I’ve been invited to a couple of social media events/ gatherings and the discussion topics have always been focused on which tools/ networks/ channels/ methods are best to reach out to the audiences. I realised there is always a tendency to generalise too much and assume that what works in US will work in Asia when we discuss marketing communications, public relations and social media.

The last couple of months, I’ve been traveling to different parts of Asia and spending time, trying to understand the different markets that I am managing in Asia Pacific region. It’s interesting to note how diverse and unique each Asian market is when it comes to managing PR/ communications in each country. It is even tougher to come up with a regional campaign that works across several Asia countries. When we talk about Web 2.0, PR, communications in general, at times we forget that there is the cultural element. Communications in an emerging market versus communications in Latin America will obviously be very different. How consumers in different market consume information is also very different and that should affect the way we plan our communications campaigns. As much as we have all heard that in the Web 2.0 world, it is all about the people, the online communities gathering together, sharing information, contributing to conversations, everything is becoming  more globalised. However, as I’ve observed and agreed with the students who wrote in the wiki, i think we’ve missed several points.

So obviously despite the market’s globalization process, there are differences between countries …because of cultural factors…which are partly responsible for the marketing environment in that market. Asia is a region with many layers: different languages, different cultures, and different technology preferences….all in a region filled with different countries, laws, etc. It does pose a tough challenge, not only for inter but also for Intra-national communication.

These observations are quite accurate. There are a lot of so called “social media experts” out there who sometimes called me up and said, “hey, we can offer you help on regional campaigns using social media….”

My immediate thought is, do you really know how people in India consume information? Have you stepped into Bangalore and understand the language difference? Do you understand the technological great divide between different cities in India or do you know what’s really big in Vietnam right now? Do you know that, web/ PC penetration is so much lower than mobile phone penetration in many Asia countries? So, it makes me wonder at times how companies and agencies hire their “experts” who hardly step out of their own country and hardly understand communciations on the web, let alone the 2.0 or the ability to reach/ engage consumers out there in Asia. Sure, some of us may understand how the web2.0 and how PR works (in general) but to put together some really successful campaigns, it takes much, much, much more than that.

In HK for instance, there are three primary communities in Hong Kong. The expatriates, who favor English, the local Chinese whose first language is Cantonese and the increasing numbers of mainland Chinese immigrants who use Mandarin. These differences are important to businesses as based on their target audience; their medium of advertisement has to change.

While we raved and make a huge fuss about Facebook, nobody really bothers about it in countries in Asia. In China, Korea and Japan and other emerging markets, there are some really big and powerful social networks that are locally relevant to the people.

When it comes to PR, it doesn’t really matter if Techcrunch or New York Times are raving about a certain product or website, if i’s not locally relevant to ie: Thailand or Vietnam, (that are not even english speaking markets) or big markets like Korea, India and China, honestly, the key media there don’t really care.

I have always hoped to find more great bloggers, influencers and thought leaders in Asia who cover topics on social media and communications, especially those who have not only in-country knowledge but cross-cultural, cross countries expertise. If you are one of them, please do drop me a note. We’ve heard so much from the US and UK folks, I think it is time to hear from Asia’s point of view on the topics of Social Media and new media. (honestly, it’s really not about knowing how to set up a second life account and far more than using facebook to set up an event invite).

Both have some really interesting points about new media and new media marketing. Since I have not finished reading them, I shall reserve any comments for now. Both are definitely worth reading!Recently, I’ve observed that some PR folks have decided to completely ignore / not get involved with the new media, leaving them in the hands of the community managers. I am not saying that’s right or wrong, I am just considering what it means for us, as PR professionals, to only care about getting what our clients or companies want us to say to our ”target media”. Do we, at some point consider what our CONSUMERS are thinking, saying, commenting, wanting, needing from our company?

A recent chat with a PR friend made me ponder more as she pointed out that, ”UH! It’s so hard to CONTROL bloggers, sometimes, they get their facts all wrong and refused to hear us out..”

