PR Chapter 9 Presentation

The Battle for influence at the digital frontier

The battle for power and control is developing just as quickly as the virtual environment.
Because of this new territory all sorts of different people are staking a claim to knowledge, understanding and influence.

At the moment there is a big debate going on in marketing as to which traditional marketing disciplines are best suited to the new conditions created by a digital world. Many agencies recognize that the era of a single message mass marketing is coming to an end. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook says “for the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation and they’re going to do this by using the social graphs the same way our users do.”

Large advertising companies such as TBWA are adding the concept of ‘media arts’ to the process of ‘disruption’.

The Third Wave of Online Influence

We have entered a third face since the inception of digital marketing.

1st Wave- Technical One- 1990’s business first lauched commercial websites and only programmers were bale to build a website
2nd Wave- Built around design and Creativity- the look and feel of a website became important for designers
3rd Wave- Characterized by the democratization of content- This stage was characterized by user generated content (UGC) template design has become more important and the content comes from many different places.

Why the Time has come for PR 2.0
The End of Advertising as We Know It by Sergio Zyman states
“Increasingly empowered consumers, more self-reliant advertisers and ever-evolving technologies are redifininghow advertising is sold created, consumed and tracked. Traditional advertising players, broadcaster distributors and advertising agencies may get squeezed unless they can successfully implement consumer, business model and business design innovations.”

The Future of marketing rests with the art of conversation, a way by which PR people have always operated through .

PR people should join the coders and designers as the third wave of skilled practitioners required for an effective online marketing communications

Issues management in the New Wild West

Before it was B2B(business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) communication
Now we have to deal with C2C(consumer to consumer ) communications
One of the biggest drivers of this type of communications is dissatisfaction
Consumers are registering cites and blogging to make their dissatisfactions know

5 Steps to dealing with Issues Management

Step 1:

Identify or at lease find a way to make contact with the unhappy customer.
If you cannot locate the person, post to the website and invite the customer to contact you

Step 2:

Separate your role from the customer service, act as go-between between the customer and you client.
Your role to the client is to advise the client that the negative impact is likely to be in terms of reach and severity
Your role to the consumer is toe reassure them that the problem is being addressed and to make representations with the regard to the impact of the coverage

Step 3:

Manage the resolution of the problem from a public relations perspective.
Make it clear to the client that the problem has to be resolved satisfactoriraly. Your resolutions should do everything a fair minded consumer audience expects.

Step 4:

Decide how to participate in the forum
Be a spokesperson for the brand , be open and honest about who you dare and clear about the what redress is being taken

Step 5:

Negotiate with the originator for a fair and equitable outcome.

If you have treated them fair then they should treat you fair as well

Ask if they are willing to hand over the domain to you
The very least they can do is shut down the website once it has served its purpose
Alternatively you may recreate it as an open customer service center.