How's your day so far?

How many of you work for an
organisation whose name, products or brands were mentioned in the
newspaper this morning? And I don’t mean in advertisements.

And for ‘in the newspaper,’ I also mean on Morning Report or on Holmes on NewsTalkZB

Is that ok? Is it a good thing?

What
was it about? A pressure group or a regulator criticizing you, or it
was it a positive news story, which projected favourably your brand
values and positioning?

How many of you work for
organisations whose products, services, brands and perhaps your
corporate values, were mentioned this morning in comparison to one or
more of your competitors?

 

Did you get your share of the story, and did the quote come out right?

How
many of you work for organisations that weren’t mentioned at all this
morning anywhere. Perhaps that’s been the case all week, perhaps it's
the case most of the time.

 

Is that ok? Or do you
really want to be out there slaying dragons, undermining competitors,
defending brand values, projecting your positioning.  Perhaps your CEO
has the idea that that’s what she or he is paying you for as a
communicator.

 

Well, don’t relax, because I am going to rattle your cage a bit more this morning.

 

I
don’t assume that being in the media or not being in the media is a
good thing or a bad thing. I think that conclusion needs to be reached
on the evidence, and judged against on your strategy, what you are
trying to achieve.

 

I’m going to cover four areas
this morning. First, I want to talk about why organisations would want
to be in the media, and some reasons why not.

Secondly, I
want to ask and answer the question what is a media strategy? Although
this may seem amazingly obvious, I am going to argue that the
definition and approach is often wrong.

Thirdly, I’ll share
with you the results of a small survey I conducted among professional
communicators about their experiences with the news media.

 

And finally I’ll discuss a new and emerging form of media in this country.

Greatness – or, well at least it’s in the paper

 

As Malvolio says in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. ( ii V)

I think that’s a good starting point for thinking about media strategy.

Because
it seems to me that some organisations simply attract coverage because
they are interesting, important or useful. In short they are born great.

 

Examples
of this are Parliament, the courts, and sporting events. As citizens,
consumers and fans we want to know what’s going on. So there is a
steady stream of stories.

 

A second group comprises
those that achieve greatness. These are organisations that have climbed
to prominence in our public life and in our consciousness by diligent
effort, or because of their service, history, brand building and the
like.

 

There are heaps of examples here, from the ASB
and the Warehouse in business, to the Silver Ferns and the Halberg
Trust in sport, from the Cancer Society and Daffodil Day and IHC in the
community, and political parties and personalities in public life.

 

They
speak and generally we listen. They get coverage because they have
something to say and that’s respected and understood, although that
may not always have been the case. The profile and the stranding are
earned.

 

For others prominence goes with the territory.
If you are Telecom, the Auckland DHB, or Air New Zealand, then media
questions and media coverage are coming at you all the time….it is
thrust upon you.

 

So how you organise yourself to
address media is first and foremost a function of what kind of
organisation you are, and of what is your strategic position.

 

Being
in the media may or may not be good for you. Being in the media may or
may not count as success. I for one do not believe that media coverage
is necessarily good, or bad. It might be either.

 

My
real point here is that developing a media strategy begins with a sound
and realistic appraisal and understanding of what you are, and that
what you are both imposes both constraints and creates opportunities.

 

Media Strategy – that looks nice, can you make me one too please?

A
few months ago, I mentioned the term media strategy to a group of
franchisees, and one of them asked me a very obvious question. What is
a media strategy, what does it look like?

. This is my idea, you may have other versions, but I think a media strategy

 

           
defines the way an organisation manages what it does and how it does it
in relation to the news media, having analyzed opportunities and
threats, and allocates responsibilities, and resources accordingly

So
it’s about relationships, responsibilities, and resources. It’s
about audiences, strategies and activities. And it’s all deliberate.

To
start the process of developing a media strategy one begins with the
question, NOT how important is the news media to this organisation, but
its direct opposite, how important is this organisation to the news
media?

 

This puts the focus on seeing the media as
a possible channel through which to communicate, not as a channel
through which one must communicate, or try to communicate.

In
the 1980s, when I first began work in public relations, the news media
would almost always be ranked highly among the list of target
audiences. We saw them as both message carriers to key audiences and as
important audiences in their own right. And that meant that there was a
lot of attention paid to their needs.

