To kick things off, we spoke with recent CIPR Diploma graduate Elizabeth Maclean. Elizabeth joined Barclays in October 2009 and she manages corporate communications for the UAE.  She studied the Diploma online with a cohort that included PR practitioners from Ghana, Bosnia And Herzegovina, Qatar and Barbados (and quite a lot from the UK too!)

Here’s what she had to say…

Ann: What was your route into the PR profession?

Elizabeth: About twenty years ago I worked for the Liberal Democrats – the political landscape was very different then. After spending four years helping to organise the party conferences there were really only three avenues open to me: to stay in politics, become a journalist or move into PR.  I chose the latter and have never regretted the choice I made.

Ann: What does a typical working day – if there is such a thing – involve for you?

Elizabeth: Whether it is a typical day or not, my first task has to be to check what the news headlines are and what is going on in the world.

Ann: What do you most love about your job?

Elizabeth: Picking up a newspaper to read an article that I have been involved in.

Ann: Why did you choose to undertake a professional qualification?

Elizabeth: To ensure that I kept up to date with developments in the UK profession while working overseas, which I have been for the past seven years. The UK PR profession remains at the forefront of innovation.

Ann: How has studying for a professional qualification impacted on your work or career?

Elizabeth: I hope that it will demonstrate to employers that I possess a combination of professional experience and current academic theory.

Ann: What one piece of advice would you give to anyone wishing to study for a professional qualification?

Elizabeth: Firstly, get the support of your family. Despite being good at managing my time, I needed to develop even tighter time management skills. The ability to prioritise tasks was also critical!

Thanks Elizabeth!

For anyone who is wondering what the point of that is on a communication-related course, the answer was made clear for us by Richard Bailey who blogs at PR Studies.  Richard ran a special seminar for all PR Academy students recently looking at this issue of academic or ‘critical writing’.  

Richard drew on Cottrell’s 2011 book  ’Critical Thinking Skills’ from Palgrave Macmillan and reminded us that critical thinking demands:

• A healthy scepticism
• Patience to work through someone else’s argument
• Being open minded
• Juggling a range of ideas for purpose of comparison
• Supporting arguments with evidence and experiences from the ‘real world’

Aren’t those exactly the skills that anyone would want from their PR, internal communication or public affairs practitioner?  

"It's been a tough old ride for Blackberry from the significant public bashing during the alleged BBM-aided riots in August to this week's system meltdown. I imagine the in-house PR team will be drowning their sorrows over a pint or twenty tonight in their local drinking hole!

I am sure the team would agree that the coverage has been extremely negative not only on the operational issues but the organisation's response to it, including the PR effort. As Rory Cellan-Jones wrote on the BBC website:
"Of course, journalists were bombarding the Blackberry PR team with calls, demanding to know what was going on, how many people were affected, and what was the root cause. By Monday evening, we had nothing more than the brief line already seen on Twitter."

I always sympathise with PR teams as they go through a crisis. Most of us have been there on the frontline for the organisation - taking the flack, defending its brand and principles in an often rapidly fast changing situation. It can be quite an unthankful task yet it is at times like this that PRs are worth their weight in gold and, the good ones, will really step up to the mark and earn their keep.

I am very aware that it is easy to criticise from an outsider's perspective. Nevertheless, as in all crises, there are lessons to be learnt.
The principles embedded into crisis management are actually quite simple. Say sorry, and do so pretty quickly. Immediately set up a crisis response team to keep opinion formers, including those all important journalists, up-to-date with the latest information. Get your messages out regularly online and then via traditional methods.

 
So I can't help wonder where Blackberry went so wrong. From the business side, there seems to have been a serious malfunction and an obvious lack of risk management. From the PR point of view, there has been a complete lack of use of social media to respond to the crisis which, in my opinion surprising given the nature of the product offering.
Social media has a huge volume of complaints from Blackberry users on all channels from Twitter to Facebook. It's extremely damaging to a brand that prides itself on bringing instant interaction to its users.

Only the Blackberry employees will know the answer to where it has all fallen down. For us, working in PR, it is strong reminder of the importance of crisis management and how you can never be too prepared. An informed PR will be dusting down their crisis manuals and making sure they are up-to-date and have the inclusion of social media - no longer a nice to have but an essential tool in crisis planning.

What damage has been done to Blackberry's reputation? Didn't the future look tough enough, given that Apple are about to launch a messenger service on its new iPhone 4S, thus potentially stealing a march on one of Blackberry's USPs? Only time will tell but it is going to be a long journey ahead for an already exhausted PR team."

Thanks Kate !

In the third of our course leader series of interviews I caught up with Chris Tucker, who directs our CIPR Diploma in public relations course. Chris has 20 years of experience working across different sectors and was formerly director of PR at Barclays. She also has a background in marketing, which means she is ideally placed to answer that commonly asked question: what are the main differences between public relations and marketing?

Here’s what she had to say….

Ann: Having worked in both public relations and marketing, what do you see as being the main differences between the two disciplines?

Chris: I think it is becoming increasingly difficult to be definitive about the differences.  There has been encroachment from both sides. Marketeers talk about ‘internal marketing’ when they mean internal communications and plenty of PR people in the public and third sectors talk about ‘social marketing.’  I would say, however, the classic definition that states marketing is centred on ‘profitability’ is still a good place to start, whereas Public Relations should begin with reputation and relationship management.

Ann: From a senior in-house PR position, what made you move into teaching?

