Corina’s Concerns Be lowly wise, think only what concerns thee and thy being.– John Milton, Paradise Lost

Definition: Conversational blindness is a phenomenon whereby listeners fail to notice when speakers respond to a different question than the one they are asked.

So why is this important? Because as spokespeople for an organization, as well as private individuals, we are incessantly faced with questions that we do not want to answer, and would much rather avoid. In such situations, we can use what authors Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton of the Harvard Business School (whose paper I am quoting above), call the “artful sidestep”, i.e. answering the wrong question so compellingly that we cause the listener to forget we have not, in fact, responded to the original question.

The fascinating finding is that the majority of people prefer an authoritative answer to the wrong question, rather than a poorly phrased one to the right question.

How to be successful at it? Here’s what I inferred from the research:

- Answer a question that is similar in tenor to the one actually asked

- Phrase your answer well, and deliver it convincingly (poor answers, even to the right question are, as I said, ill-received)

- Make sure these answers to the wrong questions are positioned in the middle of teh conversation, and not before breaks or lulls (the more time people have to process your answer before the next remark, the easier it is to realize you’re off the mark)

- Do answer some questions well and forthrightly, otherwise the lack of substance of your other responses will not be adequately concealed.

- Beware of TVs that use the crawl or display to highlight the question being answered: this heightens people’s awareness of the actual question, and diminishes conversational blindness.

- Read the research paper.

Posted under PRealities, Reading Pack

Seth Godin writes about the difference between PR and publicity, in a week old post that has somehow escaped my notice until now. His style, always incisive, sharply divides the two, classifying publicity as the process of getting media coverage, and PR as the art of crafting the message (story) of the organization.

Some of his brief comments on the strategic role of PR have an echo in my own beliefs.

Many companies, especially in Romania, believe that PR is merely publicity (or what we call media relations here). Those more advanced understand that PR is more than a layer applied to the organization’s activities for inspection purposes, being in fact integral, rather than external, to the business goals. Still, they see PR as a support function, a tool, which, just like IT, or HR, enables to organization to succeed, by making its communications run smoothly, within and without, and making sure that interactions with the stakeholders generate trust and goodwill (various forms of CSR are often involved).

I have long held that PR should be, and should consequently be perceived, as more than that. PR should advise the organization in defining itself, in improving its activities and processes to better respond to public expectations. For example, PR should be able to influence the organization in becoming green, rather than either promoting the company’s new green products to the media (product PR, a.k.a publicity), or sponsoring green CSOs (a.k.a. traditional understanding of PR). PR pros should be able to stand up in a board meeting and recommend that the company truly embrace green, because that is the stakeholder’s wish rather than recommend a communication plan based on green values, and when they do that, their word should carry as much weight as that of the Operations guy, or finance director, and be given the same consideration.

I’ve yet to learn of a company that does that.

Then I’ll apply there

Posted under PRealities

Two things converged to create this post: a weekend course in “Managing Intangible Assets” and the ongoing debate about rate-card equivalency at www.strategic.ro (that I’ll read only after I write this post, to keep my ideas untainted by those of others).

The one thing that most intangibles (whether they are human capital, brand, or reputation) have in common is the difficulty in measurement (and, not incidentally, valuation). And since the end product is difficult to measure, the organizational functions used to generate these, similarly struggle with determining their own ROI. But because measurement and metrics are the mantras of the modern management milieu (hey, this is a fun involuntary alliteration), various metrics must be created, some recording transactions, some based on surveys or evaluations, and some based on benchmarking.

PR is in a particularly precarious position (yet another involuntary alliteration) because most of its activity is related to generating and managing intangibles (trust, reputation, goodwill). In times of crisis, these apparently “fuzzy”, hard-to-monetize activities are most threatened by budget cuts or redundancies.

The defense is measurement, and one of the metrics PR uses for that purpose is the ad value equivalency, or AVE. It is applied to the print, TV or radio editorial coverage, whose value is estimated using a combination of the costs of purchasing advertising of a similar size, positioning or length.

It has some positive aspects:

- compares PR output with a type of cost that is intelligible upper management
- it’s valuable when doing comparative analysis with your competition, because instead of comparing different outlets and different sizes of coverage, you compare the overall value of their and your earned news

But here are the negatives:

- the impact of news and stories is demonstrably higher than that of paid advertising (hence the rise of the advertorial)
- dilution or distortion of the message occurs in PR, while advertising guarantees the accuracy, because it does not change your message for publication purposes
- the rate card is used to estimate the value of the PR coverage, while in real circumstances advertisers would seldom pay rate-card values. Thus it appears that PR grants higher values, whereas in fact, it does not.
- AVEs treat all media equally, regardless of the prominence and credibility of one outlet over another (for Romanians, think being disussed on OTV, rather than ProTV), and also regardless of the preference of your audience (you may get high AVE values, but on publications that your target group doesn’t read).
- There is no repetition. The impact of advertising is amplified by frequency and spread, and indeed that is part of how a media plan is designed. For earned news, even syndicated, there is no frequency amplification. Using a measurement designed for a tool that builds explicit awareness over a limited time, for a tool that generates implicit trust on the long-term is confusing, rather than helpful.
- there’s no measure for lack of coverage, meaning problems that aren’t exposed, difficulties that aren’t covered, in other words, what the PR has managed to keep out of the press for the good of the company.