Another girlfriend commented, “Why pre-brief bloggers? Why even bother talking to XX business magazine? I just want to get this story out in 3 key dailies and i get my REACH! It’s just too much effort and trouble to talk to XX business magazine and YY trade media because their reach is so much lesser…” 

There are some truths in each comment but something tells me, we are moving backward rather than forward. I realised what happened to many PR people. We are extremely busy folks, sometimes we get so bogged down by work, we become very reactive and we just keep on doing doing doing the same things, hoping for different results. We forget about exploration, learning new tools, new communications strategies as we move on into a new technological era.

At times, we are so narrow-minded. We are given a set of “key communications statements” from our clients or our corporate communciations department and we follow them so strictly, we forgot that our consumers and the media are not stupid to believe a  set of statements that doesn’t make any sense to anyone else but us.

I realised I am trying to make several points here. I guess, what I am trying to think through is, as much as I believe and blogged quite extensively about how PR folks should always go back to basic and get our messaging/ foundation right before we move on to new media. On the other hand, there is frustration with PR people who are too afraid to move on and get too engrossed in trying to make sure that they have coverage in the 1 or 2 newspapers (that might have readership of 200,000) but is that enough?

Some XX company might have a full page coverage in The Sunday Times (Singapore’s most-read broadsheet) last week but I was on the plane, my boyfriend was sick and slept through the day and my brothers were out and not touched the papers. So, even though we might be the target audience of that XX company, we missed it.

So, explain to me… how is the excuse of targeting only 3 key media every time we have news announcements (because they have the most reach) ensure that most, if not all our target audience (consumers) read about our announcements? How is that making an influence? How is that moving the needle, making an impact for the business you are in?

My good friend and a fantastic blogger, Melvin Yuan recently stated in his blog post…

In the same way, PR professionals could never master the craft of Influence because our tools for the task were ineffective (think press releases, articles and events) and our measurement was flawed (think size of news coverage and the ad-dollar equivalent). Both never did translate to direct impact and measurable results that businesses really need.

But today we have the right tools (think blogs, micro-sites, e-mails, search engines etc.), the right knowledge (in search, digital storytelling and social media), and better ways to measure business (not communication) results (think click-throughs, readership and online decisions).

We have what it takes to communicate directly, track and measure results effectively, making Influence as much a science as it is an art.

This is usually what happens when you are in a new job, a bigger role and everything’s new. You spend every possible waking hours trying to read alot of information, talking to many people, think and think about how to make various things work to make sense.

The good news is, I have learnt so much in the last 3 weeks about everything mobile and of course, the big purple house. I am attached to the mobile business division of the company called Connected Life, managing the communications for the Asia region. Before this job, I was spending my time exploring the whole web2.0 (thus the creation of this blog and signing up at a whole load of social networks) and not paid much attention to the mobile space. The last few weeks opened up new perspectives on social media on the go. (hopefully, I can start sharing more when I settle in).For now, I am happy with a brand new BlackBerry Curve and unlimited data access! For those who have followed news at CES and heard Jerry Yang’s keynote, (and I am not promoting the company’s product) but my brother and I are having alot of fun with the new beta Yahoo! Go 3.0.

Try it or read more about what others wrote. This is the case of not having to even provide links, do a quick search for Yahoo Go 3.0 and you get endless pages of news/ blog links. Wonderful thing to do communications/ PR for a brand like this. I am excited!

Anyway, that silly joke came to mind as I was reading one of Jeremy Pepper’s old blog posts on “what does the P in PR stands for?” (I’ve been spending some time going through Jeremy’s blog posts and they are really quite brilliant.). PR can mean many things to many different people.
Jeremy wrote,

…. PR used to stand for public relations. Not press relations, but public relations…

I totally agree. It has been argued about, debated on and the conclusion is that PR needs to focus and put the real “P” (for public) back to the highly misunderstood industry of public relations, (especially in this new Web 2.0 and social media age).

