Au revoir to Canada

February 28th, 2010 / 1:00 pm

In a few hours my family and I leave Canada to re-join the 2.8 million our our fellow citizens overseas. We do so with mixed feelings, the nature of which I would like to express in this blog post.

I couldn’t be prouder to be Canadian, especially right now with my country’s class-act performance as a host and as a contender in the Olympic Games. This video narrated by Tom Brokaw and broadcast by NBC heralds a lot of Canadian virtues that are famous here but unknown elsewhere. What brought a smile to my face was this article in The Wall Street Journal: Canada group makes medals its business. The idea that such a determined and dynamic group of Canadians should unite around a high-impact initiative centred on competing with the world and winning is a refreshing tonic to what can tend to be the lassitude of our national efforts against those of other countries in other fields of endeavour.

Look at the hollowing-out of multinational Canadian enterprise. How many famous Canadian companies are known and respected around the world? You can count them on one hand, and still have fingers left over. It is telling that a country so big and blessed with resources should punch so below its weight in global business. Contrast our experience to that of the South Koreans, who with a small territory and scant resources transformed one of the world’s poorest countries over 50 years into a global economic powerhouse with corporations such as Hyundai, Kia, LG, and Samsung proud international champions.

As a people, we travel well and there is a vast network of Canadians around the world in leading positions across diverse fields. But if Canadians are going overseas to work, it seems more often than not that it is for the companies of other countries. If we want to be complacent about the future and live an easy life off our natural bounty and leave the ownership of our economy to others, we seem to be on the right track.

People at home have a mixed reaction to the overseas Canadian. While there is a widespread respect for Canadians who gain global experience, in some quarters there is a vague resentment for different reasons.

Yet if you ask people in my own public relations industry if they would want to gain international credentials, in my experience Canadians tend more than their American counterparts to answer in the affirmative. In general, we Canadians certainly don’t lack confidence in our global suitability, what with past tourism slogans such as “The world needs more Canada.”

One thing is for sure: Canada needs more of the world in terms of immigration to keep its population growing. If there’s an irony I’ve noticed, it’s how a country with such incredible multiculturalism and nearly one in five of its citizens foreign-born, overseas we don’t do nearly enough to leverage our human resources for Canadian interests (because, again, there are so few world-scale Canadian organizations).

In many ways, Canada is arguably the world’s first ‘post-modern’ nation and I am happy that the Olympics have helped to showcase our strengths. Perhaps with the boost to our national confidence of these games, more of the hard work, the valuing of education, the attitude of being the best we can be will infuse us with a greater ambition to succeed and the will to win.

Every day, I will miss the good humour, free spirit, considerable creativity and restless intelligence of the people of Canada. I will not miss the frequent failure to think big, the sense of entitlement to prosperity, the petty regional parochialism, and delusions about our place in the world which give us comfort but don’t help us secure our global interests (even though we have every ability to achieve them).

I love Canada more than ever having been abroad, maybe a bit like how the Apollo 8 astronauts came to appreciate the Earth’s fragility when they saw it from space for the first time.

I’m really going to miss my family and friends, but thank goodness for broadband penetration and the ubiquity of telecommunications networks. I just wish we could experience the fresh air and wide open spaces of Canada using Skype.

Categories: culture
comments(2) Tags: canada, culture

Fortune 100 social media PR study

February 24th, 2010 / 12:00 pm

Check out Burson-Marsteller’s interesting new study on the social media communications of Fortune 100 companies:

2010 B-M social media check-up

Categories: Burson-Marsteller
comments(0) Tags: b-m, PR, social media

Two weeks into a great PR job

February 16th, 2010 / 7:00 am

The expression ‘drinking from the fire hose’ seems an apt one for my first two weeks as the new CEO of Burson-Marsteller in Asia-Pacific. In starting a new job in the information and networking business that is modern PR, the amount of data one needs to instantly absorb and the extent of relationships that must be suddenly forged is fantastic. It’s a pity we humans don’t come pre-equipped with pattern recognition software hard-wired into our brains.

