International Expansion in 2013: which country & how?

The Economist came out with an interesting article this past week that looks at which countries it is easy to set up a business. 

Since 2003 the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank have been tracking the business-friendliness of government rules around the world. Things are looking up. Nearly all regions are catching up with the best practices seen in the richest countries.

This matters for many reasons. One is that onerous rules breed corruption. For as many countries as it can, the IFC plots its own measures of the regulatory burden against perceived levels of corruption, as ranked by Transparency International, a pressure group. As the chart shows, the more rules impede business, the more incentive businessfolk have to bribe them away. Lighter rules mean less baksheesh. They also mean a larger formal economy and a wider tax base.

In “Doing Business 2013”, published this week, the countries that score well are not those with no regulation at all—Somalia is a fearsome place to do business—but places where rules are simple and designed to make markets work better. The top 20 list includes the usual suspects: Singapore, Hong Kong, the Nordic countries, America. But less obvious entrants are there, too: Georgia, Malaysia and Thailand.

The most dramatic progress has come in making it simpler to jump through the regulatory hoops necessary to start a business. Since 2005 the average time it takes has fallen from 50 days to 30. Among the worst performers (the bottom quartile, which are mostly poor countries) the improvement has been slightly greater: from 112 days to 63. But they still have far to go: in New Zealand the process takes only one day.

In 2005 only a third of countries in sub-Saharan Africa were reforming; now over two-thirds are. Poland, Ukraine and Uzbekistan have made big gains. Even the sick men of Europe—Greece and Italy—are showing signs of progress. Unlike bail-outs, cutting rules comes cheap.

What does this mean in the world of PR? Well, it is now clearly easier to set up an international operation (and not just helicopter in, do some work, and fly out again). With that comes brand reputation management and promotional requirements. With that also comes a need to understand and act congurent with the local country.  And guess what, that means a need for international public relations.

As a new country is exanded too, it's obvious that a dedicated PR team is not going to be amoung the top hires. Typically there is a need for sales (which are the first hires), followed by operational folkes to keep the sales going. 

A new county expansion may not be in the core competencies of the existing public relations team (be that in-house or agency). Just reaching out to a local agency without knowledge and experience may not result in the best ROI. Paramount is finding a solution that is trustworthy, can manage your account from your home country, understands the local strategy and can implement that with a local team.

The Three Little Pigs & UK Media

At NettResults we look at news from an international perspective. Campaigns need to be localized depending upon the target market and we have teams around the world to do exactly that, and then implement the camapign.

In the UK the media is very integrated with social media - which is what this great video from The Guardian shows.

Three Little Pigs - The Guardian on Vimeo.

Strategy, Tactics, Execution, Reputation, Persistence, Desire and Fear

Thanks to Seth Godin who summed it up so nicely today for us.

We can outline a strategy for you, but if you don't have the tactics in place or you're not skilled enough to execute, it won't matter if the strategy is a good one.

Your project's success is going to be influenced in large measure by the reputation of the people who join in and the organization that brings it forward. That's nothing you can completely change in a day, but it's something that will change (like it or not) every day.

None of this matters if you and your team don't persist, and your persistence will largely be driven by the desire you have to succeed, which of course is relentlessly undermined by the fear we all wrestle with every day.

Bottom line - you need to find an international PR partner that is strategic in outlook, knows how to build taactics in different countries, has a team that is persistent and will be relentless in gaining results for you.

NettResults is all about implementing the best international PR campaigns, so this is central to what we think, do and how we act.

Useful and believable promises

Seth Godin blogged something interesting yesterday.

Useful and believable promises is another way to think about marketing.

We only sign up/pay attention to/pay for offers from marketers when:

• What's promised is something we think is worth more than it costs

and

• We believe you're the best person to keep that promise.

This applies to resumes, meetings and even the kid raking your lawn.

If your marketing isn't working, it's either because your promises aren't useful (and big) enough or we don't believe you're the one to keep them.

Then we come to public relations, which is widely thought to be the go-to marketing promotion to build credibility. 

Bottom line, if you need your organization, company, brand or service to be believable, then you need to build credibility... so you need a strong public relations strategy in place.

The 24-hour News Cycle… always on, but not always good journalism

The 24-hour news cycle arrived with the advent of television channels dedicated to news, and brought about a much faster pace (i.e. live) of news production with increased demand for stories that can be presented as news, as opposed to the day-by-day pace of the news cycle of printed daily newspapers.

