George Lucas was right, 'The audience IS listening'

Facebook has brought together an audience of incredible numbers.  The social networking giant is today a community of people that keeps on growing, creating for businesses an opportunity to reach out directly to consumers.  But here lies the question, why are businesses still looking like ‘rabbits in the headlights’ and failing to truly engage with audiences that can help many survive during these hard economic times?

Today, Facebook has over 750 million users worldwide.  For many businesses that figure is a fantasy, after all, are we going to engage with so many?  So let’s narrow this figure down into more manageable and relevant numbers.  In the US there are over 154 million ‘active’ users, Indonesia comes in second with 40 million and a 16 per cent penetration rate, while in the UK there are 30 million users reaching half of the population. Malaysia has over 11 million users accounting for nearly 1 in 2 residents, while Singapore has a very active 2.5 million with 54% of people being on Facebook.

And the figures don’t stop there.  Here are some more, more than have of Facebook users access the network each day, half of which do so through their mobile phones.  And those that access Facebook through a smartphone or other mobile device are ‘twice as active as Facebook compared to non-mobile users.’

For many companies and organisations, these numbers are very 2-dimensional.  The audience is there, but the history and culture of 20 century business dictates that for many they still broadcast to them through a given Facebook Page.

Audience engagement is much more than a Facebook Page and the apps and tabs that these Pages have.  It is about, well, engagement.  It is about listening and delivering.  In business it is about meeting needs.  And to meet business needs you needs to re-invent itself, spending time speaking an engaging with your various audiences.

Many companies are focused on the comfort of your own structure.  Safe in the knowledge of how they have always delivered their business.  But what about your audience?  Have they been happy in how they have received your business?

As Facebook show’s us, people today are connected online.  For many they check their network, their community first thing in the morning.  People seek input, advice and support from their community that they have before they have spent money.  Today, people are happy to share bad experience, which shapes many companies brands and reputations.

While engagement is certainly not as cheap as business thinks it is, it creates a much more personal relationship than brands have ever had with it’s audiences.  It creates the loyalty, the holy-grail of business relationships that many aspire for.

Think about it this way, how do you like being talked at?

After much behind the scenes debate the UK PR industry has finally taken a step out of the shadows and stood tall.  The UK’s leading public relations title PR Week announced this week that it would no longer ‘accept AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalents) as a method of measurement in its awards.’

For years, clients and agencies have rightly been asking in-house and agency PR’s for metrics to confirm their investment in communications initiatives.

For some very inexplicable reason the PR industry decided to measure the success of it’s work in advertising terms.  Hmmm.  How confident this was.  We’ve placed a great story, which the journalist feels is strong and newsworthy and worth a few column inches.  The story carries a number of the client’s ‘key messages’ and we going to tell the client that our work has helped them save X amount because had they bought the advertising space they would have had to spend Y.  What a totally undermining and ridiculous way of measuring the success of professionals whose job is to understand human behaviour and promote causes, values and beliefs to wide ranging audiences.  No wonder those in ad-land have been enjoying Champagne budgets.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations, of which I’m a member of it’s Council, have been having it’s own debate for a number of years about the value of AVE’s.  Last June in Barcelona the CIPR along with the Global Alliance For Public Relations decided to move away from AVE as a standard measurement system.

So, with PR Week now not accepting this standard in entries for it’s awards, the question is now about how long it will take industry to focus on other measurements and accept PR for the strength it provides to brand and reputation development and management?

In my opinion Public Relations should be the driver and not the subservient to disciplines that traditionally command the big budgets.

A hat-tip to PR Week, but we still have a long way to go until we are perceived for more than just people doing media relations and gaining column inches.

The Adverting Standards Authority (ASA) siloed approach to regulating social media highlights this regulatory body’s lack of understanding of real-time communication channels.

On 1^st September the ASA announced that the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) had empowered it to police ‘marketing communications online, including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children.’ The statement from the ASA added that, ‘the remit will apply to all sectors and all businesses and organisations regardless of size.’

It all sounded very well, apart from one specific paragraph, which stated, that journalistic and editorial content and material related to causes and ideas – except those that are direct solicitations of donations for fund-raising – were to be excluded from the remit.

