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

Helping Asian brands go global

June 1st, 2011 / 7:51 am

Here’s my latest column as the current Asia-Pacific contributor to The Holmes Report’s ThinkTank section:

I first moved to Asia a decade ago. Those days, when people in the public relations business referred to ‘global multinationals,’ it was almost always in reference to Western companies communicating from the outside into Asia.

All of this is changing, and changing very fast: large numbers of rising Asian multinationals are starting to communicate on a truly global basis as never before, and even the reluctant Japanese companies – faced with a dire, declining domestic marketplace – see the urgent need to aggressively invest in international PR.

Based on the statistics, we shouldn’t be too surprised. According to a new Forbes list published last year, a whopping 34% of the world’s top 2,000 companies are now based in Asia.

Maybe most of these 689 companies are generally unknown around the world. But often for imitative reasons following what the old Western multinationals have done before them, these new Asian multinationals increasingly believe that communications can help them build profile and secure competitive advantage. Thus many are asking themselves: “What is PR and how can we use it to help achieve our commercial objectives overseas?” Given the enormous potential that this market represents, the opportunities for the PR industry are compelling and we in the agency business had better be ready to provide some convincing answers.

I can tell you right now that while this next-generation multinational communications market is going through the roof and will be substantial, capitalizing on this trend is without a doubt among the toughest challenges in PR consulting.

Those lacking patience and perseverance need not apply for this kind of work. Quite a few of these ascendant multinationals are complete newcomers to modern marketing, and so convincing them to conduct pioneering PR campaigns can be a daunting proposition to say the least.

Cultivating relationships carefully, understanding the cultural elements in play, starting slowly with a few often underfunded projects to build confidence, and checking arrogant attitudes at the door are all prerequisites to success.

Keeping in mind that inside many an Asian corporation saving ‘face’ can be much more important than Facebook, social media represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

On the one hand, it can be difficult to persuade conservative executives accustomed to exercising the prerogative of top-down control that nowadays the credibility of communication comes from peer-to-peer conversation with people who expect to be heard. But on the other hand, because digital is by definition about data, now we can furnish the tangibility of numbers and proof of PR’s power to make the abstract elements of communications more understood in a clear way that commands greater budgetary resources.

Dynamic talent combinations agency-side are key; that means world calibre foreigners with face-to-face relationship interface in the Asian headquarters cities, working in tandem with senior Asians posted in key Western markets. In the past, it’s just been the former, but now the latter is de rigueur for firms serious about surfing the next wave of commercial opportunity in the world of PR.

This is a picture of me and my colleague Margaret Key with my good friend and former client Michael Choo of Kia Motors Corporation. Back in 2002 when I lived in Seoul, Kia become the first rising Asian multinational I counseled on international communications. It was among the toughest and most satisfying assignments of my public relations career.

Categories: Asia
comments(0) Tags: asia, asian multinationals, b-m, holmes, media, 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

The Holmes Report’s ‘ThinkTank’

May 17th, 2011 / 5:00 am

During the past week I enjoyed my debut as a regular contributor to The Holmes Report’s new ‘ThinkTank’ section. Through this summer, I’ll be writing about news and views from Asia-Pacific. Here’s my first column: Pakistan? Now there’s a PR challenge.

Categories: Asia, PR industry
comments(0) Tags: PR, thinking

PR FAQ

April 12th, 2011 / 5:02 am

A rising PR industry trade journo asked me to answer some questions today. I don’t know how much of the material she’ll use, or whether it’s that interesting, but here it is, FYI:

What does the PR industry need to do to gain access to the C-suite and what are benefits for companies of doing so?

