The Buffalo Blog

The power of the online interactivism

An interesting article in Saturday’s Guardian explored the phenomenon of ‘interactivism’ in the context of the ongoing Brand/Ross phonecall debacle. Whether we agree with the almost nuclear (reputation wise) fallout that has ensued from the pair’s on air antics, ‘interactivism’ (while a tad academic semantically) has great implications for business, politics and of course, entertainment.

 

The core themes were fleshed out in the article: such as the power these well-meaning or malignant forces now wield and how pretty much nothing, reputation-wise, is safe. The reputation of people, companies and organisations now ebs and flows rapidly like a wave and can go from good to bad faster than ever before.

 

What the article missed was the type of people behind this online ‘interactivism’ – if you look at the statistics you won’t find a representative demographic. The people behind these colossal online movements, and they are colossal (try gathering 37,000 people in a town hall to complain about a BBC radio programme), are the vociferous, the politically active, the ones with something to say. But many of them may not be a direct audience of your organisation i.e. some may be abashed listeners but many are likely to have heard about the problem and pitched in with their own ‘two cents’.

 

The fact is that whether your audiences are those doing the talking everyone will soon enough be reading the damning headlines like everyone else. A big story is quick to gain credence on the web as was seen in the rapid increase in complaint numbers as the Brand/Ross story evolved last week. Someone, somewhere, will voice every question and concern that may have passed through people’s heads and if they have good reason and a good argument, it won’t be long until their arguments hit the mainstream press provoking a bigger and more dangerous media storm than would have occurred otherwise. .

 

It often comes back to this point though: these are the same kind of people that have always mattered to companies, political parties and other organisations. They’ve been there writing their letters and making their angry phonecalls for years. It’s just they are now immensely more powerful than ever before. It’s now so much easier and quicker for them to voice their views and have a tangible effect on an organisation.

 

For communicators this is another, from a long line of examples, example of why monitoring and engaging with active and vociferous audiences online is vital. The vociferous audiences will not go away and they will bring your organisation to its knees if it deserves it.

 

For this reason keeping on top of issues, putting your organisation’s voice out there in an appropriate and truthful way as soon as possible is the only way to retain integrity in an online interactivism storm. Heard this before? It is PR after all…

 

Masters (or not) of muckslinging

The last two weeks have brought two great examples of the practice of ‘muckraking’ (digging up dirt on competitors) and ‘muck slinging’ (conveying it to the world by any all means possible to make your opponent look bad) going bad. Whether in business or politics, these ongoing 'mud fights' are salient examples of why muckslinging never a good idea for winning any kind of communications battle.

The two separate examples of which I speak are of course the final verbal battle between McCain and Obama and the ongoing and hugely damaging Osborne donation request saga.

In both instances the offending parties, McCain and Osborne, have attempted to gain the upper hand by making Obama and Mandleson respectively, look rather dodgy. The trouble is that both instances have backfired and for highly obvious reasons – politicians at this level really should know better.

McCain, to start with, ended up looking silly using precious opportunities, in what was their final presidential campaign debate, to focus on Obama’s supposed relationship to a ‘terrorist’. This tenuous and pretty shaky story comes unravelled pretty quickly, and actually only served to Obama’s advantage.

The Osborne ‘scandal’ on the other hand, still yet to truly shake out, is having even worse implications for the ‘muckslinger’ than the ‘mucksling-eee’, and it’s only going to go worse. By telling the world the Peter Mandleson supposedly ‘dripped poison’ about Gordon Brown while they were out in Corfu, has created all sorts of trouble that could easily see heads roll.

The main comeuppance to be felt by those digging up dirt on competitors is threefold:

1. Competitors dig up worse dirt on the muckslinger (as may have happened in the Osborne affair)

2. Competitors make the muckslinger look silly and unfocused (as happened in the Obama/McCain debate)

3. Constituents, customers etc, all think the muckslinger is underhanded and petty and are likely to side with the competitor (as is likely to happen on Nov 4 – wait and see!)

The verdict? It’s always best to keep things aboveboard and not stoop to the level of muck slinging – it’s simply not worth it. Avoiding this dangerous practice is a much safer route and infinitely less damaging for one's reputation.

The Premier League - how not to communicate

An institution revered around the world. Its progress followed by millions. Dreams cradled in its arms. A shining beacon of…incompetence.

The FA Premier League has achieved global acclaim by delivering a product that the masses have lapped up, wanting ever more live football to quench the insatiable thirst. Yet in suggesting its new initiative, a 39th game in the regular season, the communications strategy of the Premier League was quite spectacularly ill-thought through.

