Leadership and professionalism

By Claire Riley

Strong leadership is transformational for an organisation. Leaders with a clear vision and purpose take their employees on a journey, empowering everyone to work towards the same objectives and helping them achieve their potential. Today in the NHS, teams face big challenges and need champions who recognise and promote the value offered by strategic communications.

You’ll learn:

• That the silver bullet of leadership lies within you
• What you should consider on the road to leadership
• Why we must stop allowing people to refer to the ‘cost of communications’ as opposed to the ‘value of communications’ and collaborate to prove PR’s worth

Aspiring to authentic leadership

‘The role of leaders is not to get other people to follow them but to empower others to lead.’ 

 Bill George, Discover Your True North 2015.

Much has been written about leadership – in fact in 2015 leadership paperback books were coming out at a rate of more than four per day! 

Searching on Amazon ‘leadership books’ will give you nearly 300k options to choose from. That’s a lot of leadership books which will take more than anyone’s life time to read. 

In reality becoming a leader is a journey and not something you can just read in a book. As you move up that leadership ladder, the challenges are more about you as an individual rather than you as a practitioner.

If you are however to read a book about leadership I would suggest ‘Discover Your True North’ by Bill George. This book talks you through leadership and how you really need to understand who you are, your values and the principles you lead by before you can really truly develop as an authentic leader. 

In essence and in contradiction, it demonstrates that the silver bullet of leadership is within you – not in a book. 
 

Who/what should influence you? 

The facts are we all have opinions on leadership and we have all experiences of the good, bad and the ugly. 

I am lucky to have been and continue to be, influenced by some excellent leaders in and out of the NHS. 

Authenticity is, in my opinion, the most important attribute of an excellent leader – someone who is true to themselves and focused on doing the right thing regardless of the constraints they are working within. 

As examples of best practice I personally would single out two individuals: Jim Mackey, CEO of Northumbria Healthcare and Daljit Lally, CEO of Northumberland County Council and it isn’t just because they are also Geordies.

Like everyone, both have been on their own very different personal leadership journeys. They however remain very clear on who they are and the principles that drive them; their principles, not those created or designed by others. They empower and encourage others to lead and are fiercely determined to ensure their organisation is the best it can possibly be. 

Considerations for aspiring leaders

Regardless of where you are on your leadership journey there are several pointers to bear in mind:

• How to ensure your personal values and deep beliefs influence you as you develop your leadership style and how this influences your own personal brand 

• How you can learn from others (identify those you most admire), but do not try to be someone you are not

• Let your work do your talking – ignore the superficial and focus on the substance

• Less is sometime more – as communicators we are too often on ‘transmit’ mode

• Remember leadership does not equal control – empowerment and supporting others to achieve is key to success

• Be open and honest – when things go wrong tell people, do not try and hide it

• Be resilient – control the emotions

• Maintain integrity and manage your own reputation
 

Never stop learning

Within the communications, marketing and PR fraternity, not just within the NHS but across all sectors, training and development emphasis is on the ‘practitioner’ element. 

We all must continually invest in CPD - let’s be honest, not enough of us do once we bag the qualifications. 

Very few formal qualifications include leadership development and or management skills yet these are essential for career progression and the successful management of projects and teams. 

You must regularly challenge yourself with the question – when did I last focus on my learning and development? If you struggle to answer this you need to quickly reconsider and take control of your professional goals.
 

Within NHS Communications

It would be a myth to suggest that communications activity within healthcare in England is something new – yet so many people think it is. 

When the NHS was formed 70 years ago the government at the time embarked on a communications campaign to educate the population on ‘how to access services’. 

Soon after they were educating the public on how ‘coughs and sneezes spread diseases,’ subject matters still high up on the agenda for all organisations today. It is hard to believe that there was not widespread support for the NHS when it was formed!

Seventy years on, like all other areas of the NHS, working within communications remains challenging. 

Trying to navigate the internal politics around the NHS system is like watching Elton John in ‘Tantrum and Tiaras.’ 

Regardless, patients are to be cared for, the public want to have confidence in local services and participate in discussions about any changes to services, staff need to be engaged in the priorities of the organisation and stakeholders involved as services evolve. 

All of this is a statutory duty and therefore a must do, not a nice to have.

Whilst individual organisations are labelled with different names, the public only care for one thing – the NHS lozenge and what it represents. 

We all know that communications and wider engagement has a really important part to play in the success of the NHS yet not all organisations invest in communications at a strategic leadership level.

As an example, around 30% of senior communicators are at director level and only 20% are at Board level. 

Whilst the job title is not the determinant of successful delivery, it is a litmus test on how valued the function is within any organisation. 

Is this positioning of communications the fault of communicators, or systemic of the function itself?

Arguably I would suggest the answer to this question is both. As professional communicators we do not always help ourselves. 

Other chapters in this book share examples of the added value communications can bring to organisations yet not enough of us invest time and effort in evaluation of activity. 

From recruitment campaigns to campaigns linked to clinical safety, such as the latest one on Sepsis, there are tangible and, more often than not, cost benefits of such activity. 

But we are poor at promoting ourselves and such positive outcomes.

How many of us allow people to refer to the ‘cost of communications’ as opposed to the ‘value of communications’? Let’s face it, organisations do not talk about the cost of Finance or HR functions in this way. 

Leaders of communications cannot devolve responsibility of the positioning of the communications function to others, we should take control and act together to demonstrate the value the function offers to organisations. 
 

What can all communicators do to support this?

There is much we can achieve if we collaborate. 

Here is a checklist of actions communicators can follow:

• Plan activity with purpose, tangible outputs and with clear ‘call to actions’

• Do not overcomplicate plans and over design communications activity as if it is art as opposed to a means to an end

• Measure and evaluate work regularly and formally report to executive teams and where possible Boards

• Maintain strong relationships across the whole organisation and ensure you provide a service for all as required

• If you sit at the leadership table ensure you contribute and add value, supporting the development of solutions rather than creating problems

• Understand the numbers and know how to analyse and interpret them

• Work as part of a leadership team not just as a communications team

• Do not procrastinate – deliver what you say and within the time and budget agreed
 

Finally, let’s stop apologising for working in communications and be proud of the added value and outcomes we achieve. If we appreciate our own worth, others will too. 

---

Claire Riley is Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and also works nationally with NHS Improvement on the communications development programme. Claire is a qualified marketer and experienced lecturer and has a post graduate diploma in Marketing and a BA (Hons) in Business Management & Organisations with extensive experience in business, marketing and communications across public and private sectors. Claire holds the Freedom of the City of London and is married with two girls. She is a long-suffering Newcastle United supporter and a life-long Wham! fan.

Twitter: @thefourrileys
Online: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-riley-94304a9/

Continuing professional development in the NHS

By Anne Gregory

Question: How do you stay up to date in the fast moving, complex, communication hungry, resource-strapped world that is the NHS where every moment counts? Answer: you can’t afford not to be, it’s the mark of a true professional.

You’ll learn:

• About the continuing and growing need for strategic, trusted communications advisers
• How a lack of resource drives innovation and creativity, particularly in the NHS
• Pooling CPD resources also provides an opportunity for the public sector to consider ‘joined up’ public communication on some of the big issues facing society

What’s happening in NHS Communications?

Pre 2012 the NHS was centralised. It was run directly by the Department of Health and most of the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for communication professionals was designed and provided by them. 

It was my privilege then to be involved in a project called NHS Evolve, a competency framework which provided a comprehensive catalogue of the knowledge, skills and standards needed by all NHS communicators. 

Since the Andrew Lansley reforms of 2012, the NHS has become much more fragmented. Hospital Foundation Trusts have more autonomy, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) decide what local populations need and fund services, GPs are still relatively independent and the Regulator(s) have a big role in quality assuring and monitoring the funding of the NHS system. 

And that is what it is, a system. There are many other organisations in the system, such as Health and Well-being Boards, Public Health England and NHS Blood and Transport. All these moving parts means it is complex and difficult to navigate.

Health needs have also changed. People are living longer and as they age they become frailer and suffer from more health issues, often all at the same time. 

Concurrently information demands are higher, from the press, from the public and increasingly from other parts of the fragmented system. 

In a world dominated by sound bites and ‘keep it simple stupid,’ it is increasingly challenging to communicate the complexities involved while keeping it intelligible. 

The need for strategic, trusted communication advisers operating at the highest level has never been greater.

Being a communicator, particularly if you are in a small team of two or three people, because that is how it is in many hospitals, means you face huge demand and challenges. Rather like the NHS itself. 

So what is there to help you keep up to date and at the forefront of professional development?

Against the stereotype, my experience of working with public sector communicators demonstrates they are ahead of their compatriots in the private sector. 

The fact that they are always publicly accountable means that they are highly skilled advisers. Their lack of resources often drives innovation and creativity: they are adept at using all channels available and devise content that is relevant and important.

Gaining access to training and development

With no central resource available, how do NHS communicators gain CPD?

There have been a number of initiatives over the last few years and they are gaining momentum after a bit of a slow start.

Since 2015 NHS Improvement (NHSI), the system regulator and NHS England which has overarching responsibility for commissioning through the system, have been running a post-graduate certificate in Health Care Communication with Buckinghamshire New University. It is for aspiring Communication leaders in Trusts and now for CCGs.

According to Alison Brown, Head of Communications Development at NHSI, there was a need to standardise, raise standards and enhance the strategic capability of communication staff to deliver the objectives of their organisations.

This joint body is also providing seminars on the issues challenging Trusts and has re-launched CommsLink. This is an online resource and network for all NHS communicators populated with case studies, campaign materials, lessons learned: all aimed at sharing good practice and for learning. 

Some of the larger NHS organisations have developed training based on their own expertise. For example NHS Digital has built a series of case studies aimed at enhancing digital capability throughout the system.

NHS Providers, which is a ‘trade association’ of healthcare providers including ambulance, mental health and hospital Trusts, runs a Communications Leads Network offering a forum for sharing ideas, learning best practice and addressing the issues facing health communicators.

The Association for Healthcare Communications and Marketing is yet another network for communicators working in the system supporting training and professional development and also running a prestigious annual Awards event that celebrates best practice.

Many health system communicators also access CPD programmes from the professional body, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the UK trade body, the Public Relations Communications Association.

Sensibly, the health communications community has been linking up with other parts of the public sector which have more highly developed CPD programmes.

LG Communications is a national body made up of an association of authorities working to raise the standard of communications in local government. LGComms has a full and sophisticated offering of CPD including their own Academy, a seminar programme, a Future Leaders programme and a resource bank including good practice guides.

The Government Communications Service (GCS) which is the professional body for those working in Government, also allows access to their whole range of development courses, tools, guides and best practice.

On offer here is the GCS Curriculum which provides 1600 free training places on a range of courses and at a variety of levels. The Early Talent programme and the Senior Talent programme, a Masters course run with the University of Huddersfield for those with high potential, are two year structured offerings which develop leadership capabilities.

Importantly the GCS offers a Personal Development Plan template that helps communicators build a planned approach to their own professional progress. This can be used in conjunction with a professional Competency Framework that captures all the knowledge and skills required to operate as a competent professional in public service.

That the NHS taps into all these initiatives in different parts of the public sector is good. Public sector organisations are having to work more closely together on a range of issues including health and social care, housing and homelessness, loneliness and social exclusion – the root of many health problems.

As they learn and develop their professional skills and knowledge together, they also have the opportunity to consider ‘joined up’ public communication on some of these linked ‘wicked’ problems. 
 

What about CPD into the future?

While it’s true to say that a coherent, consistent, systematic CPD offer in NHS communication is a work in progress, there are other moves in the communication space that will help. As the whole profession rises to the challenge of a more fast moving, complex, interconnected and demanding communication environment, new initiatives are being developed. 

The Global Alliance, the international confederation of professional associations, is developing the Global Capability Framework. This establishes the key capabilities that all communicators should have wherever they live and work but can also be customised and added to for particular employers, sectors and even countries and regions around the world.

The work is being led by the University of Huddersfield and will be launched in April 2018. At that stage NHS communicators, like those from any other organisation, will be able benchmark themselves against the framework. 

Software will enable them to plan their own development future. Maybe at that stage the NHS will be able to leapfrog intermediary developments and go straight to be a leader in CPD. With NHS Digital being one of the interested parties in this development, it looks like it certainly could be.

---

Professor Anne Gregory is Chair in Corporate Communication at the University of Huddersfield. She is a former President of the CIPR, former Chair of the Global Alliance and currently leads the worldwide Global Capability Project. Anne is a non-executive Director of Airedale NHS Foundation Trust.

Twitter: @GregsAnne
Online: https://www.hud.ac.uk/

NHS: The ultimate superbrand?

