The media don’t just report bad things. They twist and turn any titbit into a career-destroying event. With breath-taking chutzpah and hypocrisy, the media now plunder the private lives of any famous person. Until now the response has been “apologize, reform and move on” (ARM) or face ruin.  And often it’s to trade a mini-confession to save having to make a big one. Not any more!

Fame bites back!

When celebrities engage Rough Diamond PR, they declare war on the media’s obsession with openness and emotional incontinence. They take a moral stand against the call for public figures to be role models in every aspect of modern life from obesity to charity and fidelity, to the dreaded drink and drugs.

Our strategy is to give the finger to the new profoundly corrupt moral police.

Rough Diamond PR helps clients increase their profiles in new and creative ways. Our celebs will insist that their private lives are no-go areas. They won’t parade their happy marriages, their beaming kids, their promises of endless fidelity. They’ll give no more hostages to fortune.

Rough Diamond PR will instead reinforce and promote the virtues and value its clients bring to their particular field of public life: that’s football for footballers; golf for golfers; politics for politicians; and soft porn for that transparent talent Katie Price (aka Jordan: note that, as an exception to our mantra, her emotional incoherence, brilliantly illuminates her “brands”).

By aligning their reputations with Rough Diamond PR’s, clients strike a high-profile bargain with their publics, employers and sponsors.

Our clients vow never to make a virtue of their private lives. They also vow never to express holier-than-thou opinions or give advice about social issues that they a) don’t live up to already b) might possibly fall short of at some time in their career or thereafter c) don’t understand.

In return, our clients expect the public and media to stay out of their private affairs and to stay focused instead on their genius.

The So-What? strategy

In defence of reputations, Rough Diamond PR offers a sustainable set of life-cycle services for celebrities. These include career planning; security advice; media relations and training; sponsorship management and negotiation; events and hospitality; wide-ranging therapies; and, not least, crisis management.

Rough Diamond PR prides itself on managing dignified silence or “up-yours” salutes or even a ”So What?” in response to unwelcome exposure. But sometimes that’s not enough. That is why Rough Diamond PR will strategically and rigorously argue for a new public understanding of the media’s role, and legal measures to reinforce privacy.

But Rough Diamond PR is not the agency for every public figure. Celebrities who are celebs merely because they are celebrated are not welcome. Rough Diamond PR is for those whose talents are beyond doubt: the likes of Tiger Woods, Wayne Rooney, Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse, or Winston Churchill, had he lived long enough to hire us; because today with his wayward ways he’d need us.

Nevertheless, Rough Diamond PR is for both sinners and saints (most of us are both at once). That’s because even the well-behaved and most virtuous and restrained public figures resent media intrusion.

The face and voice of the bite-back

The firm will be led by PR’s own street-fighting savant, Paul Seaman, from Elm Park. Commenting on his new role as head of the celeb world’s most exciting and innovative PR outfit, he said today:

“I am hugely looking forward to knowing my clients’ innermost secrets. But I won’t be sharing them or trading them. I won’t be denying them, either. Rough Diamond PR empowers celebs to take control of their reputations. With us they can resist the current unmoral climate. Of course, their sometimes mad antics will still grab headlines. But shielded behind our indestructible virtual wall, they’ll never have to apologise for being hypocrites, liars and for promoting humbug. Mostly they can parry allegations with a shrug of the shoulders.

“But right now our PR rivals are putting public figures in positions in which they feel obliged to confess to virtually everything. They’ve got them throwing fuel on the fire. With Rough Diamond PR, however, so long as clients keep their talents, and don’t get sent to prison for anything serious, they can hold their heads high even during the worst media storm.”

No related pages.

So what kind of resolution should we be advising our clients to seek in this brave new world? Well, perhaps we should be telling them to win public confidence.

With the modern mantra people are told to trust only what’s transparent. The opaque will have to make a case for itself. Actually, I think almost all conspicuous transparency is fake. I am sure that in an honest world, we have to live with opacity. We need institutions to be capable of trustworthiness and secrecy and we require a public which accepts that fact.

There’s a difference between trust in individuals and confidence in institutions. Confidence is what brands are all about – it is the emotional bond marketing tries to generate – because it is about convincing people that promises will be fulfilled. As true friends know, true trust requires one to forgo the expectation of reciprocity as the basis of the relationship (call it open-ended). Confidence in firms and institutions, on the other hand, is conditional, negotiated and limited. As Norman Lewis usefully observes:

“Seligman [Adam B. Seligan's book The Problem of Trust] argues convincingly that if a trusting act was based upon calculation of expected outcomes or on the rational expectation of a quantified outcome, this would not be an act of trust at all but an act based on confidence.”

Here Norman Lewis explains:

“Trust not only entails negotiating risk, it implies risk (by definition, if it is a means of negotiating that which is unknown). But the risk is specific. It is based upon the implicit recognition of others’ capacity to act freely and in unexpected ways. Unconditionality and engagement sit at the heart of trust relations.”

Lewis supports Seligan’s argument for minimal state interference in privacy enforcement on the grounds that it would abolish risk and enshrine distrust in legal doctrine. They’re on to something that PRs know about; trust and reputations are about what people say and think about you, what they confer on you. Lewis remarks:

“Trust is therefore a very rare commodity and because it is based on free will, trust cannot be demanded, only offered and accepted. Trust and mistrust thus develop in relationship to free will and the ability to exercise that will, as different responses to aspects of behaviour that can no longer be adequately contained within existing norms and social roles.”

But I’m not sure that I share their distaste for legal sanctions as strongly as they do. Sometimes the law is required to put people and companies in their place. But that’s an issue of degree. I do share their desire to link levels of privacy corporations provide with levels of confidence people put in them. So where there is low trust or confidence there should be low privacy and vice verse.

In short, we should trust our lawyers and doctors with our inner lives. But we should be wary on Facebook of what we reveal and worry about what they will do with the information and why.

The best indication of the levels of consumer confidence that exist in society has to be the choices people make when it comes to spending their own money. Right now, the free services the likes of Google provide, gives them an incentive to betray our privacy. Otherwise they’d have no sustainable means of economic survival; no ad revenue and no innate value to attract investors.

However, that said, the key to success lies with PRs and their work to change social attitudes. This challenge is about managing relationships between firms and institutions and their various stakeholders. That will require that we engage and listen and respond to the real-world’s concerns.

We have to help firms and institutions set realistic and meaningful expectations about the bargain they are striking with different audiences, in return for the level of confidence they demand or expect from others. As Lewis insight-fully observes about life online:

“The tentative conclusion and the fundamental insight this approach offers is that privacy attitudes and behaviours will change according to the level of trust or mistrust people have with regard to the people or institutions they are interacting with. How much they trust the potential beneficiary of their self-disclosure is now [I say going to be] the overriding motivator of behaviour.”

If PRs want to be seen to be advocates for trust, confidence and reputations in society, this is among the biggest debates of all that we should seek to influence.

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Kellaway’s cheeky cut and paste of a supposedly considered piece of internal corporate communication provoked a flurry of emails, saying things like:

“I’ve just read the latest Martin Lukes column and it wasn’t funny. I think you’ve just taken him too far from the real world. The stuff about Twilight was just silly. Can you please make him closer to real life in future?”

For those not in the know, Martin Lukes is the former chief executive of a-b glöbâl, released from prison in Florida, reunited with his BlackBerry. Here’s some of the less controversial codswallop Martin Lukes usually conveys:

“Hi Nitin – A quick heads-up on this incredibly exciting project: the roll-out of a Hippocratic oath for every co-worker.”

“Disastrous meeting. Bloody CFO obsessed about ?IF! delivering value. Can you send him Oliver’s report – it doesn’t add to the sum of human knowledge, but he seems to want proof of output …”

“Hi Adrian, A couple of pointers following our useful meeting just now. I know you are concerned about the P&L implications of the Employee Hippocratic Oath, but it seems you have neglected to consider that it will pay for itself by encouraging staff to steal fewer pens and paperclips.”

You get the point, I hope. Anyway, the words of billionaire hedge fund chief Tom Barrack to his staff at Colony Capital described his “personal breakthrough”. He told them in an email how, after a tough couple of weeks, he took some “yacht time” and chanced upon his daughter’s copy of Twilight. He wrote:

“Gang”

“I don’t get it … but I feel it. Taking the agenda-less time to absorb a point of view that I had ignored while loved ones around me relished it was an oasis for my soul.

“I feel renewed and refreshed, having gotten out of my comfort zone and experiencing something so totally out of my normal realm.”

