ICCO Blog Archives - Page 17 of 25

The ICCO Global Award Entries: The Quest To Demonstrate True Effectiveness

16th October 2016/in ICCO Blog

Article by Renee Wilson, president, PR Council; co-chair of ICCO Global Awards jury

Another awards program? Oh my…….but wait! – here is a chance to get some deserved recognition for your team’s stellar work, while helping educate the global marketing communications community on the power of public relations.

Our industry is going through somewhat of an identity crisis redefining who we are, and what we do, at an incredible pace. There are many types of different discipline agencies that claim to know how to ‘earn influence’ or ‘earn media’ in a way that public relations can, with credibility and relevance. However, our discipline is truly an art and a science, and operates in some similar ways but in a lot of unique ways too.

The ICCO Global Awards is a great opportunity for our industry to showcase the way in which public relations campaigns achieve real results, through powerful outcomes. It is the measurement of changes in attitudes, opinions, and behavior (eg,votes, shares, sales etc.) that truly helps underscore the effectiveness of our campaigns, and what the ICCO Global Awards are all about.

The Cannes Lions Festival and Awards is very much rooted in creativity, and we love it for that, while the ICCO Global Awards punctuates the campaign “effectiveness.” That’s not to say that you don’t need a creative entry to win the ICCO Global Awards too, but proving how you help achieve your clients’ objectives with something measureable and tangible, not just opinion, is where your focus should be when entering for an ICCO Global Award.

Additionally, could this be the year we come up with the best collection of global campaign entries that demonstrate the powerful effectiveness that public relations offers? I think it could. Let’s challenge ourselves and our industry to do it! Then, let’s use these ICCO Global Award winning campaign entries as calling cards to clients all over the world to better demonstrate what our discipline is capable of when it comes to effectiveness.

In my role as president of the PR Council, I talk to many leaders from CMOs and marketing clients, to communication directors, about the power of PR. In order for them to continue to prioritize PR within their organizations with supporting resource, and in some cases, start to prioritize, we need to do a better job of explaining our effectiveness. It’s that simple. And, it’s that complex.

If you listen to the trade media that cover our industry and the industry pundits, some feel that we are moving too slowly in doing this. The observation – (whether you agree or not) – is perhaps we are not retooling as quickly as other disciplines in terms of our talent, infrastructure and campaign thinking. Let’s prove them wrong! Let’s show the remarkable work our teams produce. Let’s enter the ICCO Global Awards and use these entries as our industry calling cards.

For more information on the ICCO Global Awards visit: awards.iccopr.com

Don’t let storytelling become a fantasy

16th October 2016/in ICCO Blog

Article by Petra Sammer, Chief Creative Officer at Ketchum Germany

Over the last few years, storytelling has become one of the most frequently used buzzwords in PR. The accepted wisdom now seems to be that, the future of communications lies in storytelling – and PR owns that expertise.

PR claims it is home to exceptionally good storytellers for good reason. Our industry is used to analysing complex situations and identifying the top line story – we know that every good story needs a reason to be told. Our industry is used to assembling stories in ways that encourage sharing – we know that every good story has viral potential. Our industry is used to recounting stories in ways that will grab attention – we know that every good story needs a universal connection with the reader.

But in saying this we easily forget both weaknesses of PR and the strengths of our advertising rivals – who also claim the storytelling mantle. Advertising firms have long been trusted partners in developing the client’s “big idea.” Their entire business workflow is geared to deliver film and imagery – just when the world is obsessed with YouTube and Instagram. Advertisers know how to work with a palette of emotions. They are immersed in audience data and culture. They understand how edutainment makes messages sticky.

PR on the other hand is still earning its right to handle the client’s “big idea” in a channel agnostic world. Our business workflow is often geared to understand, unpick and create content using words and narratives. We also use a very specific vocabulary from the world of rational hard news and train ourselves to describe our stories in certain restrictive formats. In some cases we have almost become consultants like McKinsey, working to set methodologies that strip out subjectivity as if it were an evil. Our industry is still learning to handle value and behaviour based audiences. And most fundamentally we understand storytelling though the concept ofnews-storytelling – which is not the same as creative-storytelling.