There are alot of definitions of PR, by academics and experts in the industry. Generally, the idea of PR lies in the following:-

Public relations is the management of relationships between an organization and its publics – groups on whom it depends for its success. An organization’s publics may include employees, shareholders, government regulators, customers, financial analysts, pressure groups, and industry associations. Depending on the field in which it operates, there will be others. A school board will have parents, students and taxpayers. A food producer may have farmers, marketing boards, dieticians and consumer associations. A registered charity will have donors and volunteers…

(source: PRCA)

And of course, the mass media is part of the publics that organisations and PR people aim to reach out to, but did you notice the many other “publics” listed in the above? PR has been evolving and I have realised that the definitions can even vary in different countries but it definitely goes beyond “how to get a coverage in XX publication..”

Melvin Yuan, an independent PR and new media consultant commented in one of my earlier post about how many PR folks are thinking press relations rather than public relations.

….Ask any consultant to list his/her top five tags for PR and you’ll know the level of his thinking.

If “media relations” and “pitching stories” are in that list, you’ll know what’s going to rattle his nerves…

I have several thoughts as I was writing this post. One of them was attempting to define the “P” in PR and as I was researching on what had been discussed, I came across this great article, “Media coverage: forget about the quantity- measure the quality,” by Jennifer McClure, summarising what I had in mind.

PR is not meant to be about creating static messages in a vacuum, and it is not synonymous with media relations, but for too long this seems to have been the assumption – not only by clients and management, but even by many in the PR industry.

Public relations is about forming and nurturing relationships with the public. We all need to remind ourselves of this from time to time. If, instead of spending time creating and communicating static messages and trying to make sure that nothing negative is ever said about our organizations, PR can re-focus its efforts on creating relationships…

I start to fear and cringe, whenever I speak with communications/ PR or marketing people who asked me, “oh, so can you get us some coverage in Her World magazine?” Nothing wrong with Her World magazine (a very popular female mag in Singapore) but in today’s Web2.0 world and the age of social media, PR folks should take the opportunities to work towards achieving not a front-page press coverage but to start a real dialogue with the key audiences (which includes the “publics” mentioned above) to alter perceptions, to create awareness, to gather feedbacks (and the list goes on, depending on what you aim to achieve). Such are statements that many have spoken and written about but, honestly, how many PR people are actually practising them? How many actually GET IT or attempt to GET IT?

Two-way dialogue can occur without a front page or any media coverage. Infact, let’s put it another way, two-way dialogue SHOULD occur ON TOP of the front page coverage – that’s the job of PR now and in the near future. Most decent PR folks know all about traditional media pitching, the challenge is to move on and put PR back to the scope it is meant to cover.

Although I am in PR, I am also a blogger – possibly part of the “publics” that some organisations are targeting. I am also the consumer who buy the various media’s publications and many different brand of products. I am also the unhappy customer who had a bad perception of that hotel with such bad service, I am dying to tell the world not to go to that hotel.

I guess, what I am trying to say here is, at the end of the day, we know that PR is evolving, especially in this exciting time where we see shifts in the industry, the key thing is to start practising it, start to put the real “P” (repeat: Public) back in PR and learn to GET IT! We are sick of hearing everyone telling us, “PR just don’t get it”.

More reference articles on elated topic:-

What is PR? by Heather Yaxley (another updated post – 12 Dec 2007 – here )

PR Measurement: Does media coverage alone impact business outcomes?

What is PR? by Public Relations Institute of Australia

100 PR blog links
Brendan Cooper who was formally a “ghost blogger” has recently changed his blog link and told us his name (but not the company he works in). Brendan puts together a nice list of PR blogs. I have randomly read a few and I am still browsing through the rest. There are some really good PR blogs out there.

How to manage your clients
Spun off from my last post about ridiculous clients, Walter wrote a useful post (from a client’s point of view) on how PR agencies should manage their clients.

Community Managers VS PR Managers
I have been reading about what community managers are doing for their products/ companies. I am interested to find the differences/ similarities between the community managers and the PR/ communications managers, especially now that PR people are expected to be savvy with the communities and the new media etc. Jeremiah Owyang wrote an informative post about The Four Tenets of the Community manager. He also led me to one of his older post for reference.

