Beyond Control
How Social Media and
Mobile Communication
Are Changing Public Affairs
A Foundation for Public Affairs Report
by Tom Price
Beyond Control
Acknowledgements
The Foundation for Public Affairs would like to thank the individuals interviewed
for this report, as well as the members of the Research Advisory Board of the
Public Affairs Council’s Board of Directors, for their insights on this project.
Contents
Introduction .............................................................................................................................5
Chapter One New Tools for Activists ...................................................................................6
Case Study: Chamber ‘Crashes’ Twitter Town Hall ...................................................................11
Chapter Two New Challenges for Public Affairs ...........................................................12
Case Study: U.S. Nuclear Industry Grapples With a Long-Distance Crisis................................14
Chapter Three Winning Friends and Influencing Policy...............................................16
Social Media Policies: Best Practices...........................................................................................21
Case Study: Spreading GE Ideas Across the Social Media Landscape..................................22
Case Study: Eli Lilly’s Prescription for Executive Engagement Online.......................................24
Case Study: Union Pacific and the (Not So) Little Engine That Tweets ....................................25
Chapter Four It’s OK to Lose Control ...............................................................................26
Traditional Media Aren’t Dead Yet .............................................................................................30
Case Study: Getting Ready to Tweet...........................................................................................31
Chapter Five Preparing for What’s Next............................................................................32
Endnotes ..............................................................................................................................................33
Sources .................................................................................................................................................34
About the Author ................................................................................................................................34
© 2011 by the Foundation for Public Affairs. All rights reserved.
Published by:
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President: Douglas G. Pinkham
The Foundation for Public Affairs, an affiliate of the Public Affairs Council,
conducts research on emerging issues affecting the practice of public affairs.
Designed by Bonnie Moore | Edited by Erika Compart | Additional research and reporting by Ashley Mancheni
On the cover: New York’s Times Square at night, Faded Beauty/Shutterstock.com
Disruptive technologies improve products and services in
ways no one imagines. As Clayton M. Christensen wrote in
his legendary book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, they transform
existing markets and cause old technologies to fade away
unexpectedly.
It’s easy to dismiss Twitter and Facebook when you read
tweets from celebrities and status updates from your cousin
waiting in line at the airport. It’s easy to doubt the power of
smart phones when the manager in the next cube spends half
his day playing Angry Birds.
In the field of public affairs, the launch of the World Wide
Web in the 1990s disrupted old “technologies” for advocacy,
communications and stakeholder relations. Suddenly,
politics was no longer an insider’s game. The public — not
the company — became the biggest influencer on corporate
reputation. Individuals and groups gained the ability to
organize quickly and globally, take on powerful interests
and build or damage reputations through word-of-mouth
communication.
But, as technology blogger Chris Dixon points out, disruptive
technologies often are dismissed as toys because of their
early limitations. “The first telephone could only carry voices
a mile or two,” he notes. “The leading telco of the time,
Western Union, passed on acquiring the phone because
they didn’t see how it could possibly be useful to businesses
and railroads — their primary customers. What they failed
to anticipate was how rapidly telephone technology and
infrastructure would improve. … The same was true of how
mainframe companies viewed the PC [microcomputer] and
how modern telecom companies viewed Skype.”
Some of the outcomes from these changes — greater
transparency and accountability — have been positive. Other
outcomes — the explosion of media and the spread of
myths and rumors — have made the world a noisier, more
confusing place.
Now, more than a decade later, social media and mobile
communications are causing a new wave of disruption.
Facebook has more than 750 million active users. YouTube
and Twitter are among the 10 most popular destinations on
the Web. Wireless data traffic doubled during the first half of
2011, which means the U.S. now has more wireless devices
than people.
Soon, predicts Microsoft, mobile devices will become the
most common tool for Internet access.
These shifts are causing profound changes — despite the fact
that many people still have a hard time taking social media
seriously.
In this report, author Tom Price explains how social media
have evolved to take advantage of mobile communications,
how activists have harnessed their power and how companies
— and even Congress — have responded. Through
interviews with dozens of experts from the worlds of politics,
technology, business, the media and the nonprofit sector, he
also shares insights on the management strategies required
for an organization to be successful in this challenging era.
Public affairs “markets,” like business markets, will adjust
to the new reality. But staying ahead of the game means
understanding the potential of social media and mobile
devices to disrupt every aspect of an organization’s public
affairs strategy. In many ways, a firm’s relationships and
messages are no longer within its control; in fact, they
are beyond control. That prospect is both threatening and
exciting.
Douglas G. Pinkham
President
Foundation for Public Affairs
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Introduction
5
Chapter One
New Tools for Activists
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
When Jonathan Wootliff directed communication for
Greenpeace International in the 1990s, the environmentalist
organization equipped its ships with cameras, darkrooms and
satellite communication technology. Famous for publicizing
their confrontations at sea, Greenpeace activists would
transmit photos and videos of their actions to the news
media shortly after the incidents occurred. Then, reporters
and editors determined what information was passed on to
the general public.
6
Now, Wootliff said, the latest 21st-century electronics
technology enables Greenpeace activists to transmit events
live and to send photos, recordings and text almost instantly.
The Internet carries those postings past the traditional
news media directly to individuals throughout the world.
Cellphones and other mobile communication equipment
enable people to access the communications wherever
they are, whenever they want. Social media allow activists
to converse with their stakeholders — not just broadcast
messages one way. And social media outlets equip those
stakeholders to pass the activists’ communications on to
others, adding their own commentary if they wish.
Greenpeace’s new tools provide just one example of the vast
change that social media and mobile communication are
bringing to public affairs. The impact already is substantial,
and activists are putting intense effort into identifying new
and more effective ways they can use new media to advance
their causes.
“It’s added completely new forums, and nobody’s figured
it all out yet,” said Phil Gutis, communications director for
the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Any group that’s
not spending a significant portion of its time thinking about
2010 Usage of Tools by Sector
100%
100
98%
8080%
60
60%
97%
84%
71%
96%
59%
61%
60%
64%
58%
50%
4040%
Blogging
Facebook
Twitter
2020%
23%
00%
Higher Ed
Inc. 500
(2010-2011)
Charities
Fortune 500
(2011)
Source: Nora Ganim Barnes and Justina Andonian, “The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption: Have America’s Largest
Companies Reached a Social Media Plateau?” Center for Marketing Research, Charlton College of Business, University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2011, www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesandresearch/2011fortune500/
Together, social media and mobile devices make public
affairs communication faster and more out of control than
ever before. Their ubiquity and instantaneous nature make it
increasingly difficult for a company to monitor — much less
manage — its reputation. As advocacy groups apply these
new tools to traditional grassroots activities, they increase the
likelihood that public outrage at corporate actions can turn
into demands for new legislation or regulation.
Their ubiquity also promotes transparency, which is not
inherently a negative trend. Governments, corporations and
other large institutions have all become more open in recent
years. The challenge is that some business information is
appropriately proprietary, yet it’s difficult to publicly defend
the keeping of secrets. And when a crisis occurs, firms find it
harder to uncover and correct their own mistakes before their
problems are broadcast across the globe.
The impact of new media grows as a rapidly swelling stream
of users direct their smart phones and tablet computers to
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other social sites.
Facebook, with its 750 million active users, has become the
second most popular destination on the Web, trailing only
Google. YouTube now ranks third, Twitter ranks ninth, and
LinkedIn has moved up to 13th place.1 In fact, a look at the
top 50 websites reveals a list of primarily search engines and
social networks.
Even Congress — often viewed as slow to take up new
technology — is adopting social media faster than it did
earlier communications tools such as fax machines, email
and websites, a Congressional Management Foundation
survey found in late 2010.2 In the eight months following the
survey’s completion, the number of senators using Twitter
doubled.3 And a majority of public affairs professionals,
responding to a Public Affairs Council survey in June 2011,
said they use social media as a communications tool.4
There’s plenty of evidence that social media and mobile
communication will become even more important in future
years. Wireless data traffic in the United States doubled
during just the first half of 2011. At that point, the United
States counted more wireless devices than people — 328
million to 315 million.5 By 2015, according to Cisco Systems,
the entire world will have as many mobile Internet devices as
human beings (7.1 billion) — a 26-fold increase from 2011.6
Before then, says Microsoft, mobile devices will surpass
personal computers as the most common tool for Internet
access.7
In this media environment, everything a company does can
serve as a form of communication. Stakeholder perception
of a company’s character can be shaped by a merger, an
environmental accident, executive pay scales, political
involvement, philanthropic activities, labor relations, a
faulty product or a report alleging the use of child labor in
a developing country. Each corporate act adds or subtracts
from a firm’s reputation.
Perceptions also can be shaped by actions of partners
— suppliers, distributors or collaborators — or even by
the actions of other companies in the same sector. This
phenomenon has been true for a long time; the difference
now is that the level of public scrutiny is greater and the
demands for public policy changes come quicker. The
Deepwater Horizon oil spill, for instance, resulted in more
than outrage; a drilling moratorium was put in place and
tougher rules were developed for all companies operating
in the Gulf of Mexico. When the Japanese nuclear industry
faced severe problems following a devastating tsunami,
the impact was felt immediately by every nuclear power
company in the world.
The Activist’s Advantage
As activists did when the Internet first became a useful
public affairs tool in the 1990s, they have charged ahead of
businesses in making effective use of social media.
At the Natural Resources Defense Council, for example,
about 140 staffers write frequently for the organization’s main
blog, Switchboard (switchboard.nrdc.org). NRDC maintains
a primary Facebook page (www.facebook.com/nrdc.org)
and encourages staffers to establish their own environmental
pages on the social networking site. Similarly, NRDC’s main
Twitter feed (@NRDC) is joined by numerous staff feeds.
The organization’s YouTube postings have featured
celebrities such as Robert Redford, Dave Matthews, Willie
Nelson and the band Green Day promoting environmental
causes. The group’s iPad app, NRDC Unbound, enables a
user to download content to the tablet computer for reading
later when not connected to the Internet — on an airplane,
for instance. NRDC’s quarterly magazine, OnEarth, now
publishes a blog (www.onearth.org) which is updated nearly
every day. And, with journalists following the organization’s
many online activities, Gutis noted, NRDC President
Frances Beinecke “has never been quoted so much nor
spoken to reporters so little, because she blogs all the time.”
According to two Burson-Marsteller studies in 2010, 97
percent of U.S. advocacy groups were using at least one
social media platform, and 91 percent were using all three
major platforms (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube). In
contrast, just 72 percent of major U.S. corporations had
Twitter feeds, 69 percent had Facebook pages and 59 percent
had YouTube accounts.
Advocacy groups were attracting larger audiences, with
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
how we are going to use the new platforms is making a
tremendous mistake.”
7
Survey of Congressional Staff
“In your opinion, how important are the following for communicating the
member/senator’s views and activities to constituents?”