By Nick Ramshaw

The NHS Identity is the most instantly recognisable brand in the UK. Yet its use in England over recent years has been inconsistent, leading to confusion amongst the people who value it most. This chapter tells the story of how a better understanding of what the brand means to patients and the public has helped to inspire a new NHS Identity Policy. The Policy in turn has helped increase consistency, maintained public trust and will ultimately help the NHS to save money.

You’ll learn:

• Why understanding your audience is key to brand success
• Why testing branding with users and the public is so important
• Why making it as easy as possible is your best chance of implementation success

Why is the NHS Identity important?

The NHS Identity is one of the most cherished and well known in the world. When applied correctly and consistently it evokes exceptionally high levels of emotional attachment, trust and reassurance. 

The NHS blue lozenge logo is instantly recognised and its application directly affects how patients and the public think and feel about the NHS. 

All users of the NHS Identity have a responsibility to protect it and ensure they achieve the national standard that the patients expect from it.

FIGURE 1 NHS lozenge

Why is the NHS Identity important?

The NHS Identity is one of the most cherished and well known in the world. When applied correctly and consistently it evokes exceptionally high levels of emotional attachment, trust and reassurance. 

The NHS blue lozenge logo is instantly recognised and its application directly affects how patients and the public think and feel about the NHS. 

All users of the NHS Identity have a responsibility to protect it and ensure they achieve the national standard that the patients expect from it.
 

A need for new guidelines

A single NHS Identity was introduced in England in 1999 to help signpost people to NHS organisations and services and to help them identify information which has come from an official NHS source. 

The famous blue lozenge had been around since the early 1990s, but its use hadn’t been reviewed since 1999. 

A new NHS structure had been introduced with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and Foundation Trusts, but guidance had not been updated to reflect this. 

The existing guidelines (spread over 19 documents) also didn’t include guidance for digital communications – they were seriously outdated. 

Some NHS organisations had also introduced their own identities, leading to confusion amongst patients and the public. 

With NHS services now being delivered by different organisations, including private sector operators, a new approach was required to provide patients with clear signposting to their NHS services. 

New guidelines were also needed to bring consistency and clarity on how to use the Identity in modern communications. Taking a professional and consistent approach is important to the public and helps to create a visual mark of quality. Achieve all this and the NHS would achieve savings in the cost of communications throughout England.
 

The need for audience insight

For any brand to operate effectively, it has to understand its audience and know how it influences how they feel about the brand. 

In the case of the NHS, the audience is extremely broad – everyone in England – which currently stands at a population of 54.3 million people. 

The internal audience comprises the 1.2 million people who work directly for the NHS, as well as the third party providers who are entitled to use the NHS Identity.

To understand how the public felt about the NHS Identity, we carried out an extensive engagement programme. This consisted of focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, workshops and vox pops, with both internal and external audiences and stakeholders. 

The programme was key to us understanding how people think about the NHS Identity and what they would feel about potential changes in the future.

They’ve got the blue, we can trust them. - Public research, 2015

What we learnt from the public, was that we should tinker with the logo at our peril! When people see the blue NHS logo, they automatically associate it with high quality, free services. The use of colours other than blue and new logos were clearly opposed, as it was very confusing. 

The public is generally more brand savvy now than ever before and it understands how identities like this work.

Developing an Identity Policy

To help the 600+ NHS organisations achieve the consistent, national standard that patients expect, we developed a comprehensive Identity Policy. 

The new Policy is based on a set of over-arching principles, designed to ensure the interests and needs of patients and the public are considered first and aligned to the NHS Constitution. It also covers who can and can’t use the NHS Identity, how the core elements should be used and the responsibilities for ensuring correct implementation.

The Policy was kept intentionally simple, to help ensure implementation was successful. The Policy principles are clear and easily understood:

1. When applying the NHS Identity, the interests and needs of patients should always be considered first.

2. All applications of the NHS Identity should support the NHS values and the principles of the NHS Constitution.

3. All users have a duty of care to protect the NHS Identity.

4. The NHS Identity is the single, clear way to signpost patients and the public to NHS organisations and services and should be used universally and consistently.

5. The NHS Identity Policy applies to all services which the NHS is accountable and responsible for, regardless of the provider.

6. The NHS Identity itself cannot be used to generate profit outside the NHS.

7. The Policy is mandatory for all organisation that use the NHS Identity. There will be no exceptions.
 

Ensuring compliance between the Identity and new Policy

With the Policy approved, we carried out a major overhaul of the NHS Identity elements.

The public’s exceptionally high awareness told us we shouldn’t change the core lozenge, use of the Frutiger font or the core colours of blue and white. 

What was needed though was a more consistent system for logomarks, a much more comprehensive colour palette with implementation advice and specific help with things like logo positioning and use online. 

Practical guidance was also required on the naming of existing and new services and partnerships (of which there are increasingly more), the use of the NHS Identity by primary care providers and the appropriate tone of voice for internal and external communications.

Engaging with brand users

Given the limited resources of many NHS organisations, we found the best way of helping would be to make things as easy as possible. 

Our solution was to provide practical tools and assets that users required to achieve higher levels of consistency in their work. 

This included the creation of more than 100 visual examples of the Identity in use, logomark asset packs for over 600 NHS organisations and a comprehensive set of online Identity guidelines. 

These guidelines are rich in detail and focus on the types of scenario we know the stakeholders face on a day-to-day basis. Everything was designed to make the users’ job easier, to help save time and money as well as improving consistency. 

You can find these at https://www.england.nhs.uk/nhsidentity/

The guidelines themselves were extensively tested with users in groups and individually. By asking actual users of the Identity to test the Beta version of the guidelines, we identified not only the usability issues within the website, but also the practical issues in the guidelines’ content itself.

Once the assets had been circulated and the new guidelines launched online, the NHS Identity Team provided help and assistance via a hotline and face-to-face sessions throughout the country.

Have the new guidelines been successful?

The new approach will be implemented over the long term, with materials only rebranded when due for natural replacement. This and the use of the new asset packs, a more consistent approach generally and a new culture of sharing artwork will lead to a significant reduction in the total NHS design spend. 

“I’m struggling to put into words just how valuable this experience has been, for us and for the entire NHS organisation. My job is to help everyone implement the NHS Identity more effectively and the early signs are that the guidelines, assets and examples are proving to be an enormous help.”

Julie Haddon, Head of Identity, NHS England

Following an informal launch in late 2016, a number of NHS organisations, Trusts and CCGs are already using the new assets and guidelines, finding them very helpful. The new NHS Identity website was formally launched on 4 January 2017.
 

Key learnings

In conclusion, this project has helped us to better understand the NHS Identity and how it is regarded by patients and the public. 

Knowing what is in the hearts and minds of the public is key to providing reassurance and clear signposting. And of all Identities, the NHS really matters!

A professional and consistent application of the NHS brand helps patients and the public see the NHS as a visual mark of quality.

It was very important then to test our hypothesis and prototypes, in real life conditions with real users, to fully understand the user journey. And finally, once we developed the assets, Policy, guidelines and examples, to make it as easy as possible, in order to achieve better results and higher levels of consistency.

We are proud to have helped in the development of the best known and most loved brand in the country and look forward to helping it grow from strength to strength.

---

Nick Ramshaw has over 25 years of experience working at a senior level in leading brand and design agencies in London, Edinburgh and Leeds. He is a past President of trade body Design Business Association, a Common Purpose graduate and a governor of Leeds Arts University. Nick led the team at Thompson Brand Partners that carried out a recent fundamental review of the NHS identity in England, creating a comprehensive use policy and detailed online guidelines.

Twitter: @ThompsonBP
Online: www.thompsonbrandpartners.com

Public trust and the NHS

By Alan Maine

At a time when trust in business, government, NGOs and the media is at an all-time low, hospitals and clinics continue to perform well, helped by direct and ongoing relationships with patients. 

You’ll learn:

• That the fact hospitals and clinics present a human face helps to build trust with the public
• Employees are more trusted than CEOs or senior business executives to communicate information
• The top five trust-building behaviours for organisations

The NHS: A much-loved institution

The NHS is woven into Britain’s DNA. A recent King’s Fund study showed that almost four out of five Britons believe ‘the NHS is crucial to British society and we must do everything to maintain it.’ [1]

Clearly, it is one of Britain’s proudest and most loved institutions. But do the public trust it? And how is trust critical to the future of the NHS?

We think there are three reasons:

1. The pace of change is moving faster than ever before. Britons are now living much longer; advances in technology and genomics are changing how health professionals advise; and big data is revolutionising the future of healthcare. Do Britons trust that these advancements can help us lead healthier – and happier - lives?

2. Patients are doing their own independent research – thanks to ‘Dr Google’. What happens when a patient finds information online that conflicts with their doctor’s recommendation?

3. Service reconfiguration. With potential closures of local hospital services and clinics, do Britons trust that the goal is to improve patient care and outcomes?

Edelman has studied trust for 18 years and we are now in our seventh year of surveying an extended sample of the general online population. This year, we spoke to more than 33,000 respondents in 28 countries. We ask them a series of questions to gauge their trust in the institutions of business, government, NGOs and the media. 

The 2018 findings revealed that Britons mistrust all four institutions. In an era where trust is distinctly lacking, one would hope to be able to say that the public ‘trusts’ the NHS.

The good news is that our findings are encouraging. As one might expect, comparatively, ‘Hospitals/Clinics’ have consistently remained the most trusted healthcare sub-sector since this category was added to our global study in 2015.

FIGURE 1 Globally, Hospitals / Clinics Remain Most Trusted

Trust in the Healthcare sub-sectors, 2015-2017, (27-country global total), General Population

We believe their continued and growing levels of trust are due to:

• Patient Relationships: Hospitals/Clinics have always had a trust advantage given their direct and ongoing relationship with patients. In the US, we believe this is because more of the population are receiving access to Hospitals/Clinics thanks to public reform.

• Benefit of Real People: As opposed to other segments of the healthcare industry where employees are many steps removed from the patient or consumer, hospitals and clinics have a human face and real people on the frontlines of treatment and care.

Who can build trust?

The data helps us form some thinking around who in the NHS can help build trust. Who should represent the NHS to communicate its strategic policies; talk about change; and outline its future?

Our survey found that employees are the most credible voices - more than leaders and more than experts. 

Across the board, employees are more trusted than CEOs or senior business executives to communicate information. This includes information about financial earnings and operating performance, how to handle a crisis and - of course - how to treat employees and customers.

FIGURE 2 Employees Most Credible
Most trusted spokesperson to communicate each topic

Healthcare communicators should also be interested to find out that along with academic and technical experts, ‘a person like yourself’ is seen as credible by most people. This reinforces that people want to be spoken with, not talked at.

Engaging the public with the public health agenda – critical to the sustainability of the NHS – is another area where trust is key. 

Interestingly, The King’s Fund found that two-thirds of the public (65 per cent) agree that keeping healthy is primarily the responsibility of the individual, while just 7 per cent put this responsibility on the NHS.

This links to another finding of the Trust Barometer. Globally, 7 in 10 people agreed with the statement ‘I am confident in my ability to find answers about healthcare related questions and make informed decisions for myself and my family.’ This points to the increased availability of health information across non-traditional platforms, including online sources, social media and companies’ owned media channels.

Building trust in institutions 

In our dialogue with businesses globally on trust, Edelman identifies five top trust-building behaviours: 

1. Ensure quality control and protect consumer data
2. Be transparent and authentic in how you operate
3. Contribute to the greater good
4. Develop innovations that have a positive impact on people’s life and the world
5. Show leadership that effectively represents the interest of all stakeholders.

It goes without saying that the NHS should own points three and four. Also, transparency remains high on the agenda of the NHS, particularly with initiatives such as ‘My NHS’ on performance data.

Protection of consumer data - or in the case of the NHS, patient data - remains an area of public debate and often concern. As technology advances, along with our modern lifestyles, it is critical that the NHS builds the public’s trust in NHS safeguarding and use of personal data. 

Who should lead that debate? Certainly not the politicians. Our findings show the public trust in ‘people like me’ and ‘employees’, however. This could point the way to organically building the public trust and understanding in the NHS’s future use of their health information. 

Some steps are already being taken. Setting out her vision of the use of genomics in the NHS, Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer, notes ‘as members of clinical teams we must engage patients and the public and develop real partnerships. […] To achieve this we need to maintain patients’ and the public’s trust and make genomics everyone’s business.’

More leaders must adopt this approach.

---

Sources

[1] https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-does-public-think-about-nhs

---

Alan Maine is Senior Director for UK Health Public Affairs at Edelman. Alan has worked in healthcare and science policy public affairs for 15 years. Before joining Edelman he was Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Pfizer and he also worked for Wyeth and Merck Sharp and Dohme. Prior to his time in the life sciences industry he was head of the foreign affairs section of the Conservative Research Department.

