True PR "excellence". Or is it...?

I have recently seen some 'peculiar' photos of some company logos, I just couldn't help myself but sharing. Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy some of the funniest creations of contemporary PR "genius" minds!

1. Institute of Oriental Studies



2. Mont-Sat



3. Office of Government Commerce (the logo looks quite suggestive when rotated 90 degrees)



4. Arlington Pediatric Center



5. Clinica Dental



6. Junior Jazz Dance Classes



7. Locum (Swedish real estate company which apparently prepared a special holiday version of their logo)



8.Computer Doctors



9. Catholic Church's Archdiocesan Youth Commission



10. Pure Maple Syrup



11. A-Style (supposedly a clothing company)




I don't think any additional comments on my part are necessary. Except - does anybody know what in the world were they thinking while designing those logos...??


References:

• Gadzetomania.pl (2011) Marketingowe katastrofy - najbardziej nieudane i dwuznaczne logo [TOP 15] [Online]. Blomedia Sp. z o.o. [Accessed on 23 October 2011]. Available at: <http://gadzetomania.pl/2011/10/03/marketingowe-katastrofy-najbardziej-nieudane-i-dwuznaczne-logo-top-15>.

On Social Capital

In the article entitled “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” Robert Putnam presents the term of social capital, which according to him “refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam 1995). If I understand correct, this term entails a specific interpersonal interaction or behavior type which is beneficial for the society as a whole and it sounds like this is quite prevalent process in contemporary society. Moreover, Putnam (1995) claims that for a number of reasons living in a community which has a substantial stock of social capital is easier. One of the reasons behind it mentioned in the article is that social capital involves building up social trust, which is unquestionably an important ‘ingredient’ of social capital.

At any rate, although the title suggests that the article is about the decline of social capital in the US, I have to admit I was somewhat surprised to hear it, as its concept seems good – something the society can benefit from. The author points out various possible reasons behind its decline, however I think two of them are the most valid.

First of all, Putnam (1995) suggests a strong correlation between social trust and civic engagement. I agree with this notion – in my opinion social trust plays a very important role in building up social capital as it is simply easier to interact with other members of society if mutual trust is present. However, he also says that “Americans are also less trusting” and that “the proportion of Americans saying that most people can be trusted fell by more than a third between 1960, when 58 percent chose that alternative, and 1993, when only 37 percent did” (Putnam 1995). In this context, it is quite understandable that since social trust is decreasing within the American society, it is in effect more difficult to successfully build up social capital.

Second of all, the other important explanation the author gives is the technological transformation of leisure. Here, the author’s main ‘culprit’ seems to be television, which is deemed responsible for changing what people do for leisure. However, I believe that it is the technological development in general that is to blame. TV, cell phones, computers, internet – all those things make people stay at home rather than go out and socialize with others. In that sense, it is hard to build up social trust in a society if the majority of people prefer to sit at home in front of TV or computer.

It is indeed troubling that social capital in the US is declining as it appears to be an important part of civil society – the thing that unites people and improves the economic development.

References:

Putnam, R. (1995) Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. An Interview with Robert Putnam.

Are good stakeholder relationships important for organizations? They sure are!

Taking the analysis of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service further, I believe that, as with virtually any company, the importance of an organization having good relationships with its stakeholders is significant. I think it is safe to say that in case of Microsoft their main stakeholder are customers – the people who purchase their products and in effect greatly contribute to their worldwide success. It is therefore evident that as a company, their main focus should be maintaining positive relationship with the stakeholders.

Being in the top ten of most reputable companies as I have mentioned in my previous post, Microsoft does an outstanding job with keeping their customers happy and maintaining positive relationship with them. This is done e.g. by continuously monitoring various internet forums, gathering and analyzing customers’ feedback, which is perhaps the most significant thing for Microsoft in terms of relationship management since it is important to know the stakeholder’s needs, expectations and requirements. This feedback is then used to constantly improve the quality of their service – in case of Xbox Live this would be various Dashboard updates ('Dashboard'  is essentially Xbox 360’s main menu) which implement new features that enhance peoples’ entertainment while using their product.

Another good example of how well Microsoft uses its stakeholders’ feedback to maintain positive relationship would be their Xbox Preview Program. When Microsoft is developing either a new update or designing a new gaming peripheral, they choose some of their most valued and loyal customers and invite them to their preview program. This allows the customers to see the fruit of their labor before anyone else has the chance to and they can test it, evaluate it and send their feedback to Microsoft, which is of course used to further improve the product still in development phase. When I first heard about it I thought it was an amazing idea and a great example of ‘win-win’ outcome – valued customers get the new product free of charge before everyone else and in return Microsoft gets their product tested and evaluated before a particular project is signed-off and hits retail. Hence, this is a good example of covenantal relationship, which according to Jahansoozi is “based upon collaboration and cooperation for the common good, with the ‘win-win’ outcome in mind” (Jahansoozi 2007).