(Asked of senior and social media managers)
Local media
80
Responses to constituent mail
20
83
Attending events in the district/state
86
Member/senator’s official website
64
16
12
31
Email newsletters
In-person town hall meetings
45
District/state office hours
54
National media
32
28
Franked mass mailing letters
52
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
45
Facebook
20
54
YouTube
20
52
Paper newsletters
20
44
Twitter
12
39
Online town hall meetings
11
33
Member/senator’s blog
34
29
10
0
29
50
Telephone town hall meetings
8
40
10
20
30
Very Important
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Somewhat Important
Source: “#SocialCongress,” Congressional Management Foundation, 2011, congressfoundation.org/storage/documents/CMF_
Pubs/cmf-social-congress.pdf
an average of 4,880 Twitter followers and 777 YouTube
subscribers per account, compared with 1,732 Twitter
followers and 576 YouTube subscribers for the average
corporation. The activists also were following more Twitter
feeds, an average of 2,261 to the corporations’ 871.8
A year later, another Burson-Marsteller survey found that
corporate activity had increased on most platforms. But
companies had not caught up to where advocacy groups had
been the year before. Corporate Facebook participation grew
to 72 percent and Twitter to 59 percent. Companies had an
average of 4,476 Twitter followers and were following 1,504.
The percentage of companies with Twitter feeds remained
the same, while YouTube participation dropped to 56
percent.9
Studies by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s
Center for Marketing Research obtained similar results.
Among members of the 2011 Fortune 500 list, 62 percent
had Twitter feeds and 58 percent had Facebook accounts.
Each was 2 percentage points higher than the year before.
The researchers found that 98 percent of higher education
institutions and 97 percent of charities had institutional
Facebook pages, while 84 percent of the educational
institutions and 96 percent of the charities tweeted. Of
firms on Inc. magazine’s 2010 list of the fastest-growing
U.S. companies, 71 percent used Facebook and 59 percent
tweeted.10
Small businesses were much less likely to use social media,
according to a 2010 survey by the National Small Business
Association. Just 12 percent of surveyed NSBA members had
Twitter accounts, while 33 percent used Facebook. A third
of the social media participants did so for political advocacy,
while 86 percent used social media for business networking.11
Even within the business community, corporations are
less likely to use social media than are business-oriented
associations. The Public Affairs Council’s 2010 Social
Media Benchmarking Report observed that just 48 percent
Part of advocacy group supremacy on the Internet may stem
from necessity: Corporations have bigger budgets, so activists
are quicker to take advantage of less-expensive online
communication. On the Internet, said Wootliff, who now is
a corporate responsibility consultant at Reputation Partners,
“it’s all down to how you use it, not how many dollars you
have in your pocketbook.”
“Companies have an installed base in how they
communicate,” said Frank Ovaitt, president and CEO of the
Institute for Public Relations. “They have people in place
that know how to do certain things. Activists have fewer
of those things, so there’s less inertia, more of a guerrilla
mindset.”
Social media’s flat — rather than hierarchical — style of
organization and communication is more compatible with
the culture of activism than with the culture of business.
And activist groups have been quick to exploit social media’s
capability to enable anyone to play the role of the traditional
journalist — publishing information and opinion for the
world to see.
Before the advent of the Internet, “you had to find a
publisher and convince them to publish a book, which was
expensive,” said consultant Jerry Michalski. “Or you had to
get into a newspaper or magazine or on radio or TV.” Now,
of course, practically everyone has a video camera in their
smart phone. As a result, consultant Nate Garvis of Naked
Civics said, “we are all mobile TV stations, complete with
the ability to film things and distribute things.”
Instant Communication
When viewed on mobile devices, social media sites enable
policy discussions to occur anyplace at any time. The
Internet gave everyone global reach. Now that reach extends
anywhere with access to phone or Internet service.
“Public policy debates are not simply taking place on the
editorial pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street
Journal and The Washington Post,” noted Jeff Mascott,
managing director of the public relations firm Adfero Group.
“They’re taking place in ongoing conversations among many
influential people on social media.”
What Kinds of Social Media Do You Use?
(Asked of small businesses)
Blogging
5%
Twitter
12%
Facebook
33%
LinkedIn
37%
None
53%
0%
0
10%
10
20%
20
30%
30
40%
40
50%
50
60%
60
Source: National Small Business Association, 2010 Small Business Technology Survey, www.nsba.biz/docs/nsba_2010_
technology_survey.pdf
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
of corporations reported using social media in their public
affairs operations, compared with 79 percent of noncorporate organizations such as trade associations. Noncorporate organizations were more than twice as likely as
corporations to use social media to engage elected officials
and their staffs.
9
Facebook.com/pages/The-Arab-Spring-2011/204130836279029
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
10
“Look what happened in Tunisia,” Garvis said. “A fruit
vendor sets himself on fire and, through Facebook, regimes
topple.”
Mobile phones with cameras played a crucial role in telling
the world what was happening in Egypt, particularly
when television crews were banned, according to Ken
Deutsch, senior vice president of Jones Public Affairs, a
public relations firm with offices in Cambridge, Mass.,
and Washington, D.C. And social media’s impact is not
limited to exposing repression or fomenting revolution. “If
somebody sees a company, a government or an individual
acting in a terrible way, all they have to do is film it and post
it, and very quickly this can be a real issue,” noted Nick
Sorrentino, director of social media for Future 500. “We live
in a time when somebody with a cellphone can create the
biggest story in the world in 24 hours.”
And secrets can be retold anywhere in the world.
A Wider Community
“Local is now global,” said Shaun Wiggins, Shell
International’s head of global NGO and stakeholder
relations. “If you’re operating irresponsibly in a community,
not only that community will know but the world will know
as well. If you think you can get out there and say one thing
and do another, think again.”
Social media reduce the cost of organizing as well as the
cost of communicating. “Before, to build up grassroots,
you’d have to have a large network of field individuals
— people on the ground — and that costs money,” said
Katie Harbath, associate manager for policy in Facebook’s
Washington, D.C., office.
Mobile devices make it easier for activists to integrate their
online and offline activity. Activists who are lobbying on
Capitol Hill can share what they learn with their supporters
no matter where the supporters are. “It’s quicker, because
you don’t have to wait for them to be sitting in front of their
computer or by the phone at home,” Harbath said.
Increasingly, activists are using social media and mobile devices
to organize protests, and protesters have taken the further step
of using the media to organize and sustain disruptions.
During consecutive nights of rioting in England in August
2011, social media and mobile communication were used
to urge rioters to gather in certain locations and to track the
movements of police. In response, British Prime Minister
David Cameron suggested turning communication services
off in areas where disruptions occur.
After a police shooting touched off disruptive protests in July
2011, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit did turn off
cellphone service in several transit stations. Officials said the
protesters threatened the safety of commuters on platforms
beside train tracks.
Both official reactions were strongly criticized as restrictions
on free speech.
“It is a mistake to look into the mirror and try to break the
mirror,” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said in an interview
with the British newspaper The Guardian. “Whatever
the problem was [that spurred the riots], the Internet is a
reflection of that problem.”12
Social media outlets also have created new online venues
where advocacy groups can take action.
Immediate Results
During a campaign against Mattel in mid-2011, Greenpeace
posted a YouTube video showing Ken breaking up with
Barbie because her packaging allegedly contained materials
from rain forests.
Activists also posted criticism on Barbie’s Facebook page.
Greenpeace launched a fake Ken Twitter feed with such
tweets as: “Very :( to see Barbie in such denial. We need to get
that doll some help for this awful deforestation habit!”
Someone outside Greenpeace established a fake Barbie Twitter
feed that tweeted: “Yes, I participated in #Deforestation...how
else am I supposed to heat the ‘Dream House’?”
These strategies clearly have an impact. Greenpeace’s YouTube
video, posted June 9, 2011, contained footage of activists
hanging banners at Mattel’s California headquarters on June 7.
On June 10, Mattel announced that it was developing
a sustainable procurement policy that would address
deforestation.13
Conservative activists are putting social media to work as
well, Harbath said.
Social media played a crucial role in the growth of the tea
party movement, she said. “There wasn’t a single group that
said: ‘Let’s create the tea party.’ It was a lot of people finding
themselves through social media. The American Action
Network [another conservative organization] reports that
Facebook is the best way for them to get their supporters to
take action very quickly.”
Chamber ‘Crashes’
Twitter Town Hall
“Twitter and other popular social platforms are just beginning
to show their potential for driving message and action in the
advocacy space,” said Nick Schaper, the Chamber’s executive
director for digital strategic communications.
In addition to showcasing its advocacy, the Chamber aimed
to get throngs to ask about regulations it believed were
hurting job creation. In the end, there were over 1.2 million
impressions of the messages the Chamber pushed out. Its
Twitter following doubled in size as a result of the campaign.
“Twitter and other popular social platforms are just beginning
to show their potential for driving message and action in the
advocacy space.” — Nick Schaper, executive director for
digital strategic communications, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Askobama.twitter.com
In July 2011, President Obama held a Twitter Town Hall to
discuss job creation, fielding tens of thousands of questions
from Twitter users. Deciding to “crash” the town hall, the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent emails to people in its
database asking them to tweet. It also provided sample
language for them to use in their tweets. And it used Twitter’s
paid promotion tool to amplify its message, while using its
other social media pages to direct people to the effort.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Case Study
11
Chapter Two
New Challenges for
Public Affairs
12
Social media’s global reach and round-the-clock nature
have created an era of instant and constant communication
that public affairs professionals ignore at their peril.
But communication is not just becoming faster; it’s also
becoming more permanent. Once something is posted to the
Internet, it stays there, enabling anyone to look at or listen to
it for years to come.
Multiway communication through social media allows
recipients to select the type of information they wish to
receive and enables communicators to select the specific
individuals who will get their messages. Activist groups can
Thinkstock.com
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Fueled by social media, mobile devices and 24/7 cable
television news, today’s communications environment
heightens pressure on public affairs professionals by making
policy debates faster, decentralized, more diverse, more noisy
and more confusing. At a time when brands have become
more valuable than ever before, they’ve also become more
vulnerable to attack from communication-savvy advocacy
groups.
target the organizations they wish to attack or, by the same
token, the individuals they would like to recruit as members.
The proliferation of news and news-like media — including
cable TV news channels, news media websites, blogs
and other social media — creates a limitless supply of
information and misinformation. The never-ending news
cycle spawns a never-ending demand for content so that
all of the time and space can be filled. This pressures
professional journalists to file reports more quickly and then
update them throughout the day, which can lead to more
mistakes and a lack of thoroughness in reporting.
If a shortage of content creates a vacuum, something will
fill it. Public affairs practitioners who are slow to respond
to negative information can wake up to discover their
organizations have been defined unfavorably by whatever
filled the vacuum.
Through social media, anyone can add to the information
supply, whether what’s added is true or not. Even traditional
Ol
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siy
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Sh
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ers
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media can circulate inaccurate or inflammatory material
when they allow readers to post comments on their
websites without vetting the comments’ accuracy or civility.
Misinformation and attacks can circulate worldwide before
the attacked organization is able to respond.
Because of the contrast between this instant communication
and the glacier-like pace of government, advocacy groups
are finding attacks on brands to be a popular tactic. Activists
can get instant gratification by rewarding and punishing
companies in the shopping aisles.
Faster and Thinner
“There’s little reason for Greenpeace to lobby in D.C. for
legislation,” said Shireman, who expects advocacy groups
to become increasingly active in protesting well-known
brands. “Through social media, they can impact corporate
reputations, brand impressions and sales more effectively
than almost any advertising or public relations firm can.”
Accurate information can be treated superficially and
without context because of mobile communication, Future
500 President Bill Shireman said. Writers must be extremely
concise when targeting a mobile device, he said, which
means “you can’t communicate complex information. You
end up with even faster communication and thinner ideas.”
“The cool thing is it’s been democratized,” consultant Garvis
said of the new information flow. “The horrifying thing is it’s
been democratized.”