So for me, if we are to truly to seize upon the potential to own a wider notion of storytelling, and transform our industry accordingly, we need to spend a little more time understanding what that really means. PR must learn how to make people laugh and cry, every day. PR must get comfortable with a balance of facts and emotion. PR must focus its stories around heroes and encourage our clients to recognise the need for conflict in our work. We must give equal thought to words and visual communication.

If we can do this, and some of the work of our industry proves we very much can, there are some truly wonderful and incredibly rewarding opportunities to be had.

For example, my firm, Ketchum was responsible for the origination and production of these films for Samsung and Häagen-Dazs. We have been busy hiring producers, artists and camera operators. We are beginning projects with visual turns and images instead of relying only on the written word. We are helping CEOs and managers to tell their personal stories in the colourful language of day to day life. We are connecting brands with creators like documentary filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock and Academy Award Winner, Morgan Neville.

PR cannot just claim creative storytelling as its natural right, we need to reengineer the way our organisations solve problems if we are to broaden our horizons.

Message from ICCO President to the Participants of the Global PR Summit in Oxford

7th October 2016/in ICCO Blog, ICCO News

Dear ICCO Summit participants,

A sincere thanks for attending the most prestigious and useful event in our business in the world – the Global PR Summit – last week in Oxford, UK.

We all witnessed many professional and interesting presentations, exploring the future of the Public Relations business and to the enormous changes which are happening everyday. The quality of the speakers, the topics, number of participants (almost 200) and countries represented (36) put this year’s Summit among the best in the almost 30 year ICCO history.

As you know ICCO is growing very fast and develops its structure and management according to this growth and also according to the needs of this dynamic business – Public Relations. Establishing our Regional Groups, launching new events more focused on regions and much better cooperation between countries, sharing both achievements and problems within our business at special forums, trainings, further enlargement of the organisation globally and also creating a special professional Innovation panel are the projects we would like to develop next year, to name just a few. And also – the Global PR Summit in Oxford was undoubtedly the most covered, shared and commented professional event on social media most probably since its launch a decade ago.

Thank you very much again for coming to Oxford to be one of us, to be one of the selected group of people looking to the future of the business, for your posts on social media, for the comments, remarks and questions both from the stage to the audience and from the audience to the speakers and during the coffee breaks, lunches, dinners and other social events.

We all look forward to an even more successful Summit next year in Helsinki, Finland, and I would like to announce that all participants to our Oxford event will have a very special discounted rate for the 2017 event in Finnish capital.

I will be happy to meet you in the meantime at any PR event throughout the world and – of course – in London on December 1st at the ICCO Global Awards Gala Dinner. If I can be of any help, please do contact me anytime.

All my best,

Maxim

Maxim Behar
ICCO President
www.iccopr.com

CEO & Chairman of the Board
M3 Communications Group, Inc. | A Hill+Knowlton Strategies Partner

m: +359 888 50 31 13 | p: +359 2 818 70 10
e: max@m3bg.com | www.m3bg.com
60, Bulgaria Blvd. | 1680 Sofia, Bulgaria

103 TAKE-AWAYS FROM 2016 ICCO GLOBAL SUMMIT/OXFORD

4th October 2016/in ICCO Blog, ICCO News

By Elise Mitchell, CEO, Mitchell Communications & Dentsu Aegis Public Relations Network

This year’s conference theme was “Talent, Inspiration and Innovation – Creating the Consultancy of the Future.”
Two fast-paced days of speakers, panels and networking opportunities made it hard to pick, but here’s the best from my notes. As a bonus, I’ve included 23 links to research, case studies, frameworks and other resources.

