I'm not sure whether Edleman has the German client in China market. As my experience, though the German clients put the China market as a very high position and mark the growing data in the financial report even the annual report, they have very slow counterattack action to the competitors in the market. In PR campaign or strategy, it's the same situation.

Let me get this straight... Unemployment is at 12% and there's going to be a tax increase?

I've never heard of a country that successfully taxed itself into prosperity. I wish them luck.

First of all I hope you had a good time.
Then, something is wrong with the mood in Germany and the issues you address do play a role. While I agree that PR needs to play a role in straightening the ship, there are several factors which will hinder a PR-induced push.
1. "We" are still running a "each man for himself" kind of race - a fundamental shift to a joint effort is needed.
2. You will have trouble getting enough companies to change to a transparent communications model because the way most of the operate at the moment, profit is valued higher than the humans producing the profit.-> How do you sell "let's all work together for joint success" when companies are closing factories although they are profitable just because the same factories overseas make more profit?
3. Something is wrong with the media. With the current editing e.g. in the main news programm on TV you will have trouble getting the message into the programm.

The process you'd like to see can only come from within companies or from within communities. My guess is that it will take a long while until "we" get there.

Good Afternoon Richard,
I'm a second year student in PR in London, and my opinion is a student's one not a professional one, but according to what I understand of the PR activity, I think that what you said about the PR role in the perception of the positive future of the Germany is not enough.
I was born and lived in France for almost all of my life but my parents come from Cameroon, and I have been particularly concerned with the troubles that French government faces against the CPE (first employment contract) as I found that although it was right, it missed its essential task to communicate with French people, particularly the opinion leader, by explaining why this contract was so important for the future of the France.
I think that like the majority of European Countries, Germany has to face the aggressive competition of countries such as China or, closer, from Eastern Europe countries.
I agree with you when you say that PR is particularly essential in this drastic period to draw a positive picture of our future. It is important to believe in the future. But I think that PRO will miss their objectives as the French government did, if you don't highlight first the economic reality: the truth is that the world is changing. I think that the real transparency is to tell them that being competitive has a price: companies will continue to close their plants to make profit and more and more the labour market will become hard, specially for those people with low academic qualifications or not qualifications at all.
Peugeot closed its plant last week in England, and I think that it will be very hard to explain to all of these former employees that they have to believe in the future, whereas most of them think that they have been betrayed.
Whatever the number of personal blog and internal communication PR people will set, employees won't believe them.
As I said earlier, you're right when you say that PR can help to draw a better image of the future, but I think that this point of view will apply for a particular audience.
To be totally effective, I think that PR should work more closely with the government and the companies to design more tailored messages that address the fear and the angry of thousands unemployed people to show them that everything is done to help them.
Dyane

DE you are right. The best PR is about an honest assessment of the future, so the German people know the true face of global competition. We are going to be key to the success of any strategy because belief comes through understanding and vision. Thanks for writing.

Sara,
Very insightful comment. In fact German companies look to China for a key aspect of a growth strategy.

Sebastian

The tough choices in business require moving jobs and making change. But the context must be explained and the employees given a real sense of the future.

One thing that we really need when it comes to the need for PR is a totally different approach when valuing the potential of public relations. In many German companies today, the battle between PR and marketing is still won by the latter. The mental shift is to use PR to open and develop communities which will then be open to marketing measures. The real challenge for marketers will be the ability to surrender control to the consumer.

I go beyond even the marketing versus PR argument. I think that the management consultants and investor relations folks also win out over PR. The idea that the less a CEO says the better is their mantra. I totally disagree with it. I use Klaus Kleinfeld at Siemens as a model--he writes a blog each week and 7,000 people in the Siemens global empire are reading it. Thanks for writing. By the way, can you have Heiko contact me please

Thanks for the reply. Sure, employee communications need to improve, but that alone will not win over Germany. I agree with Magnus that PR is still seen at the "also-ran" in the marketing mix. I see your vision, but unfortunately you can convince only one at a time to understand the changed media landscape we now live in.

Hi Richard,

What you seem to be alluding to is that a pivotal role that German companies and their suppliers could play is ensuring their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs are properly coordianted and aligned to really addressing the interests and concerns of their stakeholders.