The new marketplace
Jon just ordered a new book (Now is gone) for me from Amazon. Written by Geoff Livingston & Brian Solis, the book aims to help businesses embrace Social Media intelligently. Check out Geoff’s latest post about The Public Relations Long Tail.

Like Geoff, I am not convinced that social media will replace traditional media completely. As I mentioned in some of my earlier posts, I believe that the two should be working hand in hand, complementing each other in an integrated environment to meet the communications/ marketing objectives.

Finally, an irrelevant and rather funny sign board Jon and I saw outside our hotel (near a construction site) few days ago when we were in Bali.

The client emailed my friend and the boss a note saying along the line of “We need a front page story!”

Unfortunately, the story came out in one of the news pages in The Straits Times, not too small but not the front page.

I rolled my eyes when I heard that. How do you explain to such clients that it is not only a tall order but it is an unreasonable and ridiculous demand?

It is very common for clients to ask PR agencies to perform tasks that are not only unreasonable, most of the times, they are totally ridiculous, especially when all the information the client can offer is not even newsworthy enough for a small column?
I was reading an interesting  The INQ’s article and I find a lot of truths in there:-

Because clients are as unreasonable as most journalists, by and large. They produce little widgets and expect their PRs to get a front page splash on the Financial Times. If the miserable PR manages to get any mention in said paper, the client will see it and rip the coverage to pieces, forgetting in the process that a journo is not a tool of the PR …

I was also reading Peter Shankman’s book that I mentioned in my last post and there is this rather funny paragraph that I just have to include here.

 I remembered a friend once called me, furious that the reporter didn’t mention him in a second story he did on my friend’s industry.

“Why should he have mentioned you?” I asked my friend.

“Because after he didn’t mention my company in the first story, I called him up and ripped him a new one! I told him that he should be ashamed of himself and not even call himself a journalist if he didn’t do his basic homework to realise that my company is in the space he covered!”

I find myself smiling when I read this. It reminded me of an ex-client who was (I used “was” because it seems to have disappeared, probably ceased operations), a very small player in a particular industry but he insisted that we get a story in the main dailies about his company as “the next big thing!”  and when there were stories about the big players in the industry and his company was not mentioned (because it was new, small and had alot of product flaws), he jumped and demanded that we explained why the company was not highlighted in the story.

Ok, the BIG question here is – Why then did PR agencies allow themselves to be stepped on all over by the clients’ unreasonable demands?

Fear! Yes, fear of losing the clients. Some PR professionals and even the bosses/ MDs/ Directors bend over and compromise to the extend of reducing integrity – just so to keep the client “happy”. Some will attempt to explain, offer alternatives, attempt to help the client to see the bigger picture and most of the times, the clients have their ways and some crappy campaigns were produced with unreasonable expectations and the miserable PR people had to annoy the hell out of journalists to try to get that “front page story.”

Andrew B. Smith wrote the following and again, I see alot of truth in there:-

However, to ask the journalist how much coverage the client can expect is clearly a redundant question – aside from the fact that it is up to the publication to decide how much space a story gets, this can’t be predicted or guaranteed in advance – and certainly not without any information on which to make even an educated guess. A bit like being asked to guarantee the outcome of a race when you have no idea who the runners and riders are.

I am trying to find out from my friend what she and her boss did to reply/ explain to the client about NOT GETTING the front page story.

Another PR person told me, “PR is definitely a misunderstood profession.” PR people are constantly under fire and often caught in between many different groups of people. There are many great PR people around, who are highly skilled, trained and have great credential. Perhaps, some “black sheeps” in the industry should be blamed for the bad name of PR. Perhaps there is just very limited understanding of what PR can or cannot do. Without the right understanding, things get misunderstood and resulted in grievance.

We think, perhaps not.

Don’t misunderstand my point, I totally love the new media / the Internet and this blog is set up with the aim to explore and learn more about how the new and social media work and how they affect communications and how to integrate as part of marketing strategy

And this is what I believe …There is absolutely no need to insist on including a “new media” component (very typical nowadays) in PR briefs or to insist that some bloggers be invited to your PR events or to create some form of facebook group to get “social” with the people etc. I believe that when your campaign is carefully thought out, focusing on finding the best communications channel to meet your objectives, the rest will fall in place. If you have created something newsworthy, news coverage will happen. Communications and conversations with your target media – new or old as well as target audience (or people that matters to your brand) – online or offline will happen.