Would love to know what you learned too, so please connect with me and share. Here’s to being inspired!
Elise Mitchell
CEO Mitchell and Dentsu Aegis Public Relations Network
Twitter
LinkedIn
Mitchell
EliseMitchell.com

A Fresh Look at Talent
1. Retaining talent is the top challenge agencies face today
2. Embrace diversity as if the future depends upon it
3. Technology can help agencies attract talent — use virtual reality when interviewing prospects to give them a tour of the office, give them an authentic feel for the company culture
4. Data can help agencies attract talent — we should use learnings from CRM tools to find and reach talent when they’re interested in making a job change
5. Be braver about who you hire

Global Women in PR Gender Pay Gap Study and panel discussion
6. The gender pay gap is £12,600 ($16,175)
7. 36% of agency board level (senior management) are men; 16% are women
8. Wage inflation is a challenge for agencies: pay is increasing, over-servicing tendencies by agencies and inability to raise fees means margin is squeezed
9. Flexibility needs to work both ways – between the agency and the employee, they must work together if flexible roles are to be developed successfully
10. The PR profession often doesn’t lend itself to flexible working roles or job sharing due to the unexpected needs of clients in a 24/7 world; harder to offer these types of situations to employees
11. Look at what people can do, not just what is on their resume
12. Challenge that lies ahead: Close the gender pay gap, retain talented women for a balanced boardroom, be more flexible in working practices, help women develop their skills to grow confidence

Diversity in Turkey
13. Communications is going back to being human, it’s the individual that counts
14. Family is an important aspect of life in Turkey; togetherness is something people value
15. Be hopeful – residents choose to celebrate life and look to the future in spite of the challenges the country is facing. A quote attributed to the Dalai Lama sums this up well: “What is the happiest moment of your life? Now.” The teaching: live in the present
Talent lessons from China
16. Give stretch assignments to your employees to keep them engaged, growing and bringing new value to clients
17. Don’t miss opportunities to bond with employees, capturing key moments of truth – review and reward employees when they don’t expect it (based on behavioral science, an unexpected positive event will send dopamine to the brain)

Winning the war for talent
18. Employees are effective brand ambassadors for their employers — content shared by employees has 8x greater engagement than content shared by the organization itself
19. PR agencies can compete for talent against management consultancies by offering a more creative environment; employees are attracted to work environments that place creativity at the core; work/life balance = fun
20. People leave bosses more than they leave agencies

Emerging markets
21. In India, 30% of revenue is coming from non-PR services
22. Hong Kong – PR pros need to develop talent in many areas and hire for hybrid roles, looking for combinations such as social media and entrepreneurship
23. Russia – the role of communications in organizations is changing significantly, the need for the CCO role is increasing
24. “Africa means business” – the PR industry is growing, but recognize that Africa is a very diverse continent that requires local market knowledge and strategy to engage with local stakeholders

Brand-building and brand culture
25. A brand is only as good as its people
26. Integrating your social feeds can enable you to build a more compelling personal brand, build your community
27. Millennials comprise more than 40% of those who use ad blockers
28. Criteria for winning at Cannes (Entertainment Jury): quality of content, relevant, entertaining, effectiveness
29. New York Times campaign “The Displaced” – Cannes Lion winner, example of experiential content like VR to immerse audiences in an engage manner ;it’s not just about understanding, it’s about feeling
30. ING campaign “The Next Rembrandt” – example of how data and deep learning can help a brand build meaningful relationship with audiences
31. Content marketing is most successful when it communicates a message and compels the viewer to share that same message; researchers have found the key to the content virality is to evoke an arousing emotion, whether positive or negative.
32. Crowdsourcing is an increasingly popular way to engage consumers, give them more power and choice; allows brands to gain valuable insights for innovation purposes

The power of the earned brand
33. Four behaviors that increase the most when “involved” consumers become “committed” consumers: participate in creating the brand’s content, like what the brand says on social media, willing to share personal data with the brand, early adopter of brand products/services when they come out
34. What consumers value about different media: earned media is most likely to get their attention; paid is most entertaining; peer media is most likely to change opinion or lead to purchase of a new brand; owned media is most accessible

Storytelling
35. Every story needs: a reason to be told, a hero, conflict, to touch our heart, to “go viral “ (living on from generation to generation)
36. Pick one person and tell their story, not an entire group of people
37. Creating empathy is key – the conflict and struggle are what draw us in
38. “Desire is the blood of good storytelling.”

