PR lessons from RATM’s glorious routing of Simon Cowell

I enjoyed and blogged on the PR battle between the X Factor publicity machine and the online campaign to get RATM to the top of the charts for Christmas.

Rob Dyson also has some interesting observations on the PR dimensions of this little episode. He makes the good point that currently social media makes it easy to organise campaigns where people feel strongly against something. Certainly tapping into the British public’s contrarian vent and humour with a small campaign ask, can achieve remarkable results in a short time period. But, as Rob notes, we are still a long way from seeing social media making a big impact for “unsexy” but vitally important issues such as equality for disabled people.

Documenting Celebrity Woo

Face it. The celebrity endorsement to publicise theories, treatments and therapies that make absolutely no scientific sense is a staple for those who promote these ideas and products,  and for our scientifically illiterate media.

So it’s always good to give a plug to Sense About Science’s annual review of celebrities and science.

Megan Fox, Denise Van Outen and even Robin Van Persie are all named and shamed in the report. But my favourite entry comes at the expense of American actor Suzanne Somers who is quoted as saying:

I’ve come to realize that they [birth control pills] weren’t safe because is it safe to take a chemical every day? And how could it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?

To which Sense put up a proper chemist in the shape of Harriet Teare to respond:

There are many examples of drugs for certain diseases which must be taken every day in order to stay alive. These drugs are processed and excreted by the body and so do not accumulate over time, which is why they must be taken every day.

Suzanne Summers

RATM for Christmas Number One: You’ve Been Framed

Really enjoying the spectacle of the battle to be this year’s top-selling song for Christmas. We all expected another shoe-in for whoever would be the winner of this year’s karaoke jamboree on the X Factor. But then we saw the power of the internet to allow people to organise and respond. So, now we have Rage Against the Machine ahead and selling more songs than Joe McElderry

As you might expect I’m particularly enjoying the PR dimension to all of this, and this could be a case of who frames the battle best ultimately wins.

The online campaign clearly won the early framing of this race.  They appealed to anyone who felt irritated or bored with our Christmas charts being dominated and manipulated by the record industry machine – and its personification in Simon Cowell.  The chosen song for the protest – killing in the name of – very directly conveyed the messages and themes of the campaign.

This has pushed the big PR team behind the X Factor, Simon Cowell, various associated celebs and a few others, into full crisis communications mode. They have tried to re-frame the race as being about rewarding the hard work of McElderry and giving him his chance for stardom.

So it’s not about Simon Cowell it’s about rewarding the hard work of a nice lad from Newcastle. The tabloids seem supportive. But there’s a rather sour and desperate resorting to xenophobia in the press statement from Cheryl Cole commenting that the “campaign” by, wait for the shock, “American” group was “mean”. Cowell is quoted in The Guardian as saying this is a “hate mob” against a “teenager”.

The framing strategy is quite clear.  Both sides understand that the British public want to support the underdog.

Although it’s outrageously tangential to the actuality of the situation to portray the X Factor juggernaut as the underdog – a whopping great spin – but it’s quite fun watching this one play itself out.

Rage Against the Machine: The Campaign Against the X Factor

On a final note, the last I can remember the establishment being so desperate to stop a singing being Number 1 in the charts was when the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen was selling in huge quantities 1977 during the week of the Queen’s silver jubilee.

Nutt Sacking Report: Allocate PR resources to allow government science advisors to do their job properly

One interesting detail from today’s report from the select committee on science and technology on establishing principles for how the government should work with its independent science advisors. The report was prompted by the sacking of Professor David Nutt – who was advising on drugs policy -  by Alan Johnson the Home Secretary in November.

In its report the committee recommend that a small press office be set up within the Government Office for Science to serve the media needs of all the government’s scientific advisory committees. Previously, the independent advisors would have to use the same departmental press teams that were,  in this case, also briefing the media on why the government thought the advice was barmy and why Professor Nutt deserved the sack.

