Digital Insanity Magazine by Bruno Amaral

X-Ray of a broken political system

Sun, 29 Dec 2013 22:55:19 +0000

The picture in this post is an infographic built by Pedro Cruz. The circles represent portuguese companies. The bigger the circle, the more politicians where involved in managing it. You can find it here: https://pmcruz.com/eco/

He called it “An ecosystem of Corporate Politicians“, I call it an X-Ray of a broken political system.

The dataset includes data from 1975 to 2013. Which shows that this is not just a problem to be fixed, it’s a whole tradition of mixed interests and loyalties. I, for one, have long ago lost all faith in the political parties available. Whenever there is an election, I get myself out of the house to stand in line, show my ID card and push a blank vote down the ballot box. It’s my way of saying that I care, but that none of the options available make any sense to me.

Now, seeing the way major companies are organised around the political system, I can’t help but feel a bit more of dismay and, this is new, a lot more anger towards the political class.

Three players and no communication

Just keep this in mind, our PM is a social-democrat faced with a country taking financial hits from all sides, he is therefore forced to resolve all these issues of alliances between companies and opposing parties to get anything done. While he does that, we get news from him saying that things are looking up with no clear signal that they in fact are. Taxes are still high, starting a profitable company sounds like pulling off a miracle and some families are at the brink of poverty.

On the other side of things, the Socialist Party is a joke. Their communication strategy is to wait for any action by the social democrats and to counter it with an ideological speech. There is no clear plan, no actionable ideas, just shouts and soundbites against the prime minister.

The communist parties do pretty much the same, trying to rally up the middle and lower class towards demands of better quality of life and most of the time undermining any scarce effort for a joining of hands towards a solution.

As for the President, well, there is nothing I can say about him because I haven’t seen any action on his part. Ever. So he’s the non-playing character of this system.

In this scenario I don’t trust any of the remaining members of our government to be virtuous and make the right decision if they have to choose between the people or their own companies (and well-being).

Hacking it to fix it

Have you ever worked with an old computer? Or even an old software at your job that everybody hates and that stopped being efficient a million years ago?

I am going to take a leap here and say that if you answered any of those questions affirmatively that computer or software was soon replaced with a newer model. Sadly we can’t just throw our politicians out of a window like we did in the past. Also, I don’t expect to see this government passing laws that enforce political independence from private companies.

The solution I see is to raise the bar on political scrutiny. In a balanced social system, this scrutiny would come from journalist and media companies. In this status quo journalists have little resources and whether they want to or not, their publications are in some way tied to some of the major portuguese companies.

In Portugal, Political Scrutiny, good or bad, needs to come from hackers and geeks. People eager to learn and eager to build things that help others. And there are already some good examples out there about what can be done.

One of them is a site where people can view what political promises were made by their mayor.

To help fix this system, we could take that idea one step further and list relevant political actions and laws passed, with names of those involved and the private companies they work with. The goal would be to bring just a bit more transparency to politics. Of course it wouldn’t work forever, but it would at least serve as a deterrent.

What’s the use ?

Probably nothing. This idea will by no means result in a complete fix for the broken system. The only good fix would be a full reboot but we simply can’t afford it. We have however entered a time when we must take matters into our own hands.

Patch it wherever possible,
Build new tools to empower citizens,
Make it more transparent,
Throw away ideology in favour of practical and effective projects.

We have sat on our hands and the political class had their opportunity to show results. It’s about time we take action.

A New Perspective

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 12:20:22 +0000

This blog was a bit stuck in the dark ages of blogging and was in need of a redesign, in all definitions of the word: a new look and a new reading experience, as well as a revised editorial line.

Fortunately I know some amazing people, one of them being Diana Costa.

With her help, there is now a new logo and a new design. It is more focused on the content and the reading experience and adapts gently to any screen size.

I liked her solution so much that instead of applying it to an existing wordpress template I went the extra mile and coded it all from scratch. It is using the latest Twitter Bootstrap Framework with a 16 column grid instead of the usual 12 columns. This saved several days of coding to get the first prototype.

And because the search function is paramount on any website, it is there at the header for when you need it taking up the whole screen so you can focus and find what you are looking. For an added bonus, check out what happens when you search and don’t get results.

But there is more.

To make the blog a more compelling experience I reviewed the whole editorial line I was following. So now you have the following categories, or perspectives:

Communication; Communication and Web

Not all communication is about the web, but the web is always about communication. If you want to check out the ideas and opinion, papers and articles on Communication and Relationship Management, then you need can follow the communication part which will include the web perspective as a sub-category.