Twitter: @edelmanuk
Online: https://www.edelman.co.uk

A journalist’s perspective: The good and bad of NHS comms

by Denis Campbell

Public relations practitioners and journalists need each other but without trust, honesty and an open line of communication, relationships can soon get strained. This chapter looks at the good, bad and ugly of NHS comms, focusing on engagement with the media.

You’ll learn:

• How the NHS, by being more honest about its situation, could potentially make greater in-roads into securing greater investment into its services
• How positive, compelling journalism results from journalists and NHS PRs working closely together
• Why stonewalling reflects badly on an organisation because the story will find its way into the public domain anyway

A poisoned chalice

To be asked to write about how NHS PRs engage with health journalists like me is the professional equivalent of being offered a cyanide pill. 

As the health policy editor (main NHS reporter) of the Guardian and the Observer I seek these people’s help daily; I couldn’t do my job without them. So why would I say anything at all, lest even a smidgeon of criticism alienates those whose goodwill, determination and professionalism I routinely rely upon? 

Because from my experience of covering health for almost 11 years, while some NHS comms officers are superb (creative, resourceful, at least as keen as me to make the story work), others display behaviours which are unhelpful, unbecoming of their profession and, most importantly, ultimately damaging to the NHS. 

I need the former to win out over the latter, for both my sake and also to help the service itself. 
 

Be honest and hold the line

The health service’s well-rehearsed weaknesses – too little money, too few staff, a fragmented system, rising demand involving epic amounts of avoidable illness – mean it is increasingly, visibly unable to do the job it wants and citizens expect.

Any health system that seriously considers rationing chemotherapy to newly-diagnosed and existing cancer patients, as Oxford University Hospitals Trust did in January, is clearly in very serious trouble and breaching its social contract with the nation, albeit involuntarily. 

So dissembling or downplaying the NHS’s many problems, or going along with the government’s fantasy version of events – part Big Lie, part cruel blame game, part Yes, Minister amateurishness – is unforgiveable. 

Yet in my view, worryingly many NHS bodies, local but especially national and their leaders are making that mistake, for example by pretending that understaffing isn’t the disaster that it clearly is. 

NHS public relations professionals are inevitable handmaidens in that disgraceful and dishonourable mission, which is itself partly the product of pressure from government. 

I exempt NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens from that criticism. His speaking of truth unto power about the NHS’s budget, even at the cost of antagonising Theresa May, has been bold, necessary and very impressive – not to mention effective. 

A mixed bag of talent

The baffling, atomised nature of the NHS in England – 240-odd Trusts, 200-odd Clinical Commissioning Groups and array of NHS arm’s length bodies – makes it impossible to talk in any meaningful way about how good or bad ‘NHS PRs’ are. 

There are so many of them: thousands of them, compared to a few dozen health journalists in national media outlets. And working as a PR for an NHS Hospital Trust, with its primarily local focus, is clearly very different to working for national bodies such as NHS England, Health Education England or NHS Improvement. 

Overall, I find them a mixed bag: some brilliant, some appalling and many perfectly average. 

In early 2016 the Guardian ran a month-long series called This Is The NHS. 

It was the most in-depth look ever attempted by any media outlet at the work and superb staff of what is, rightly, the country’s most-loved institution. We couldn’t have done that without the help and trust of NHS England, who helped open doors for us and NHS Trusts, who gave us access to people, places and sometimes mind-bogglingly amazing work, like heart surgery on babies performed in utero. 

The result was compelling journalism about fascinating things, facilitated by a virtuous circle of journalists and NHS PRs working closely together to mutual advantage. 

Guiding principles

So why don’t things work like that more often? Well, the NHS Constitution sets out seven ‘principles that guide the NHS in all it does’. 

According to this fine, thoughtful document, these seven are ‘underpinned by core NHS values which have been derived from extensive discussions with staff, patients and the public,’ like care being free at the point of use. 

These principles sound great: honourable, uplifting, in spirit with what most of its bosses would say were the service’s values. For me as a journalist the most important is the seventh principle. 

This specifies that ‘the NHS is accountable to the public, communities and patients that it serves…The system of responsibility and accountability for taking decisions in the NHS should be transparent and clear to the public, patients and staff.’ 

In my view that principle should guide and bind the behaviour of NHS PR practitioners too. 
 

Moving from good to bad

The accountability described above involves board meetings, annual reports, appearances at the local health scrutiny committee and – crucially – engagement with the media. Some NHS bodies I deal with take such responsibilities seriously. 

Yet almost daily, sometimes hourly, I encounter examples of how NHS organisations don’t so much as drive a coach and horses through their constitutional duty – to explain and answer honestly for what they do – as ignore it altogether, such is the level of opaqueness, evasion and outright denial of information which I encounter. 

I cannot tell how much NHS PRs themselves are to blame and how much of it is them simply implementing media-unfriendly policies dictated by their bosses. 

But I do tear my hair out at how bland, opaque and evasive replies to simple queries I submit to NHS organisations often are. 

I marvel at the effort senior managers and clever PRs put into coming up with entirely irrelevant answers. Do they think that will stop the story appearing? 

I am appalled at receiving so many Whitehall-style non-response answers – a refusal to respond to the evidence or opinions that are the basis of the story – that deliberately refuse to engage with concerns raised by doctors, researchers, health charities and grieving relatives. 

Because they have no good answer, presumably. In a health service of all things, why are those doing this not ashamed of themselves? 

And I know that, obviously, if the issue is something that will embarrass an NHS body, even a little bit, too often the seventh principle means nothing and damage limitation all that matters. 

When I was looking into understaffing and compromised patient safety at North Middlesex hospital in London, the hospital deserved an Olympic medal for stonewalling and denial of basic facts. 

Happily, previously-unpublished documents circulating within the wider NHS, which outlined the troubled Trust’s many problems in graphic detail, rendered their unhelpfulness irrelevant. Given that 99% of the time the story is still going to get out there, why not just be honest instead? 

Transparency is key

I despair, too, at the NHS’s addiction to secrecy: over the rationing of care, Strategic Transformation Plans, the creation of ‘Accountable Care Organisations’, plans to reshape local hospital services and much more. 

These things are always controversial, I appreciate. But when the truth gets out, as it nearly always does – via local campaigners, 38 Degrees, the BMA, people submitting FOI requests and so on – that secrecy makes things worse, because people (MPs, councillors, local people, the media) have been taken for fools and don’t like it. 

NHS PRs’ background and talents lie in communicating. So why not spend more time and put more creative energy into communicating what their bit of the NHS does and who the staff are that make that possible? 

And why not be routinely honest with the media – and thus the public – about the pressures the service is under and not be afraid to acknowledge that that can cause problems? Why not trust journalists much more to do a decent job and not be so suspicious all the time? 

I know these are all in NHS terms risky behaviours. But they might just help – people like me and people like you - and so the NHS itself. 

As the NHS turns 70, these are my NHS birthday wishes. 

---

Denis Campbell is the health policy editor of the Guardian and the Observer.

Twitter: @denis_campbell
Online: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/deniscampbell

Outside looking in: An external perspective of the NHS

By Roy Lilley

The NHS occupies a special place in the public’s heart and politicians are keenly aware it can win or lose them votes. Life in the NHS is more challenging than ever but the NHS has one huge benefit on its side – amazing staff and strong communicators who recognise that transparency is the only way forward.

You’ll learn:

• Good comms centres all around transparency
• Why staff are your greatest asset
• That organisations must avoid becoming corporate and distant if they are to maintain goodwill

An NHS is crisis

As I write, making my contribution to this book, the NHS is under siege.

It’s early January and the NHS is dealing with what has to be the worst winter crisis since the ‘90s.

Patients in A&E are on trolleys, ambulances are lined up outside and wards are fuller than full with sick people. For the first time in my 30 plus years, in and around the NHS, the Secretary of State for Health has appeared, voluntarily, in front of the cameras and said... “Sorry”.

A day later the Prime Minister did the same. She was sorry for the cancelled operations and praised the hard work of the staff.

We are so used to the Department of Health press office dissembling and camouflage, it came as something of a surprise. For senior politicians to apologise for failings (you can’t call it anything else), is unheard of.

You can bet the policy wonks, ministers, the lawyers and probably the Cabinet and the communications experts would have had a say in the decision to fess-up.

It truth, there wasn’t much else they could do. The usual bluster and conflation, the barrage of statistics, wasn’t going to wash. Take it on the chin. Admit it on your terms and dilute it, best you can, with lavish praise for the ‘hard working staff’ at the front line of health care.

A public communications case study if ever I saw one. A hollow confession, a plastic apology and a dollop of sickly praise. 

‘Oops, sorry and luv ya!’ What’s not to like!

Nowhere to hide

This winter thing isn’t over yet and already NHS communications teams are struggling to know what to do. Generally their job is to put on a brave face, be sunny-side-up and polish the cow pat.

It’s difficult to do that when the evidence of the system melt-down is all around you. Staff are taking to social media to say how ‘third world’ it all is and the public are only too willing to go on the telly to share bad experiences.

How do you handle all that? What are the lessons learned?

The first; there is no hiding place. The good old days of issuing a press release and going home at five o’clock are over. The press are more intrusive and the public more demanding. Second, the media has a 24-7 avarice.
 

Communicate openly and honestly

There is only one word that comes to mind. It’s a painful word, rapier-like and hurts. The word is transparency. The only defence is transparency. The only comfort transparency. This is the only answer.

In times of crisis and heightened public interest, there are three things to do, communicate, communicate and communicate. 

Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em... tell ‘em... and tell ‘em again.

It’s not rocket science and it certainly isn’t new. To answer the question, how often should I communicate, the answer is before somebody else does and in a global, 24-7 media world that’s tricky.

A clear idea of what you want to communicate is no bad idea. 

In the current crisis the only approach can be:

‘Our hospital has 600 beds, when they are full, they are full. We are moving people through the system as fast and as safely as we can but we depend on colleagues in primary care to keep people at home and our colleagues in social care to get them back home. They are struggling too. We all are. There is unprecedented demand and people are having to wait, sometimes for hours. Please don’t come unless you are very ill...’

In dealing with frustrated staff, taking to social media and creating hell with their smart phone, communicators have to be smart. It’s part of the new repertoire of communications management that was certainly not on the agenda back in 1948, when the NHS was born.

Finding the line between freedom to speak, getting the facts straight and not alarming the public is the job of a diplomat and a colleague who is trusted to make sure the truth is told.

 
A brand like no other

The enduring love affair the public has with the NHS, the undying affection, poses a question of its own. Is the NHS such a strong brand it doesn’t need communications strategists fussing over it?

The NHS runs out of money. The public gives it more. Piles people up in waiting rooms, stacks them up in corridors. The public comes back for more. Makes terrible mistakes. The public are forgiving. Why?

Because the NHS is the only show in town? There’s no choice? The same is true of the trains and look at the stick they get.

The NHS survives because of the amazing talents and vocational skills of the front line of health care. They are the communications department’s greatest asset. The evangelists, disciples and best advert. What other ‘business’ is there with such an enduring brand, public affection and committed workforce.

Of all the public services and the impatience users have with them the NHS is the one that politicians are the most nervous of. History tells us the health service can make or break careers and win or lose elections.
 

Time to close the corporate gap

If we think the NHS is a special case and a one off there is a risk to that. 

At the birth of the NHS hospitals were part of the community, funded by charities and public generosity. Local, up-the-road and ‘part of us’. 

Increasingly, they are bigger, more remote, management more distant. Social media gives health communications professionals the opportunity to connect with service users, talk to them directly, listen to their thanks and pay attention to their concerns.

It’s a lesson the NHS was slow to learn and is a warning for corporations everywhere.

The disgruntled no longer write in and complain. They take pictures and plaster them over social media for a global audience to gawp at.

Lessons for the wider communications community? The people who deliver the product are your case studies and ambassadors. Equally there is no substitute for a good product.

---

Roy Lilley has a background in business and as a Trust chairman. He now writes and broadcasts on the NHS and social care. He is the author of 27 books on healthcare management.

Twitter: @RoyLilley
Online: http://fabnhsstuff.net/

Communications offers the NHS its Greatest lifeline

Editors analysis by Sarah Hall

“The NHS will last as long as there are folk with the faith to fight for it.” Nye Bevan, founder of the NHS.

#FuturePRoof edition three is a story of an NHS striving hard to modernise as it navigates through the toughest challenges of its lifetime, challenges that can only be overcome if it embraces an honest dialogue with the public.

An aging population with complex heath needs, underfunding, political agendas, privatisation, parochial self-interest, healthcare that doesn’t consistently meet quality standards and questions over the type and location of delivery, are just some of the huge questions its leaders face.

There are no easy answers.


