Mobile Public Relations Strategies
Chris Galloway
Monash University, Gippsland, Australia
Department of Communication & Writing
School of Humanities, Communications & Social Sciences
Northways Rd, Churchill, VIC 3842
christopher.galloway@monash.edu.au
Ph. 61 3 5122 7452
Fax 61 3 5122 6359
1.
Introduction
Public relations is about the “ethical and strategic management of communication and
relationships” (Johnston & Zawawi, 2004, p.6) with individuals and groups ("publics") important
to an organization. At one time such publics could safely be thought of in relatively static terms
such as geographic location. This is, of course, still possible -- but such fixed categories are of
diminishing importance when it comes to building relationships with modern publics and
communicating organizational messages to them. Even the motor vehicles that facilitate physical
movement are becoming “smarter” and converging with technologies such as mobile telephony,
personal entertainment systems and handheld computing (Sherry & Urry, 2000, cited in Sheller,
2002).
This paper aims to explore the idea that mobile technologies mean PR practitioners must rethink
both the notion of publics and also how to relate to them. A "mobile PR" will undermine
taken-for-granted views about the nature of media, messages and the kinds of relationships public
relations people can expect to create on behalf of their clients. Many practitioners are still getting
to grips with the online public relations they have known -- through activities such as arranging the
building of corporate websites, monitoring online discussions relevant to client interests and both
disseminating company information online and responding to inquiries about it. The idea of an
even more flexible communications environment enabled by mobile technologies may seem very
daunting. No-one has so far worked out how to "do" PR in this new communications climate -there are no prescriptions or generally accepted approaches. Yet if practitioners do not confront the
dilemma of how to reach mobile audiences they risk becoming irrelevant to many clients who
must communicate in the mobile space or face unacceptable decay in their business.
2.
Background: why mobile is different
The Internet and mobile marketplaces have important differences. As Lindgren et al note, “The
mobile marketplace has a much wider reach than anything before it. It becomes synonymous with
everywhere” (2002, p.5). Siau, Lim & Shen agree that, “the emerging mobile commerce operates
in an environment very different from e-commerce conducted over the wired Internet” (2003, p. 2).
It is important that PR practitioners understand the differences and adjust their thinking and
practice accordingly.
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Siau, Lim and Shen list mobile market features they consider are not characteristic of “traditional”
e-commerce:





Ubiquity –users can get any information they want, whenever they want it, wherever they
are (including, now, RSS feeds delivered via mobile internet services)
Reachability – businesses can reach customers anywhere, anytime: equally, a user can be
in touch with and available for other people anywhere, anytime
Localization – knowledge of a user’s physical location allows locality-specific services to
be provided
Personalization – mobile commerce applications can be personalized to represent
information or provide services in ways appropriate to a specific user.
Dissemination-some wireless infrastructures support simultaneous delivery of data to all
mobile users within a specific geographical region (Siau, Lim & Shen, 2003, pp. 2-3).
As wireless technologies evolve, customer relations will experience dramatic change (Siau, Lim &
Shen, 2003, p. 16). To what extent can these relations be called public relations and be the domain
of PR practitioners rather than marketers? Lines of demarcation can be very blurry. But PR is
foregrounded when the prime purpose is to use mobile technologies to create connections –
relationships -- where the end game is the nature of the relationship rather than an immediate
output such as a purchase decision. Examples include

Viewer voting via SMS or mobile calls associated with television pop contests, where the
goal is to create a broad community of fans who feel they are helping shape the outcome.
Their sense of involvement and connection to the contestants -- and to other contest
followers – is something the promoters hope will morph into long-term enthusiasm for, and
purchasing of, products associated with the winner.

Free delivery of information to mobile devices where consumers have opted-in to receive it
– such as notifications of airline or public transport schedule changes. Individuals who are
thereby saved a fruitless trip to the train station will value such a convenience – and the
organization which provides it, enhancing the organization’s reputation for being
accessible (if not always for making the trains run on time).