After rambling on about love, anticipation and vampires, he resorts to what one guesses he rates as a rabble-rousing conclusion:

“Move your cheese!!!! … The earth is turning on its axis. Planets and moons and suns are in orbit. Gravity is pulling and tugging, and molecules and quarks are warring inside of us. We need movement to live …”

“It is hard for us to dream … it is time for all of us … to spend more time outside the strict arithmetic cadence of our business … we must really find the ‘moment’ …”

There’s a simple lesson here. Running a company is best left to the likes of Mr. Barrack, who is clearly a world leader at directing hedge funds. PR, however, is best filtered or produced and managed by professionals. Every C-suite needs access to an experienced wordsmith who leads their executive communications. She, or me if it’s a he (please forgive the shameless plug), needs to have a sound knowledge of business issues, sharpened by years in the front-line.

But before I disappear into the Twilight Zone, I’d like to remind readers of my debate with Neville Hobson, where he put the case for allowing (encouraging) corporate blogging online to be personal and unmediated by PRs, and I replied that it must be kept corporate, but made human: Corporate blogging: now it’s personal? I now feel vindicated by this example of how the personal in the corporate sphere can become pathetic when it gets divorced from professional oversight.

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Vision 2050 advocates that big business solves mankind’s major social and environmental problems in partnerships with government and society. The aim is to produce enough food, clean water, sanitation, shelter, mobility, education and health to provide for 9 billion humans.

Here’s some of what they think needs doing over the next forty years to make a sustainable planetary society possible:

“These include incorporating the costs of externalities, starting with carbon, ecosystem services and water, into the structure of the marketplace; doubling agricultural output without increasing the amount of land or water used; halting deforestation and increasing yields from planted forests: halving carbon emissions worldwide (based on 2005 levels) by 2050 through a shift to low-carbon energy systems and improved demand-side energy efficiency, and providing universal access to low-carbon mobility.”

The WBCSD explains that:

“As part of this transformation, Vision 2050 calls for a new agenda for business: to work with government and society worldwide to transform markets and competition. New rules for markets will reframe environmental challenges as economic challenges, driving innovation and competition in the direction of sustainability and away from resource- and energy-intensive production. Rationalizing prices to include such externalities as climate and biodiversity impacts will make corporate environmental efficiency a true competitive advantage across all industries and regions.”

How to interrogate this stuff from an independent PR perspective? Sceptically, I suggest.

Big business likes this stuff because it sounds and even is virtuous. It has the merit of turning all kinds of uncertainties into market opportunities. I certainly warm to Vision 2050′s commitment to raising productivity (output) by improving land usage and making better use of genetically modified organisms. I can also see the logic of accepting political realities and in proactively helping governments turn costly externalities into profit-centres.

It’s worth noting, though, that this means that externalities and social desirables become goods and services which have a state-subsidy or state guaranteed price.

The problem is that state planning risks making the future of the world dependent on the short-term political thinking politicians are prone toward, which is the very opposite of what Vision 2050 aims to achieve. Certainly, WBCSD hopes that governments will map the paths to achieve pre-advertised and pre-announced priced services (the ex-externalities), which is something that may or may not happen.

Yet, when the state is required to map out the big things it wants to happen, won’t it be natural (as the WBCSD knows well) that big firms will be able to gear up to deliver it quicker and better than small firms? Won’t government find itself talking with the big firms which can deliver big stuff?

For instance, BP may have cocked-up in the Gulf of Mexico, but a small firm couldn’t have even begun to get the deal. If you electrify cars, the trains, build new track, put in huge windfarms or solar arrays, deliver new low-pollution chemical plants etc, etc, almost all the sustainability deliverables get delivered quicker by giant firms. So the big problem-makers become the big problem-solvers. Yummy. Trebles all round. And a PR victory to boot, you would think. Perhaps, says I, but it is a short term and limited one. Here’s why.

Vision 2050 assumes that in the future the world will have to cutback on carbon dioxide usage to combat global warming. However, what if we could either suck the carbon from the atmosphere or clean it up effectively as we go at little cost? With the former solution we could turn-reverse global warming and keep using fossil fuels. With the latter solution we could make use of all the fossil fuel resources we desire for as long as they are available without making AGW any worse than it already is (evidence suggests there are still huge reserves of gas, oil and coal waiting to be exploited).

Moreover, if the nuclear fusion technology comes on tap in the next 40 years then our energy usage could increase in intensity almost without limit forever. Energy production might remain centralized with the emergence of fusion. It would also make desalination possible on a grand scale; ending all worries about water shortages in a world that is two thirds covered by oceans. We already know how to build gas pipelines over distances of thousands of miles to deliver energy to our homes, so building a global water-pipe network should not be beyond us (something states might legislate for but might not pay for; while the market might be able to sustain the entire costs because it is profitable to do so).

By making best use of nuclear fission, solar and wind technology, this might facilitate the trend toward greater decentralized energy provision that environmentalists demand and Vision 2010 supposes: that is until fusion  - or something else – replaces them all (again subsidies might help, and they might not, and special pleading might not be attractive to taxpayers either).

My point is not to favour this or that solution over some other possible solution. My point is that innovation creates new industries, new possibilities and paradigms. Another issue is that the WBCSD Vision 2050 is in the business of envisioning. In that regard, I accept that the BCSD has identified all sorts of problems which are up ahead, and it may be right that government has a role in fixing them, helped by big business. My concern is only that we should be careful when big business signs up for a green agenda, but only because it’s neat and now it suits them.

Regardless, they may still be right. But I suspect they’d be quick to argue, whatever the reality was, for legislation, controls etc, which make their life more mappable. That doesn’t make them wrong, but it takes away some of their virtue, which they so boldly lay claim to. In any case, they may – as I fear – wrap us in all sorts of expensive taxpayer action which turns out misguided and which leads to its own backlash that undermines their credibility and reputations for honesty, integrity and insight.

The future is almost certainly unpredictable. And perhaps my most important point of all is that we should instead be encouraging new risk-takers to emerge to solve today’s and tomorrow’s problems. Such risk takers are as likely as not to be competitors to today’s major solution providers. They will make best use of scientific and technological breakthroughs to challenge the existing order. Such innovation and innovators rarely emerge from partnership relationships (cosy clubs) but unfold as the work of disruptive entrepreneurs, as the railways, automobile, IT, internet and bio-pharmaceutical industries did.

Vision 2050 does have PR potential, certainly for spin. It also has potential for making progressive progress through the promotion of partnerships, even if its difficult to know in which field. What grates on me is the self-interested certainty that is embedded in the content and tone of Vision 2050. At the very least I counsel that however well intentioned Vision 2050 is, I don’t think it is a sustainable plan over the next 40 years given the nature of the unknown unknowns – such as politics, serendipity and competition – that are as likely as not to tear the plan’s assumptions to shreds.

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BP is on a knife-edge. They can’t seem attractive (and suitably penitent) whilst blaming others, and yet they are not alone in causing the accident in the Gulf. (Leave aside that they’ve got a gaffe-prone CEO who says that he wants things to go well because “I’d like my life back”. A severe shortage of pre-accident media training there, I fear.)

But in time – and that time isn’t yet, not by a long chalk – BP may well find itself able and required to discuss (first in private with sympathetic mature journalists and opinion-formers) where other parcels of blame lie.

It may well be that Transocean or Halliburton or others are culpable in some degree, perhaps even greatly. But how about those nice regulators who are the thin line between corporate greed and the fragile public and planet?

I am pretty sure that if there’s blame to be spread, the regulator is as much at fault (or as innocent) as BP or other firms. Indeed, I am inclined to think that the regulator is more to blame based on what I’ve learned from the circumstances behind all of the disasters I’ve ever studied. I’ll return to this another time, but from Titanic to Three Mile Island, I’m struck by how technological failure has flowed from regulatory failure rather than greed. I mean that very often – most often – the private sector fails when the public sector thinks it’s doing fine and has signed-off on its behaviour. (The modern financial failures are examples of this, by the way.)

So I reason that it was more the regulator’s job to drive, own, the “what-if” process than BP’s. It isn’t exactly BP’s job to be gungho and alpha-male. But, certainly, in the modern highly-regulated and accountable world the corporation is in a proper and allowed tension with its regulators. Indeed, I hold the view that regulators are rather feeble in hardly ever accepting a proper share of responsibility.

Unless BP has purposely pulled the wool over our eyes, something I doubt, or didn’t carry out its agreed obligations, which remains possible, I think BP ought to be cut a good deal more slack than it actually will be.