Facing the challenges with integrity and transparency

Seventy years after it was first established, the NHS has grown beyond all expectations; a behemoth which comprises a network of organisations, occasionally with competing agendas, but all fighting with one aim: to maintain healthcare that is free at the point of treatment.

Daily life for NHS employees is a juxtaposition of medical and technological innovation within buildings and infrastructure that are in some cases no longer fit for purpose. World class frontline teams of doctors and nurses prop up a system that is creaking at the seams.

There is widespread recognition that the NHS is on a knife edge.

The greatest challenge is not where the money comes from, but how to have an honest conversation with the public about what future healthcare should be and to educate the wider population about the change that is needed and create demand for this to happen. 
 

Public engagement is the most powerful form of advocacy

Professional communications has never been more critical to the future of the NHS. 

Public relations in its truest sense is needed not just to speak truth to power, but to engage with NHS users who think that an injection of funds will suffice to fix the issues. The NHS will stand or fall on its relationship with the public. As public engagement is the bread and butter of what we do, the power is in our hands.

Investment alone is not the solution. A much more radical overhaul is urgently required that engages both the workforce and the public. 

Difficult conversations need to be had and decisions taken, not at the behest of politicians or NHS management teams, but following true collaboration and engagement with members of the public who must accept that the care they receive needs to revolutionise and fast. 

While the general populace may be wedded to having doctors’ surgeries and hospitals on every corner, this is not where a sustainable future lies. 

Instead, technology is already empowering online consultations and self-care within the home setting.

Non-urgent treatment is moving from hospitals into the community. Apps are providing better access to healthcare advice focused on prevention rather than cure.

This is the new reality and UK society needs to embrace this. 
 

So what is the role of professional communicators in the NHS?

The story of NHS communications is an evolving one. The comms role is more linked than ever to the organisation’s viability, sustainability and longevity. 

Speak to any NHS leader involved with the drive to professionalise the marketing and public relations function and they will tell the tale of an up and down journey of quick fixes, pockets of mediocrity and a mixed bag of talent. 

They will equally laud the communications excellence within its teams today, particularly those demonstrably showcasing best practice and trailblazing the way digitally, as evidenced by this book.

Fall out from the mass recruitment of journalists to improve its media relations service continues to reverberate. The skills vacuum related to integrated communications and reputation management is felt across the network and managing this is a clear priority.

Thankfully short-term decision making has been replaced by a long-term strategic approach which sees professional development as paramount. 

Despite - perhaps due to - the fragmentation of the system, the introduction and use of capability frameworks is finally ensuring communicators within the NHS are being measured against the same knowledge, skills and standards and that their work is aligned with and delivers against organisational objectives. 

Ensuring its communicators have the experience, skillset and ability to step into the strategic adviser role may be well overdue but comes at the perfect time in the history of the NHS. It may well prove that these people will be its saviour. 

In times of crisis, the answer is often the most simple and obvious. 

Those in the communications space offer the NHS its greatest lifeline if they have the courage to speak the truth. 

Not just about rising demand versus lack of investment, understaffing, or how the whole system fails if one of its connected services falters (think hospital bed shortages and how patients move - or don’t - through the network) but about the pressing need for change and how a better service can be achieved for those who have the privilege of using the NHS. 
 

The risk is now greatly outweighed by the reward

Research shows that the NHS remains one of the most trusted institutions in the UK. According to the Commonwealth Fund healthcare thinktank, whose international partners are the OECD, WHO and European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, it is the best, safest and most affordable healthcare system out of 11 high income countries analysed. Much of its credibility comes from the human face and skills of its employees, who interact with the public every day.

With this in mind, perhaps the biggest lesson for its management teams, communicators and the wider public relations community is to embrace transparency, invest in skills and use real people to lead the debate.

For the NHS this means fielding doctors and nurses and others within the care setting to start the discussion about what the future of healthcare holds, what the journey there looks like and the impact for modern society.

Not just this, it means taking one approach at scale and talking about the true cost of treatment and the value of the service that the public receives. 

Educating people about what they might have paid privately is potentially one solution to reducing non-urgent attendances at A&E.

Explaining the benefits to a total overhaul of the system, while recognising the challenges this will create, could mobilise an army of vocal supporters prepared to lobby the government for what the NHS needs.

Right now, it needs all the support it can get. 

---

Sarah Hall is a pioneer of best practice in the PR industry. The holder of the CIPR’s Sir Stephen Tallents Medal 2014 for exceptional achievement in public relations practice, she has established a reputation as an ethics tsar and diversity and inclusivity champion.

She is a strong advocate of accountable leadership and women in business and believes in helping young talent break through. 

Sarah is the CIPR’s President for 2018, a member of the Northern Power Women Power List, features in the PRWeek UK Power Book and is a regular speaker at industry events. She is one of Lissted’s top North East England digital influencers.

Sarah is proud to be on the Athena40 Global Committee, an initiative launched by the Global Thinkers Forum to discover and acknowledge the work of the 40 most dynamic, active and fearless female thought leaders, columnists, commentators and activists across all industries and from all over the world.

Sarah Hall
Managing Director
Sarah Hall Consulting Ltd

Mobile: 07702 162 704
Twitter: @Hallmeister
Online: sarahhallconsulting.co.uk

Happy 70th NHS

By Antony Tiernan
Engagement and Communications Director NHS 70
NHS England

The NHS is turning 70 on 5 July 2018. It’s the perfect opportunity to celebrate the achievements of one of the nation’s most loved institutions, to appreciate the vital role the service plays in our lives and to recognise and thank the extraordinary NHS staff – the everyday heroes – who are always there to greet, advise and care for us.

The birthday is also an opportunity to look at the radical thinking that led to the creation of the NHS, the breakthroughs which have transformed our health and well-being and how the service is evolving to meet our future needs, including the wide array of opportunities being created by advances in science, technology and information.

Communications professionals are an important part of the NHS family and play a vital role in telling the story of the NHS to the public, patients and staff. A story where we’re getting healthier, but we’re using the NHS more. A story where the quality of NHS care is demonstrably improving, but we’re becoming far more transparent about care gaps and mistakes. A story where staff numbers are up, but staff are under greater pressure. A story where the public are highly satisfied with the NHS, but concerned for its future.

This can be a difficult story to tell. However, we have three powerful factors on our side.

First, we are a passionate and versatile breed and we work hard. We have adapted to the changing world of communications and regularly go above and beyond.

Second, the NHS is one of the UK’s most recognisable ‘brands’ which is renowned far beyond our shores. We uphold this brand with pride. A brand which is much more than the famous blue lozenge. 

Third, we work with people who do some of the most amazing things as a day job. The midwives who deliver us into the world, the GPs and pharmacists who advise and treat us, the nurses, doctors and other clinicians who come to our aid when the unexpected happens, the porters who keep our hospitals moving, the support staff that make appointments happen, the researchers at the forefront of innovation and so many others. Their stories and those of the one million patients we see each day, bring the NHS to life.

This book tells the story of NHS communications and communicators. The things we do well and the things we need to be better at.

I am a proud NHS communicator and it is great to see our role being celebrated as part of the NHS’s 70th.

---

Antony Tiernan joined NHS England in 2015 and, working with a wide array of partners, is leading on plans to celebrate the NHS’s 70th birthday. Prior to this, he worked at a senior and director level in a number of NHS Hospital Trusts including Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. 

Twitter: @AntonyTiernan
Online: nhs70.nhs.uk

#FuturePRoof: Edition Three shines a spotlight on NHS comms best practice

Using real people to lead the debate, transparency and investment in skills are the three key learnings for comms practitioners as #FuturePRoof Edition Three hits the shelves.

#FuturePRoof is a labour of love for me and never more so when it comes to this special edition celebrating the NHS at 70, launched today.

Like hundreds and thousands of people across the UK, I owe the complex system that is the NHS a huge debt of thanks. 

It has been a permanent fixture throughout my lifetime. It’s an organisation which is remarkable for the high level of trust we place into it and its dedicated and talented staff who have treated and cared for me, my family, friends and colleagues.

I will always be grateful for the NHS.

So this book, The NHS at 70 with Lessons for the Wider PR Community, is dedicated to all the hardworking communications professionals whose excellent work often goes unrecognised and unsung.

Within this special edition, 25 new essays explore key themes including the role of comms in achieving organisational outcomes; how organisations can secure and maintain trust; planning and data; digital-first strategies; how to address barriers to technological innovation; and the role of practitioners in managing major change.

As you’d expect it is jam-packed with expertise from a forward-thinking cohort of comms leaders and advisers, striving to reinforce the strategic value of public relations within their organisations.

I'm very grateful to each and every contributor for sharing their time and expertise. 

There are some very clear take outs and perhaps the biggest lesson for management teams, communicators and the wider public relations community is to embrace transparency, invest in skills and use real people to lead the debate.

The book comes at a critical point in the NHS’s history. The organisation is a living breathing case study of comms innovation as it manages competing political agendas and stretched budgets, while communicating ever more frequently with an increasing number of people with complex needs.

How its many teams join forces to implement one approach at scale is a pressing challenge as the face of healthcare as we know it changes radically.

You can get your hard copy or Kindle version of #FuturePRoof here.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed curating and editing it. And if you'd like to get involved, please do follow @weareproofed on Twitter and join the Facebook group. The more, the merrier!

All the best,

Sarah Hall
Founder and editor, #FuturePRoof

When Two Tribes Fail to Jaw

By Michael Greer

Why is it that experienced public relations professionals in the UK dislike, or fail to understand, the role of publicists? Did the unethical behaviour of Max Clifford tar every publicist with the same brush, or is it because publicists are perceived to be ‘one trick ponies’ specialising only in media relations? The only certainty is that our profession is made of two tribes with one looking down on the other.

You'll learn...

• Why it is offensive for the PR profession to think all publicists are like Max Clifford.
• Publicists are more than 'one trick ponies' specialising in media relations.
• What publicists actually do, a little bit of publicity history and some suggestions for legendary publicists to follow. 
   

They are all like Max Clifford.

Max Clifford described himself as a PR man, but many thought he was a publicist. He was reviled by some, tolerated by many and liked by a few. He cemented his role in public relations with a column in PR Week and was the go-to-guy for any scandal dodging celebrity or TV programme looking for a “PR expert”. 

Max Clifford was very good at publicising himself and clients, but his conduct had a corrosive effect: the reputation of publicists within the PR profession suffered, and the public’s perception of the PR industry became more negative. When an audience of PR pros voted in favour of his motion that fabricating news on behalf of a client was okay, the ethical image of publicists and the PR profession took another hit.

Veteran publicist and strategist Mark Borkowski accurately described Max Clifford as “An anomaly. Not a PR operator - more a dark alchemist - part agent, part deal-broker, a one-man news agency with a twist. He was invented to exploit the voracious tabloid news agenda.”

PRCA Director General Francis Ingham said of Max Clifford: "He did our industry a disservice by pretending to be part of it. I note that most media outlets are describing him today as having been a publicist. That is - finally - an accurate description of his career."

To class Max Clifford as a publicist is debatable, but to pigeon-hole all publicists with Max Clifford is both ignorant and insulting. Publicists working for great brands like the BBC, Walt Disney, Universal Films, Channel 4, Random House and many award-winning PR agencies deserve better from many in the PR industry.

One trick ponies.

Whilst some PR people believe publicists are cut from the same cloth as Max Clifford, others believe publicists specialise in media relations only, and are therefore less qualified with a narrower skill set. In reality, a publicist works in-house or for an agency within the film, broadcast, music, entertainment, publishing and fashion sectors and employs the full range of PR skills. 

Before a story is even pitched to the media, a PR plan is drawn up that will include objectives agreed with the client, financial and budgetary considerations, strategy, goals and real-time measurement, research and data analysis to understand and identify audiences, creative activity, distribution channels, timing and resources needed.

Additionally, the strategy might also include integrating digital PR, advertising, experiential events, sponsorship and other elements. Spokespeople or celebrities might need to receive media training and their agents included for the exploitation of cross-promotion opportunities. If the objectives are controversial or have the potential to generate negative publicity, crisis management and reputation protection will be prepared. 

The great showman PT Barnum would measure the success of his event publicity by counting bums on seats, cash in the till and press clippings. If Barnum was a publicist today, his post event review might also include analysis of all offline and online media coverage, sentiment monitoring, market research and measurement of digital media activity.

What does a good publicist look like?

If Edward Bernays was “the father of public relations” then Jim Moran, PT Barnum and Harry Reichenbach are the legendary three wise men for publicists.

James Sterling Moran was a publicist and a press agent for film studios, manufacturers, retailers and Washington politicians from the 1930s to the 1980s. In 1989, Time ranked him as "the supreme master of that most singular marketing device - the publicity stunt." His many PR stunts included selling a refrigerator to an Eskimo and walking a bull through a New York City china shop. 