My first day was spent in our firm’s Washington, DC office, which is a research-rich public relations and public affairs powerhouse. Given my lifelong passion for politics, I felt really alive there, like I was in a campaign headquarters with election day looming just around the corner. What I especially noticed is the ubiquity of bright and talented young people working in senior positions alongside profoundly experienced colossi of the PR and research worlds. In a way, the place had the meritocratic feel of Star Trek, where the best and brightest have well earned the top spots on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Then I proceeded to New York, where the B-M office has all the hustle and bustle that one expects of a Big Apple operation. Its substantial quality atmosphere is a distinguishing characteristic, evidenced in the apparent confidence of people who know that they are at the top of their game. The history and gravitas of the firm are unmistakable and I found the NY folks friendly, focused and unusually dedicated to their clients and colleagues. Many of them were kind enough to come and hear me provide a presentation in tandem with the showing of this superb TED video that plots the future trajectory of Asia’s economic rise. On my last day, I shot this video with the delightful Rose Gordon of PR Week.

Following that, it was on to Singapore aboard SQ-21, the world’s longest non-stop flight. As a Canadian who a few days earlier had been shivering in Toronto’s bracing -20 weather, I found Singapore’s +30 degrees an extreme antidote to the winter. The warmth of the welcome I received was commensurate with with the equatorial heat. Our office in Singapore is bursting at the seams owing to rapid growth, and having met many of the staff, I can understand why space will continue to be at a premium.

A few days later, I discovered much the same in our fast-growing Hong Kong office, where I learned first-hand about the massive bench strength B-M offers in public affairs and corporate communications. What I didn’t know beforehand is the top talent and growing business of the firm in the area of brand marketing. I also noticed here, as elsewhere in the region, the fact that while my new firm excels at telling the stories of world multinationals in Asia, it also champions Asian multinationals communicating their stories with the world.

Actually, compared to what I was expecting and to my past experience (having competed staunchly against B-M for years), I found that my new consultancy:

is considerably larger than what I had been told and also faster growing
excels at doing all kinds of great digital work that clients count on every day
offers an above average consistency of quality service across practices and geographies
has a far more sophisticated program focused on large multinational clients than I’ve ever seen before
consists of generally happy people who seem to feel that the journey is just as important as the destination
offers advanced financial systems and a well developed human resources infrastructure competently run with a sincere interest in employees’ lives
invests heavily in serious evidence-based intellectual capital that’s actually applied to the task of devising client communications programs (rather than just agency marketing)

B-M is not perfect and there are certainly areas for development in my turf (foremost among them is spreading the word more about the under-appreciated positives above), but these are the stand-out characteristics that I noticed.

Now that I’m into my third week (four if you include the days I spent personally responding to 778 congratulatory e-mails after my announcement went out), I feel confident in saying that B-M in Asia:

will always aim at setting a new PR standard with a relentless focus on achieving certainty of positive business outcomes delivered through client-centric consulting excellence
will be driven by an ambition to be the best we can be through continuous improvement to maintain our premier position

Yes, you can tell that I am now advocating my new company’s point of view, and more likely to emphasize that our glass is half-full. One of the things I have respected most about B-M over the years is that it didn’t need to call itself a thought leader to actually be one. But this is no time for complacency about our offer. These days, the competition is out there self-heralding its attributes more aggressively than ever, so I feel we need to underline where we are strong and growing with an evidence-based confidence that I am told by our veteran players has always been at the core of B-M’s corporate character.

I’m a greenhorn in the company with lots to learn (and no doubt many mistakes to make), but these are some of the the experiences I’ve gained during these early weeks. I’m so busy now that maintaining this blog will be hard, but I’ll try and keep at it.

Categories: Burson-Marsteller, blog
comments(2) Tags: b-m, culture, PR

Now I’m a ‘Burson Person’

January 24th, 2010 / 11:30 am

Now that it’s official I will be joining Burson-Marsteller as the firm’s new President and CEO in the Asia-Pacific region, I would like to offer a few reflections about how I got here.

When I elected to leave Edelman (where I served as its North Asia President) after six years of service, Harold Burson was kind enough to send me a personal e-mail message wishing me well. I was intrigued that he should take such an interest in my career trajectory, and I made a mental note to follow-up with him in due course. That I did a few months later, and so on the brisk morning of October 22^nd in New York City, I met the legendary founder of my new firm for the first time.