Clearly the committee believe that for scientific advisors to be truly independent, and effective, they need their own PR support.  It won’t always be the easiest of briefs, for a small team to try and explain the science when the press are onto one of their anti-science campaigns and government ministers are running scared…again.  But, it is likely to be an improvement on the current situation.

Political posters using Jedward all a bit wayward

Labour’s quick and dirty Jedward poster of David Cameron and George Osbourne – strap line – “you won’t be laughing if they win” – has drawn a reply in kind from the Conservatives.

Really wasn’t sure about Labour’s first attempt, and Daniel Finkelstein agrees that the Tory retort is also a mistake. Mainly on the grounds that he doesn’t believe it will change voter opinions on the government but does make the “Tories look nasty and rude“.

The two posters are below, see what you think?

Labour's original Jedward poster

 

The Tory's Jedward come back

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please don’t label me billboard campaign – both score draw and win?

Does provoking a widespread response automatically equate to success?

The British Humanist Association (BHA) and the Atheist Bus Campaign latest billboard posters against the take over of community schools by faith groups has certainly, once again, brought their campaign to media and public attention.

Billboard campaign against faith schools

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The adverts have drawn a positive response from the significant, possibly the majority, proportion of the British public who feel uneasy about schools being subverted to the wider strategic aims of religious organisations, and their fears that children will be coerced and our communities segregated.

Likewise the posters have also provoked a small flurry of negative media commentary that the campaign has had to try and rebut this week.

Media and online responses to the poster are clearly divided, but does this imply success or failure for the poster? This will depend on the strategic aims of the initiative.

On one side the poster is clearly helping a fundraising drive, has energised supporters and helped to keep the issue in the public eye. On the other the poster has equally energised its opponents who, as is life in campaigns, won’t accept the desired framing of the issues at hand and will seek to re-frame the debate.

However, one indicator of relative success is how the campaign seemS to have become synonymous with billboard advertising, in so far as that a search of the term “billboard campaign” on Google brings up BHA and Atheist Bus web pages as the first and third results and a BBC report on the campaign comes in second.

Election 2010: Is the impact of the internet about to be overestimated…again

A big hat tip to Colin Byrne’s blog for drawing this one to my attention.  First the disclaimer, clearly online and social media are evolving into powerful tools for political campaigners. They offer opportunities for a better quality of discussion and conversation between voters, and between voters and the parties and candidates.

However…

…As the survey by Weber Shandwick of 1,000 Uk voters highlighted in Colin’s blog indicates, when asked to rate which media they believe to hold most influence over their voting decisions, voters nominated the traditional “old” media or press, radio and TV as holding the most influence at 59%.  Despite the huge hype blogs and social networks such as Facebook were only rated by 5% as influential.

This resonates with some of my previous research work, indeed the pattern is entirely predictable, the role of new media for the campaign will be grossly overhyped by writers in the old media and elsewhere. Research I conducted with John Downey at Loughborough University for the Electoral Commission in 2005 found, that contrary to popular myth, blogs were peripheral to setting the campaign news agenda.

I am sure in 2010 their significance will be both be greater than last time around AND grossly exaggerated in election commentary.

 

 

Links for 22/11/09

Karen Miller Russell with some very useful notes on an US conference session on teaching social media in public relations education.

Bente Kalsne’s list of case studies of how blogs, forums, public data and other online technologies that are being incorporated into Scandinavian politics.

Journalism must be in crisis. Neil Benson editorial director at Trinity Mirror suggests regional newspapers should move into PR services.

Robin Brown 38 invaluable online tools for journalists…or for PRs for that matter.

Greg Mundy the CEO of Aged and Community Services Australia on the power of words and the stereotyping of us all as we age. Greg prefers “seniors” to “the elderly”.

Five lessons to be learned from the recent CharityComms seminar.

 

Mum, Dad and the Silver Swingers

Ahh, the distant drum beat of the next general election. A favourite media construct of any campaign is the mythical demographic group who will hold the outcome of the election in their hands, remember Worcester woman, Mondeo man, or going back to the 1980s Basildon man.

