Over the past many years, in speeches, workshops, books and articles, I have steadfastly preached two axioms of public relations:
- At its core, public relations is the management of an organization's efforts aimed at building and maintaining positive relationships with its strategic publics. A strategic public is one that, in the absence of a strong relationship, could produce obstacles to the organization's ability to achieve its objectives.
- Public relations is about influence. Organizations can and should wield influence ethically. Among academics, ethical public relations is often referred to as "two-way and symmetrical." That is, the relationships result in win-win scenarios in which both the organization and the public achieve their goals. The tools of two-way symmetrical communication include negotation and boundary-spanning. These two concepts-relationships and influence-go hand in hand. It is easier to influence somebody who is on your side than it is to influence somebody who thinks your organization is a bottom-feeding, ethically challenged bully that makes Enron look like a candidate for sainthood. The desire to be perceived as a good corporate citizen leads a lot of organizations to embrace the notion of "doing well by doing good." Enlightened self-interest drives corporate efforts to be socially responsible. But, at the end of the day, the organization still wants something from its strategic publics: buy our product, vote for our candidate, support our initiative, don't boycott us, don't burden us with new regulations, invest in our stock, join our family. Influence remains the goal. Interestingly, we have translated this notion to the blogosphere. I check my assessing one's influence, according to many. Accountant-blogger Dennis Howlett yesterday's installment of "The Hobson & Holtz Report." Since then, I haven't been able to get the notion of influence as PR's end game out of my head. I don't think Dennis went far enough. Not only should we question whether Technorati is relevant to reputation. We should question whether influence is the road to a positive reputation at all. To put it another way, if public relations is about managing relationships between institutions and their strategic publics, why aren't relationships the defined goal of our PR campaigns? In many instances, influence still must be the goal of public relations efforts. I remember the PR campaign to stop Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad from running coal trains through the middle of Rochester, Minnesota. The campaign-managed brilliantly by Weber Shandwick-had one goal: Influence the Surface Transportation Board (a U.S. government agency) to extend the public comment period following the release of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement. (The effort succeeded.) However, given the shift from message delivery to conversation, I question whether influence should be the goal of all PR efforts. Rather than set a goal of getting something from our audiences, the relationship itself should be the final objective, whether it's for our institutions or for our own blogging. A couple of experiences have reinforced this thought. First, there are the many times I have worked with organizations on the development of a mission statement. In nearly every case, the senior leadership starts the process by insisting their mission is clear: Produce a superior return on shareholder investment. In fact, I conducted a Google search on "mission statement," "return," and "shareholders" that produced 250,000 results. In order to move the process along, I insist that producing a return on investment is the result of the organization achieving its mission; it is not the mission itself. When I worked in the communications department at Allergan, we finally wound up with a mission statement that explains the company's reason for existence, to focus "on specialty pharmaceutical products for specific disease areas that deliver value to customers, satisfy unmet medical needs and improve patients' lives." If the company succeeds in this mission, it will make a ton of money and produce superior returns on shareholder investment. To reiterate, the return on investment is not the goal; ROI is the positive consequence of achieving the goal of improving patients' lives. The concept translates quite well to the blogosphere. Many bloggers craft their posts in a blatant effort to influence readers' thinking. Just read any of the political blogs; the political philosophies they embrace don't matter-they all want you to think the same way they do. I generally don't read these blogs, even the ones that lean the same way I do. I just don't like it when somebody tells me how I should think. Yet I am influenced by a number of bloggers who are not trying to influence me. In episode #2 of Allan Jenkins and DiggThis | Furl Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications. As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog
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