More media, more space, happier PR people.

But occasionally we have to step back (even as PR people) and look at what is making it as news.  Particularly alarming is when news becomes the news.

Of course most of the journalists we know abide by ethics and standards of good practice as applicable to the specific challenges they face while they do their job.  But occasionally things spiral out of control. 

If you didn’t know the various existing codes share common elements including the principles of — truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability — as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public. Journalism ethics include the principle of "limitation of harm." This often involves the withholding of certain details from reports in case they harm individuals or the public.

One of the joys of having our head offices in California (and news on TV all the time) is that we are privy to police car chases through Los Angeles… as they happen.  Why else would there be all those news helicopters over the smoggy city?

Click the image to view the live coverageThis month a particularly bright team of (alleged) bank robbers were making their get-away and while law enforcement officers were in hot-pursuit, we were watching the chaise unfold.  The clever ‘unconventional banks withdrawal’ lads decided it would be advantageous if they could get some innocent bystanders between their speeding vehicle and the police… so they started throwing cash out of their car window while they sped down some of the poorer streets in South LA.  And as a reminder, this is on live TV.

The live coverage and reporting is classic.  The eye-in-the-sky even giving out the address of where the cash is being thrown!

Needless to say, the NettResults team won’t the only people watching this live, and many good (or not so) folks in that area raced out of their homes to retrieve (no doubt with the intent of returning) the bank notes.  The report later that day on ABC wraps it up nicely.

How necessary is live news reporting?  We understand there are multiple news channels and they compete to bring the news to us as quickly as possible… but perhaps news organizations may consider slowing this to a tad below real-time to provide themselves time to actually think about the content and add some intelligent commentary that doesn’t endanger the public. 

Just a thought.

Seven solid press release ideas

All too often, when there is an annual PR program put in place, it dictates how many press releases have to go out.  That’s fine, but inevitably you get to about two months in and expected press releases are not ready to be released for unexpected reasons and now the whole team is determined to meet an (often irrelevant) KPI. 

Result: you are left with a burning desire to release something, with nothing to say.

Of course, all good PR pros will tell you not to waste your (and the media’s) time on anything unless it is 110% news worthy. 

Well, even when it looks like dire, consider that all companies have news – you just need to find it.  Now, some is going to be more relevant and news worthy than others. For example, when was the last time you saw an announcement of a company’s new web site?  Yeah, well that used to be page 5 business fodder 12 years ago!

Here (with a little help from PRWeb) are some of the most common release topics that might spark some ideas:

Announcing a new product or feature

Product launches are fundamental to fueling your company’s growth. Generate maximum visibility for your next product launch with preliminary PR support (to set the market) and at-launch PR support to stimulate interest.

Winning an award

Awards give your company credibility with your customers—and sending out a news release is a great way to get the attention your award deserves. Whether you are a local restaurant celebrating your Zagat Rating or your company has been voted best place to work—let the world know.

Hosting a fundraising dinner or technology summit

Successful events need publicity—and what better way than to announce your event online, where millions of people can learn how they can participate in or support your event. Whether you are hosting a fundraising dinner, or launching a technical summit, keep your prospects up to date while driving traffic to your web site by promoting your event.

Announcing an employee change

Employee promotions and new hires can be newsworthy. And sharing that news with the world shows that your business is growing and that you value your team.

Launching a new partnership

Sharing news about your business partnerships is one of the best ways to promote your success, highlight your company’s growth, build credibility for your company and your partner’s company, and potentially lead to new customers for both organizations.

Sharing survey results

Market research is an effective tool to build credibility and awareness for your key initiatives—especially when the information is broadly communicated. Whether you’re using survey data to identify industry trends or to build support for a key program, share that information.

International Expansion

The more successful your organization, the more news worthy.  And nothing says 'success' more than expansion into new international markets.  If you start hiring or setting up an office in a new country (or continent) then share that with both your target and home media - both have interests for slightly different reasons.

What other good ideas do you use for press releases?

Marketers with power

Great insight today from Seth Godin - who just gets it:

I know that I have to fill out this form before the doctor will see me, but the way you behave when you design the form and the way you ask me to fill it out will change the way I think about everything else you'd like me to do.

I know that I have to go to that meeting or pay that tax or listen to this lecture, but, right here, in this moment when you have power, you are going to to establish the way I feel about your entire organization.

If a marketer works hard to provide a positive experience when the customer has no choice, the benefit of the doubt that's earned is worth far more than it costs.