The world’s top 100 brands comprise half the value of the
companies that stand behind them, according to Shireman.
“The fact that small activist groups can impact the way
jillions of people feel about a brand means companies can
no longer ignore activists, no matter how loud they are or
how unreasonable they may seem to be,” he said. “Even a
supposedly small fringe group can impact your brand globally.”
Gutis agreed that brand-focused activism is “a very powerful
and growing” opportunity for advocacy. “People see
themselves voting with their purchasing choices all the time,”
he said, “whereas voting at the ballot box is a little more
tangential or tenuous to them.”
The voter’s preferred candidate may lose the election, Gutis
explained, or the voter may lose track of a winning candidate
during a two-to-six-year term.
When consumers select or reject products at the supermarket,
however, they feel they’ve made a tangible impact on a
company’s bottom line, Gutis said.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
om
13
Case Study
The U.S. Nuclear Industry Grapples
With a Long-Distance Crisis
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Before an earthquake and tsunami touched off Japan’s
nuclear energy crisis in March 2011, the U.S.-based
Nuclear Energy Institute focused its communication
activities on policymakers and opinion leaders. When the
crisis began, institute executives knew that the safety of
U.S. plants would be called into question and that they
needed to communicate with the general public. Much of
that communication took place through social media and
other online channels.
14
“We wanted to be as factual as possible without having
any tone, whether negative or overly optimistic,” said Scott
Peterson, NEI’s senior vice president for communications.
“We just wanted to be the organization that was delivering
information.”
To NEI’s three existing Twitter feeds — the main institute
feed (@N_E_I), the media relations feed run by Media
Relations Manager John Keely (@NEI_media) and the
policy feed maintained by Peterson (@Nuclear_policy)
— they added a feed dedicated to the Japanese crisis and
related issues (@neiupdates).
They posted videos of nuclear experts discussing concerns
raised by the Japanese crisis (www.youtube.com/user/
NEINetwork). They posted crisis-related information to the
NEI blog (neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com). They also used
social media to drive traffic to the NEI website (www.nei.org)
and to a new site that focuses on safety (safetyfirst.nei.org).
The Medium Is Everyone
“Everyone can be a media company” has become a
widely repeated phrase. “And it’s really true,” Dartmouth
College corporate communication professor Paul Argenti
said. “Everybody has the ability to contribute to the
conversations.” And the size of a conversation is potentially
huge.
In the past, even the most popular media had a limited
audience. But not anymore.
“The book is only going to whomever buys the book or finds
it in the library,” Michalski noted. “A best-seller is maybe
Peterson discovered a “tremendous appetite for
information.” The videos drew 50,000 viewers during the
first month. Daily hits to the institute’s website rocketed
from 80,000 before the crisis to 8.6 million a week later. Its
Twitter following also grew.
‘Operating 24/7’
Because of the enormous traffic increase, NEI purchased
space on 16 servers scattered around the globe. The
institute began using Radian6 software to monitor social
media discussions about nuclear issues. NEI retained the
Burson-Marsteller communications firm to bolster the
institute’s in-house team. “We were operating 24/7 the
first three weeks,” Peterson recalled.
Monitoring social media traffic became as important as
putting out the institute’s messages, he said. “Monitoring
gave us the capability to know and understand the key issues
that were being discussed in social media. If we were starting
to see a significant uptick in radiation issues on social media,
we started bringing in experts in radiation issues to help us
engage in those conversations.” The institute monitored
news media reporting and tweeted links to specific stories.
And when a 5.9-magnitude earthquake rattled the U.S.
East Coast on Aug. 23, 2011, the NEI Nuclear Notes blog
quickly posted a roundup about safety conditions at all
nuclear plants in the region.
100,000 copies — a tiny fragment of the population on
Earth. Even with a circulation like Reader’s Digest, it’s not
reaching a very big slice of the world’s population.”
Because Internet use has grown so much, a blog post
theoretically could be read by half the world’s people, he
said. And all it takes for them to discover someone’s ideas
on a controversial issue is to search for a topic covered in the
post.
Responding effectively to an attack is also more challenging
now because it’s more difficult to change minds through
social media. The conciseness of social media messages
tends to “tweak people’s impulses rather than cause them
to think,” Shireman said. “So prejudice and group-think can
appear very quickly with few restraints.”
The ease of online communication also contributes to
political stridency.
Social media conversations tend to occur among people
of similar opinions, Deutsch said, so they “reinforce their
deeply held beliefs. Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and
Google+ show you things from people you’ve self-selected.
They give you recommendations for whom to follow or to
friend based on whom you’re already following and friending.
The deeper you get into social media, the further you get
away from people you disagree with.”
Highly motivated activists can bombard public officials with
demands that they take a certain action and with threats if
they don’t. To the extent they overestimate the support for
their positions, they become less likely to compromise.
Few people paid attention to the first GOP presidential debate
of 2011, he said. Yet there appeared to be significant Twitter
traffic because “a small group of Republicans were tweeting
about everything that was said and reading each other’s
tweets and responding. No one else was talking about it, but
they were active enough to make it appear to be a big deal.”
Pitfalls to Avoid
An organization’s social media activities can falter
if they step into any of these common traps:
• Not having clear policies for how employees
should behave online.
• Failing to include social media in crisis
planning and risk management.
• Turning social media activities over to young
people who understand platforms but don’t
have a thorough understanding of the
company’s business, culture and strategy.
Perov Stanislav/Shutterstock.com
Because Internet use has grown so much, a blog post
theoretically could be read by half the world’s people.
And all it takes for them to discover someone’s ideas
on a controversial issue is to search for a topic covered
in the post.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
This can lead someone to overestimate the popularity of his
or her own beliefs. And attempts to measure public opinion
through online activity can be misleading. “You can have
Twitter trending of an issue even if a small group of people is
very active,” Deutsch said.
15
Chapter Three
Winning Friends and
Inf luencing Policy
Social media enable companies to respond to criticism, to
turn criticism into conversation and to converse with critics
and other stakeholders.
Corporations and business associations are discovering
that social media can give public affairs professionals
opportunities as well as headaches. There’s no reason
businesses can’t do almost everything advocacy groups do.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
“It’s understandable why people are nervous and reluctant
to jump into this space,” said Helaine Klasky, the company’s
director of global public affairs. “But you have no choice.
This is the world today. We need to tell our own story and
not have others tell our story.”
16
By monitoring social media, companies can learn what activists
are doing, what governments are doing and what various
stakeholders — including the general public — are talking about.
Through social media, companies can target small groups
for conversations about specialized topics. Such conversation
and relationship-building can nurture networks of supporters
who will listen to company arguments and may provide
third-party defense when the firm faces criticism.
To operate effectively in this new environment, public affairs
professionals have to accept the limitations and embrace the
opportunities that new media and communication devices
create.
Fortune 500 Corporate Twitter Account by Rank
(2009 vs. 2010 vs. 2011)
40%
40
35%
35
39%
30%
30
25%
25%
25
25%
25%
24%
2009
20%
20
17%
15%
15
10%
10
40
55%
00%
17%
17%
19%
17%
17%
18%
13%
2010
16%
2011
11%
1-100
101-200
201-300
301-400
401-500
Source: Nora Ganim Barnes and Justina Andonian, “The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption: Have America’s Largest
Companies Reached a Social Media Plateau?” Center for Marketing Research, Charlton College of Business, University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2011, www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesandresearch/2011fortune500/
Corporate executives will have to define the public affairs
function broadly, realizing that traditional stove-piping —
separating government affairs, corporate communications,
corporate social responsibility and other stakeholder relations
functions — is incompatible with the new world.
Viral Is Vital
“Public affairs and public relations are much closer together
today than they used to be,” Deutsch said. “You used to have
people who pitched stories to news media and others who
focused on influentials rather than media.” Now, to influence
both leaders and the general public, “you have to figure out
how to get your messages to go viral.”
Following advocacy groups’ online activities can enable a
company to anticipate protests before they occur. Monitoring
also can uncover negative public sentiment that a company
needs to deal with before it becomes problematic.
Activists’ social media chatter can provide “early bellwether
warnings of what is going to become mainstream public
opinion,” said Reputation Partners’ Wootliff. “If you’re not
there with your ear to the ground, listening for the beat of
the drums before they get close, you’re not actually doing
your job.”
A study by Wool.labs, an online business intelligence firm,
concluded, for instance, that patient discussions in Internet
forums could have alerted drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline
about concern over the diabetes drug Avandia years before it
exploded into a public controversy.
Harbath said marketing and public affairs departments
also need to work more closely together. Public affairs
practitioners could make good use of information that
marketing departments gather about stakeholders online, for
example, she said.
Patients began discussing the drug’s safety online as early
as 2003, according to Wool.labs’ report, four years before
a scientific study associated Avandia with increased risk of
heart attack. By the time the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) added restrictions to the drug’s use in 2010, patient
comments had turned to anger at the drug company, the
FDA and the pharmaceutical industry in general because
they had not acted sooner, Wool.labs said.
Many companies appear to understand the necessity of
following online discussions, both about the firms themselves
and about topics that are important to them. In the 2011 Public
Affairs Council survey, 62 percent of respondents said they do
monitoring in-house, and 46 percent hired outside consultants.
Some did both, while just 3 percent did no monitoring at all.
Effective techniques for evaluating online discussions weren’t
available in the early 2000s, but companies can now monitor
what’s being said and respond to it, said Wool.labs Chief
Operating Officer Michele Bennett. Monitoring not only can
enable a drug company to respond better to patient concerns,
it also can contribute to the firm’s understanding of the
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Twitter.com/#!/who_to_follow/interests/business
Organizations must develop a mobile-communications
strategy because people use the Internet differently when
they’re out and about, often looking for different information
when they’re on the move from when they’re sitting in front
of a desktop computer.
17
drug’s effects and possibly alter guidance for the drug’s use.14
At Shell, Wiggins’ department monitors social media for the
entire corporation. Shell uses monitoring tools — Radian6,
Media Mind and Moreover — and does the analysis in
house.
“We have daily reports if anything is happening out there
that needs immediate attention,” Wiggins said. Weekly,
monthly and quarterly reports enable the company to spot
and analyze trends. As a result, Shell can “catch something
in social media before it gets to the issue or crisis level. You
can save yourself a huge headache by catching a problem
early on.”
18
The company took advantage of its online intelligence when
a 2010 commercial featuring rapper David Banner inspired
a great deal of online chatter. Within 24 hours, a full-length
version of the song was pushed out to Gatorade followers
and fans on Twitter and Facebook.16
Radian6 sells software for monitoring and analyzing
activity in social media. Its “engagement console” enables
YouTube.com/watch?v=InrOvEE2v38
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Gatorade has created a “mission control center” in the
marketing department at its Chicago headquarters. The
NASA-like facility — built in cooperation with IBM and the
Radian6 online monitoring firm — contains large flat-screen
monitors and computers at which Gatorade staff track online
conversations. The system monitors what’s said about the
Gatorade brand, its competitors, sports nutrition and the
athletes who endorse Gatorade products. Staffers join social
media discussions when they think it’s appropriate.15
a company to enter social media conversations. Companies
also can hire Radian6 to do the work.17 Wool.labs similarly
offers software and services for monitoring, analyzing and
engaging.18
State and Federal Communications Inc. uses free tools —
such as Google Analytics and TweetDeck — to monitor
social media and how others use the company’s own website.