Of course one of my main research interests is the impact of population ageing on our politics and the portrayals of the “grey vote”. The concept of “generations”, such as the baby boomers or generations X or Y – each believed to possess unique ideas about the lifestyles to which it aspires – are also popular media narratives at election time.

And so this week we see the Sunday Times predicting it’ll be the “mum ‘n’ dad” vote – part of the echo-boom generation i.e. children of the baby boomers who are now having their own children – that will be deciding the next election.

Over at the Telegraph Mary Riddell argues that 2010 will be a “grey election” where the fates of the parties will be decided by “the elderly” and a growing number of “silver swingers”. It’s certainly hard to defer from Riddell’s view that in terms of social care Britain’s treatment of older people is “appalling”. Whether this will become an issue where voters clearly perceive one party to make a real difference ahead of the others, remains to be seen.

Crowdsourcing Arrested and Threatened Bloggers

Threatened Voices is a really good example of using crowdsourcing to organise online campaigns, and enriching the content of web sites.

This website is a project of Global Voices Advocacy to map instances where bloggers and online writers have been threatened, arrested, killed, or disappeared by authorities since 2000 until today.

Threatened Voices uses a dynamic map to track cases by country

The  project allows visitors to track cases by country, timeline and status (i.e. threatened, arrested, deceased, unknown).

From the site we can learn more about cyber-dissidents such as Chen Shuqing and Jamyang Kyi who have been arrested by the authorities in China.

Whereas once violations of human and civil rights states were exposed to audiences intermittently via smuggled film or video, or the testament of escaped dissidents, now such material is routinely posted online; visible to a growing audience of Net users. Initiatives such as this one form an online record of actions by states that can be easily accessed by international audiences, that increasingly is prompted to take action in response.

Top PR Agency names walk straight into an ethical elephant trap over homeopathy

Why are so many PR practitioners unable to see the bad ethics of seeking to use their skills to undermine public trust and understanding in science-based health care?

I have been developing this argument over the summer and presented an ethics paper to the CIPR academic conference in September on doing the PR for snake oil.

More hard evidence today from PR Week’s invitation to its digital essay writers to say how they would have advised Neal’s Yard Remedies after they agreed, but  then withdrew from the Guardian’s You Ask They Answer column, when confronted with sceptical questions from readers over its homeopathic products.

There’s a big ethical problem with established PR practice and science. Frequently, whenever there’s hard scientific evidence to state that a client’s product is either useless, or worse actually harmful, there’s a knee jerk response. Grossly simplified the knee jerk will involve:

1) Trash the science

2) Take measures to give an impression of scientific debate or argument

3) Roll out any third parties to amplify the bogus “there’s a debate on the evidence” framing.

Sadly, none of PR Week’s industry voices, raised any notion that there might be an ethical problem in promoting the modern equivalent of snake oil as medically effective:

• Phil Szomszor of Citigate Dewe Rogerson and Chris McCafferty of Shine Communications advised the avoidance of skeptical forums.

• Meredith Bradshaw of Fleishman-Hillard also advised the avoidance of skeptical forums, and suggested creating a more friendly forum where “partners” would be invited to take part.

• Chris Quigley of Delib amazingly dismisses anyone who wants to quiz the scientific evidence for homeopathy as “trolls”

• David Phillips of Publicasity - who are having their own problems with an alternative health client in the shape of the British Chiropractic Association and their odious decision to try and silence science debate by suing Simon Singh for libel – suggested a Tesco style pre-buttal.

• Ricky Vazquez of Ogilvy PR started well by agreeing there were “fair questions” that needed answering, but then recommended developing an initiative to give the impression that there was “independent” evidence in favour of homeopathy. This misleads the public as there is no sound science behind homeopathy aside from the placebo effect.

