Philip Sheldrake

How dare they!

// April 5th, 2013 // No Comments » // Digital Media Relations, Public Relations, Website/New Media

[Written originally for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

You should not make edits to a Wikipedia entry when you have a conflict of interest, as any PR practitioner does in relation to their employer or client. Simple.

This Wikipedia rule is reflected precisely in the CIPR's Wikipedia guidance, published by the social media panel last summer and supported by PR bodies in Canada, Australia and South Africa. (Although not yet in the US.) (more...)

‘Masterclass’ at Bournemouth University

// March 4th, 2013 // No Comments » // Public Relations

Professor Tom Watson (@tomwatson1709, @historyofpr) invited me to deliver a 'masterclass' lecture at Bournemouth University on Friday. (When asked about PR higher education in the UK, most people would mention Bournemouth and Leeds Metropolitan.)

Student elections were at fever pitch, and there was a real energy about campus. The students at The Media School were on top form – in fact, I usually only get the calibre of questions they threw at me days or weeks after someone has digested my book or a presentation. So thanks to everyone who attended and participated.

HT to @lauramanninen, @kbadders, @hannaherowley, @edinjel, @JessicaNorthPR, @lottsGC, @FleurieFM, @morellopr, @BenjaminDeacon.

Here's the stack.

Dell Social Media Predictions 2013

// March 1st, 2013 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations

I enjoy Full Gesture Communication™ in Unaugmented Reality™ (#fauxtrademarks). As amazing as social media is becoming, it's still no full substitute for eye-to-eye interaction. I met the co-founding CTO of Yammer this week, Adam Pisoni, and our conversation came to life immediately in a way that I don't believe would be as easy to kindle pixel-to-pixel.

Here's an interesting question I think. Can you distinguish in your mind the kinds of online relationships you have with people you see physically from time to time from those you've yet to meet? I believe you probably can, and probably do.

This topic just cropped up again for me this morning. It may be a sixth of the way through 2013, but Dell has just published a little slidestack quoting some pundits, including yours truly, on some development aspects of social media this year. Geoff Livingston is quoted as saying: "I really believe in events. Online becomes much more substantial when someone meets you face to face. Try to create ways to meet your stakeholders in person so you can cultivate a deeper substantial relationship."

Do you think digital technologies can help crack this nut? How? When?

Social Media Predictions for 2013 from Dell Social Media

GREAT (PR)ODUCT

// February 22nd, 2013 // 3 Comments » // Public Relations

I have asked six people with senior positions in techie professions who they thought "does great PR" in the tech sector. Now these individuals are not in marketing and PR functions, so you'll forgive my casual turn of phrase I hope.

You might know I detest the idea that you might "PR something", as if PR is as tactical and atomic as picking up the phone or putting a release on a wire, but I deliberately didn't wish to infect them with my view of public relations excellence. I wanted to hear what they'd say unprompted, unguided.

Each proffered two or three companies. Samsung and IBM were mentioned twice. Google thrice. But out front with four mentions was Apple.

Now anyone who follows the world's first or second largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization (it swaps places regularly with Exxon Mobil) will know that they're actually quite a secretive bunch. Steve Jobs infected the company with the idea that it knows what's best for the customer, and any idea that it should work with the rest of us in defining future products and services appears plain counter-cultural.

If you, like me, define public relations as pursuing mutual understanding to build goodwill, the PR function at Apple appears quite asymmetric. As and when it suits its agenda, they'll tell you. Otherwise get back in line. End of. I always feel a reluctance on Apple's part to discuss its contractors' labour practices, its own environmental and business practices, and the occasional product mess up. (more...)

A Measure Of Influence – IABC Communication World magazine

// January 28th, 2013 // No Comments » // Digital Media Relations, Measurement & Analysis, Public Relations

Jessica Burnette-Lemon is Senior Editor of Communication World, the IABC's member magazine. I had the pleasure of talking with Jessica on the topical and some might say controversial topic of influence (in the context of marketing and PR of course).

The resultant article appears in the current issue of the magazine, but because it's a publication for members' eyes only, I can't add a link here.

Fortunately, Jessica has given me permission to reproduce the article right here, "A Measure Of Influence" (PDF). I hope you find it interesting.

The article pulls out one quote up front. At the risk of stating the obvious:

The best way to exert useful influence remains to deliver great products and services so that your customers evangelize your brand to friends and family, and to be a well-run organization so that your employees and partners evangelize working with you.

