New media and Stakeholder prioritisation

Power – interest matrix

The power – interest matrix is a tool which helps PR professionals classify and prioritize the stakeholders according to their interest in a project and their power to influence the organisation.

The A quadrant represents the stakeholders who have minimal power to influence the project and show little or no interest in the organisation’s activity. Thus they require minimum effort to be monitored.
Although the stakeholders in group B don’t have power to influence the project, they should be informed because they are regarded as peers of the organisation’s goals.
The stakeholders in group C are generally passive, but a change in the environment may trigger their interest. The organisation should strive to keep them satisfied because of their power to influence the project.
The high level of power and interest makes group D a key player which should be managed closely.

How do new media influence the stakeholder prioritisation?
1. Activity
As the features of new media encourage people to be more active the boundaries between active and inactive public are blurred. PR practitioners should be more proactive in their approach to the stakeholders.
2. Flexibility
With the emergence of social media the intensity of change in interest has increased which resulted in greater flexibility of the groups to move from one quadrant of the matrix to another. The power to build groups which are more likely to have influence on the organisation’s activities has risen.
3. Tribe building
New media allows people to build online communities which have different characteristics from the communities they are part of in their everyday life. Online groups emerge suddenly and could move from one quadrant to another very quickly.
4. Public characteristics
There are more factors which should be taken in consideration while creating the power – interest matrix. The importance of the interaction between the demographic and cultural characteristics of the community and the technographic profile of the individuals and groups has increased.
5. Shift of power
New media gave people the opportunity to become active creators of online content which affected the public ability to exert their power. Stakeholders are generally regarded as groups of people but nowadays the individuals’ impact on the organisation’s goals shouldn’t be underestimated.

Crisis management. When a disaster strikes don’t run and hide.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

Crises shouldn’t necessarily be regarded as the natural disasters of the business world. It is true that they emerge unexpectedly increasing the perceptions of risk, but following the right set of rules usually give public relations professionals many opportunities to benefit from the situation.
If you want to create a bigger crisis on the top of the existing one you should follow these simple instructions.
1. Don’t react timely!
Public relations practitioners should be prepared to take actions in a very short time. That is why any crisis plan needs to be as simple as possible.
2. Deny even if it is obvious that you are guilty
Problems need to be addressed as soon as they arise. Don’t hide behind your brand name and reputation because you might end up losing your clients’ trust.
3. Don’t say anything
It is essential to know how to deal with the media and tell your side of the story because the less you say the more the world wants to know what is wrong.
4. Play hide and seek
Transparency is of vital importance for the company’s success. In a case of crisis being transparent and cooperative might save your brand’s reputation.
5. Ignore the public opinion
Public relations professionals should be able to react in a fast changing environment and consider people’s perceptions of the crisis situation.
It is hard to believe that anybody would follow these rules, isn’t it? But actually I was surprised how many companies actually adhered to them as a result of which an issue which could have been handled developed into a full blown crisis.

How not to handle a crisis: Toyota case study

War spin or how to turn a war into soap opera

The art of justifying a war challenges the professional political communicators’ ability to develop successful strategy for the media and gain public support. Richard Lebow defines three types of international crises and the Iraq war presents a great example for Justification of Hostilities crises. In a nutshell, public relations practitioners need to convince the public that the opponent’s hostile intentions and unwillingness to cooperate makes him responsible for the war. The question is how to sell our side of the story to the media and how to make sure that it is just our message that gets out.

While watching the BBC War spin video I noticed some striking resemblances between the way war was presented to the audience and soap operas’ scenarios.

1. Demonize the enemy to gain public support and interest
A soap opera will never attract public interest if there is no antagonist character responsible for all the misery and suffering of the others. At the outbreak of war, the demonization of the enemy has a vital role in ensuring public support for government actions. Public relations professionals should use every single opportunity to show how anti – democratic the opponent is in order to justify the rightness of the war.

2. Choose a victim that people would feel sympathy for
The story of Private Jessica Lynch’s rescue managed to reach the hearts and minds of the people and played an important role in convincing the public to support the war. She became a war icon used by the government communicators to arouse strong public feeling of nationalism. In the same time her story created a sense of insecurity and vulnerability which highlighted the government role of defender of justice.

3. Keep the audience engaged
Sending journalist at the battlefield was a brilliant tactic applied by the government PR team which satisfied the journalist’s demand for ‘objective’ real-time news. In fact the creation of media centres in Iraq allowed the government to direct skilfully the war footage providing journalists with carefully selected information. On the other hand, the footage could not be completely impartial having in mind that those media representatives lived with the soldiers who offered them protection and brought to light the human angle of the war.

4. Reveal the weakness of the enemy
When public support for the war is constantly declining an effective public relations tactic is to show that the regime is cracking. An image is worth a thousand words! Photos and video footage of surrendering enemy soldiers or friendly football match guarantee media coverage with a minimum insight.

5. Stick to the message
If the protagonist does something wrong it is not intentional. If the antagonist does something wrong it is done on purpose. In order to earn and maintain the public trust, government public relations team should stick to the message and try to manage the information flow despite the enormous amount of war news coverage.

Some of the tactics described above might be criticized for not being in conformity with the democratic values and principles but there is no doubt that they contributed to the shift in public opinion and ensured public support for the war. The only question that needs to be answered is why Bernays’ reputation still haunts public relations professionals.