Reputation and trust
39. Different reputations exist for different audiences within the same brand
40. Study by Mayer, Davis and Schoorman on three dimensions of trust: ability, benevolence, integrity
41. Reputation engagement is achieved through behavior, networks and narratives
42. Other people own your reputation; narrative is a powerful tool to influence reputation

How public affairs is changing
43. Position papers are no longer enough; we must tell stories on behalf of clients
44. An engaged CEO is the key to successful public affairs initiatives
45. Creativity plays an important role in public affairs

Being a learning leader
46. Learning leaders are open-minded, humble and believe “the world has something to teach me,” engage their teams in finding solutions, make the time to invest in themselves
47. Arrogance leads to ignorance; the world is changing and you must change with it
48. Benefits of learning: We stretch ourselves, gain broader perspectives, make better decisions, enable others around us to grow
49. Leaders today are becoming adaptive leaders – finding new solutions to new problems in real time
50. Learning tips for busy leaders: Listen to podcasts in the car or on the train, while you exercise; speed date suppliers to swap ideas and spot innovation you can apply to your agency

Next practices in public relations — Lord Chadlington
51. “The hamster is dead but the wheel is still turning” – i.e. you’re all dead unless…you can incorporate software, analytics and the ability to measure reputation online
52.We need to make more time to think: we are working too hard, too fast
53. Agencies of the future will invoice based on digital movement
54. Insights will carry the day, critical to be able to provide clients insights to drive campaigns

Communicating at the speed of culture
55. Consumers unlock their phones 150 times/day not to call anyone but to access and create content
56. “Moments in between doing other things” – when people are looking at their phones, flicking through infinite content
57. PR agencies are best positioned to manage clients’ needs in a noisy world; we are consistently good at two things: being reactive to what the world cares about right now; telling a good story

Lessons from the UK government communications
58. Four essential outcomes of comms work: changes in behaviors that benefit individuals and society, operational effectiveness of public services, reputation of the UK and responding in times of crisis, explanation of the government’s policies and programs
59. Why citizens would rather talk about football? Timeless themes: struggle, persistence, challenge, success
60. Download evaluation performance tools and framework
61. Good leaders ask themselves: What do you want to be remembered for? And then strive to live up to that
62. Good leaders have the courage to step up/step in when they are needed, voice ideas that help drive needed change, inspire others to learn

Cannes panel
63. The emotional connection is essential for entries to demonstrate
64. Campaign illustrating impact of data on creativity: “The House of Clicks”

The science of human behavior
65. Study on what impacts our decision-making in completely unrelated situations: what judges ate for breakfast, whether a college football team (American football) won/lost
66. We make 226 decisions a day about food (most are unconscious); example of “system one” decision-making (automatic, effortless, associative); we use system one more than we think we do!
67. Publications of Daniel Kahneman, Nobel prize winner on “thinking fast and slow”
68. Clients are very interested in behavioral insights because they are evidence-based
69. We spend too much time on the “Sherlock Holmes” bias – trying to persuade people with pros/cons; emotions play a much larger role than we think
70. Social persuasion can be a very effective approach –“everybody’s doing it” – example: communicating that 9 out of 10 people file their tax returns on time to encourage timely filing
71. Download insights framework: Four simple ways to apply behavioral insights
72. Give and take: How reciprocity drives our behavior
73. A/B testing of campaign messages on your website is a valuable way to determine what motivates people to respond more often; apply learnings to gain traction; however PR industry should test behavioural triggers more often rather than just wordsmithing

