Viewing entries by
David Cormack
My wife and I are expecting our first child in 5 weeks. As part of preparing for that process we did a final clean-out of stuff that has been sitting in boxes since we moved into our first home. Six years ago.
While going through everything, I found a photo of me from when I was sixteen that, well I looked like a scumbag. All the sense of teenage angst and awkwardness came rushing back and so I did what any millenial would so, I shared it on social media.
When I was starting out my career I got asked this in a job interview. It got really tense really quickly because I realised I had no idea. I waffled my way through some crap and people nodded politely. I didn't get the job.
That was a lot of years ago now, but I still don't see a lot of people demarcating between the two. In fact they are used as interchangeably as PR and corporate communications which is a shame because if you get both nailed then you're in a really good place from a communications stand-point.
In its simplest terms, a communications strategy is the big over-arching ambition, the lofty goal - whereas the communications plan sets out the tools you'll use to get there.
So for Draper Cormack Group we have our communications strategy sitting right up the front of our website - "Not just a PR firm, but also a PR firm" - it's our strategy to convey that we are a company who does all the things you'd expect from a PR firm, but we also do more than just public relations.
The communications plan we have for ourselves contains things like "blog your expertise" (must do more often), get well connected so we can make introductions between clients that are mutually beneficial, make sure we trumpet our successes but also own where we go wrong - things like that are what we call the "tactics", to use communications parlance.
If we do all of our tactics and do them well then we will have gone some way to achieving our communications strategy of showing that we are a PR firm, but not just a PR firm.
Communication strategies should be at an organisational level, you don't need to do one for each subsection of a business, or each job/campaign (though they can be helpful). Where they most come into their own is at the highest level so that everyone in an organisation knows that the reason they're communicating in a certain way is to achieve a certain goal.
You can also fold your communications plans and strategies into one document. In a future post, I'll set out what that might look like so you can go away and try and make your strategy yourself. And then if you need a hand, why I know just the communications company that can help you.
Recently we did some work with a client who had been wronged. Pretty badly wronged actually. And it was going to come out that they had been wronged, but it might look a bit embarrassing that they were able to be wronged. So they spoke to us and we did some work with them on how best to prepare.
It's an unusual situation when you've done nothing wrong but someone has done something wrong to you and you might still look like an egg. It's not a common one but it can still happen, and fortunately the client we worked with didn't wait until after it broke before talking to the experts. They prepared.
We got them to explain exactly what had happened, what they knew, what they wanted to know, and then suggested some things they might like to know that they hadn't mentioned - the unknown unknowns.
Once this was done we set about writing a plan. This meant:
The audiences we identified were:
Staff needed their own set of messages to be able to use if they were asked about the issue so we built that into the narrative for them. We created a script to use when talking to staff, as well as another script to use for key clients. We drafted an email to send to all other clients and then we prepared a holding statement if anyone else (including media) asked any questions. We also did a Q&A section of any possible questions that anyone might ask. Having this for the client was really useful in case something got thrown their way that we hadn't included in any of the scripts.
On the day it was going to break, staff were briefed first, then key clients and other clients and then came the expected publicity about the case. We stayed in close contact with the client throughout the day but everything ran smoothly because we had planned. We anticipated the questions that might get asked, we had answers for everything and we were able to just run through what we'd planned to do.
The client was very happy, but not because we'd been amazing, mainly because they'd been in a position where a stressful event occurred but they weren't left scrambling because they had everything down on paper.
Now obviously sometimes it's impossible to plan for these things because you may get surprised by them - we wrote about emergency comms here but if you do have a few days warning then either you, or a professional agency, can help you so that on the day it doesn't have to be too stressful for you.
Over the weekend a bit of a hullabaloo broke out when a 2-day old tweet from Nicky Wagner, the Minister for Disability Issues, showed some ... you might say flippancy, towards her portfolio and the issues within.
We say we're a PR firm - public relations - but actually we're a communications firm. Because there is a difference. I promise.
Some of you may know, some of you may not that we run (ran) http://whatisITWellington.com - a blog/news site for Wellington's tech sector.
Well our ambitions have grown. And we've re-branded it to New Zealand-wide. So now it's http://whatisITnz.com; and we didn't just stop there, we also made a sister site for it too - http://whatisBIZnz.com because we wanted to include everyone.
Despite the best of intentions, the best of behaviour, and the best of staff, things can go wrong. And they can go wrong spectacularly. And when they do it can feel like you're in the middle of a hurricane, being buffeted by criticism and negativity and that it will never ever end and things will always be bad.