Phineas Taylor Barnum was an American showman and businessman remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Barnum was also an author, publisher, philanthropist, and for some time an anti-slavery politician.

Harry Reichenbach was a US press agent and publicist who dreamed up sensational publicity stunts to promote films. He worked both for actors, as an agent, and for the studios as a promoter. He promoted the ‘Return of Tarzan’ by sneaking a lion into a hotel and tipped off the management by ordering 15 pounds of raw beef through room service.

Three new stars to follow

Barbara Charone was an early champion of Madonna and cited Seal's elevation to stardom as a satisfying result in her PR career. The Guardian included her on its list of "The 20 most powerful celebrity makers" and dubbed her "Britain's most powerful music PR" after revitalising the careers of Madonna and Neil Diamond, and establishing those of Duffy and Mark Ronson. 

Alan Edwards is the founder of The Outside Organisation. Over the last 40 years, he has managed the publicity for some of the biggest names in the music business, such as: The Rolling Stones, The Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, Prince, Michael Jackson, Blondie and The Who. Alan has been named the number 1 entertainment PR in the UK by PR Week magazine for three consecutive years (2015, 2016 and 2017). The one constant in his life as a publicist was nurturing David Bowie’s reputation from the very beginning.

Dotti Irving is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Four Colman Getty, established in 1987 after a decade spent at Penguin Books. With an extensive address book that spans arts, culture, business and the media, Dotti also handles high-level sponsorship and partnership deals on behalf of Colman Getty's clients. She has been instrumental in profile development of clients including the Booker Prize, Harry Potter author JK Rowling and domestic goddess Nigella Lawson.
 

Finally

Publicists are by nature storytellers. They like to start with a blank sheet, create opportunities that intrigue journalists and capture their attention with something irresistible that makes news. A picture is worth a thousand words and a stack of press clippings ‘on message’ is a job well done. Talent is to be nurtured, and it is a fine art to develop it into celebrity.

If you still think publicists are just like Max Clifford, or lesser than PR professionals, just remember it was entertainment publicists that turned Star Wars into a business delivering box office receipts of $7.52 billion.

Think about what could be achieved if the two tribes – PR professionals and publicists – had a greater understanding of each other. I wonder how many publicists are members of the CIPR and PRCA? There is more that unites us than divides us.
 

---

Once a retail ops troubleshooter and Manager of Primark’s flagship store. Former PR wizard for JK Rowling. Very experienced at managing A-List celebrities, consumer events and PR campaigns. Now searching for the next big PR challenge, when I am not organising the #EalingTweetup - probably London’s longest running Twitter gathering.

LinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/mgreer
Twitter:     @MGreer_PR

#FuturePRoof edition 3: The NHS at 70 with lessons for the wider PR community

2018 marks seventy years of the NHS. To celebrate, #FuturePRoof is publishing a special edition aimed at showcasing best practice in comms by teams within one of the UK's best loved brands.

#FuturePRoof launched in 2015 to tackle issues facing the public relations profession and celebrate best practice. Edition three is designed to celebrate the innovative and pioneering work undertaken by practitioners within the NHS on its seventieth birthday. It will be published in the New Year.

Below is the chapter spec list (in no particular order). As you'll see, authors are still being sought for some chapters. If you'd like to get involved, please email editor Sarah Hall at sarah@sarahhallconsulting.co.uk with the chapter you're interested in and a précis of your proposed content.

In terms of the commitment involved, authors are asked to supply 800-1200 words by 12 January.  The style requires 3 chapter 'take outs’ and dynamic copy written for the screen with sub heads as per this example.

If your pitch is successful, you'll also need to supply a 2-3 line bio containing any relevant links, a Twitter handle and a pic when it comes to submission.

CHAPTER SPEC LIST

CHAPTER ONE

Strategy setting - Where is the NHS heading and how will it get there? Aligning comms and marketing with the organisational objectives. Transitioning to prevention over cure. AUTHOR APPROACHED

CHAPTER TWO

Leadership and professionalism - What does good look like and what’s the benchmark? CLAIRE RILEY

CHAPTER THREE

Managing complexity - Simplifying and communicating how the NHS system operates; organisational complexity, hierarchies and managing competing agendas. STEVEN POLLOCK

CHAPTER FOUR

Political safeguarding - Competing political agendas and the impact on NHS business planning and comms. ROY LILLEY

CHAPTER FIVE  

The NHS at 70 - Outside looking in; an external expert’s perspective. AUTHOR APPROACHED

CHAPTER SIX

The power of the NHS brand - The story of the NHS identity and brand and how sub brands are using the association to diversify and scale. NICK RAMSHAW

CHAPTER SEVEN

Trust in the NHS - Public trust and the NHS. KAYLEIGH RYAN

CHAPTER EIGHT

Doing digital - Managing the public and patient interface through technology. RACHEL ROYALL

CHAPTER NINE

Employee engagement and culture - Best practice with particular reference to strong sub-cultures within the NHS (such as The Christie in Manchester). AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER TEN

CPD - Establishing a common competency framework across teams. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cash strapped and resource starved - Doing more with less; how NHS comms teams are responding. ROSS WIGHAM

CHAPTER TWELVE

Integrated comms and content marketing - Moving away from a reliance on media relations to integrated comms featuring strong visuals and multi-media content. CAROLINE LATTA

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Innovation through technology - The TEL programme. ALEX DRINKALL

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Crisis planning - Planning for the worst; politics, privatisation and data breaches. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Safeguarding data - Understanding patient data and managing conversations about its use with the Care.data programme as an example. NICOLA PERRIN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Planning and insight - Winter bed shortages; how to use data to inform future campaigns and change the media narrative. LIZ DAVIES

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Internal comms with 1 million people and counting - Managing internal comms within a complex web of organisations. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Motivation and mental wellbeing - Supporting employees in the face of organisational criticism and pay freezes. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hello, my name is - Putting the patient first; what comms pros can learn from the ‘Hello, my name is’ campaign. CHRIS POINTON

CHAPTER TWENTY

Public health behaviour change - Taking a holistic approach from prevention through to end of life. ALEXIA CLIFFORD

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Social leadership - Diversity & inclusion & conditions for community. JULIAN STODD

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Dispelling myths - Managing misperceptions and the media. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Ethics - Challenges in daily practice in adhering to industry Codes of Conduct. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Procurement - Small changes, big differences; embedding procurement processes that can add real value. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Sorry we can’t help - Breaking bad news; communicating with audiences and stakeholders when lives are at risk. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Continual improvement - Identifying and sharing areas for improvement without denting internal and public confidence. AUTHOR APPROACHED

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Change management - Managing consultation and the major change process. STEPH HOOD

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Future of the healthcare profession - What’s next and how do we benchmark progress? DANIEL REYNOLDS

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Disruption in the name of progress - Selling technology to the NHS. BEN JUDAH

CHAPTER THIRTY

A creative approach to audience engagement - The story of the NHS Christmas Number One. JOE BLUNDEN

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Real results - Evaluating and demonstrating the difference NHS work makes – from clinical areas through to recruitment and corporate areas. AUTHOR NEEDED

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Beyond communications - The broader impact of comms professionals on the NHS as it moves forward. LOUISE THOMPSON

Embracing the backstage of public relations

Experiencing Public Relations: International Voices is no ordinary public relations textbook.  It brings together stories of public relations in daily life throughout the world, examining both its positive and negative sides.  Here, co-editor Elizabeth Bridgen from Sheffield Hallam University explains why we need to delve beneath the surface of public relations practice if we are to ever understand and explain it.

You'll learn…

• Why it's OK to be impressed by good public relations carried out for bad organisations
• Why we should celebrate individual practitioners in public relations
• Why the less glamorous 'backstage' of public relations is just as important as the celebrated 'frontstage'

Embracing the backstage of public relations

Why is there a photo of a slightly bored-looking woman with tattoos on the front of a book about public relations? I predict that those who see public relations as a strategic management function will feel awkward about this - that's not how those at the top of public relations perceive public relations or want others to see it.

Public relations leaders have a knowledge and experience (and possibly a well-read blog) which has given them status in the world of public relations.  They understand how communication fits into broader leadership behaviour and, for that reason, they belong to the dominant coalition in their organization – in other words, they are among those people at the top who make the real decisions. This is the image that students get from text books, this is how practitioners tell their ‘war stories’ at conferences and how they present their best case studies for public relations awards. This is, in the words of the sociologist Erving Goffman, the public relations frontstage.

In his book Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman developed a metaphor of theatrical production to describe social behaviour. We all live in a duality of frontstage and backstage behaviour. For instance, we wear comfortable clothes at home, and dress up when we leave the house. We have parts of our houses which are presentable to our guests and we have rooms which are rather more chaotic and into which we usually don’t invite guests. Essentially, we talk, behave, and interact differently in backstage than frontstage. Frontstage is a public place, backstage is private - and public relations is no different.

An image that represents reality

The woman with the tattoos is not telling the story of public relations that we see presented at conferences or in industry blogs and articles. She tells the story of the hidden in public relations - those grafting in the background, running Twitter feeds and running around after clients.   

These are the public relations practitioners who go home, pour a glass of wine and start a second shift of work liaising with online influencers. These are the public relations practitioners who get shouted by journalists and ignored by the agents of D-list celebrities. Sometimes they're bored, sometimes they're stressed, sometimes they hate their job and other times they love it. They're multi-taskers and have their own lives outside public relations.  They don’t hold managerial positions and they don’t belong to the dominant coalition. 

And if we scrutinise public relations literature, they barely exist - even though there are thousands of them across the world.

In public relations literature, public relations is often only discussed as a ‘thing’ or in the abstract; the individual is frequently forgotten.   When a junior practitioner is remembered, it's only on account of the 'great work' they have done (such as in the '30 under 30' lists) or as a 'problem' which can be solved with a little hard work (such as gender or diversity or education - the individual's problem is acknowledged, but they are often absent from the conversation about the solution in favour of industry 'greats' giving their views).

However, the individual matters, and without them public relations wouldn't happen.  The problem is, however (as we have explained above) that they don't tell the story that public relations leaders want to hear.  Get a group of public relations practitioners together and they will tell you stories of how they had to break the rules to get an impossible task finished for their boss or a client.  Or they might whisper stories of the unethical practice that goes on in agencies with the highest ethical standards. 
 

Time for a different story to be told

These practitioners experience public relations in different ways and carry different understandings of the work they do. They also have their own strategies and models – not the grand models of academic papers but strategies which give them a way of surviving the workplace or carrying out the work they are asked to do. The stories of these people remain largely untold in favour of the ‘big stories’ or the frontstage of public relations. However, these are the people who try to bring these ‘big stories’ – and the everyday plans and campaigns that accompany them – to life. They are also the people who are told to carry out the unpleasant side of public relations as well as the everyday, the trivial or irrelevant within the industry.

And here we get to the heart of the matter.  Public relations has a problem with its image, as all the op eds about the reputation of public relations will testify. The truth is that some public relations activity is unethical and wrong, with work carried out for unpalatable organizations and on dubious campaigns where language is used to manipulate. Meanwhile, other aspects are worthy. And a lot of public relations exists somewhere between the two. 

The fact that the less than savoury side of public relations puts the new and reputationally rather fragile public relations industry in an unfavourable light doesn’t mean that this aspect shouldn’t be discussed. 

Is the ‘unpleasant’ side of public relations too horrid to write about apart from when commentators use it to 'bash' the public relations industry? Confusingly, some offensive organisations (such as terrorist organisations, or oppressive governments) use public relations techniques to an incredibly high standard and have enviable corporate narratives - that we refuse to discuss them in case they put public relations in a 'bad light' means that perhaps, we refuse to learn (and counteract their effects).
 

A 360° view on the profession

Whether we like it or not, we need to understand all representations of the everyday life of public relations- not just to learn from it but also to help inexperienced as well as seasoned practitioners make sense of their personal feelings about their jobs and what they see at work. 

By digging into the dirt, you can obtain valuable insights into how things operate. This knowledge is useful for orientation in the universe, not only in its physical landscape, but also within our heads. 

It’s the sign of the maturity of a practice that it can also confess and articulate its darker and muddier sides. Humans and our actions are not perfect, and telling people that they can expect only the best in their lives (which is often the picture painted by 'how to' public relations texts)  may make them miserable later down the road. 

This book is about the public relations that happens while managers are busy making their strategic plans.

Experiencing Public Relations: International Voices, edited by Elizabeth Bridgen and Dejan Verčič is published by Routledge https://www.routledge.com/Experiencing-Public-Relations-International-Voices/Bridgen-Vercic/p/book/9781138632448

---

Twitter: @lizbridgen

All Quiet At The Top - Why the voices of authority have fallen silent

To understand the true meaning of stories in the news, the public needs to hear from genuine voices of authority. But in today's world of fast-moving media, we hear from them less and less. Ex-BBC and ITN newsreader Andrew Harvey looks at why this is happening and calls on true experts to make their voices heard.