Redesign that form, change your attitude, adjust your fees and bend over backwards to be grateful. It'll be rewarded.

....

Thanks Seth!

When we think PR, this is often the starting block of the race for a customer.  It is the first a new customer knows, learns and then interacts with you.  So get it right.  Get the PR right.  Make sure that message holds the power and right brnd for your organization.

Taking a Stakeholders Approach to Public Relations

Who’s your target?  A vitally important question, and not asked nearly enough in the world of PR strategy.  Sure, we often find out their geographical target, languages spoken, what industry they are in, job position or even social-economic indicators, but there is another, possibly more beneficial, way to view this.

According to the classic writings of Edward Freeman, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, there are three types of stakes:

1. Equity stakes: have a direct ‘ownership’ in the company, such as shareholders, directors or minority interest owners.
2. Economic (or market) stakes: held by those who have economic (but not ownership) interest in the organization, including employees, customers, suppliers and competitors.
3. Influencer stakes: from various groups (economic or moral in nature) for example, consumer advocates, environmental groups, trade organizations and government agencies.

Right from the offset it is clear for any PR pro to see that these different stakeholders require different, often specialized, public relations (such as internal communications or public affairs).

At NettResults we like to consider a simple stakeholder analysis (or reflection) to make communications more efficient:

1. Who are the organization’s stakeholders?
2. What are their stakes?
3. What opportunities and challenges are presented to the organization in relation to these stakeholders?
4. What responsibilities (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic) does the organization have to all its stakeholders?
5. In what way can the organization best communicate with and respond to these stakeholders and address these stakeholder challenges and opportunities.

Next, to aid tactical priority, we look at the stakeholder salience. In other words, how visible or prominent a stakeholder is to the organization based upon the stakeholder possessing one or more of three attributes:

1. Power: the power of the stakeholder group upon the organization.
2. Legitimacy: the legitimacy of the claim laid upon the organization.
3. Urgency: the degree to which stakeholder claims call for immediate action.

The more salient or prominent stakeholders have priority and therefore need to be actively communicated with.  Smaller or hardly salient stakeholders have less priority and it is less important for an organization to communicate with them on an ongoing basis.

Without getting all MBA’ish on you and drawing out a Venn diagram (remember those three overlapping circles?), it’s probably evident that with three saliency variables there are seven different types of stakeholders – the stakeholder that falls in the center which has power, legitimacy and urgency is clearly the priority and where the PR effort should be focused.

Target your stakeholder.

PR Multiplying or Dividing?

There was an interesting story we tweeted about a few days ago originally written by our friends at PR Newswire that suggested there is some disagreement about the skill set PR pros need to succeed in today’s environment, and there are three points of view emerging:

• The traditionalist, who values the ability to write, build relationships, isolate and convey key messages and build publicity strategy above all else.
• The digital enthusiast, who values social media acuity, digital content production and editing and coding skills highly.
• The quant, which focuses on data, analytics and how PR integrates with business processes.

At NettResults we like to think of it as multiplying and dividing.

If you have a list of 1,000 subscribers or 5,000 fans or 10,000 supporters in a social media world, you have a choice to make. You can create stories and options and benefits that naturally spread from this group to their friends, and your core group can multiply, with 5,000 growing to 10,000 and then 100,000.

Or you can put the group through a sales funnel, weed out the free riders and monetize the rest. A 5% conversion rate means you just turned 5,000 interested people into 250 paying customers.

Multiplying scales. Dividing helps you make this quarter's numbers.

So it is with PR.  You want to ever increase your sphere of influence, or put another way, you want to increase the number of journalist you can call up.  At the same time you want to concentrate your time on the 5% (or is it another 80/20 rule?) that don’t just passively receive your news stories, but actively read into them, converse with you and find the story they can report on.

This is why an intellectual rivalry between traditional PR pros and digital enthusiast PR pros is a loose/loose battle.  To be good at PR in today’s rapidly evolving media market, you need to be both a traditionalist and a digital enthusiast.  Gone are the days when having one Millennial digital evangelist in your PR agency’s office was enough – today each of your teams need to be made up digi-traditionalists.

Oh, and they better be able to measure that success. Results are king.

Why PR is Easy

As Jeremy Porter wrote in Journalistics, “If you work in media relations today, and you’re having a hard time getting coverage for your news, you’re doing something wrong. Journalists exist to write about news.  If you have a legitimate news story, you shouldn’t have a hard time getting coverage.”

