3. [SHOW SLIDE: Silo or Prairie]
[Ladies & Gentlemen: it is a very great pleasure to
be with you at the 2011 SABRE Awards here in
Prague.]
Let me make a confession. I am an enemy alien. I
am not a ‘PR person’. I have had no formal training
in public relations. I joined Ogilvy & Mather as an
adman. And after eight years in advertising, I
moved to the Direct Marketing business. But during
this time I became interested – with an increasing
sense of passion – in integration, in how
collaborative working between different specialists
could produce seamless programmes. One of the
first of these was an OPR led campaign for the
British Insurance Companies as they responded to
3
4. changes in the UK regulatory environment. It
sounds like a no-brainer now, but back in the 1980’s
it was revolutionary stuff. Then, when I moved to
Asia, I became organizationally responsible for
Ogilvy Public
4
5. Relations, along with our other disciplines, and saw
it move, under a number of very able managers, into
a leadership position. In particular, I became
involved in our PR business in China.
So what you are hearing described in a roundabout
way is a business model in which the different
communications disciplines of Ogilvy & Mather –
public relations, advertising, direct marketing and
activation – sit under one roof.
[SHOW SLIDE: 360]
We call it 360°, and each of these disciplines, while
existing independently, and being resolutely
committed to their specialist insights and
techniques, owe their ultimate loyalty to a holistic
view of the client’s problem, not just a narrow 90°
6. view. A whole series of interactions – from cultural
values to digital platforms to common training -
reinforce the mutuality which lies at the heart of
what we do day-to-day in pursuit of deep
integration, the sort of integration which starts at a
strategic level – as opposed to the sort which is
merely executional, where things look and feel the
same, but where the intellectual underpinning is
simply not there.
[SHOW SLIDE: IMAGE OF SILO]
Public Relations was not born in a silo but at some
stage from the middle of the last century it started to
inhabit one. I realized when I submitted my title to
you that the word ‘silo’ was perhaps not a familiar
one. Silos are those vast objects in which
6
7. harvested grain is stored: closed, with bleak walls,
they symbolize isolation from the world around
them. While the founders of modern PR in the USA
– men such as Ledbetter Lee - were truly broad-
minded, their successors tended towards silo-
mindedness, if only perhaps, to signal their
differences from the advertising industry, and their
forgivable pride in earning media coverage rather
than just paying for it. Their skills and their activities
were primarily premised on what we would think of
today as media relations. It was a model which
served the industry well, but which I suggest, is now
dead – as dead as a dodo, as dead as a dinosaur.
Three forces have killed it: the forces of
socialization, of fragmentation, and of globalization.
Their impeccably perfect sense of timing has
7
8. resulted in a beautiful congruence right now. It’s an
exciting time – if we are prepared to open our silos.
[SHOW SLIDE : SOCIALIZATION}
First, let me talk about socialization. I do not have
to lecture you on the evidence of the arrival of social
media. The absolute numbers are out there for all
to see. We can all have fun adding up how many
countries Facebook’s population is the equivalent
of. Hardly surprising, then, that 25% of the search
results for the world’s top 20 brands comprise links
to user generated content. Social media is the
flavour du jour for any savvy marketer: numbers
count and it offers numbers.
8
9. What we can see as a result is the arrival of a new
phenomenon – “strangers with experience”. How
odd this phrase might have seemed five years ago.
More traditional sources of advice have declined in
the trust given to them. In the US now, between 34
to 50% trust ‘strangers with experience’, in other
words, on-line peer advice. In China, it is around
the same. In the EU, the same.
[SHOW SLIDE : SOCIALIZATION- TRANSPARENCY]
But the arrival of social media has had a more
profound effect still - on the corporations which
make those brands. Put simply, there is no longer
any hiding place. The bracing wind of transparency
has blown through corporate corridors in a way
9
10. which defies resistance. Of course, we have seen
recent examples of attempted resistance. When
Toyota first started to receive reports of accidents,
and credible attributions of those accidents to
defective brake pedals, its first reactions were slow.