In fact, monitoring has become part of the firm’s core
business, President and CEO Elizabeth Bartz said.
Her company helps clients comply with U.S. and Canadian
regulations by publishing information about state, provincial
and federal rules that govern political contributions,
lobbying and procurement activities. A growing number of
government agencies are providing early notice of regulatory
changes on Facebook and Twitter, she said. Her company
also monitors clients’ online activities to spot actions that
might raise regulatory red flags.
More Than Monitoring
But monitoring alone does not reveal everything that
activists are doing and that the public cares about. “The
way to understand what is happening in social media is to
participate and not just to observe,” Wootliff said. “It’s not
about [a specific] technique. It’s about truly being engaged,
and engagement is a two-way street.”
The American Frozen Food Institute, for instance, has
launched a grassroots initiative, called Friends of Frozen
Food, which has a Twitter feed (@FriendsofFrozen), a
Facebook account (www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-
The institute tweets because a significant and growing
number of members of Congress use Twitter, AFFI
Communications Vice President Corey Henry said. “If we
want them to take notice of us, we simply have to be up on
the platform to be part of the conversation.”
AFFI follows legislators with whom the institute has a
relationship or who sit on committees important to the
frozen food industry. “We see this as an opportunity, on a
quick and timely basis, to have real-time, back-and-forth
sharing of information,” Henry said.
AFFI also uses Twitter and the Friends of Frozen Food
Facebook page to mobilize supporters on issues the industry
cares about.
The Nuclear Energy Institute encourages its executives to
participate in mainstream news media blogs — such as
National Journal’s Energy & Environment blog (energy.
nationaljournal.com) — that reach policymakers, Peterson
said. The institute treats bloggers the same as mainstream
reporters, offering tours of facilities and inviting them to join
media teleconferences.
Dell takes a similar approach, recognizing that people of
influence aren’t restricted to the mainstream news media or
financial analysis firms, said Michele Glaze, the company’s
regional giving manager for the Americas.
In 2011, for instance, Dell’s corporate communications
team invited bloggers and other influential social media
participants to visit company headquarters in Texas to
discuss Dell’s sustainability efforts. “They got to hear directly
from Dell executives and to ask questions, and they were
encouraged to tweet or blog to share their feelings throughout
the day,” Glaze said.
The meeting produced two-way communication, with the
bloggers learning what Dell was doing while Dell personnel
heard directly from social media participants. The face-toface contact created the potential for long-lasting personal
relationships. After the conference, Dell employees became
followers of attendees’ online postings, and attendees began
following some of Dell’s social media activities.
Virtual one-on-one relationships can be created even without
face-to-face meetings. The Internet’s targeting capabilities
enable an organization to treat each stakeholder as “an
audience of one,” as Ovaitt put it. Mobile communication
enhances those capabilities.
“In the past, communication was very location-centered,”
Ovaitt said. “The call needed to go to your office or your
home. Even when we started putting phones in cars, that’s
still location-based communication, because you had to
reach a particular vehicle. Now we have truly crossed over to
where your outreach is to individuals, [because] I can reach
you wherever you are.”
Initially, Deutsch said, the companies that used the Internet
most effectively for public affairs were those that had large
numbers of employees who could be reached through email
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Twitter.com/friendsoffrozen
Frozen-Food/207728629242370) and a section on the AFFI
website (www.affi.org/friends-of-frozen-food).
19
to the computers on their office desks. Now, “you can get to
people outside their professional lives.”
That ability to nurture relationships outside the workplace
enables an organization to build a powerful resource — the
third-party supporter. “The best allies a company can have,”
Shireman said, are “stakeholders who are not beholden
to the company but genuinely support the company’s
objectives.”
20
Though all organizations can participate in social media,
they don’t all participate in the same manner. Size and the
kind of business a company does can affect the ways it can
benefit from social media and the ways it might be attacked.
Because of their resources, larger companies have more
opportunities to use social media to their advantage,
Dartmouth’s Argenti said. But they also face more dangers.
Garvis noted a tendency of activist groups to perceive that
“big is bad.” The anti-fast-food movie Super Size Me “could
have been made about Burger King,” he noted. “It was made
about McDonald’s because McDonald’s was the biggest.”
Ironically, McDonald’s history of being sensitive to activists’
criticisms also could have been a factor, because advocacy
groups sometimes target organizations that they think are
most likely to respond.
At the other end of the spectrum, social media give smaller
organizations more opportunity to get their messages out
than they had in the past. A small company can pitch stories
to reporters through Twitter, when in the past it may not
have been able to get the news media’s attention. Reporters
looking for information online may come across small
organizations that they didn’t know existed.
Shutterstock.com
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Henry saw the proof of that when he worked for the
National Mining Association. When critics posted to
the association’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/
actformining), “it energized our supporters,” Henry recalled.
“Were we to post something on cap-and-trade legislation,
we might take criticism from some in the environmental
community. But supporters of coal-based electricity would
respond to that criticism. It was particularly heartening to
see responses from people who were not industry insiders or
Beltway types — people in communities who rely on mining,
who work for coal companies or who were from regions
heavily dependent on coal-based electricity.”
at Reputation Partners, he advises corporations about how
to deal with advocacy groups and other nongovernmental
organizations. Among his clients: Coca-Cola, ColgatePalmolive, Merrill Lynch, Owens Corning, Procter &
Gamble and Whirlpool.
Similarly, online supporters have reduced the need for the
nuclear industry to respond to some attacks, Peterson said.
Companies should reach out to advocacy groups and not
assume that a critic is an “automatic enemy,” Wootliff said.
A conversation with an apparent opponent may uncover
common ground, he said. Then the company can advance
its reputation among the advocacy group’s members by
incorporating the group’s ideas into its policies and by giving
the group credit for offering good advice.
Ian Morrison, president emeritus of the Institute for the
Future, suggested hiring advocacy group members to bring
their point of view to a company’s internal discussions.
“If I was running public affairs at Microsoft and I knew of
significant websites or bloggers or tweeters who were antiMicrosoft, I’d want to get to know those guys,” he said. “I’d
want to hire some of them and get to know how they do
what they do and why they do what they do.”
Many companies have done that with Wootliff, who
transformed himself from a Greenpeace leader into a
business consultant. As head of corporate accountability
Not surprisingly, technology companies are more likely
than other companies to engage stakeholders through social
media, because tech companies’ customers tend to be social
media participants, Deutsch said. Nearly every major brand
is the subject of extensive online discussion these days, but
“the further removed from technology a product is, the less
likely there’s social media conversation about it,” he said.
Companies in highly regulated industries, such as financial
services and pharmaceuticals, may have to avoid some
online activities that other companies can carry out. If
someone posted a negative comment about a drug on a
pharmaceutical company’s Facebook page, for example,
it could become an incident that had to be reported to the
FDA.
Because of that, Facebook had allowed drug companies to
block comments on their pages. But that policy changed in
August 2011. Facebook said pages for specific drugs could
continue to be closed to comments but that other pages —
such as for a company itself or for a disease — would have
to allow comments. As a result, some drug companies left
Facebook or discontinued certain pages.19
Social Media Policies:
Best Practices
To help guide employees’ use of social media and provide them with guidelines for engagement, companies
should create social media policies. These policies should differ based on an organization’s culture and
industry. Following are a collection of best practices excerpted from various companies’ guidelines. To view
these policies in their entirety, consult the endnotes for the URLs.
Make it clear that the views expressed are yours. Include
the following notice somewhere in every social media
profile you maintain: “I work at Ford, but this is my own
opinion and is not the opinion of Ford Motor Company.”
2. Be transparent about who you are at
all times. Nobody wants to be accused of
misrepresentation. Honesty and trust are keys to
being taken seriously in social media, and if you
don’t divulge where you work, you risk losing both.
Most policies say something along the lines of the
following, from Intel:21
Be transparent. Your honesty — or dishonesty — will
be quickly noticed in the social media environment. If
you are blogging about your work at Intel, use your real
name, identify that you work for Intel, and be clear about
your role. If you have a vested interest in something you
are discussing, be the first to point it out. Transparency
is about your identity and relationship to Intel. You
still need to keep confidentiality around proprietary
information and content.
3. Don’t comment on confidential matters. Policies
generally include language prohibiting the
sharing of proprietary information or disclosure of
colleagues’ or customers’ personal information.
From Duke Energy’s policy:22
Never publicly disclose, discuss or comment upon Duke
Energy’s confidential or proprietary information, nonpublic information regarding the financial performance
of the company or the personal information of Duke
Energy’s employees or customers.
4. Be courteous. Online communication, more so
than one-on-one communication, can lend itself
to personal attacks, vulgarity and otherwise rude
behavior. A general axiom to follow: Ask yourself,
Would I want to see that on the front page of
The Washington Post? From VanCity:23
I will always be respectful and will never say something
online that I wouldn’t say in front of my grandma. I agree
that profanity and hateful language is never appropriate.
5. Fix mistakes. If you make a mistake, admit it.
The online world is quite forgiving if you admit
mistakes gracefully. From IBM:24
Be the first to respond to your own mistakes. If you make
an error, be upfront about your mistake and correct it
quickly, as this can help to restore trust. If you choose to
modify content that was previously posted, such as editing
a blog post, make it clear that you have done so.
6. Speak only on matters that you’re qualified to
discuss. From Dell’s policy:25
Make sure you’re engaging in social media conversations
the right way. If you aren’t an authority on a subject, send
someone to the expert rather than responding yourself.
Don’t speak on behalf of Dell if you aren’t giving an
official Dell response, and be sure your audience knows
the difference. If you see something being shared related
to Dell on a social media platform that shouldn’t be
happening, immediately inform the Social Media and
Communities team, your manager, Ethics & Compliance
or some other appropriate contact.
7. Think twice but post once. Once something
is posted online, it’s there for posterity. Nothing
is ever truly deleted from the Internet. If you’re
concerned that something you’re posting might
be inappropriate, ask first. From Intel’s policy:26
If it gives you pause, pause. If you’re about to publish
something that makes you even the slightest bit
uncomfortable, don’t shrug it off and hit “send.” Take
a minute to review these guidelines and try to figure out
what’s bothering you, then fix it. If you’re still unsure,
you might want to discuss it with your manager or legal
representative. Ultimately, what you publish is yours — as
is the responsibility. So be sure.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
1. Employees speak for themselves and not their
employer. From Ford’s social media guidelines:20
21
Case Study
Spreading GE Ideas Across
The Social Media Landscape
General Electric has developed a robust social media
presence that entails both creating its own sites and
participating in others’ discussions.
“GE is doing it across all our business platforms, and
we’re doing it very actively in the public affairs space,” said
Klasky, the company’s director of global public affairs.
“We’re trying to push the content we’re creating out to
places everybody is already going.”
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
That includes guest-blogging for think tanks and wellestablished media sites such as National Journal, The
Huffington Post and Atlantic Monthly. The targeted audience
is broad: public officials, those who influence public
officials, news media and the general public.
22
“We’ve been pretty aggressive at getting our [corporate]
leadership and senior government relations folks out
there in the thought leadership space so they become
the known entities,” Klasky said. When a think tank
selects participants for a program, she said, she wants GE
personnel to be on the radar. That way, “when Brookings
is doing a conversation on the future of U.S. energy policy,
GE is part of that conversation.”
