Mi pare sempre utile dare ogni tanto un occhio a qualche vecchia, cara definizione di base, se non altro per non distrarsi troppo con tecnologie emergenti e nuovi media e ricollocare il tutto nell’ambito di una visione più ampia e produttiva.

- At its core, public relations is the management of an organization’s efforts aimed at building and maintaining positive relationships with its strategic publics. A strategic public is one that, in the absence of a strong relationship, could produce obstacles to the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives.

- Public relations is about influence. Organizations can and should wield influence ethically. Among academics, ethical public relations is often referred to as “two-way and symmetrical.” That is, the relationships result in win-win scenarios in which both the organization and the public achieve their goals. The tools of two-way symmetrical communication include negotation and boundary-spanning.

Ma più avanti trovo anche questa stimolante considerazione:

“As conversations become the principal characteristic of company-public engagement, the relationships themselves will prove more valuable to organizations than influence. As with the notion of the mission statement, focusing on relationships for their own sake will surely lead to the outcomes organizations seek (sales, friendly regulatory environments, minimal activist activity, support for initiatives, etc.). Or, to put it more simply, who needs to wield influence when you’ve got friends ?”

Technorati Tags : PR, influence, relationships, conversations

La London School of Economics (LSE) ha pubblicato i risultati di un interessante studio sugli effetti della Word of Mouth sulle vendite. Mi sembra davvero valga la pena di dare un’occhiata a questi dati, e mi limito a sottolinearne alcuni al volo:

- Companies suffering from low levels of word of mouth advocacy and high levels of negative word of mouth, such as Lloyds-TSB, Sainsbury’s, Fiat and T-Mobile, grew slower than their competitors.

- A 7 per cent increase in word of mouth advocacy unlocks 1 per cent additional company growth.

- A 2 per cent reduction in negative word of mouth boosts sales growth by 1 per cent.

Technorati Tags : marketing, WOM

Immagine di James Marsh 

P.S. di mercoledì 24: RISOLTO !

Via Media guerrilla leggo alcune considerazioni di Richard Edelman sul futuro delle relazioni pubbliche, considerazioni espresse durante un “live talk” su Syndacate.

Tra le altre:

Press releases will be deconstructed: how companies produce and package their news via the press release will change but not die.

PR will play a critical role in early stage product development: with PR teams increasingly listening to and participating in edge conversations, the richness of this information in aggregate will be invaluable for product development. Also, the concept of co-creation,
where “edge conversationalists” are invited in to actively influence and shape new products will be a unique value that PR can bring to bear for both the company and the audiences that care about these products.

PR will have a seat in the c-suite: as the eyes, ears and voice of a company, a bridge really to the conversational edge, executive teams will need to rely (heavily) on the input
and counsel of communication leaders when it comes to strategic business decisions.

Mi ha particolarmente colpito la previsione circa il ruolo delle PR in quello che Edelman definisce “early stage product development” . Si tratta di un’area di intervento innovativa e , per quanto riguarda la mia personale esperienza, pressochè sconosciuta in Italia.

Va anche rilevato che questo nuovo ruolo presuppone un’attività di PR/marketing decisamente attenta al blogging e capace di progettare e gestire con l’azienda gli spazi conversazionali necessari perchè questi processi si possano realizzare.
Capito, uomini di marketing in ascolto ? I blog come spazi di conversazione con i pubblici dell’azienda, come risorsa, non mini-siti, fake blog et similia.

Giusto per mostrarvi i simpatici auguri che ho ricevuto dal sito dell’Inter.La taglia mi sembra un po’ abbondante … (Oddio, forse neanche tanto, che sia un monito per un po’di dieta ?!)

Technorati tags:Enrico

Vi segnalo un interessante  post di Jeremy Wagstaff, giornalista che si occupa di tecnologia per il  Wall Street Journal e per la BBC.

Jeremy si sofferma sull’utilizzo dei blog da parte delle agenzie di PR sotto vari punti di vista, per quanto concerne la raccolta di informazioni, il pitch, l’opportunità o meno di intervenire,etc etc. Le sue osservazioni e raccomandazioni sono davvero stimolanti.

Vi riporto direttamente alcune specifiche considerazioni:

Being a PR person pitching a blogger:

• Pitches should never be made by phone without an email requesting a chat first. Phone calls are no longer as acceptable as they were; they are now as intrusive as a foot in the door.
• PR people should find out if their mark has a blog, and if so, read it. For background, and to make sure the person is not on holiday or in the middle of a gender-change. It’s good to include some reference in the pitch to the fact that the blog has been read but there’s really no need to be smarmy. (“I’m a huge fan of your blog since before you started writing it and your post about how spammers are really annoying was just so spot on I had it tatooed in its entirety on my children’s foreheads.”)
• A PR/journalist relationship can be as close as lips and teeth, but teeth can bite, and should. (The teeth is the journalist. Please keep up.) A journalist will always, if not today then at some point in the future, write something the PR person doesn’t like about their client, and the PR person needs to be ready for that. So should the journalist. The two can be best buddies, but I find that makes it harder to do one’s job, and be seen to be doing one’s job as a journalist al dente.  So I keep my personal distance. That’s just me. I think it was the BBC’s John Simpson who quoted someone as saying that people should always feel a journalist at the table was a menacing presence. As a journalist you’re not there for the people you’re dining with, you’re there for your readers/viewers.

Technorati Tags : blogging, PR, journalism