If anyone is reading my twitter/ del.icio.us stuff, I’ve been reading and saving links that are related to new/ social media. I am looking for case studies, some HOW TO. Enough of the WHAT AREs.

I think I get the parts where alot of “experts” are saying, “PR people should send new media pitches in this and that way, PR people should understand the importance of social media – it’s all about the PEOPLE, not the audience (uh?? if the people are not my target audience, I wouldn’t bother talking to them actually) and of course about the “stupid PR people should be banned and have their names and email addresses listed in public blogs to be ridicule etc etc…”

I get those. I understand what they are saying…

What I am hoping to find out are some really good “how tos?” Some great social/ new media case studies and I am really looking for NON- IT/ tech/ gadgets / Web related campaigns, I am looking for those where the target audiences of the brand/ products are not spending that much time reading the Techcrunch/ CNET or maybe not even New York Times and don’t know what Facebook is?

What if my “target people” of the brand are the socialities and the rich tai tais who spend most of their time shopping, flipping lifestyle magazine titles while doing their $600 hairdo, and I am trying to sell them a new croc skin handbag brand? How about if my brand targets older aunties and uncles who are not savvy enough to even read the local online newspapers?

How do I then incorporate the “social/ new media” elements into a consumer PR campaign to get these PEOPLE? OR, is it even necessary to use any of those new tools just to show that you are savvy in the new media?

I often hear about, “how companies need to use social and new media to share information OR risk falling into obscurity.”

Clients, brands, PR people are panicking and eager to jump onto the bandwagon but am I wrong to think that at the end of the day, it’s about finding the right communication/ conversation/ interaction channel to (1) get a message across (2) get a feedback to and from the people – the fundamental of PR, the basic of communications.

Understanding and using the tools in our new media toolkit is one important thing (I agree) but blindly trying to applying them to every other campaign we work on… that, to me is just letting tools control you and not you, utilizing them.

The conversations that drive and define Social Media require a genuine and participatory approach. Just because you have the latest tools to reach people, or have played around with them, doesn’t mean you can throw the same old marketing at them. And, it doesn’t qualify you to attempt to do so without first thinking about why and how, as it relates to the people you’re trying to reach..

I totally agree with what Brian Solis wrote. Even in Facebook, I find that creators of events and groups simply mass spam their “friends’ list” with invites to events that are totally irrelevant to the friend. I am really NOT interested in a programming/ coding event where programmers and tech engineers meet to discuss codes, neither do I want to join the group that talks about and attend football games, so stop spamming me on my social networks.

Titled “How to recruit great speakers for your conference (and avoid the terrible ones)” David wrote

In my experience, these awful speakers come in two main categories:

> Those who are chosen by conference organizers because they signed up as a “Platinum Sponsor.” These speakers assume they have the right to bore audiences because they paid for it.

> The second group are “big names” (such as a company CEO). Because these speakers are chosen for their brand value (“hey, he’s CEO of XYZ Company!”) instead of their ability to hold an audience with a compelling presentation, these speakers often suck big time. When one of these big names steps up to the podium, the audience is anticipating something extremely interesting. But then within five minutes of some inane nonsense about how their services work, half the crowd is playing blackberry. Ugh.

Over the years, I attended many conferences, events, summits etc and sat through alot alot alot of very very very boring presentations. If they are FREE,  well, then I guess I can forgive them (I usually got up after 10 minutes and try to excuse myself and go make some coffee outside the conference room and wait for the next speaker to start). For those conferences that I had to pay to sit in, I often feel totally cheated if the speakers were really bad!

As PR folks, we sometimes have to find speaking opportunities for our clients and David is also right to point out that, there will be times, some clients are given speaking time slots because they are big sponsors (but that does not make them great speakers).