Personalized, user-specified content delivery. This can range from downloading a daily
prayer to getting top news points from the daily paper sent to a mobile device. The
organization providing the service is extending its reach to consumers who may not
otherwise stop to access their content, or in fact may not be able to access it by other means.
This extended reach is valuable to the organizations concerned as a larger pool of
customers creates more opportunities to piggyback paid services on free ones.

Research conducted by SMS, where members of a group which may be dispersed through
several countries both receive and respond to researchers’ questions through their mobile
devices. The group is connected to the research company solely through their mobile
equipment but their relationship with the company is essentially no different in nature from
that of a focus group meeting in the company’s home office.
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These examples draw on some of the characteristics of mobile commerce noted by Siau, Lim &
Shen (2003) such as ubiquity, reachability and personalization to highlight the fact that mobile
technologies are enabling new forms of connectivity between organizations and publics that differ
from the previous concept of cyberspace as something entered through fixed, location-specific
devices. In their difference, the examples also highlight the need for PR practitioners to rethink
their approaches to electronic public relations, recognising they now need to do more than
designing conventional public relations campaigns that may (or may not) incorporate some online
activity. “Mobile PR” may constitute only one part of a public relations initiative – but it should be
seen as one that cannot be ignored.
Public relations has developed a range of strategies and tactics to influence publics, most focused
on using mass media. Audiences are assumed to be susceptible to media-based persuasion
expressed in fact and logic-based statements that frame a particular advocacy position. When the
Internet became widely available, public relations practitioners began using it as just a new tool for
doing what they had long done, such as publishing media statements and other corporate
information and disseminating advocacy material. Email meant that some interactivity could be
introduced. A new field known variously as cyber-PR, online public relations, electronic PR or
"E-PR" developed. Online press conferences were held and some companies began monitoring
online chat groups where discussions could highlight an emerging issue that might affect their
business. E-PR was used alongside traditional public relations approaches in campaign
implementations. Discourse about it focused on translating questions of communication efficiency
to the online environment, such as how organizations can integrate the Internet into their existing
investor relations activities (Kuperman, 2000) and how they may identify issues that need to be
managed (de Bussy, Watson, Pitt & Ewing, 2000). Interest has focused on exploiting the
technology to deliver communication efficiencies for the organization rather than on delivering
experiences consumers may want, such as a sense of “connectedness”, which Dholakia et al. (2000)
describe as “the feeling of being linked to a world outside the specific site” (in Gustafson & Tilley,
2003).
3.
Reconceptualizing PR for a mobile world
Existing E-PR tactics are not longer sufficient for mobile-driven markets. E-PR needs to
encompass “M-PR” (mobile public relations).The fluid nature of mobile communications means
some core, generally accepted notions of public relations planning need redefinition. PR campaign
planning models vary (Bobbitt & Sullivan, 2005, p. 32). There are, however, common elements
used in communication processes that aim to build a mutually beneficial relationship with a public
– a best-practice goal of contemporary public relations. They include



The need to identify priority audiences ("target publics")
Selecting appropriate media
Designing effective messages.
Mobile communication also reworks the idea of relationship.
The table below attempts to point to both similar and dissimilar aspects of the mobile and
traditional electronic public relations environments, necessarily making generalisations as it does
so:
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Mobile PR
‘Traditional’ Electronic PR
Consumers access cyberspace from mobile
devices
Consumers access cyberspace from fixed
devices
Target publics form fluid communities
linked by mobile communication
Target publics self-select by “pulling”
information to themselves
Messages abbreviated, “burst-y”, often in
TXT and symbols – “emoticons”
Messages use symbols and plain text;
facility for delivery of extensive content
Devices allow multimedia experience
Multimedia delivered via fixed devices
Demand to satisfy emotional needs such as
sense of involvement is a strong driver for
relationship formation
Greater opportunity to influence
relationships with rationales for advocacy
positions
(a)
Target publics
The world of mobile commerce calls for a wider way of thinking about relating to publics, one that
recognises that mobile communicators -- one description of them is “global knowledge-nomads”
(Lindgren et al., 2002, p. 10) -- are consuming content and managing relationships, including with
commercial organizations, every bit as much as those consumers who are working with fixed
technologies. Mobile communicators cannot be unambiguously defined by familiar psychographic,
demographic or even geographic characteristics. “Fleetingness” is the key characteristic, with
audiences seeming to be always just beyond reach (Proctor & Kitchen 2002).