Chris: Being the PR Director for one of the biggest banks in the world was a fantastic opportunity, but one I was happy to put to bed once I had started a family!  The 24/7 rolling news agenda is a tough one if you want a private life.  That may not please the feminist lobby, but everyone has to make the right choice for how they want to live their life.  That said, I do still do a fair bit of consultancy work and media training senior executives is a particular passion of mine.  It is incredibly rewarding to see people grow in confidence before your very eyes.  In terms of teaching I did not see it as a particularly new direction.  I always saw coaching as one of the biggest parts of my in-house role and one I really enjoyed. 

Ann: What do you think practitioners can get from formal training or education that they can’t get on the job?

Chris: Again that word ‘confidence’.  If you sit in a Boardroom you are really conscious of the amount of trained expertise around you – all MBAs and finance or marketing degrees.  PR people are often judged by their contacts rather than their intellectual rigour but this needs to change.  It may often be the case that it is our PR gut feel that leads to good decisions, but how much better it would be for us to know that this instinct is also backed by academic theory, experts in the field and solid case studies. That is what formal training such as the CIPR Diploma should give you.

Ann: What do you think are the major challenges facing PR practitioners?

Chris: It’s a bit seismic at the moment.  It is really the PR take on the changes facing business and organisations in general such as globalisation and the awareness of and respect for different cultures that implies; transparency and accountability as people question the traditional figures of authority; and the multiplicity of stakeholders that now have to be listened to and communicated with.  Of course, the impact of social media fuels all of these.

Thanks Chris!

But this doesnt just apply to internal comms does it? Many of our students working in other communication disciplines struggle with the same thing – how do we prove that we matter. And in these tough times that is more important than ever. Of course some are still forced by their clients or peers to prove it through the quantity of media  coverage, but we all know that this doesn’t really prove anything apart from the obvious fact of there being a lot of  cuttings. We are none the wiser what our customers and other stakeholders think as a result.

In my mind what we need to do is set out a good strong strategy from the start that articulates how the communications/PR will support business objectives. Then set some measurable objectives – get the client or senior managers to sign up to them and then prove that you have delivered them. Yes, that means spending money on decent research but how much money is wasted doing stuff that we can’t prove the value of?  And then again, how on earth do you measure the value of keeping your client or employer out of trouble?

Do we need different approaches for internal and external facing activity? How have you met the challenge of proving your worth? I’d love to hear……

Er, so what has this got to do with PR? Well, its the time of year when many people return from holiday all set to sign up for a new course of study.   Enrolments are already coming in for the CIPR courses that we run and the new digital communication certificate that we have launched. CorpComms magazine recently carried a feature about the choices available to communication professionals – it was a good, rounded piece by Rosie Murray-West and we were delighted to be asked to comment.

Part of the debate centred around whether courses grounded in theory were of as much value as courses based on skills. Wow, are they ever!  What is the point in learning to write a press release if you don’t understand what motivates people to think, feel or behave in a certain way?  You may never need to manage a crisis if you understand issues management.  We firmly believe that the CIPR courses take practitioners to another level, developing critical thinking skills and giving students the confidence and gravitas to provide real professional counsel to their clients or inhouse senior managers.

Now, this isnt to criticise skills training, because the same sort of argument applies – ie, whats the point in having all the theory if you cant construct a news-worthy press release? I guess its just that for us at PR Academy, if you want to lift PR practice beyond the purely tactical, you’ll never do it if you just focus on skills.

But, we’d like to know what you think – how has theory helped you in your role?

Asked why they haven’t done anything to help themselves, the top reasons cited were the cost of qualifications (39%), the length of time they would take to complete (30%) and “not knowing which qualification would be best for my career development” (13%).

Yet, says the CMI,  these findings come in the wake of analysis revealing that the estimated lifetime economic benefit associated with holding professional qualifications amounts to £81,000.  There is lots more detail of the survey on the CMI website here. Now, of course this survey has been done by the CMI and so is more focussed on general management but this isn’t a trend that we have noticed with PR people. A lot of our students are self funding – we have had some who, when funding from an employer has been withdraw perhaps due to budget cuts or re-organisations have been so keen to get qualified that they funded the study themselves. 

The cost of a qualification and the personal commitment in terms of time shouldnt be underestimated which is why we have recently introduced payment by installments for practitioners who are paying their own fees and started offering the CIPR PR Diploma on a unit by unit basis which spreads the load both in terms of study time and cost.

But overall, I think PR people really want to get on and recognise the value of a high quality qualification in helping them to do so. Its a view that is backed up by the qualification survey we ran earlier this year.  I think it is testament to the type of people who work in our industry that they have such a commitment to development when working in such a demanding and unpredictable field. Anyone who dares to call PR and comms people ‘fluffy’ can think again or answer to us!

For me it comes down to having set appropriate, measurable objectives at the start.  And that is what I think a lot of PR folk can be quite bad at (and I have to confess to having been just as guilty in my time and a bit of a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ type!).  This is something that anyone who has studied the CIPR qualifications will have heard me and others on the team bang on about. They have probably also heard the story about how as a financial services PRO I had an objective to have two press lunches a week – nice work if you can get it! – but what was I meant to be achieveing through said lunches?!!

Planning our PR is all about getting the objectives right at the start. It means you dont spend time and money on tactics that dont deliver the results you need and measurement becomes a no-brainer because it is the objective you measure. Simple as that.

If you know someone who wants to study with us but doesnt have the benefit of company funding, they may be eligible for our bursary scheme. More here.