Businesses should always commit to meaningful action above all things, but many corporations pussyfoot around serious issues in the hope that PR (misunderstood as spin-making) can create a buffer between reality and appearance.

Unfortunately, it is easy for PR professionals to accede to this agenda under various pressures from clients and upper-management. And we have ourselves to blame if we are not taken seriously in the boardroom.

To advance my previous argument for PR’s place in the C-suite, one reason why we’re not there yet, is this: When PR professionals successfully mask the truth to get a positive story where a negative one could have resulted, we get applauded for solving the problem. The recognition may feel good in the short term. But in the long run, the profession takes a beating because we don’t get respected for helping to steer the company in the right direction.

I came across a succinct summary by Michael Tangeman on the need to help companies face up to the truth and take the right action; and it’s worth quoting here:

“The best advice any public relations firm that premises its work on truth can give a client is that if you’ve got a problem, fix it – ‘fess up, tell what you’ve done to correct the problem and move on to the many positive things you are doing… …Trying to help a company mask its problems with other initiatives or justifying a p.r. approach with utterances that clearly don’t connect with the reality of a client’s situation is a true disservice.”

And might I add - it’s a true disservice to both our clients and the profession.

[Disclaimer: This article is not directed at any individual or company in particular. I mean to point out a fallacy in common thinking about PR – a deeply-rooted error in traditional PR practices that seems innocuous, but threaten to jeopardize all the good that we are doing today.]

I stumbled upon a post on the Hass MS&L blog that discusses “the value of online media monitoring”. It makes a case study out of the KFC/Taco Bell crisis – the company was shamed by the news media earlier this year, when rats were found scurrying around in one of its restaurants.

The main point of the article: Seven hours is all it takes for a company’s reputation to be smashed when issues are left unmonitored. And it ended with: “If this company had media monitoring and crisis monitoring someone could have called to move media crews away from the front window or covered the front window where dozens of media outlets had set up shop filming and getting customer reaction shots.”

It is a useful post, because it emphasizes the importance of media monitoring and crisis management. And it presents a very compelling timeline that shows how fast a company’s reputation can “go south” when crises are left unchecked today.

But I am troubled that it was overly preoccupied with the case for monitoring, covering up, and responding to appearances. I understand that PR professionals are concerned with the public image, but I’m disheartened that there was no mention of, or apparent regard for, what’s really needed immediately after “monitoring” – apologies and meaningful action.

Yes, we do have a part to play in a crisis, but we shouldn’t prioritize ‘transparency’ above meaningful action. Neither should we conceal the truth. We must understand that corporate transparency is not something to be manipulated. But we must charge ourselves with higher standards of integrity in a business landscape that’s increasingly transparent.

And I advocate 360-degree pro-activity – understand what goes on in the day-to-day operations of a company, and hold every department accountable to the public. Public Relations should not be just about conversations with the public, but also ensuring that promises are kept after all the talk is done.

In naming an agency effort that deals with the complexities of PR in our very wired world today, Ogilvy PR has nailed it with ‘360 Degree Digital Influence’. Few agencies can do better because “360 Degree Influence” is exactly the challenge that businesses face today in reaching out to the public and other stake-holders, and influencing them. (Well, almost the perfect name. I think ‘digital’ wrongly puts the spotlight on the technological aspect of the media revolution. It is primarily a sociological change, with technological second. But that’s another post altogether.)

The Case for 360 Degree (Digital) Influence
Corporations today are forcibly more transparent than before; with citizen journalists probing at every outlet, and with the power to draw public attention – for good or bad – vested on every employee from CEO to janitor.

Rohit Bhargava in his post on Corporate Bloggers and the Rise of the Accidental Spokesperson offers an insight into the complexities of PR today. He points out that individuals “working for an organization and blogging, but are not considered official spokespersons” can become ‘accidental spokespersons’; and he cites the example of Robert Scoble who became that very accidental spokesperson who humanized Microsoft to the rest of the world.

Similarly, outside corporate walls (and payrolls), there are customer evangelists who speak more for a company than the designated spokespersons or individuals from the corporate communications team itself. Mike Kaltschnee of HackingNetflix.com fame is one such example. So great is his influence on, and for, the online DVD rental service that Steve Rubel constantly talks about what Mike does for Netflix.

The Naked Corporation and its Many Public Faces
The point is – there are more faces to a company today than there were three years ago; and there are more public inquirers in the form of citizen journalists. The world is rife with ‘Accidental Spokespersons’ like Scoble, evangelists like Kaltschnee or unwitting newsmakers like the Comcast technician who fell asleep at a customer’s home while being put on hold by his own company’s customer service!

The Changing Role of PR Managers
In recent months, I’ve been thinking about the role of the PR manager amidst all these changes. The dynamics of PR has changed, but observably, the role of the PR manager hasn’t. And it should. With public spotlight on every inch of the company at all levels and in all departments, the PR manager has to stop focusing on mere publicity and media relations. He has to start influencing public relationships through every department and at every level of the company’s structure – orchestrating, in effect, a concerted PR effort.

The Concerted Effort
John Cass, in his response to my previous post on “Being transparent…”, accurately observed that “many public relations professionals were [not] formerly in the business of creating trusted relationships with customers directly, though certainly maybe indirectly.” He added that “product builders, customer service people and the people who traditionally were the first contact with customers were responsible for creating trusted relationships.”