It looks likely that BP was operating in the Gulf of Mexico at the edge of technology’s capabilities in a high risk environment. (Krauthammer in the Washington Post argues that’s because of green prejudice, a nice argument I won’t pursue.) If it turns out that BP’s bad luck was to have an accident that no regulator or operator on earth had made allowances for then BP has the makings of a sound defence.  Though, paradoxically, even if that’s proven true, that’s an argument which can’t be pressed too loudly in polite society without risking a backlash.

There’s little doubt, then, that the blame will stick with the corporations (it may widen from BP as Shell fears here). That’s not least because regulators and the politicians will wriggle out of it and the media will prefer to hound BP and the other corporations to hounding the regulators and governments. That’s unless, and I’m dreaming here, the balance of third party opinion comes down on BP’s side.

I am almost sure – and far from happy about it because I believe BP should say what it knows or believes to be true – that there is very little BP can say today credibly in public. It cannot exonerate itself to any degree without appearing to avoid responsibility. It is up against quite deep human prejudices and tastes.

People love disaster and villainy. That’s why certain accidents have had mythic narrative power which no amount of good evidence can shift.  The Titanic, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Exxon Valdez, are powerful cases where the very names have stuck emblematically in our minds. Their very mention comes with the clutter of preconceived ideas about class, capitalism, corporations, technological over-reach. BP will, presumably, now join that list. Like the others, it will probably be a good example of an operation which went on to do good work whilst exploiting plenty more technology. But it will serve as an example of bad-intentions and hubris.

It is just possible that this event will sink BP. But that would make it truly unique (even the owners of the Titanic didn’t go under).

Away from the hype, the financial market will look at this issue in a wholly cash manner. What will the accident cost? Will BP face difficulty getting US or other licences? Yes, this might well be a transformative event for the entire petroleum industry. But the market may think that BP is becoming case-hardened in a big-time way.

Therefore the outcome of the whole affair provides BP with an opportunity to take pole-position in the battle to reshape the industry’s worldwide image. After all, the world remains as dependent as ever on petroleum, so there’s a lot of mutual self-interest out there. There’s also a lot of cognitive dissonance. Plenty of firms feel forced to align their reputations with tragedies, real and very often imagined, as if they were responsible for them, but still do good business regardless. Some of my colleagues – cynically, perhaps – call that hit on the company’s reputation the price of securing a licence to operate.

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There was something very panicky about what Shell called its visionary remediation plan for Nigeria. The press release partly explained the company’s motivation thus:

“The expected hurricane of regulation and policy change across industry, resulting from the negligent practices [in the Gulf of Mexico] by one pair of companies especially, means that all of us need to try to push harder in the interests of long-term survival. Shell will therefore distinguish ourselves by being the first oil company in history to cease taking risks with important delta ecosystems.”

But Shell has no more idea what caused the accident in the Gulf of Mexico than does BP. There’s been some discussion as to likely causes at a Senate hearing (dubbed the blame game by President Obama) but there’s been no conclusive evidence revealed that negligence sparked the accident. It is highly indecent, opportunistic and disrespectful of a rival for Shell to say or suggest otherwise right now.

Let’s get back to Nigeria. There is a blinding omission in Shell’s picture of its work in the Niger Delta. It has completely ignored the truth of the damage it is supposed to have done. Instead, it has scapegoated itself. It has seemed to accept responsibility for stuff it didn’t do. Maybe the “truth and reconciliation” work it is funding will start to reveal the rights and wrongs of all the parties in Nigeria, but I frankly doubt it. This is a pity. Nigerians have the right to know the truth about their country’s workings.

Poverty won’t be dented much

Shell proposes to spend $8 billion over the next two years followed by $1 billion per year over the following ten years to clean up the Niger Delta. That’s a region in which more than 30 million people live. So there’s no way that an investment of $2.50 per person per week for two years, followed by $0.62 for ten is going to lift the region out of poverty.

Such an expenditure might help clean up the Niger Delta. Equally (perhaps more than likely) it might not. Shell promises to use locally-sourced suppliers and staff in a region in which it was and remains responsible for just a small proportion of the overall oil pollution, and in which it has little power to tackle the problem of leaks at source. Moreover, the Niger Delta is the most corrupt region in one of the world’s most corrupt countries (the world’s 130th most corrupt state, and falling) as I recently explained in my personal account, CSR: it’s not the same in Lagos as in London.

Shell also said yesterday that it proposes to establish a $4 billion fund earmarked for compensation for perceived injustices in the Niger Delta caused by its operations since 1958. In describing its intentions, Shell borrowed emotive language from post-apartheid South Africa. It talked about creating a $45 million ”truth and reconciliation process” fund, which will assess and award reparations. That’s likely to create a feeding frenzy centred on locals involved in the fund in which those that win bank in Zurich, and those that lose reach for their guns and head back to the Niger Delta’s creeks.

To glimpse the trouble Shell might encounter, we need only examine how hard it has been for Pfizer to handover around $30 million worth of compensation to 100 or so so-called victims of its meningitis-related drugs trial in the north of Nigeria. Unlike Pfizer, however, Shell possesses no DNA data-bank of the people affected by its activities (regardless of the evidence, Pfizer has been unable to convince the other side of who is entitled to compensation and who is not).

China seeks to replace Shell

But there was also some more weird stuff wrapped up in yesterday’s press release from Shell. I say weird because it strikes me as unreal, and therefore as untrustworthy. Shell promised to:

“…cap oil production at current levels until 2015, and then to gradually reduce production to 10 percent of current levels by 2050, while compensating for this reduction through the development of renewable energy sources.”

Yet Nigeria has just concluded a deal with the Chinese to construct three oil refineries at a cost of $23 billion. It is clear from this that Nigeria is dreaming of an oil-filled future, not one based on renewables. But this deal might explain Shell’s warped CSR strategy, as the WSJ says:

“For the Nigeria government, the deal represents a victory of sorts over U.S. and European oil companies, which have long turned a deaf ear to Nigerian government calls to operate refineries in the country because of the poor financial returns.”

The real prize for China is getting its hands on Nigeria oil reserves. To do so it needs to displace the Western companies already established there with their rights to exploit the resource. So that perhaps explains why Shell took the bold step yesterday to cease:

“…deepwater drilling off the coast of Nigeria until the conclusion of a full independent safety review by our local government partners with international oversight.”

This will, as Shell explained in its release, ensure that it has a secure long-term licence to operate in the region (assuming it jumps this self-made hurdle). This pro-active move might well strengthen Shell’s grip on the Nigerian market in the face of stiff competition. It might well explain Shell’s CSR flannel. But yesterday’s announcement is not so easily dismissed. Hidden away, low down in the release was this very significant global commitment to create:

“…local stakeholder program [s] that gives decision-making and veto capacity over new and ongoing projects to communities affected by Shell and SPDC projects worldwide, pending more formal control at the level of local government.”

Exactly how this will be implemented is not explained. Whether Shell would really give, say, the spokespeople of 500 000 local Ogoni tribes people in the Niger Delta region the right of veto, when it has the support of the Nigerian government representing 150 million citizens, remains to be seen.

Lending Goodluck a hand?

There’s a new President in Nigeria. Goodluck Jonathan’s chances of remaining President come the next Presidential election depend in large part upon whether or not he can secure peace in the conflict-ridden Niger Delta region from where he hails. So one suspects Shell has a two-pronged approach. Its latest strategy looks like a ruse to see off Chinese competition and to curry favour with the new President. As I see it, Shell simply decided that its survival in Nigeria depended upon it helping to fund the peace process through its CSR initiative.

Much of yesterday’s announcement came wrapped in today’s obligatory language of sustainability:

“The unique geology underlying these deltas have sustained our shareholders very well, but we must not let that kind of sustainability come at the the expense of the biodiversity, carbon absorption and O2 production that are their true worth.”

But Nigeria’s economic future and sustainability depends upon oil revenue. The sustainability of Western economies also in large part depends upon continued oil supply. China’s future economic growth depends upon cheap energy much of which it hopes to obtain from Africa.

Some home truths

Sure, nobody can doubt that the Niger Delta needs cleaning up and that Shell should have stopped gas flaring years ago, which it announced it was ceasing immediately. Sure, it is also welcome news that Shell now proposes to exploit the surplus gas instead to provide free energy to local people. Sure, nobody can argue with a commitment to protect the region’s biodiversity. Actually, though, Shell has wanted to reduce gas flaring for many years and for several years (I cannot speak for the very recent history) its investment was bedevilled by the failure of its Nigerian government partners to cough up their share.

