Marketing Manual: Public Relations - Wake up to digital danger

other forms of user-generated content is influencing PR strategies.

'In an age of blogs, wikis, podcasts and citizen journalism, there are
more media for the public to give opinions or vent about anything - a
company, product or customer service - which can help make or break a
brand,' says Firefly managing director Mark Mellor. 'The PR industry has
to adapt to this environment and move to a "PR 2.0" approach, to engage
with the web 2.0 environment and react to whatever it presents.'

There is evidence that the influence of blogs on corporate reputation is
growing, so understanding them is crucial for PR agencies. Among the key
findings of Hotwire's Blog Impact Barometer 2006 research, in
conjunction with Ipsos/MORI, was that 25m adults in Britain, France,
Germany, Italy and Spain have changed their minds about a company or its
products after reading comments or reviews on a blog. It also revealed
that 34% of people decided not to purchase a product after reading
comments on the internet from other customers or individuals. Perhaps
most interestingly, the survey discovered that blogs are second only to
newspapers as the most trusted source of information; 24% of respondents
consider them a trusted source, behind newspaper articles (30%), but
ahead of TV advertising (17%) and email marketing (14%).

The blogosphere can be a daunting environment for companies, as
consumers are defining what a brand means to them and sharing these
thoughts with others, rather than having the company's own view forced
on them. As a result, the methods employed for managing corporate
reputation and responding to criticism have to change. For example, it
is essential that policies and training are put in place for employees
who blog, together with guidance on how to participate in online
conversation. There have already been high-profile legal cases involving
staff who have written defamatory things about their employers in
personal blogs. The most notable example involved a Waterstone's
employee, who was fired last year as a result.

Savvy PR strategies are recognising that social media present a great
opportunity for companies to create dialogue between employees and
customers. Corporate blogs, for example, can be an effective
communications channel - but only in the right circumstance. It seems
that too many companies have still not thought through the reasons for
introducing one. 'There is a lot of hype, with many companies keen to
set up a blog or develop podcasts without considering how this fits with
their brand or wider marketing strategy,' says Porter Novelli UK
managing director Jean Wyllie. 'For example, in recent research carried
out by Porter Novelli and Cymfony, we found that 63% of respondents were
driven by the need to participate in the medium, rather than to meet a
specific communications objective.'

If you believe that you can control what people think, you will fail.
Companies should make sure that whoever creates a blog site is aware of
the prevailing social media principles. Lack of disclosure, transparency
and honesty may create a negative 'bloglash' or 'blog swarm'. Companies
that engage in duplicitous blogging risk inflicting huge damage on their
image.

'Blogging is all about communication and two-way conversation,' says
Immediate Future managing director Katy Howell. 'That is why it belongs
to PR, as we are people who create relationships. We have the skills to
help companies become transparent, open and honest. All agencies should
have some kind of rapid-response team to deal with negative
comment.'

Howell assesses online crises by asking whether a story is true, whether
the site is influential and whether the story is likely to spread. Only
once these questions have been answered should a response be chosen.
Understanding this is the difference between good PR and a brand in
trouble.

CASE STUDY - LG MOBILE

When it came to launching its innovative Chocolate phone, LG Mobile
recognised the influence of social media in driving purchase
recommendation.

As well as traditional marketing activities, launch agency Hill &
Knowlton's social-media team built relationships with bloggers, sending
them pre-release versions of the phone. Responses and reviews, both
positive and negative, were posted on LG's own blog,
chocolate.lgbloggers.com, along with information about the campaign and
the people running it.

A video that one blogger included in his review of the phone was posted
on YouTube, and was viewed almost 22,000 times in a week. A leading
technology portal emailed LG, asking that its review of the product be
included on the brand's blog, and at one point the blog ranked as high
as sixth when the phrase 'LG chocolate review' was typed into
Google.

Transparency and authenticity were key to success; at no point were
bloggers asked to write about the phone, and the identity of the agency
and its relationship with LG was made clear from the outset.

'The results were phenomenal,' says Hill & Knowlton worldwide director
of marketing technology Niall Cook. 'On an average day, mentions of the
Chocolate phone on blogs exceeded those of competitor handsets from both
Samsung and Nokia.'

About 1.7m Chocolate handsets sold worldwide in the first two months
following the London launch.