I would assume that in an increasingly complex economy with the EU, with deepening economic, social and environmental inequities, stakeholders (including shareholders, analysts, regulators, activists, unions, employees, community organisations, and media) demand companies be accountable not only for their own performance, but that of their entire supply chains.

Perhaps corporate public relations needs to be this glue that helps all sections of a company comunicate their goals and achievements and ensures that all stakeholders can engage and participate with them to create the trust needed in that society. As you say, they've got some great innovation, heritage and business system prowess upon which to build.

This is an interesting post to say the least. I think the same conditions that exist in Germany are present in the US. American companies need a "Brand America" campaign. Unfortunately with globalization, its forces are prompting every company around the world to compete on price as consumers tend to see more and more products as commodities. Consumers want "more" but they want lower prices in order to consume even more. Innovation may not always yield lower prices initially, the easy way out has been to search for cheaper labor pools thus displacing potential loyal citizens/consumers of the brand. The caveat is that mass media influence i.e. PR will be invaluable in this global one world westernized economic system. At some point this business cycle is going to repeat itself similar to the Age of Mercantilism where governments partnered with business brands and went global to ascertain wealth and build loyalty and national pride back home. At some point I could see in Germany the government capitalizing on innovation by doing Ads that feature Mercedes, BMW and Audi/VW collectively promoting innovation "Buy Germany's best". In any event Pr/Marketing will continue to increase in importance as companies and countries try to inspire and maintain relevance.

First of all: your 3 PR messages would be the right choice. But Sebastian Keil's opinion regarding a transparent communications model is right, I'm afraid. I've managed a workshop for IQPC about weblogs and issues management in Frankfurt last December and worked with a couple of communication officers of several companies you're mentioning above. Their prime interest was monitoring and not dialogue orientated forms of communicating. It's control - not opportunity - that matters. And that's not only an issue concerning blogs: it's an issue regarding corporate communications at all. We'll see more corporate blogs of DAX-companies in future and in front of the firewall. But it'll take much more time than I've ever expected.

You are pointing at a major tension in the stakeholder ecosystem: when consumers keep asking for cheaper prices, and shareholders expect quick returns on their investment, this can only be achieved by exerting maximal pressure on costs and salaries. Outsourcing is one of the ways to achieve this, resulting in the loss of local jobs. Trust disappears in the crack, and that's the problem for brand Germany - as for France, by the way: "design, innovation and caring for the environment" are great ID markers, but it doesn't put Wurst on the table. So you get a brand that isn't trust-based and not inclusive either. perhaps it is time to consider the European business model (Donalf Kalff)wiht its focus on sustainable growth.

Robert,
Fascinating piece on the European business model in today's NY Times on outsourcing. Note that 30% of jobs in Spain are temporary--employers are terrified of having full time employees because in a downturn, the cost of termination is huge. P--add URL of story please.

I think your article hits several points after working at Audi. I think Germany has a lot of problems that the people I feel do not want to realize these problems exist. As an intern in a German company, I can say that the Germans themselves are not happy with a 3% Mehrwertsteuer increase, a 500€ university administration fee and higher cost health insurance payments makes most Germans unhappy as well as very concerned about their country's economic future. Because of this, Germany needs to focus on Arbeitlösigkeit reform as well as overall government reform. The government needs to look at ways to give tax incentives to businesses and provide means possible to reform Germanys pension system. All of these issues raise tough questions with the heavily unionised German workforce making change difficult. Germanys future depends on the willingness of the unions to realise that they will need to give up more in order to globally compete with the world.

Richard,

Whiling away my time in a Heathrow airport hotel room (I'm off to see our new client - British Airways tomorrow) and lamenting the paucity of English television I found myself spending more time using my wireless lap top to watch Australian and US news services. In doing so, I again welcomed the growing development of the new media where we can get the news we want, when we want it and how we want.

What struck me was how the MSM is increasingly beginning to catch up to this revolution and improve its offerings in this regard.

That the MSM is late to the revolution is well known, that they have now recognised the earlier errors of their ways was reinforced just minutes later as I ate dinner in the hotel lobby cafe and read two most interesting pieces on the new media revolution in MSM publications.

The first in this week's Economist (http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794156) with an extensive survey on the impact of new media and the second in Australia's Business Review Weekly with its cover story (http://www.brw.com.au/fearticle.aspx?relId=17521) detailing how the nation's second largest media company, Fairfax, is positioning itself for the new media revolution.