‘Straight from the horses mouth’ as they say from where I come from (OK half my family made their living as journalist – the others as bookmakers).

If a journalist can tell you that they want to cover news, why are so many companies not getting the coverage they want?

Basically it comes down to two things: either your story isn’t actually newsworthy or you are not speaking to the right journalist. Here’s a little help:

1 - Speak to the right journalist. 

OK, this is the back-office stuff that needs to be right.  To sum it up, do your research. 

Who covers your news? Which reporters write the most about the topics related to what you do? You should know who they are off the top of your head.

Then you actually need to read what these journalists are publishing.

Next up – get to know these people.  You can do this through regular communication and networking. Don’t just contact a journalist when you’re pitching a story. Provide them with tips throughout the year when you come across information that’s of interest to them – even if, especially if, it’s not related to your organization.

They’ll quickly start to value you as a source – and they just might call you the next time they’re working on a story. The trick is to get yourself inserted into their Rolodex or whatever “trusted source” file they use.

OK, so I’ll admit, in the world of cross boarder, multi-language communications, this is far simpler if you have a professional PR team compared to one person trying to hold all the relationships.

So, that was easy right?  Now on to the second, and possibly the more complex element.

2 - Make your story newsworthy

First up – not everything is newsworthy.  Whether you take directions from a client or from a CEO, not everything they think is going to be newsworthy is actually newsworthy, so one important talent is managing expectations.

What makes a good news story? Your topic should be timely and relevant for the audience of the outlet you’re pitching. Even if your story is timely and relevant to the outlet you’re pitching, it might not be a fit for the reporter you think writes about that stuff. Sometimes newsworthiness is merely a factor of how you package the news in your pitch. You have to adapt the pitch to each journalist and outlet.

To help you adapt your pitch to the right journalist or outlet, NettResults offers seven golden tips for refining your pitches:

Localize – is your story not a fit for national news, but a good fit locally? Get strong local coverage in the outlet with the widest coverage. If your company is hiring 20 new employees this year, it’s not a fit for The Wall Street Journal. If you’re hiring 2,000 employees this year due to a big contract you just landed, it might be. Find local angles and see your placement success go up. And more often than not we’re looking at not local and national newsworthiness, but also country and regional newsworthiness.

Timeliness – if your story has a time element to it, you need to be able to act fast. If the world is talking about unemployment figures and you represent the company that is about to open a new office and hire 1,000 new staff how can you capitalize on news coverage? To capitalize on current events like this, you need to have the right reporters on speed dial.

Numbers – Journalists love numbers. Pretty numbers are even better – which is exactly what a good infographic offers. You’re probably sitting on a bunch of recent facts and statistics about your industry you could package as an infographic to support your news. Not only will the infographic help you break through the clutter of competing pitches, but it also provides the journalist with a potential visual to use with their story. We often work with clients to develop their ‘top 10’.  So, for example, an anti-virus company may know the top 10 viruses this month, which could be interesting.  Then, as you delve deeper, start comparing month-to-month and individual penetration rates to quickly produce stories.

Seasonality – What seasonal events create PR opportunities for you? Right now, we’re in the midst of spring. Which means Valentine’s is done with, Easter is right on us, a plethora of mother/father days and soon enough the school holidays will be here. Considering that a lot of these days are locally/regionally/nationally specific. You need to build out a years calendar of relevant days. Next you need to back out about 6 to 8 weeks so you can actually pitch the right seasonal news story when the journalist is writing it (and not when it is about to be read).  Yes, I’m sure there are journalists working on 2012 Christmas issues right now…

Bounce-backs – What do you do when a reporter writes a great story about your industry and leaves your company out? Do you ignore it and take the abuse from your superiors? Do you write a scathing letter, lambasting the reporter – asking them how they could have possibly overlooked you? No, you educate them on your organization and the value you could bring to the table on future stories. Start by acknowledging that the story they wrote was on-target – in some cases, it might be appropriate to highlight some elements that you felt were left out. Journalists like to get reader feedback in most cases. It’s okay to share your side of the story. Even if it doesn’t get you in this article, they’ll think of you next time around if you’re polite and professional.

Name-drop - if your story is related to well-known organizations or people, get that stuff in the first paragraph of your pitch. While it’s not a guarantee for coverage, the better known the players are in your news story, the more likely you will break through the filters. Look, about 1% of the world’s brands, companies, organizations and celebrities actually get 90% of the world’s coverage… so be aware of who’s in the news and use that.

