By Martin
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March 12, 2010
In the dreaded vernacular of government, the corporate affairs or corporate communications role within most major institutions is no longer fit for purpose. Predicated on the illusion of control – the idea that a corporate reputation can be protected by tight news management and the careful nurturing of a handful of key opinion formers – the role no longer bears scrutiny in the era of consumer empowerment.
The last 20 years has seen the elevation of the once humble in-house press officer to the uber powerful role of corporate affairs chief – the person responsible for polishing the corporate reputation, keeping the critics at bay and the stakeholders happy. They have done their job so well that far too many of their internal audiences (especially those occupying the c-suite) have bought into the idea that the world around them can be controlled, critics silenced and crises managed.
Unfortunately, in a world in which trust is at a premium, influence is dispersed and criticism is cheap, these masters (or mistresses) of corporate spin are struggling. Stories can no longer be buried with a quiet word to your mate on the city desk. Analysts are no longer reliant on your personal briefings and are picking up their information from the web. And the CEO is starting to ask why sites critical of the company are starting to appear at the top of the Google rankings. You are paid a big salary to stop this type of stuff from appearing … or at least that’s what you told them.
Welcome to the new world of the public affairs director … chaotic, complicated and largely unspinnable. It requires a completely new set of skills, in which an understanding of social media, behavioural psychology and influencer marketing is far more important than a bulging contacts list on your Blackberry. It is a world in which many of the people currently occupying the leading corporate affairs roles are going to struggle.
I am ranting on this topic at a free breakfast workshop on 26th March, hosted by Glasshouse Partnership. If you fancy taking part, here’s the link.
By Martin
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March 11, 2010
An interesting suggestion from Alan Mitchell in his Marketing column about how businesses can strengthen relationships with customers by handing back the data they already hold about a customers’ choices – what he calls Personal informatics. Amazon and other online suppliers already provide a summary of our transaction history, accompanied by helpful suggestions about what we might also find interesting or enjoyable.
We often get paranoid about the amount of personal information held by commercial companies, but the irony is that in many cases, brand owners know far more about our preferences than we do – such is the disengaged way that most of us shop, especially in supermarkets – and much of this information could be extremely useful.
By Martin
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February 25, 2010
One of the most significant consequences of consumer empowerment is the willingness to question and challenge traditional sources of authority. The opinions of the people in the white lab coats are no longer trusted, whether defending the integrity of GM foods and MMR vaccines, presenting the scientific evidence underpinning climate change or questioning the efficacy of homeopathy. This represents a huge challenge for the scientific community, which is increasingly losing the battle for hearts and minds, but it is also an issue for society as a whole – when we no longer trust the experts, who can we trust?
A new book has just been written on this topic by The New Yorker’s science writer, Michael Specter – “Denialism: How irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet & threatens our lives.” Specter sees the lack of faith in the scientific evidence produced by formerly trusted authorities as symptomatic of a society struggling to cope with “the trauma of change.” No matter how much evidence is produced, the deniars will always find a hole in any scientific argument that doesn’t reflect their view of the world, so biotech will always be unsafe, whereas paradoxically, the scientific evidence for man-made climate change can never be challenged. It is now difficult to envisage a time when GM food production will be permitted in Europe; no matter what scientific evidence is produced, the anti-GM movement will always be able to play on the irrational fears of European consumers.
G K Chesterton’s aphorism, “When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing. They believe in anything” should be reworked for the 21st Century. Swap the word ’science’ for ‘God’ and you have a pretty good sense of the prevailing view within society.
By Martin
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February 1, 2010
First blood to Labour in the use of consumer empowerment to undermine its rivals. The repurposing of David Cameron’s “We can’t go on like this” airbrushed poster, both online, via www.mydavidcameron.com and on the streets, is a great example of how to appeal to peoples’ subversive streak. Barbera Ellen in yesterday’s Observer described how “this was the public channelling its ‘inner Banksy.’ Here’s the best version so far, courtesy of one creative soul in Hereford:
By Martin
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January 20, 2010
One of the first signs that a company is in trouble it when tries to regulated its less formal communications channels with external stakeholders. We saw it with the banks last year, all of whom started to micro-manage every communication from the outside world. Unless it came from the c-suite and had been scrutinised at length by corporate corporations and legal experts, it wasn’t going out of the building.