The first thing we need to do is clearly demonstrate the value that public relations adds to the achievement of tangible commercial objectives. C-level executives know in their hearts that PR is now more important than ever, but many just can’t articulate why they feel that way. Many hope for positive publicity, and perhaps more fear a ruined reputation from what we used to call ‘bad press.’ What they increasingly need these days is proof of how PR can promote their image and how it can protect their brand: numbers, charts, diagrams, and analytics. Digital is by its very definition about data and so the rise of social media gives us the power to plot outcomes and track progress during the life of a communications campaign. This is what is increasingly called ‘evidence-based communications.’

What are the current barriers to that?

Even though the opportunities are enormous with PR poised to be the breakout player in this new era of digital marketing, there remains this tendency within the industry to think small. It’s ironic; in my 21 years as a corporate communicator, I’ve never seen our profession stronger and more powerful than it is today, but not enough people in our field stake a claim to the leadership that can be ours if we transcend this stifling lack of efficacy about what we do for a living. Overcoming the legacy of what can be a ridiculous inferiority complex relative to the advertising industry is therefore key. The other challenge that we must meet is the establishment of higher professional standards so that clients can enjoy a certainty of positive outcome across the full spectrum of their ‘touch points’ with PR. Quality levels can be wildly inconsistent across firms, industry sectors, service spheres and geographic contexts. That costs the PR industry credibility and results in a dampening effect on prices that harms PR’s ability to attract and keep the best talent.

Has the situation changed in the recent years in how brands and top management view PR and how? Especially for Asian leaders, what have their attitudes been?

It is abundantly clear that senior people in complex organizations of multinational scale are investing much more in PR than they ever have before. PR is evolving from its roots as a craft of relationship artistry to becoming a measurable modern science of persuasion. More and more, we have proof based on numbers to support our sales contentions. In Asia, the problem is that even in more developed economies, PR often remains a developing industry that is poorly understood by elites in positions of power. In one country, PR might be confused with advertising or advertorial. In others, it might be seen as simple press-agentry or even purchasing coverage with cash. The good news is that in more and more places, the contemporary reality of PR is being refracted through a social media lens and that’s where we can see the true vision of our industry’s future. In the past I think PR people may have been branded in some quarters as hyperbole peddlers, media grifters, or social conveners. Fortunately, today’s serious PR professionals are increasingly seen as a curious hybrid of social scientist, communications counsel and management consultant.

From the agency POV, how have they evolved?

I think we agency people are finally wrapping our heads around the fact that with social technology we now have the tools, techniques, and talent building a consulting business on a digital platform the likes of which we have always dreamed of. In order to exploit the opportunity this presents to PR, we must deliver consistently high service and quality standards while keeping a brand promise in a business where firms have had difficulty honouring commitments in the past. Indeed, there is a lot of restless multinational PR money roaming around Asia, switching from one agency to the next, fed-up with mediocrity and looking for certainty of positive outcome across borders. In some Asian markets, there are few or not enough post-secondary institutions offering PR education, so the smart firms are taking matters into their own hands and building their own training capability. For example, we have BMU [Burson-Marsteller University]. Education is at the heart of building a premium PR brand in Asia. At B-M, training the team to keep setting the PR standard for quality is my #1 priority. I often remind myself of what one of my Korean clients once told me: “Aim for the money, and quality suffers; aim for the quality, and the money will always come.”

Categories: PR industry
comments(1) Tags: journalism, modern, PR

TV interview on crisis PR leadership in japan

March 23rd, 2011 / 1:59 am

Channel NewsAsia, the Singapore-based Asia-Pacific TV news network, interviewed me in this segment on March 19th for my thoughts on the situation (as of that date) concerning Japan’s leadership communications in light of the country’s recent national disasters:

[sorry the video quality from the source file I received is not high resolution]

Categories: crisis communications
comments(1) Tags: crisis communications, japan, leadership, 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

The rise of the digital storyteller

February 19th, 2011 / 2:40 am

[This is a blog post I wrote for Marketing in Australia].

The decline of the mainstream media in the face of the expansion of Internet-based communications has been well documented. Less well known is the concomitant declining quality of news stories themselves.