The issue I’m exploring right now, however, is what’s really driving Shell’s new strategy.

We immediately meet the oldest problem in discussing CSR. When a firm claims to be interested in environment and society, does it matter if these are cloaks for its own self-interest? Is it morally and strategically sort of OK for firms to claim an interest in being virtuous when, after all, it happens that the wider human and planetary good happens to flow alongside their own advantage?

I would not want you to think I am too much of a purist. Hypocrisy and humbug are often valuable. We need lots of sleeping dogs to have their peace.

But when a firm announces a CSR programme, half-way sensible people start digging (it’s better than running straight for the doors). Maybe we’ll never know what Shell’s motives really are. One casualty of the CSR process is honesty: outsiders will never now know what Shell is really thinking. We have to speculate.

Using Nigeria as a poster child

My main guess is this: Shell has decided that it will turn the Niger Delta into a poster child. It will do a very great deal to buy itself a good global reputation by its work there.

I believe that Shell’s imprudent comments on the Gulf of Mexico disaster reveals boardroom-level angst about the likely consequences of the spill for the entire petroleum industry. That will have tempted the company to over-hype the virtue of its CSR spend in Nigeria and throw into the mix some loose global commitments to listen more to stakeholders.

There must also be a very big Nigerian dimension. It takes very little cynicism to speculate that locally, regionally and nationally in Nigeria, these new CSR schemes have been designed to do some quite shabby or at any rate covert and unseen work whilst flying the CSR banner.

So I can’t help feeling that Shell’s response is a self-interested and cynical abuse of CSR and all that it should stand for.

Peter Vosper puts his foot in it

There is something comic in hearing CEO Peter Voser say:

“At long last the words ‘stakeholder’ and ‘sustainable’ will actually mean something. CSR-ND means planning not just for short-term profits, but for what actually matters, including the viability of the planet itself.”

It’s as though he’s admitting that CSR has been hogwash so far, and this time it isn’t, honest injun. But maybe his successor, and his successor’s successor, will be making similar declarations that CSR is at last the real clean, saintly, truthful thing.

Shell’s stunt may work on most levels. The Niger Delta may be a slightly nicer and happier place. Shell may secure its place in Nigeria’s tortuous political economy. The firm may acquire a global bloom at tolerable cost. It may be able to feel better about itself.

I still think it matters to say that corporate culture is polluted when the necessary, expedient and self-interested are dressed-up as outward looking, transformative and virtuous. I don’t know how much narrow self-interest and canny show-boating lies behind this new strategy of Shell’s, but my guess is that there’s a fair bit of it. Anyone interested in the well-being of Shell, but especially of Nigeria, ought to keep watching and inquiring.

Maybe we should be asking Shell to archive its discussions on this CSR programme, and promise to publish them in 30 years. In the interests of intellectual and moral sustainability, you understand.

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As the three companies faced their interrogators, behind sat protesters wearing T-shirts embossed “Energy shouldn’t cost lives”. When the proceedings closed the protesters screamed at the BP spokesman, “Hey, Hey, Lamar MacKay, how many fish did you kill today?” They chanted “Boycott BP”. They seemed to have friends in the Senate. Bob Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey said:

“We were told that the Titanic was so technologically advanced that it couldn’t sink, and we were told that this well was so technologically advanced that it couldn’t spill. Unfortunately both of these technological marvels ended in tragedy.”

Actually, nobody ever said that either accident couldn’t happen. Though the makers of the Titanic and BP both at some point understated the potential risk involved in their respective challenges. That’s all the more reason, I believe, for BP to use this latest incident to set the record straight with the public about the realities of its business.

But right now the White House has vowed to “keep a boot to the throat” of BP. That’s an understandable response while the oil flows unchecked from the seabed. That does not mean that either PRs or BP should see it that way.

However, PR dogma suggests that BP should bite its tongue. The PR rulebook, designed to maintain a licence to operate, opines that if people think BP’s the villain it should act like one. Larry Smith of the Institute for Crisis Management and Timothy Coombs of Eastern Illinois University advocated this viewpoint to Slate:

[It's] literally true: BP owns the oil but not the rig. But it’s a shoddy communications strategy, says Smith. Wherever the fault lies, BP shouldn’t be splitting hairs. Companies should take the fall and work out recriminations behind closed doors, says Coombs. For example, when the chain Taco Johns had an E. coli outbreak, it didn’t publicly blame the lettuce supplier. It took responsibility. And, of course, sued the lettuce supplier later.

Effectively, Coombs is arguing that BP should adopt a cynical strategy in which it says one thing in private and another in public. His logic – and that of most PRs – is that the truth is too nuanced and complex for the public to comprehend. The argument goes that perception is everything. As the WSJ explained, they’ve got a point:

When you consider that analysts’ worst case scenarios put the eventual cost to BP at around $8 billion, yet $30 billion has been wiped off the company’s market capitalization since the crisis began, it becomes clear that this reputational damage has a value.

The problem is that by accepting full responsibility for the accident, BP would promote itself (dishonestly) as incompetent. How would that help maintain its credibility and reputation? Hence, I much prefer BP chief executive Tony Hayward’s strategy of accepting full responsibility for cleaning up the mess caused by its oil, while quietly but firmly disputing that it caused or was responsible for the accident. But Malcolm Gooderham, MD, TLG Communications, dubbed Hayward’s approach a “Miss” in PR Week. He also contrasted Hayward’s stance to that of his predecessor, Lord Browne:

“The virtue of Browne’s tenure was that despite the disasters, he is revered because of his strategic achievements. The challenge for BP today is to define a new thought leadership agenda.”

Browne’s thought leadership led him to re-brand British Petroleum as Beyond Petroleum. It was deceptive positioning and slightly bonkers to boot. To his credit, when Hayward took control of BP, he quietly downgraded the tag-line’s prominence. It now merely serves as “shorthand for what we do”, which is petroleum, and it hardly features at all in BP’s PR. What’s more, the irony of BP’s current plight is that it follows Mr Hayward’s determination to re-oritentate itself on technological competence rather than geo-political flair.

So what’s my advice to BP today?

• BP should concentrate on proving itself committed and competent as it cleans up the mess and reconsiders safety strategies
• BP has to speak with one voice in public and in private, now and in the future
• BP should use this crisis to educate the media, public and political elite about the realities of complex accountability
• BP should seek to lay the blame wherever the facts take them, even if some more of it falls on them
• BP should remind the world that energy is bottled force; BP is as good as any in handling the hazards involved in fueling our world
• BP should state the Browne years of Texas and Alaska lapses are behind them and what happened in the Gulf of Mexico was not caused by the same internal flaws
• BP needs to stress that the oil that’s now being drilled is located in inhospitable conditions and has inescapable risks
• BP should repeat and repeat that whatever lessons can be learned will be learned and that no stone will be left unturned in discovering them.

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Before we go on, it is worth building on part 1′s theme: what exactly do the Stockholm Accords expect to achieve? Here’s what the event’s website says about their objective:

“The aim of the Stockholm Accords is to articulate and establish the role of public relations in the “communicativeorganization”[sic] within a fast-evolving digital and value-network society.”

In essence, the Accords suppose that we live in a new “networked society in which communicative organizations are vital to organisational success” (forgive the clumsy words, they’re theirs, not mine).

In essence my beef is that this exercise over-complicates everything. Most PR is an effort to help clients both be and appear more attractive. You can usefully enrich that proposition by noting that there are internal and external audiences; that everything about an organisation can be part of its good or bad messages; that building up a good reputation may be useful for when things go wrong (as they will). One may want to stress how non-stop and intrusive and persistent modern observers are. Perversely, the globalised, modern world is more like a village than ever: everybody thinks everything is their business.

As I argued in part 1, the Accords ignore the obvious: society is, and always has been, networks personified. Moreover, all human interaction depends upon communication and relationships, or nothing whatever would have been or will ever be achieved. Of course, the digital bit is sort of new. I say sort of because the internet is now second or third generation. It strikes me that the Accords’ authors are really saying that their thinking boils down to considering technology’s influence on human behaviour. This narrow obsession has sent them and their new definition of PR’s role off in the wrong direction.

