why China is not too ugly in its political communication

Simon Lewis, the former director of communications for 10 Downing Street Simon Lewis, once was reported to hold the belief that corporate sector had gone further than either political parties or the news media to embrace transparency and his hunch was that the British people would have more influence on politics.


But my belief is that political communication will never catch up with corporate sector anywhere in the world for the reason that politics is simply too complicated to be transparent.


Take China as an example, whose political communication is quite notorious. It is of course very easy to criticize its Great Fire Wall, 50cent Party, and what happen to the human right fighter Ai Weiwei(I am reluctant to consider him as an artist).


I am certainly not at all proud of the above. But if you wear the hat of governor of a vast country with the world’s third largest territory and world’s largest population comprising of 56 ethnic groups, with relatively low and uneven economy and education level, and sharing borders of 14 countries (most in the world along with Russia and that doesn’t include Japan and south Korea which are also important neighbors), and realize there are still more international hostile forces to wrestle with, you will probably feel a bit need to put down pointing fingers and more need to provide helpful suggestions.


It is far from whether politicians are willing to be transparent in communication but rather how to survive from tussling among numerous interest groups, both domestically and internationally. It then not only determines fates of tens, hundreds or thousands of people from several companies, but millions or even billions in China’s case of human beings. There is no political ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but immortal ‘interests’ only.


For background information about 50cent Party and Ai Weiwei:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7783640.stm

Third sector PR in recession

The below sarcastic cartoon on the Economist has reflected some thoughts that during recession firms’ suffering has bolstered the public-relations business. The article illustrated by the cartoon argues that the recession has increased corporate demand for PR and enhanced the industry’s status.

Is it the same case for public relations working for the third sector?

According to The Times, charities have felt the financial squeeze.

Economists predicted in 2009 that organizations that rely on corporate funding will need to ‘brace themselves’ for a drop in donation over the next two years at least.

Birdsong’s Charity Pulse 2010 Sector-wide Staff Survey Report also revealed a fall in charity staff satisfaction. Responses to 58% of the questions have dropped since 2009. 42% are on a par with last year. No areas have improved.

Although the scenario seems grave at the moment for the whole sector, for the sector that’ breathes PR, eats PR, sleeps PR’, I am quietly optimistic for the role and status of PR in this sector during a tough time.

In the time that resources are becoming more limited, effective public relations is even more vital to make the organization’s voice heard and carefully manage relationship with stakeholders to seek support, in aspects from finance to government policy.  Compared with advertising and marketing, public relations is relatively cheaper when the influence can be enormous via right channels to reach audience such as media outlets and key opinion leaders. The rise of the Internet and social media has also given n third PR a big boost, a platform with easy access to reach and interact with targeted audience in an engaging way.

Public Relations and NGO sector in UK

View more presentations from Gunjan W

Reference:

http://www.economist.com/node/15276746?story_id=15276746

http://www.csg.org.uk/PDF/Charity%20Pulse%202010%20Report%20-%20Recession%20Bites.pdf

Birth Defect of Spin Doctor

Spin-doctors are almost equaled to public relations practitioners, especially who work for political communications, by journalists.

Although some PR practitioners argue that journalists should be the owner of the honorable title rather than themselves, sadly we have to admit that PR professionals had a congenital disadvantage that PR guys work for a certain interest group. When it comes to political communicators, they are even more susceptible to being accused of spinning for the simple and natural reason that they only speak for a small group of people instead of for the common good. While journalists, the king without crown, are considered to be representing interests of more general publics.

That is why we can see the innovative separated two posts of Prime Minister's Official Spokesperson and Director of Communications. We then ‘have somebody who does the Civil Service bit and who is preeminent and then you have somebody who does the political bit that the civil servant cannot do’.

This is new to me as someone from a mono-party autocracy. And the civil servant Director of Communications is almost like a judge in the court, making final judgment while spokespersons representing their own client (political party in this case) make their own statements.

And yet even the ‘judge’ is still referred to as Spin Doctor. So the profession (if I can call it a profession) is desperate in getting rid of the honorable crown (oh we have a crown too!)? Or is it just that it is too convenient weapon for journalists?

Never mind then. After all, media have their defect too as being partisan, which also amazes me. The reputation gap is even larger when they are expected to be more objective when they are not necessarily like that.

Plan for the Worst

There is one thing that organizations should always prepare for but never want it to come: Crisis.

Researches tend to show that organizations that get themselves ready for potential crisis will lessen the damage of a crisis. On the other hand, when organizations only passively respond to crises, potential opportunities may be over-shadowed by damage of the crisis. (Nudell and Antokol,  1988)

Proactive planning may include mechanisms for determining possible crises and analyzing situation, procedures to follow (checklist) during a crisis, appointment of a crisis management team, development of a communication plan, and policies for evaluating and revising the plan.

Communication strategy to deliver accurate information available in time is top priority in a crisis. To prepare,key steps include developing a communication policy, assigning and training spokespersons, identifying key audiences and key messages, and agreeing on appropriate communication methods before a crisis occurs. Pre-draft and approved messages and templates including statements by top management, news releases, etc. are also strongly recommended to save time, which is extremely scarce in crises.

One thing to note is that not all problems deserve equal attentions. In crisis planning, it is important to have a alert state and triggering response system to assess different level of threats to mobilize managers at different levels accordingly to focus on things most relevant to them. Do not mobilize resources that far exceed a requirement, as this will quickly fatigue the crisis management responses. Burnett’s Crisis Classification Matrix is a tool to improve decision making by revealing and prioritizing various crisis situations that an organization may need to confront, allowing for the proper allocation of resources.

To have a look at a sample communication plan: 

http://www.instituteforpr.org/topics/crisis-management-and-communications/

Reference:

Nudell,M., and Antokol,N.1988,The Handbook for Effective Emergency and Crisis Management, Toronto: Lexington Books.

Penrose,J. 2000, The role of perception in crisis planning, Public Relations Review.

Are the Publics Really Targeted?

PR practitioners have various tools to segment and analyze the publics, such as Grunig’s situational theory, Bernstein’s wheel, Broom and Dozier’s 9 ways to segment stakeholders,etc. The goal is to get across messages that organizations want to send out via segmented media channels to targeted audiences.

Public relations professionals are often the ones to suggest segmented media channels to reach segmented stakeholders, where

media proliferation driven technology has fragmented the market greatly.

Below is the photo showing how consumers choice for media has mushroomed until 2006, which is already significant when explosion of new media such as streamed broadcasting, podcasts, user-generated media hasn't been take into account.

PR practitioners, like many advertisers, often base their media decisions (whether in part or comprehensively) on differentiation claims of the media. But are media as targeted as they claim?

In Nelson-Field and Riebe’s (2011) journal on the impact of media fragmentation on audience targeting, they found that media are not successful in delivering the audience they claim they do because ‘audiences are not as segmented, nor are they as niche, as media owners suggest’. Their research suggests that media fragmentation just delivers smaller audiences instead of highly differentiated ones.

This is obviously not encouraging news for the industry. But it could be an implication for corporate that at the end of the day, we could be less bothered and distracted to target so loosely called niche media but focus on more trustworthiness of media channels, which are an all-time crucial.

Reference:Nelson-Field,K. and Riebe,K.,2011,The impact of media fragmentation on audience targeting:A generalization approach,Journal of Marketing Communication.

A World with Social Media

Ladies and gentlemen,please let me introduce to you 'social media' in a way that I try not to be too boring. Some video clips edited are from the Internet for creativity purpose. No copy rights infringement intended. Enjoy!