereby we persuade journalists to write
favourable articles about our clients and organisations. The output is third party validation
via the journalist’s media outlet. The intended outcome is to influence a far greater
audience than we are able to alone.
In a fragmented media environment influencers aren’t just journalists anymore. They can
be anyone with a network or community of their own; so an individual with a blog, or on
Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter or YouTube.
Organisations seek to engage with these new influencers and secure their third-party
endorsement and the reach of their network.
The content and channel may be new but an influencer relations campaign is effectively
media relations for the modern age. The media may be new but the tactics remain largely
traditional and unchanged.
The skills required for influencer relations are more sophisticated than traditional media
relations as we make use of the data and insights available via the Internet.
Planning tools are required to identify influencers in a given market, and you need to be
able to convey your message and story using different forms of media and content.
Like all areas of developing public relations practice, it also benefits from a growing third
party tools market although in most cases they remain relatively crude.
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Blogging, Twitter and YouTube are the most sophisticated for influencer identification and
management, whereas other networks are at an earlier stage of development.
The development of content in images and video rather than words requires an
investment in skills. Typically agencies or in-house teams will buy in design or production
expertise until they have sufficient demand for a full time resource.
“
In the summer we hired an individual with great
skills in video and production – before this we had
been doing the videos with a high definition camera
and basic software. Now we’ve upgraded and have
a more robust offer. We’re able to integrate video
into public relations campaigns and demonstrate the
benefit to clients. We’re achieving great results.”
Laura Sutherland, Managing Director, Aura PR, and Director, CIPR
#3COMMUNITY
In my view the development of communities around an organisation in a two-way form of
engagement is the most significant opportunity for modern public relations practice that
we’ve had in more than a generation.
In this way an organisation seeks to build reputation and engagement not only through
third-party influence but also directly via its own media and social forms of media. This
is an increasingly competitive space as other disciplines such as advertising, digital and
creative all vie for budget and work.
The PRCA reported in its recent Digital PR Report (see above) that other disciplines and
in-house experts continue to raise their levels of expertise. Worryingly there has been a
13 per cent growth in firms not using public relations agencies to help with tactical digital
and social work over the last 12 months (five per cent to 18 per cent).
Public relations practitioners have an opportunity to assert their role within organisations.
In my view, two-way dialogue, or conversation to use the modern parlance, is firmly the
domain of public relations.
The typical approach to incorporating new forms of media into public relations campaigns
is to bolt it on as an additional channel; a Facebook page or Twitter account is added to a
programme in the belief that this makes it social.
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This misses a fundamental opportunity. The application of social media in public relations
needs to start from a more basic position. At Ketchum every piece of work is based on a
planning model.
We have access, unlike ever before, to data from social forms of media to help us identify
the media where publics are engaged, and understand their motivation.
The social web is often described as the largest market research exercise that no one ever
commissioned. Increasingly third-party tools are available to cut data sets down to size
and draw insights, and media choices, to inform campaign planning.
“
One of the ways in which public relations agencies
can modernise is by moving into new territory
and the provision of customer insight offers an
opportunity to do this. Consumer insights are
increasingly sought after as the lines between
disciplines blur and public relations consultancies
work to connect clients directly with stakeholders.”
Sarah Hall, Managing Director, Sarah Hall Consulting, and Director, CIPR
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“
Research should be part of our arsenal, however this is no longer
enough. If brands really are to have conversations with their markets,
they need hard and fast data to inform appropriate interaction and to
demonstrate their relevance to the customer. A big challenge is how
we demonstrate that this service should now sit with public relations
and how we secure appropriate budget.”
Planning is increasingly an important function in public relations to enable insights to
be drawn from data to inform campaign strategies that are aligned to organisational
objectives. It also enables rigorous measurement criteria to be set to evaluate and
measure campaign activity.
AMEC’s Valid Metrics Framework (opens as a PDF) should always form the basis for
communication measurement and evaluation.
A series of templates describe every type of public relation campaign and call on
practitioners to align objectives with those of the organisation and set not only outputs,
but critically outcomes, for every area of a campaign.
As we continue to work through the planning model the next two significant areas
of development in modern public relations are the development of content, and the
management of modern forms of media.
I’ve already acknowledged the shift from text to multimedia content including photos,
images and video. I’d urge you to use your mobile phone to explore how to create and use
each of these types of content.
Next there’s the media. The modern public relations practitioner is a community manager
helping to facilitate and curate conversations across owned communities such as apps, a
website or wiki, and platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Pinterest.
Commercial networks and platforms also demand an understanding of paid media.
Advertising and the promotion of content is critical if you want to optimise the reach of
your content in these forms of media.
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“
It is no surprise that paid media is an attractive prospect for
agencies – both strategically and financially. But we can’t expect to
waltz into this complex field and succeed without earning our stripes.
So we need to prove ourselves and earn our place at the table.
We need to show how we can bring the unique benefits of traditional
public relations thinking to paid media.”
Danny Whatmough, Chair of the PRCA Digital Group
and Head of Digital, Consumer EMEA, Weber Shandwick
This shift to an organisation participating in a community is the biggest communication
change that organisations face in the coming decade, as they seek to modernise their
communication teams and engagement with public relations agencies. It requires teams
to be reorganised and aligned with the planning, and demands new skills to be added to
existing teams.
#4SOCIAL BUSINESS
Whenever an organisation creates a new channel it will very quickly be discovered by
publics or audiences as a means to engage with the organisation.
Promotional social channels very quickly become hijacked by customers wanting to call
out customer service woe. Any gap between the expectation of a product or service, and
the reality, will generate a conversation on the social web.
As the PRCA’s Digital PR Report 2014 (see above) shows, public relations expertise no
longer falls solely within the domain of a communication team but is required within
every area of an organisation.
