New infographic of India’s Internet landscape

July 9th, 2011 / 2:00 am

Categories: india
comments(0) Tags: digital, india, infographic, internet

New infographic of China’s Internet landscape

July 4th, 2011 / 5:41 am

Categories: infographics
comments(0) Tags: china, digital, infographic, social media

Digital crisis communications in Asia

June 18th, 2011 / 2:03 pm

I have just finished doing an e-mail interview for a major Asia-Pacific marketing publication, and here is what I submitted (they’ll selectively use some quotes, but seeing how I spent all this time jotting the answers, figured I should post the whole thing here on my blog):

What is accounting for the growth of crisis management as a PR service?

The demand for crisis communications consulting is going through the roof right now because social networks are creating so many additional touch-points for risk and reputation. Companies that in the past may have been reluctant to admit the dimensions of a mistake now realize that digital creates such radical transparency it is pointless to be defensive and try and cover things up and conversely profitable to be proactive and engage people with the facts of the matter. Some folks falsely believe that PR is just about brand promotion but these days its role in reputation protection is more important than ever.

How is digital and social media changing the crisis management landscape and are in-house and agency PRs equipped to cope?

Worldwide the PR industry has been quickly retooling its factory to capitalize on the new possibilities of digital for crisis communications. We have always been in the relationships business where conversations and engagement come naturally, so we’ve really been able to turn on a dime in a very short period of time during the social media revolution. The fact that PR firms are themselves in the process of becoming social businesses helps us counsel clients on social media with an assured confidence. We’ve been doing a lot of development in digital storytelling, programming and weaving repurposable content across platforms into streams.

On the client side, some in-house teams are modernizing fast but others are mired in the assumptions of another era. In Asia a lot of companies are making excellent progress but all too often, corporate communications remain centered on one-way, top-down monologues where ‘face’ can sometimes seem more important than Facebook.

Is there significant difference between crisis management in Asia and the West?

It’s difficult to make sweeping generalizations, but I find the role of lawyers in a crisis is far stronger in the West, especially with respect to the making of an apology, which comes more easily to corporations in the East which may be less concerned about how saying sorry for making a mistake somehow constitutes an admission of guilt with liability implications.

Do Asian governments and corporations take PR seriously enough as a way of handling a crisis?

It depends which government we are talking about. I think the Chinese government takes PR very seriously and it has demonstrated crisis communications prowess in past, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the Japanese government, which has famously not taken PR seriously enough in the wake of the country’s recent triple disasters. In terms of response speed, decisive leadership communications and use of social media, China has generally evidenced a better command of communications. Then there are the Koreans, who are very advanced on digital crisis communications in particular.

How do cultural and geographic differences in Asia impact responses to a crisis?

The diversity of Asia between and within countries makes it challenging and yet critically important to master the nuance and tonality of the language that is used in highly sensitive issues management and crisis communications situations. To some extent we have a ‘lingua franca’ in the world of PR, but what works in English doesn’t always work in other languages so a tailored and not just translated approach gets the best results. English can be so direct and subject-centric and ‘conclusion first,’ whereas some Asian languages can be quite the opposite, so knowing this can make all the difference.

I think especially in East Asia the transcendent importance of ‘face’ is such that companies are reluctant to engage in peer-to-peer communications with their communities online, with fear of losing control and thus face having the effect of dampening the kind of dialogue that might help defuse a crisis situation.

Is the PR industry in Asia sophisticated enough to adequately provide this kind of service and where can improvements be made?

The premise of this question underscores the work we need to do in Asia but also the biases we need to correct and update. In my view, there is plenty of sophisticated crisis communications consulting capacity in Asia, but it overwhelmingly resides in the international PR firm ‘ghetto.’ There are some excellent domestic in-market independents coming along but there are many others who suffer from development challenges.

What I have noticed is that there are too many crisis communications poseurs out there, ‘experts’ who can deliver a decent training seminar but then haven’t the foggiest when a real situation explodes. I also see this tendency with social media for people to share information about crisis communications with others online and then to overestimate the extent of their own expertise. There are those who seem to feel that to Re-Tweet the thinking of others is to become an expert themselves.

What specific training are brands doing in this area? Is it enough?

What we’re seeing is accelerating demand for full-scale digital crisis simulation training. The old analogue crisis simulations were heavily scripted, but to those participating the format presented them with some daunting if unlikely dilemmas. Now the new digital training moves at warp speed and confronts trainees with a bewildering array of wildfire stimuli that simulate real-life social media conditions.

