a recent interview with BBC Radio Northampton on Branding- a new vision for the Post Office (62 minutes into show)
alan j seymour
BBC smashes streaming record during the World Cup
13 years ago
Friday 30 October 2009
'Branding'- Debating the issue in the Postal Strike
a recent interview on BBC Radio Northampton- (62mins into show) on 'Branding- the future of The Post Office'
Saturday 24 October 2009
Sunday 11 October 2009
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My site is active, my creativity is blossoming, my motivation is mercurial, my literacy is loquacious and my meanderings are meaningfully measured- made to measure for my boxes to be ticked, my fans to become fanatic and my potential followers to put their heads above the blogging parapet and say 'PRMatters you are the blog for me!!"
Come and say hi and lets us start a new PR Movement where persuasion and commentary, interest and comment, knowledge and opinion all raise their status for the future of marketing communications
Welcome to the 'wizard of blogz!!'
Alan J Seymour
PRMatters
Come and say hi and lets us start a new PR Movement where persuasion and commentary, interest and comment, knowledge and opinion all raise their status for the future of marketing communications
Welcome to the 'wizard of blogz!!'
Alan J Seymour
PRMatters
Tuesday 6 October 2009
Public Relations Spin-'Truth or Fiction?'
Spin-‘Truth or Fiction?
The debate surrounding Public Relations activity and business ‘kudos’ is becoming increasingly an issue in the public domain. Some notable business disasters emanating from the events surrounding Baring’s Bank and Enron, as well as other ‘gaffes’ like Gerald Ratner’s infamous ‘knocking’ of his own products as ‘crap’ have led to a heightened spotlight for greater visibility and accountability.
Can we blame PR for creating an angry public? We are becoming a much more litigious society and feel that ‘blame culture’ and having easy scapegoats are the norm. A Marketing Communications analyst recently writing in The journal of marketing communications’ rather provocatively entitled his article ‘this company sucks .com’ where he inferred that with the advent of instant gratification through the world wide web that companies are laying themselves open constantly with feedback channels on line for people to always complain!
Surely the argument should be that in a pluralistic society PR is about giving ‘voice’ where the voice gives authority, credence and value to ‘groups’ and ‘publics’ who may well share as well as having different values. The result of this phenomenon’ is that, rightly so, self-preservation comes through ‘self-presentation’ where we can deduce the ‘attention for advantage’ syndrome.
We undoubtedly now inhabit a ‘promotional culture’ universe where one of its distinctive features is an ‘argument culture’ where Tannen(1998) argues: ‘Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention-an argument culture-….which urges us to approach the world-and the people in it-in an adversarial frame of mind’.
However there is a clear distinction to be made in PR activity-where the notion of ‘positive spin’- is prevalent and necessary because one can always distinguish between positive need for making an argument in public for a point of view than the just negative view of having an argument for its own sake. On this basis one could argue both spin is always relevant where truth overtakes fiction and consequently and that ‘voice’ or ‘words’ can be significantly more relevant thus countering the view that ‘actions speak louder than words’!
The concluding notions about PR values and roles in a modern society should centre on engagement with its publics. PR is very much the ‘voice’ of mass-mediated interests and opinions. Sometimes there is a blur with the increasing emphasis probably driven by ‘American’ society‘s preoccupation with ‘commit to nothing, admit to nothing approach’ to anything contentious. However these ‘voices’ are always persuasive by intent whether they are heard as the self-rampant publicist or the ‘Victor Meldrew grumpy old man’ protagonist.
Perhaps a good summation of my thoughts on this Public Relations perceptions and values or morality of ‘Spin’ is best argued by the Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill who argued that ‘Truth is what is left after public argument’. The fiction is probably the natural outcome of society demanding ‘a good story’.
Alan J Seymour
October 2009
The debate surrounding Public Relations activity and business ‘kudos’ is becoming increasingly an issue in the public domain. Some notable business disasters emanating from the events surrounding Baring’s Bank and Enron, as well as other ‘gaffes’ like Gerald Ratner’s infamous ‘knocking’ of his own products as ‘crap’ have led to a heightened spotlight for greater visibility and accountability.
Can we blame PR for creating an angry public? We are becoming a much more litigious society and feel that ‘blame culture’ and having easy scapegoats are the norm. A Marketing Communications analyst recently writing in The journal of marketing communications’ rather provocatively entitled his article ‘this company sucks .com’ where he inferred that with the advent of instant gratification through the world wide web that companies are laying themselves open constantly with feedback channels on line for people to always complain!
Surely the argument should be that in a pluralistic society PR is about giving ‘voice’ where the voice gives authority, credence and value to ‘groups’ and ‘publics’ who may well share as well as having different values. The result of this phenomenon’ is that, rightly so, self-preservation comes through ‘self-presentation’ where we can deduce the ‘attention for advantage’ syndrome.
We undoubtedly now inhabit a ‘promotional culture’ universe where one of its distinctive features is an ‘argument culture’ where Tannen(1998) argues: ‘Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention-an argument culture-….which urges us to approach the world-and the people in it-in an adversarial frame of mind’.
However there is a clear distinction to be made in PR activity-where the notion of ‘positive spin’- is prevalent and necessary because one can always distinguish between positive need for making an argument in public for a point of view than the just negative view of having an argument for its own sake. On this basis one could argue both spin is always relevant where truth overtakes fiction and consequently and that ‘voice’ or ‘words’ can be significantly more relevant thus countering the view that ‘actions speak louder than words’!
The concluding notions about PR values and roles in a modern society should centre on engagement with its publics. PR is very much the ‘voice’ of mass-mediated interests and opinions. Sometimes there is a blur with the increasing emphasis probably driven by ‘American’ society‘s preoccupation with ‘commit to nothing, admit to nothing approach’ to anything contentious. However these ‘voices’ are always persuasive by intent whether they are heard as the self-rampant publicist or the ‘Victor Meldrew grumpy old man’ protagonist.
Perhaps a good summation of my thoughts on this Public Relations perceptions and values or morality of ‘Spin’ is best argued by the Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill who argued that ‘Truth is what is left after public argument’. The fiction is probably the natural outcome of society demanding ‘a good story’.
Alan J Seymour
October 2009
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