Take a breath. Things will nearly always be ok.
It's pretty rare that the CEOs of organisations have come up through the PR/communication route. Usually it's a finance person, or a legal person or a policy person. Comms and PR folk are usually held back at the 2nd tier because they're there to fix it up if something goes wrong. They don't need to be involved in the decision making process.
Wrong.
Admittedly I've set up a straw-man that I'm now going to argue against but nevertheless, while anecdotal, it's fairly common to hear that comms people don't get a seat at the senior leadership table. More often than not the communications and PR manager reports into someone at the top table; this can have negative consequences for you and your organisation's brand and reputation.
It's easy enough to fall into the trap that communications and PR people just need to be informed of what's going on. That from this information they can work with management's decisions to do their job, help your organisation and improve your reputation and brand. But wouldn't it be cool if you had a communications person sitting at the top table with you? Helping you make decisions instead of being told what they are.
If you're thinking of making a business decision it's going to have an impact on your reputation and brand. It doesn't matter what that decision is, there will be an impact. It might be tiny, it might be large, but the point of having a communications manager is so they can assess that impact and help mitigate if it's bad, or promote if it's good. And this isn't just external facing decisions either, business decisions get made that have impacts internally all the time. How will staff react to it? How will it be perceived by the people who are at the coal face doing the hard work? If it’s going to go badly should the business be doing it at all? Cutting off crappy reputational decisions before they are made could save you a world pain later on.
Having a comms person sit at the top table who can let you know if your business decisions will have a positive or negative outcome means you can sometimes save yourself from serious issues born of unintended consequences. We know what we’re talking about when it comes to reputation so use our skills in the decision making process. Not just the cleaning up process.
Recently I was asked to guest lecture at Massey University to their first-year media skills class. It's a group of people studying to become either journalists or communication practitioners.
I thought I'd take the opportunity to impart something that's taken me a long time to learn. That media engagement is a lot more than writing a press release. In fact press releases are not the magical panacea to get your brand out there and get you oodles of media coverage.
That's not to say that press releases don't have their place, but that they should not be your go-to when you have a story. The main thrust of my point was that we should be reaching out to journalists first, to talk to them and see if they're interested in our stories. If they're not, just spraying out a release and praying it will get a hit is not a sensible, efficient or effective tool.
You can see the presentation here (it's very short, don't worry!):
We’re a humble lot us New Zealanders, if we were going to have a slogan it would probably be “pull yer head in, you’re not an All Black”. Tall poppy, humility, call it what you want, but what it means is we have a great reputation overseas for being nice and approachable but sometimes we struggle to trumpet out own successes.
We shouldn’t though. Because there are huge numbers of Kiwi individuals and businesses succeeding and they should be allowed to talk proudly of that.
We’re proud because we have an amazing group of clients who were finalists at the recent Excellence in IT Awards. We put together nominations for five clients, four became finalists, and three won, two won the top awards. We’re proud of our amazing clients who do amazing things and we’re proud of the work we did in getting them to the awards.
But the sad thing is a number of organisations possibly didn’t bother to nominate themselves or didn’t feel right doing so. We got on the phone to our clients and said “hey we think that what you do is really excellent and there are these awards coming up and we think you should go for it.”
Then we sat down with them and talked about why they deserved to win and that was all reflected in the judges' comments for each of them which I’m going to replicate:
Excellence in Software: CricHQ
“The judges especially liked the team’s great technical leadership in its early adoption of crowdsourcing, and continuing to look for new opportunities to develop the product.”
Young IT Professional of the Year: Thomas Mitchell from Hunchbuzz
“All the finalists were amazing, but the judges found Thomas’ can-do attitude and sense of social responsibility humbling for someone in their early 20s. Operating at the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurialism, Thomas is an inspiration.”
New Zealand IT Professional of the Year: Victoria MacLennan from OptimalBI
“The judges felt Victoria was the epitome of the technology advocate, working at all levels to elevate the development and use of technology in New Zealand. She walks the walk and yet remains incredibly humble throughout. We’re very proud to recognise Victoria as the 2016 New Zealand IT Professional of the Year.”
Why would you bother to nominate yourself for an award? It can be time consuming, you don’t really get anything out of it, and winning doesn’t help your bottom line.