I suspect that customers and perhaps the regulators would get the most attention these days.

If
the answer to the question… how important is this organisation to the
news media …..is that your organisation is at the completely
unimportant end of the spectrum, then over half your work is done.

Forget
about using the media as a channel, unless you come up with the unusual
or the bizarre angle, in which case you might get some coverage. But if
you do, it’s hardly likely to be on message, or to reflect your
brand, values or positioning is it?

Second question: what
kind of an opportunity does the news media present to communicate with
your key audiences and your stakeholders?

If the answer is
that it doesn’t present much of an opportunity (which is not to say
it’s no opportunity at all), then using the media as a channel
doesn’t look like a great option.  (At a practical level, I have
discussed this further in a piece published in the New Zealand
Herald’s  The Pitch column. It’s attached as an appendix)

Ask
instead who are the people and bodies that are most important to you to
reach and why. Then go to the how. If the media, or any part of it,
come up as important or useful under that approach, then, and only
then, do you need to consider the matter further.

All right,
but what about when the media comes to you? Surely we need to be
prepared?  Yes you do. Ask, in your organisation, under what
circumstances could we be in the media spotlight, and what plans do we
want to put in place about that.

Robberies, fires and
accidents are all obvious examples of how a quite innocuous business
can be suddenly and dramatically thrust into the spotlight. There will
be others: product failure, service breakdown.

So you need a
contingency plan. And the staff need to know who is able to speak for
the company. In simple terms you need a situation analysis and a crisis
communication plan, and all that goes with those plans. But you may
need not much more than that.

If the media aren’t
interested in your business, in the ordinary course of events, then I
don’t think this is, or should be, a major source of communicator
angst or corporate despair.

Look to who is important to you,
and communicate with them, by whatever means, and at whatever times and
places that they find acceptable and useful, which you can execute and
are affordable.

Jack Welch of General Electric fame said that
there were only three things worth measuring, customer satisfaction,
staff morale and cash flow. I agree.

And by analogy talk to
the audiences that are important to you. Communicate with them directly
where possible, and unless you are a Telecom or a Meridian, a
contingency plan based on a realistic issues management plan and a good
crisis communication plan may be all you need.

If you are
constantly dealing with the news media then your planning and
organisation need to be entirely different, and they will necessarily
be more complex, involve many more resources and be based on an issues
management approach or a relationship management plan. Other speakers
will address those in much more detail than I have time to do.

The Survey – all is not well in PR City

In
preparing this paper I developed some hypotheses based on my own and
others observations of what was happening between communications
professionals and the journalists.

I refer to a study
published in the National Business Review earlier this year, and my own
response to it. This paper is attached as an appendix, and also
available on my website.

 Jonathon Dodd in the NBR reported a study of journalists that found:

most of the journalists in the survey rated the PR people they dealt with as “adequate, basic and functional�

a majority said PR people told the truth “only when it suits�

PR people need to improve their knowledge and appreciation of news values and news formats

“If
there is one thing the PR industry could do to improve its game, it
would be to stop insulting the public with bullshit or lies of
omission.�

and

“Some PRs are excellent – the majority are hopeless.�

One
of the lessons I have learnt as a professional communicator when
dealing with the news media is that it pays to think like a journo. And
therefore I wonder if the introduction of public relations and
marketing communications and the like as separate courses at university
and polytechs has created a class of person for whom PR is not a
possible career choice after journalism. It is the career choice from
the beginning, and journalism and its values has nothing to do with it

However
I wanted to inquire further. So I developed a questionnaire to test
agreement with some propositions and sent this to a wide range of PR
people on my database.

I don’t purport that this is a fully
scientific survey, but I was surprised by the extent to which the
sample of about 80 agreed on some issues, and by the extent to which
they were divided on others.

The survey results show that
there is considerable disquiet among communications professionals about
what the mainstream media report and on their attitude to approaches
about stories, angles and coverage.

 

The survey was conducted online in the first week of September and said:

Assume
that you are working as a communications professional doing media
relations, public relations and marketing communications. Please give
your level of agreement or disagreement with each of the following five
statements on a scale of one to ten, where 1 is completely disagree, 5
is neutral and 10 is strongly agree

Question
One                      If you are working for a small company in a
minor industry then the mainstream media are not likely to be very
interested unless your story is about something really unusual or is
otherwise interesting to their general readers

There was very
strong agreement with this statement – much more than I thought would
have been the case. The average score was  8.4

Virtually all the scores were in the eight, nine and ten range. There were only two scores below five.