Buf If all you care about is what’s new online and how it can help you communicate or how it changes the way we relate with each other, then you should read the Web perspective in its own single category.

This is a split-hair. I was inclined to just keep the Web category and drop it in favor of Communication or vice versa. But the web has always been social, always been about communicating and collaborating with people across the globe. Therefore they need to be present and intertwined.

Business

With so many things that change online and offline, what does that mean for business? This is where I want to share what perils and what opportunities show up whenever a major player like facebook, twitter, or google makes changes or when we as users switch from one platform to the other. This is also where I am going to expand on the idea of strategy and around the need for a concept of communication strategy, either digital or analog.

Geek

I don’t hide that I am a Geek and in fact I am quite proud of that. So it was only fitting that for a personal perspective I would embrace this trait. This is where I will share what is happening with me, the bits and pieces of code I come up with, the pet projects and aspirations. This is the window where you will have a chance to peak into my world of madness and coffee.

Why the World of PR Is Changing

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 08:00:58 +0000

I really don’t want to lose or forget about this article.

Alastair Campbell shows an amazing clarity on what Communication is about in a corporate setting and how it relates to Strategy, Objectives and Tactics.

It is a long read, but well worth your time regardless if you are in PR or any other field of Communication.

There is no such thing as digital strategy

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 14:37:46 +0000

Digital Strategy 101 from Bud Caddell

Budd Caddell has an interesting presentation on Digital Strategy 101 that you can see above.

If you are looking to a way to provide your company or your clients with a solid method for digital communication, then this is surely worth your time.

My only critique is that Budd’s definition of strategy does not fit the common taxonomy of the concepts of strategy and plan. This is something I began by talking about when my research on strategy began.

First, lets please agree on one premise: Strategy is about long term thinking, a Plan is the way you assemble tactics to meet a specific objective in short or medium term.

Budd’s definition starts off with:

A digital strategy is a plan to accomplish something with the benefit of digital tools.

He breaks this down brilliantly and explains a great perspective on how to look at a brand’s digital planning. Right now, I would suggest a definition more on the lines of :

A strategy is a long term thinking, with objectives and associated resources to reach them, and a digital plan is a set of tactics to accomplish objectives with the benefit of digital tools and channels.

At this point I need to take charge of my own shortcoming on proposing a definition of “Communication Strategy”. This concept will have to be applicable to both online and offline communication, otherwise it won’t be any good to me or anyone else. Budd’s slide deck did raise a few questions and showed a few solutions that may be interesting towards that objective.

Three Perspectives on Strategy

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:46:43 +0000

When you work in Management or Communication you hear people talk about strategy all the time. They talk about the need for a solid business strategy, a stakeholder management strategy, a financial strategy, a communication strategy… and all that turns to something quite confusing when you realize everyone as their own definition of the concept.

First, lets please agree on one premise: Strategy is about long term thinking, a Plan is the way you assemble tactics to meet a specific objective in short or medium term.

1. Military Strategy

Sun Tzu is the first cornerstone in military strategy. Yet he does not give a short definition of what he understands to be “Strategy”, and the whole concept of “Art of war” leads me to believe he accepted a level of subjectivity in managing an army.

I know nothing else of military strategy other than that last paragraph and yet a quick search led me to NATO’s definition of strategy:

“presenting the manner in which military power should be developed and applied to achieve national objectives or those of a group of nations.”

But ever since I read Isaac Asimov’s “The Foundation” I see military strategy on a new light. To sum things up, the book talks about a planet deprived of any military strength and how in different points in time they had to resort to other means to assure their safety and independence. In the book, strategy has nothing to do with military strength nor is it about winning wars.

2. Business Strategy

Business Strategy leads us to Mintzberg, right? And in fact that is most of what I recall from my graduate training. Strategy was setting long term goals and objectives, managing resources in order to achieve those objectives. This makes a lot more sense to me than the military perspective.

In Public Relations this also makes sense because it gives the discipline a purpose: to monitor and scan the environment the company exists in while at the same time looking for opportunities to accelerate that strategy. Lets correct that: It made sense.

Today I feel it makes more sense to talk about Communication rather than in PR or Marketing as separate disciplines. At the same time there are areas like User Experience and Social Business that are proving to be crucial in achieving long and short term objectives. Business strategy is no longer just about managing resources.