Copy Success – Look at the coverage in the target publications you are going after. If you start to analyze the news, you can start to identify the formula for how coverage happens with each outlet – and each reporter. From there, you can develop strategic approaches to getting your organization or experts included in the mix.

A lot of the tips above will seem old-school to seasoned PR pros, but you know what, while many things in the world of PR are changing quickly, the ability to pitch well hasn’t changed much in years.

12 Crisis Communication Interview Tips

Our good friends at Beuerman Miller Fitzgerald put out a great newsletter this week.  As they say:

One thing we hear a lot from clients with potentially hostile or dramatic media challenges is that "media interviews are a losing proposition." "They are a 'no win' because reporters are out to get us."  "No matter what I say they'll make me look bad."  For these reasons and many more, some clients make a potentially bad situation even worse by making interviews far more difficult and complex than they should be.
 
12 quick tips to help clear the clutter and focus on those things that really matter in an interview:   

1. Interview the interviewer.  How much do they know?  Who else are they talking to? What, specifically are they looking for?  Interviews are a two-way street.  Communication should flow both ways.
2. Put yourself in the reporter's shoes?  If you were them, what would you ask?
3. Place time limits on your interview right up front.
4. Place topical limits on the interview as needed: "I can talk about several of these issues but I'm not at liberty to discuss X at this time."
5. Be conversational.  Treat the interview as a guarded, cautious conversation, not an inquisition.
6. Keep the pre- and post-interview chit chat at a minimum.  The reporter is always listening and the camera is always on.
7. Rehearse your key comments with a colleague as much as possible in advance.
8. Know your strengths but also know your vulnerabilities and how you'll deal with them.
9. Be brief.  Make your point and STOP!  Interviews are like a tennis match. Their turn...your turn. Their turn...your turn.
10. Practice "framing" your most important points so the reporter has no choice but to recognize that they're key.  "Here's what's most important...."  "What I really want you to understand is...."  "If I could stress one key point it would be...."
11. Don't speculate and don't ever say or confirm anything you're not fully certain of.  There's nothing wrong with: "I don't have that information" or "I'm not certain of that and can't comment on it."
12. After the interview ends, make a quick, graceful exit.  Do not hang around.

PR pros and journalists - conjoined twins that constantly squabble

Public relations and journalists have always had a love-hate relationship; simultaneously relying on each other for their professional livelihood while at the same time holding untold (and sometimes voiced) resentment.

They are like conjoined twins that constantly squabble.

Both professions are miss-understood by the general public, but well understood by the other.  Today, the facts are that there are becoming less professional journalist and more public relations professionals. And the trend is getting more dramatic.

In their book, The Death and Life of American Journalism Robert McChesney and John Nichols tracked the number of people working in journalism since 1980 and compared it to the numbers for public relations. Using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, they found that the number of journalists has fallen drastically while public relations people have multiplied at an even faster rate. In 1980, there were about 45 PR workers per one hundred thousand population compared with 36 journalists. In 2008, there were 90 PR people per one hundred thousand compared to 25 journalists. That’s a ratio of more than three-to-one, better equipped, better financed.

Oh, and that was 2008 – in the USA.  One can only imagine how those stats have multiplied in the past 4 years taken at a global level.

The researcher who worked with McChesney and Nichols, R. Jamil Jonna, used census data to track revenues at public relations agencies between 1997 and 2007. He found that revenues went from $3.5 billion to $8.75 billion. Over the same period, paid employees at the agencies went from 38,735 to 50,499, a healthy 30 percent growth in jobs. And those figures include only independent public relations agencies—they don’t include PR people who work for big companies, lobbying outfits, advertising agencies, non-profits, or government.

Traditional journalism, of course, has been headed in the opposite direction. The Newspaper Association of America reported that newspaper advertising revenue dropped from an all-time high of $49 billion in 2000 to $22 billion in 2009. That’s right - more than half. A lot of that loss is due to the recession. But even the most upbeat news executive has to admit that many of those dollars are not coming back soon.

So, do PR folks and journalists even need to play friendly.  My father was a serious journalists having worked in several countries and eventually settling in the UK writing for The Times and The Sunday Times.  I’ve been involved in public relations (both client and agency side) for over 15 years, so maybe my view is bias, but even in the day of citizen journalism and hyper blogging, the scope of a PR pro and a professional journalist rely on the skills, contacts and reach of each other.

