PR FROM THE BEACH

Up Periscope or Down Meerkat - will public relations dare to win?

I can honestly say I haven't been this excited about a new network or app since Twitter launched. With the advent of live streaming video apps, Periscope and Meerkat, a whole world of possibilities opens up for public relations and communication professionals - if they dare. And, the chances are,  these apps will be the tipping point that shifts us even further away from text to total visual communication.

In case you haven't caught them yet, Meerkat and Periscope have been slugging it out in the live streaming space for the last week. Meerkat, launched to much tech joy earlier this year, allows you to broadcast live to your community - and the world at large - as well as schedule and tweet the fact that your doing it.  So far there have been AMAs (Ask Me Anythings), people's breakfast, dinner and tea, think pieces, observations, kids, cats, dogs and camps. I've developed a liking for a few seconds of sunrise and have shared the sun coming up over Rangitoto with people around the world still struggling through the night before.  Meerkat was the tech darling until (key change) Periscope, bought by Twitter, was launched five days ago. It does the same thing, except your footage is saved for replay. As a Twitter product it's fast gaining traction, so much so that the tech world is predicting the death of Meerkat, even though it is still in its infancy. Personally, the Mark Twain quote (or misquote)  'reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated' could be applied here as there's life in Meerkat yet.

So, that's the scenario - what's the potential? For public relations and communication management, simply enormous. Live stream your story to your community as it happens.  Let them see inside your place warts and all. Manage your crisis comms as it unfolds. It is the ultimate tool for organisational transparency and, if you don't build it in to your communications, someone else will. Whether they stream their conversation with your receptionist, broadcast during a factory tour, or filming their hospital dinner, this new 'live tv' will become our reality and our norm before you know it.

At a PR training course I delivered in 2006, I introduced newly launched Twitter as an essential communication channel - and lifeline - for PR.  News, crisis, issues, customer care - you name it, Twitter had the potential to deal with it all and for the first time you could use a network from anywhere. Sadly, those attending found it hard to believe and were reluctant to experiment.  The video apps launched this year have the same potential for good - and for bad. Periscope is already proving to be the harsher, more unkind environment. Meerkat has the better quality streaming but then you can only save your stuff to camera roll. There are ups and downs with both. Whatever happens to them as businesses, as a channel, network or communications tool, together they've changed the game. Let's hope PR isn't so slow to get on board this time.  Go on, I dare you - get out there and experiment.

 

Good behaviour - the X Factor that keeps your licence to operate

Links to media.nzherald.co.nz

There's been a huge furore in the last 24 hours over New Zealand's X Factor, thanks to some ill-considered comments by husband-and-wife judging duo Natalia Kills and Willy Moon. Now, New Zealand On Air has announced it is withdrawing funding from the show, although they suggest they made their mind up about this before the controversy. Both judges will be replaced because of their remarks - and currently face a tirade of abuse themselves on their social accounts - much of it absolutely despicable. Elsewhere, the discussion rages around whether the whole thing was a hoax designed to boost the show's flagging ratings and we are left with a million suit-and-hair memes littering the web. All in all, it's a shambles. So who is to blame?

Seven handy hints for hashtag help

Hashtags are interesting things - one minute they look cute, cuddly and amusing and the next they roar into life, turn around and bite you. I thought this post would be helpful to those wrestling with the way in which they use hashtags, with public relations and communication professionals uppermost in my mind. So below you'll find seven handy hints to help avoid hashtag horror.

Beware the creeping algorithms softly invading your privacy

Hot on the heels of the EU Court of Justice ruling around the 'right to be forgotten', I attended the Auckland Writers' Festival debate with Iraqi/English scientist Jim Al-Khalili, Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, New Zealand privacy expert Bob Stevens, and British broadcaster, writer and comedian Sandi Toksvig.  

Under scrutiny was the topic 'Is privacy an outdated concept' and, while Jim and Bob made some interesting points around the nature and history of privacy, Sandi and Frank won the night (for me at least) with their arguments in favour of retaining and strengthening rights to privacy both online and off.

The right to be forgotten - can PR truly deal with data?