3. Communication Strategy

This is where things get complicated. I started out by saying Strategy was about long term thinking exactly because there are a number of people who talk about Communication Strategy when in fact they should be talking about Communication Plans.

A communication plan would be setting up a Facebook Page or a Corporate Blog with a set of tactics aimed at making that new channel known and valuable to internal and external stakeholders.

A communication strategy would be to identify the need for a communication channel with specific Stakeholders and determine objectives, acceptable tactics and resources to be made available with the objective of influencing their behaviour and perception of the brand in the long term. This is a simplistic way to explain the difference, but it serves our purpose.

Jeremy Waite showed a very interesting view on communication strategy during his presentation at Engage 2013. Watch the 20 minute video below, he does more than showcase tactics, he explains how by looking at data different companies were able to identify long term objectives and choose tactics to achieve them.

Watching Jeremy’s presentation was what got me thinking about what is in fact Strategy. Only later, after watching the video again, did I realize that he talks mostly at a tactical level, in the sense that he does not go into detail about what should constitute strategic thinking (nor do I think it was the objective of the presentation).

In terms of Strategic Thinking he points us towards a TED Talk by Simon Sinek that you can watch below. The key takeway is that “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

Simon’s idea is solid, he makes a strong argument on why you should have strong core values with a strong vision and how those two elements make up the “Why” for what you do. Start with the Why and you will find out that you have a strong message for your key stakeholders but you still won’t have a Communication Strategy.

All this still does not feel enough to build a concept of Communication Strategy that can translate into a Strategic Thinking process and that can accommodate the changes the Web enforced upon society and the corporate world.

You have made it this far, so don’t stop and please leave a comment with your thoughts. 🙂

London will never be the same again

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:17:45 +0000

Whenever there is a trip in the horizon to a city new to me, I make the bold statement that it “will never be the same again”.

It’s more of a philosophical thing than ego or arrogance. When you visit a new city it stops being an idea, a set of postcards and photos and turns to something real. Sometimes, you even fall in love.

Last week I got to fall in love with London, with its streets and the people I met along the way. I was there both on vacation and on a mission, to meet current and new friends. I did, and came back to Lisbon with that excitement of new ideas, plans and things to do. So let me tell you just a few highlights, bear with me and in the end you get to see the snapshots. Fair enough?

The current state of Public Relations

Meeting Stephen Waddington and sharing a few ideas on what the current state of Public Relations as a whole is, was one of the highlights. These were all issues that I overlooked because I felt they didn’t influence my day-to-day. But they do. PR is still using the same models of PR that derived from Grunig’s excellence model for public relations. In the meantime, we have all changed the way we communicate and although that model is still applicable it does not take full advantage of social media and as a result could deliver much more value to organizations.

I came back to Lisbon scribbling about new models of Public Relations that link back to the Lisbon Theory and the work I did with David Philips.

Lisbon Theory and what it means for communicators

Every now and then Philip Young and me find ourselves in the same city by mere chance. So over a quick coffee in Heddon Street we talked about the Lisbon Theory, debating whether it is a progression or a revolution for Public Relations.

Whichever the case, there is a need for more on the Lisbon Theory and the ways it can help PR move forward. There are a few posts on this blog about it, but I hope to re-write bits of them into a more concise and understandable article.

Barcelona, Melbourne and Stockholm

Neville Hobson as already shared a few thoughts on this.

There are a number of documents, principles and accords that promise to shape Public Relations and its practice.

Do they get read by practitioners or are they just for academic reference and to help build curricula for universities?

I honestly don’t know and doubt that in their current form these documents succeed in getting the message across.

The Portuguese are everywhere

Really, we are everywhere. In one of those lightning fast new models of organisation, Celso Pinto got 7 people to meet, 6 of which are portuguese. Not counting the others I met along the way and the 4 portuguese stores or pubs that you find in Stockwell.

And Celso is doing some amazing things with Simple Tax, a new way for people to fill in their taxes. If you live in the UK you should visit and take a closer look.

Strategy at #Engage2013

Just my luck, there was still some time to visit the Engage 2013 conference by Social bakers. I attended during the morning and got a few interesting take aways.

Hootsuite lets you manage a number of online presences and delegate tasks, from the first presentation by Jaz Rezab i felt that they are building that functionality into Socialbakers and adding analytics to it.