What
this tells me is that if you are small, unexciting and doing your job,
then you’ll be ignored unless you have something unusual. From a
journalist’s point of view this is called news judgment.

From a PR person’s perspective, I am thinking that I am not going to promise positive media coverage to many of my clients

Question
Two                      If you are working for a company in a highly
competitive industry whose products and services are commonly used,
your approaches to mainstream media will be seen as commercially driven
or self interested.

Again there were very high levels of agreement with this statement – almost as high as for the first statement.

Virtually
all the scores were in the eight, nine and ten area. The lowest score
was six and there were only a couple of them.  The average score was 8.3

 

Journalists
would seem to believe that the media statements made by companies that
were strongly competing with others were about competitive advantage
not about informing the general public. Would they be right or wrong
about that?

 

Question Three       If you are
working for a cause that does not have any special interest group or
commercial party opposed to it, media coverage is easier to get when
you use events, personalities to support your cause.

Again
there was a high level of agreement with this statement. Only a handful
of the answers were below six. The average score was 8.0

 

These
are the “nice� causes, which compete for attention and are rewarded
with fat caption stories about their events. Publicity not news.

 

Question
Four         If you are working for a central government agency
(whether in Wellington or not), mainstream media are more interested in
the failures and mistakes of your agency than in the successes.

This question generated the highest second highest level of agreement of the five questions I asked.

Only a couple of answers were at five or below, and most in the nine/ten area. The average score was 8.3

Does this mean that the mainstream media are interested mainly in bad news?

Failure,
disaster, slackness, stupidity, crime and greed are always news, and
that’s what the purveyors of good news have always had to contend
with.

Personally I don’t see any evidence that the battle
to get good news published in mainstream media is any harder or easier
than it ever has been.

Over the years there have been many
comments about our willingness in New Zealand to knock each other,
about the tall poppy syndrome, and that the highest compliment one can
pay in NZ is to say that something is �not bad�

However
there does seem to me to be a culture where people tolerate slackness,
and then they act horrified when the “crimes� are discovered, and
demand severe retribution.

Whatever is happening, it is clear
that communicators find it hard to get their organisations credit for
doing well, but feel that there’s always plenty of buzzards around a
corpse. This level of cynicism and mistrust is not going to encourage
mutual or professional respect.

 

Question
Five                      Using communications tools and channels that
I control (eg our own newsletter) give me better results with our
audiences than going through mainstream media.

There were
high levels of agreement with this statement. Scores were commonly in
the six, seven eight range. There were only a handful of nine and tens,
although only a few scores below five.  The average score was 6.9,
which is high, but not, I think, overwhelming.

The response says two things to me:

Rather
than relying on the mainstream media as primary carriers of an
organisation’s messages, many organisations are creating their own
media for the very reasons that one creates media; you control the
content, format, image, tone and manner, frequency and expense.

If
this is so, and you aren’t relying on the mainstream media as primary
message carriers, then their importance to you as a corporate
communicator is reduced. Perhaps almost to the point that you don’t
want or don’t need your messages in there at all, except to the
extent that you cannot avoid being there.

This might apply,
for instance, because you are a government department and have to
produce a statement of intent, and an annual report, or if you are a
local authority which has to do a district plan, set rates and consult
on just about anything important that you want to do or build.

If
this is your position, I think you must be very tempted to regard the
news media as things and people you would rather not deal with, or will
deal with because you have to.

Secretly you want them to
write as little as possible about you as infrequently as possible,
unless of course it is very positive stuff – in which case, bring it
on.

This kind of attitude leads to a risk management
approach, where one’s exposure and appearances are carefully managed,
not so much in order to project positively, but more to avoid the
consequences of a failure. Putting out the news release and answering
questions for reporters is one thing, even being on Checkpoint or Larry
Williams is ok. But the real internal debate starts when the producer
of the Holmes show rings. Should we go on?