Ironically, this was the worst thing they could have done. No one these days trusts official communication, especially when it comes from the men in suits at the top of an organisation. Conversely, other less formal communication, between people on the inside and people on the outside of a corporation, tends to be more trusted. Microsoft and Sun Microsystems learned this lesson years ago, which is why they allow thousands of their employees to blog, Twitter and chat, without any corporate interference.
Unfortunately the marketing people at Manchester United haven’t learned this lesson. It was revealed today that the Twitter accounts of their leading stars have been closed down and from now on, all communications with fans has to go through the official Man United website. This is the reaction of a corporate communications team in complete panic mode. At a time when the club needs to win the trust of its fans, in the face of escalating protests against the Glazer family’s ownership, closing down one of the few credible and trusted links between the club and its fan-base is not the cleverest of moves.
By Martin
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January 17, 2010
Student facing the next round of job interviews can now get the inside track on likely questions, thanks to a new website – http://www.whatwilltheyask.co.uk/- set up by a bunch of enterprising economics students from Bristol University. Another great example of how the crowd is increasingly able to subvert the procedures of even the most powerful corporation and change the balance of power between interviewer and interviewee. When the job market starts to pick up and companies once again find themselves in a ‘war for talent’, this site will become even more influential.
By Martin
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January 15, 2010
A backlash is gathering pace against the naive belief in the wisdom of crowds and the inate righteousness of the Open Source movement. Jaron Lanier is one of the original new media thinkers – he is credited with popularising the term ‘virtual reality.’ In his new book, “You are not a gadget”, he criticises the impact of what he terms “hive thinking and “digital Maoism” – open source software, the belief in the rights of free access to creative content – on individual creativity.
Lanier also takes issue with the what reviewer John Tierney, in a great article in the New York Times, labels the “viscious pack behaviour on blogs, forums and social networks - the meanness of mobs.”
The Open Source/”free content for all” philosophy represents the first time since the days of Robin Hood, that the theft of other people’s property (creative content) has been allowed to assume the moral high ground. Lanier’s book is a smart reminder that even some of the most enlightened web minds, fear that this might prove to be a destructive force.
By Martin
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January 7, 2010
Despite what the social media evangelists would like to claim, the forthcoming election will not be won through tweets, postings and blogs. It will generate much social media debate – and a painful amount of bullshit – but just like in the US, it will ultimately be a battle of mobilisation.
Obama didn’t win because he used Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook. He won because his team had worked out exactly the best way to turn peoples’ interest into action. Admittedly, much of that interest, especially from younger voters, was generated and expressed through social media, but ultimately it was the millions of telephone calls and visits to peoples’ houses that mobilised the Democratic vote.
This point of view appears to be shared by Matthew McGregor from Blue State Digital (Obama’s digital gurus). In an Observer article, ironically entitled, ‘How the 2010 election will be won by blogs and tweets’ he said, “Blogs and politicians twittering get most attention, but under the radar a new form of organising supporters is happening. By energising people, and then giving them the tools to get involved and become advocates for the party, thousands of people are talking to volunteers, passionate about the issues and ready for a conversation. It is a new way of doing traditional politics.”
By Martin
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December 21, 2009
It is wonderfully appropriate the my final post of the year should celebrate the consumer power that helped ‘Rage Against the Machine’ beat the X-Factor juggernaut to become the Christmas number one. If anything demonstrated the spirit of the times, this was it: collective action – starting with a couple of grassroots activists, Jon & Tracy Morter, and using the power of social media to recruit a mass movement – focused single-mindedly on a campaign that appealed to the subversive streak that doesn’t lie very deep within the British psyche. We wrote Crowd Surfing for days like these. Happy Christmas.
By Martin
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December 17, 2009
Jo Swinson, Scottish Liberal Democrat MP, has clearly read her marketing case studies. In her crusade against the retouching of images by the beauty industry, Swinson adopted the template provided by Dove’s ‘Campaign for real beauty.’ She launched her own Real Women campaign in August – with the aim of trying to combat body image stereotypes by ‘injecting some realism’ into media images of women – and then set up a dedicated website and Twitter feed to recruit like-minded supporters.
The result? A P&G ad campaign, featuring an air-brushed Twiggy, has been deemed misleading by the ASA, after receiving more than 700 complaints and Swinson’s credentials as a smart political campaigner have been enhanced. A great example of how to enlist the support of the crowd to win an argument against a powerful corporation.