This week's ruling by the European Union's Court of Justice that stressed individuals have the 'right to be forgotten' will inevitably cause Google some serious headaches. But they will not be alone. Public relations practitioners too will need to determine who among their stakeholders will need to be 'forgotten' following this decision.

The EU court ruling has far reaching consequences. For instance, if it is my right to be forgotten then should all saved tweets be destroyed at my request? My Facebook comments eliminated? Any Snapchat screen shots destroyed?

Expect data denouements to punctuate political performances

The news that the Obama official tweeting for some time under the username @NatSecWonk has been unmasked is no surprise.  They were bound to find him out in the end. The most interesting thing for me about the story was closeted in a simple sentence: 

"It said his travel and shopping habits had been profiled by parsing over 2,000 tweets"

This is an approach we will see more and more of in the months ahead as people become much smarter about using the data available to them. The trail we leave online is long and winding and the option of anonymity reduces by the hour.

Organisations - once they wake up to the fact - will increasingly use data mining to reach their stakeholders and, if they are savvy enough, stakeholders will use data mining to benefit themselves.

The rise of data journalism is not unexpected, but again, is mostly ignored by those who should have woken up to this approach many moons ago. 

So, data, data everywhere - when will they stop and think?

 

Not if, but when: the radical reflection and PR rethink waiting around the corner

Imagine it is this time next year. Or even the year after when all the bugs are ironed out of the new web-enabled devices that will pop into Christmas stockings this December. Your organisation has some visitors arrive. They are all wearing Google Glass. What do you do? Ask them to remove their eyewear or accept that your interactions are likely to be live-streamed or captured on video to be shared with their stakeholders? 

Or you're serving in a restaurant. The customers come in, again, with wearable transmitting devices. Do you quietly present them with their meal or, as was the case last year, create a scene that ends in physical assault because the augmented-reality digital eye-wear cannot be removed?

In the same way that ten years ago the developments on the web disrupted the way we communicate and interact with others, bringing us to today's point of ubiquitous mobile engagement, the next wave of wearable (or implanted) devices  will change forever not just the way we communicate, but the way we live. I wonder how many people, organisations, businesses and governments are ready for this shift?

 

There are countless scenarios that can be conjured when you think about the effect the next wave technologies will have on our lives and, from a professional standpoint, they are scenarios that all public relations and communication practitioners should be rehearsing before they find themselves, and their organisations, 'always on'.  It is a big leap for most - a leap highlighted by the recent instruction to journalists not to tweet from a press conference. Even today this is a redundant instruction, but how would the organisation concerned react to the press conference being live streamed through a device such as Glass? The journalist attends a press conference as the representative of others. The expected delay between briefing and publication is the assumption of the host, based on older communication speeds and use of technology.  As a journalist, my expectation would be to get the information back as soon as possible, and, if that means as it happens, then all the better.

The reality is not what shall we do if this happens, it is actually what are we going to do when this happens - and that 'when' is just around the corner. It's not just Google Glass either. Many companies are working on wearable devices and the next 'next wave' is likely to include invisi-wear, such as contact lenses, implants and the like. Unlike today when people at least have to speak to their phone, pretty soon you simply won't know who is communicating 'elsewhere' when you meet as the process will be seamless and simultaneous.

I meet with a lot of people who debate and discuss their 'social media strategy'. Frequently it revolves around tactics on the big networks - Facebook, Twitter and the like rather than creating a digital strategy that underpins their organisational and communcation goals. Rarely does it include Google+ or Hangouts and it inevitably involves a discussion around how to convince the organisation involved that today's communication channels are chaotic, concurrent, confused and cannot be controlled. 

Over the last ten to twelve years I've said many times that the available technologies we have at our disposal don't simply transform the way we communicate - they transform the organisations themselves. That's where the biggest changes occur. Individuals and organisations that meet with success in social communication have inevitably undergone this transformative process from the inside out.  They have a clear understanding of their role, provision or service, they have identified the communities that are critical to their licence to operate then set about forming networks of engagement mutually beneficial for all those involved. Yet even those organisations will find themselves disturbed once again by the device-shifts ahead as the reality of what we do rather than what we say becomes the primary organisational asset it should have always been.