I suspect you'll not find any of the information in either publication particularly new, as they simply demonstrate what you've been saying for ages - that communication has changed and that it is now about conversations and participation.

Early into my first public relations course at Syracuse, the teacher challenged us to think of a media representation of the public relations professional that was positive. Not a single character or story could be recalled. Gum the keyboards indeed! Thanks for this uplifting post.

To your fourth point, I would like to mention that there is a multi-stakeholder holy grail taking place in October that is being planned as we speak (type? blog?) and it is called the Internet Governance Forum. Anyone can contribute to the planning of the inaugural meeting and the actual meeting itself is likely to be a live multi-stakeholder process. This is an opportunity for anyone, especially those interested in international approaches to Internet communications issues (spam, data protection, net neutrality etc.), to gain exposure to the policy side emphasized by point (2) and participate in an international discussion. The IGF was born out of the UN's World Summit on the Information Society and represents a major initiative to use the Internet for an extremely diverse, multi-stakeholder process. For tech PR pros, one very practical benefit to paying attention to the international discussion is the value in understanding which issues are shaping the global use of the Internet and who the key stakeholders are. The address is http://www.intgovforum.org/ and to the future PR heroes among us, "up, up, and away!"

I would add, monitor globally. A story on line in Africa is still seen by folks in your back yard. In these past people did not see buy the international media.

I think you are right on the money. As the time between release and broadcast, or print, decreases in time -- it becomes much more imperative to position the release with more information than just the text. Pictures, audio, video and background links all will help the journalist finish your story.

The PR industry is stuck in the mud with what we are providing journalists. Plain text press releases are meaningless. We need to start to tell the story before the journalist gets the release.

I think www.enr-corp.com is starting to put this together -- including global media monitoring. Check them out. They also just pulled together a deal with Business Wire -- should be interesting.

PR Education: Your "implications for PR folks" parallel the implications for PR education. Even if the practitioner is not the one handling the technical aspects of digital content production, it will behoove them to understand the demands of a journalist needing various digitized content. Sensitivity to new demands on journalists in merged production environments must be explicitly taught to PR students.

Aggregators: Hopefully MSM or "branded" aggregators will provide some small balancing influence to the myopic side effects on a media consumer's worldview that personalized news subscriptions can cause. Or will they make it worse? The burden would seem to rely on the interest of the MSM's aggregating staff member(s) to present objective/diverse sets of perspectives.

Thanks for writing to me. Think about how we are all assimilating the plethora of information that confronts us each day. I retain visuals often better than words. My mentor Mike Deaver tells me that impressions are critical--if so, visuals along side the words make a huge difference.

EH
The usual wise commentary from you--thanks. We are trying to do our part on PR education front. We will be offering each month to PR educators and their students a 1 hour best of Edelman in new media starting in September. So the XBOX case, the Starbucks case etc. Stay tuned.

Richard,

What would you recommend to the PR industry to incorporate more of the visual in our efforts. It seems that the entire PR world is still dealing with PRN and BW with text releases -- struggling over any distribution of video -- and overall not engaging journalists at all.

If you are correct, and I agree, that most people retain visuals better than words -- why do we keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result?

I seek a diverse work force because we will be able to serve our clients better Simply stated a white suburban middle aged person's view of the world is not especially creative or edgy. I know that blogging has helped me stay relevant but I need smart people who are living in modern culture to push me and others to excellence

Just as mainstream media is now learning to develop cross platform content so we must adapt our pr techniques. We should be facile with camera cwell phones or mini cams for video. We should be able to post photos to flickr where they can be downloaded by interested parties. More later I need to get on a plane

In corporate America, there is a five-step process in crisis "manaqement". With apologies to Jack Welch, they go something like this:

The first stage is denial. The problem isn?t that bad, the thinking usually goes, it can?t be, because bad things don?t happen here, to us. The second is containment, wherein leaders try to make the problem disappear by giving it to someone else to solve. The third stage is shame-mongering, in which all parties with a stake in the problem assign blame and claim credit. Stage four: blood on the floor. In just about every crisis, a high profile person pays with his job, and sometimes he takes a crowd with him. In the fifth and final stage, the crisis gets fixed and, despite prophesies of permanent doom, life goes on, usually for the better. Which stage describes Duke/Brodhead at the moment?