There’s no wisdom in a mob, but there’s often treasure buried in crowds. So, of course, I accept there is something in Reed’s Law. (See: “The Law of the Pack”). I accept its proposition that digital networks can scale exponentially by transforming technological platforms into social networks that add value. But in the business world, Reed’s Law is just a statement of potential. It remains a theoretical construct that might prove to be hopeless if taken too far. The commercial world is in recession. It is not currently up for the risky experimentation and investment that would be required to test the weaknesses and strengths of Reed’s Law. This is something I discussed in part 1 No. 2 & No. 14 (without mentioning Reed). In part 1, I also cited SM’s irrelevance in the British General Election and its only fleeting influence on American politics.

My charge is that the authors of the Stockholm Accords lack historical or sociological insight. Most of today’s social developments from the breakdown of traditional politics, to the shift in community alignments, or the fall of religious influence, to the decline in trust in, and authority of, traditional institutions, pre-dates the internet.

In other words, the internet and social media usage were shaped in the wake of already existing currents, including the already declining mass media. That was particularly the case with SM, which is more often used as a retreat from public life rather than as its lifeblood. That’s one thing China’s SM usage has in common with the West’s. There’s mass disengagement and passivity in society, which is the polar opposite of empowerment, which so many PRs like to crow about. That’s not to say SM is irrelevant, or that it does not have influence or empower people, sometimes, in this or that circumstance or usage.

It is the failure of the Stockholm Accords to look at these real world tensions during the boom and now during the recession, and the Accords’ myopic worship of all things digital, which I criticise. But let me make it plain. This blog celebrates technology and advocates innovation. It is obsessed with understanding them and with exploiting their potential. But it does not endorse technological determinism, which I believe the Accords’ authors do.

So, that’s the preamble. Let’s now look at the Stockholm Accords one by one.

Stockholm Accords on governance:

“The increasingly adopted stakeholder governance model empowers board members and organisational leaders as ultimate custodians of stakeholder relationship strategies and policies, as well as of monitoring their implementation.

“In today’s value networks, a communicative organization requires timely knowledge of economic, social, political, legal and environmental developments, as well as opportunities and risks affecting the organisation, its direction, its actions and its communication.

“Public relations professionals:
• co-create organizational values, principles, strategies, policies and processes;
• constantly report on the dynamics of stakeholder involvement;
• inform, shape the organisation’s overall communication abilities;
•  measure, evaluate and account for results;
• deliver timely analysis and recommendations to ensure an effective governance of stakeholder relationships, enhancing transparency, trust and sustaining the organisation’s ‘licence to operate.’”

My reply

I dealt with the above extensively in part 1. But let me now add a few more brief remarks;

• The stakeholder governance model or doctrine is seriously flawed. An organisation can’t look to outsiders as the first source of its probity and efficiency.
• Firms, governments and institutions primarily pursue self-interest. This will include a measure of enlightened and widened self-interest.
• PR is indeed uniquely useful in our complicated, media-orientated times. But we should beware over-stating the newness of our skills and roles.

Stockholm Accords on management:

“Effective and timely decision-making related to operations and resource management are essential for organizations seeking to enhance their license to operate. These management choices must be sensitive to the concerns of internal and external stakeholders, seeking equilibrium between societal and organizational goals.
A communicative organization listens to its stakeholders, uses this input to improve the quality of its decisions, and communicates through its behavior.

“Public relations professionals:
° help understand and interpret broader societal, political and economic interests and aspirations;
° participate to the solution of organizational issues and lead those that are particularly focused on stakeholder relationships;
° help to legitimize the organization; by increasing the communicative value of products, processes, services; and building financial, legal, relational and operational capital.”

My reply

Yes, PRs are the professional diplomats of the modern organisation’s internal and external relationships. But we won’t do the job better by having theories and ambitions which are too fancy for the valuable but recognisable work they have to do. Way too much of the Stockholm Accords’ approach brings in more posy sociology, management-speak, media studies, post modern guff. This is the way to lose the interest of clients and audiences alike.

Stockholm Accords on sustainability:

“An organization’s sustainability is based on balancing today’s demands with the ability to meet future needs, based on economic, environmental and social dimensions.

“In this network society, sustainability leadership offers a transformational opportunity for the communicative organization to enhance it’s license to operate and demonstrate success across the triple bottom  line.- economic, social and environmental.

“Public relations professionals identify, involve and engage key stakeholders contributing to appropriate sustainability policies and programs by:
• interpreting society’s expectations for sound economical, social and environmental investments that show a return to the organization (the advocate);
• creating a listening culture – an open system that allows the organization to anticipate, adapt and respond (the listener);
• ensuring stakeholder participation to identify what information should be transparently and authentically reported (the reporter);
• going beyond today’s priorities to anticipate the needs of tomorrow, by engaging stakeholders and management in long-term thinking (the leader).”

My reply

Sustainability has to do with robustness and flexibility, which can be darn hard things to reconcile. We need to be modest: sustainability is about the future, a thing we know very little about. We should not pretend to know the recipe for survival (or to assume, for instance, that environmentalists are any cleverer at it than supposedly un-green capitalists).

Stockholm Accords on the new boundaries of internal communication:

“Internal communication enhances recruitment, retention, development of employee loyalty and commitment to organizational goals by ever more diverse and segmented publics.

“In the network society a communicative organization goes far beyond today’s traditional definition of full-time employees, understanding that internal stakeholders now include full-timers with tenure generally shortening, part-timers, seasonal employees, contractors, consultants, suppliers, agents, distributors, volunteers and more.

“Public relations professionals constantly address:
° how organizational leaders communicate;
° how knowledge is shared;
° how decisions are made;
° how processes and structures are created;
° and expand communication to include many boundary publics that are also often considered as highly trusted sources of information about the organization and essential players contributing to the organization’s success.”

My reply

Yes, many of an organisation’s relationships are now both important and fleeting or arm’s length. Actually, that will often require an unattractive wariness. The need for secrecy, privacy and caution is greater than ever and has to be communicated as well as possible.

Stockholm Accords on the new boundaries of external communication:

“The network society mandates that a communicative organization expand its scope and skills to focus on customers*, investors*, communities*, governments*, active citizenship groups*,  industry groups*, mainstream, digital and social media*, and other situational stakeholders*.

“Public relations professionals:
° promote, support and contribute to modify products, services or processes;
° bring the voice of the organization into regulatory and community decisions;
° adopt social networking and research skills and tools to listen to stakeholder demands and report to management so that they may be appropriately interpreted and, where relevant and effective, integrated into the decision making process;
° strengthen brand loyalty* and equity*, thus reinforcing the organization’s license to operate;
° work with all organizational functions, through every step of production and delivery, to craft and implement effective communication programs*.
° actively participate in dialogue*, evaluate and measure results*, and accordingly adjust their practices.”

My reply

This looks like PR’s pitch to stick its nose in everywhere. Nice try, and to some extent justified.

Stockholm Accords on co-ordination of internal and external communication:

“In value networks, each communicative issue* is multi faceted*, multi stakeholder* and inter relational within and between different networks* and positioned in diverse legal frameworks.

“The communicative organization must balance global transparency, finite resources and time sensitive demands dealing with dynamic changes in inside/outside territorial borders and new conflicts of interests emerging from multiple stakeholder participation*.
Dialogue with internal, boundary and external stakeholders must be coordinated with the organization’s mission*, vision*, values*, implementation*, promises*, as well as actions* and behaviors*.

“Public Relations professionals:
° research, develop, monitor and adjust organizational behavior and communication behaviors providing leadership for issues based on stakeholder and societal relationships;
° develop a knowledge base that includes social and psychological sciences, best practices and formative research to create, evaluate, measure and implement programs for continuous improvement.”

My reply

This looks like a pitch for PRs to be rulers of the universe: all-seeing, all-knowing, etc. I don’t mind this accord but it is not so much edifying and energising as yawn-making. How about: “Almost every aspect of your work will convey a message about your organisation, so expect a good PR to take an interest in everything you do.”

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Pulling together hundreds of academics, PRs and business leaders to meet in Stockholm to discuss the role of public relations today is a great idea. This post is a contribution to that debate. I want to try to frame discussion.

Yes, the world is changing for our employers and clients, and especially for our best customers in big business and big government. Yes, PRs are trying to position their trade in this new world. Yes, PRs feel that the world of new media is changing the ground under their feet. However it is my contention that the current new-wave of thinking being expressed in the Stockholm Accords has not been thought-through properly. It is open to serious question and in some cases should be rejected altogether.

I have two prongs to my attack. One is that the Accords do not describe the problems well. The second is that they won’t work, and that’s partly because people will see that the premises are wrong, and partly because the Accord’s assumptions steer our clients away from the kind of robust messaging which stands a chance of surviving scrutiny and events.