As a matter of urgency, I would hope that practitioners convince their organisations to focus on their inner workings and deliverables. To focus on their employees and how to equip them to be 'always on'. On their suppliers and customers and agreed levels of acceptable shareability. 

As the mobile phone is replaced in its ubiquity by the wearable or implanted device the question every public relations professional should be asking is this: how ready are you for the technology waiting around the corner and the change it will bring to your organisation?

What were they thinking? State Services Commission 'bans' tweeting at press conference

I thought it was a hoax when I first read the tweets from journalists at the State Services Commission press conference today - they had, apparently, been banned from tweeting. Then, later this afternoon, out came the story via the Herald and Newstalk ZB that this had, indeed, been the case.

It is beyond me that those in charge of this press conference could be so impossibly behind the times. Aside from demonstrating a complete lack of understanding as to mainstream media operation, how social networks, particularly Twitter, break and drive the news, not to mention the seismic culture shift of the last ten years, surely common sense would tell you that to 'ban' journalists from doing anything when you've called them together is a bit like the old red rag to a bull?

A few years ago, New Zealand's State Services Commission were actually quite innovative when it came to social and digital policy.  Obviously something has gone wrong - very wrong - for this to have happened today.  I would recommend a refresher course in basic communication management along with a PR101 session for all those involved.

Why Tongariro eruption should ignite New Zealand's infrastructure plans

The beginning of August saw Pacific Fibre close its doors after valiant attempts to finance and construct a second cable to secure New Zealand's connections to all things web. At the moment we have only the Southern Cross cable to keep us going, which to me seems utterly foolhardy - if not reckless. 

We need more than Kiwi ingenuity to be ready for kick off

I know there are huge life-and-death concerns in the world right now but, at a local level, I find myself worrying more and more as to whether or not we will be ready for kick-off come the Rugby World Cup on September 9 this year.

I love New Zealand, I love rugby, I love Auckland and Invercargill and all the places in between. I also know it is tantamount to treason to profer criticism of either New Zealand's ability to do something or rugby. But looking around, I am not confident that we will be ready to the standard the rest of the world expects come the big day. 

Today's New Zealand Herald  looks again at the financial cost of hosting the event here. Me, I'm worried about the cost to our reputation.  There's the big tent thingy going up on the waterfront, the stadiums that are not equipped to deal with the demands of the world's sports and other media, there's the inoperative countdown clock  just opposite Britomart. Then there's the whole business of accommodation, transport links to venues, overpricing, no eftpos at stadiums and (whispers) the normal potential for the weather to be atrocious in September and October.

Whether we like it or not, the world has high expectations of international events of this kind and looking around the country four months out, I wonder if we will meet those expectations or fall dreadfully short. We rely on people coming here. Tourism is, we are told, one of our economic cornerstones. Yet this showcase event looks scarily unfinished at a time when we should be adding polish to the preparations, not still struggling with the infrastructure.  The long term risk to our reputation is far greater than the initial financial deficits being reported. If those coming - or not - for the Rugby World Cup - are not happy with the provisions and preparations for their arrival our tourism industry will be affected for years to come. 

It is naive to think that it is just a sporting tournament even though that viewpoint is the one most heard. If you have any doubts about that, cast your mind back to the debacle in India last year during the Commonwealth Games. September's event is a world showcase for the entire country so we need to see some leadership - and some real action - in order to be ready for those we have invited to come. 

If I had invited visitors from across the world to come to see me in September, the rooms would be ready, beds counted, meals planned, transport sorted and entertainment organised.  All that would be left to do four months out would be a tidy up in the garden just before they got here.

Looking at the event from the inside out, it all looks very piecemeal, disjointed and uncoordinated. From an event management point of view, this is not a good look, nor good operational practice. I am willing someone, somewhere to create a rounded picture for fans and visitors alike of what they can expect - something that doesn't exist at the moment.  

Looking at today's picture, I fear it will take a heck of a lot more than Kiwi ingenuity between now and September to give the rest of the world the welcome it expects - and deserves. Because there is an awful lot more to do than just tidy up the garden.