You'll learn…

• What makes a genuine expert, and how they can contribute to a news story
• Why 24 hour news makes it difficult for their voices to be heard
• How they can step up, assert themselves and get their message across
   

All Quiet At The Top - Why the voices of authority have fallen silent

The constant, shifting flow of big stories and events is what makes news so fascinating, both to the journalist and the audience. But to get the true picture, we need to hear real voices of authority, instead of relying solely on soundbites and snatched interviews.

The recent hurricanes in the Caribbean spawned dozens of angles on the same story. After the meteorological phenomenon came the rescue effort. That quickly developed into a blame game over the speed of rescue response and the insularity of the US aid effort which, it was claimed, was aimed almost entirely at American victims. Then came the cost, the clear-up, and the comparison with events in Houston just days earlier. And for weeks to come there will be stories of heroism, of communities coming together - and, inevitably, of those exploiting the distress and damage.

Each of these aspects of the hurricane story - the news angles - involve people. Ordinary people have extraordinary stories to tell, and vox pops with survivors help to convey the fear and the personal ordeal.

But for a wider appreciation of the causes and the effects we also need to hear from the experts, those with the knowledge and the experience to make sense of the event and its aftermath. For example, how will businesses pick themselves up after the damage they have suffered? What happens now to tourism in the area? How does the insurance industry sort out the mess? What about hearing from serious meteorologists, instead of TV weathermen and women?

The need for true experts

The words of key players in any event like this add crucially to our understanding. Without that expert input, we are left under-informed. The journalist’s job is to make the complex simple. It’s not easy, but the process of simplification can often leave a sense of incompleteness, a feeling that there is more to the story, that the treatment of the subject has left important areas unexplored.

Journalists, even specialist correspondents, can rarely claim to be true experts in their subject. But they know where to go to for the information they need. What a pity that we don't hear directly from their informants with their voices of authority. The question is, why don't we?

As a former BBC and ITN News Channel broadcaster it pains me to admit it, but the 24-hour news machine is largely to blame. It is too often superficial in dealing with major issues, while in the next moment it can beat a subject to death, simply because there is nothing else around and the hours have to be filled somehow.

The result is that a sense of context is lost and something that merits little more than a couple of paragraphs on an inside page is elevated to major news status. At the same time, to keep the programme moving, items are kept deliberately short and the coverage is scanty at best.

In this type of climate, interviewees frequently fall victim. Politicians speak privately about their dread of the minor slip, the badly-expressed thought that is then chewed over hour after hour. For example, an unfounded claim or unintended disclosure excavated by John Humphrys on the Today programme becomes an item near the top of the World At One running order, only to be explored from a different angle by Eddie Mair on PM, before it is given the final treatment on The World Tonight. Throughout the day, social media will be snapping at the heels of the story...and still to come is the commentary in the next morning’s papers.

Is it any wonder that those whose views would be most valuable simply shrug their shoulders and decide not to get involved?

Experts at the heart of the story

But as they turn away, somebody has to step in to take their place. Very often the space is filled by “the industry expert”. We all know their names and voices. Those who pop up in the aftermath of a disaster like a rail accident or airliner crash and deliver what is often a useful commentary on the event. They have knowledge, they have insight, but they are not at the heart of the story and therefore their words do not carry the weight of a senior rail manager or an airline boss. 

Two subjects dominate much of the current news coverage and social media comment - Brexit and the possibility of terrorist attack. Both are so complex that expert voices are urgently needed. Details of the Brexit negotiations will gradually emerge, but other Brexit-related issues are going unanswered. How are the financial services preparing? What about those industries reliant on foreign workers? What would be the result of resorting to WTO rules? One or two leaders have come forward, but we need more voices like Sir James Dyson to put their point of view. 

And how enlightening - perhaps comforting, perhaps not - to hear from someone at the heart of the anti-terrorist campaign. While accepting totally the need for some secrecy, there is still much that could be said about so many aspects of the current campaign - the size of the task, the path to radicalisation, the growing importance of CCTV, and so on. The need for secrecy is a valuable excuse, but the appearance of a senior officer on the steps of New Scotland Yard offering the same soundbites about the “ongoing investigation”, the “deployment of officers” and the “need for vigilance” only fuels the public anxiety. 


Making their voices heard

It is unlikely that instant news and combat-style interviewing will die away soon, so spokespeople must assert themselves and make their voices heard.

Training and practice can help nurture the confidence to handle the media. That in turn will produce the information and the insight from a spokesperson that ensures a successful interview - and an invitation to return.

Knowledge delivered with confidence and clarity will always be in demand, now more than ever.

---

Andrew Harvey was one of the main news presenters on BBC TV News, fronting all their daily news programmes. More recently he was senior presenter on the 24-hour ITV news channel. He covered many major events in that period, from 9/11 and the London bombings in 2005, to nine general elections and two Royal funerals. He now runs the media training company HarveyLeach (www.harveyleach.co.uk).

Twitter: @harveyleach

Ethnic diversity woefully under estimated in UK public relations

Karan Chadda crunches the numbers and suggests that the UK public relations profession has a much bigger issue with diversity than even it realises.
 

The diversity debate can become quite personal and bruising.

Those who sit at the top of an industry can feel like their accomplishments and hard work are being questioned or devalued.

Meanwhile those who are battling to change the status quo are often framed as loud mouthed or troublesome.

It’s often helpful to view issues through the objective prism of data and economics.

At the outset, a basic assumption. Let’s assume that no ethnic group has a greater proportion of creative or talented people. I hope no one will find this controversial.

Now let’s gather some data.

CIPR Census: 8% practitioners from BME or mixed background

The CIPR’s last census, found eight percent of respondents identified as black, Asian, mixed or other (page 31). It tallies with the PRCA’s figure of nine percent BME practitioners from its 2016 census.

Figure 1: Analysis from PRCA Public Relations Census 2016
 

ONS: 13% of UK public is BME or mixed background

ONS data from the 2011 Census found that the BME or mixed ethnicity population of the country as a whole was 13%.

These two data points are often used together to state that the public relations business needs to up its ethnic minority practitioners up to the national average.

Job done. Or is it? Let’s take a harder look.

London Mayor’s office: 58% of UK public relations business London-based

In a report published in November 2016 GLA Economics, part of the Mayor of London’s office, estimated that 58% of public relations roles are London based (page 601).

Figure 2: Professional activities in London (GLA Economics, 2016)
 

That means three in every five people that work in public relations, work in London.

ONS: 40% of London population is BME or mixed background

If we jump back to the ONS data from the 2011 census, it found that those from BME or mixed ethnicity background made up 40% of London’s population.

Let’s assume that the 42% of public relations practitioners outside London are living, in aggregate, in areas with a BME or mixed ethnicity population that matches the national average (13%). 

Adjusting for London and the South East

We now have two sets of numbers.

Let’s calculate the proportion of BME practitioners that would in theory work in public relations, if the industry recruited in proportion to the local populations where it is based.

For that, we need to calculate the 40% BME populations of London as a proportion of 58% of public relations jobs, and combine that with the BME population as a proportion of public relations jobs outside London (13% and 42% respectively).

It gives us 29%. 

That’s a blended national rate for the proportion of public relations professionals who should come from BME or mixed ethnicity backgrounds in a perfect labour market.

At this point, the model has a glaring failure in that it doesn’t account for the fact that people move for work and sometimes commute long distances for work. For example, someone living in Cambridge might commute to work in London.

ONS: 24% of London and South East population is BME or mixed background

Let’s make a simplifying assumption.

Let’s take the combined ethnic minority population of London and the South East (24% according to ONS data) and treat that as the employment pool for London’s public relations jobs. I’m going to leave calculations for the rest of the country as it stands.

So we’re still taking 13% of 42% and now we’re adding onto that 24% of the 58%. 

That gives us 19%.

We’re currently at 8% BME representation in public relations, according to the CIPR. We should be aspiring to reach 19% because so much of the profession is based in London.

To put those numbers into context. When you next walk into a room full of public relations people, at best one in 12 of them will be BME. Our goal should be to get that to one in five.

The industry’s response

Taylor Bennett Foundation

Prior to publication, this analysis was shared with the Taylor Bennett Foundation, the PRCA and the CIPR who were all kind enough to provide their responses to the findings.

“At the Foundation we would like the industry to at least aim for the 13% figure, but we are acutely aware that with the prominence of London this doesn’t go far enough to reflect the true diversity of the regions the industry operates in and we welcome this analysis,” said Sarah Stimson, CEO, Taylor Bennett Foundation.

“With the 2021 census looming, we would expect to see an increase in the number of BME people living across the UK. The 2016 National School Census showed that more than one in four school children under 10 years old are from a non-white background. Those children will be entering the workforce in the next 8 to 15 years and we need to be preparing for that.”

“The numbers are useful because they allow us to set aspirational targets, but they should be the minimum not the ultimate goal. We can’t have too much diversity.”

PRCA

"Thank you to Karan for these insightful observations into the data around the diversity of the UK public relations and communications industry,” said Pema Seely, Co-Chairman, PRCA Diversity Network.

“The integration of ethnic diversity figures with regional demographics provides a valuable layer of sophistication. This only serves to further prove that the public relations and communications industry has a lot more work to do to provide equal access to careers for people from all backgrounds."

CIPR

“These statistics evidence the scale of the diversity challenge facing public relations,” said Koray Camgoz, Public Relations Manager, CIPR.

“Comparing PR’s ethnicity statistics with average figures for the UK unquestionably understates the size of the problem.”

“These figures show that even if the number of BME professionals in public relations doubled overnight, the industry would still fall short of delivering equal representation.” 

“Public relations’ progress on this issue has been inexcusably slow for years. Whether the target is 13% or 19%, the irrevocable fact remains the industry has collectively failed to make any positive steps towards addressing the issue.”

“We should absolutely be working towards higher targets. But a sustainable increase of diverse professionals will only be achieved when we cultivate genuinely inclusive environments in our organisations and agencies.”

“Increasing the percentage of diverse professionals is critical but efforts will be wasted if those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds find themselves in an industry that doesn’t value their contribution and lacks the willingness to adapt its culture. How many BME practitioners are truly thriving in our industry today?"
 

Post script

This isn’t particularly sophisticated modelling, but it’s far more sophisticated than existing data in public relations.

More detailed regional data would help produce a more accurate target figure. As would data about regional candidate pools. Above all, the availability of data with regional breakdowns of the ethnic make-up of the working age population would be useful.

However, even with that data, the dominance of London means the percentage will be in the mid-to-high teens regardless of other regional variations.

Moreover, we can safely state that most public relations jobs exist in cities or larger towns and these locations tend to have higher BME populations than the national average, so better regional data may actually drive that figure up.

---

Karan Chadda creates brands, marketing frameworks and content that build stronger businesses. He is the founder of Evolving Influence, a marketing consultancy. He has also founded Poetry by Numbers, a data poetry project, and Read.Think.Discuss., a business book club.

Twitter: @kchadda
Online: www.evolvinginfluence.co.uk

The key mindsets to make your business futureproof

A guest article by Minter Dial.

As a veteran marketer, I shudder at the ways my inbox gets filled with unsolicited, impersonal and pushy emails. The bad practices range from vapid content, spelling mistakes and evermore clickbaity titles, to increasing frequency of emails (in response to lower open rates) and, worse, hiding the unsubscribe option. Like so many other sectors and roles, PR and Communications have been completely upended. But, what to do about it? In my new book, Futureproof, How to get your business ready for the next disruption (Pearson Sep 2017), with my entrepreneurial co-author, Caleb Storkey, we look at the 3 key mindsets and the 12 most disruptive technological forces.

If the new technologies are highly exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time, it is our conviction that the biggest disruption is one of mindset. This comes from a confluence of events and situations that have been revolutionising the way we work, but more importantly have been changing what we want out of life.

Whether it is to become the disruptor or to avoid disruption, and whether you are an entrepreneur or a business leader, the attitude with which you approach these new disruptive technologies will determine your success. On this front, there are many buzzwords and concepts bandied about, such as agility, trial and error, pivot, MVP, intrapreneurialism… They may all have validity in certain situations. We know that technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the next generation of smartphones and, even, genomics will alter the future of marketing and communications. But, it is our conviction that, above all, you will need a combination of three mindsets in order to navigate through the changing landscape and leverage these disruptive forces.