During our pow-wow at his Park Avenue office, I was blown away by the depth and breadth of his feel for the public relations industry. I was especially impressed by his sense of people in PR and his understanding of what makes them tick. It became clear to me that one key ingredient of his success over the years is his acute awareness of the other person’s point of view and a sensitivity to their needs and concerns. This I found very refreshing, because in the small town that is the global public relations industry, there are a lot of fast talkers but not nearly as many good listeners.

The antique radio in Mr. Burson’s office caught my eye, because I collect them as a hobby. In the old technology of radio, like the new technology of social media, there is a term called ‘signal to noise.’ Let me just say that I left our hour-long meeting thinking that this man has probably more ’signal’ and less ‘noise’ about him than just about anyone else I’ve ever met in the industry.

In many ways, I felt as though I had met Mr. Burson repeatedly during my career through his consistently premium-grade representatives, aka ‘The Burson Person.’ My first PR mentor and a co-founding partner of my old firm in Canada cut his teeth at Burson-Marsteller. When I first moved to Seoul, Burson was the class act in that country and I very deliberately applied lessons learned from its winning ways when I was in charge of Edelman Korea. Later, as I traveled across Asia, I discovered that a large proportion of the region’s top talent earned its spurs at B-M and when I met Simon Pangrazio and asked for his advice about building a business in North Asia (an experience that my predecessor and I share in common), he — like all the other B-M pros I’ve met since then — could not have been more impressive.

Fast forward to New Year’s Eve a few weeks ago, when I first spoke to B-M’s Global CEO, Mark Penn. I had almost signed on with another firm by year’s end, but I found his intelligence and vision most compelling and I decided to pursue the B-M option with enthusiasm. Especially because I’ve been giving these lectures on campus of late about how public relations is becoming more of a science than just an art, I was immediately drawn to B-M’s new, data-focused approach to PR called “Evidence-Based Communications.”

I’ve really enjoyed my 18 month sabbatical, but now I am looking forward to working with a tremendously talented team of the highest caliber and professional character. This is a business that’s going places (for many of the reasons I wrote about in this blog post about choosing the right PR firm).

With a rich inheritance of wisdom and experience gained during nearly four decades of experience in Asia-Pacific, Burson-Marsteller is addressing the future with confidence as we focus on setting a new PR standard of excellence in communications achievement.

Categories: Burson-Marsteller
comments(27) Tags: asia, b-m, burson, careers, penn, PR

The persuasive storytellers

January 20th, 2010 / 9:00 pm

Today it was my pleasure to guest lecture two classes of PR students at Toronto’s Humber College. To say the least, I was impressed about the extent to which these bright and engaging students have a contemporary command of the forces of change shaping the future of public relations. Here’s a copy of my presentation deck:

Modern PR professionals: the persuasive storytellers

View more presentations from Robert Pickard.

Categories: blog, persuasion
comments(4) Tags: digital storytelling, persuasion, PR, psychology, public relations, research

Liar, liar: knowing the enemy

January 18th, 2010 / 1:00 pm

I have become instinctively irritated when I hear people say that public relations involves lying, but I get far more annoyed when I hear PR practitioners actually lie. Most of us in the profession value telling and selling a story straight, but there are those — often the ones who talk most conspicuously about the importance of ethics for some reason — who seem to fib far too much. This sort of behavior from a small minority helps perpetuate on the honest majority what I believe to be an inaccurate and unfair ‘liar’ stereotype.

It’s pretty widely accepted that lying is corrosive to the trust foundation of relationships. Every field of endeavor has its liars, but because PR people are in the relationships business (Public Relationships and Private Relationships), the importance of avoiding lying is fundamentally important to our craft. This is especially true at a time when we are achieving a growing traction as an industry amplified by the rise of social media. So if lying is our adversary, then we’d better well understand the enemy so we can prevail against such a formidable foe.

Here’s an interesting video that purportedly shows how to detect lies:

…and these are some of the best sources and links that I’ve seen lately:

Liar, liar | The Globe and Mail
Your brain lies to you | The New York Times
The truth about liars | CBC Television
Artful dodging trumps open evasions, studies show | The Washington Post
Lying: moral choice in public and private life | book by Sissela Bok [1979]

Categories: blog, psychology
comments(0) Tags: ethics, honesty, lying, PR, psychology

Apology PR: Asia’s latest export to the world?