This means the idea of “target publics” must be reconceptualized, taking into account that “in a
global context mobile telephony is used by a far broader spectrum of the population than PCs and
the Internet” (Lacohee, Wakeford & Pearson, 2003, p.206). To PR practitioners raised on linear,
structured campaign planning models, elusiveness of audiences is as frustrating as it is demanding.
Yet, as Proctor and Kitchen suggest, inconstancy of targets need not justify inactivity: a key may
be to “adopt an open, untargeted, ill-defined approach which leaves scope for imaginative
consumer participation” (2002, p.154). Such an approach is ideal for the interactivity of mobile
communication, acknowledging that “mobility does not only relate to our physical bodies. We are
also mentally mobile and are adept at migrating between various mental states, various identities”
(Lindgren et al, 2002, p. 24). Computer and mobile phone-supported social networks are enabling
communities of shared interest to form in both physical and online spaces (Wellman, 2001, in
Sheller, 2002) and such communities may form the basis of new publics (Sheller, 2002, p. 46).
(b)
Media
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Commonly used PR planning approaches based on a stage-by-stage implementation concept
include a point where media are chosen to carry the messages intended to influence a target
audience. Complementing traditional print and broadcast media, the internet has been used as a
medium to reach online audiences. Mobile devices capable of supplying voice, video and text
(including RSS feeds) to a user constitute a new, rich and challenging medium for the E-PR
practitioner. It is demanding because familiar tactics such as issuing press statements cannot be
deployed as before: they require reconstitution for convergent mobile media use.
(c)
Messages
The “intensity, brevity and the absence of narrative continuity” (Lash, 2002, p. 206) that
characterise mobile-enabled communication are incompatible with delivering extended
logic-based PR advocacy material. Post-modern audiences are likely to be influenced as much by
emotion, experience and a desire to find meaningful connection with others as they are by logic
(compare Caru & Cova, 2003; Ito & Daisuke, forthcoming, p.3). Mobile communication’s
interactivity can offer this kind of intense connectivity.
On-the-move consumers not only seek to be accessible themselves most of the time – Ito &
Daisuke’s “persistent connectivity” (forthcoming, p.19) -- increasingly they also want to draw
down needed information to their mobile devices. Many may remain consumers of traditional
media such as newspapers, television and radio while relying largely on mobile devices to function
in cyberspace. The condensed nature of much mobile communication means mobile
communicators may be less exposed to the extended information and advocacy material available
on organizational websites, thus obsoleting the press release in its traditional form. That in itself is
a big challenge for E-PR practitioners, who must also take into account the mobile field’s rapid
technological change, which may lead to unexpected applications (Lacohee, Wakeford & Pearson,
2003, p. 206).
PR people now face the task of designing and delivering content to mobile publics that meets their
less tangible need for connection with others: according to Fox (2001) mobile telephones provide a
“’social lifeline’ in a fragmenting and isolating world” and even the gossip that comprises much
mobile-based chat “restores our sense of connection and community” (2001, p.1). They may need
to consider an approach that has been dubbed “dynamic touch” (Galloway, forthcoming) because
it relies on creating an experience of connectivity rather than on getting prose published or images
broadcast. One example is the sense of connection with contestants that fans develop during the
American Idol television contests through voting via SMS, emailing messages of support and
discussing their favourite’s progress on their telephones.