And what are the
dimensions of the debate; they’re not about informing the public,
discussing the key issues, or rebutting the opposition. The key
dimension, so often is about the risk to the organisation of appearing
(or not appearing)

The risk management approach does not
foster trust and respect between professional communicator and
journalist. And it does not because it cannot. They two co-exist, but
there’s no love.

Who do you love?

 

In the
next batch of question, which were much more open ended, I asked people
to nominate programmes, organisations and people they admired. Let’s
have a look at the results

 

Question Six                        Which news media publication or programme produced in New Zealand do you most admire?

Morning
Report and the Sunday Star Times got the most mentions, but there were
many others who were admired. The New Zealand Herald, TVNZ’s
Assignment programme, which doesn’t exist any longer, and 3 News all
had supporters. North and South, the Listener, the DominionPost and
Unlimited also got mentions.

 

Question Seven      Which news media publication or programme produced in New Zealand do you least admire?

Here
there was a clear winner, and a close second. Holmes took the top award
for least admired, and the Sunday News and Truth were second. Others to
get a mention were 3 News, 20/20, National Radio, the Listener, NBR,
Sunday Star Times and an interesting programme called ALL TV

Question Eight        Which organisation in New Zealand represents for you best practice in its external communications?

Respondents
had difficulty with this. Very few organisations were mentioned, and
I’ll give you the list in a moment. However quite a number of
respondents said none, as opposed to simply leaving the box blank.
There was no requirement in the survey to answer this or any other
question, so I felt that actively writing in ‘none’ was a message
in itself.

The organisations named were as follows: Tourism
NZ, Hubbard’s, Air New Zealand, Telecom, Meridian Energy, Public
Trust, and MAF.

 

Question Nine                     Which professional communicator working in New Zealand do you most admire?

Many
respondents could not or did not answer this. Some nominated their own
Chief Executive or their chief communications person.  I did not
discern any clear pattern, although no one wrote none. Boxes
unpopulated were left blank, in contrast to the last question.

I’ll
read you the list of people named. None of them had much greater
support than any of the others. Here’s the list. George Hickton,
Gordon Chesterman, Ralph Norris, Michael Player, Alan Seay, Jim
Hopkins, Carolyn McCombs, Rob Crabtree, John Bishop, Tony Johnson, Jim
Greenhough, Brett Sangster, Susan Wood, John Campbell, Tracey Bridges
and David Russell.

It’s difficult to know just what to make of that list.

 

Question Ten                       Which journalist working in New Zealand do you most admire?

There
was a clear winner here, someone who was favoured more often than
anyone else, and that was Simon Collins. In his wake and in no
particular order, others to get a mention were Craig Howie, who has
just gone to PR, Daniel Gilhooly, Kent Atkinson of NZPA, Finlay
MacDonald, Vernon Small, Rob Harley, Bob McNeil, Andrew Keoghan, Philip
Kitchin, Cameron Bennett, Simon Hendery, John Armstrong and Colin James.

The
list is a bit short of representation from radio and television, but
with the small number of nominations I don’t want to make a big deal
out of that.

So what’s next

What’s next, I think, is less reliance on the news media to carry key organisational messages to mass audiences, but

more intense activity to try and do this when organisations can get their messages through, or believe that they can

the
skepticism, rivalry, cynicism and sniping that characterises relations
between journalists and professional communicators will continue, The
attitudes shown in the survey are evidence of that

more reliance
on media and channels that organisations control in order to get their
messages to their audiences. I think that will be the big mover in the
next five years

more “management� of media, in the sense that
access is controlled, the amount of information let out is controlled
and responses to inquiries will be carefully crafted. Organisations
that have to be in the media will take a risk management approach
seeking to minimize risk and “manage� exposure.

Let’s run our own media

If
communications professionals are not relying on the mainstream media,
or at least relying on them less than previously, what are they doing
to get their message across.

I think I have found one answer, and it’s an old answer in a new guise. Create you own vehicle.

We all get stuff in our letterboxes – right? Not just letters and bills, but other stuff that we may or may not want.

It’s
promotional material: offering anything from the house next door, or a
kitten to a good home, to advertising the local stores, or soliciting
work for a handyman.

The Farmers, the Warehouse, Briscoes,
Placemakers, MitreTen, Harvey Norman, New World, Woolworths, Foodtown,
Countdown and Pak'n'Save and pizza companies regularly fill my mailbox
(and then my rubbish bin.)