January 15th, 2010 / 4:00 pm

When I moved from North America to North Asia in 2002, South Korea was roiled by the horrible death of two young school girls who were run over by a U.S. military vehicle (gruesome pictures of which were posted online). Afterward there were mass anti-U.S. demonstrations around the American Embassy in Seoul, located right next door to the Edelman office where I then worked. Feelings against America were running so high, I made a point of wearing my Toronto Maple Leafs hockey jersey when I went to the office, wading through what at times was an angry mob.

One reason why the anti-American passion was running so high? What some felt was the slow speed of the apology for the deaths from President Bush, pouring fuel on the cultural fire in a part of the world where a timely and appropriate apology is de rigeur.

Compared to the West — and especially to America, where I lived for several years — one of the first things I noticed living in Asia is how rapidly and frequently apologies are offered across a wide range of circumstances. At first, this seemed too quaint and maybe excessively ‘weak.’ Why apologize for something that’s not proven to be your fault? That was my attitude then. But over time, I came to believe that the generous Asian approach to apology ensures more harmonious and friendly relationships between people, contributing to civility in society and helping prevent angry public outbursts that one sees more often in Western societies.

Indeed, I increasingly found my own culture’s approach to apology callous and calculating; a tactic of last resort if there’s no other way out of a situation. I had reflected on this issue before, because in my role as a PR consultant to clients experiencing crisis situations, I have repeatedly fought battles with lawyers who always seem to insist that there should never be an apology if a company does something wrong, lest there be legal liability as a result.

All too often, the lawyers win the ‘apology war’, but it’s a pity because simply saying that harm has occurred and showing that you feel bad or sad about what’s happened evidences human empathy and does not constitute an admission of guilt. The Asians certainly appreciate that, and because the lawyers do not reign so supreme in their societies, PR people don’t need to ‘induce’ public apologies that are already a natural cultural response.

Thus, for example, the reflexive bowing at Japanese news conferences if ‘mistakes have been made,’ which even if sometimes reluctant and slow to happen — often a problem with foreign companies in Japan such as Schindler — is such a humble admission that public acceptance usually follows and the media is likely to move on to something else. Indeed, the media ‘pile on’ that happens to organizations or people who have erred often seems like society’s way of extracting an expected apology.

Does that thinking sound familiar? It should, because during recent years — and I have noticed this change since I returned to North America — the spectacle of public apology has become far more frequent in Western countries. There certainly have been many media stories about this tendency lately and the whole area of ‘apology communications’ has become very trendy in PR circles. In an age when so many people fashion themselves as ‘PR experts,’ the apology as the fast way to ‘get the media off your back’ if something bad has happened is now a commonplace theme.

Look at what happened to Tiger Woods when his apology was slow and selective, rather than speedy and seemingly sincere.

On both sides of the Pacific these days, if you are slow to apologize, then people are less likely to trust the sincerity of the apology when it finally does come. Just ask Mark McGwire or any of the executives bowing at Japanese news conferences who are especially sorry that they got caught doing something wrong (which in many cases they could have sincerely admitted much earlier had they been proactively transparent…).

Early in my PR career, I learned about the ‘CAP formula’ for crisis communications. Show Compassion, take Action, provide Perspective. Nowadays, in Asia and worldwide, I think it has really become the CAAP formula: Compassion, Apology, Action, and Perspective. There are even websites now that specialize in apology techniques.

For so many years, there has been this cultural condescension towards Asia; this sense that Western communications are always more advanced and thus American and European PR methods have been widely imported and adapted. In the area of apology communications, the reverse is true and I think the export of Asian apology sensibility is likely a change for the better.

[If you are interested in the apology element of professional communications, check out this excellent article by my former Hill & Knowlton colleague Boyd Neil. If you can read Korean, one of the top Asian thought leaders in this space with significant material online is the brilliant Hoh Kim, my successor at Edelman Korea who is now doing his PhD thesis in this area at KAIST].

Categories: blog, crisis communications
comments(3) Tags: apology communications, asia, civilization, culture

Are PR people incorrigible gossips?

January 11th, 2010 / 11:00 am

My wife said the other day that “PR people are such gossips!” Is it possible that she could be right?