Now, when you realize that customers (with the power to blog and to be heard online) ARE the Media as well, you can’t help but wonder about the need for PR counsel in Customer Relations, and the many other functions within the corporation.

Why PR Has to Lead
Because PR professionals have the skill-set to deal with the intricacies of public relations and corporate reputation, the PR manager/director must take the leadership reins in preparing the company to deal with the ‘360 degree’ landscape of digital influence.

John Cass observes that “blogging is a team effort that borrows many skills from the public relations profession, [and] also much from other professions.” And that is true. This is why PR must be considered in every aspect of the business; for counsel on the impact of every business function on public relations.

Clearly, PR (in the true sense of the word) is no longer the sole responsibility of the PR team, or designated spokespersons. The reputation of a company and the relationship it has with the public lies in the hands of many.

And the PR manager must lead this concerted effort with an effective strategy – energizing employees to be effective spokespersons, engaging customer evangelists and integrating them into the media and marketing strategy, holding customer service accountable to stringent demands that corporate reputation is built upon etc.

Earning Our Place in the C-suite
Along with this responsibility comes PR’s opportunity to prove our place in the C-suite.

It begins when CEOs recognize that corporate walls have vanished and that the company – like it or not – is made more transparent than ever. And there is a need for effective counsel in the C-suite, because in the ‘transparent organization’ phenomenon lies both danger and opportunity:

Danger, for the company that does not have its house in order. And opportunity, for strong companies to bring vital relationships with the public to a much deeper level.

The way to do it?

Before developing strategy at the C-levels, corporate PR managers must first earn that trust and equip themselves by understanding how every department in the company operates and its intrinsic relationship with the public. When they do, they will see their (transparent) company as it truly is. And this understanding will enable them to forge relationships with the public that views the company, not through the windows of the CEO office or the communications department, but through every pore. Only then, can Influence be truly 360.

Updates:
John Bell and Walter Lim have made two comments that are worth expanding here

PR’s Catapult into the C-suite – Direct Impact on the Bottom-line
John Bell affirms that today, we have an increasingly important place in the boardroom because social media has greater impact on stock prices than before; and “traditional marketing is going in only one direction”.

We need no more evidence than corporate crises like the Kryptonite lock case, or the numerous research papers that forecast higher online expenditure. The imperative is now on CEOs to bring PR into a calm boardroom with a solid game plan; rather than yank them in later with the panic button.

Everyone thinks 360 anyway. It’s time we do too!
Walter Lim points out that another motivation to think 360-degrees – is simply because everyone else does! Even if ‘traditional PR folks’ don’t think so, journalists are even more aware today, of a company’s many public faces. This means that more reporters will want to talk to bloggers with a point of view on customer service, and interview the shop-floor operators who sit 10,000 cubicles away from the HR directors.

If there ever was a motivation for those holed up in ‘traditional media’ to embrace the mandate to think 360-degrees, this is it!

Natural Progression
And a final point – natural progression. The world is clearly moving towards greater social public disclosure. Financial standards, food and drug labeling and manufacturing data, amongst many other aspects, have to abide by stricter standards of social disclosure than before.

Sure, we could wait for a global public disaster the likes of Enron, before bringing PR higher up the management agenda, or we could be proactive in creating constructive transparent relationships at all levels of the business.

It’s your call.

I’ve created a page - PR Apps (for lack of a better name) – to list web applications that will be useful to PR professionals and agencies.

This is definitely work-in-progress. Flickr, YouTube and other tools that enable PR professionals (or any web worker for that matter) to do more / be more productive, deserve to be on the list, but I will only list them along with tips on how to best apply it to our work.

If you wish to contribute to this list, please send me an e-mail with links to the application and your blog post on how to make full use of it. I’ll be glad to add it in.

As part of our counsel to clients/colleagues, we track the news regularly and provide analyses on the issues discussed.

The Problem
Very often, the administrative hassle – of collection, collaboration, formatting, sharing and publishing – impede our personal efficiency and ability to get the real work – of analysis and counsel – done quickly and effectively.

The Solution
Google Notebook - which just came out of beta last week - seems like the perfect solution.

As you search for news articles online, you can easily add them to your Google Notebook by simply cutting and pasting. It’s even simpler with a Firefox Extension - you can “add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window”.

More importantly, you can type in your analyses in the ‘Notes’ section at the bottom of every notebook entry – just as you would comment on a blog post.

Organize, Collaborate, Publish
You can create sections to categorize your news clippings by date, topic or in any way you please. And you can collaborate, share, publish and even export your entire notebook to Google Documents and saved so that it can be stored offline.

I used to think that a blog was a good way to keep a shared record of news articles with relevant commentaries, but Google Notebook offers a far more intuitive interface for this purpose. Plus it has collaboration features that blogs don’t.

What it Lacks
My only gripes at this stage are:

1. We can’t add tags to each entry. This makes sorting quite difficult if we have a massive amount of entries.
2. We cannot post images, and audio and video news clips, directly to the notebook. But this problem is easily solved by hosting the clips on an ftp site or a file sharing service like YouTube.com and linking to it.

But still, I love it. If you haven’t already, you should certainly take a tour and see how this can dramatically improve your personal and team productivity.

I’m posting this for the benefit of those who’ve been accessing the content on this blog primarily through RSS feeds; because you would not have noticed a new page that I added:

It’s a list of essential readings in PR 2.0, and I’ve labelled it “The PR 2.0 University“. Click here to find out more.