The blog GE Reports (www.gereports.com) addresses
policy issues, such as trade and competitiveness. “We use it
to push back on [news] stories” as well, Klasky said.
The company produces YouTube videos (www.youtube.
com/gereports) that address GE’s businesses, positions on
public policy issues and social responsibility activities.
Reinventing the News Media
Companies can use social media to bypass news media
filters and speak directly to stakeholders. Company
communications can even fill journalistic voids left by the
decline of traditional news media.
“With traditional media,” Gutis noted, “you were going
to reporters and hoping their reports would tell your story.
With blogs, Facebook, Twitter and so forth, you have
[direct] access to people much more than you ever did.” An
organization’s reach is extended further when recipients
forward the messages to others.
GE created an interactive online magazine, called
“Txchnologist” (www.txchnologist.com), to explore
many aspects of technology. Some entries are written
in-house, some are written by freelance journalists, and
some are links to content produced by other organizations.
Readers can comment on any of them. Early topics in
2011 included solar power, electric vehicles, aviation and
advanced manufacturing.
The blog Edison’s Desk (www.edisonsdesk.com) publicizes
GE’s research accomplishments and is complemented
by Edison’s Desk posts to Twitter (@edisonsdesk),
YouTube (www.youtube.com/grcblog) and Flickr
(www.flickr.com/edisonsdesk). The Genius of the Day blog
(ge.geglobalresearch.com/geniusoftheday) introduces readers
to individual GE scientists and engineers and their work.
GE’s public affairs Twitter feed (@GEpublicaffairs)
promotes the company’s business and technological
achievements and tries to tie them to GE’s public policy
positions when possible. “We might tweet: ‘Hey! Did you
know 100% of the train engines produced in Erie, Pa.,
went overseas?’” Klasky explained. The post would be
designed to demonstrate the value of free trade and might
include a link to a website.
The GE Reports blog in Portuguese tells stories of
importance in Brazil. GE Deutschland is published in
German. Several Chinese blogs reach out to government
ministries, think tanks and educational institutions in
China.
The decline of newspapers and other traditional news media
enhances the power of social media and the effectiveness of
those who use social media to perform news-like functions.
In addition to individuals and organizations that make
news-like posts to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other
social media, an increasing number of corporations are
creating websites that are staffed by journalists and seem to
resemble journalism more than they resemble advertising or
marketing.
Tom Foremski — former Financial Times reporter and now
author of the Silicon Valley Watcher blog — said he first
Foremski concluded that other companies should follow that
example and that they should hire professional journalists to
produce quality content.
Beyond the Fourth Estate
Currently, a dozen freelance journalists contribute to Cisco’s
site. Their 2011 reports covered topics such as how European
soccer teams use social media, how urban transit agencies
deploy information technology to make bus riding more
efficient, and how educators are using cloud computing. And
Cisco is not alone.
In 2011, at Best Buy’s journalistic-like site, “Best Buy On”
(www.bestbuyon.com), visitors could view a video of CNN
anchor Anderson Cooper discussing how he uses technology
to gather and broadcast news. An article reported the “Top 5
Rumors” about the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show
in Las Vegas. The site contained many how-to pieces about
using the kinds of electronic products that Best Buy sells,
without making blatant sales pitches.
All of these websites contain buttons that enable visitors
to share content through Facebook, Twitter and other
social media. Intel’s Free Press site (newsroom.intel.com/
community/intel_newsroom/free_press) invites news media
and other visitors to “take our stuff ” and republish it.
These sites not only advance the companies’ public affairs
agenda and their overall reputations, they also fill gaps
left by the decline in business news reporting, said Shel
Holtz, principal of Holtz Communication & Technology.
“Companies that used to have reporters covering them
[exclusively] now have reporters covering multiple companies
or multiple industries. If you want to have news out there
about your products or your thought leadership or your
corporate social responsibility initiative, organizations are
finding it necessary to produce that content themselves.”
To succeed at this task, Holtz said, organizations must create
shareable content that will raise their profile — “content that
informs, educates, entertains, inspires and is more journalistic
in its approach than it is PR or marketing.” Developing
content that people will share and talk about “creates much
higher levels of visibility,” he said. Best Buy’s site, for instance,
“raises the public’s perception that this is an organization that
really understands these kinds of products.”
By encouraging visitors to forward content to others through
social media, these sites tap into social media’s multiplier
effect.
While Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, a large
number of tweets contain links to news stories and other
longer content. Facebook users also often link to such
content. An article that’s tweeted gets seen by more readers
than one viewed from the original source. And the more it
gets passed around social media, the higher its search-engine
ranking becomes, and the more likely it will be found by
people searching on the topic.
That phenomenon is not lost on members of Congress,
according to the Congressional Management Foundation
study. One member told Foundation researchers that a
congressional floor speech will be seen by a small number
of C-SPAN viewers. “But take that video, put it on your
YouTube site or put it on Twitter, put it on Facebook, and
then you’re getting that multiplier effect,” the lawmaker
said.28
Social media don’t relieve public affairs practitioners of the
need to deal with traditional news media, but social media
do provide an effective means of communicating with a
growing number of journalists.
Virtual Flacking
If an organization does not post information to social media,
“you’re missing a gigantic opportunity to tell your point of
view,” said Susan Neely, president and CEO of the American
Beverage Association. “We’ve had reporters call who have
gotten leads from our tweets.”
Henry taps the reference website Muck Rack (muckrack.
com) to find and communicate with journalists who use
Twitter.
“In the past, I would have had to get a list of publications
and phone those publications,” he said. “With Twitter, I’ve
been able to find reporters very quickly and reach out to
them instantly.” He also uses Twitter’s “Who to Follow”
function to find members of Congress who tweet. Tweet
Congress (tweetcongress.org) provides another directory of
congressional tweeters.
Social media do not replace traditional communications,
however. A public affairs professional’s online relationship
with a journalist will be enhanced if they already have
established a relationship offline, for example.
“It’s one thing to put information out,” AFFI’s Henry said.
“It’s another to make sure it gets read and used in a story.”
To increase that likelihood, “you need to develop personal
relationships with reporters and still be available by phone.”
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
realized that “every company is now a media company”
during an interview with Cisco executive Don Scheinman.27
Cisco had hired veteran journalists to contribute to
its technology news site, now called “The Network”
(newsroom.cisco.com), and Foremski described them as “a
team that produces top-notch quality media ... that meets the
highest journalistic standards.”
23
Case Study
Eli Lilly’s Prescription for
Executive Engagement Online
Eli Lilly’s top executives supported their public affairs
department’s move into social media, and now the senior
execs have jumped into the game themselves.
24
Amy O’Connor, head of Lilly’s digital government affairs
team, led the social media project. When she ran into
significant internal opposition, Michael O’Connor said,
she got help from Bart Peterson, senior vice president
for corporate affairs and communications, and John
Lechleiter, chairman, president and CEO.
Like all pharmaceutical firms, Lilly can’t allow discussion
of specific medicines or specific diseases in ways that
could require them to report comments to the Food and
Drug Administration. Lilly does allow visitors onto its
platforms to criticize the firm.
A Genuine Dialogue
Lilly’s social media representatives are told that “you
can’t get personal,” Michael O’Connor said. “You have
to be interactive. You have to recognize that this is give
and take, and you’re not always right. Social media is real
conversation, not just advertising.”
One-time participants are trained the day before
they venture online on the company’s behalf, and a
communicator sits with them during the session.
These social media efforts are designed to reach
out to legislators and their staff, advocacy groups
and organizations that address health, such as the
American Diabetes Association and the American Heart
Association. In turn, Lilly’s communications and public
affairs professionals follow news media, legislators and
advocacy groups. “You’ve got to know what’s being
said about you in order to plan to deal with it,” Michael
O’Connor said.
LillyPad.lilly.com/
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
“Because we had very strong senior management support,
we had legitimacy in the company to begin with,” Lilly
Public Affairs Manager Michael O’Connor explained.
“Otherwise, the inertia is ‘don’t try something new.’”
Entering this new realm of communication “made a lot of
folks nervous.”
Communicators don’t have to seek pre-approval for
specific posts, but they do have to be trained in what can
and cannot be discussed, and on the tone the company
expects them to project online.
Since then, both senior executives have participated
in Twitter chats, setting an example for the rest of the
company. Now, when the company addresses major
legislative issues, other senior executives also engage
stakeholders through social media.
The move into social media was facilitated by a legal
department that “understands we need to be out there,” he
said. And he joined a chorus of public affairs professionals
who said the best way to convince skeptics is to show
them how the company already is discussed online, both
positively and negatively.
On a daily basis, communicators post to the company’s
public affairs blog (lillypad.lilly.com), Twitter feed
and Facebook page, all of which are named LillyPad.
From time to time, a company expert makes a one-time
appearance in social media.
“We are a drug company, a consumer-driven company,”
he said. “The way the consumer gets information about
us as a brand and as a company is changing at lightning
speed. We have to be active participants in that realm of
communication, or we will get left behind.”
Case Study
Union Pacific and the (Not So)
Little Engine That Tweets
They do have help from human beings most of the time.
But, using their on-board GPS devices, the engines
automatically tweet and post their locations as they pull
their passenger cars on community-relations travels around
the Union Pacific network.
Train Tracking
“Stopped near TUCSON, AZ at 1:36 PM MST on
Thursday 11/10,” No. 844 tweeted one day in November
2011. The tweet included a link to the blog, where railroad
enthusiasts could view the location on a map and zoom
all the way in to the specific siding where the train was
standing.
Nearly 4,000 people were following No. 844’s Twitter feed
that day — some of whom are interested in all things rail,
others who were planning to see the train when it arrived
near their homes.
The trains’ travels and Web presence serve mainly to
polish Union Pacific’s image — among the general public
and among community leaders who are invited to meet
with railroad officials for meals in the vintage dining cars.
Both will feature prominently in the company’s 150th
anniversary celebrations in 2012.
But Union Pacific also puts social media to work in public
and internal communications.
Regional public affairs and communications professionals
are encouraged to use social media to interact with
government and community leaders, according to Donna
Kush, Union Pacific’s assistant vice president for corporate
communications.
All regional public affairs directors have Facebook
accounts, she said, while fewer than a quarter tweet.
They also post to others’ social media platforms, such as
newspapers’ Web pages, community blogs and Facebook
pages. Kush’s Internet team monitors the activities, but the
communicators and public affairs personnel are trusted to
engage in real-time discussions online.
The company allows any employee to comment on Union
Pacific’s intranet, where the company posts news about
the company and the industry, about community activities
employees participate in and about awards and recognition
workers receive.
Kush’s team monitors comment before they go online, but
only for concerns such as tone. Criticism of the company
is allowed as long as it’s respectful, Kush said.
Valuing Candor
Company officials sometimes pick up good ideas from
employee comments, she said, and the process boosts
morale. “It has helped validate the company’s culture
of being open, transparent, respectful and focused on
teamwork,” Kush said. “It makes the company more
credible, because people realize that we are being
respectful of their [positions] and that we listen to them.
“We have had employees post comments saying: ‘I am
surprised, but I’m thankful that the company is allowing us
to post comments that aren’t necessarily what the company
may want to hear.’”
James Young, Union Pacific’s chairman, president and
CEO, has been supportive of social media participation
since it was first considered, Kush said.
“Education was the key” to winning support throughout
the company, she added.
The first step was teaching executives how social media
work, she said.