At first, I pooh-poohed the idea, perhaps reflecting the conceit of a profession where supposedly the ability to keep confidences well is one of our distinguishing characteristics. After all, PR people have historically been the staunch enforcer of the embargo and the trusted custodians of news secrets (the strategic ‘leaking’ of which this article in The Financial Times says may have gotten out of hand).

Now, there is a difference between being a small-time gossip and breaching confidentiality big-time, but I suppose not enough of one to challenge the basis of my spouse’s contention because the two are such interrelated phenomena.

The number of PR people I would 100% trust to absolutely, positively maintain discretion no matter what is fairly compact. On the other hand, I’ve often been amazed at how often I’ve sought and secured solemn pledges of confidentiality before sharing sensitive information, only to find out later on that the secret was spilled to others under similar (in)secure conditions.

Indeed, when it comes to confidentiality in PR, the extent of hypocrisy can be breathtakingly pervasive. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard senior PR executives criticize others for a lack of discretion while evidencing a conspicuous lack of it themselves.

Why might it be that PR people are prone to promiscuous information-sharing practices?

One theory is that because we are under so much pressure to always keep information under wraps (until the right time for it to become ‘public’), in private there’s a corresponding need to feel less repressed by acting more liberally. Or maybe it’s because we have grown so adept at sharing stories with others (trafficking information to the right people at the right time), it has become habit-forming and we’ve just become too turned-on when it comes to spreading salacious things around. Another explanation is that there’s a lack of ample formal sanction in PR against such behavior; unlike lawyers, PR people cannot be drummed out of the profession for breaching confidentiality because our industry doesn’t yet have a mandatory professional credential (like attorneys and accountants, for example). That said, if someone is addicted to shooting their mouth off, word spreads informally and the repeat offender gets frozen out of the loop.

Perhaps because PR people have become arguably the world’s most powerful information workers, the information we have — which is scarce and exclusive — might be what makes PR people feel more powerful. Often ignored by media and under the client thumb, I can understand how some PRs seek that sensation.

I think Dr. Robert Cialdini’s findings on the self-interested nature of information-sharing may be the most compelling explanation: “The persuasive power of exclusivity can be harnessed by any manager who comes into possession of information that’s not widely available and that supports an idea or initiative he or she would like the organization to adopt.”

Perhaps PR folks are no different than anyone else when it comes to these modern ‘transparent’ trends. This is, after all, the age of social networks and with rising acceptance of less privacy and more ‘Re-Tweeting,’ I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised by a shrinking domain of trusted private disclosure and an enlarged sphere of public information.

Still, what a wonderful feeling when you know — through repeated confidence-building experience — that you can trust certain individuals with your reputation. The good thing is that word of how they can keep secrets well also spreads like wildfire, with such people enjoying all kinds of reputation benefits (e.g. being widely known as an executive of high caliber and sound character).

Categories: blog, psychology
comments(1) Tags: character, cialdini, discretion, management, persuasion, PR, psychology

18 lessons learned after 18 years in the PR world

January 9th, 2010 / 7:00 pm

Lately I wrote an article about 18 reflections after 18 months away from PR. Sticking with the ‘18′ theme, I am posting a PowerPoint presentation delivered to the staff of Edelman Japan in June 2008 that outlines the 18 lessons I’ve learned each year working in the PR world starting in 1990. I began using SlideShare recently and thought this would be a good first deck to upload.

View more presentations from Robert Pickard.

Categories: speaking platforms, thinking
comments(0) Tags: careers, continuous improvement, management, PR

18 reflections after 18 months away from PR

December 29th, 2009 / 5:00 pm

Last year, when I elected to leave Edelman (where I served for six fiscal years, most recently as its North Asia President), it was time to come home to my native Canada and reconnect with friends and family after 13 years overseas.

I wasn’t sure whether I would ever return to the public relations business. Even with the exciting advent of social media and a plethora of stimulating industry sectors and consulting services from which to choose, PR can sometimes be a simple and repetitive occupation. I was feeling the need to hit the career ‘pause button’ and take stock of whether there’s enough meaning and fulfillment in the business where I’ve built a two decade career.

Early in 2010, I will be starting my next international PR adventure. I’ve been fortunate to build businesses living in four countries during the past two decades, but before we ship out for the fifth and hopefully foremost experience, I want to share some reflections after this, the third year-plus sabbatical of my career: 18 reflections after 18 months away from PR