“Spikey” ideas rather than just a big idea
74. An idea that enables many activations, manifests itself across many channels
75. Good insights are at the core of spikey ideas; the combination of human insights, social insights, brand/product insights
76. Spikey ideas have at the core a persuasive human truth or purpose
77. PR agencies are better equipped to develop/deliver spikey ideas because we think and can activate across all channels (PESO)
78. Semantic encoding –it’s not just what you see or hear but the meaning of something helps you remember it
79. Case study: “Kern the Gnome” engaged scientists around the world to teach us about gravity
80. Case study: #emergencylessons to bring school to children in war-torn countries

Time-keeping and timesheets
81. You don’t prove value to clients by showing time sheets. Demonstrate that you have achieved pre-defined objectives and targets.
82. Some clients do require time sheets and audit them, but employees struggle to keep them accurate and current
83. Daily time entry helps fight “time slippage,” a big challenge for agencies
84. The downside of time-keeping: Time sheets are “an assault on creative brains at work”
85. Don’t threaten employees who are not keeping accurate time sheets, instead reward employees who are (occasional free venti or beer when time sheets are up to date)
86. Time-keeping is a valuable tool to measure time spent against certain activities and the opportunity cost of not being able to do other things

Analytics functions that work at agencies
87. It’s not just about the numbers, it’s also about the packaging; think about how to make data beautiful and shareable
88. The role of metrics in award-winning entries: We have a responsibility to force award-winning entries to demonstrate robust metrics; otherwise we send the wrong message to the industry that it’s okay not to measure. Could this encourage clients and agencies to invest more in metrics?
89. Challenge for agencies: Until more of agencies’ work is paid based on results, they’re not going to invest as much in measurement
90.Outputs alone are losing their effectiveness; must include outtakes (response and reactions of audiences) and outcomes to show business impact
91. Download integrated evaluation framework from AMEC

Innovation and creativity
92. “Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive.” (Tom Kelley, General Manager IDEO).– IDEO founder
93. Invitation to join the Innovation in Communications panel
94. Where a client starts isn’t always where they end up; design thinking helps uncover what is really most important to clients and what their objective is
95. Snapchat: Users are documenting their lives on this platform; brands in the Middle East have been using Snapchat as a valuable customer service channel for the past 2-3 years
96. National Geographic campaign Face Swap to create and demonstrate empathy with others
97. AR/VR can help create empathy in audiences – “augmented empathy”
98. Use of robotics in business: Pepper the Robot uses ability to understand emotions to manage customer service interactions
99. Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism: Many valuable reports on innovations in the profession
100. Creativity should be as important to study in schools as STEM
101. World Economic Forum 21st century Skills Gap goes in-depth on key skills needed in the future — critical thinking, problem-solving, persistence, collaboration and curiosity; flexibility is a critical skill due to the amount and speed of change
102. Being perceived as an innovative workplace can help agencies attract talent; employees care significantly about what they get to work on and who they work with
103. Adobe Kickbox is a toolkit to jumpstart innovation in your company

Other resources
• “Innovate or Die” – another great summary of ICCO summit takeaways by Sonya Madeira
• C-Suite podcasts — interviews with many ICCO summit presenters
• Official speaker presentations and photos from the summit can be downloaded from ICCO here

The 2017 Global ICCO PR Summit will take place in Helsinki, Finland. To find out more, contact ICCO General Manager Charlene Corrin, charlene.corrin@iccopr.com.

Demonstrating expertise to clients

11th September 2016/in ICCO Blog, ICCO News

Article by Connor Kinnear, Chief Marketing Officer, Passle

Most agencies and professional services companies are named after the individuals that founded the company. The reason for this is that the talent driving these companies is the asset that clients buy into. Saatchi and Saatchi was named after Maurice and Charles because, as advertising greats, they realised they were their own secret sauce and their communications should reflect that.

This poses a question for all agencies and businesses where the people are the asset that clients buy. How do you communicate the knowledge and expertise of the true experts in your business? The problem is two-fold. How do you access the insights of these people, given that they are going to be extremely busy and then how to distribute that knowledge?