Next was showing how the company already was being
discussed online and would be wise to join the discussion.
“People are already talking about your company, so why
shouldn’t the company have its own Facebook page?” she
asked.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Employees aren’t Union Pacific’s only representatives in
social media. The railroad’s heritage steam locomotives
from the mid-1940s — No. 844 and No. 3985 — tweet
(twitter.com/up_steam) and post to the Union Pacific
Steam blog (bit.ly/cxKUsk).
25
Chapter Four
26
It started as a classic Greenpeace campaign to capture public
attention for an environmental cause: saving the whales.
a play on “humpback”) finished second, with less than 3
percent.30
For many years, the advocacy group funded scientists who
were tagging and tracking humpbacks in the Antarctic. To
make the mammals more sympathetic, in 2007 Greenpeace
decided to personalize the whales by giving seven of them
names. Then, in an effort to heighten public interest,
the group conducted an online poll to select the names.
Greenpeace suggested names such as Anahi (which means
“immortal” in Persian), Shanti (“peace” in Sanskrit) and
Aurora (the Roman goddess of dawn).
After their initial uneasiness, Greenpeace leaders embraced
the new name, using it to promote their save-the-whales
efforts and raising money by selling Mr. Splashy Pants
merchandise.
One cheeky member of the public, however, thought a better
name would be Mr. Splashy Pants, and the idea went viral.
When the poll was supposed to end, Splashy had 76 percent
of the vote. Greenpeace extended the deadline, apparently
hoping a different name would prevail. One environmental
website, Treehugger (www.treehugger.com), urged its visitors
to vote for one of the “very beautiful” names, such as Anahi,
Shanti or Aurora. “Do your bit and save a whale’s selfrespect,” Treehugger author Bonnie Alter pleaded.29
Other sites hopped onto Mr. Pants’ bandwagon. Facebook
users created groups to boost Splashy. Reddit, a contentsharing social media site, designed a Mr. Splashy Pants logo
to promote the name. And Splashy’s share of the more than
150,000 votes rose to 78 percent. Humphrey (presumably
Facebook.com/group.php?gid=6603936373
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
It’s OK to Lose Control
“One of the great lessons” of the incident, Reddit co-founder
Alexis Ohanian said, is that “it’s OK to lose control.”31 By
losing control, Sorrentino said, Greenpeace “actually raised
awareness to a whole other level, because people took it and
ran with it.”
It’s a lesson that all public affairs practitioners need to learn,
Mascott said.
“The biggest paradigm shift [caused by social media] has
been that people have realized that they’re actually not in
control of the message,” he said. That’s always been true to
an extent, he added, because “anybody can take what you’ve
said and have conversations with others and say whatever
they want to say” about the message. Social media sites allow
that to happen more rapidly and with broader impact.
But organizations must embrace loss of control beyond a
single campaign, the way Greenpeace eventually did. They
must allow stakeholders to choose topics to be discussed,
send employees to visit stakeholders’ social media sites
on the stakeholders’ terms, listen and act on what the
stakeholders say, free company communicators to interact
in social media in real time and become increasingly
transparent.
When the American Beverage Association organized
Americans Against Food Taxes in 2009 to oppose proposals
for a federal tax on soft drinks, it didn’t pretend that the new
organization was not a creation of the beverage industry.
Neely was quoted in the second paragraph of the press
release that announced formation of the coalition, and she
was identified as the association’s president and CEO. The
announcement described the new group as a “coalition of
concerned individuals, working families and small and large
businesses.” The release listed coalition members, including
the National Supermarket Association, the Grocery
Manufacturers Association, the Can Manufacturers Institute,
The wide availability of information today requires that
organizations be transparent, Neely explained. “If you
appear to be obfuscating in some way, the consequences in
terms of public loss of trust are large.”
Ten or 15 years ago, she said, organizers of such a coalition
might not have revealed its membership. “The old-school
thinking would be: ‘We don’t need to volunteer that.’”
Now, the public expects membership to be revealed. If
a company or trade organization attempts to hide its
membership, it eventually will be found out and the discovery
will be treated as a scandal. There’s no scandal when
membership is revealed at the outset.
“When you’re up front,” Neely said, “it’s the ultimate preemptive strike.”
Hiding information not only delivers ammunition to
opponents, AFFI’s Henry said, it “will turn potential allies
into potential enemies. We try to represent our industry
openly and transparently, and we make no bones about who
we are and what we represent and what values we bring.”
Showing Vulnerability
An organization functions most effectively in social media
when it displays qualities such as modesty and vulnerability,
as well as transparency.
“Companies need to behave like our peers, not our masters,”
consultant Michalski said. “If you come across as being too
corporate,” Henry said, “people will call you out.”
In responding to Japan’s nuclear crisis, the Nuclear Energy
Institute tried to find the right tone between not appearing
overly complacent about safety at U.S. plants and “not
being overly defensive, either,” according to Peterson, NEI’s
communications vice president.
Future 500 President Shireman said a company needs to
“humanize itself ” when it participates in social media. “If
what the company says does not humanize the company —
doesn’t trigger people to feel empathy toward the company
— then it’s a counterproductive statement.”
Michalski said humanization requires an organization to
display vulnerability, which he described as “taking down the
corporate veneer” and “opening portholes of communication
between people on the inside and people on the outside of
the company — and doing so in very authentic ways.”32
Microsoft did that by establishing a blog that described the
company’s inner workings, warts and all, Michalski said.
Robert Scoble, the blogger from 2003 into 2006, “schleps
a video camera around inside of Microsoft’s campus and
does surprise interviews with people. He puts them directly
on the Web, thus creating an atmosphere of vulnerability
and connection with the outside world. When you pierce
the vacuum created by the corporate veil, you begin to put
a vibe out about what you care about, who you are, what’s
going on.”33
Scoble would even give another company credit for making
a better product, The Economist reported. That made him
more effective at defending Microsoft when he determined
that was necessary. “If somebody somewhere takes a swipe
at Microsoft that is unfair, Mr. Scoble can cry foul and
actually have his readers concede the point,” The Economist
said.
Michalski credited Scoble with having “single-handedly
reversed the negative impression of Microsoft.”34 The
Economist said, more modestly, that Scoble “made Microsoft,
with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally
but noticeably less evil to the outside world, and especially
to the independent software developers that are his core
audience.”35
Other companies humanize themselves by encouraging
employees throughout the organization to participate in
social media on the organization’s behalf, as Shell, Dell,
General Electric and the Natural Resources Defense
Council do.
Michalski said a communicator should “start treating
yourself not as a spokesperson for your organization but as
a coach or facilitator,” to enable other employees to interact
with the public. “If you do this well, you will have a very
credible, resilient, broad spectrum of contacts that let you say
things with credibility.”
Transparency, which requires honesty, also means
organizations must acknowledge mistakes, admit fault,
accept blame and promise to do better.
“I think there is enormous power in honesty, particularly
with the Twitter generation,” Morrison said. “I think young
people have an unbelievable [BS] detector.”
Companies can make mistakes and “still be very, very
credible,” Michalski said. “But you have to listen, respond
and never make that mistake again.”
Don’t promise perfection, Shireman warned. The best
position is: “‘We’re not perfect and don’t pretend to be, but
we constantly try to get better.’ That is effective because it’s
true.”
Staying silent allows others to define you, Garvis warned.
“‘No comment’ is heard as ‘I’m guilty.’ It says you have
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
the National Association of Convenience Stores and other
trade groups. The coalition website identifies several hundred
companies and industry organizations that belong.
27
something to hide, and now [others] have full license to
create a story around you.”
your press releases on your blog. They want you to talk about
things that they want to talk about.”
Even worse is a whitewash. “If you cover up the mistake,
and it comes out later that you did, there’s nothing more
damning to your reputation,” Michalski said. Instead,
Garvis said, “admit that you had a bad day, that you learned
something, that you have contrition and that you want to
move on.”
Social media are about the stakeholders, not the company,
futurist Morrison said. “A lot of people look at this as
another channel for advertising and marketing, but they’re
missing the point. The whole issue of social media is the
consumers’ controlling whom they hang out with.”
It can be especially effective to put out bad news before
others know something’s gone wrong, Michalski said. That
enables the organization to define the context.
If company lawyers and senior executives prefer silence,
public affairs professionals can point out the dangers of not
being forthcoming: The cost of lost reputation can be higher
than the cost of a legal battle, and transparency can be a legal
asset rather than a legal liability.
“You have to educate your leaders to weigh the benefits of
what the lawyers are saying against the other risks,” Holtz
Respond Quickly
And to hang out successfully, a communicator has to
converse, not issue carefully vetted pronouncements. “A
mechanism that takes two weeks to get anything done is
guaranteed to be flawed,” Ovaitt said. “If something happens
at 9 on Saturday night, you have to have your video up on
your website by 9:30.”
Shell selects the topics for its online Dialogues Forum (www.
shelldialogues.com/forums), but it solicits opinions contrary to
its own and allows no-holds-barred comments from the public.
28
Shell’s answer: “Shell has operated in Arctic and subarctic
conditions for decades, giving us the technical experience
and know-how to explore for and produce oil and gas in a
responsible way.”
Blogs.shell.com/climatechange/
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
A topic in August 2011, for instance, was: “Can Arctic
development be carried out safely and responsibly?”
said. When half a company’s value can be in its reputation,
Shireman said, “the biggest damage that can come to the
company is remaining silent in the face of assertions against
the company.” If company executives remain silent, Adfero
Group’s Mascott said, “there’s the potential that they’ll lose a
public policy debate that will have a massive negative impact
on their business.”
Aim for Influence, Not Control
In this new environment, people tend to be influenced
more by each other than by the messages of professional
communicators, Holtz said. This shift requires public
affairs professionals to participate in multi-directional
communication, attempting to influence the conversation
rather than control it.
Many companies fail at social media because they use it to
talk about things that are of interest to the company rather
than the stakeholder, Holtz said. “People are tired of reading
But United for America’s Arctic — a coalition of 19
environmental groups — begged to differ, and its dissent
appeared right below Shell’s comment: “A major oil spill in
the Arctic Ocean would be impossible to clean up and could
have enormous consequences for the region’s communities
and ecosystems. … Until issues such as the lack of science
and the inability to clean up an oil spill in Arctic waters are
addressed, no development must happen.”36
These are followed by dozens of comments by any who
wanted to add a voice to the conversation.
Many organizations might hesitate to invite dissent at a
company website, but Wiggins called it a “no-brainer” in
Shell’s culture.
A pilot session of the dialogues drew larger-than-expected
public participation and “turned out to be a huge success,”
Wiggins said. That won buy-in from corporate executives, he
added.
“We welcome open and constructive feedback,” he said. “We
value all opinions, even if they’re counter to our opinion. It’s
always good to listen.”
Participants tend to moderate the dialogues themselves, he
added. An unreasonable comment frequently is rebutted by
another participant.
David Hone, Shell’s chief climate change advisor, writes a
climate change blog (blogs.shell.com/climatechange). And
the company plans to increase the number of employees
who enter social media “to talk about Shell from their own
experience,” said Wiggins, Shell’s NGO and stakeholder
relations chief. “We would like to have people from all
disciplines participating.”
Shell launched the climate change blog in February 2009
after careful searches for a topic of enduring interest and for
an expert who could write posts that people would want to
read. Hone turned out to be adept at “taking a complicated
situation and explaining it in common, everyday speak,”
Wiggins said. “He’s an engaging personality with a good
sense of humor.”
