PR at crossroads....Technology vs The People

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It was some what of an eye opener for me when I came across a blog about social media and whether it is about sociology or technology? This got me asking the question that when one does any campaign or initiative for a company, do they go about focusing on the people involved or the technolgy behind it? To elaborate more on what I am talking about I came across this extract. "Unfortunately in new media, we tend to put technology ahead of people. Think about your current social media, mobile, or web strategy for a moment. Do you even know who you’re trying to reach? Do you know what customers or stakeholders expect or the challenges they face? Are you familiar with how they connect and communicate and why? Lastly, do you understand the journey they take to make those decisions?".

As a public relations practitioner one has to work with both the ever changing sphere of technology in the new media and still focus on "altering" the perception of the human mind through bringing across the point that the organisation cares about them, still puts them first and cares about them as a buying power. A huge problem that most organisations face is that they presume they know what the consumer wants when in reality only a few have actually went about phsically asking. There is an interesting statistic that states that 77% of organisations say they know what their consumers wnat but only 53% percent of them have actually went about asking. These are rather alarming figures for organisations who have PRP's in the forefront because it means that they have gone about steering the organisations basic consumer knowledge on trends and figures they see instead of actually presenting the question of asking "what do you as a consumer and an individual want?". A practical example that came to mind for me is that organisations are so head strong on exposing their brands through social networks like Facebook and Twitter and beefing up their websites and blogs that they forget to work on an actual relationship with the consumer and build a certain level of trust between themselves and the people that support their brands. Relationships are not static, they are in fact dynamic and becoming more so every day. The sales funnel of the past is now alive and is multidimensional.

So I suppose my title shouldn't be "PR at crossroads....Technology vs The People'' but "PR breaking BORDERS by improving technology and TRULY knowing the People". If this balance between the two could be achieved without the one being focused on more than the other then PR would completely serve its purpose of reaching the goal of satisfying the public and the organisation through communication.

Technology....meet PR



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I was quite chuffed to see my lecturer had a tablet during one of my classes and was teaching us off it and it brought me to the question, just how much has technology transformed the public relations game? It made me wonder whether it's simply a case of subconsciously following a trend just because theory says so or is it trully a survival key to help one stay ahead in the game?

Mutually Beneficial Relationship
While researching how technology has changed the PR field I was quite stunned to find out that technology has equally been influenced by public relations in the sense that "having clear messages and public relations programs in place that enable technologists, scientists and other experts to distinctly articulate their vision can not only help them become industry leaders and advance their technologies, but provides organisations with a voice in the marketplace of ideas, facts and viewpoints to aid informed public debate" (source) so essentially PR provides a platform for technology to be exploited by the audience that respective type of technology is looking for. So where as technology offers public relations practitioner a more convenient way of communicating through things like the web and emails, PR gives technology a better outlet to being promoted through a more focused and professional way of communicating to the public.

This fact adds a whole new dimension to possibilities of further change in public relations, it allows for public relations to not only be known for representing more corporate fields of work but also scientifc fields where if a scientist has discovered a new serum or has a breakthrough, they are able to deliver it down the channels of putting the ''public first" with the skills of a PRP's perception change.

All in all this sparks a new trend for the future of communication with companies and organisations being able to gain a tighter crip lock on how the public percieves them in terms of image, some will argue however that one can never truly control how the public percieve anything done by an organisation..however with the help of technology and the coaxing of PR in the wings, this may not be such a far-fetched dream after all.

Blackberry...not so sweet

Background
BlackBerry, the brain child of RIM(Reasearch In Motion), its most significant move in the mobile communication world was the release of its BIS(BlackBerry Internet Service) this brought about a convinience for many on surfing the net and put a massive foothold on the social networking game with BBM(BlackBerry Messenger). All in all these features were responsible for it being placed as the 6th most popular device maker. (Read..)

BlackBerry is seen as one of the leading brands when it comes down to sales figures,  but for a company with such a driving force when it comes to bringing in clients, it some how lacked to satisfy many of them, seen with the crash that happened back in 2011 . Now when one looks at this situation from the communications point of the company it almost quite literally strips them of whatever credibility they had in the beginning. It brought about a sense of concern for consumers across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It brought about unwanted attention for BlackBerry and set up an almost insurmountable task for them to start explaining and compensating for this "accident".

How South Africa handled it

In South Africa and across the whole world for that matter they set about compensating for the crash by giving away certain applications for free to download in App World (a mobile software shop available to only BlackBerrys). It is quite interesting to see how each of the major networks in South Africa went about compensating to their blackberry customers. Cell C offered their customers a R10 discount from the R60 internet service fee,Virgin Mobile offered R50 airtime and MTN said it would credit its users with R10....

While one may argue and say that to a certain extent it was not BlackBerrys fault for the events that took place with the network backing up, it does raise a question as to how much does BlackBerry really value its customers. When the media archives are drawn out and this event is examined, people will come to see that BlackBerry simply went about solving the technical issues and threw the rest of the matter under the carpet hoping it would be a hush operation and everyone would simply forget. To a certain extent one must compliment them on this because as much as people threatened to change phones as soon as they could, no-one really did, and as soon as the network was up and running again, it was like all had been forgiven and forgot. However you look at it BlackBerry has no real competitor when it comes to making a compact, practical and affordable smart phone and until then they can afford to fumble as much as they want....