What are your top tips on the best ways to handle a crisis?

There is no doubt that speed is a key factor in a crisis, but responding accurately is equally important. Better to refrain from speedy and sloppy glib statements and instead take the time to transparently communicate the verified facts of the matter.

Times have changed and the rules of the game have evolved. It used to be that crisis communications were defensive and reactive, with holding statements used like protective shields to keep critics away. Nowadays I think crisis communications need to be aggressive and proactive, where we invite people to participate right from the start and then communicate continuously.

Passively waiting for the crisis to pass and then rebuilding reputation is arguably an outmoded approach because in these digital times by then it is too late. It makes more sense to actively prevent the storm in the first place by engaging people, listening to what they have to say, apologizing for mistakes and humbly asking for ideas to help ensure continuous improvement. Brands used to act like things; now they are expected to act like people. This is especially true in crisis communications situations which are golden opportunities to showcase a company’s character at its finest, with personality, humor and gravitas ideally on conspicuous public display.

Categories: crisis communications
comments(0) Tags: asia, crisis communications, digital, PR

PR measurement: what’s not-so-new

May 26th, 2011 / 10:50 pm

When I started my communications career in the late 1980s, public relations was perceived as being an intangible relationship artistry that was notoriously difficult to measure. Expectations of accurate measurement were therefore low, but the anticipated demand for a reliable measurement system was always assumed to be high (should one ever be developed).

During those analogue days, measurement was crude and arbitrary; most PR people felt frustrated that the enormous contribution we all believed our profession was contributing to our clients’ business success went under-reported and was therefore perennially undervalued. Many sought to be the first to find the ‘Holy Grail’ of PR that truly accurate and objective measurement tools would represent.

Now, approaching a quarter century later, the rise of digital is transforming PR into a measurable science of persuasion. Social networks have opened up a whole new world of measurement possibilities. After all, digital is by very definition about data. We suddenly have access to a wealth of information – page views, ‘likes’, click-throughs, comments, re-tweets, downloads and a myriad other ways of tracking how consumers of content interact with and respond to our communications.

But while much has changed during my PR life in the sophistication of tools available to measure results, the underlying imperative has remained basically the same. It is still essential to define real, tangible outcomes from the outset before deciding what your communications activities will look like and how they will be measured.

Experienced PR professionals will always work to build communications programs backward, ‘reverse engineered’ from a clear understanding of the business objectives they are seeking to achieve – typically a measurable change in the attitudes or behavior of a specific target community to a product or an organization.

Return on investment in digital communication is measured in the same way as in every other discipline – it is simply the ratio between the tangible results obtained and the expense of securing those results.

Having a massive online presence is not, in itself, a PR result. Online visibility is important, but only insofar as it drives intended behaviours. The challenge for PR pros is to use that presence to facilitate dialogue-driven relationships with targeted groups of stakeholders and track their response to your communications.

That means incorporating clear calls to action in PR – “Download this coupon,” “Sign up for this newsletter,” “Support this proposal” – targeting communications effectively with the audiences most likely to respond to that call, and tracking the way in which they do, in fact, respond.

In this new modern era of “easy metrics,” the imperative is to identify only what is meaningful and measure that. We need to consider not only the volume of information we disseminate, but also the ways in which that information inspires measurable stakeholder activity in favour of a clearly defined business result.

This is the world that PR professionals have always wanted to live in. To take advantage of it, we need to use today’s new measurement instruments to demonstrate why and how our discipline adds real business value. Unlike when I started my career, today’s newcomers to the profession have the digital tools that allow them to build PR’s compelling ‘evidence-based’ case for the marketing budgets our work has always merited.

Thanks to Steve Bowen for his contribution to this post.

Categories: measurement
comments(0) Tags: digital, measurement, PR

A couple of recent media articles

March 12th, 2011 / 9:58 am

Recently I was interviewed by the excellent Aude Lagorce, who wrote this piece in The Wall Street Journal about Asian corporate culture and social media and how ‘face’ is as important as Facebook.

A few weeks earlier, I wrote this op-ed for Marketing magazine:

Categories: publicity
comments(0) Tags: asia, digital, PR, publicity

Creativity on Twitter boosts communication in Brazil

February 5th, 2011 / 4:01 am

Guest post by Rodrigo Capella of São Paulo, Brazil

If there is something we always think about in the communications world, it is: How can we do something really different? This question is as wide as the possible answers. However, it may be – oddly enough – answered in one word: creativity.