Assuming they have to play in the same sand box, how do PR and journalist folks reconcile the difference in number and budgets to hand?

Well, the number game is not so difficult.  With the ever-increasing efficiencies of technology, there is not only the ability to communicate with multiple people at once (it was only 15 years ago when the best way to do this was to print and envelope stuff your press release), but we can use these tools to understand and build stronger relationships.

One of the age-old truisms for a PR pro is to understand the media and the journalist’s contributions before pitching.  Only ten years ago a PR agency would have piles of newspapers and magazines going back at least a year.  Of course there in no reason for this any more.

So we can speak quicker, to more people, with more meaning and at a deeper level then ever before. This goes for PR pros and journalists equally.

What has caused the budget differences?  In other words why the increase in PR?  I think that is relatively simple.

1 – Globalization.  More companies are conducting business outside of their home city, so need to have a PR strategy in place to speak to their potential and existing customers.

2 – The cost to offer PR services has decreased.  Therefore more PR agencies can offer the service (it’s still a relatively low cost business to start) and more companies can afford to use these professionals (or carry the function in-house).  The fact that there are less traditional media outlets doesn’t really matter – the fact that are so many non-traditional media available just increases the requirement of the PR agency.

3 – Those larger companies that were already implementing an integrated marketing program have spent the past 10 years shifting their expenditure within the marketing functions – money coming from the advertising line item and flowing to the PR and social media line items.

4 – More media is now consumed by more people.  So what if there are less newspapers in existence? How many people did actually read multiple newspapers who were not directly involved in the industry? If you were the type of person who read a newspaper in yesteryear, there are still plenty to choose from. And the number of people logging in online to news / views from newspapers, blogs, twitter, facebook etc etc far exceeds newspaper subscription rates in the past. Oh, the fact that so much media is actually free to consumers doesn’t hurt either.

So yes, the PR pro needs the journalist, and for a journalist to act professionally and profitably (they are of course producing and writing more stories, quicker, than ever before) they need the PR pros.

The technology allows for greater communication and sharing of knowledge.

Now all we need to do it get the remaining children to stop squabbling in the name of better media for all. 

The Public Relations Control Center

There are a lot of things going on at a PR agency.  In the days of old (back when we actually put a physical press release in an envelope) there was the creative team and the account management team.  That model has clearly been outdated for some time.  Now, all account members need to have both skills.  Of course they need the skills to work with clients, build strategy, write, interact and influence the media, and show results.  So far this in not rocket science.

Then the economy changed, and there were less people doing more.  Lean was mean and that meant profitability which lead to job security. Suddenly we were dealing with multiple countries, in multiple languages and over different time zones.  Soon technology was pulled to offer our knowledge workers better accessibility than the fixed line servers in our offices as these were superseded by other more efficient cloud solutions.

When it comes to managing PR across multiple teams - for a client or an agency - there really are not many solutions out there.  At NettResults we live and bread cross-boarder PR and were constantly frustrated by the online tools available.  We could find media databases and distribution/monitoring solutions and we could find project management solutions, but there was nothing that the PR industry could call their own.

If you can't find it, build it.  So we did.  We developed the Public Relations Control Center (PRCC) which is used across our organization, as well as with many clients and partner agencies that we work with.  This was recently showcased on Intranets Today.  To read that article - you can link here.  And if you'd like to have a demonstration of our system, please call us today.

PR Defined - the winner is...

In January, we told you all about the search for a new definition of PR.

On Friday the results were announced by the PRSA and covered in the New York Times.

So here it is:

Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.

The last definition was written in 1982.

Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.

So at least this is an improvement. But is is good enough?

OK - so they managed to get a definition that is just under 140 characters...

My problem is with the last word - publics.  I will admit that adding an apostrophe would considerably change this definition, so just to be sure I looked up what defines 'publics'.

According to Wikipedia, this is, "Publics are small groups of people who follow one or more particular issue very closely. They are well informed about the issue(s) and also have a very strong opinion on it/them. They tend to know more about politics than the average person, and, therefore, exert more influence, because these people care so deeply about their cause(s) that they donate much time and money."

Most dictionaries don't think this word exists except as the plural of pub.lic (Noun).

I think what the PRSA is hoping, is that the wider definition as on BusinessDictionary.com is applied: "Communities of people at large (whether or not organized as groups) that have a direct or indirect association with an organization: customers, employees, investors, media, students, etc"

Anyway, PR now has somewhere to hang its hat. What do you think?