As the truth emerged, it seemed that it had to be
dragged out. Now I do not believe there was any
willful conspiracy not to be transparent: rather, the
culture and politics of a conflicted organization just
never put a premium on transparency as a value;
and hundreds of small decisions added up to an
overall behavioral trait. The learning came the hard
way.
The good news is that when it comes, transparency
can heal. It has redemptive power. Toyota was
10
11. able, for instance, after a while, to stimulate
supporters’ groups on Facebook in the US who felt
the process of vilification had gone too far.
About 40 days after BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico, and well into its unprecedented media
crisis, which that created, our Digital Influence team
were engaged.
[SHOW SLIDE :BP]
We had a team in the Houston command centre,
24/7. Their role was to make heard BP’s
commitment to transparency.
From no social media uptake at all, the new You
Tube, Twitter and Facebook sites quickly generated
significant numbers of followers and fans.
11
12. [SHOW SLIDE BP-CHARTS]
[SHOW SLIDE :BP FLICKR]
Transparency was literally streamed out daily via an
infographics campaign, letting the facts speak, and
photos were streamed out on Flickr.
There was an ‘Ah-hah’ moment during the crucial
pressure test of the well-casing CNN was covering
the situation live and was mistakenly reporting that
the pressure gauges on screen were what should
be watched to assess the success or failure of the
operation.
12
13. [SHOW SLIDE :BP CNN]
We were able, immediately; to corral the BP
technologist, draft the words to clarify, and then to
tweet. The tweet reached the anchor, who
corrected the story. An on-air academic confirmed
our tweet as accurate. Bob Dudley, the new CEO of
BP, was present at the time and had a vivid
demonstration of the real time power of social
media. While still in its early days, there were signs
that BP’s transparent approach was beginning to
turn the tide of opinion in the US.
The first requirement of transparency is the ability to
listen. You live or die by it.
[SHOW SLIDE: BP LISTENING POSTS]
13
14. You need to understand what people are saying.
‘Listening posts’, like this one provides, against
agreed conversation criteria, a set of actionable
reports.
But understanding how people search is as
important as what they say. [SHOW SLIDE: SKIN
CARE INFLUENCERS]
Let’s think of search as the new shelf-space.
Against any set of key words, we can now
understand how the “search shelf” is constituted: in
other words, where do the results fall, by %? In
shopping sites, on video, in images, in wiki, on
news, in blogs, magazines or books? We can also
14
15. understand the constituents of search volume in any
category.
Insights like these are the ‘sine qua non’ of any
social influence strategy. Now, the Pareto principle,
which I was brought up with in my Direct Marketing
career, that 20% of the users amount to 80% of the
value, applies also to social media. Our task is to
influence those who most influence. Here, for
instance is an influence map, for the beauty
business in the US. It shows graphically the
influence muscle of style bloggers, fitness sites,
travel and cooking sites, and so on – of which
beauty bloggers are just one component. They are
now the 80%.
15
16. [SHOW SLIDE: CONVERSATION MANAGEMENT]
Then we also have to seek peer-to-peer influence.
This is activity at the social grass roots. It creates
an entirely new art form, that of “conversation
management”. The besetting sin here is the ‘one
off’ – the tactical Facebook page or Twitter feed.
What is important is to see conversation in terms of
a calendar, with conversation managers overseeing
the grass roots it serves. The context of the
conversation has to promote everyday engagement,
remarkable experiences and be sustained over
time.
You can see all these things coming together in some of
the work we do for Ford. Recently, we designed an
enterprise-level digital influence strategy which showed that
“Ford is different” and which has helped to deliver market
16
17. share growth at a time when one can still feel the after-
effects of the auto industry crises.
[SHOW SLIDE : FORD CES]
With the reveal of its first-ever consumer electric vehicle
sheduled for CEO Alan Mulally’s keynote at the 2011
Consumer Electronic Show, Ford Motor Company knew
it would have no trouble making the news. However, other
automotive companies have increasingly used CES for big
announcements, so Ford knew it had to be innovative.