Research conducted by Passle shows that the top 50 UK PR Agencies produced over 3,500 knowledge pieces last year. The number might seem impressive, but it amounts to only 0.72 pieces created in a year per member of staff. For comparison, the top 100 UK lawyers produced 0.75 pieces of content per staff in 2015! What is this world in which the famously reticent British lawyers are outflanking creative and engaged agencies that sell their ability to communicate?

These two points – that clients want to buy into the core talent at an agency and the industry’s surprising silence in communicating its knowledge – represent a huge opportunity for agencies across the world.

Enter, content marketing. Content marketing is a strategy that puts your audience first. It creates content to inform, help or entertain your audience. The opposite of content marketing is to sell at your audience. Content marketing takes many forms, from blog posts, to webinars, to, yes, social media updates.

If your agency is ignoring digital content marketing for itself, whether that be blogging or vlogging, you are making it harder for yourself to a) attract new clients b) maintain existing ones. It’s such a shame not to make the most of it, when doing both doesn’t need to take much time away from your day-to-day or cost much money. Indeed, Hubspot’s State of Inbound Report claimed that “content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads”.

PR Agencies have all the skills required to excel at content marketing. They know how to create content that attracts audiences because they help their clients achieve this every day. They just need to create it for themselves now.

In Passle’s panel at the Global ICCO PR Summit on 29^th September, we’ll be discussing what your brand, including the personal brands of your experts, says about your agency. If you would like to download Passle’s report into the content marketing habits of the top 50 UK PR agencies, and request a free personalised report, visit pr.rankmyfirm.com

What is PR? A new answer to an old question

11th September 2016/in ICCO Blog

Article by Julian Boulding, President, thenetworkone

PR. Public Relations. Influencing the public, via editorial media. Lunches with journalists. Press conferences. Press offices. That was then. Today, rather like advertising people, communications professionals are almost embarrassed about the label ‘PR.’ But these days, one hears ‘I work in PR” almost as rarely as ‘I work in advertising.’

We live in a time of existential crisis: we don’t know who we are, or what we do. A few years ago, we thought we had the answer. Some bright spark coined the terms “paid media” and “earned media.” Aha! PR doesn’t pay for media, so we do “earned media.” And since the big new thing was social media, which was essentially earned media, the future looked rosy.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple; because paid and earned media became indistinguishable. Organic search spawned paid search. Amateur bloggers became paid influencers. Viral communications agencies paid “seeders” to kick-start the sharing process. Native advertising proved more lucrative than features.

Meanwhile, paid media started to reverse into earned media, as advertising agencies realized they had to create communications that people chose to watch, and share, and talk about. And in new markets like China – soon to be the world’s biggest economy – the distinction never existed anyway.

We need to learn a new lesson. And we need to work in a new way. The lesson is: PR and advertising are dead. But communications is not dead. It just needs redefining.

Agencies today are either reputation managers (long term) or creators of visibility (short term). Both are fusions of what-used-to-be-PR and what-used-to-be-advertising. Customer insight. Storytelling. Engagement. User experience. Video content. Brand ambassadors. The tools are the same. Where’s the difference?

Actually the big difference is data. What do individual consumers actually read, view, share and do. When, where, why and how.

The advertising industry has bought into this. Even a small media buying agency in the US spends half a million dollars a year on subscriptions to data provider services. But PR and data still live miles apart.

The PR industry, all too often relies on gut feel and experience: darling, you need to be in Elle, not Cosmopolitan; the Mail Online, not Facebook. This is last century stuff. And yet.. how many examples have you seen, of a PR agency actively partnering with a digital media buying agency? With this one little fix, PR could end up top of the heap.

PR professionals are used to orchestrating multiple stakeholders with differing objectives, needs and skills. They just need to engage better, with professionals from other communications disciplines. A leading PR firm needs a broader competence than media relations, or content development, or event management: and that means looking outside the box. Some niche firms are also showing the way.

Montieth & Co in New York, knits together media communications with litigation expertise: 35% of their staff are trained lawyers. Jericho Chambers in London, leveraging its founder’s communications skills to create and manage diverse stakeholder and advocacy communities, to defuse tension between proponents of differing policies.

