public relations is an applied social science | a blog by Rusty Cawley, APR

AP is testing its ability to set the national agenda by banning the phrase 'illegal immigrant' in its news copy | #PR

The Atlantic Wire says:

Starting now, you will never see the "lazy" words "illegal immigrant" in another AP story unless they're quoting someone important saying it. That faint sound you hear is Senate reporters from the AP, The New York Times, and beyond smacking their delete keys, rethinking their agenda setting aloud, and figuring out how we talk now, amidst a serious legislative discussion, about the millions of illegal immigrants people living in the U.S. without legal permission.

 

Pope Francis is using symbolic actions to send a message to his church and its leadership | #PR

Barbie Latza Nadeau at the Daily Beast reports:

After his appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s basilica, he refused to be held above his peers.  Instead of taking the special papal car with Vatican plates from the Sistine Chapel to the Santa Marta commune, where the cardinals were cloistered during the conclave, he shunned the private vehicle and rode back in the shuttle bus with the rest of the cardinals.

When he received the cardinals in the Sistine chapel, he refused to sit in the throne, but instead stood as all 114 cardinals congratulated him.  And when he went to his titular church in Rome to pray on Thursday morning, he again rode in an ordinary car instead of the papal limo.

After mass, he stopped by the priests’ house where he had stayed before the conclave to pick up his luggage (and) pay his bill. No doubt, as pope, he could have had someone take care of those pesky details for him, but he said he did it himself to “set an example.”

via www.thedailybeast.com

Sit-down meetings are broken; should we walk and talk instead?

Nilofer Merchant at Wired says:

Whiteboards, agendas — these are the common artifacts of meetings. Yet they’re not always effective, and questions around walking meetings expose these gaps. For instance, how do we share notes if walking? The answer: beforehand. Walking meetings force information to be sent in advance.

Too many people wait until the meeting to share information, resulting in the first 20 or 30 (or 40!) minutes spent on “background.” Which means the most expensive time — eight people in one room, prime-time hours — are used to do data transfer, not idea-building or problem-solving. Sending information in advance has obvious benefits, including more time for: research, formulating ideas, and asking other people about their points of view to inform a better discussion. Perhaps more significantly it allows those who are naturally quiet or introspective to contribute more meaningfully.

Meetings are broken, and the associated artifacts are our crutches. Walking meetings help us, well, walk and meet instead of relying on those crutches.

via www.wired.com

Social proof as a marketing strategy | #PR

Demian Farworth at Copyblogger says:

We look to social signals when evaluating any piece of content. A blog post with 1,000 Twitter shares is an indication that we probably won’t be disappointed by reading it. The same with a photograph shared more than 600 times on Google+ or a YouTube video with 5 million views.

In other words, social proof is the new marketing.

Well, Google took this idea to another level with Search Plus Your World (S+YW), a search feature that enhances your results with posts, photos and more from your friends. It’s yet another intriguing wrinkle in the ever-unfolding story of authorship and how it may affect search rankings.

via www.copyblogger.com

How to use games to spread ideas | #PR

Wharton professor Jonah Berger says in Fast Company:

Leveraging game mechanics requires quantifying performance. Some domains like golf handicaps and SAT scores have built-in metrics. People can easily see how they are doing and compare themselves with others without needing any help. But if a product or idea doesn’t automatically do that, it needs to be “gamified.” Metrics need to be created or recorded that let people see where they stand—for example, icons for how much they have contributed to a community message board or different colored tickets for season ticket holders.

Airlines have done this nicely. People have flown commercially for more than half a century. But flying was gamified in the 1980s, with airlines recording miles flown and awarding status levels. And because this provides social currency, people love to talk about it.

via www.fastcompany.com

Why is concrete language perceived as 'more truthful' | #PR

Chase Fleming at Communications Studies cites three reasons from a 2010 study:

When something is quickly and easily understood we perceive it as more truthful.

We can create mental images more easily by using concrete language.

We tend to think that the easier something is to imagine, the more plausible it must be.

via www.communicationstudies.com

The Dreamliner crisis: Boeing's CEO works his stakeholders | #PR

Boeing CEO Jim McNerney appears to have embraced the crisis strategy of "focus on your consituents and forget everyone else."

Kenneth Duberstein, lead director of Boeing’s board, insisted that McNerney “is doing exactly what he should be doing,” and that the chief executive is “out front right now with the constituencies that matter — the customers, the regulators, the employees and the suppliers.”

via www.prsa.org

Do customers want us to listen? Maybe not

From Brian Solis at Altimeter:

We all know that customers are demanding that businesses use social media to listen to ideas, engage them in conversations, and also solve their problems when in need. As I’ve often said, the best listeners often make the most engaging conversationalists.

Not so fast.

Perhaps what we think we know and what customers may actually want in social media represent an unforeseen gap that requires further consideration. According to a joint study published today by NetBase and J.D. Power and Associates, a double standard may exist in social media customer service where consumers say that listening is intrusive except when it’s not.

Cue the screeching brakes…

WTF!?

via www.briansolis.com

A final tweet from Carnival to the disembarking passengers of the Triumph | #PR

"Of course the bathrobes for the Carnival Triumph are complimentary."

via www.prsa.org

Follow the leader: The psychology of PR

I first ran into the work of Edward Bernays about a year after switching to PR as a career. I had grown frustrated. No one had a framework for thinking about what we were doing. There seemed to be no theory, no methods and no principles for solving the problems we encountered each day on the behalf of our clients.

Then in early 2001, during a presentation to a prospective client, I heard someone mention Bernays as the "father of public relations." I immediately when to Amazon, and bought copies of Bernays' first two books: "Crystallizing Public Opinion" and "Propaganda," each written the in 1920s. Both were out of print.

My first copies were photocopies bound by staples. (Fortunately the books are now back in print, thanks largely to progessives who want to position Bernays as one of history's great villains.)

I immediately embraced Bernays' notion of PR as an applied social science. I found my peers to be far less enthusiastic. They preferred "winging it" to approaching PR intellectually and systematically.

I also soon learned that the public relations profession had long ago distanced itself from Bernays and his theories. Many in PR mistake Bernays' pragmatism for cynicism. They find it uncomfortable and thus reject it.

While you may argue with some of his tactics (such as the use of front groups rather than true third-party experts), and with the details of his theories (which, after all, were developed very early in the history of the social sciences), it is short-sighted to discard his most fundamental concept: That it is the role of the public relations counsel to ethically and morally apply the social sciences on behalf of our clients.