Hone had to be taught “a few do’s and don’ts” before he
started writing, including “don’t criticize someone, be positive
in how you write, don’t go more than a week without posting.”
‘A Public Relationship’
Shell representatives not only post to Shell websites, Wiggins
said, they also visit stakeholders’ social media. “We’re not
talking at them,” he explained. “We’re having a conversation
with them. It’s a dialogue, not a monologue. It’s no longer
public relations. It is more a public relationship.”
Dell also participates heavily in social media. “We see it as
a differentiator for Dell — one of the things that sets Dell
apart,” explained Glaze, Dell’s regional giving manager for
the Americas.
Dell’s marketing department has a dedicated social media
and community team, led by a vice president, Manish
Mehta. Employees throughout the company are encouraged
to participate on various social media platforms. Hundreds
of Dell personnel — including Chairman and CEO Michael
Dell — tweet. Dell participates in YouTube, Facebook
and LinkedIn and publishes blogs, including one focused
on the federal government (en.community.dell.com/dellblogs/health-care/b/washington-report/default.aspx). The
company also created a platform, called IdeaStorm (www.
ideastorm.com), where customers can discuss how to
improve Dell products.
Dell uses social media internally to facilitate collaboration
on products and to encourage employees’ community and
charitable involvement. One platform enables employees to
volunteer, make charitable donations and invite others to join
community or charitable activities. Nearly a quarter of Dell’s
employees participate, said Glaze.
Shell’s and Dell’s focus on listening to stakeholders illustrates
a “core objective” of effective social media activities,
according to Shireman: Before a company can deliver its
messages to stakeholders effectively, it needs to know what
stakeholders are thinking.
“Telling is not what people want to have done to them,” said
Diane Lilly, executive vice president for government relations
at Wells Fargo & Co. “They want to talk with us, interact,
have a conversation that’s a thoughtful dialogue.”
“If you truly expect to have influence with an activist group,”
Ovaitt said, “you have to be open to their influence on you as
much as they are open to your influence on them.”
As Garvis put it: “If I project myself as a good student of
you and convince you that I’m actually hearing what you
said, you’ll be more likely to hear what I have to say as well.”
What’s important “isn’t what I have to say. It’s what you’re
willing to hear.”
Stakeholders don’t have to have their way all the time, Garvis
said, but they don’t want to be ignored. “Allowing yourself
to be seen as a learning organization that is willing to change
its mind when it learns something new is a really good
practice,” he said.
Without entering a conversation, listening carefully and
asking stakeholders to clarify their statements if necessary, an
organization can misunderstand what stakeholders want and
take counterproductive actions, Shireman warned. Engaging
stakeholders in conversation makes it more likely that an
organization’s actions will win stakeholder approval, he said.
Acting unilaterally can cause even an appropriate action to
be rejected.
“If you just try to educate people [without asking for their
input], they’ll feel manipulated and reject what you sell,” he
explained. “Because the stakeholders have no ownership in
what’s been done, because they’ve not been consulted, they
will automatically reject it in most cases. When the company
does take action, if the stakeholders feel they’ve been heard
and they can see their fingerprints on that action, they’re
much more likely to support that action.”
Empowering Employees
To engage in conversations effectively, an organization
must relinquish some control of its employees as well.
Communicators must be empowered to converse with
stakeholders in real time. Online discussions will pass by
any organization that requires every post to be approved by
a lawyer or executive. But employees must be trained for this
new challenge, and companies must prepare thoughtfully.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Shell also conducts video Web chats and then posts
transcripts online. It has Twitter, YouTube and Flickr
accounts. Shell’s Meet Our People Web page (www.shell.
com/home/content/aboutshell/who_we_are/our_people/
our_people_video) contains links to Shell personnel
discussing various aspects of the company.
29
“Your approval process can’t be as linear and multilayered
as it used to be,” said the American Beverage Association’s
Neely. “If you’re tweeting six or seven times a day, somebody
has to be empowered to do that.”
Argenti said just a small number of companies allow
public affairs personnel to engage in unfettered, real-time
conversation. Although a growing number of public affairs
practitioners are being empowered to do so, they tend not to
enjoy the flexibility granted to customer service representatives.
In the Public Affairs Council’s survey, just a seventh of
respondents said they never have to seek approval before
posting to social media, while nearly a third said they
always have to. Asked to place their frequency-of-approval
requirement on a five-point scale, nearly a third said 1 (never)
or 2. Nearly half said 5 (always) or 4.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Muting ‘Institution-Speak’
30
At the Natural Resources Defense Council, Gutis said,
superiors do not preview postings to Twitter, Facebook or
blogs. “I argued for that point of view very strenuously”
when NRDC’s social media strategy was being developed,
he said. “I realized that if we had to do previews — as we
do with press releases and reports and fact sheets and things
like that — it would never have succeeded. People don’t want
institution-speak on these platforms.”
NRDC’s experts speak in public all the time, Gutis pointed
out. “My feeling was: If we trust them to do that, we should
trust them to post a blog.”
Traditional Media
Aren’t Dead Yet
Despite the increasing importance of social media,
traditional forms of communication aren’t going away.
Public affairs communication will continue to include
telephone calls, letters, face-to-face meetings and the
nurturing of personal relationships with government
officials, community leaders and traditional journalists.
Attending events in their district or state still is the
most important way legislators come to understand
constituents’ opinions, according to senior and social
media managers in congressional offices.
In the Congressional Management Foundation survey,
congressional managers ranked other means in this order:
personalized messages from constituents (via email, postal
mail, fax or phone call), in-person town hall meetings,
district office hours, telephone town hall meetings, surveys
At the Frozen Food Institute, Henry is empowered to engage
in real-time conversation: “In the same sense that I can take
a call from a reporter, I don’t have to run to legal counsel
or higher up the leadership food chain to get permission to
respond” online.
Professional communicators at GE can converse in real time,
too, said Klasky, the company’s director of global public
affairs.
In both cases, however, communicators can consult
quickly with lawyers or superiors if they feel the need. And
effective organizations train personnel in the art of online
conversation.
Staff drills are integral to emergency-response preparation in
the nuclear energy industry, so it was natural for the Nuclear
Energy Institute to make thorough preparation a part of its
approach to social media. “You can do a lot of work with
Twitter without getting into trouble if you’re prepared for it,”
Peterson said. “It’s difficult to do on the fly.”
Social media guidelines should be “simple and
straightforward,” said Ovaitt, of the Institute for Public
Relations. “You assure one message and many voices.”
Shell has social media guidelines and is preparing
an in-depth social media policy, Wiggins said. “Our
communicators know what the boundaries are,” he said. If
a conversation is about to go beyond a boundary, the Shell
communicator has to say, “Let me get back to you,” then
confer with a company attorney about how to respond.
completed on paper and using Facebook. Other online
activities rated lower.
Ninety-eight percent of respondents said attending events
was very or somewhat important. Using Facebook was
deemed very or somewhat important by 64 percent.
While 77 percent said attending events was very
important, just 8 percent put using Facebook in that
category.37
“You always have to do the real-world engagement,”
Wiggins said. “People meet each other, sit down and talk.”
Traditional media organizations also remain the most
important news media, Deutsch said.
“Look at what people are tweeting or blogging about. It’s
mostly news stories. There’s not much original content
happening in social media,” he said. Instead, social media
are “how people spread things that someone else writes.”
Even as people get excited about new media, Ovaitt said,
old media tend to keep plodding along. Radio did not
destroy newspapers. Television did not destroy radio.
A challenge, Wiggins said, is to make sure the message is
communicated naturally. “Anyone within the social media
space will sniff out the corporate talk,” he warned.
Don’t Let Others Tell Your Story
To convince GE executives to approve social media
participation, Klasky and her associates compiled examples
of postings about the company and argued that “you never
want anyone else telling your story.”
In departments where resistance to participation remains high,
she said, “we’re just starting with baby steps, [such as] an
expert blog where you tell a story about something you make.”
Those who enter real-time social media conversations are told
to “be sensible,” she said. “You’re representing the company.
If you wouldn’t say it to The New York Times, don’t tweet it.”
GE public affairs personnel spot-check online conversations,
and sometimes posts are altered or taken down. But, overall,
Klasky said, “we’re trusting folks to be smart and sensible.”
Real-time communication also requires communicators to
be thoroughly familiar with what their company does and
able to find out quickly what they don’t know.
Online resources can allow stakeholders to collect information
about a company and end up with more knowledge about
some topics than corporate communicators have.
Case Study
Getting Ready to Tweet
As the company’s public affairs department began to
prepare to become a social media participant, “we focused
first on what we would and would not say,” Manan Shah
explained. Shah, associate manager, state advocacy and
compliance, said the company couldn’t talk about medical
products or treatments without possibly stumbling into the
need to make additional reports to the FDA if followers
reported an adverse event. If Shah, the company’s chief
U.S. public affairs tweeter, wanted to link to a research
article, “we would have to vet it.”
Securing Approval
To ease concerns of company lawyers and higherranking executives, Shah crafted a series of tweets for
approval before the company’s Twitter feed went live.
He also prepared a template for thanking legislators who
supported bills the company hoped would pass. After two
months of Shah’s tweeting these pre-approved messages,
company lawyers loosened the reins. “They became more
comfortable and understood the process more themselves,”
he said. “Seeking permission instead of apologizing later
was the best way to do it.”
Shah said he benefitted from working with a young lawyer
who understands social media and whose office is nearby,
and whom he still consults when he feels the need.
“I was able to walk down the hall and say, ‘I want to say
this, and what do you think?’ rather than having to send an
email and wait for him to respond.”
Shah now tweets about company activities and public policy
positions, and he posts links to articles of interest.
Shah’s primary target audience is diabetics, “to better
educate them about what we’re doing on their behalf.
If you tell people you’re a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical
company, that isn’t the warmest-received job title out there.
When I’m messaging that we’re excited about the local 5K
race where the proceeds go to a children’s diabetes center,
that communicates that we have a big commitment about
what we do on behalf of patients.”
Novo Nordisk’s Twitter followers also include advocacy
groups, health organizations, legislators and the news
media. Shah follows them in return and counts following
patients as the most important aspect of his reputationbuilding exercise. “To follow them and engage with them
shows you’re committed to having discussions with them
rather than just pushing out what you want to talk about.”
Shah had 1,250 followers in mid-October 2011, up slowly
but steadily from 975 in mid-June. But his reach exceeded
that, because followers retweeted some of his posts and
news media picked up information from his tweets.
Shah devotes about 10 percent of his time to Twitter, the
rest to lobbying and government compliance in New York,
North Carolina and Florida. A Twitter app on his smart
phone enables him to tweet while traveling and to post
photos from events he attends.
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
Novo Nordisk, the global pharmaceutical company,
tiptoed into Twitter (@NovoNordisk_GA). The Denmarkheadquartered company, with significant operations in
North America, worried about inadvertently violating
rules that govern its highly regulated industry.
31
Chapter Five
Preparing for What’s Next
As communicators grapple with how to make effective use
of social media — often referred to as Web 2.0 — techies
already are preparing for Web 3.0.
Web 2.0 is distinguished by Internet users’ ability to
interact with each other online and to produce Web
content themselves. Web 3.0 will feature greatly improved
interactivity among computers, making the Internet much
easier for people to use.
