what comes next?

The social media has changed drastically. We went from traditional media toward the new media, e.g. the world wide web. However, to maintain effective, Public Relations had to change with the social media. In the future they still have too if they still want to be effective in 10 years from now. 

If we take a look at this graph, we notice that interest in social media and social networking started to pick up in 2006 and reached their highest point in 2009. Mass communication is changing. In order to be effective, PR has to use the new media for reaching out to all the people. 

In the future the line between marketing, PR, management, etc. will become thinner. Every discipline will have an enormous influence on the other. This due to the fact that the communication had reached a higher level.

As technology never will stop changing, so will Public Relations.

This is my last blog post, so I hope you all enjoyed reading my posts.

I like to end with an cartoon about PR.

Google ads in political campaigns

Who could ever imagine that a politician from one party would promote to vote for a politician from another party, his opponent. Nowadays, because of Google ads, it is possible.

Lijst Dedecker, a party from Belgium started to use Google in 2007 for the elections. Bart de Bie, another politician from the party Vlaams Belang promoted on his webpage 2 candidates from the party Lijst Dedecker ( not intentionally of course) . How is this possible? Well, The search engine Google ignores the Google ads, thereby it is possible.

The two candidates that used Google ads for the elections have indicated that they wanted to use their advertisement space on political websites. Therefore, the advertisement of the two candidates have been found an several other political websites from their opponents.

A researcher explained that the use of the new medium was more effective in numbers than the traditional leaflets and brochures. The ads of the two candidates were watched 2 million times for approximately 10 dollars a day. The traditional leaflets and brochures could never compete against this new medium.

The example of the Google ads is a good example to explain that PR and the use of the internet are very effective in comparison with the traditional media. It is not so expensive and very easy to use. Notice that this example have nothing to do with the outcome of the elections. It only explains that the use of the new medium is more effective in ratings.

Do you think that PR in the traditional media eventually will disappear  in political campaigns?

Reputation management

Reputation management: the new face of corporate public relations is an article written by James G. Hutton, Michael,B. Goodman, Jill B. Alexander and Christina M. Genest. This article didn’t found a correlation between reputation and overall spending on corporate communication activities, but it did fount some interesting correlations between reputation and specific categories of spending.

I will talk now about reputation management because as well in politics as in public relations it is very important to maintain a good image and reputation.

The study they did was primarily focused on the relationship between corporations’ reputations and the companies spending on corporate communication activities. There was a survey to be filled in followed by three follow-up waves of communication that were administered: a postcard reminder, a second survey form, and a phone-call. The term corporate communication was defined in the study as the overall internal/external communication function of the organization ( sometimes also called public relation in some organizations).

The results showed that the most common functions included in corporate communications budgets were media relations (96%), followed by crisis communication (86%) and PR agency (85%).

 Furthermore, Managing reputation occupied the leading role among the corporate communications departments who responded to the survey, followed by managing image.

These results show u how much attention goes to image and reputation and how important they actually are for an organization and company.

Do you think that this will be the same case in politics?

Berlusconi: the ultimate example

Earlier this day I was reading an article from Johan Op De Beeck about Berlusconi. Johan Op De Beeck is a ‘famous’ person in Belgium because he accomplished a lot of things in the media. He was an newscaster of the public television and later he started his own media company. This are just some examples of all the things he has accomplished.

The article that he wrote about Berlusconi was interesting to read because the article is giving us an idea how keen Berlusconi is an his image.

Berlusconi approved of making a documentary about himself and his relations with AC Milan. During the documentary Berlusconi, who acted most of the times smoothly , charming and visionary, sometimes lost his mask and showed that he was cast out a different mould. After a couple of months, when the documentary was edited, the documentary was send to Italy. A few weeks later, the documentary was send back and surprisingly all the scenes where Berlusconi appeared were replaced with new scenes. However, the scenes were replaced, the verbal aspects wasn’t changed at all. For example the scene in the stand were Berlusconi took place next to two politicians was replaced with the scene that Berlusconi took place next to two children. His two bodyguards who didn’t left his side for a second, were vanished in the documentary. Although the scenes were different, the content and the spoken words were totally the same. This gives us a perfect impression how Berlusconi deals with the media. The documentary, the new version of it,  was published in countries all over the world except in Italy itself.