Answering the homework question – I believe the biggest challenge in case of this particular company is trying to keep happy as many people as possible, which of course is not easy at all for a worldwide company whose target are many different people from different cultures, with different opinions and expectations. However, as the aforementioned ranking shows – Microsoft seems to be successfully fulfilling the expectations and needs of majority of its stakeholders. This, in effect makes them a highly reputable company and good reputation is helpful in a lot of ways – it significantly affects the ability to move more Stock Keeping Units (SKU’s) off the shop shelves and it also improves the chances of new customers choosing their company instead of the competition. Even the little things help, e.g. the knowledge that Microsoft has the most responsive customer support service on Twitter – this can mean a lot to stakeholders who expect the best customer service, should something go wrong.

Summarizing, Microsoft certainly is a highly reputable company, able to successfully manage the stakeholder relationships. This is precisely why they have been winning the ‘home entertainment race’ on the game consoles worldwide market for the past couple of years, leaving their competition (Sony and Nintendo) with questions such as “how are they doing this?” and “what are we doing wrong?”. As for the answer to these questions – I might be wrong but it appears that appropriate, positive stakeholder relationships are the key to success.

References:

Jahansoozi, J. (2007) Organization–public relationships: An exploration of the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group. Public Relations Review 33, pp. 398–406.

Dissecting Microsoft and Xbox Live (communication-wise)

It took me a while to think of a good exemplary company to analyze for this week’s homework assignment but I think I finally managed to figure out a good one when playing on Xbox Live yesterday – Microsoft. After all, it is among top 10 most reputable companies according to Fortune’s 2011 ranking. The idea came up to my mind when at some point Xbox Live broke down and none of the users could log back in to the service to play online – it was not long before I found myself checking one of Microsoft’s Twitter accounts (@XboxSupport) to look for their feedback or an ETA on how long will the downtime be. Since Microsoft is a huge company with many different departments, I have decided to focus on only one – the one responsible for Xbox 360 game console.

When I visited the aforementioned Twitter page, the following account description drew my attention: “Guinness World Record Holder: Most Responsive Brand on Twitter! Tweeting from 6am - 12am PST M-F & 10am - 6pm Sat – Sun” (@XboxSupport 2011). I was honestly astonished when I noticed how many daily replies do they generate and how swiftly do they reply with a common to Customer Service ‘thank you for contacting us, we are already working on it’ type of answer, to dissatisfied customers who could not log in to their service. In this sense, I believe that this Microsoft department exercises the two–way symmetrical communication, which is because Xbox Live is a paid online gaming service that revolves mostly around Customer Service. It is therefore understandable that, as a company, they strive to help their public to the best of their abilities in order to reach consensus and that they show highly proactive approach regarding mutual communication using different means – from telephone support lines, through letters and emails, to various social media such as Facebook and, heck, even the ‘under-140-character-messages-allowed-only’ Twitter.

However, dissecting this particular department made me understand that it is not always possible to definitely assess one general communication model used by a company. I realized that in Microsoft’s case the Contingency Theory most certainly applies – after all like I said – it is a huge company with many different departments which most likely require different communication models, e.g. I am highly doubtful if the communication model of Xbox Live department is the same as that of another department within the company whose target public is different.

As to what can be done to improve Microsoft’s communication further – although I know it may not sound like the best answer I honestly have no idea how communication of a company currently in the top 10 of most reputable companies, a company who holds a Guinness World Record in Twitter responsiveness can be improved further. According to Cancel et al., “The contingency theory suggests that many factors affect whether more accommodation or more advocacy will be effective in achieving departmental and organizational objectives in the short and long term” (1999:173). Obviously no company is perfect and there surely is some room for improvement but at this point, it is apparent to me that generalization is not possible and any attempts to improve the communication could only be successful if focused on a particular department within the company, with these particular factors unique to this specific department.

P.S. Just an interesting detail – it took me roughly 2 hours to write this entry. During this time, Xbox Support Twitter posted precisely 185 new tweets. Just to give you an idea of how ‘responsive’ they are.

References:

·         Cancel, A., Mitrook, M. and Cameron, G. (1999) Testing the Contingency Theory of Accommodation in Public Relations. Public Relations Review, 25(2), pp. 171-197;

·         Xbox Support (2011) Xbox Support (xboxsupport) on Twitter [online]. Twitter. [Accessed 4 October 2011]. Available at: <http://twitter.com/#!/xboxsupport>.