I don’t think AVEs are thoroughly wrong. When you balance PR investment with advertising investments, there is the need for a tool that allows you to decide or allocate between the two. But advertisers themselves don’t measure solely the cost of inserting an ad, but instead the sales resulting from it, the leads, the comments etc. so PR needs to find a measurement that treats earned editorial coverage similarly.  And yes, they can borrow some of these metrics from marketing.

Now I’m going to read the debate on Strategic, and see if others agree with me. I suggest you do the same

Posted under PRealities

I travelled recently to a medium-seized Romanian town with a sleepy countenance hiding some amazing surprises: modest people of immodest wealth, chic (and tasty) restaurants with reasonable prices, an almost all-male press of decent, pleasant journalists.

In this really nice city, I also ran into the PR’s worst nightmare: the media outlet that asks for money to cover your news. I had thought it a fable, despite my PR fellows’ protests to the contrary.

It wasn’t.

I had just sent a reminder about the press conference I had scheduled for the next day, and the gala event following, to mark the opening of the city’s first multiplex cinema, a significant investment from both my company and the host mall, in a city where business is dwindling as a result of the recession, opening up to 60 part-time jobs for students. In addition, only 8 cities out of tens in Romania even had a multiplex, while at the same time, previously state-owned cinemas were in a state of transition that threatened their very identity as cinemas.

Get it? It was news, according to the criteria for newsworthiness drummed into my sophomore head by Profs. Christina Kotchemidova and Larry Gordon (the latter is a new Facebook friend, another testament to FB’s amazing prowess in reconnecting lost friends and acquaintances).

The day before the event, I got a phone call, and a youthful female voice told me: “Ms. Gonteanu, I am so-and-so from local TV station X. I have to tell you that if you want us to cover the fact that you are opening a facility in our city, it is considered advertising and you will have to pay us for it. It’s company policy.” I of course, declined, and politely explained to the lady that although a business is involved, the fact that an international company worth millions of euro is now investing a lot of money in a recession fraught town is news, and furthermore that our policy is never to pay for editorial coverage. We do pay for advertising, I explained, and put our budgets where our mouths are, but I personally have never paid for legitimate news, and am not about to start. We said our polite goodbyes, and that was it.

So why is this bothering me? Well, first of all it’s the dubious professional ethics, and second, it’s the quality of journalism arising from that. (I have been schooled to be a journalist, and have the utmost respect for the profession.)

I do not want to be a citizen watching a TV station that accepts (nay, even requests) money to put a news item in the bulletin. It’s tantamount to misinformation. And I do not want to be a citizen watching a TV station that shuns news that may be important, or relevant, because the source is not paying. Think of the great NGO stories that you would miss, for example.

I admit, there’s a thin line between genuine journalism and PR fluff when reporting about a company, and most journalists tread it carefully.

The point was however, I wasn’t asking the TV station to be positive about our new multiplex. I wasn’t even asking them to actually run a story. But I was, naively perhaps, expecting a reporter to be present, and then the producer could decide whether the story was worth airing or not, whether it was crossing that thin line, instead of a sales and marketing exec. a priori telling me that payment was required.

I had heard qualified people saying that Romanian media is far more advanced than other media in the region. I gloated, and agreed that in many respects they were. But perhaps not in all. And I think owners need to be warned that despite tough economic times, journalistic integrity should not be compromised, and every potential story should be approached as a potential story and not an opportunity to gain profit.

And just to clarify whether the stuff was news, let me check the list of newsworthiness criteria, as I always do when issuing a press release:

Timing. The multiplex was about to open (first customers were two days away) so the story was fresh.

Significance. It was a new facility accessible to all the 200,000+ inhabitants of the city (not to mention the county and surrounding cities. Even if seen through the eyes of the 11,000 movie lovers that had braved the dilapidated state-owned cinema in 2007 (latest stats) it was still a statistically relevant group (and percentage).

Proximity. Check. It was the local press, dude

Prominence. Well, the mall owner was a prominent (and previously newsworthy local businessman), and the ceremonial ribbon cutting featured the deputy mayor, a well known local figure.

Human interest. Not so much, by design, but we did get the surprise attendance of the city’s best known cinematographer, who called our presence the rebirth of local cinema, an unplanned emotional moment that many of the press present decided to incorporate.

So you see, it was news. And without being critical of the station (for which reason I am naming neither it, nor the town), I am saddened by their decision and their policy. I understand their reasoning. I understand that the almost ridiculous restraints placed by the National Council of the Audiovisual on company names have created some funny and some monstrous habits in the broadcast media.

But I just think that the press was not meant to be pay-per-news.

Posted under PRealities, Random opinion

A few days ago, prior to the big Steelers vs. Ravens game that I know about because some of my American friends on FB are fans ( I can’t tell American football from rugby – or mashed potatoes for that matter, except that some players look hot, definitely hotter than New Zealanders doing some tribal dance in all-black outfits), the Mayor of Pittsburgh changed his name from Ravenstahl to Steelerstahl (since the Ravens are the rival Baltimore team, and the Steelers the local idols). This gutsy move (which is, as far as I can see, temporary) earned him a lot of positive coverage, including a spot on the Yahoo home page.

The recognition is enormous. Think about it. Even here in Romania, someone has heard and wrote about him. I can only guess what levels of sympathy he has garnered in his home town. Wonder if he’s up for re-election?

I’d like to meet his PR guy. He deserves congrats.

Posted under Marketing vibes, PRealities