Because the proposed Accords are complex, I’ve decided to post my contribution in three parts. The first will interrogate the glossary of terms which inform the overall thinking of the Accords. The second will examine the Accords themselves on Governance, Management, Sustainability, Internal and External (communication), and Coordination. The third will offer a much shorter summary of my key points of concern and some pointers to taking a more robust approach.

I’ve decided to print in full what the glossary says so that I cannot be accused of quoting out of context and so that people can make their own assessments by contrasting what’s been said. Here goes:

1. Stockholm Accords on stakeholder governance model:

“It implies that a corporation’s board of directors, or the elected leadership of a social or public sector organization, in the case of conflicts between contrasting stakeholder group expectancies decided which of them needs to be taken more into account, on the basis of a sound listening of those expectancies.

“The shareholder model instead – even when it recognizes that other interests beyond those of the shareholders need to be taken into account- tends to privilege, in the case of conflicting expectations, the latter.”

My reply

The idea that all stakeholders are equal is erroneous. To pretend that organisations think they are is to be open immediately to charges of double-speak.

Shareholders set the objectives of firms, control them through shareholder democracy, provide the funds to run businesses and reap the rewards from their long-term success while carrying the risks from their failure. Firms and institutions have self-interest at their core and there should be no shame in saying so. Of course, other stakeholder interests need to be taken account of to fulfill shareholder expectations because firms fulfill their objectives by providing goods or services which add value to society.

I’ve spelled out what’s wrong with today’s all-to-prevalent stakeholder doctrine and presented a manifesto in defence of shareholder value elsewhere on my PR blog here and here.

2. Stockholm Accords on value network:

“In the network society, the traditional and consolidated strategic planning process based on Michael Porter’s value chain model, which is mostly linear and material, is either replaced or at least integrated by another planning process based on value networks.

“This recognizes that much of the value created by the organization stems today from fuzzy (and not linear) and immaterial (rather than material) networks that normally disintegrate the distinction between internal and external publics because their components play specific and value added roles or are expelled from the value process.

“The value itself is based on the quality of the relationships which exist between the various components of each network and on the quality of the relationships which exist between the various networks.”

My reply

Society has always consisted of a collection of social networks held together by common values and interests. The question we need to address is what’s new about how they’re formed and interrelate. We need to ask sociological questions rather than get obsessed with technology and novelty.

Michael Porter’s supply chain model is as appropriate today as is Adam Smith’s account of the productivity boost and added value that comes from the division of labour in society (Porter just builds upon that sound logic: see also No. 14 in this text). Moreover, society is experiencing the exact opposite tendency to the one described in the Stockholm Accords. Value networks based on class and traditional communities are breaking down, as are old fashioned political allegiances and ideologies. But these social developments pre-date the internet and social media. They are hurting newspaper circulation, hollowing out political party organisations and undermining people’s self-definition as members of this or that class or community. In that sense traditional value networks are disintegrating.

It is also a myth (approaching technological determinism) that the internet and SM has created a new world of meaningful value networks. Take politics and public opinion. The UK election just showed that the internet is almost irrelevant to politics and to political outcomes (see here, here and here). The US election showed how the internet can have a major influence on politics, but not quite the way many commentators claimed. Even there it still played second fiddle to mainstream media, as demonstrated here. It is worth noting that the US-experience was a temporary one-off. There’s no relationship being forged between Obama and the masses via social media today, because a relationship is not a relationship unless it is ongoing. Moreover, as the 50-year-old and even older Tea Party GOP veterans turn to social media to vent their anger, Obama’s more youthful team increasingly condemns the medium itself (see here).

3. Stockholm Accords on the communicative organization:

“A communicative organization recognizes that even the most empowered public relations director cannot realistically hope to govern more than 10% of its communicative behaviours.

“Therefore the communication leader of the organization plays two fundamentally strategic roles:

“an ‘ideological’ role by supporting and providing the organization’s leadership with the necessary, timely and relevant information which allows it to effectively  govern the value networks as well as an intelligent, constant and conscious effort to understand the relevant dynamics of society at large;

“a ‘contextual’ role which implies the constant delivery of communicative skills, competencies and tools to the components of its value networks so that they improve their relationships amongst each other and with the other value networks.”

My reply

This is third-rate Machiavellian thinking. Indeed, its whole tone is the very reverse of the ”listening”, associative, socialised entites the Accords seem mostly to want our clients to aspire to become.

I insist PRs are not in the job of governing behaviour; not even among 10% of their audience. PRs do not and never should act like propagandists playing “an ‘ideological’ role” that seeks to “govern value networks”. PRs communicate as advocates. PRs seek to influence behaviour; not govern it. They influence debate and opinion and try to ensure positive outcomes on behalf of their employers. PRs explain and spread understanding and attempt to win consent for the views and activities of whomever they represent. Of course, that involves developing messages, positioning clients and defining what they stand for and wish to be known for. It also involves writing the narratives that connect with audiences, and it mostly requires us to cooperate with other groups by taking on-board their views and stances in a meaningful fashion (one that maximizes or acknowledges mutual benefits and honest disagreements). This was always so. But if there is a difference today to the past it is that the role and importance of professional PRs in ensuring positive outcomes is more understood and valued than before. Another major difference is that most post-1945 communication assumptions are becoming redundant precisely because there’s fewer clearly defined value networks of substance in play. Right now there appears to be more atomization and social disengagement in society than ever, which the internet and SM for all its potential doesn’t bridge and often accentuates.

4. Stockholm Accords on licence to operate:

“To reach its conscious objectives every organization needs to constantly nurture and improve its ‘licence to operate’ by improving relationships with its stakeholder groups and society at large on whose opinions, attitudes, behaviours and decisions the achievement of organizational objectives rely on.”

My reply

This is fine as far as it goes. But it is both obvious and empty. An organisation’s real licence to operate is its legality, the demand for its services and the willingness of people to deal with it. I have seen very few instances of the informal “licence to operate” being withdrawn where real-world acceptability was in place.

5. Stockholm Accords on boundary spanning and/or issue management:

“Beyond its direct and indirect relationships with active or potential stakeholder groups, the organization needs to identify and analyse those economic, political, social, technological issues whose dynamics impact on the achievement of its strategic and tactical objectives.

“In doing this and in prioritizing those issues through a careful importance/possibility-to-influence analysis, the organization must identify those subjects who either directly or indirectly impact on those dynamics and dialogue with them to convince them to either reduce their hostility or increase their support for the organization’s objectives.”

My reply

I agree. With luck PRs do operate as antennae, spotting reputational downsides and opportunities beyond the purview of clients who may well be too busy perfecting widgets to have ears to the ground, etc. And PRs ought to be good at spotting social changes which require changes in their clients’ behaviour.

6. Stockholm Accords on sustainability:

“In organizational management speak the term (once also defined as corporate social responsibility or CSR) is used to indicate those policies and programs which ensure the economic, environmental and social being of the organization well beyond the short and medium term, and is directly connected to its licence to operate, the quality of its stakeholder relationships as well as the concern for societal and presumed future generations expectations.”

My reply

This is a minefield in which a lot of nonsense gets said. Some firms and institutions are in it for the long term and some merely (but just as reasonably) for the short term (that goes for shareholder value too). Organisational structures are rarely sustainable because they are designed to meet specific challenges at specific times; hence the saying “the only certainty is change”. The word “sustainable” does not always fit comfortably with the word “development”. Of course that does not mean that firms ought to sacrifice their long term interests in return for short term gains. One of the big issues in society – perhaps partly responsible for the recession – has been the pressure to boost short term shareholder value at the expense of long term business success and at the risk of business implosion and collapse.

7. Stockholm Accords on economic, environmental, social dimensions -  transformational opportunity:

“Sustainability policies and programs, even more than external consequences for the organization, represent possibly the most relevant leverage for its leadership to drive internal cultural change and transformation.”

My reply

I think this means that being environmentally aware may achieve nothing much except for a feel-good factor within the organisation. This is OK so far as it goes but it seems (a) a bit inward looking and (b) a terrible mangling of the English language.

8. Stockholm Accords on stakeholders:

Are those publics which are aware and interested in dialogue with the organization because its activities bear consequences on them and/or whose activities bear consequences on the organization.

Potential stakeholders are instead those public which, if made aware of the organizations strategic or tactical objectives, would be interested in dialogue with the organization. The prevalent communicative mode with the first is pull and for the second, at least initially, is push.”

My reply

I have dealt with this issue above and refer readers to an in-depth piece by me here.