And here lie the problem.  The guidelines and regulations that the ASA wishes to apply to social media and networking channels appear to have been written from a 20^th centaury perspective, where marketing disciplines where siloed  – advertising was the big beast, direct marketing was direct marketing and public relations was, well, media relations.  There appears to have been little understanding of the fact that social media and networking crosses all these marketing disciplines.  In fact, it brings them together and maximises message penetration.

You would have therefore thought that the ASA would have consulted widely before announcing that it was to regulate social media channels.  Well, its statement said that the regulations that it would be enforcing were formed as a result of ‘formal recommendations from a wide cross-section of UK industry.’  Very odd thing to say given that the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and it’s Social Media Advisory Board, which I should declare that I sit on, had been omitted from any consultation even though numerous requests were made.

Without a doubt social media has to a certain extent be regulated – best practice needs to promoted.  The CIPR is currently reviewing its social media guidelines and has uploaded these to a wiki where people can register and share their thoughts.

Online and social media has changed the way that companies, brands and consumers interact with each other.  Transparency has a higher value than ever before, especially in a world where the old ‘broadcast communications model’ is taking a back seat to a ‘conversational’ one where consumers and stakeholders can cross examine business.

The ASA is right, there is a need to regulate.  But before doing so there needs to be a clear understanding of what one are trying to regulate, and why.  Marketing communications is changing.  Six months, the time until 1 March – when the regulations are currently due to come into force, is a long time in social media terms.

Engagement, dialogue and understanding comes through dialogue.  So lets start here.

A lot of rumours are floating around at the moment about how publishing companies are developing digital platforms for the print offerings.

Condé Nast recently showed off a concept video of Wired’s supposed iTablet application at Wired’s New York store.  The video shows Wired magazine as an interactive title that’s updated with not just print but video content.  Techcruch meanwhile have seen a demo of Sports Illustrated’s concept for tablet computers (above).  The Wonder Factory have worked with Sports Illustrated’s publisher Time Inc to create a video that like Wired’s concept shows how Sports Illustrated would work (below).

These are interesting times for the news and publishing industries.  I said some time ago that Apple could come into the market with a tablet based device that would aggregate your favourite titles on an iTablet.  Such system would use iTunes to work and manage your subscriptions.  The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story at the end of October claiming that Apple had in fact ‘sent specifications of the device to Australian media companies in an effort to sound out whether they would be interested in delivering their content to the tablet.’  None would go on the record though.

And Rupert Murdoch is very much considering putting up a paywall in front of his titles while taking these off Google.  This could well help the news industry bring in much needed subscription income.

The fact is that news and print as we know will have to evolve and provide more that just words and pictures if people are to subscribe.  The evidence though is pointing to the fact that media companies are redesigning their business and their offerings.

The Government recently unveiled an advertising and communications campaign to promote the export opportunities that exist to British industry.  Some might consider the timing to be odd given that the nation is in the middle of the worst recession in living memory.  But a recent UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) conference in London at the beginning of the month proved otherwise.

At UKTI’s ‘Digital Business: India and China’ two day conference which I worked on (Reuters TV news above) small and medium sized technology and communications companies came together to share knowledge on the opportunities that lay in two countries that are bucking the downward global economic trend.

Companies from Britain’s digital, technology, mobile and gaming sectors agreed that while growth in the UK was hard, business opportunities in these two countries gave them hope for the future.

During the second day, which was devoted to China, representatives from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology gave an insight into the help that was available to UK companies thinking of investing in China, a country that is looking to move its economy towards value-adding products and services.

Welcoming The World To Britain

We’ve seen UKTI’s ‘Take It To The World’ campaign message on billboards at stations up and down the country.  And companies like Playfish.com are an example of how Britain can take gaming to the world.

But what has this got to do with PR and communications?  Well, it was wisely pointed out at the conference that China was not just looking to bring expertise to its home country.  Businesses in China are looking to enter the British and European marketplace, thus increasing the need for services such as PR, advertising and the like for them.

And let’s be honest, Britain has usually been concerned about China and it’s new financial muscle.  But with the UK PR industry suffering in the current recession the opportunities that might exist from Chinese companies wishing to expand into Europe might help.

Some of the big agencies, such as Burson-Marsteller already serve and support Chinese companies, such as  online business-to-business trading company Alibaba.com, which last week announced a 39 per cent increase in revenue to over £300 million.

Agencies are getting ready for business from merging markets.  Maybe Brazil will be next.  Not a bad place for a business trip me thinks!