PR mind map

Mats Heide on Berger...

My most recent lecture was a chapter from Mats Heide’s book, a chapter entitled “On Berger – A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication”, the main topic of which is crisis communication analyzed from a social constructionist point of view, i.e. from a point of view of Peter Berger.

First of all, it is important to point out that according to Heide, crisis is commonly perceived as a result of some external threats in the surrounding environment, hence it is normally understood as objective and a real thing, which hits and affects organizations at full strength, requiring immediate action (Heide 2009).

It is also important to note that Berger regards sociology as having as its focus an understanding of contemporary society as a large complex of human relationships and that the goal of sociology is to uncover the different levels of meaning hidden from the consciousness of everyday life – to “see through” and “look behind” and to receive a better understanding of what goes on in a particular context in terms of social interaction (Heide 2009). Moreover, Berger states that people’s worldviews are already given in a society’s language (Heide 2009), in other words, meaning that society’s language contains people’s worldviews and opinions. In that sense, the attempt of analyzing crisis management through sociology is quite understandable as it allows to understand people’s demands, wishes and thoughts.

According to Berger, things are not what they seem and that reality has many layers of meaning (Heide 2009), which means that things can be interpreted in a number of different ways and often have a few, sometimes hidden meanings. Hence, in order to be able to objectively understand reality and to develop sociological consciousness, Berger proposes analyzing it while adhering to his four proposed motifs: debunking motif – which essentially is centered around being inquisitive, tenacious and thinking ‘outside the box’; unrespectability motif – which suggests reality should be understood from all social classes perspective rather than just from the perspective of the superior middle class; relativization motif – suggesting that the world should be understood looking at it from the perspective of different cultures with diverse values; and cosmopolitan motif – which says that “sociologists ought to have an open mind and be interested in other cultures and eager to understand new horizons of human meaning” (Heide 2009). It is worth pointing out that the use of these motifs can be extremely helpful as it appears to be a set of guidelines one should use in order to have as objective view on reality as possible.

Summarizing, Public relations unquestionably plays an important role in crisis management. With it, the reality can be assessed objectively, social construction, society’s wishes, demands and expectations can be assessed more easily, which in effect, makes it a lot easier to manage a crisis situation and ensure appropriate level of communication with our dynamic society.

References:

Heide, M. (2009) On Berger – A Social Constructionist Perspective on Public Relations and Crisis Communication. pp. 43-61.

Public Relations vs Network Society.

The final article I have read was written by Kaja Tampere and is entitled “A walk in the public relations field: Theoretical discussions from a social media and network society perspective”.

Firstly, I don’t want to be a suck-up since Kaja is one of my lecturers at University of Tallinn, but boy was I glad to read her article, honestly. It was written using academic, yet a lot easier vocabulary than vocabulary used in Castells’ articles and in effect was much easier to understand than the previous three articles. I felt like Castells’ observations and discoveries were described by Kaja with significantly more clarity, which was of great help, judging by how his articles were not cleared up in class and after reading them I was left with somewhat of a cocktail of mixed feelings and slight confusion.

More importantly though, Tampere attempts to describe what is the best way for public relations to successfully cope with the new network society impacted by globalization, which is a new environment for public relations. Castells said, presented in Tampere’s article (2011), that “in a new, network society organizations break down their bureaucracies that are an obstacle to efficiency and create relationships with their stakeholders that are based on positive experience, which is deeply connected with public relations goals to build up dialogue and trust”. This evidently connects with the fact that many practitioners in public relations field note that public relations' essential contribution is to build up trust, dialog, the public information system, communication networks, through which democratic society functions (Tampere 2006). This is indeed true, especially the dialog and trust part – I do not think one would like to use a company which is not perceived by the general public as honest and trustworthy, nor would he find it credible. Therefore the inclination to improve the trustworthiness should be one of the main focuses for companies.

The second important process in need of implementation by contemporary PR practitioners is the aforementioned stakeholder relations, the nature of which

“is based on the fact that an organization treats other organizations and persons in its environment mostly ‘vertically’. This means that the organization and its stakeholders form a network where the parties are equal and relations between the different participants are based on the principles of cooperation and competition, they are dialogical” (Tampere 2011).

This, together with the use of various electronic and technological tools, which, if I understand correct are the same tools responsible for creation of network society in the first place, “in turn increases the quality of relations and makes the processes underway more precise and also more rapid” (Tampere 2011) and should essentially make it easier for the field of public relations to cope with the environment of network society.

References:

Tampere, K. (2011) A walk in the public relations field: Theoretical discussions from a social media and network society perspective. Central European Journal of Communication 1 (2011), pp. 49-61.