Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Apparently, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is doing some PR for itself. The age of social media has led to a blurring of the lines between marketing and corporate communications. In fact, so many things brands need to do nowadays puts even creative agencies in the territory of PR or vice versa.

The change agent being social media empowered consumers, the effort to redefine PR is quite aptly also a social media crowd-sourced effort in which people can submit their definitions on the PRSA website. A new definition (last updated 1982) may be overdue, but even so, the NYT speculates it may also be an effort to disassociate the industry from the notorious PR Eff-ups of the last couple years:

Among the more notorious examples are BP’s mishandling of the aftermath of its accident in the Gulf of Mexico; Facebook’s hiring of a public relations agency to try generating articles that would criticize the privacy practices of its rival, Google; how ChapStick increased complaints about a new campaign, which asked consumers to “Be heard at facebook.com/ChapStick,” by repeatedly deleting negative comments about the ads from the Facebook page; and how Netflix lost hundreds of thousands of members with a plan, later rescinded, to divide into separate businesses.

Nevertheless, I wonder how an official redefinition can help. In the de facto world of the communication business, PR is no longer the top-down message manager of yesteryear. Just like ad agencies cannot be the top-down message creators of yesteryear any longer.

Making this fact official may help in giving the industry a bit of common purpose and feel-good. Something, that ad people have, frankly, been kind of struggling with for their profession as well. How fitting then that its the PR folks taking the lead on this, staying true to the old PR mantra: If you don’t like the conversation, change it.

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Oh my, some brands just can’t help themselves, can they? I mean it’s not like you need a social media guru or digital ninja to tell you this: you shouldn’t pretend to wanna have a conversation with your brand’s fans if you can’t stomach criticism.

But yet, this is what keeps happening. This time with Versace. Versace closed down posting functionality of for their 500K fans after criticism about sandblasting their jeans was voiced because it is done manually by laborers in poor countries and the sand gets in their lungs.

What I find particularly spicy about this is that this kind of reaction is that it isn’t about just shutting down or moderating fans bickering or complaining about products or styles.

This is about shutting down a worthy cause and request people have with a brand they actually would love to be able continue to like. Please take these folks to a “How to avoid PR nightmares 101″ night class somewhere.

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Check out this short video from Common Craft about how employees can participate responsibly in social media.

Watch it here.

Ideal for HR and PR professionals, it talks about how honest conversations by real people in the company can help customers make better decisions and increase trust.

Even though the video is short - everything is covered in terms of setting up guidelines, processes to follow, and things to watch out for.

via Common Craft

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Cool PR launch of the First Direct’s Buddy program - which, while the actual service probably won’t last much longer than the promotion hype, it is a wonderful example of technology enabling real offline Human Connections.

Via Adverbox

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In was is admittedly a pretty creative PR stunt in of itself, EuroRSCG created a software that creates advertising based on typical advertising parameters, such as category, product, and advertising objective.

Of course, EuroRSCG admits, it cannot replace humans, and that’s the whole point. However the prospect of this type of software is pretty scary, considering that templated and pre-formatted ads are more and more on the forefront anyway. It’s not as if generic advertising wasn’t already a reality.

Come to think of it, why not let computers do the generic advertising? Maybe this way real human creatives don’t get bogged down with the generic kind.

Links: NYT, EuroRSCG, Heise

via Ronald The

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I was just about to write a post on brands and using social media for transparency when the David Letterman confession happened. What a perfect example.

Okay, so it must have been a really embarrasing day for David Letterman to admit he had sex with women who worked on his show on national television. But man, chapeau to him and his PR folks for doing just that. To come clean with the whole nation (a nation which is no quite as lax with the sex thing as, say France) and by doing so, catching the extortionist who wanted 2 Million Dollars.

Surely, a decade or two ago, this would have been the end of a career. But honesty goes a long way today, and I immediately thought: What if more brands actually communicated this way? Some brands still think admitting mistakes kills them. But what if they stopped being worried and neurotic about being honest about mistakes they made as corporate citizens or as manufacturers? What if they took failure as an opportunity to shape how they talk about their mistake instead of pretending it never happened and letting people talk about it without acknowledging people’s problems? Letterman couldn’t be sure if he wasn’t gonna be extorted again, so he did the right thing: he shaped the message instead of being a victim. Brand today should do the same. Some have, using social media to listen and respond and being transparent about what they need to improve. Others still pretend it never happened and then have to lamely apologize.

Fact is: today, people will find out about your mistakes and talk about it. They will shape the message, unless you are transparent about it. And you know what? If you’re honest, just like Letterman, you will even get applause, and you won’t become a neurotic brand no one can trust.

For those of you who haven’t seen the Letterman confession:

Thanks to Simone Hausch for the link.

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