Well actually none of those things needs necessarily be true. Yes, nomination forms can be time consuming – or you could outsource it to a PR firm (cough). Not getting anything out of it? Well you get a validation of the work you do, which can be a huge morale booster for you and your organisation; and as for your bottom line – being able to say you’re a national award winner means that people know you’ve got the chops to do what you say you’ll do – and do it brilliantly.
It can be a jungle out there when it comes time to figure out what awards you should go for, but that doesn’t mean you throw your hands up and say “bugger them all”. Put yourselves out there. Be proud of the excellent work you do and own it.
An app has recently hit Android and iOS app stores that seems to have smashed the world right in its collective face.
I'm talking about Pokemon Go, a game that has really exploited the augmented reality we've been promised would be everywhere by now. In the game, people walk around with their faces buried in their mobile phones peering through their cameras. On their cameras wee Pokemon appear on the screen as though they were there in the real world.
It's the gamification of life.
And you might wonder, why are you telling me this Dave? What does this have to do with PR and reputation and publicity?
Well the answer is that this Pokemon Go craze has seen just about every single PR wave lap over it in just the one week it's been in existence.
There's been huge publicity in a positive way, two Pokemon hunters got a colour photo in the Dominion Post for kayaking out to a fountain and 'claiming' it for their side. Stories are emerging that talk of previously empty places 'teeming' with people hunting Pokemon. Businesses are asking that their employees stop hunting Pokemon and instead do their jobs. It's a good news bonanza!
Except on the other side we're seeing negative stories come out simultaneously. We've heard stories of people being mugged at popular hunting rounds, gang members using the game as a means to lure people into traps and people injuring themselves while trying to grab Pokemon in difficult ways.
Inevitably the snooping stories are emerging too, with suspicions being cast upon how much of your privacy you're giving up in order to hunt a Pokemon (this is a sentence I didn't think I'd ever type).
But the most telling story is the one of its success. Already Pokemon Go is bigger than Tinder on Android and is looking likely to surpass Twitter for active users. Not bad for a game that's a week old. And one that gets people out into the streets too!
So my point in all of this is that with every huge success you need to prepare for a backlash. There will always be haters. It's just part of society. You can either keep your head down and let success speak for itself (the riskier strategy), or you can do your due diligence and prep for all the possible terrible outcomes that may occur and what your answers will be. Obviously we'd recommend that you do that. But there are almost an infinite number of events that *could* occur, and to that say, well, ya gotta catch em all.
It's said that the gap between expectation and reality is the most depressing one of all. The millennial generation was all told we could be anything when we grew up, which is depressingly untrue. So when a number of us grew up and weren't astronauts, or film stars or ponies (my sister was weird) then we got upset about it. So we need to think about managing expectations.
It's particularly true in the service industry like PR - when you work by the hour you need to make sure your client is very clear on how long something will take and also of the impact that will have. The media landscape is changing so it's not so easy to promise multiple column inches devoted to your company's new colour-scheme.
It's been budget week and for the first time in its 8 years of budget delivery the Government failed on managing expectations. Previous budgets have been very carefully sign-posted about what will be in them from a negative perspective. In 2010, John Key sign-posted that there would be tax cuts that would benefit the rich more than the poor. He got out early so that by the time Bill English delivered the budget people were all "oh yeah, John Key said that would happen, so there we go". Brilliant. He managed expectations of the public exceedingly well. The reverse of this was when the benefit increase was kept secret and suddenly bam! "First benefit increase in 40 years" the National Government crowed and nobody saw it coming. It caught the opposition as they looked foolish arguing against it.
But this time around something went a bit haywire. There were large expectations about some kind of panacea for the housing crisis but we got very little. So people are angry about that. Also there were a number of media reports that the Government might extend paid parental leave - when asked about it, Bill English was cryptic and said we'd have to wait and see. Bad move Bill. What you needed to do was stamp that out - "no there will not be anything in there extending paid parental leave". By not doing this he created an expectation that there might be, and for the majority of people this would be a great thing. It wasn't there and so we're unhappy.
The huge increases of health spending which should have been the good news (when in actual fact it's just meeting the bare minimum requirements) has been overshadowed by the fact that the Auckland Housing Crisis remains unfixed. And even if they weren't going to / couldn't fix it, the Government needed to be clearer about this so we knew it was coming. Surprise is the enemy of goodwill in this instance.
The lessons for us all are clear - don't try and be cryptic if you're not going to deliver something that people want. Be up front and honest about it, because people will forgive that, but they won't be so quick to forgive the attempts to be sneaky.