However there’s a new type of
publication turning up in mailboxes, and its message is rather
different from the usual ‘buy this now’.

It’s not a pure product message, nor is it the more subtle refinement, the ‘informational’ brochure.

I
call it organisational media for want of a better term. These are
publications, and they come through the mailbox, but they are not about
selling a product or service, directly or indirectly.

Local authorities, and water and power suppliers have been publishing organisational media in various parts of the country.

I
got two such publications delivered to my home just recently – one
from the regional council, the other from the city council, the latter
sixteen pages in full colour, thirty positive stories with forty
pictures.

Organisational media has some specific
characteristics. It’s free. It’s targeted only in the sense that
everyone in the target audience (all households in this case) gets a
copy.

The message, tone and content are absolutely controlled
by the sender. The communication is intended to develop a positive
image of the organisation rather than to ‘sell� anything, so
there’s no call to action as in the buy now promotions.

The
communication is passive. The organisation determines what it wants to
tell you. It’s based on their desire to communicate with you, not on
your expressed need to know.

It’s about building image more
than providing information. It’s very specifically about only the
organisation and its activities, and it’s overwhelmingly positive in
content and appearance.

Manipulative? Probably. And it’s
usually done with your money. If challenged, the organisation will say
that surveys showed that the public wanted more communications, “so
that’s what we are doing.�

I think we are going to see a
lot more of that kind of thing over the next few years.  Communications
professionals, and particularly their big sisters the marketing
professionals are under pressure to show results – better ratings in
the corporate image surveys, more brand loyalty, higher repeat sales,
more bookings, sales, and more trading up and extras bought,
everything, more often and at a lower unit cost per sale.

If the news media are a channel for doing that effectively for your organisation – good luck to you.

Because
I think sales, revenue and margins are what the game will be about, and
that while news media, journalists and PR people are players, but not
the only players.

Conclusions - or all’s well that ends?

 

Let
me conclude with a variation on the quotation from Twelfth Night. The
American wit Daniel J. Boorstinrearranged Malvolio to say

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.�

The
relationship between journalists and professional communicators will be
an enduring topic of conversation in the professions.

John Bishop - Communicator

32 Disley Street

Highbury

Wellington 6005

Tel 04 475 8650

Mob 025 482 247

email
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www.johnbishop.co.nz

Appendices

Journalists and PR people; both often wanting

(published in the National Business Review 30 April 2004)

So the majority of PR's are hopeless according to journalists. Well, many journalists are just as hopeless. Fortunately not all.

Far
be it from me to defend the public relations industry, for I share many
of the opinions voiced by the journalists in Jonathon Dodd's survey
(NBR 23 April 2004).

When I was running a PR shop our company
took the view that our people had to understand corporate and marketing
strategy, the dynamics of the sectors in which their most important
clients operated, and to possess at least one of the technical skills
of the profession - that is writing, design, DM, advertising, the web -
to a high degree.

In addition they had to be able to speak,
present and service clients properly. Knowledge gaps were met by
training. We ran in house courses with an MBA lecturer on strategy and
corporate finance. It made a big difference because the consultants'
business skills matched those of the clients, and the consultants could
talk knowledgably with media and stakeholders.

Equally I
would not want to over-praise journalists by comparison. Most are keen
to do a good job for their readers, viewers and listeners. But if there
is one single common fault among journalists it is that they don't know
enough.

What they don't know is how policy regimes,
strategies and administrative structures work. That means it's hard to
put facts and events in a context that advances the public's knowledge.
It's not their fault. You don't get taught that stuff in communications
and journalism courses.

Senior business executives and
government officials have often remarked to me that reports on the TV
news show little understanding of policy issues. "When I know about an
issue and see how little of it is revealed in a typical news report, I
question how much I am really being told in the other items."

There
are exceptions among journalists: Rae Lamb is one because she makes the
effort to understand policy issues. Most of the others just deal with
the flashpoints.

Recently I surveyed a panel of journalists
and public relations professionals - all of them former journalists. I
asked two questions.

One, what was the most common mistake people made when they are being interviewed?

The
replies were interesting: The journalists talked of dishonesty,
evasion, lies, and being deceptive. The communications people talked of
lack of preparation.  Journalists said "number one would be attempted
evasion, closely followed by use of bureaucratic jargon or management
talk" and "misleading, obfuscating, failing to give a straight answer,
lying, call it what you will."