After using Facebook for a teaser photo countdown to the
reveal, we hosted a 24-hour technology and innovation
live-stream on Ford’s Facebook page counting down to the
keynote. Bloggers from the around the world participated
as well as Ford executives live from the show floor. As a
result, Ford social media mentions exceeded 63% share of
voice of the major automakers presenting news at CES,
live-stream viewers watched for double the time and Ford
achieved nearly 50 million social media impressions digital
efforts.
Even when Ford has not controlled the content directly, it
has still been able to manage conversations through digital
strategy.
17
18. [ SHOW SLIDE: FORD GLOBAL TEST DRIVE]
In Febuary 2011, Ford hosted nearly 20 key social media
influencers – internet journalists and bloggers – with
focuses on technology and social media at the Focus
Global Test Drive event at INTA in Spain. These bloggers
were sent personal video invites and asked to come
experience the new 2012 Ford Focus under a variety of
conditions and then encouraged to document their drives.
After this event, blogs reached 5.3 million visitors, videos
created by bloggers generated over 500,000 views and
Global Test Drive related tweets reached 12.3 million
followers.
[SHOW SLIDE: SOCIALIZATION-
TRANSPARENCY- COMMUNITY]
I think it will be evident now that if the result of
socialization is transparency, then community is the
dividend of transparency.
18
19. However, a community cannot be built haphazardly.
It has to be grounded in a digital influence strategy.
There is a real case here to “make haste, not hurry”.
The collection of expired initiatives, ignored sites
and unattended accounts litter the social universe
like satellite debris in outer space. I hope I have
been able to suggest to you that a response to
socialization lies at the heart of an enterprise, not at
its edges. If you accept this, and I am sure you will,
there is a huge implication for corporate
governance. Imagine, for instance, an organization
which has complex channels or maybe licensed
partners. A governance mechanism which
manages one-step-away conversations has to be
worked out, not just ignored or assumed. If a
customer seeks to engage a soft drink manufacturer
19
20. via for instance the brands bottler, who manages
the conversation, and how? We are dealing here
with a genuine transformation of how the ‘public’ in
public relations is legislated for and catered for. In
the new world, the role of PR lies with issues like
this. Its role is to help socialize the enterprise.
[SHOW SLIDE FRAGMENTATION]
Next, I want to talk about fragmentation.
Again, I do not have to adduce the evidence here.
It is clear for all to see. But the de-massification of
media has been accompanied by iPad or android
technology: another perfect storm to rage around
that increasingly exposed silo. Multi-purpose
devices aggregate the vast fragmented mass of
available disaggregated content: they are so much
20
21. the new normal it seems hardly worth commenting
on them.
Of course, the fragmentation – and the risk
associated with it – is not totally new. An early but
prescient commentator of the implications was the
American sociologist Orrin Klapp. In the 1980’s,
Professor Klapp pondered the fragmentation of the
media, and the consequent proliferation of
information, and coined a phrase to describe the
result. He called it the “meaning gap” – in other
words as the quantity of information increases, the
inability to extract meaning from it also grows.
Klapp is all but forgotten now, but never, I would
suggest, has his thinking been more relevant.
21
22. It has been advertising much more than Public
Relations which as a discipline has explored the
realms of neuro-science. It seems rather urgent to
me to rectify that. In fact, comparative psychology
has much to teach us about how we qualitatively
deal, in our brains, with the quantity of information
we are now exposed to. Essentially, we have
moved into an era of “cognitive overload”, where our
brains lose the ability to encode. Welcome to the
“meaning gap”. In an intelligent article on the
subject, John Lorinc wrote – and his words have
never been more timely: “It often seems as though
the sheer glut of data itself has supported the kind
of focused, reflective attention that might make this
information useful in the first place. The dysfunction
of our information environment is an outgrowth of its
22
23. extraordinary fecundity. Digital communications
technology has demonstrated a striking capacity to
sub-divide our attention with smaller and smaller
increments; increasingly, it seems as if the days
work has become a matter of interrupting the
interruptions.”
What on earth can we do about it? Lorinc rightly
criticizes those who believe the solution lies in more
technology. Rather, it seems to him – and to me –
that it lies within us. In fact, we need look not much
further than a “white paper” of the Arthur W. Page
society of the USA entitled “The Authentic
Enterprise”.