The traditional multinational holdings could to this, but mostly don’t, due to their finance-driven models, silo structures, earnout deals and separate P&L’s.

Independents have the biggest challenge, because developing diverse capabilities, expertise and contacts takes time and money. But they also have the greatest potential: only if you can choose your partners freely, do you have the power to choose the best.

Julian Boulding is President of thenetworkone, the world’s biggest independent agencies organization. thenetworkone hosts the annual ‘Indie Summit’ (indiesummit.net), a unique forum for leaders of independent communications agencies of all disciplines. The next Indie Summit will be in London on 14^th and 15^th June 2017. @thenetworkone

Applying the science of human behaviour to the art of communications

11th September 2016/in ICCO Blog

Article by Dan Berry, Behavioural Insights Strategist, H+K Smarter, Hill+Knowlton Strategies

As communicators we have always known that people act in ways that are often surprising and seemingly irrational. People do not always switch to a better and cheaper product. Employees are sometimes resistant to change that would benefit both them and their company. Almost all of us do not save, exercise or eat as healthily as we know we should.

But it’s only in the last decade or so that behavioural science has begun to help us really understand why this is. To put it simply: our feelings and habits not only influence how we think, but are more important than our conscious and rational thoughts. What we then do, our behaviour, is likewise not usually driven by rational thought.

There’s a consensus in psychology and economics that this is true. It’s spurred the new discipline of behavioural economics and Nobel Prize winners. It’s led to the creation of teams of behavioural economists and similar specialists in the White House and the UK government – as well as at Facebook and all the big banks.

The PR industry needs to catch-up. We’ve moved on from the days where our primary expertise was a knowledge of how the media works. As more of our communications become direct to audience, we need to become expert in the science of how people actually think, behave and make decisions.

You may be thinking that the notion people are influenced by our feelings, emotions and habits isn’t controversial. You surely often draw on emotions in your own communication strategies. What’s new?

The answer is quite a lot. Whilst the human brain has hardly changed in thousands of years, our understanding of how it works has recently increased greatly.

For instance, people are hardwired to over respond to both positive and negative actions of others. We all feel obliged to give back to others the type of behaviour we have received from them. This is what you feel when someone gives you a Christmas card; you feel a strong urge to give a card in return. Communications professionals can do a lot more to harness and share this sense of reciprocity. This is just one behavioural insight.

These new insights are very important. Scientific research shows that rational communication approaches may be less effective than we might think and sometimes actively counter-productive.

The good news is that we now have a better than ever understanding of precisely which emotions or other instinctive thought processes matter – and in what circumstances. The science helps us to analyse the drivers for human behaviour as well providing the tools to better influence them. People may behave irrationally, but they behave in predictably irrational ways.

There is also a big positive to the seemingly unhelpful implication that human decision-making and behaviour is much more complicated than we previously thought. This makes our jobs more difficult but also more valuable: it would be much easier to influence a bunch of rationally calculating robots.

But to truly seize this opportunity, we need to be brave. Applying behavioural science will often mean changing the way we develop insights and solve problems. It is not a term to be used to badge or package the ways we worked yesterday.

This means we need to challenge the models and approaches we typically use and question whether they reflect the new knowledge we now have. We need to ensure they are not just a reflection of our own habits.

If we do then the potential is significant. Adding the science of human behaviour to the art of communications makes campaign ideas better as well as more buyable.

Dan Berry from Hill and Knowlton Strategies’ in-house behavioural insights team, H+K Smarter, will give some more examples and tools at the Global ICCO PR Summit on 30 September 2016 – iccosummit.org

New media are communications’ present and future

9th September 2016/in ICCO Blog, Uncategorised

Jelena Djelic, eKapija interviews Maxim Behar, President of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO)

In the past decade, the public relations industry has changed much more than any other business industry. A drastic shift in the ownership of media throughout the world has contributed the most to the process. It was certain during the 1990s that it would happen, but many of us ignored the fact that both us and our clients already had strong ties to the media and the we needed to learn quickly and carefully in order to use the relations as well as possible.