Meaningfulness

Insofar as the choices available seem to be plethoric, many companies get overwhelmed. Whether it is FOMO (fear of missing out) or FOBO (fear of becoming obsolete), companies have been systematically mobilizing themselves to onboard new tech, become more entrepreneurial and implement digital transformation. Yet, many of these companies will fall short in their efforts. It takes energy at every level of the organization to power through. But if everyone is burning the midnight oil, frustration, burnout and failure are the inevitable outcomes. The real challenge is to tie the initiative(s) directly to a clear strategy that is linked to a genuine purpose. We call this the quest for meaningfulness. 
 

TO DO: Make sure you know why your organisation exists beyond generating revenues and profit. Host an internal team day for formulating vision together and use a listening. 

Responsibility

There are two aspects to Responsibility. The first is the notion of being civically and ethically responsible. As with having purpose in one’s job, employees – especially the younger ones – are acutely aware of the earthly and societal issues facing us. One’s corporate approach to these questions is a legitimate criterion of attractivity for prospective employees. However, the second aspect is more complicated as it is about individual responsibility. In order to leverage these new disruptive forces, from digital skills to ongoing learning to cyber security, everyone has their part to play. From the top to the bottom of the organisation, each person in the company must take personal responsibility for their ongoing learning, their personal presence online and the way they manage incoming links and unknown devices that may carry malicious software. Hiring and firing for attitude has never been more relevant.
 

TO DO: Evaluate honestly whether the mixture of talents and/or resources you have is adapted to deliver the best performance. Also, to what extent is expertise and knowledge mixing together and being shared throughout the organisation?
 

Collaboration

The final mindset is labeled collaboration, but we might have also called it the sharing attitude. We believe that most of the disruption is happening not with one singular technology and, certainly, not through one specific expertise. Sharing economy initiatives (ranging from Lyft and OneFineStay to Suppershare (IT), Skillshare or Popexpert) involve a cocktail of technologies. To properly tackle the “big data” question or the massive amount of communications, if artificial intelligence is not part of the strategy, there is a low likelihood of success. As such, companies will need to figure out how to ally and align themselves with other actors where their own expertise might be missing. Going it alone may mean you go faster (and that’s not even sure), but going together, you are more likely to go far further. To properly exploit the disruption, it will inevitably involve finding the right partnerships, whether that’s joining up with the best accelerators, startups or even, in certain cases, with competitors. The challenge inside the company, especially if they’ve been around for a long time, is that the internal departments too often don’t even want to collaborate with one another. How can one collaborate externally if the different department heads are at loggerheads? 

TO DO: By focusing on these three mindsets, we believe companies will be best served to achieve three important goals:

• Attract the best talent
• Better serve the customer
• Create longer lasting profits.

It’s hardly an ABC process. Like with human relationships, it’s bound to be messy, complex and uncertain. But, the journey will be considerably aided if the company resolves to embrace meaningfulness, responsibility and collaboration. In Futureproof, we explore all the 12 most disruptive forces, look at specific cases and solutions, as well as provide a practical roadmap for any person looking to take on the future with gusto.

---

Minter Dial is President and founder of the boutique agency, The Myndset Company and an international professional speaker & consultant on Branding and Digital Strategy, working with major global brands, such as Samsung, Remy Cointreau, Kering and Tencent. He is author and producer of the award-winning WWII documentary film and book, The Last Ring Home. His latest book, Futureproof, How to get your business ready for the next disruption (Pearson) comes out in September 2017.

Prior to the Myndset, Minter led a 16-year international career with the L'Oréal Group – including 9 different assignments in France, England, USA and Canada. Among these, Minter was MD Worldwide of REDKEN, then of the Professional Division for the Canadian subsidiary. In his final position at L’Oreal, he was a member of the Executive Committee worldwide, in charge of eBusiness, Business Development and Education. 

Minter received his BA in Trilingual Literature from Yale University (1987) and gained his MBA at INSEAD, Fontainebleau (1993). 

Minter is currently a Board member of the ECV School (Paris) and previously served as NED Board Member of Lastminute.com Group.

Twitter: @mdial

LinkedIn and the rise of individual influence

Everybody wants to contribute to a company’s social media calendar: recruiting, marketing, communications and PR. The problem is that many of these teams still often sit in silos, and that can make a coherent plan for social difficult to achieve. A potentially bigger problem is that control of social media channels often sits far away from the PR silo. Yet there’s no denying the evidence that PR can and should be a major contributor to social media strategy – and a results driver for the business.

In this dedicated #FuturePRoof post, content marketing evangelist Jaime Pham looks at how social media has democratized influence and how media owners are no longer the keeper of the conversations. Instantaneous, viral public sentiment means those conversations are created and dissipated in a matter of hours. A rumour becomes a headline and the headline becomes the story. It looks like the wild west of digital communications with all bets – and all previously valued skill sets – off the table. But is this really the case?

You'll learn…

• Social media is just an enabler of conversations and digital relationships
• Relationships require trust and PR has a role to play in earning it
• Employees now play a bigger and more influential role in earning that trust

Social media’s role in conversations and relationships

Social media is really just a relatively new tool for executing the core competency of great PR teams: building and maintaining relationships with key audiences. 

What is the one thing that all healthy and sustainable relationships require? Trust. This is why Edelman has been reporting on levels of trust in institutions since 2001. 

Trust requires consistency over time. Content marketing requires consistency over time. Hence why PR firms were among the prime movers in the rise of content marketing. Today, that continuing rise is being driven on social media: a natural platform for regular communication through content. 

LinkedIn is at the heart of this, because of its rich profile data, and the opportunity it therefore provides to communicate with multiple constituencies. Journalists, bloggers, investors, government think tanks, employees, alumni, clients and prospects are all using LinkedIn to stay up to date with news and industry trends. All of these groups can be targeted with sponsored content or encouraged to follow a company page. 

Beyond consistency, trust also requires transparency. Effective participation in social media demands that companies communicate regularly and honestly. However, there is a flipside: honesty and transparency require vulnerability, and this is where traditional communications organisations often fall short. Communications and PR teams have historically been trained to control the flow of information, where now they must monitor and harness it in order to guide it.

Social media and the opportunity for PR

Encouraging greater transparency is where the real opportunity lies for the PR industry. Tapping that opportunity involves overcoming three barriers to change:

1. Social media channels have been taken over by marketing teams and “influencer agencies” that have little-to-no connection to what corporate communications and PR are working on. Closer collaboration is needed in almost every organisation I have worked with.
    
2. Social media marketing teams tend to focus on the “media” part of the title, treating it like another megaphone. PR has an opportunity to focus on the “social” part of the channel, unlocking its true value: the ability to make and maintain connections.
    
3. PR as an industry has not been quick enough to empower employees and other advocates to participate in the storytelling process. When was the last time your executive team took a look at the company’s social media policy? When was the last time the policy was updated, or circulated within the company? 

Building greater collaboration with social media marketing teams is an essential starting point for PR to make the contribution to social that it should. However, the biggest gains can be unlocked when the industry addresses the third of these barriers – and starts building momentum for employee advocacy. 

People trust people more than logos. Let’s repeat that again for emphasis. People trust people more than logos. The Edelman Trust Barometer report1 illustrates this beautifully, through the fact that people trust employees at their own level more than they trust CEOs.

[1]

LinkedIn’s own audience research also confirms that content coming from peers and colleagues is more influential than content coming from brands.

Content that comes from peers and colleagues is most influential in encouraging engagement.

[2]

This reflects LinkedIn’s evolution to a content and learning platform, where shared content is an essential currency in conversations and interactions, and over 150,000 articles are published every week. This is the democratization of influence at scale. It should inform how PR engages in the space – and there’s great opportunity when it does.

In January 2017 [3], nearly 25% of the top posts on LinkedIn were about companies and the policies and issues they stand behind. However, less than 10% of the top posts actually came from leaders or employees themselves. These companies were happy to allow others to craft their reputations. They weren’t participating and they weren’t being seen to participate by their audiences.

When leaders are participating, the best of them do so in their own voice. They write their own messages, passing them through communications teams only for a speedy review, and for as little editing as possible. When business leaders communicate directly, it feels forthright and relatable – and earned media often follows. 

PR practitioners, this is your opportunity space on LinkedIn: help your organisations empower employees to create their own content and share their own stories. Make sure that your brand narrative or CSR story aligns with the actual operating priorities of the business and then gather stories of employees making those priorities a reality. Train leaders and employees in the power of social media to build individual and corporate brands. Hire writers. Teach the socially active members in your community to be better writers themselves. Recognize top contributors and help them be more successful just as they are helping your organization to be more successful. Your core competency of building and maintaining relationships is as important as ever. However, you have a whole lot more partners to work with on making it happen.

Sources

[1] http://www.edelman.com/global-results/
[2] LinkedIn content research, June 2016 
[3]  LinkedIn engagement data

---

Jaime Pham is a content marketing evangelist. Jaime has spent eight years at the forefront of social media development, and the last four years specializing in the intersection of content marketing and social. She currently spends her professional time helping companies with their social content strategy, and her personal time with her husband and daughter in London

Twitter: @jaimelynn09

Workplace by Facebook has the ability to fundamentally change the way that organisations work.

Workplace, Facebook’s newest enterprise product, is a promising tool for the marketing communications industry. Workplace fosters cross-border working and employee engagement resulting in the best
end-product for clients.  Here Ketchum's Melissa Barry gives the full low down.

You'll learn…

• All about Facebook’s newest enterprise product, Workplace 
• The benefits of implementing Workplace at a large, global marketing communications agency
• The adoption process and challenges of introducing a new agency-wide, global platform

Overview

Workplace by Facebook has the ability to fundamentally change the way that organisations work. Workplace is Facebook’s enterprise product where employees can connect, communicate, and collaborate in a secure space. Having launched at the end of 2016, there are currently over 14,000 companies using the platform across a variety of industries throughout the globe. 

One of the best things about Workplace is that it is familiar and easy to use. For marketing and communications professionals who are often active on this social network in their personal lives, there is no training required.


Features

Workplace has many similar features to Facebook such as a News Feed, messages, and most importantly, groups. It looks great on your desktop or on your mobile device. I like to describe Workplace as being very similar to your personal account, but with fewer political rants and cat memes. 

The News Feed acts as a “smart inbox” and will bring trending conversations or posts from senior leadership to the top. Messages act like an instant messages and allow you to immediately reach your colleagues. Groups are the essential feature and the main way employees communicate on the platform; you can have a group for a specific team or project (e.g. – Corporate Team), a social employee group (e.g. – Ketchum Book Club) or even an all-company group to reach your entire organisation. 


Workplace Fosters a Borderless Agency

Workplace allows a company to work in a borderless fashion connecting employees from San Francisco to Stuttgart to Singapore. With many office and team groups being open for anyone to join, transparency is increased throughout the agency. Employees can join groups or can simply take a glance into the open groups to see what going on with a specific office or team. 

Cross-geography groups allow employees to knowledge share and provide updates at a much faster pace. Recently, an employee from Chicago had asked if anyone had experience with a specific automotive brand. Within hours, she received case studies from automotive experts from around the globe, she learned about specifics from individuals who have direct previous experience with this client, and she was able to learn about competitors doing work in this space. 

Without this platform, this would have taken several days and many emails. Important to note, with this platform, the counsel was elevated for the client. This person never would have known to tap many of the individuals who offered their expertise as she did not personally know them as we are such a large agency.  The platform helped to create a much stronger result. 


Distance Bias: Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Workplace helps to foster a borderless agency by decreasing distance bias which is defined as the tendency to favour people who are physically closer to us and to even think that somebody further away from us provides less value. 

As someone who works on a global team with members in New York, London, and Düsseldorf, and with many of us often traveling, I can personally attest that this platform has reduced distance bias. We are constantly connected through Workplace sharing daily updates ranging from where we will be that day, real-time learnings, and of course fun, social sorts of things such as what we are eating on an international business trip. Also, Workplace has a video chat capability. Actually seeing each other and easily connecting via video has helped to alleviate distance bias. 

Workplace has brought us together and made us a true part of each other’s daily lives that would not have been possible in any other way. Our work has been enhanced due to our stronger connection. 


Engaging Employees

According to Mindshare and Dynamic Signal, 74% of employees feel like they are missing out on company information and news. Engagement experts say strong connections with team members will lead to more satisfied employees. With Workplace, teams can engage with each other about exciting news (e.g. – “We won the pitch!), learning moments (e.g. – “I am at a conference and I want to share key facts that apply to our client.”), and general information sharing (e.g. – using Workplace Live during a Town Hall to engage those who aren’t able to physically attend). This tool involves employees which will drive engagement in an organisation. 


Hello, Introverts! 