[SHOW SLIDE : AUTHENTIC ENTERPRISE]
23
24. It posits the urgency to a corporation of being
grounded in some sense of what defines it, why it
exists and what it stands for. The authenticity of
these things is described as the “coin of the realm”
for successful corporations and those who lead
them. In place of the voice of authority, these
stakeholders demand “proof of authenticity”. Are
you who you claim to be? And, who do you claim to
be?
[SHOW SLIDE :FRAGMENTATION-AUTHENTICITY]
One of the co-authors of this white paper went on to
become the IBM CMO, Jon Iwata. Jon is a
remarkable client who is helping reinvent traditional
notions of marketing and public relations. He has in
instinctive dislike of what he calls “campaignery”,
24
25. which has inspired a remarkable case history within
the last two years. A quotation from Abraham
Lincoln is much in use at IBM: “character is the
tree, reputation is the shadow”. Is Public Relations
a player in the shadows, or a builder of character?
[SHOW SLIDE: IBM ]
In the IBM story, a lot of work went into the matter of
values, in thinking about the tree, about what made
IBM authentic. And a great deal more work went
into defining the role of the tree in the world.
In the new “internet of things,” there is still massive
inefficiency. On average 67% of energy is lost
moving on grids, for instance.
25
26. Well, out of this emerged the belief that the world
would be a better place if it simply worked better;
and out of that came IBM’s Smarter Planet platform.
[SHOW SLIDE:IBM SMARTER PLANET LOGO]
This platform was launched by the Chairman of
IBM, Sam Palmisano at the US Council of Foreign
Relations in a significant policy speech – only then
did it turn into advertising – in the form, literally, of a
manifesto.
[SHOW SLIDE: IBM MANIFESTO]
Then it morphed into a whole series of op-eds on
topics, published each week in the Journal and the
New York Times.
[SHOW SLIDE: IBM JOURNALS]
26
27. [SHOW SLIDE:IBM JOURNALS 2]
Each one expressed itself in a different way
symbolically, drawing from the work of
contemporary designers: design was a value which
the founders had baked into IBM’s DNA, but which
sometimes in its history became lost.
[SHOW SLIDE: IBM ECO-SYETM]
Behind these, a whole eco-system of content
developed. In fact, the agency’s role became that of
a content producer in which the traditional
definitions of copywriting, journalism, academic
research, public affairs, and design all became
mashed together. It is true integration, but in truth
27
28. all the components come from a Public Relations
view of authenticity. It has become a much talked
about phenomenon and something of a reference
point for US clients. There are many testaments to
its success so far but the one I like the most is that
within weeks a set of op-eds appeared on the walls
of senior White House staffers. And it has achieved
exceptional results – both in terms of attitudinal
measure and hard sales. This was the tree casting
its long shadow.
So, if the need from fragmentation is authenticity,
the output of authenticity is belief.
28
29. [SHOW SLIDE :FRAGMENTATION- AUTH-BELIEF]
A striking endorsement of the power of belief in
business came to us from some research we
conducted last year. Just as IBM had a point-of-
view that the world would be a better place if it
worked better, some companies also seem to have
well-articulated beliefs underpinned by a sense of
authenticity. Yet, in the same categories others do
not, to the same degree.
One part of that research was conducted with pairs
of brands, which were allocated into two groups,
those with a higher point-of-view rating and those
with a lower. In other words, those that had a belief
about the world, or stood for something.
Consumers sorted them very clearly. And we learnt
29
30. that if a brand is seen to have a strong point of view,
then its consideration is heightened. Brands with
stronger points of view also ranked higher in
consumer perception. Then we were able to take
these ratings and correlate them on a larger scale
through WPP’s Millward Brown’s BrandZ database.
We found that best performing brands for point-of-
view out performed the lowest by 2.2 times in terms
of brand voltage, which is usually accepted as one
component of market share prediction. In other
words, it pays to believe.