At its heart, the news is a product that media companies sell and to which people have assigned their trust. Traditionally, the news has been produced by standards-based journalism that is, at least in theory, motivated by the pursuit of truth, resourceful in the use of research, informed by facts, governed by standards and edited with balance.

The rise of digital communication has put the traditional news media at the eye of a perfect storm. On the one hand, declining attention spans and ever-shorter deadlines increase the need for news outlets to report ‘the facts’ as rapidly and succinctly as possible. On the other, declining advertising revenues impact the ability and willingness of news companies to hire top-flight reporters and editors. As an unfortunate result, sensationalism, speculation and speed trump research, analysis and accuracy. This decline in editorial quality is driving a parallel decline in the trust of media.

Ironically, in an era of around-the-clock broadcast news channels and ‘always on’ commentary via the likes of Facebook and Twitter, we have a lot more content noise but actually far fewer news stories.

Stories are fundamentally important when it comes to educating, inspiring and persuading people. Stories provide a way to tap into the subconscious mind and touch the feelings and emotions that drive daily purchasing and behavioural decisions. At a time when brands are increasingly expected to act like people, stories form the fabric of human communication and, when used effectively, are very powerful motivators of attitudes and behaviours.

Leading brand strategists have long recognized that messages woven into a narrative are more compelling and attract higher recall than messages pushed at an audience via overt communications such as traditional paid media. And yet the marketing conversation still tends to revolve around advertising and the role it has to play in convincing today’s new connected consumers.

Public relations practitioners, meanwhile, have spent their careers trying to persuade executives that they should invest more in ‘earning’ editorial media coverage of their brands in news stories rather than ‘buying’ paid coverage through advertising. Because people can readily identify ads when they see them – and we tend to think that ads are supposed to be present during times and places we expect them to be – they attach less credibility to their claims. But if they see a product featured in a news narrative, people are less likely to be suspicious and more likely to trust brand messaging that isn’t visibly purchased.

As trust in media declines, though, the traditional wisdom is turned on its head.

If it is true that a declining media business can no longer generate an ample supply of compelling story content then what is to prevent companies from generating that content themselves? If it is true that resource constraints (i.e. too few journalists with scant time to prepare stories) are reducing some media outlets to automated and uncritical conveyor belts for pre-packaged marketing information passed to them by PR people, then what is to prevent companies from filling the void and telling their stories directly to the public?

The ability of modern corporations to build and enhance their reputations is no longer constrained by the traditional news media model. The modern corporate storyteller has access to a range of digital communications platforms that can reach audiences in many different ways and draw them into the brand experience in a way that traditional media could never hope to replicate.

In many ways, the rise of digital storytelling is simply a natural progression for PR people. We finally have the freedom, the tools and the channels to communicate in the way that, at heart, we have always dreamed about. Now we need relationship connections not just between dozens of journalists but among thousands of people. Public Relations has always been about the artistry of relationships but because digital is by definition about data, now PR is evolving into an evidence-based science where results can be measured as never before.

When I started my agency life 21 years ago, the work of PR primarily involved pitching and placing publicity through interaction with journalists. This will continue to be of central importance to the profession. But these days we also need to know how to think like the media producer in programming content for scrolling social media streams while thinking like the researcher in applying an advanced mastery of analytics to campaign planning and accountability for results.

Where data meets design is the ‘sweet spot’ for digital storytelling. Information overload means we must tell complex stories in a simple yet compelling way in the blink of an eye and thus the rise of the infographic as the most transformative trend in PR at the moment.

Digital storytelling – and, by extension, brand storytelling – is not about pushing messages, it is about building relationships. The scattergun approach doesn’t work here. Instead, companies need to invest the time and resources to evaluate the relationships that drive their business, use the available channels to listen to the online conversation and then engage in a manner that is transparent, authentic and, above all, human.

Categories: article
comments(0) Tags: digital storytelling, media relations, PR

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.