Workplace accommodates different styles which is increasingly important in marketing communications. It is sometimes hard for more introverted, analytical people to share ideas during a large meeting or call. Workplace allows for written and visual communication, two methods to express ideas that are not always accommodated in an office environment. Those who need more time to process ideas to come up with smart thinking appreciate this platform. Including our introverted and extroverted employees helps our agency come up with varied and diverse strategies.


Creating Better Work for Clients

Workplace is positively impacting our client work. As mentioned, increased collaboration across teams and offices leads to better creative ideas. We have increased best practice circulation and knowledge sharing around the network. 

Another key feature of the platform is trending topics. If there is a hot topic trending within Ketchum, this will show up on the top corner, similar to personal Facebook. Employees will see if many people are talking about a specific subject which can help us be better strategic counsellors.


Launching Workplace

We were selected to be part of the Workplace beta test with a small group of 200 companies. We were thrilled to try it out launching a “pilot” for our agency. I put the word “pilot” in quotes because we had so many employees ask to join the initial group, about a quarter of our organisation, that it no longer felt like a pilot. There was huge enthusiasm over a collaboration platform that everyone instinctively understood. Additionally, as PR professionals, many were simply excited being part of Facebook’s newest product. 


Continued Adoption and Challenges

Excitement and momentum of the tool continued to grow, but as of publication, engagement has slightly plateaued. We have about 70% of the agency with accounts and about half of the organisation as monthly active users. 

With any new technology or change, there are those who are innovators and early adopters. The innovators and early adopters were those who self-selected into the initial pilot. Commitment and enthusiasm around the platform is still strong with this audience. The early majority has engaged, and now we need to conquer the late majority and the laggard populations.

One of challenges in adoption includes lack of mobile engagement. The team at Facebook explains that those involved on the app are much more engaged on the platform than those who are not. This rings true to my personal experience. We need to push the app out to more of our employees to drive adoption and engagement. 

Another challenge for our organisation includes not removing other platforms. We send out a daily agency wide email and we also have a separate intranet. With these two things still active, along with a heavy email culture, it makes Workplace seem like another thing that people need to check, and like most busy communications experts, people simply do not have the time. I would advise to look at all internal communications platforms and tools when implementing a tool like Workplace.

Conclusion

Overall, Workplace, and other enterprise social networks, have huge potential. Workplace has been a smashing success in some pockets of the agency, and I see it as a major area of opportunity for other areas of the business that are currently less engaged. If we can get 80% or more of our business as active monthly users, I think this can positively shift our agency resulting in a more borderless organisation with engaged employees who create the best ideas and programs for our clients. 


Sources

[1] http://dynamicsignal.com/resources/?_ga=1.218571545.1242960641.1487177752#ufh-i-152140923-survey-your-biggest-brand-champions-are-missing-out
[2] Management 3.0 by Jurgen Appelo  

---

Melissa Barry is an organisational psychologist at Ketchum, a global marketing communications agency. She helps to counsel groups and teams on strategy implementation, change management, and team dynamics. In her free time she enjoys traveling and searching for the best dim sum.

Twitter: @melissabarry

Mental health typically managed as a performance issue in public relations

A #FuturePRoof report published by the PRCA explores the mental health of the public relations profession.

Our first project investigated the future of the public relations agency. Today we’re publishing a report exploring mental health within the public relations profession.

The defining moment for the project came during the research phase when we were contacted by someone with an employment contract that cited mental illness as grounds for dismissal.

It’s an extreme example of how mental illness is managed within the public relations profession. It’s also illegal.

But the reality is that mental illness in public relations is frequently ignored, or managed as a line management or performance issue.

The #FuturePRoof report lifts the lid on mental health in the public relations profession, and attempts to characterise the issue, signpost potential solutions, and identify best practice.

We're publishing the report under a Creative Commons licence. We hope that you find it useful. Please share, reuse and remix the content.

Exploring the mental wellbeing of the public relations profession from Stephen Waddington

Recommendations for employers

The report makes three recommendations for employers and managers.

1. The cost of mental health to public relations and the broader business community is well known. Make mental health and wellbeing a management issue within your management team.
2. Company policies and procedures should cover sickness due to mental health. Provide clear signposting and training to all employees and managers on policies and procedures.
3. Where resources do not exist within an organisation, access external support such as the resources listed in this report. Small organisations should consider retaining specialised support.

This #FuturePRoof video looks at mental health in the public relations profession and attempts to characterise the issue, signpost potential solutions and identify best practice.

“We fully support the recommendations in this report. The industry still operates on a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy and unfortunately this report highlights the stigma surrounding mental health. We know that improving mental health and wellbeing among employees is a key business issue yet many organisations have been slow to implement mental health management policies," said Francis Ingham, Director General, PRCA.

"It is important to talk about this issue, but we need action as well. The PRCA will be campaigning on raising awareness about mental health and more importantly we will be working with key players in the industry to deliver a programme on how to tackle the issue.”

As part of our investigation #FuturePRoof carried out qualitative and quantitative research, engaging with practitioners ranging from assistants and interns to communication directors and managing directors.

A wide range of issues were identified as symptoms of poor mental health in the workplace ranging from absentmindedness to anxiety, and from anger to depression.

Attributing factors included financial pressures; service delivery including always on, long hours and deadlines; office politics including culture, and poor management; trauma, particularly in emergency services; and a lack of respect and understanding for public relations.

The report found that attitudes to mental health in the workplace are polarised.

36.6% people said that they would be comfortable or very comfortable talking about their mental health in the workplace with colleagues. 56.7% said they would be uncomfortable or very uncomfortable.

Many practitioners are unaware whether their sickness policy at work specifically addresses mental health. 53.3% said they were unaware; 14.2% reported that it did; and 32.5% reported that it did not.

35.8% respondents reported that their organisation had workplace schemes aimed at enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of staff. These included employee assistant programmes; subsidised exercise; mental health awareness training; and wellness action plans.

Cost of mental health to public relations

It’s not hard to quantify impact of mental health on the public relations profession or the broader UK economy. Indeed, data highlighted by recent surveys prompted the #FuturePRoof report.

30% of respondents in the 2016 CIPR State of the Profession Survey state that they are ‘somewhat unhappy’ or ‘not at all happy’ when indicating their level of well-being in their jobs.

Nearly a third of UK staff persistently turn up to work ill and only 35% are generally healthy and present, according to the CIPD’s Absence Management Report.

The 2016 PRCA Census reports that 12% of those in public relations changing their job opted to leave the industry completely for a new career. And the overall level of staff turnover within the public relations industry is around 25% per year.

The statistics are alarming. And the cost to the communications industry of failing to adequately address these issues is huge.

Mental health issues cost the UK £70 billion per year while the annual cost of presenteeism is twice that of absenteeism.

Thank you

#FuturePRoof would like to thank everyone involved in this project. Mental health in the workplace is a sensitive issue that we have only been able to address thanks to all the contributors and in particular the support of Paul Sutton, Chris Owen, Carol Featherstone and Julia Fenwick.

This blog was originally posted on Stephen Waddington's blog.

Could an open CPD standard in public relations accelerate professionalism?

In the latest in the series of #FuturePRoof blogs, here its founder and editor Sarah Hall asks whether continuous professional development (CPD) should be an open standard in public relations.

Open standards are a proven way of quickly creating scale.

The PRCA has launched a new continuous professional development (CPD) platform that allows points to be accrued from training and learning outside its own provision.

It has signed up 17 partner organisations from across the communications industry, all of which organise activities that can be logged against career progression. 

The CIPR isn't a partner. 

Although I've been transparent about my desire for the two organisations to work together, whether it should be become one isn't the question here. 

The CIPR has its own, well established system which, while the main focus is on CIPR content and training, allows bespoke activities to be logged.

Progress is slow.

In the UK around 60,000 to 80,000 work in public relations. 1,600 people met the requirement for the CIPR’s accredited practitioners and participated in its CPD scheme in 2015. 

The PRCA provides an opportunity to rapidly increase commitment to CPD. Many agency employers also have their own CPD system.

The question is whether it's time for an open standard for CPD across the industry. 

Unlike the CIPR's offer, the PRCA's new system is open to non members. 

It's a welcome move at a time when the industry is striving to become more diverse and professional.

It sends a clear message to the marketplace that it wants to scale CPD and widen participation from all area of the communications industry.  

Should our industry bodies look to introduce a single standard for CPD in public relations, while marketing their own content and training workshops?

Is this an area in which the CIPR, PRCA and partners should collaborate, if that was a possibility?

Why the PR industry should be the big winner from influencer marketing

In the latest of our #FuturePRoof guest blogs, Sam Oakley from Stashmetrics, looks at influencer marketing and the opportunity for public relations. 

PR  has a golden opportunity when it comes to influencer marketing, but the industry needs to learn from its mistakes.

I worked through, and saw first hand, the way the industry’s eyes lit up when social first became a thing – it was new area of practice that was all about relationships and dialogue, (stuff we were good at), and there was real budget available.

However, while I’ve seen some fantastic social media work delivered by PR agencies, broadly speaking the bulk of budget for owned social has gone elsewhere and looks like it will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Stay upbeat

I don’t see this as a reason for despondency though, there’s a ton we can learn from how the explosion in owned social channels brought value into agencies and a lot we can apply to other growth areas.

I’m going to focus on influencer marketing for the sake of this post simply because it’s the only area I’m even vaguely qualified to talk about. That said, I have a sneaking suspicion that broader lessons will be applicable to other growth areas.

What is the opportunity, and is it worth going for?

Whilst it’s hard to put an exact figure on the size of the influencer marketing opportunity, it’s safe to say it is both significant now and growing fast.

Only a couple of weeks ago a PRCA / YouGov survey showed that digital budgets were up 9% on last year and that influencer outreach was the most commonly requested digital PR service by brands (12%).

With regards to whether the opportunity is worth it I’d argue that, whilst it’s hard to find numbers that definitively make a case, it’s very easy to argue that it can’t be ignored.

Why can’t it be ignored?

A lot of behavioural factors are coming together on this. I don’t need to talk about shifts to online consumption here, but combined with ongoing media fragmentation we are left with an inescapable equation.

More media titles / the same number of people = fewer eyeballs per title, and in a business where the bulk of junior – mid-level work is spent on leveraging those media, it means the same amount of work takes place, but with lesser gain.

The third factor to really play into the PR industry’s hands is the rise of ad-blocking. The PR mindset is built around earned media; if you’re earning your reach then it won’t get blocked.

Finally, there’s the evolution of search. Google is getting really good at helping people to find what they want to find, and as a result the defining lines between individual publishers and media titles are blurring.

How can the industry position itself to capitalise on the growth in influencer budgets?

We work with some amazingly smart agencies who are already make great, organisation-wide steps to do this and it’s been fascinating over the last 12 months to see how best practice begins to coalesce around a few key principles.

1 – Measure better than anyone else. PR measurement frameworks are much more easy to adapt to influencer work than ad / digital measurement. Influencers are generally reticent to share their measurement data but are much more likely to do so if they’re part of a targeted, relationship-driven campaign, than if they’re one of 500 people whose audience has been bought through a marketplace. The Barcelona principles need pretty much zero adaptation to work well in an influencer marketing context. 

2 – Don’t be afraid to push back against a bad brief. There is a lot of ambiguity / confusion around what influencer marketing is and how it should be delivered – this can lead to inappropriate briefs that you know will go nowhere. If that’s the case, ask yourself “should the first time this client is exposed to this kind of marketing take place in the context of a flawed project?” 

3 - A bad brief is also one where there’s no money for measurement. If this is new for the client then measurement is doubly important - without it you’ll find it hard to make a case for ongoing influencer work.

4 – Recognise that influencers can fulfil a multitude of roles. We’ve seen staggeringly good results from campaigns using influencers in a wide variety of ways - everything from using massive celebrities to start a waterfall effect (with smaller, related influencers amplifying the celebrity content to brilliant effect), down to a company that uses micro-influencers to create a constant flow of authentic UGC for the brand’s owned channels. It’s not just about paying someone to make you a YouTube Video

What are the pitfalls the industry has to avoid?

The main areas where we’ve seen people struggle are all linked to a lack of self-confidence amongst PR agencies. The industry can’t afford to get caught in echo-chamber debates, there simply isn’t the time. Nor can it afford to get sucked into the “innovation bubble” where campaigns are pitched based on innovative delivery over and above sound strategic work. The winners in the space will be those who get on with delivering brilliant work and who prove its brilliance with smart measurement. 

When it comes down to it, the opportunity is reasonably clear – behavioural shifts in consumers are creating an industry that dovetails almost perfectly with PR skillsets.

Yes, we’ve been here before but if we learn from mistakes this could and should be a major driver of value for the industry in the years to come.

Stashmetrics is a tool that helps agencies and brands find and collaborate with brilliant people online. Before co-founding the business Sam worked in digital PR for brands ranging from Sony Mobile to Unilever.