Within hours of the news breaking, it had been wholeheartedly condemned by potential stakeholders – managers, chairmen, the Football Association and even the countries that the Premier League imagined would host games. Surely the Premier League should have consulted all interested parties before breaking this to the shocked and hyper-critical media.

Information is a basic building-block of any communications strategy, particularly if there will inevitably be a measure of disaster recovery within it - and even the hapless Premier League chairman Richard Scudamore must have imagined that there would be a level of criticism. In order to present this story to the media, Scudamore and the Premier League should have had lengthy negotiations with everyone who could possibly put a dampener on the idea. The proposal could then have been amended to deal with the issues posed by some of its more vitriolic critics. Now they have had to beat a hasty retreat, as the world waits for the next hair-brained scheme to fill the papers and then disappear without trace.

Auntie goes mad

News that the BBC is to cut 2,800 jobs couldn’t come at a worse time for Auntie as she fights to keep afloat in the battle for quality news content and acceptable audience shares.

While I may not have an inside knowledge of the funding structure of the BBC, I can still tell that cutting jobs is not a great idea right now.

Commercial channels are currently trying to balance falling ad revenues against quality programming. This is creating a downward spiral in programmes, audience and, in turn, advertising interest.

However, just at the moment when the BBC should be stealing a march on the embattled commercial stations, it is reducing its news capabilities by consolidating its back and front office news network. This will mean various news services will be distributing the same news in an attempt reduce duplication of effort.

The trouble is this that this strategy makes absolutely no sense from a commercial or quality perspective. Firstly, viewers value the varying perspectives given across the BBC network, i.e. BBC News 24 versus Radio Four – with everyone saying the same thing it will make things very mundane. Secondly, BBC viewers/listeners are notoriously traditional, the slightest change creating uproar.

This misplaced ‘streamlining’ opportunity, rather than creating a lean, mean BBC, could leave the corporation looking more like a rabbit in the headlights, rather like their oh so forward-thinking viewers during Emily Maitlis’ skirt scandal

Power to the little man

Who’d have thought that multi-national corporations would attempt to lead-on the poor man on the street?! Well, believe it or not they have been. Every time you buy broadband that is ‘up to 8Mbit/s’, it only actually goes about half that speed because of contention, poor quality wiring and distance from the telephone exchange. Feeling cheated yet? You should do!

But the little man is fighting back. Fighting for fair communications. And good for them. We applaud a fighter, and sometimes we even applaud a fight.

Royal Mail communications farce

Recently, Royal Mail revealed plans to close its final-salary pension scheme to all employees in a move that could plunge the business further into industrial turmoil. The decision is expected to trigger strikes by thousands of postal managers, in addition to unrest among its 130,000 employees who are in dispute over pay and working arrangements. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6342031.stm

However many millions (or hundreds of millions) pounds the Royal Mail has recently spent on developing their brand is quite evidently money down the drain. It’s all well and good having a fantastic logo and beautiful shining new collateral but with a communications disaster like this they might as well not have bothered. The true test of a brand and its values is the way that it is perceived, both internally and externally, and no amount of money can rectify this fiasco now.

It is typical of the lack of joined-up thinking synonymous with big company culture to treat employees with such disdain. Every single element of best practice in communications has gone out of the window.

Is it too late for Royal Mail? The answer is probably yes – they have been dishonest and secretive, leaving employees angry and in the dark. Even discussions with the unions and employees at this stage will leave them with a bitter taste in their mouth. Moving forward, Royal Mail needs to develop communications and HR procedures, both internal and external, that keep everyone informed when such an important decision is to be made. 

For more info on this story, click here

The church - where’s all the morality gone?

It was this week revealed that Songs of Praise filmed both their Christmas and Easter episodes at the same time…in November.

Now as those in PR will surely testify, the truth can be bent slightly, and re-positioning of common conceptions is not impossible, but it seems that for the vicar this was one stage too far, and he told his congregation so.

So has Songs of Praise lost its authority? This was not a show that claimed to have any moral authority, and it is simply the economics of television that dictated this. This is not a communications disaster, because the audience are well aware that this is not recorded live, and the spirit of the occasion is not dictated by the time of year that it is recorded. I’m sure Songs of Praise would rather this had not come out, but this story has few far-reaching consequences. Come Easter Day, when everyone is enjoying watching Songs of Praise, the date of recording will soon be forgotten.