9. Stockholm Accords on advocate, listener, reporter, leader:

“These four roles of the organization’s communication function, as much as the internal articulation may allow, imply different professional skills and competencies.

“While the advocate needs to be highly familiar with the contents of the argument to be advocated as well as nurture rhetoric skills, the listener must know the basics of desk analysis, opinion and attitude research as well as be equipped with the skills to objectively comprehend and subjectively interpret inspired by organizations objectives the collected materials.

“In turn, the reporter needs to be an excellent narrator capable of finding the correct formats and preparing the most attractive contents to attract the attention of organizational stakeholders while the leader needs to be highly credible inside the organization as well as be a good manager in enabling other to be effective in group and project work.”

My reply

This sounds like a CV written by an over-educated and under-experienced chancer.

The real danger here is that listening and an over-reliance on research leads to confusion, indecision, caution and the abdication of responsibility by decision-makers. In a world as fluid as ours there is often not a coherent set of views, or even a clearly defined audience (never mind audiences) to examine and interpret what’s in their interest. The duty of PRs is more to help their bosses lead than it is to help them listen; though listening is a must-have PR skill. The real problem is defining what the public interest is, which is far from easy. Mostly it is not definable by opinion surveys or research. The public interest is a constantly changing reality; a moving target. Moreover, PRs are not the best advocates of the public interest or in the best position to interpret it objectively because they represent their employers first and foremost. Suspicious minds might also remark that no company ever claims to act against the pubic interest and that no PR campaign ever made opposing it a positive part of its platform.

10. Stockholm Accords on falling boundaries between internal and external communication:

“With every individual potentially being a globally accessible medium and with the constant decline in credibility of institutions and authorities, traditional internal publics are increasingly being considered as the most trusted sources of information from the organization.

“Vice versa, and for the same reasons, any customer or supplier or competitor opinion on the organization is immediately accessible by traditional internal publics.

“What is more, border publics such as shareholders, consultants, agents and partners are considered highly credible subject by both traditional internal and external publics.  Most boundaries between publics are tumbling down.”

My reply

Yes, everyone’s got an opinion and it’s amazing who gets attention. So yes, you want to be in touch with a huge range of voice. But – and it’s a huge but – firms, governments, institutions, NGOs and all our clients still have to aim to get trusted, and they’ll do it best by speaking in a trustworthy way about their work.

11. Stockholder Accords on leadership communication:

“Organization increasingly define and attempt to implement policies and programs which imply coherent and cross functional leadership styles. This is a core and natural role for public relations professionals operating inside or working for the organization.”

My reply

Perhaps, and certainly it’s the job of PR to grease the wheels of whatever structure our clients fancy. But fashions change. One day, the business is a network or a matrix. The next it’s a series of radiating lines. Like, one day organisation is by region, the next by function.

The fact is, old-style top-down management techniques still predominate the business world today for good reasons. Even so-called old-fashioned silos still make business sense and define best practice – not least for setting lines of accountability and responsibility. Moreover, successful and innovative businesses today are increasingly centralised and command and control-led: look at Apple, Google, Facebook, Ryanair and Microsoft. Some businesses do well with a decentralized and locally empowering approach, such as coffee shops and other retail chains (though only up to a point because their backbones are tight and efficient). It is worth noting that many of Toyota’s recent problems were caused by over-centralisation on the one hand, and a too loose a grip on its suppliers on the other (so there’s always a tension involved in managing such challenges successfully).

At the level of the state we can expect to see lots of change (for instance, the US state may do more, the UK state less). States’ management and regulation of the economy is changing fast, and unpredictably. Firms and the Third Sector may get much more involved in previously non-commercial welfare roles. The transition and restructuring that all this involves will require a lot of consensus-busting and unavoidable conflict. Such an environment requires honest and robust PR. It also requires a rejection of much of the language, logic and thinking currently being proposed in the Stockholm Accords. Increasingly, both firms and governments are going to have to be brutal to survive – let’s not pretend otherwise.

12. Stockholm Accords on knowledge sharing:

“The sharing of knowledge inside and increasingly also outside the organization is considered one of the more precious immaterial assets in and amongst value networks.

“This is enhanced by smooth and productive relationships amongst network components and the public relations professional in appropriately performing h/er ‘contextual’ role can be instrumental.”

My reply

Holding on to intellectual property has never been more important or more difficult. But sure, firms and other institutions probably should be more adventurous in their pro bono use of their skills, wisdom and information.

13. Stockholm Accords on decision making processes:

“Effective and timely decision making process are essential to the success of the organization. By professionally listening to, understanding and interpreting stakeholder expectations before decisions are made by management, the public relations professional allows leadership to improve the quality of those decisions, to accelerate the time of their implementation and, in those recurring circumstances in which decisions are not adapted to include a specific stakeholder group expectancies, allows the organization to better anticipate and prepare to deal with potentially disrupting actions by that stakeholder group.”

My reply

This is a statement of the obvious.

14. Stockholm Accords on processes and structure:

“Ever changing processes and structures inside and amongst value networks are constantly framing change management programs of the organization. Change management, if and when it really works, mostly relies on sound and realistic objectives and effective relationships, which in turn are driven by good communication.”

My reply

Again this is motherhood stuff. However there could be something in this that the authors of the Stockholm Accords don’t get. Some modern companies are increasingly partner-focused and dependent on integrated inter-company networks. The success of such endeavours requires collaboration and the management of processes throughout the value chain. This is very much in line with Michael Porter’s thinking, which the authors of the Accords mistakenly believe is now largely redundant (see No. 2). The innovation here lies in the introduction of end-to-end data access between the various companies. In other words it is about the integration of one company’s internal information systems with another’s. The objective is for staff from different firms to work in sync to maximize the use of social and technological capital. Of course, this does throw up some challenges for PRs, but it is much more the realm of CIOs and other business disciplines than it is of ours. Moreover, such developments do not put a stop to command and control or top down leadership techniques, even though they encourages collaboration and real-time decision making. I’m of the opinion that it is from this fledgling field of cross-company systems integration, in which social media could play a major innovative role, that the Accords’ authors grabbed the term “value network”, and then bent it out of shape and made it valueless.

15. Stockholm Accords on stakeholder groups:

“These are individuals and organizations who are aware and interested in developing a relationship with the organization because the organization’s actions bear consequences on them or through their actions they bear consequences on the organization. Not necessarily a favourable relationship.

“These stakeholder groups are not chosen by the organization, but decide by themselves to be and act as stakeholders. It is clearly up to the organization to acknowledge them and to responsibly involve and/or engage with them, at its own peril.”

My reply

I have tirelessly – indeed to the point of tedium – combatted the idea that all and sundry are one’s stakeholders. I do accept that it’s no use assuming one’s critics are one’s enemies and can be ignored or fought, as opposed to schmoozed, co-opted, or otherwise engaged where possible. I think it is also true, by the way, that one’s clients’ supposed friends are often very false. So sure, a PR’s job is to engage widely. But reticence will sometimes be useful, and it can be extremely dangerous to pretend to be all things to all men.

16. Stockholm Accords on situational stakeholders:

“Stakeholder groups may also be situational as they form and dissolve according to social and organizational dynamics which need to be carefully monitored by the public relations professional.”

My reply

Well said. That’s a pompous way of saying that a lot of one’s support and opposition is temporary and opportunistic. It doesn’t do to get too bogged down in today’s PR battles. As is the case in bringing up children, quite often problems have just gone away long before one’s worked out a clever strategy to deal with them.

17. Stockholm Accords on brand loyalty:

“This is a traditional marketing term which has grown to include the quality, the trust, the commitment and the power balance of the relationship of a customer or any other stakeholder with the organization.”

My reply

It’s a big mistake to think that there is much new about brands: they were always valuable and wide-ranging. Just think of what Ford or Boots or Cadbury or ICI meant to people. Anyway the statement, like much of the wording of the Accords, reads like an assault on the English language, which does little to enhance our image as professional communicators.

18. Stockholm Accords on brand equity:

“This is one of the immaterial values attributed to an organization’s overall capitalization. Often expressed in monetary terms, this value is calculated by conventions amongst peers which relate monetary value to immaterial indicators.”

My reply

Agreed. Intangibles such as reputation have a direct influence on tangibles such as share price and market share.