Now I confess this makes me very happy; and so it
should all of us – because it demonstrates that
platforms predicated on belief galvanize brands in a
way which I think had become somewhat forgotten.
30
31. So it is no coincidence that when Sam Palmisano
talks about the Smarter Planet agenda he talks
about it as a “point-of-view” and expresses it as “a
belief.” He did not talk about it as a strategy or
expresses it as a vision, for instance.
In this way I sense a bigger mission for Public
Relations than its silo comfortably provides for, one
which values definition and sustenance is as
important as message projection.
[SHOW SLIDE :GLOBALIZATON]
Finally, let me deal with globalization.
Again, I need not labor the evidence. In our Public
Relations business, the US is our largest market,
31
32. China is the second. That is globalization. But
sometimes I see in articles about Public Relations a
perhaps unjustified faith that there is a “flat world.”
Of course we’re all familiar with the phrase “flat
world”, so brilliantly promoted by Tom Friedman. I
happen to believe that the world is not quite as flat
as all that. Certainly it’s shrunk, made smaller by
technology. But some would argue it’s still got a
lot of mountain peaks on it.
I happen to believe the truth lies somewhere
between two extremes. As I see it, the world in
which we do business today is neither completely
flat, nor is it totally ‘peaky’. Rather it is bumpy. The
bumps can be quite intimidating. They can be
32
33. overcome, but we need to be wary of them in all we
do.
In my experience, these bumps are not primarily to
do with economics, or politics, or technology – the
topics which the literature on globalization tends to
concentrate on – but rather they are cultural. And it
needs broadmindedness to navigate through them.
This was really brought home to me in an incident
which involved one of the students I taught at the
Tsinghua School of Journalism, in Beijing.
[SHOW SLIDE : CHINA-TIBET]
You will recall that in 2008 Tibet was hit by unrest.
In the West, the tendency was to assume the rioters
33
34. were heroes. But in China the popular view – not
just the Government view – was the opposite. I am
not even beginning to enter the debate of who is
right and who is wrong. But what then happened
was that the Western news media started publishing
photographs of the riots.
{SHOW SLIDE: RIOTS]
[SHOW SLIDE:RIOTS]
Showing demonstrators being beaten by police.
Appalling. The only problem is that these police
were actually in Katmandu, not in Lhasa. In the
foreign press a Han Chinese rescued by the police
was described as a demonstrator being arrested.
And CNN started cropping photographs in a way
which removed rock-throwing rioters.
34
35. The effect on my journalism students was dramatic.
Having been taught that Western journalism was all
about objectivity they felt betrayed.
[SHOW SLIDE:ANTI CNN]
CNN took the brunt of the anger; and my student set
up a website called anti-cnn.com which in days was
recording millions of hits and recruiting thousands of
volunteers – predicated solely on finding and
publishing examples of Western journalistic
inaccuracy. Of course, for Westerners this is an
uncomfortable story. The internet – the great
flattener – can easily be the inflamer of bumpiness.
35
36. My point is that cultural perspectives even amongst
the young are not globally homogenous. Business-
to-business marketing has recognized cultural
difference for some time. Geert Hofstede, the Dutch
sociologist did the pioneering research on this.
Hofstede used a number of dimensions to define
cultural difference: such as the relationship between
leaders and followers, the importance of rules or
long-term view. The differences between the
dimensions dramatically impact the buying process.
[SHOW SLIDE; IPHONE]
Incidentally, there is now a cool i-touch application
which turns Hofstede into a cultural ready reckoner.
See the differences, US versus China, for long term
view.
36
37. [SHOW SLIDE: GLOBALIZATION- DIVERSITY]
The point I am making is that the response Public
Relations can make to globalization as much in its
ability to bring diversity to the party, as in its (much
more limited) ability to provide homogeneity. Of
course, I’m not arguing that it should not be global,
but simply that global promises need to be
grounded in the reality of the bumps. Recognizing
that the internet, for instance, is an aspect of
diversity itself is a mission critical promise. One
only has to consider, for instance, the nature of the
Chinese digerati – a very different tribe in some
ways from those in the US, not just in what they
37
38. believe in but in how they use the internet. In fact,
just this year we recently created a dedicated China
practice based in New York which aims at
synergizing Ogilvy’s global resources to help
companies, governments and investors expand both
inside and into the Chinese market.
