Sunday, March 30, 2008

Media Relations

This blog posting deals with the issue of media relations, which is one of the most critical areas within any corporate communication function. The media are both a constituency and a conduit through which other constituencies can receive information. In this blog posting I look at what media professionals do and how companies should approach the increasingly sophisticated media.

The News Media
The news media are omnipresent in our society. Because they affect so many areas of our lives, the news media are a very powerful part of our society. The media brings the distant world of politics into the home of the average citizen. Business has always had a more antagonistic relationship with the press.
Before the 1970s, the average citizen did not care much about business news. Mostly businessmen were interested in information about the country’s companies. Therefore, business news was relegated to a few pages toward the back of the newspapers and to a handful of business magazines. There was virtually no coverage in national and local news broadcasts.
In the 1970s, these public attitudes began to change. Today, business news is a very important part of the news conveyed to the average American citizen. Typically, the media are not very excited about the good things that companies do. Instead, they are interested in reporting bad news about companies because this news is more likely to become a major story.

Building Better Relations with the Media
In order to build successful relationships with the media, organizations have to take the time to create personal relationship with important people in the media. This task can be accomplished by the company’s media relations department or can be outsourced to a public relation firm.
However, several significant points have to considered, when a company wants to manage successfully its media relations.
First of all, the organization should conduct research for targeting media. An analysis of the media and the reporters that typically reports on stories concerning the company provides valuable information. The next time when the company wants to launch a story, it can use this information obtained from the analysis and contact favorable reporters.
Another important point is that a company has sufficient staff in its media relations department to be capable of responding all media calls. Responding to media calls can make a powerful difference in how the company appears in the story.
Once the research and analysis is completed, the executive who will be interviewed needs to be prepared for the actual conversation with the reporter. The following approach works successfully. First, the executive should be given a short briefing on the reporter’s prior work. Then, he or she should be given a set of questions that the reporter is likely to ask. Afterwards, the communications specialist should arrange a trial run with the executive to talk about answers to possible questions. Prior to the interview it should be made clear what the executive wants to communicate to the reporter no matter what he or she asks. The actual interview should look as if it is totally natural and unrehearsed.
A fourth important point concerning building better relations with the media is to gauge success. A company should identify those communication activities that create the most value and evaluate how well an organization’s various communications functions perform against the industry average. A demonstration of the total value created by a corporate communication department can highlight the valuable work of the department.
After relations with the right persons in the media have been created it is equally important to maintain those ongoing relationships. A company cannot simply turn a certain relationship off and on when it needs a story to be launched. Instead, maintaining media relations is a continuous long-term job.

Building a successful Media Relations Program
Building a successful media relations program means involving media relations personnel in strategy (1), developing in-house capabilities (2), and using outside counsel sparingly (3).
(1) Companies need to involve communication executives in the decision making process. Communication professionals who are involved in the decision making process are more capable of presenting convincingly the decisions made by upper management.
(2) Organizations should develop in-house communication expertise because this expertise can save a lot of money. One problem for many companies is that they do not consider media relations to be important enough to hire professional staff in this area. However, scientists demonstrated that successful media relations have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line results.
(3) Outside counsel should only be hired if a sudden need for professional advice or information arises (major story or crisis). The ordinary and predictable work should be done by in-house experts.

Developing an Online Media Strategy
Over the last two decades, Internet has become the primary source of information. Modern companies need to use the opportunities given by the advance of the Internet in order to convey their messages to the maximum number of people. For instance, companies can establish forums for constituencies to share opinions, concerns, and complaints. Additionally, companies should extend their media relations work to blogs
because those publicly accessible Web sites that are discussion forums on a variety of topicsare becoming increasingly popular. The internet discussions can be used to monitor and influence information circulating about the company.

Class Discussion (02/28/08)
Last week, our communications class listened to and spoke with guest speaker Michelle Fryling, who is responsible for the media relations at the IUP. I learned how important media relations are for every kind of organization. Because I will surely work within an organization after I have finished studying, I need to develop a good understanding of the media relations business. Michelle Fryling helped me to develop that understanding by providing an interesting insight into practice. She has spent 15 years in the media relations job and has witnessed how media changed during that time. I learned that today’s media is faster, more sensational, and less detailed. We discussed in class that the media is the most important source of information. Therefore, it is crucial for me to know how the media works in order to be capable of appropriately evaluating the information I get through different channels. I learned that the media is a reflection of society. Thus, it changes as the society changes. When I plan my career or when I work within an organization, I should keep up with current developments in the fast changing media world.
I liked how Michelle Fryling explained and illustrated the fast changing nature of the media world and how she made clear that is a necessity to adapt to those changes in order to stay up-to-date. What I read in our textbook about the changes in the news media was a detailed addendum to Michelle Fryling’s words. Our textbook emphasizes that business news has become an increasingly important part of overall news throughout the recent decades. As opposed to forty years ago, today business news is omnipresent in the media. Since I am a business student, this was important information for me. Now I know that especially business entities are in the focus of media reporting. Therefore, business entities need to establish a close relationship with the media in order to ensure future success. I will have to remember that when I work in those organizations that deal intensively with the media.