2. What is strategy after all?

Like many others, I loved Jeremy Waite’s presentation. And just our luck, the whole thing was recorded and made available on youtube and Jeremy shared the slides on the like cycle.

The definition of strategy and how it applies to communication as been quietly poking me since then. Jeremy’s take and the Ted Talk by Simon Sinek that he mentioned on twitter are quite valid approaches. They give you the tools to think and come up with plans that are consistent and that drive a company or brand in a clear direction.

But what if you need a hard definition of strategy and not just models of strategy to apply on your business? I hope to write more on that later this week.

Still there? Well there are bunch of uninteresting photos next. Feel free to jump them and just leave a comment, question or any idea you have.

London

Communication and Relationship Management

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 07:21:00 +0000

Remember the post where I showed this image?

It sparked a few interesting comments.

I have wondered about it since then, going back to stuff I wrote years ago. The story of a love affair between Public Relations and Communication (in Portuguese), how they work together and yet can’t be together. It’s more of a short love story than anything else, really. (And between us, that story has a Universe of Value to me.)

Going back to the sketch.

Public Relations needs to move forward and Marketing has without a doubt changed as well. Today I am part of a Digital Marketing agency and the truth is that I have never done so much PR work. From social media policies to crisis management to a whole world of Communication and Relationship Management.

This is what I do. It is Communication, Relationship Management and much more. Right now I feel that PR and Marketing are categories of tactics and companies benefit when they work together.

And my roots come from Public Relations. A discipline where understanding and building bridges between publics is key to success. That being a fact, it makes sense for PR professionals to focus on understanding the divide between PR and Marketing, while at the same time finding common ground and helping organizations communicate better with internal and external stakeholders. After all that is what we do, right?

Communication Public Relations Marketing

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:05:05 +0000

How to prove the value of PR in a time of crisis

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:43:44 +0000

Richard Bailey posted a very pertinent question on PR Studies, how can we prove the value of PR?

The conversation drifted a bit towards what is in fact PR, but another way to answer the question is to look at what PR does, more than what it is.

First off, one of our daily tasks is to develop and manage communication instruments. This means making sure that a newsletter or any other instrument is both effective and efficient, in a time of Crisis, it is also important to make sure there isn’t any waste (as publishing a newsletter that no one reads). Sometimes this means forgetting one instrument altogether and focus on a completely different approach.

But our job is also to manage relationships. In a time of crisis this means we have to make sure that we do not lose the tangible and intangible values and relationships that power the business model. Knowing which ones really matter is a first step into making them stronger, and as machiavellian as this may sound it also helps to identify which relationships to break in order to be more agile.

Times of crisis are also times of change, of changing corporate culture, procedures and even build entirely new business models. Internal communication plays a big role in this change and its management, it is important to keep people motivated and informed of the overall progress and most of all it is important to have monitoring mechanisms in place to make sure everything is going smoothly.

There are probably several other aspects that don’t occur to me, but it seems to me that the communication department should list its routine tasks and how they impact the organization in a positive way. Think about it as a personal audit, and if our audit proves that we are lacking there is nothing stoping us from expanding the focus, this time trying to find opportunities to help the company in a time of crisis.

The Current State of PR in Portugal

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:23:52 +0000

Last week I wrote a rant on how Public Relations is seen in Portugal. To sum everything up,

We are seen as party-goers, guest relations or hosts at night clubs;
There are several Blogs from PR Professionals, some of which have a great deal of influence in the market. These blogs focus more on soap-opera discussions, exchanges of personal remarks that don’t belong in this public sphere;
When we saw the Stockholm Accords come to light, I couldn’t find one mentioning it and the importance they have for our profession;
The few PR associations around have not shown any action towards building a professional association or simply building awareness towards what the profession in fact is.

This rant began after yet another comment on a post titled “to be a PR professional in Portugal“, which was written in my old blog back in 2007 and keeps gathering new comments. The last of those comments is an “ad” for a job opening at a Night Club. Discouraging to say the least.

To top it off, over 1500 pageviews later, my initial rant does not seem to have made a dent. Not a single comment, not a single mention.

I believe that in the current state of things, Public Relations in Portugal may face its demise but I am not willing to go out without a fight.

Euprera Spring Symposium and the Values School of Thought

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:16:46 +0000

Saying it was a pleasure to be in Gent for the Euprera Spring Symposium 2010 is nothing short than an understatement as it is the kind of event that can give you enough energy and insight for the whole year. I was sorry to have missed the first day, but the second day and the presentations that I had the chance to attend were more than enough.