Another example of “bumpy” diversity is the world’s
Islamic community. They represent a global market
of some 1.8 customers: yet few have paid attention
to their own needs in communications. Ogilvy Noor,
our new Islamic branding consultancy, aims to do
exactly that. Concepts such as “halal” and “haram”
should in fact go to the very heart of any truly global
enterprises value set.
38
39. [SHOW SLIDE: GLOBALIZATION- DIVERSITY-CQ]
Public relations needs to escape twice over from
this silo: once from inevitable constraint of ethno-
centricity in any market of origin; but then, again,
from any superficially credible but practically flawed
notion of a flat world which is likely to run against
the whole notion of “grass roots.” Thus, if the
requirement of globalization is to recognize the
value of diversity, then CQ, cultural intelligence, is
the output of diversity. In the globalized world, IQ is
not enough.
So, we have three inputs – socialization,
fragmentation and globalization. We have three
requirements – transparency, authenticity, and
diversity. And we have three outputs. Welcome to
39
40. the world of community, belief and cultural
intelligence!
[SHOW SLIDE: CPR]
Herein, I think, lies the opportunity for Public
Relations in the future, which is to break out of any
vestige of a self-imposed silo, and assume a central
role for helping define the corporate public
responsibility of the client. It’s a higher order, for
instance, than just corporate social responsibility,
though it certainly includes it. I do not think, unlike
Reacting
SPIN some, that the time has come to rename Public
Values Tactics
Relations. Formulae such as “Public Engagement,”
“Public Interaction” and so on which have been put
Creating
forward by various “wise men” seem to me to be
40
41. missing the point. The point is, to what end are we
interacting? To what purpose are we engaging?
Likewise models which seek to classify forms of
engagement or interaction do not provide the key to
the silo for me. [SHOW SLIDE :VALUES AND
TACTICS]
For me, the tension is between “values” and
“tactics” on the one hand, and between reacting to
publics versus creating communities on the other.
Some of the founders of this business – let us flag
Edward L. Bernays as one unfortunate example –
operated very much in the interaction of reaction
and tactics. This is the territory of “spin.”
[SHOW SLIDE :SPIN]
41
42. Reacting
Values Tactics
The whole point of my speech today is that the
sweet spot lies in the intersection of values and
Creating
creation. [SHOW SLIDE: CREATING]
It is no coincidence, of course, that the original
Arthur W. Page in his long-term role from 1927
to1960 at Bell and AT&T espoused in his time just
such a point of view. Only, he didn’t have the
technologies fully to exploit it.
[SHOW SLIDE: PRAIRIE]
This is the prairie of my title. Here is the broad
horizon and luscious grassland which Public
Relations needs to stake its centricity in.
42
43. Last year in Stockholm, PR professionals from
around the world gathered and deliberated and
announced the “Stockholm Accords.” They are a
significant step in attacking silo-ism and deserve
credit. They talk of the “communicative
organization,” which I understand, but which
perhaps does not go far enough in the direction of
authenticity. Where I worry is in the Accords’
definition of the role of the “Public Relations
Director,” who they say “cannot realistically hope to
directly monitor more than 10% of its organization’s
communicative behavior.” Here, I think, there is
insufficient ambition. But isn’t the real role that of
leadership itself? Of helping lead the leaders? And
should not that role be central and not peripheral?
43
44. In fact, recent changes in a number of organizations
have begun to recognize the opportunity. I have
already mentioned IBM, where corporate PR, brand
PR and marketing have converged organizationally.
Another example would be P&G, where the Brand
Building organization is now connected
organizationally into External Relations. This
recognizes that in the new world of influence
corporate reputation in a company cannot have one
guardian, and a brand reputation in the same
company another.
To me this is highly empowering. The silos are
breaking down. The prairie dogs are howling and
their message is about the centricity of the new
Public Relations to the business world of tomorrow.
44