Hi Richard:

Communicating quickly and accurately is indeed a cornerstone of crisis communication planning. During a crisis, your focus should be to deal with the situation, gather accurate information and communicate quickly. Your goal should be to "speak with a clear voice."

Yet my biggest concern as a Duke alumni was the acute absence of women as spokespersons during this particular gender/race violence incident. Why were there no women academic spokespersons or alumni leaders speaking on behalf of Duke? Where were the women? Any women?

This incident could irrepairably damage Duke's reputation among women students and alumni. Issues like this can cascade across colleges and create a halo effect if improperly tended. During this crisis, a woman's voice would have helped to deliver a strong and positive leadership message of assurance to women.

As a woman and Duke MBA alumni -- and Chicago YWCA Junior Board Chair -- I wish Duke's administration had handled it differently.

Should Duke's President have been the sole spokesperson? I respectfully disagree. One of Duke's Women's Initiative leaders (Susan Roth, Judith White, or Donna Lisker) should have been at his side. Too bad Nannerl Keohane was not available.

Alas, women are still marginalized in news media. Women are far less likely than men to be considered experts in media coverage. They are more often relegated to voices expressing personal experience or popular opinion.

kindly,
kirsten

Mr. Edelman,

I read your new blog post before leaving for the evening, and I have another possible answer to your question of why it took Duke so long to respond. I agree that a wiser move would have been to come forward early with transparency. As you noted, the fundamental problem has been more about timing and less about content. President Broadhead’s response in recent days has been appropriate for the most part. It just took a week too long to say it.

So what took so long? While instinctually, the logical conclusion is that legal and fundraising concerns drove Duke’s decision to keep the investigation under wraps, I think there is another cause that has gone largely neglected. I have a sister currently at Duke and a cousin who was just accepted, and after speaking to both of them this past week, it occurred to me there was another primary driver of this decision to stall: admissions yield.

As I’m sure you’re aware, all colleges and universities recently mailed out their admissions decisions to high school seniors. I don’t think there is any doubt that these allegations will in some cases make accepted high school seniors choose another school over Duke. With fewer students accepting offers, Duke will need to dig deep into its less-qualified wait-list to fill its freshman class. As a result, not only will Duke’s incoming class be less accomplished, but also, the lower yield and higher admissions rate will damage its position in the annual U.S. News & World Report ranking. It’s reasonable to believe their hope was if this investigation could be kept quiet into April, there would be less impact to yield, requiring fewer acceptances from the wait-list (both of which factors into the U.S. News ranking). So aside from legal and fundraising concerns for containing this to the extent possible, the timing of admissions decisions was also a likely factor in their choice of tactics.

Have a great weekend.

Best,

Phil Walotsky

Kirsten
I don't believe in president of Duke as single spokesperson But I do believe that the president has to set the context initially as does a CEO in a crisis That was the key missing piece here--you are right to suggest a woman as one of the spokespeople in next communications

Stan, I would like not to think that you are correct I believe the President of Duke has now regained the initiative But it took far too long to get here and has cost the university in reputational sense

Hello Mr. Edelman:

I am curious to know if you have any thoughts on how the other institution, North Carolina Central University, has done in handling this situation? The accuser is a student there, and thus far the university community has tried to support her through press conferences and demonstrations.

I am a former employee of NCCU's public relations department, so I know first-hand that their small staff must have their hands full with such national attention and constant media requests for the university's response. I have seen news clips of NCCU students reprimanding the media for unfair portrayals of the victim as far away as Miami, FL. In your opinion, could such coverage have a negative impact on this university as well?

Best,
Alonda

Rich, interesting article by Ms. Waldmeir. She also notes the impact of generational change on attitudes to lawyerly work; young lawyers seeking more in life than money.

Your blog post made me seek out the NALP Foundation report referred to in the article, and it's not easily available on the internet. However one of the co-authors, Susan Saab Fortney, has got this article up:

http://www.nalp.org/assets/library/351_1105worklife.pdf

I think that there seem to be a few law firms out there being kind and gentle to their serfs, but it's not a trend yet.

Dear Richard:

Personally, I don't find anything wrong with being committed to ones work and working hard to do it well. It's amazing that people are now apologizing for this. Maybe it's a generational thing (yes, I am a Boomer). But then again,the folks in Silicon Valley, Israel's hi-tech industries, and Bangalore don't seem to find it unusual.

Keep up the 6AM e-mails.