Do you believe it?

// January 18th, 2013 // No Comments » // Public Relations

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

The 2007 report from the Arthur W. Page Society, The Authentic Enterprise, identified four new leadership priorities and skills demanded of the Chief Communications Officer:

• Leadership in defining and instilling company values
• Leadership in building and managing multi-stakeholder relationships
• Leadership in enabling the enterprise with ‘new media’ skills and tools; and
• Leadership in building and managing trust, in all its dimensions.

The report marked the beginning of a rethink at the Society that culminated last year in Building Belief: A New Model.

I'm a fan of the Society and made sure to reference the four leadership priorities in my book The Business of Influence. I'm slightly obsessed with defining the role, skills and traits of CCOs, if only because this matter appears to be mission critical when it comes to making an organisation fit for the 21st Century. If you share this interest, do take time to familiarise yourself with Building Belief if you haven't already done so.

As we approach the first anniversary of Building Belief, I'm very interested in gathering reports of the model in practice, particularly as it complements aspects of the Six Influence Flows model. If you have a story to tell in this regard, do please drop me a line.

Arthur W. Page Society Chairman, Jon Iwata, on Building Belief

CIPR TV on journalism, PR and the Leveson Inquiry

// December 6th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations

I hosted the CIPR TV show on the Leveson Inquiry on Monday. As you may have seen, I wrote about the inquiry for last week's CIPR Friday Roundup, a day after the publication of the inquiry's report – Public relations and the 'ethical vacuum'.

Our guests were Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, and Jane Wilson, CIPR CEO.

Social business webinar with Jay Krall, Cision’s Media Research Supremo

// December 6th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations, Social business, Technology

The Cision webinar on 8th November was dedicated to social business, and I was delighted to be the guest in the hot seat. It was great to be able to chat with Jay Krall and answer questions from listeners about the impact of social web and related technologies on organizational structure, culture, process and performance measurement this decade.

I've known Jay since we started following each other online several years ago now, and he took part in an Influence Scorecard workshop I ran in New York in 2010. His contributions were invaluable then, and London is better off for having persuaded Jay to upsticks from Chicago. And if ever there was a guy with the most fabulous radio voice...

The webinar is now available on Soundcloud.

Public Relations and the “ethical vacuum”

// November 30th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations

[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

"Too many stories in too many newspapers were the subject of complaints from too many people, with too little in the way of titles taking responsibility." Newspapers have often demonstrated "a significant and reckless disregard for accuracy" and "misrepresentation and embellishment takes place to a degree far greater than could ever be thought of as legitimate or fair comment."

I've just read the Leveson Inquiry, published yesterday and running to nearly two thousand pages. These quotes come from the forty page executive summary. For those of you beyond the UK's shores, the Inquiry is about the freedom of the press in both the positive and negative manifestations of that expression, with a focus on how we can attenuate the negative.

The UK enjoys a pluralistic media of which other countries are rightly envious, and a free press is central to our national identity. The report quotes Sir Winston Churchill: "A free press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that free men prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny ... Under dictatorship the press is bound to languish ... But where free institutions are indigenous to the soil and men have the habit of liberty, the press will continue to be the Fourth Estate, the vigilant guardian of the rights of the ordinary citizen."

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The CIPR Friday Roundup +/- 5 years

// October 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Public Relations, Website/New Media

[Originally written, obviously, for the CIPR Friday Roundup.]

The Kardashians first appeared in October 2007 just as it was becoming difficult to get a mortgage. I don't believe the two were related. I also sent out the first Friday Roundup... to eleven recipients.

Five years and 250 editions later (missing out the festive seasons), it's gone out to 9345 of you, which is fantastic. But let's look at some more interesting October 2007 facts, spanning the full gamut of topics we've covered here for PR professionals.

Facebook had just passed the thirty million user mark, approaching half that reported by MySpace. There were 350,000 of us on Twitter and ten million odd on LinkedIn – now half a billion and 175 million respectively.

There was no Kindle, no Android, no tablets, and no Justin Bieber. Nokia was number one in mobile phones, bigger than numbers 2, 3 and 4 combined. The Blackberry 8800 and the very first iPhone were the executive must-haves.

There was no FourSquare, Groupon, Pinterest, Instagram, Angry Birds, Prezi, Quora, Spotify, Mendeley, Blippar, Dropbox, Tweetdeck or Google+. And these were pre-Chatroulette days too, and pre-Barcelona principles come to that.

(more...)