32
The next Internet stage often is explained this way: Instead
of planning a vacation by separately visiting the Internet
sites of airlines, hotels, car rental companies, online travel
agencies and others, people will type “three-week vacation
to Australia,” and the user’s computer will query other
computers and produce a complete plan for the trip.
Consultant Garvis worries that the social fragmentation
currently caused by telecommunications fragmentation
would become much more prevalent because of Web 3.0.
Already, people with differing political views tend not to talk
with each other. Instead, “they’re talking with themselves,”
Garvis said. In the future, “if the algorithm tells me this is
what I need to know — and that is different from what you
need to know — we’ll have less information in common.”
If computers know what individuals have been interested in
and “start throwing similar stuff ” at them, “it makes it very
difficult to discover something new.”
Sorrentino, of Future 500, cautioned against jumping to too
many conclusions about Web 3.0, however. “The first streaks
of light are just on the horizon,” he said.
When online activity becomes that easy, Dartmouth’s Argenti
said, already-fast public affairs communication will become
exponentially faster. When queries about corporations
become that simple to do, “people will know everything there
is to know about you before you start to talk to them. Stories
are going to be told about you all the time. The issue will
become: What are you doing to stay in the conversation?”
New Tools and Metrics
Public affairs consultant Deutsch foresees enhancement of
the ability to segment and target online participants and to
measure online opinion and the impact of online activities.
“It will accelerate the ability to identify the exact people you
want to communicate with,” he said.
With one query, for example, an activist could compile an
energy company’s health and safety performance in every
country in the world whose records were online. An activist
could compare many CEOs’ pay levels with their companies’
layoff records. Quick and easy analysis could be made
of legislators’ voting records on a particular topic, their
campaign contributors’ interests in the topic and other benefits
legislators have received from interested parties. Activists
also could more quickly and thoroughly identify like-minded
Internet participants and organize them for political action.
Adam Edwards/Shutterstock.com
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
By recording users’ online activity, computers will learn the
users’ interests, wants and needs and be able to round up
information without the need for detailed queries.
All this would enhance the connect-the-dots exercises
that activist groups already perform and facilitate actions
to advocate government policy or to press for change in
corporate behavior.
Endnotes
[2] “#SocialCongress,” Congressional Management Foundation,
2011, congressfoundation.org/storage/documents/CMF_Pubs/
cmf-social-congress.pdf
[3] Ben Pershing, “#Surprise: Congress not so slow when it comes
to using social media,” The Washington Post, July 26, 2011, www.
washingtonpost.com/todays_paper?dt=2011-07-26&bk=A&pg=15
[4] Public Affairs Council, Stakeholder Matters in Internet 2.0:
Communicating Issues of Public Affairs, 2011
[5] Cecilia Kang, “Number of cell phones exceeds U.S. population:
CTIA trade group,” The Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2011, www.
washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/number-of-cellphones-exceeds-us-population-ctia-trade-group/2011/10/11/
gIQARNcEcL_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_tech
[6] Joseph Galante, “Cisco Says Smartphones to Boost Mobile Web
Use 26-Fold by 2015,” Bloomberg, Feb 1, 2011, www.bloomberg.
com/news/2011-02-01/cisco-says-smartphones-to-boost-mobileweb-use-26-fold-by-2015.html; “Population Growth Rate,” The
World Bank, www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/modules/
social/pgr/chart1a.html
[7] Sarah Kessler, “Mobile by the Numbers,” Mashable, March
23, 2011, mashable.com/2011/03/23/mobile-by-the-numbersinfogrpahic
[8] Burson-Marsteller, Burson-Marsteller DC Advocacy Groups
Social Media Study, 2010, www.slideshare.net/BMGlobalNews/
bursonmarsteller-dc-advocacy-groups-social-media-study-final;
Burson-Marsteller, “Vast Majority of Leading U.S. Political
Advocacy Groups Are Using at Least One Social Media Platform
to Connect and Organize Stakeholders, Study Finds,” July 10, 2010,
burson-marsteller.com/newsroom/lists/PressReleases/DispForm.
aspx?ID=768&nodename=Press%20Releases%20Archive; BursonMarsteller, The Global Social Media Check-up 2010, www.slideshare.
net/BMGlobalNews/global-social-media-checkup
[9] Burson-Marsteller, The Global Social Media Check-up 2011, www.
slideshare.net/BMGlobalNews/bursonmarsteller-2011-globalsocial-media-checkup
[10] Nora Ganim Barnes and Justina Andonian, “The 2011
Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption: Have America’s Largest
Companies Reached a Social Media Plateau?” Center for
Marketing Research, Charlton College of Business, University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth, 2011, www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesan
dresearch/2011fortune500/
[16] Adam Ostrow, “Inside Gatorade’s Social Media Command
Center,” Mashable, June 15, 2010, mashable.com/2010/06/15/
gatorade-social-media-mission-control
[17] www.radian6.com/what-we-sell
[18] woollabs.com/products.html
[19] Christian Torres, “More drug companies close Facebook
pages as Walls open,” The Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2011, www.
washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/more-drugcompanies-close-facebook-pages-as-walls-open/2011/08/16/
gIQA1venJJ_story.html
[20] www.scribd.com/doc/36127480/Ford-Social-MediaGuidelines
[21] www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm
[22] www.duke-energy.ibia.info/about-us/emp-social-mediaguidelines.asp
[23] https://www.vancity.com/AboutUs/SocialMedia/Guidelines/
[24] www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
[25] content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/corp-comm/social-mediapolicy.aspx?c=us&l=en
[26] www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm
[27] Tom Foremski, “5yrs: Lessons and Insights — Meeting
Cisco’s Dan Scheinman and Realizing Every Company Is Now a
Media Company,” Silicon Valley Watcher, Aug. 20, 2009, www.
siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/08/5yrs_lessons_
an.php
[28] Ben Pershing, “#Surprise: Congress not so slow when it comes
to using social media,” The Washington Post, July 26, 2011, www.
washingtonpost.com/todays_paper?dt=2011-07-26&bk=A&pg=15
[29] Bonnie Alter, “Name That Whale, Quickly!” Treehugger, Dec.
5, 2007, www.treehugger.com/files/2007/12/name_that_whale.php
[30] “Mister Splashy Pants the whale — you named him, now
save him,” Greenpeace, Dec. 10, 2007, www.greenpeace.org/
international/en/news/features/splashy-101207
[31] Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder, “How to make a splash in
social media,” speech to Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED)
Conference, November 2009, www.ted.com/talks/alexis_ohanian_
how_to_make_a_splash_in_social_media.html
[32] Gordon Cook, “Building Innovation from the Edge,” Cook’s
Collaborative Edge: The Blog, March 2006, gordoncook.net/
index_page2.html
[11] National Small Business Association, 2010 Small Business
Technology Survey, www.nsba.biz/docs/nsba_2010_technology_
survey.pdf
[33] Gordon Cook, “Building Innovation from the Edge,” Cook’s
Collaborative Edge: The Blog, March 2006, gordoncook.net/
index_page2.html
[12] David Kirkpatrick, “Social Power and the Coming
Corporate Revolution,” Forbes, Sept. 26, 2011, www.forbes.com/
forbes/2011/0926/feature-techonomy-social-power-corporaterevolution-kirkpatrick_print.html
[34] Gordon Cook, “Building Innovation from the Edge,” Cook’s
Collaborative Edge: The Blog, March 2006, gordoncook.net/
index_page2.html
[13] “Mattel Announces Sustainable Procurement Policy,”
Mattel, investor.shareholder.com/mattel/releasedetail.
cfm?ReleaseID=583977
[14] Mark Iskowitz, “Avandia warning signs seen online as early
as ’04,” Medical Marketing & Media, Aug. 31, 2010, www.mmmonline.com/avandia-warning-signs-seen-online-as-early-as-04/
article/177982
[15] David Kirkpatrick, “Social Power and the Coming
Corporate Revolution,” Forbes, Sept. 26, 2011, www.forbes.com/
forbes/2011/0926/feature-techonomy-social-power-corporaterevolution-kirkpatrick_print.html
[35] “Does Robert Scoble, a celebrity blogger on Microsoft’s payroll,
herald the death of traditional public relations?” The Economist, Feb.
10, 2005, www.economist.com/node/3644293/print
[36] www.shelldialogues.com/forums/can-arctic-development-becarried-out-responsibly
[37] “#SocialCongress,” Congressional Management Foundation,
2011, congressfoundation.org/storage/documents/CMF_Pubs/
cmf-social-congress.pdf
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
[1] mostpopularwebsites.net/1-50/
33
Appendix: Sources
The following individuals were interviewed for this report:
n Paul Argenti, professor of corporate communication, Dartmouth College, paul.a.argenti@tuck.dartmouth.edu
n Elizabeth Bartz, president and CEO, State and Federal Communications Inc., ebartz@stateandfed.com
n Ken Deutsch, senior vice president, Jones Public Affairs, ken@jonespa.com
n Nate Garvis, founder, Naked Civics, nate@nakedcivics.com
n Michele Glaze, regional giving manager, Americas, Dell, michele_glaze@dell.com
n Phil Gutis, director of communications, Natural Resources Defense Council, pgutis@nrdc.org
n Katie Harbath, associate manager, policy, Facebook, katieharbath@fb.com
n Corey Henry, vice president, communications, American Frozen Food Institute, chenry@affi.com
n Shel Holtz, principal, Holtz Communication & Technology, shel@holtz.com
n Helaine Klasky, director, global public affairs, General Electric, helaine.klasky@ge.com
n Donna Kush, assistant vice president, corporate communications, Union Pacific, dmkush@up.com
n Diane Lilly, executive vice president, government relations, Wells Fargo & Co., diane.p.lilly@wellsfargo.com
n Jeff Mascott, managing partner, Adfero Group, jmascott@adfero.com
n Joe May, social media coordinator, State and Federal Communications Inc., jmay@stateandfed.com
| Beyond Control: How Social Media and Mobile Communication Are Changing Public Affairs
n Jerry Michalski, president and founder, Sociate, jerry@sociate.com
34
n Ian Morrison, president emeritus, Institute for the Future, seccurve@aol.com
n Susan Neely, president and CEO, American Beverage Association, info@ameribev.org
n Michael O’Connor, manager, public affairs, Eli Lilly & Co., oconnormi@lilly.com
n Frank Ovaitt, president and CEO, Institute for Public Relations, iprceo@jou.ufl.edu
n Scott Peterson, senior vice president, communications, Nuclear Energy Institute, jsp@nei.org
n Manan Shah, associate manager, state advocacy and compliance, Novo Nordisk, mnxs@novonordisk.com
n Bill Shireman, president and CEO, Future 500, bshireman@future500.org
n Nick Sorrentino, director of social media, Future 500, nick@exelorix.com
n Shaun Wiggins, head, global NGO and stakeholder relations, Shell International, shaun.wiggins@shell.com
n Jonathan Wootliff, head of corporate accountability, Reputation Partners, jonathan@reputationpartners.com
About the Author
This is Tom Price’s eighth report for the Foundation for Public Affairs, the fourth exploring the
impact of the Internet. Now a Washington-based freelance journalist who focuses on public affairs,
business and technology, Price previously worked for 20 years as a politics writer and Washington
correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is also the author of three guidebooks to Washington, D.C.,
most recently Washington, DC, Free and Dirt Cheap (Wiley, 2010).
Foundation for Public Affairs
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