19. Stockholm Accords on dialogue, participation:

“An organization’s stakeholder relationships may be differently categorised according to their acknowledgement, involvement, engagement, separation, divorce programs. A relationship begins with the two subjects acknowledging each other (acknowledgement); then proceeds when the organization stimulates its stakeholder groups to access the information they believe stakeholder groups require to keep abreast on their relationship and are enabled to provide feedback (involvement); the organization may also decide that in order to more effectively achieve its objectives it should engage some of its stakeholder groups in direct dialogue and conversation on specific issues in order to find mutually beneficial outcomes (engagement):

“Sometimes this does not work, and there is a period of time between separation and divorce in which the organization can attempt to involve them”

My reply

The degree to which any organisation engages with another is driven by self-interest. Of course it can be enlightened. Anyway, isn’t this Accords statement a complicated PC way of saying the obvious: that you often need to sup with a long spoon?

20. Stockholm Accords on success, evaluation and measurement:

“The most importance measure of success for public relations professionals, beyond the visible and tangible achievement of the organization’s specific objectives, within a given time frame and a given amount of financial and human resources, is based one or more selected evaluation or measurement tools which today are abundant and certainly no fewer than those available to other management functions. Evaluation implies the prevalent use of qualitative tools while measurement implies a prevalent use of quantitative tools. The new frontier, as is happening for other management functions, relies in quantilitative tools which integrate both evaluation and measurement.”

My reply

“Quantilative”: we can hope that doesn’t last. There’s an obsession with measuring intangibles which borders on nonsense. It is partly driven by the research industry itself (call it their marketing success) and partly by insecure PRs trying to justify their budgets. Much of what constitutes research and its results is self-justification and not to be trusted. Some is invaluable. Naturally enough, as a PR you will be valued when you prove yourself in a crisis. The rest of the time you’re trying to prove you’re valuable because of something which didn’t happen, and that’s a tough call.

21. Stockholm Accords on communicative issue:

“A communicative issue is one which, in its analysis and operative process by the organization coherently with its objectives, implies and requires an above average focus on stakeholder relationships and effective communication.”

My reply

I have a feeling that a “communicative issue” is a communication problem or opportunity. So that would be an issue involving diplomacy and messages. Do you mind if I repeat that our trade does itself no good when it wraps simple ideas in the kind of windy guff that is more in place in a third-rate sociology department?

22. Stockholm Accords on Multifaceted, multi-stakeholder, inter-relational:

The concepts of network society, value networks and communicative organizations imply that issues are more than often multifaceted (they provide different perspectives and angles according to the single stakeholder group perspective), multi-stakeholder (individuals and organizations increasingly belong to parallel stakeholder groups who may even have conflicting interests, for example shareholders, employees and sometimes even suppliers…), and inter relational in that value network components may in parallel belong to more than one network and perform different roles which implies that relationships amongst value network components as well as different value networks may be also in conflict.”

My reply

There’s nothing new in the insight that society consists of a tangle of webs in which contradictory values and interests co-exist. (Bernays, for instance, was clear about that.) It has also always been the case that most people rarely grasp how their differing interests are irreconcilable or at least conflicting, or even how downright hypocritical their own views are. It was always true that customers could be shareholders, employees, activists and consumers. The truth is we can’t have it all and often we don’t know what we want anyway.

23. Stockholder Accords on networks:

“Networks are today the core components of society, as well as of single public, social, private or mixed organizations.”

My reply

There’s never been a society without networks. Society is networks personified.

24. Stockholm Accords on mission, vision, values, strategy, implementation, promises, actions, behaviour:

“The mission describes the organization’s identity. The vision describes the organization’s aspiration to be in a defined time frame. The values are related to the defined behaviour the organization declares to abide to in migrating from mission to vision. The strategy is the path the organization decides to pursue in its migration from mission to vision; while the business plan defines the operative steps the organization plans to implement to pursue that strategy.

“The promise is what the organization claims it will deliver to and with its stakeholder groups. The actions are the operative behaviour of the organization in implementing its business plan, and communication is in itself a behaviour.”

My reply

Almost all mission statements play down the things an organisation really has to do and play up the things its critics would like it to do. Fine: but since most mission statements also make one feel slightly sick, one can hope they either wise-up or go out of fashion.

25. Stockholm Accords on highly trusted sources (Edelman trust barometer):

“For many years now, Edelman Worldwide has been conducting an annual global effort to monitor the concept of organizational trust by different stakeholder groups. The overriding ‘fil rouge’ is that official and institutional sources are decreasing in public trust while peers and friends and neighbours are increasing.”

My reply

The latest Edelman trust survey points in the other direction altogether. People’s trust in “people like me” is falling rapidly as a consequence of the recession as people seek authoritative sources of information and opinion. This is a trend PRs should encourage. I believe that the faith people supposedly put in “people like me” was always overblown and now it appears to be no longer even fashionable to make such claims.

I agree that PR can’t altogether ignore or disparage the anti-institutional fashion. If social media networks are now what people trust, PR has to get in amongst the social media and get heard there (and, yes, listen carefully too). But the big thing to remember is that “people like me” are less likely to have means of being serious, informed, experienced or even honest than do well-managed, long-haul, publicly-accountable bodies of the kind PRs get paid to represent. Doctors have to stand by science-based medicine; astronomers understand the heavens better than astrologers; I’d rather fly in a Boeing than by levitation. Likewise, PRs need to value honest, serious, information: they need to know it when they see it; promote it fairly; and defend it against the shrill relativism of much social media and vox pop noise.

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This manifesto might seem a lost cause. Speaking at the RSA/Sky Sustainable Business Lecture Series in London, Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI, the British employers’ group, said “what you might call Jack Welch [1980s] capitalism” was drawing to a close – a reference to the former General Electric chief executive’s championing of shareholder value. Last year Welch dubbed his old mantra “the dumbest idea in the world”. He added: “Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy . . . Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”

Richard Lambert advocates that doing good is good business and that:

“The risk now is that the public and political response to what’s happened will itself have troubling consequences. If you don’t trust an institution to behave well, you impose regulations – perhaps to a point that undermines the dynamic workings of a market economy, and in turn holds back the forces of job creation and sustainable economic development”

He’s not alone in thinking that shareholders are now just one of many competing interest groups CEOs work for. In a recent FT interview, Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive, said:

“I do not work for the shareholder, to be honest; I work for the consumer, the customer. I discovered a long time ago that if I focus on . . .  the long term to improve the lives of consumers and customers all over the world, the business results will come.”

I think these intelligent people are setting up a false dichotomy. Shareholder value is not necessarily at odds with social value. Customers and employees are not necessarily at odds with shareholders. Sure, running a socially respectable, customer-facing business may well be the ticket for shareholder value.

So I prefer the more robust approach of Lord Haskins, the former chairman of Northern Foods, who has questioned Mr Polman’s assertion that he does not work for Unilever shareholders, saying:

“Isn’t it the shareholder who appoints him, provides him with the funds to run his business, and awards him with his substantial pay package?”

Moreover, many firms, such as Swiss Re and DuPont, to name but two, still put creating shareholder value at the top of their stated objectives: see here and here.

To echo Michael Skapinker writing in the FT, before we consign the shareholder value movement to the dustbin, it is worth remembering why it arose: to prevent chief executives from running businesses in their own interests rather than those of the companies’ owners.

So here are my manifesto’s key points:

The problems:

• The emergence of a generation of CEOs who ran companies for their own benefit;
• A generalised passion for short-term stock value.

The solution:

• CEOs (agents) should be more accountable to the owners (principals) of their businesses;
• They should agree and assert the kind of firm they are running (long or short term value, for instance);
• They should communicate and sell these propositions.

Some principles:

• As a fan of Theodore Levitt, I’ve no doubt that Welch and Polman are right that great products, services and customer focus are the key ingredients of a successful company;
• No firm can function without a licence to operate;
• Key stakeholders need to be kept onside – employees, customers, suppliers and the like;
• If the longer term is what counts most, CEOs need to do more than they currently do to invest in innovation and in R&D (here’s a useful manifesto addressing this issue).
• Longterm profits matter a great deal to some firms, but that requires great flexibility and constant change.

PR challenge

PRs would do a much better job for their employers and clients if they spoke plainly and honestly about the realities of business. The current recession is caused by a crisis of profitability and negative growth. It is experienced as a crisis of confidence and trust. But it is not helpful to the cause of restoring growth and boosting reputations in society when PRs communicate that profit and growing shareholder value no longer matter most.

Today, the reality is that millions of people are losing their jobs, accepting pay freezes, going part-time, and feeling insecure about their futures, precisely because there’s not enough profit or a strong enough expectation of long-term shareholder value growth in the system. We’d all do better with our PR if we faced the truth rather than evaded it.

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