This is part of the ongoing shift in organisational communication that removes the line
between external and internal stakeholders.
Organisations are moving beyond the tactical use of social media, to embed social
technologies into their business processes that enable communication, collaboration and
insight into customer, employee, supplier and partner behaviour.
This is open business and it is impacting every area of organisational design. It’s the future
of public relations.
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»» business transformation
I’ve explored the requirements for new skills in each of the areas that I have outlined
above, and the changes that need to be made to modernise.
There are three ways to transform a public relations business or communication team
around digital, depending on the scale and the potential for investment.
•TRAINING
Upskill existing staff to address the opportunities that digital media provides. Having
set a strategy for modernising a team everyone’s learning and development and key
performance indicators should be aligned. This is ultimately the only way to transform an
agency or communication team.
•EMBED
Hire new staff with the skills that your organisation lacks to plug the gaps and work
alongside existing staff. This is a disruptive approach but is often essential to kick start
change and can only ever be a short term strategy. In time everyone in the team must
become digital.
• BUILD OR ACQUIRE
This is a combination of the first two approaches whereby a team of domain experts is
hired to speed change through training and practice. This process can be accelerated
through acquisition but that raises an additional set of challenges in terms of integrating
the new team.
One thing is for sure: communication teams and public relations agencies in the future
will look a lot different to how they have in the past.
“
Despite the demands placed upon practitioners by 24/7 news and
social media, public relations agencies have been surprisingly slow
to introduce flexible working arrangements. Servicing clients around
the clock and employee work-life balance are not mutually exclusive.
Implementing new working arrangements is a sure fire way in which
consultancies can modernise, and quickly,”
Sarah Hall, Managing Director, Sarah Hall Consulting, and Director, CIPR
Teams will be based on the skills that have been outlined here such as research, planning,
content or community management, rather than generalists being the norm. They’ll
almost certainly be flatter and more agile than they have in the past. They’ll have to be in
order to serve the needs of organisations, markets and media.
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CASE STUDY I THE CROWD & I IS LEARNING FROM OTHER INDUSTRIES
UK agency The Crowd & I has taken inspiration from other professions and industries in a
bid to modernise public relations workflow.
Founder and managing director Gemma Griffiths believes that the technology profession
can provide lots of useful lessons.
“Public relations agencies typically plan and report in a very rigid fashion. An agency will
write a detailed three-month plan and report back to the client on a weekly, monthly and
quarterly basis,” said Ms. Griffiths.
She believes parallels can be drawn with how developers used to build a product. Years ago
they would take a brief from a client, go off and build the product and then report back
three months later at the end of the project.
“Now it is best practice in the developer community to adopt an agile method where they build
in iterations and continuously show the product to the client and keep them involved in every
step of process.”
“This means they remain nimble so they can respond quickly to changes or challenges in the
business or in their market. It makes perfect sense for PR professionals to adopt agile planning
methods, as it would mean our campaigns would be more streamlined, relevant and timely.”
CASE STUDY II MODERNISING GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATIONS
In November 2013 the Cabinet Office published an assessment of how digital aspects of
Government communication are planned and executed and how they can be improved.
The Digital Communication Capability Review is a bold piece of work that contains lessons
for both the public and private sector. It’s a manifesto for change that sets out a framework
for modernising and upgrading communication across government in the UK.
The findings, set out in a 24-page document, are consistent with how digital
communication has developed in almost all large organisations.
Pockets of digital expertise exist in specialist teams, communication is often broadcast
and one-way, and digital communication is frequently treated as a risk rather than an
opportunity to improve citizen engagement.
The review sets out a bold ambition and a plan that seeks to nominate digital
communication. Digital forms of communication and engagement should be a core
skill, not a specialism, communication leaders need to work close together to share best
practice, and attitudes to risk need to be balanced with business need.
A work plan sets out objectives and actions for the wholesale upgrade of government
communications.
The review commits to improve access to technology, support change via leadership,
improve skills and training, and address governance.
Source: The Digital Communication Capability Review (2013)
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»» further reading
Far wiser minds than mine have debated the topics that I’ve raised in this article.
Harvard Business Review (HBR) and McKinsey have both published lots about
modernising business around digital and are worth seeking out. I reviewed a paper
published by HBR last year on the future of agency business models.
I highly recommend MIT’s George Westerman’s work on digital transformation. He recently
published a report called The Nine Elements of Digital Transformation based on interviews
with executives at organisations with greater than $1bn sales.
Organisations Don’t Tweet, People Do: A Manager’s Guide to the Social Web by Euan Semple
and The 10 Principles of Open Business: Building Success in Today’s Open Economy by David
Cushman are also good handbooks to reorganising organisations for the future.
I often return to the Cluetrain Manifesto, written in 1999, which predicted all of the
changes that we see in organisational communication. Cluetrain set out a series of 95
theses that predicted the impact of the Internet on markets. It’s a good guide to first
principals.
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»» thank you
My thanks to the following people for reviewing this article and providing input prior to
publication: Ged Caroll, Margaret Clow, Gemma Griffiths, Sarah Hall, Sarah Pinch, Laura
Sutherland and Danny Whatmough.
I’m keen to hear your views on how you are helping to modernise your communication
team or public relations agency. It’s a topic that is going to concern us for at least the next
generation.
ABOUT STEPHEN WADDINGTON
Stephen Waddington is Digital and Social Media Director,
Ketchum Europe, and President of the Chartered Institute of Public
Relations (CIPR). He is a joint author with Steve Earl of Brand Anarchy
and #BrandVandals, and editor and contributor to Share This and
Share This Too. He blogs at wadds.co.uk and tweets @wadds.
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