In Brazil, there is a dispute between the public relations firms and the digital agencies concerning who is best able to build programs and create content for social media. To explain that, I am going to present two Brazilian examples.

To promote the sale of Xbox, the virtual shop Saraiva announced on Twitter an interactive campaign with its followers, developed by digital agency iThink. The followers’ participation was the key distinction of this effort. To be part of it, you had to follow @saraivaonline (so far, nothing original) and tweet an image simulating a scene or a character from any Xbox game (this is the insight of the campaign). The twenty best pictures went to a popular vote and the author of the most voted image won an Xbox. To see the best photos of the campaign, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/saraivaxbox

Another interesting campaign was undertaken by public relations agency LVBA for Nokia. To make it known that a mobile application had been developed to access digital channels (social networks, sites, blogs, etc.), LVBA raffled – via Twitter – a Nokia 5235 with the ‘Comes With Music’ embedded app.

The initiative itself was simple. Just follow the profile of the agency (@lvba), Re-Tweet (‘RT’) a specific phrase, and you are already participating. The originality was in raffling a cell phone with an application, offering a user experience for the Twitter followers.

These two actions – creative in certain aspects – have helped to consolidate Twitter as an innovative, agile and intelligent tool in communications programs.

In the past, communication campaigns in Brazil were limited to the RT of some messages on Twitter to get discounts or win some products; nowadays, we’re seeing an additional dimension to these new programs: real interactivity, either through the imitation of an Xbox character, or through a mobile application experience.

It is a new kind of communication being created by digital and PR agencies. It doesn’t matter who does it. The initiative is becoming increasingly more social, more fun and certainly not predictable.

What is coming next?

Rodrigo Capella is a Brazilian public relations professional. A lecturer and writer, he edits the blog PR Interview and has more than twenty books published. E-mail: capella.rodrigo@gmail.com Twitter: @rodrigo_capella

Categories: guest post
comments(1) Tags: brazil, digital, latin america, microsoft, PR, xbox

Digital Storytelling for Asian Multinationals

January 27th, 2011 / 8:30 am

Today at Singapore Management University, in a class convened by Professor Michael Netzley, I was honoured to speak about digital storytelling for Asian multinationals.

Worldwide communications for these emerging corporate champions is powering Burson-Marsteller’s business forward in Asia-Pacific on a profoundly digital platform.

Digital Storytelling for Asian Multinationals

View more presentations from Robert Pickard.

Categories: Asia
comments(0) Tags: asian multinationals, digital, PR, singapore, social media

Image and reputation in the age of digital communication

September 1st, 2010 / 11:00 pm

This morning I delivered this presentation to the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. We discussed the crafting and co-creation of persuasive narratives, digital storytelling through the newsfeed with stakeholders, the production and packaging of content for the new public mind, and how the art of PR is becoming more of a science.

View more presentations from Robert Pickard.

Categories: speaking platforms
comments(0) Tags: asia, digital, marketing, PR, public relations, social networks

The Brand Management Dinosaur

August 30th, 2010 / 11:24 pm

Here’s a first-rate presentation by B-M’s Steve Bowen on why marketing mindsets need to change to take advantage of digital and social media. His premise: the effectiveness of integrated marketing communications is hampered by a reliance on marketing mindsets that do not reflect the reality of modern consumer interactions. Digital engagement is not about taking analogue marketing methods and rolling them out on digital platforms. It is about finding new ways to engage consumers in an ongoing brand narrative not by directing content at them but by helping them find and interact with content that is meaningful and valuable to them.

How outdated thinking hampers brand communications

View more presentations from Burson-Marsteller Asia-Pacific.

Categories: Burson-Marsteller
comments(0) Tags: asia-pacific, b-m, brands, digital, marketing, PR

Image and reputation in the age of digital communication

July 22nd, 2010 / 9:00 am

Today in Shanghai it was my honor to address the China New Social Media Forum on the crafting and co-creation of persuasion narratives, digital storytelling through the news feed with stakeholders, producing and packaging content for the new public mind. I also spoke about how PR is the key marketing discipline when it comes to both promoting and protecting image in the modern world of social networks.

View more presentations from Robert Pickard.

Categories: digital
comments(1) Tags: china, digital, PR, reputation, social networks