Public relations people may need to design more such virtual experiences as part of building and
maintaining relationships with mutable, mobile publics, recognizing that “the mobile marketplace
merges the virtual and physical marketplaces” (Lindgren et al., 2002, p. 6). This is not the stuff of
PR “as we know it” but rather, largely uncharted territory for professional communicators who
will need to learn how to imagine and deliver experiences that connect with people in ways that
have a planned, overall consistency to them.
(d)
Relationships
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Increasingly, today's markets are driven by many organizations’ perceived need for a “continuous
personalized dialog with customers” (Lindgren, Jedbratt & Svensson, 2002, p. xvii). In the light of
this pressure, any concept of E-PR as merely managing familiar tasks in an electronically-enabled
environment falls far short. It does so for a number of reasons. One is simply the strong and
sustained growth in mobile telephony and in wireless data usage. More than 20 per cent of the
world’s population uses a mobile telephone and usage is increasing at more than 10 per cent a year
(Rerisi, 2003, in Grant & Meadows, eds., 2004). Such surging growth and the changes it is
bringing in the way people connect with organizations and individuals that matter to them is
simply too significant safely to ignore.
As Levy points out, “major technological inventions not only enable us to do ‘the same things’
more quickly, better or on a greater scale, but also allow us to do, feel or organize ourselves
differently” (2001, p. 199). People now use mobile technologies to negotiate co-ordination of their
activities, permitting “direct contact that in many ways is more interactive and flexible than
time-based co-ordination” (Ling, 2004, p.58), enabling users to “have a foot in both the here and
now as well as the there and now” (2004, p. 190). According to Lacohee, Wakeford & Pearson
(2003), the linking of communication to mobility is central to contemporary social networks. As
they point out, such communication need not be in a close social network: the BBC has found with
text messages that “New technologies are giving us a level of interaction with out audiences that
we have never seen before” (Chapman, quoted in Lacohee, Wakeford & Pearson, p. 206).
Internet and mobile-linked consumers are primarily interested in building a sense of
connectedness with others (individuals, groups and organizations) rather than in consuming
particular types of media content. As Proctor & Kitchen note, “Postmodern consumers seek to feel
good in separate, different moments by acquiring self-images that make them marketable, likeable,
and/or desirable in each situation or moment” (2002, p. 148). People choose to group themselves
in shifting “neo-tribes” which share emotions and a “more spiritual sense of community” (compare
Patterson, 1998, p.70). While text messages are often low in informational value they are
considered high in social grooming (Lacohee, Wakeford & Pearson, 2003, p. 206).
4. Future trends
In the United States, the number of mobile device users exceeds the number of people who use
personal computers (Lim & Siau, 2003). As more computing features become not only available
on mobile devices but also easier and cheaper to use, this trend can be expected to continue.
Wireless capabilities are being incorporated into more technologies and extended for others – and
there is the prospect of “unheard of transmission rates” (Meadows, J.H. (2004, p. 356) in Grant &
Meadows (eds.) (2004). As more and more functions are offered on wireless devices, it is likely
that those with one predominant use will give way to those with multiple capabilities (compare
Banks & Fidoten (2004) in Grant & Meadows, 2004).
For public relations practitioners this means coming to terms with more than a need to understand
these converging capabilities and how to deliver content in a way that is both technically and
“culturally” compatible – culturally in the sense of being viewed by users as appropriate to the
environment of the hybrid communication and computing devices. It also means learning to surf
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the fluid waves of the mobile market as “members of the communities in which they wish to
communicate” (Nicovich & Cornwell, in Rettie, 2002, p. 261).
6.
Conclusions
Public relations practitioners must learn to use mobile devices as new media for campaigns, not
just as tools for managing their schedules or arranging the next client function. Doing so will
demand a fundamental reworking of familiar concepts to adapt to the new mutable world of
mobiles.
7.
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