This is how Maxim Behar, the president of the International Communications Consultancy Organization (ICCO) begins his interview for eKapija. The Public Relations Society of Serbia has become a member of this organization this year.

We also talked with Behar about the upcoming Global ICCO PR Summit, the largest gathering of PR experts, to be held in Oxford on September 29-30.

eKapija: How do you see future PR trends, where is PR headed and what should, in your opinion, PR professionals focus on in the future?

– In the past, public relations mostly meant acting as a link between our clients and the media. We were making great efforts to be as creative and innovative as possible. However, there was a limit to innovativeness. The situation has changed completely and PR professionals now manage entirely different requests and tools in doing their job. We have suddenly turned from advertisers and consultants to content managers of our media and the media of our clients. There’s been a clear crossing between public communication channels – public relations, advertising and e-business and the process is getting faster and faster.

Nowadays, many experts express conflicting opinions on who will take the leading role in the future and it is my firm conviction that it will be us, public relations professionals. The reasons are quite simple.

Firstly, we are the only ones in charge of the content, words and expressions in the whole process, and the content is currently the most important part of public communications. Secondly, and in my opinion most importantly, PR professionals are absolute leaders in the two areas of key importance to our clients and their operations – reputation management and crisis communication. We need to focus on these areas in the near future as the basis of our profession’s success.

eKapija: Do you believe that online PR has in a way replaced traditional PR and how do you feel about the transformation?

– This has happened without a doubt and we are all aware of it. The transformation happened overnight, while we were organizing events and press conferences. We simply woke up one day and realized that press conferences and press statements no longer work, that online media are more powerful than anything before and recognized one of its greatest advantages, which we hadn’t been aware previously – cost competitiveness.

Finally, this is what’s most attractive to our clients and we realized this many years ago, but we couldn’t do anything in order to measure the effects of our work and ideas precisely.

photo: Deyan Georgiev/shutterstock.com

eKapija: Based on your personal experience, are PR professionals ready to accept new challenges in the PR area and adjust to current technological trends? Are they prepared to learn and change?

– On the whole, my answer is ‘yes’, but the pace of changes varies from country to country. The fact is that the new media will prevail and that they are the present and the future of communications. What’s expected from PR professionals is to keep track of all new trends and case studies every day, hour and minute, and of course, to create their own.

eKapija: What will be the main topic of the upcoming ICCO PR Summit?

– The most important one is, of course, how to run a successful PR company in the times of drastic changes in our profession. Global ICCO PR Summit is the most important annual event in our industry in the whole world. More than 250 top professionals from all continents will have the opportunity to discuss modern trends in our profession.

There are two main prerequisites for an event’s success – good speakers and enough coffee breaks in which to meet them personally. This year, on September 29 and 30 in Oxford, these prerequisites will be fully met and I’m sure that we will share a great number of new trends, stories and case studies and discuss them to the general benefit of our line of business.

eKapija: What’s your opinion on the future of media? Can content prevail over sensationalism?

– Creating good, brief, attractive, intelligent and professional content is currently the most important element of our profession. We need to be aware of that fact and work hard on it.

eKapija: What is the role of social networks in the PR world? Do you believe that social networks can endanger traditional media?

– Social networks are the most powerful tool we’ve ever had in our hundred-year-old profession. Above all, despite all the apprehensions and concerns, they really are an independent and genuine medium. Theoretically, you can “buy” a journalist, the media, a TV station… but you can’t buy Facebook, you can’t buy Twitter, nor any social network, as they show opinions from all sides.

It is precisely this that is the advantage of social networks – they are interactive and wholly independent, which currently makes them the only medium we can trust and the most important channel that we as public relations experts have at our disposal in order to provide the best service possible to our clients.

http://www.ekapija.com/website/en/page/1529446/Maxim-Behar-president-of-International-Communications-Consultancy-Organization-New-media-are-communications-present-and-future

New media are communications' present and future

9th September 2016/in ICCO Blog