There are a few things I would like to highlight given that I was part of them. One is the Euprera Euroblog Social Media Awards, led by Philip Young this project meant to recognise the best student and research PR blogs across Europe. Being part of the Jury was an honour that Philip described well by saying: “we were happy that it was such a hard decision”.

Winners of the Euprera Social Media Awards

Best Student blogger: Laura Fischer, for New Media in Practice
Best practitioner/ researcher: Ben Cotton, for SocialWebThing
Best group blog: Bergitte Lowzow and Mette-Lise Kjellberg, for Komma

I was happy to see so many students participating, and especially thrilled to see a Portuguese blog make it to the short list.

Part of Euroblog is also a daring research project. The intent is to know how social media is taught in Public Relations courses across Europe and even to build a generic teaching model. During the spring symposium we presented how the project progressed so far and managed to get very good insights from a small team work session.

There is a lot to do for Euroblog, and now we have quite a diverse team to help us do it. Feel free to follow the Euroblog Wiki and this blog for more news on that later this week.

The Spring Symposium is indeed the best setting for a dialog on Public Relations and social media and fortunately all of the presentations and papers presented are made available on Euprera’s website.

My contribution this year was a small part of my MA Dissertation on values and values systems, of which I already talked about in a previous post. It began as a small review of the main concepts of Values used in a series of disciplines, specifically concepts presented by Rokeach, Schwartz, Hofstede and others.

But the concept of Values as changed.

Concepts of Values for Public Relations

Recent work on Values and Values Systems points Public Relations to a Values Systems School of Thought to which David Phillips as contributed a great deal, both in previous work and in the paper he prepared for the conference. The paper details Toyota’s recent crisis and the extent to which an online landscape can be identified and monitored. But more than that, it challenges Public Relations professionals to be more than technicians and to take charge in looking after Values that are sometimes outside of the organization’s sphere.

Jon Iwata’s work with IBM is also a new perspective on Values and Values Systems, proposing a framework of values that goes from what it means to look like IBM to actually being IBM. Although I do not fully agree with models of Values Systems (or corporate identity) that originate solely from within the organization, Iwata’s perspective appears to be flexible enough to be used in more negotiated approaches.

From a different area comes a model of Values Systems in Collaborative Networks, by Camarinha-Matos and Macedo. If we put together this model for values system with work done in both psychology and neurobiology by Harry Reis and by Quartz and Sejnowski, we find a model that details the process by which relationships are formed around values. It also provides us with a number of important concepts to study how relationships are built around Values.

Not only does the the Values System School of Thought help explain Social Media, it is reinforced by our use of technology to communicate. It does this by creating a more permanent record of our demonstration of personal and group values that we can use to conduct research. This demonstration of Values can be the way we build Public Profiles, the editorial line followed in blog posts, the images and colors we opt to use and a number of other types (or tokens as David Phillips would say) and their respective occurrences.

The recent work by Jeong-Nam Kim and James Grunig promises to make this area even more interesting, by proposing a set of tools to understand our communicative behaviour in problem solving. It may very well be that our Values and Values System play a part in both our identification of problems, as well as in the choice of solutions.

It would appear that 2010 is to become a very interesting year for the Public Relations discipline.

With all this said, I would like to thank everyone who made the Spring Symposium possible with a special note to the Artevelde students who made me feel welcomed simply by reaching out on Twitter.

A clean slate

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:49:33 +0000

Some of you may remember a different blog, Relações Públicas.

Written in Portuguese, It is still the blog that ranks second for google searches on the portuguese translation of Public Relations. Positioned as the best place for dialogue on PR, it stands as the result of three years of work.

It reached 550 RSS Subscribers and an average near 5000 visits per month and I believe that in time it would continue to grow. But times change and I began to regret the language barrier for a number of reasons.

So I decided to take on a new domain name, and start over. With a new blog, a new strategy and new challenges. Aggregating the dialogue being one of those challenges. (Hopefully, as soon as I have the time, you will see a good mix of blogging and microblogging.)

At the same time, I could not simply leave the first website un-attended. With a great google rank also comes great responsibility. That means that the pulse for Relações Públicas will still beat, just at a slower pace.

As for this new place of dialogue, I will try to focus on research and insights on Public Relations that applies to the discipline and not simply to a new platform for online communication.

Stick around, it will be interesting.

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