David highlighted this interesting conference that asked its “potential speakers” to submit a short YouTube video on a topic that will inspire, and be relevant to the audience. Attendees get to vote who they want to listen to at the conference. The ones with most votes get invited with an expenses paid for trip and a speaking slot at the conference.

I totally love the idea! All conference / events organisers out there, NOTE PLS! Some form of “screening” will be great.

Usually out of a group of 10 speakers, 6 are crap, 2 have some interesting products (so, we just sat there to find out what’s new) and only 2 will be truly brilliant.

The success of a conference often lies in the quality of its speakers. I’ve sat through some really great presentations though and one of them was by Mitch Joel and the other speaker I totally adore is the person I listened to every week – Pastor Joseph Prince who is an amazing speaker!

The problem has always existed but recently, it seems to get worse as more and more competing publications pop up, vying for the attention of advertisers and consumers in our small country in Singapore.

I am sure I am going to get some “concerned” emails after this post from some of my wonderful local media friends who are reading this blog but I am open to hear some thoughts.

Here, I am not even debating about the difference between advertorials and editorials, I am just looking at how some media are asking us, PR consultants to get our our clients to advertise in their publications before they even consider our pitches. And here, I am talking about newsworthy stories that we crafted but got rejected because our poor clients do not have enough advertising budgets to spread across all key media.

It sounds unbelievable? “Where is journalistic integrity?” you ask and it’s the exact question I am pondering over.

Some common comments I got from journalists:-

- “oh, your client is a competitor of one of our biggest advertisers, so even though it’s a new launch, it is not nice for us to feature it. Even if we do, can’t do it too big” and that usually ends with “ask your client to advertise with us! then we can maybe do this and this and that too..”

I wonder what is the root of this problem. Is it the need to survive, profit pressures, thus causing publications to try push and increase ad sales by any means? It is not that bad if the question on ad buys comes from the sales folks but we get that from editors and writers/ journalists as well!

Perhaps, the companies/ marketers have a part to play too. The understanding of the difference between advertising, PR/ editorials is all confused. Every other day, we have clients telling us “I’ve already bought ads in XX publication, please ensure we get some editorial coverage in that publication.”
Because of that increasing pressure, and despite endless explanation to clients that it does not quite work that way, PR folks are getting tired and some gave up and went to the media and said, “well, our clients bought these ads in your publication, you should support us by featuring this and this…”

Vicious cycle!

At the same time, I am also observing the blogosphere and how some bloggers are blogging endlessly about their “sponsored” gadgets and would only blog about restaurants who advertise on their blogs.

Again – the blurred divide. But it’s a new space and there are alot of movements and changes, I shall have to keep on observing before more comments can be made.

Meantime, I have to start preparing myself for questions from clients asking ,“I spent $XX, can we get coverage of our latest product launch in the Christmas issues!?”

PS: maybe if the products are like the iPod Touch or the Nanos, there is absolutely no need to worry about getting editorial coverage in any Christmas supplements?

Recently, I have been searching on mobile related topics – it’s a growing market (the whole bringing online content and social networking into mobile phones)! I was speaking with Jason Coates, Senior Comms Manager of Yahoo! SEA, and he was telling me about the explosive growth and opportunities in mobile development (especially in the Asia markets), usage and what users can now do on their phones nowadays. In August issue of Marketing Magazine, it also mentions that the global mobile advertising market will rise to S$17.13billion in 2011.

With Steve Job’s recent announcement on iPhone, new iPod touch, the mobile market is going to explode into alot of opportunities for marketers and users. Again, I am not going to go into details into the mobile research.

What I am highlighting today is six amazing FUTURE PHONES (that are not exactly phones) – developed by product design students at the University of Dundee’s College of Art, Science and Engineering. The brief was to create “Phones to support intimacy and sensuality.” Got the lead to this from Kevin Roberts’ latest post. Thought they are pretty cool.

The above is called the m:ssage handset, built to send soothing massage at anytime, to a loved one, anywhere in the world.

The Aware is created to allow communication between people on their personalised network. When someone on your network is nearby, the leds will pulse and send tingling down the users spine from the vibrators down to the back. (targeted at teens).