Regards,
Steve Edelman

PS I wonder if we're related.

How does one measure progress? Is working longer hours a progress to be proud of (as the simplistic bashing of the French who refuse to go that way implies)? Or should progress be measured by the increase of real leisure time and good health? How many people get sick because of excessive "working" hours? How productive are people who are overworked/overexploited? I wonder what are the results (in terms of productivity and global health -for the individual, the family, the community at large) of the 4 day work week experience in Canada? As I recall the 4 day work week started in the US (Quaker Oats?) but apparently so much theatened vested interests it did not take hold. I am convinced that in many instances there would be no loss of productivity with less hours than by forcing people into unsustainable schedules.
As for the economic impact of more leisure it would certainly create more jobs... in all leisure related sectors and decrease the number of days lost to illness and accidents. Is the fact that the US is beyond most industrial countries in paid vacation a sign of superiority or the result of very weak unions that stopped obtaining for all the workforce what has been in achieved without any major disruption in the last 50 years and is taken for granted in most EU countries? How long is the standard paid vacation at Edelman-USA? How long is the standard paid vacation at Edelman in France? Just curious :)

Bravo, Richard! We need more experienced professionals pointing out the productivity perils of running a rat race.

One of the reasons why people are working very long hours is because the nature of business has changed despite advantages gained from technology that faciitate communications. Two of these changes are: 1) speed to market--- getting products out has reached supersonic speed. The companies that are most competent in this arena are the ones that are winning the game; 2) corporate structures are still stuck in the old managerial/ hierarchical structural models despite working in a global market that requires a great deal of flexability.

Technology is a catch-22. It is the cause of people working long hours due to increased accessability, but it can also provide solutions to this distressing situation. In particular, the PR industry, which is based on relations as Richard points out, has much to gain. Moves in this direction are already under way as savvy companies analyze their internal social networks and identify bottlenecks. Intel Corp., for example, sees an opportunity in creating technology that lowers the time cost of teamwork. At Intel, the drive to reduce the time spent sharing knowledge and collaborating is an outgrowth of efforts to better coordinate far-flung operations that stretch from Israel to India. One idea being pursued is "dynamic profiling" -- technologies that automatically summarize areas on which a researcher or a manager is focusing, based on the subjects of their e-mails and Web searches. The PR industry that focuses on collaborative idea-generation could also utilize dynamic profiling and other web-based organizations.

We probably will see a rise in new forms of Web-based organizations where people can contribute without having their time eaten up by existing corporate hierarchies. Blogs, collaborative online databases (wikis) and open-source software development all use the Net to handle much of the coordination among people rather than relying on top-down command and control. Embracing technological innovation could eventually lessen bureaucratic time burdens on overworked professionals. For further reading, a good article on the subject is:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_40/b3953601.htm

N
Thanks for adding to the conversation. I believe firmly in technology as a means of lowering stress and adding to efficiency. I see a different face of technology, however, in excessive blackberry addiction, a neurotic need to be constantly on line and a lack of time for thinking. Anyway we should all be conscious that overwork does not yield optimal results.

Yes, I do tend to agree with you. There was a great article in Washington Post last year on how people develop tendinitis. It was called "For Some, Thumb Pain Is BlackBerry's Stain."

Thanks for writing!

Nabeela

Living in Japan where there is no BlackBerry (yet), I always notice how North Americans comment on how relaxed they are when they visit Tokyo on business trips. Several have spoken about how 'liberated' they feel, sounding almost like reformed smokers who are no longer enslaved by cigarettes. Freedom to focus and to think rather than to respond spasmodically to fragments of always-incoming information still seems to be valued.

It's no secret that Japanese working hours tend to be longer than those in America, but even though some have questioned -- with reason -- the productivity of those hours, I have been to enough meetings in the US and Canada in recent years -- where people rudely no longer pay attention or listen to each other as they constantly check e-mail -- to see how BlackBerry may inhibit rather than aid productivity (at least when used in a compulsive way, which regrettably seems pretty common).

In Japan a 12-hour day may be pretty standard (plus what can be brutal commuting time), but there seems to be a clearer demarcation between personal time and company time that the BlackBerry has helped to blur elsewhere. Americans (and Europeans of course) do get to go home earlier, but when they are there, less and less of their time outside of the office really belongs to them it would appear and I think that's a pity.