I give you the example of Berlusconi but know that many politicians use the same strategy to maintain their image.

How do you feel about this example? Do you feel that you will be misguided if you looked at this documentary? 

PR 2.0

When I was reading all my blog messages, I noticed that I never have given a good definition about PR. I took it for granted that everybody knows what PR is, in what it involves. Although  recapitulating Pr is not that easy, I will try to do my best.

Surfing on the web in my search for a definition, ( which was not easy), I came on the wikipedia page. Wiki says that PR is the mutual understanding between organisations and their audience. To gain this mutual understanding they use intern and extern communication to inform their audience or to influence them. This by tekst, ads, publicity and promotions. The main goal of PR is not production, but construct a good image.

I think that all the things were PR is standing for are mentioned here above. Having a good image is one of the most important things at the moment. No good image equals on no good business, this due the fact that you will not buy a product from a company that is having problems.

I have choisen PR 2.0 as my title because I think it was quit interesting what wikipedia had to say about it. Nowadays, the 21 century, internet is one of the most powerful things. The last 10 years the internet has rasing to an unknown power. Therefore PR is at the moment also very present on the internet. PR 2.0 represents the PR on the internet. The name comes from the well known web 2.0 term.

I thought is was interesting that they had given a name for this kind of PR. I am saying this kind of PR, can we  see PR as different levels of things? Can we distinguish?

In my opinion we can. Although PR presents always the same goals or outcomes, either they will be negative or positive, it uses always a different form to attract the attention of the audience. There is a differents between PR in politics, PR in companies, PR for schools, country's. Just name it, there PR approach will always be different.

Do you think we can distinguish in PR?

The use of the tool, television

Television, discoverd after the radio, one of the most famous tools that people use on a daily basis.
As the television was discovered, one the main purposes ( intentionally or unitentionally) was to inform people about what was going on in the world, after the television as an entertainment tool. Later on, when the media and television become more dominant or in other words had a greater impact on the world, more people started to make advantages of this tool. Politicans, therefore, used the television for gaining votes, presenting there camagne. They did all the things that they had done before on the radio, the only advantage that television has that radio did not, or still do not have is that with television we can see the person. The question that you can ask yourself at the moment is: ' is it indeed an advantages that we can see the person on the screen?' In my opinion it is like the two sides of a medaillon, it can be good but also bad. With the former I mean that people can easier think with images. Images come easier to our mind and stay longer in our minds. The latter, however, ones you make a bad decision, the people know your name and face. For the moment I am not even talking about the private aspect of the faces-on-screens.
Back tot the television and the aspect of PR here. Like we all know has PR a broad defenition, we can't just give one real declaration. That is the same as PR in television, or Pr and the use of television. It can go so far that we will never be able to discuss all the aspects where Pr has an influence on.
If we take a look at politicians and PR on television, we notice that television brings the statements of the politicians in our living rooms. The news brings the world closer to the people and by doing so the people get to know things about politics too. Just remember life whithout television, would you know as much as you do at the moment about politics? For me, this anwser would be negative. This is just to indicate what an influence television can have on us. Therefore, politicians use peruasion techniques to gain votes. Most of the time we are unaware of these persuasion techniques.

Radio as a political weapon

While I was listening to the radio this morning I was thinking, what was the impact from the radio for politicians?

Going back to the time that there was no such thing as television, radio was for most of the people the primair source off information. 

Radio was a great tool for propaganda. Politicians therefore used the radio to persuade their voters. They used the tool to reach out to all the people. 

I was wondering the most about the impact of the radio today and back in the days. Is there a shift? Is the impact of the radio still the same as it was 50 years ago?

In my opinion, there is definitly a shift. Nowadays the impact of the radio is not that big anymore as it was in the earlier days. Radio does not give the face-to-face impression like television, the voice is the most powerfull thing here. No use of non-verbal communication.

Politicians speak directly, without a intermediary, like we have with the newspapers e.g. the editor. The voice of the politicians will or can not be changed. Although the communication is direct, I think the newspapers, in comparison with the radio, still have a greater impact on people. 

It can be that I am wrong and that some people still think that the radio is having a great impact on people. if you think differently than me, don't hesitate to comment.