• At least Louise Stewart-Muir of Say Communications stated that Neal’s Yard would have to admit “any mistakes” and James Warren of Weber Shandwick’s advised them to stay engaged with the debate and try to answer questions “honestly”

Most sense in the whole article appears to come from the comment added to the web page by Richard Elen, a creative technology consultant, who posted:

If you are making medical-type claims and it is not possible to provide scientifically valid evidence, then perhaps it is unwise to be selling such products

Richard then concludes:

If you are selling faith-based products, perhaps target believers and not the public at large. Better still, make sure your products and services deliver what you say they deliver, and that you can prove it by objective standards – and drop them if they don’t work. Then you have an answer for any critic.

I rather think Richard would make a good addition to PR Week’s digital essay writers, he was the only one to see the massive ethical elephant trap raised by this case study.

New Spurs Stadium Benefits from Responsive Communications with the Fans

A pleasant surprise tonight to see that Tottenham Hotspur have changed their stadium development plans after feedback from the fans and other stakeholders

When the original plans were revealed a big debate kicked off, as we would expect, as a modern audience we don’t just read or see, we want to discuss and respond.  Some of the recurring themes on Spurs messages boards were; a dislike generic bowl designs; pleasure that Tottenham’s nearest rivals Arsenal had a  new modern stadium but one that seemingly designed out features that create a vibrant atmosphere (The emirates, indeed, is the new library); and a worry that the stadium would be too similar to other new builds.

What is interesting in this case is that what mattered to the fans wouldn’t always register as priorities with the money men seeking to make as much money as possible from project. The fans value atmosphere and community, they wanted to keep the seats as close to the pitch as possible – a were concerned that concessions in stadium design to create corporate entertainment spaces would rip the soul out of the new stadium.

Computer drawing of the proposed new Spurs stadium

These points were forcibly made and it seems, also listened to. The new 56,000 capacity stadium design which has been submitted for planning permission today has moved seats closer to the pitch, it has sought out ways of building in unique features, but the most pleasant surprise is the move away from a generic bowl design to now include a super-sized single tiered stand behind one of the goals.

For many of us who have followed Tottenham Hotspur closely over the years, we don’t expect the club to care much for the fans, but tonight’s response shows promising strategic leadership. In many areas of life I am sure that passionate supporters and advocates can be better brand guardians than the senior management and allied consultants working for an organisation. It’s no good in strategic communications carrying out listening exercises and then just ignoring the responses, but Spurs have confounded expectations and shown some intelligence and vision by managing to combine their corporate objectives with meeting the desires of the fans in designing the new stadium.

So here’s something you don’t hear me saying often, well done to the board and management of Tottenham Hotspur…well done indeed for some good public relations!

Bad PR getting more just deserts

Hastily withdrawn press release yesterday. Stirring up the online great and the good as well as the twitterverse against you. The bad PR and questionable ethics of the British Chiropractic Association trying to silence science writers such as Simon Singh through the libel courts goes on.

Check out this despatch from Jack of Kent for the latest update.

Video mash up of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking…Wow!

Read the About page about me and this blog to know why this video just has to be posted here on framing the dot.  The “Melody Sheep” channel on Youtube has published this video. It’s already got over 750,000 views and 3,500 comments, and no wonder putting the words of Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking into song.  Making science poetry.

Resources and Links 08/10/09

1. Debate on Google’s new sidewiki application. Co-opting conversations that bloggers should rightfully own? A strange alternative online universe? A chance to cyber graffiti all over your most disliked brand’s site!? Indeed, someone has already used the opportunity to abuse the Daily Mail.
2. Eight projects showing how Public Media 2.0 has graduated from “theory to practice”.
3. 10 tech trends that every journalist should know?
4. The Lay Scientist attempts to quantify how many people might die as a result of the UK media’s shockingly poor coverage of the HPV vaccination…
5. …while Malcolm Coles over at the Online Journalism Blog rates our national newspapers by degrees of irresponsibility in how they have covered HPV.

UPDATE: From the comments, I’m taking up Malcolm Coles’ mini campaign to make sure Google doesn’t keep placing inaccurate links at the top of searches on the cervical cancer jab or for the cervical cancer vaccine. Glad to help.