2012: Can we again?

It’s not a secret that when Barack Obama entered the white House in 2008 he broke many barriers. He was the first African-American US president and he also was the first leader who understood the power of communicating through social media.

Now that Obama has announced that he is going to run for president one again, everybody is wondering how the (social media) political landscape is going to look like for 2012 now that all candidates will be optimizing the use of social media.

In 2008, Obama’s campaign team has used social media to its fullest. Not only was he able to get his message out there, he was also able to garner the votes of those who don’t vote (the youth) and to energize Americans into action.

Let’s have a quick look to Obama’s social media strategy:
There was the website, the blog, the Flickr account, the YouTube channel, the Linked In account, the Twitter account, the Facebook page , the MySpace page etc. And all this work paid off.

On the eve of the election, a web strategist thought about taking a snapshot of the Presidential Candidates Social Networking Stats and numbers don’t lie!
Obama was able to raise $656million for his campaign; over $500 million were raised online.
Let’s hope that for 2012 the republican candidate will also hop on the social media bandwagon.

A nice side to marketing!

I always thought that marketing was selling a product to make money out of it. I recently discovered that there was also “another side” to marketing, a nice one this time: Social marketing. Social marketing was born as a discipline in the 1970s; it uses the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviors.

Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society. It is generally used in health care programs.

As in “regular” marketing, social marketing focuses on the consumer’s wants and needs instead of trying to persuade him/her.

Social Marketing uses the 4 Ps used in consumer marketing and adds 4 more Ps, which gives us the 8 Ps of social marketing:

1. Product: in social marketing the product can be but is not necessarily a physical one. (Physical product: condoms, service: medical exams, practice: breastfeeding etc.)

2. Price: it refers to what a consumer has to do to get the product. The price can be money (to buy the product) but also time (to get a medical exam).

3. Place: it describes the location where the consumer can get the product. It can be a store, a clinic, a moving bus etc.

4. Promotion: it refers to do ways by which a demand for the product is created (advertising, PR, media advocacy…)

The following Ps are specific to social marketing:

5. Publics: all the people that are involved in the program. It includes the target audience as well as any audience that can reach them or have an influence in their involvement in the program.

6. Partnership: since a social or a health issue cannot be dealt with by only one institution. Partnerships are created between all or some of the actors that play a role in the fulfillment of the program.

7. Policy: the implementation and the success of a program can only happen if there is a policy change accompanying it. An adequate policy can help make a program sustainable.

8. Purse Strings: most organizations that develop a social marketing program need funds to do so.

Here are some examples of social marketing videos that were made for The Partnership for Drug Free America:

The Cost of Free

The digital revolution brought by internet and mobile phones has greatly changed communication, commerce and relations between people. Internet has become one of the most important tools in Public Relations As part of this digital revolution, social media has greatly facilitated the task of PR professional to target effectively their intended audience. In fact, social media has allowed the creation of communities; people with the same interests use the same platforms to communicate their thoughts and ideas. The creation of these communities has enabled corporations to create tailored advertising that will reach only individuals that might be interested on a specific good or service therefore increasing the chances of selling products.

The Virtual Revolution, a television documentary series that aired on BBC 2, looked at the impact internet has had on society over the past two decades. One of the episodes, the cost of free, examined how the web is transforming our notions of privacy and culture and the trades made online by users of the web as their share their thoughts, their preferences, their curiosities with the many search engines, services and media which appear to be delivering information online for free.

Here is the first part of the Cost of free:

PR and NGOs : Friends or Foes ?

NGOs and corporations have very different goals. NGOs try to raise awareness or change attitudes while corporations try to make profit.
The practice of public relations has often been associated with corporations. In fact, PR was perceived as a tool used for the promotion of corporations; which obviously makes PR part of the bad guys by opposition to NGOs being the good guys. This perception has lead NGO activists not to associate with PR professionals. However, whether this perception still exists or has started to fade, the tools NGOs use to communicate with their stakeholders to reach their goals are the same as the one used by PR people.
Whether it is to raise funds or awareness or to prevent something from happening, activists use events (demonstrations), celebrities and experts, social media etc.
Moreover there is more and more cooperation between NGOs and PR agencies.
As an example, Ogilvy and WWF have been working together since 1977.

Take a look at this video which was produced as part of the new WWF campaign:

WWF - We Are All Connected from Troublemakers.tv on Vimeo.

vidcast: social media

As part of my MA Public Relations, I had to do a vidcast from the perspective of a PR agency to introduce certain key aspects and issues regarding social media to clients.

Don’t shoot the messenger!

According to Kevin Moloney, the pluralistic society in which we live today has transformed PR into a powerful form of advocacy. In fact, today’s society is a competitive society: many voices want and need to be heard. The problem however is that media are saturated; people have therefore to compete and grab media’s attention to be heard.

Moloney point of view is valid; however it opens the door to political spin. In fact, if media are saturated with so many messages, who decides what message should be communicated?
So maybe it is better to embellish the truth to make the message more interesting, to make people want to listen to it. Then it is justified to spin if it is the only way to get a message heard.

But then again, there is not only one way to look at this problem. Political PR might be responsible for some spin but only because Political PR is responsible for the political communication. PR professionals do not rule countries, presidents and prime ministers do. Those are the people taking the important decisions; those are the people who make the choice to lie to their citizens. PR cannot be blamed for bad decision-making as it only communicates the message. If citizens do not trust their governments and politicians anymore maybe it means that politicians should try to do a better job and not blame it on bad PR.
And what happened to the fourth estate? What happened to journalists being the government’s watchdogs? What happened to the media being a forum in which all opinions can be expressed?

PR might have a part of responsibility in spin but it is definitely not the only one to blame.

Identifying and Prioritizing stakeholders

Identifying and prioritizing publics or stakeholders is very important for Public Relations practitioners especially for in-house PR. In fact, some groups of stakeholders can influence the way an organization acts. Some people will often support an organization such as shareholders others have to be won over or at least monitored to avoid a crisis such as consumers or pressure groups. It is therefore important to have a model that helps classifying stakeholders.

Correctly identifying and assessing the role and importance of each stakeholder can make the difference between a successful and a non-successful organization.

One tool that might help prioritizing stakeholders is the power interest matrix.

In fact, although a lot of different stakeholders may exist, some of them may have more importance than others: some of them might be affected by your organization, some of them might have the power to block you, and others might not care at all about what you do.

Minimal effort: stakeholders with low power and a low level of interest à no immediate action required but have to be monitored carefully in case their position in the matrix changes

Keep informed: Stakeholders with low power and a high level of interest à no immediate action required but have to be kept informed and monitored carefully in case their position in the matrix changes.

Keep satisfied: Stakeholders with high power but a low level of interest àmost challenging stakeholders to maintain relationship with: despite their lack of interest in general, they might exercise their power in reaction to a particular project or initiative.

Key players: stakeholders with high power and a high level of interest à these are the “key players”, their reaction towards the organization’s projects and initiatives must be given primary consideration.