Category: Ethics

Advanced blogger relations lesson from Geoff Livingston

Loved this post by Geoff Livingston on unorthodox ways to woo bloggers – so I thought I’d pass it on. Not sure the ways are so unorthodox, because ultimately all the strategies translate into engagement. I guess what makes the approach unorthodox is that you engage with a blogger only because you’re representing a client, not because you are personally interested in the topic.

Messing with their minds

This semester, I won the teaching evaluations lottery. It got me thinking about what makes a good teacher. It’s really an elusive concept. Some semesters I’m the best teacher ever, others I’m… not.

I always try to reach out and relate to students as people. I genuinely care about them and invest a lot, mentally and emotionally, in these people who, for one semester, are my responsibility. I approach teaching with awe and care, because ultimately, what I am doing, is messing with their minds. For one semester, they sit there and we talk, and I’m supposed to guide, direct, have the answers, be right. They open their minds to me and I get to mess with them. Scary.

Messing with their minds is what many of you in the strategic communication professions (PR, marketing, etc.) do. Granted, your audience is more skeptical than mine, but every time you communicate, whether it is to an audience of 10 or 10 million people, there is a chance you are messing with their minds.

You get to teach them new ideas & beliefs, influence attitudes and opinions, and change behavior. You can influence your publics on an individual level (yey! Mary bought my brand of… insert product here) and you can influence the overall culture (think about how the Mastercard priceless commercials have become part of everyday culture here in the U.S.). That’s what I call messing with their minds.

Communicating involves a huge responsibility, because when you communicate, you get to mess with people’s minds.

Are you aware of that responsibility? Do you reflect upon it?

The easy test I apply is: What if they believe me? What if, out of 10 (or 10 million) people, there are a few who 100% believe me? Who do as I say? If my communication is successful, and they believe me and do as I say, will their lives be any better? Will the world be any better? Am I, knowingly, causing any harm? What if my communication is really changing someone/something in the world? Am I comfortable with the direction of that change?

I don’t claim I’m always successful (at communicating, or at applying the above ethics test) and I can’t claim that all ethical responsibility is on one side. Yes, people should take care of themselves and protect their own minds against my messing with them. Yet I can’t help but reflect on my responsibility as a teacher and communicator.

Thank you for (not) allowing me to mess with your mind. What are your thoughts?

Triple astroturfing cheeseburger

So, what exactly is wrong with the anti-counterfeiting campaign run by Heidi Cee? Or was it run by Hunter College students? Or was it actually run by the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC)? Or was it actually run/paid for by the corporations behind the IACC?

That’s exactly the point. If figuring out who’s behind a public relations campaign feels like playing with Russian dolls, you’re most probably dealing with a case of astroturfing. Here, I see a triple case of astroturfing:

  1. IACC is a front group for corporations. Creating front groups or coalitions to campaign publicly and lobby for corporate interests is a textbook astroturfing tactic. See Beder, Sharon. “Public Relations’ Role in Manufacturing Arti?cial Grass Roots Coalitions.” Public Relations Quarterly, Summer 1998.
  2. The campaigns that students have run on many campuses, not only Hunter College, are in fact a public relations tactic for promoting IACC’s goal, are supported by IACC, and paid for by corporations. This relationship, even if it were fairly implemented and did not interfere with course content and academic freedom, is tainted by many shades of gray. To sort through them, let’s think of the publics on those campuses. Do they know that they’re targeted by an IACC campaign? Is it clear to them who exactly is behind the message? Are they fully informed and able to make a decision about the message’s credibility, which includes its source? Some campaign materials I’ve seen on IACC’s website do list IACC and a corporation (Coach, Perry Ellis, etc.) as a source of support. But is supported by a clear disclosure of interest and authorship? The shades of gray are getting darker…
  3. Finally, there’s the issue of a deceptive campaign that uses a fictional character (Heidi Cee) who engages social media. On her blog, “Heidi” writes that it’s her initiative to run this campaign and that she approached the IACC and raised funds from Coach for the campaign. It’s not until the very end of the campaign that a press release and a one-line blog post reveal that Heidi Cee doesn’t actually exist. Some people might find humor in this campaign, but the social media savvy will know that social media culture does not tolerate deception.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a similar case of astroturfing layered upon astroturfing (layered upon astroturfing). It’ll make a neat example in a public relations lesson, one that the poor Hunter College students are learning the hard way.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here are some links to help you catch up on what happened.

First, read this post that summarizes the story: A public relations campaigns class at Hunter College was closely directed by Coach (member IACC) to run an anti-counterfeiting campaign. The campaign used a fictional character. The major issues people point out about this case are academic freedom and the deceptive campaign strategy. More relevant posts on this case:

Update [Feb. 27 9:00 am]: I came across the class blog for this course. It was mainly a tool for students and professors to stay in touch. But I found a number of problematic posts showing that no one thought twice about using deception, such as these about deceiving friends on facebook or the media. And this one summarizes the origins of the campaign’s concept.

Video: Changing the world with graphs

Here’s a video worth watching, even if a bit long (about 25 mins.).

Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet and Director of Gapminder Foundation, speaking at LeWeb3 conference, Paris, 2007 (video courtesy of Robert Scoble).

