This week in PR (28 June newsletter)

There are 35 content links in this week’s roundup. From these, here are three talking points.

The election is not one of them. That’s because, by design, you’ve probably not learnt anything new in the past week. You’d already heard that Keir Starmer’s father was a toolmaker, hadn’t you? The lesson from political communication is that only when we’re bored of hearing a message is it likely to be cutting through.

What did cut through for me in the past week?

On Cannes and creativity

The trade media loves the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. So much so that it can give the impression that we’re all involved in high profile award-winning consumer campaigns and that we often attend expensive events in glamorous locations alongside celebrities. It certainly feeds into a narrative of the industry. In short, it turns us into advertising executives.

That’s the important lesson for the rest of us. For historical reasons, an advertising industry developed separately from a public relations industry. They are like two branches of hominids (though I’m not suggesting which one was neanderthal and which was sapiens). They may have coexisted; they may even have interbred; but they largely operated in separate spheres.

If you were starting today, you would not invent an advertising industry; nor a public relations industry. Tony Langham argues in his book Reputation Management that in place of the many siloes involved in sales and marketing you now only need two services: reputation management and integrated marketing.

To make it even simpler, and to draw on an analogy from the European Championship, I’d suggest that reputation management equates to your solid defence and integrated marketing is your attack. And that’s why the media loves reporting on it: it’s where the goals are scored and most of the flair is displayed. (We’ll return to reputation management in a moment).

The commentary centred on the coming of age of public relations at the Cannes Festival where historically PR agencies have not been major winners, not even in the PR category created specially for them. My favourite contribution was not from a trade journalist, but from a former regional boss of a large PR agency, David Brain:

What was absolutely clear was that the number of PR agencies leading award winning work (rather than just publicising it) has massively increased. Not surprisingly, the bigger networks with their ability to hire planners and proper creatives (rather than publicists) are over-represented. Golin’s Specsaver Gold Lion winner takes that brand’s humorous appeal and freshens it with an ‘earned centric’ properly funny idea.? Part of its effectiveness was that they didn’t try to jam a cause or charity appeal into it.? Helping an optician sell more glasses (or in this case hearing aids) is very OK.? You don’t have to save the world in doing so. But….it was, at? heart, a PR campaign and didn’t rely on a media buy.?

That’s the Cannes commentary in a nutshell: we have a genuine PR winner at last, and not every campaign has to be purpose-led to achieve earned media.

A similar lesson emerged from Ben Smith’s regular conversation with Andrew Bloch on the PRmoment podcast. As Bloch explained:

The output of PR is earned media, but the value of the PR agency right at the start of the process is being able to influence the brand campaign and the creative so there are natural avenues to take out of a 30 second TV ad into different media.

Post Office: Lessons in reputation management

Here’s an article that needed writing, and who better than the CEO of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations to write it? That’s because the CIPR’s definition of public relations states: ‘Public relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you.’

And yet PR-as-reputation-management has taken a battering in the Post Office Horizon enquiry. Barely a day has gone by without us hearing that the Post Office management prioritised defending its reputation, even at the expense of its subpostmasters and the truth. How could the CIPR defend something so unethical?

In his Management Today article, Alastair McCapra points to the lessons learnt. That a good reputation is hard won and and easily lost; that you can’t communicate your way out of a crisis you behaved yourself into; that you need wise counsel and this can be provided by public relations experts as much as by lawyers; so listen to your advisers and heed their advice.

McCapra concludes:

The bitter irony of the Post Office scandal lies in the fact that an organisation so obsessed with its reputation went to such great lengths to protect itself from accusations of wrongdoing that it ended up trashing its historically good reputation anyway.

Lessons in diversity

The diversity, equity and inclusion agenda has been a major talking point this week. Take your pick from Ben Monteith on Pride Month; Rachel Miller on neurodiversity; Louisa Houghton on ageism; Tristan Lavender along with Priya Bates & Advita Patel on promoting a culture of diversity.

Here’s my pick: Sarah Pinch on social capital (she’s chair of the Taylor Bennett Foundation and a past-president of the CIPR). She explains the concept of social capital, its importance, and why those who have it should give it away.

Young people at the Foundation are often the first in their family to go to university and the first to start on a career path.? I know that feeling.? I did not go to University straight from school, I did so later in life and I have a post graduate qualification in management.? But I was the first to start on a career path; my dad left school at 14 and my mum at 16.? My dad was a highly skilled electrician, all learnt on the job and my mum ran a nursery. As we discussed at the Conference, building Social Capital, as academics refer to it, or being socially mobile as many of us would say; requires some kind of intervention from someone, at some point.? For me I can trace that back to my maternal grandmother Hilda Stevens, my primary school teacher Mrs Howell, and Fiona Windrum who supervised my work experience at BBC Radio Devon when I was 15.? And I have been richly blessed by others who have continued to open doors and mentor and sponsor me; it is a lifetime’s work.? The key learning I have taken is to give freely; and generosity feeds generosity.? The help I have been given; I do truly try to pass on.? It is why I am the chair of the Foundation; and why every week I take a call or jump on Teams or make an introduction to help and support someone else.

This column is my chance to pick out and praise great content and the thinking that goes into it. It’s never about me, so perhaps you’ll forgive me ending with my own humble example as it fits the Pinch point, so to speak.

I shared a more personal and self-indulgent reflection this week to mark the imminent end of my time as a university lecturer. Among the comments from students and colleagues, let me single out this one, from final year student Sarah Cockett who I had taught in her first year.

Sorry to hear you're leaving, Richard. It was quite daunting coming back into education after a few years away, but you really helped my confidence grow. Thank you for all the advice and encouragement over the last few years! ??

Sarah thought she’d be disadvantaged as she started as a (relatively) mature student who’d previously been working as a beautician. I didn’t see this as a disadvantage, and immediately recognised that she had something extra: extra determination, added experience, coupled with native smarts. I did go out of my way to encourage her because she’d taken the trouble to stand out.

Sarah Pinch is right about the gift of social capital. Those who have it can give it away and lose nothing (except a few minutes of their time). They’ll even enrich their own store of social capital. So ends the lesson.