Personal Experiences/Examples
A good example of media relation work is the German company BASF. When a person goes on the company’s website, he or she easily finds the media relation link. On the media relation site (http://www.corporate.basf.com/en/presse/?id=Qa4KdC7X6bcp.s1 ), there is current news and information. Each day, a new posting is published. Additionally, press information, photos, and contact information are provided. When I visited the webpage, I conveniently got all information I wanted to get. In my opinion, this is a good example of media relation work.
I experienced an example of bad media relation work, when “StudiVZ”, the German version of “Facebook”, changed it terms and conditions concerning the protection of personal data. “StudiVZ’ did not collaborate with the media in order to explain their changes to its customers. This led to confusion among the users of StudiVZ. Many left StudiVZ because they thought StudiVZ could use or sell their personal data. If StudiVZ had cooperated with the media in order to communicate the objectives of their change, they would have prevented the loss of several users.

Links:

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/articles/pr_linking_strategies.aspx

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3552876

http://aboutpublicrelations.net/ucdavid1.htm

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/Taking-your-PR-Campaign-to-the-Web-A-Menu-of-Smart-Partnering-Strategies.html

Saturday, March 22, 2008

21st Century Communication Trends

This posting deals with the 21st century key organizational trends identified by Stephen P. Borgatti. The trends are called Globalization, diversity, flexibility, flat, and networked. In trhe following sections I will briefly describe each of those trends.

Globalization
An increasing number of companies operate globally. In order to be close the emerging markets, many companies decide to move from direct exports to having departments (sales, manufacturing, research, and so forth) spread across the whole world. This trend leads to the phenomenon that even companies which have only domestic operations have to care about global competition because their competitors operate globally. Thus, each and every of today’s company is affected by the globalization of markets.
Globalization is not limited to sales, manufacturing, marketing, or research markets. Also, the labor market is subject to the changes brought about by globalization. Today, organizations search for talented employees all around the globe.
The trend of globalization is a reality of today’s world. However, an interesting question is: What are the reasons why globalization occurs? First of all, we have witnessed significant cost reductions and quality improvements of international transportation and communication. Furthermore, companies, which are based in the western world, search for unsaturated markets. Moreover, those companies strive to exploit regional cost advantages and expertise differences.

Diversity
The next key organizational trend is diversity. Borgatti describes the observation that the workforce is getting more heterogeneous sexually, racially, culturally, individually, etc. This trend can be the source of innovation, but it can also cause conflict and communication problems. Challenges that go along with this trend are the need to cope with different styles of interaction, dress, presentation, physical appearance, and so forth.
The trend of diversity occurs because of changing demographics and the globalization of the labor markets.

Flexibility
The trend of flexibility is characterized by the emerging of organizational systems and processes and people that can respond differently to different situations. On the one hand, this trend is associated with fewer detailed rules and procedures. On the other hand it leads to greater autonomy and encouragement for initiative. For employees, increasing flexibility can mean greater uncertainty.
Reasons for the occurrence of the trend of flexibility are differentiated customer needs, increasing diversity in the workplace, and increased pace of change in technology and markets.

Flat
In order to be competitive, most of today’s companies decrease their levels of management, empower workers to make decisions, and fewer differences in responsibility across levels. This flattening trend arose because of the need for speed, which makes it helpful to empower employees to make decisions, which means fewer managers are needed. Additionally, changes in information technology mean lees need for the communication and control functions of middle managers. Moreover, the flattening of corporations provides the opportunity to cut cost, which is becoming increasingly important due to the intensified competition caused by globalization.

Networked
Finally, the world is becoming increasingly networked. Direct communication across units and corporate boundaries, ignoring the chain of command, is important. Companies build cross-unit team structures and decentralize their organizational structure. Outsourcing, downsizing, and strategic alliances are employed to focus on core competences. In the new business world, firms are closely coordinated to share information through open computer systems. The whole organization becomes focused on customers, who are allowed to specify their orders to their individual needs (customization).
The networked global business became possible because of the advance of new information technology, especially groupware, client-server, and distributed computing. This new technology helps to handle fast changing customer needs and competitor offerings and makes it possible to produce more complicated products that require better integration of manufacturing, design, and marketing functions.

Class Discussion (02/21/08)
We were divided into several teams, each consisting of three team members, to create and hold a presentation on Borgatti`s organizational trends. My group worked on the trend diversity. In order to find information, we looked at the web pages of the companies Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Dell. We chose those companies because we knew that they have a diverse workforce and many locations of operations around the globe. We learned that diversity is an issue of increasing importance. Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Dell, for example, set up programs to manage the diversity concerning several corporate areas. The most important area of diversity is the workforce. We learned that it is crucial to understand that a diverse workforce can foster innovation but can also cause conflicts and communication problems.
In class, we listened to several other presentations on the other Borgatti trends. It was interesting to get information about how the trends described by Bogatti affect not only the business world but also the lives of the people worldwide.

Examples/ Personal Experiences
Everybody who reads this posting has experienced at least one characteristic of globalization: the internet, or more general, the advance of modern communication tools. Twenty years ago, it would have been very cumbersome and costly for me to communicate with my family or friends backs in Germany when I am in the USA. Today, that is no problem. Via internet it is even for free. This example indicates the significant change that took place during the recent decades. Distances vanish and communication across the globe becomes feasible. Perhaps, this trend could lead to the development of a world community.
The perfect example of diversity is our communications class. International students from almost all regions of the world sit in one classroom to study organizational communication. Twenty years ago, there would have been some international students from the Western part of the world but hardly any from Asia or Africa. This has changed. Today, young people from all over the world come to the USA to study so that many classrooms are as divers as our organizational communications classroom.

Links:

http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/trendsin.htm

http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/globalization/

http://www1.worldbank.org/economicpolicy/globalization/