Several things to notice in this video:

  • statistical storytelling with amazing graphs (of interest to both students of narrative theory and visual communication or information design)
  • fresh perspective on globalization, economic development, history, and environmental issues
  • the power of software and animated statistical graphs to help tell stories that can change (how we see) the world
  • Rosling’s message to bloggers: use blogging to connect to the whole world instead of reinforcing the homogeneity of the Western world. How do we do this? How do you do this?

http://vpod.tv/leweb3/392157/flash/videoPlayer

Facebook Beacon timeline & analysis

I love this analysis by Geoff Livingston of what went wrong with Facebook Beacon: They put business before community. Geoff argues this won’t work in social media:

ROI is a by- product of community participation as opposed to hard transactional advertising.

If you haven’t followed the Facebook Beacon controversy, here is a brief & manageable timeline for media snackers:

November 6, 2007: Facebook announces new targeted advertising system, Beacon: AP news; Read/Write Web

Analysts reflect on the business implications & possibilities of Facebook Beacon:

Privacy concerns emerge

Moveon.org starts campaign against Facebook Beacon: Read/Write Web; Moveon.org online petition; Moveon.org Facebook group (65,000 members between Nov. 20 and Dec. 3); For Immediate Release commentary (Shel Holtz & Neville Hobson);

November 28: Facebook makes changes to Beacon: Facebook announcement (ripe for ripping apart in a PR rhetorical analysis!)

The PR nightmare doesn’t end here:

Evolution of Beacon Nov. 6 – Nov. 29 from NY Times B.I.T.S. (hat tip to Jeremiah Owyang who posted this on twitter)

Edits (Dec. 5 & 6):

The big PR question is: Where is Mark Zuckerberg? It started with R. Scoble’s post above but others (note the excellent PR advice in this post), including Shel Israel, are asking the same question.

Todd Defren posts as Fake Mark Zuckerberg and shows what Mark should say. Funny, but great PR advice.

Mark Zuckerberg finally posts on Facebook blog. Shel Israel comments and finds Mark’s statement credible. I think the first paragraph is nice, because it admits they made mistakes. However, what has annoyed me throughout Facebook statements is that they claim to have created Beacon to “help people share information with their friends.” Really? As my students put it: “If I want to share information with my friends, I TELL them.” Beacon is an advertising platform and its goal is to make more money. So, although the first paragraph is OK, the second one is not:

When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.

But, here’s the change, as a result of user “feedback” (outrage?):

today we’re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here.

And, OK, this excerpt is good PR:

It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better.

What’s missing is some sort of promise/guarantee that user privacy will be a priority in the future. Instead, Mark’s last paragraph closes the topic. He hopes that:

this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we’ve heard about from you.

Meaning, that’s it, we’re done, can we drop it now? We’ll see…

Dec. 5: Read/Write Web claims this is the end of the Beacon saga… the blogosphere is tired.

Ethics in the Digital Age survey

I’m working in my office and my eyes wondered to the September 2007 issue of PRSA Tactics, sitting in a side tray. The survey on the front page reads:

Ethics in the Digital Age

The percentage of PR professionals and students who think technology makes it difficult to ethically conduct public relations:

Professionals: 35%

Students: 46%

????!!!!

Is this a stupid question, or what??!!

Ethics, again

The discussion in the PR blogosphere of social media PR ethics makes me happy 🙂 It’s wonderful to see PR critics in the field – not only in books such as Toxic Sludge is Good For You or in academic journals only academics have access to. The very fact that this conversation is taking place is a huge step towards more ethical PR. Shel Holtz calls this a nice thought and claims it won’t solve the problem of unethical social media PR practices… no, it won’t, not it the short term. Besides, no one solution will be enough to solve the problem. It needs to be attacked from several fronts, and this is but one of them.

Another solution is the one that Shel proposed, that each agency publish a case study after implementing a campaign. I called that solution unfeasible. It won’t hurt, but here are my doubts about it:

  1.  It relies on trust. If people are OK with engaging in unethical, misleading PR tactics, they’ll be OK with not publishing these tactics in their case studies. How can we trust them to provide an honest account of all their tactics?
  2. It assumes education that might not be there. This fellow who explained his misleading tactics did just what Shel recommends  – and when I read the comments I noticed it didn’t even occur to him something was wrong with his approach! Similarly, if clients don’t know the difference between ethical and unethical PR, they might be drawn to the unethical practices that bring impressive immediate results (never mind the long-term consequences…)

A comment on Shel’s post states that client education is the answer. If clients know the difference between ethical and unethical PR, they’ll only pay for the ethical kind. This is a good idea, I think, but how do we do that?

To recap, I believe there’s no ONE solution to the unethical social media PR problem. It has to be addressed on several fronts. So far, the ideas I encountered are:

  1. Put peer pressure on PR folks to  publish their tactics
  2. Keep a PR watch, keep critiquing and calling people out on unethical practices – maybe our posts will come up when their names are googled!
  3. Educate (some) PR practitioners and clients
  4. Use a WIC (wisdom of the crowds) rating system for PR practitioners & agencies (another good idea in a comment to Shel’s post)

Do you have more ideas for possible ways to tackle this problem? Do you have practical recommendations for how to accomplish 1, 3, and 4 above? (2 is already happening, although we might be preaching to the choir…)