Secondly, what made a person a good interview subject?

According
to the journalists "A good interview subject is someone who can
encapsulate information in a very compact format, who speaks with
colour and idiom, and who knows their subject back to front." And
"having a clear message, with facts and figures to back it up, but more
importantly honesty."

The advisors talked of "a good
interviewee, in command of their subject, will be able to translate
complex issues into very simple language that is accessible to any
audience. If it's a TV interview the person needs to look the part, and
as preparation referred to "going through likely questions,
particularly the difficult ones and settling on some key messages.�

Personally
as a journalist I always preferred to talk to an interview subject who
was prepared, and on radio and television I also preferred people who
tailored their answers to my needs. That means that gives bite sized
answers which make a point. Long rambles don't do anyone a favour.

Advisors
also referred to the pride and arrogance that went with the "I can wing
this" attitude, and to the belief of their principals that what they
had to say was important to the media. Often it isn't, which I think
accounts for a lot of the sheer blather generated by organisational
publicity machines.

Journalists and PR people would likely
get on better if the PR people could curb their management's will to
over-communicate, and to coach them into how to communicate better.
Likewise journalists need to learn more about the way industry,
government and societal mechanisms operate so they report and interpret
more fulsomely.

Talking to the media: opportunity or risk?

(published in the New Zealand Herald 29 April 2004)

After speaking in public, talking to the media is one of people's greatest fears.

Many
otherwise well performing managers and professionals stumble and fail,
but success is easier if you follow some simple rules.

The
first and greatest mistake is to think that you have to talk to a
reporter because one calls you for comment, or asks you to appear on a
programme.

 

Flattered - perhaps. Obliged? No.

There may be a down side in saying no, but yes doesn't have to be the automatic response. Pause, think, call back if necessary.

 

Then
try this. Ask what kind of opportunity is this for me and my
organisation. Ask, what can I usefully say on this occasion, through
this medium, and to the audience who will hear, see or read what I say.
If the opportunity doesn't measure up, say no. Say it politely and
firmly, but say no.

 

If the opportunity does measure
up, then ask whether you are the right person to say those things. Ask
also who else will be in the article, or taking part in the programme.
What is the angle of the story or the approach of the programme? (If
you don't know - find out).

 

Only if overall the positives outweigh the negatives should you say yes. Otherwise why risk it?

 

I put two simple questions to ten current journalists and communications advisers recently.

I asked what was the most common mistake people made when they are being interviewed?

The
journalists talked of dishonesty, evasion, lies, and being deceptive.
The communications people talked of lack of preparation. Common faults
were:

Not understanding what the interview is about. To go
into an interview without asking questions first, full of bravado that
you can wing it can spell disaster, commented a TV journalist.

Other
journalists referred to "attempted evasion, closely followed by use of
bureaucratic jargon or management talk", and being "misleading,
obfuscating, failing to give a straight answer, lying."

An
interview is an opportunity to say something. Your comments may inform,
entertain, rebut another point of view, shift the ground on an issue,
promote a person, brand, opinion or product, any of those things. But
your participation has to aim to achieve something for you: otherwise
why do it?

To prepare properly: ask what is the one single
point that you want to get across. Focus on that, write it down and
rewrite it until you can say convincingly and naturally. (And assemble
the facts to support it).

As Jim Hacker famously said on Yes
Prime Minister, "if you have nothing to say, say nothing. Better still
have something to say and say it, no matter what they ask." An
overstatement, but valid.

So what marks someone out as being good in media interviews? The journalists said:

• someone who projects as open, accessible and out-going is going to be well received.

• having a clear message, with facts and figures to back it up, but more importantly honesty.

•
A good interviewee, one adviser said, is "in command of their subject,
will be able to translate complex issues into very simple language that
is accessible to any audience. If it's a TV interview the person needs
to look the part. "

Electronic reporters refer to
interviewees as 'talent'. 'Good talent' often earns a place in a news
story because he or she adds colour, robust comment or in-depth
knowledge. 'Poor talent', no matter how knowledgeable, is often avoided
or cut.

So assess the opportunity, prepare properly and perform strongly. Then you communicate with conviction and credibility.