Tag: Brussels

The telephone was once pretty useless too, so what?

I recently heard for the umpteenth time that someone who had signed up to Twitter and didn’t gain a following of a million within a few weeks had given up, claiming it doesn’t work as a channel to raise awareness and engage on policy-related issues because it’s not credible and 140 characters is only enough for a bit of mindless babble.

I doubt it. There are two reasons it wouldn’t have worked (beyond the fact that it always takes a bit more time than you think): either tweets were dull or irrelevant, or, on the given issue, there aren’t enough people interested in it active on Twitter YET i.e. there’s no critical mass. A telephone too was pretty useless when hardly anyone one had one.

So two points:

  • A channel is just a channel: it’s not the nature of it that determines whether it works or not but what you transmit on it. Does an annoying telemarketer trying to sell you something utterly useless make you think the phone is a worthless communications channel?
  •  A channel is just a channel: it’ll work if there’s enough critical mass i.e. lots of people on it, meaning people in your sector/area of interest/issue, actively using it. Fact of the matter is, in most areas, they aren’t all on Twitter yet.

And a third:

  • Enough with the “only 140 characters”: it’s enough for a quick exchange and to drive traffic somewhere else where you have as much space as you like to delve deeper (a blog, for instance.)

Pet hate: “there’s no digital element in this”

There always is. ALWAYS. And thanks to input from my clever colleagues, Aoife and James, from now on, in order to make this very, very clear, I’ll explain digital to PA crowds solely in terms of how it can be used in support of traditional PA activities and will always avoid supposed jargon like content and engagement.

Meaning what? Summarising PA very neatly in 4 categories – i) getting your message to policy-makers and influencers; ii) building relationships with policy-makers and influencers; iii) building and mobilising alliances and networks of support; iv) intelligence monitoring – I’ll then move on to explain how each of these four categories can be enhanced using a variety of digital tactics.

Fingers crossed it’ll get more of the nay-sayers onboard.

“All we need is more face-time with MEPs”

Heard this week in Brussels. Perpetrator? A lobbyist for arguably the most hated industry in Europe. When, when, when will PA professionals realise we’re in 2011, not 1981. If you’re universally loathed, many a policy-maker – even those who side with you at heart – will not care what your report says, how many people you employ or what percentage of European GDP will go down the pan if they don’t let you carry on with business as usual. And while they keep chipping away at your business, you carry on trying to get as much face time as possible and your only KPI remains “number of meetings with policy-makers.” What do you think? That they didn’t hear you the first time? That leading a war of attrition will bore them into submission? Have you thought of teaming up with your leadership, business units, corporate comms, marketing and whoever else matters to overhaul your reputation? Probably not. Your loss.

Three challenges of digital PA

I just re-read my last post and wanted to expand a little on the challenge that is PA and digital in Brussels especially. Using the full array of digital is tricky on a number of levels, of which I’d cite three in particular.

1. Limited “critical mass” on most issues

Digital is always relevant in some way. Even with an audience of 20, the 20 will use Google to access information and will expect an organisation to have good material on their website (or at least relevant and up-to-date material). So content and search are always essential.

However, the true and game-changing value of digital lies in the speed and ease of engagement, and on this front i.e. engaging on issues online, there isn’t much going on. Part of the reason is that on a number of issues, the number of players involved is tiny, and even a successful online micro-community requires at least say 30-50 people who are highly active (ideally far more). Plus the community should include a suitable array of players. On issues, this would be, say, government (national and Brussels), industry and civil society. Yet on many issues which PA professionals work on, at least one significant player will be absent online (i.e. perhaps industry and some national-level civil society are active, but no one on from the government side, or vice versa). Online engagement then becomes like a concert where a headline act has failed to show up: a bit pointless.

Another element has an impact on the limited mass on Brussels issues: the paucity of links between online conversations at national and EU level. I’m not going to get into why it’s the case (language, parochialism, basic lack of knowledge of what others are doing etc.) but the fact of the matter is that if PA issues were seen in a pan-European light, digital might offer a platform for broader conversations and help build up critical mass. As it stands, Brussels issues too often remain Brussels issues, unaffected by activity at national level.

2. The nature of (some) issues

I’ve touched upon this in the paragraph above to some extent: niche regulatory issues discussed in Brussels are often not of interest to larger groups of people, meaning that the critical mass needed for active conversation online is simply non-existent.

The point about the nature of the issues goes a step further though. In many cases, PA professionals don’t want to or simply don’t have the consent to engage on issues “in public” – which the web essentially is even if a conversation is confined to a micro-community. And it’s not because they’re shady operators trying to elude the public, but because there are often complex legal, competitive and political ramifications that need to be resolved before an organisation can go public.

3. The PA professional

I can’t count the number of times a condescending PA pro has implied that digital is irrelevant in Brussels and should be left to the marketers and consumer PR folk, the fallacy being that digital is a mass market medium. It’s not, and anyway, digital is only part of the parcel of how a broader, more integrated approach to PA is increasingly required to ensure success in Brussels (see a previous post on this here.)

However, these developments require an appreciation of and an interest in integrated communications as a discipline: the ability and willingness to analyse a wider set of audiences, to explore and utilise new channels. Too often, the PA professional does not view him or herself as a communicator, but rather, would prefer to be defined as a political scientist, policy counsellor, regulatory expert, or a lawyer even. Undoubtedly, the skills required to be any of these remain key to PA success, but on their own, they’re not enough if the people in question fail to embrace communications more holistically, whether on or offline.

“Digital is for PR, not for PA” – three reasons why it ain’t so

I hear some variation of this all the time: we don’t need digital, this is just a policy issue; digital isn’t relevant, we’re not trying to reach a mass audience. And so forth.

No – digital is always relevant; it’s the degree that changes. In short, here are three reasons why:

  1. Digital isn’t only social media. People often think that being active online always involves 2-way engagement but I’m perfectly happy to admit that in many cases, Brussels issues are such that online engagement isn’t likely to happen, for a number of reasons. However, policy-makers and others who matter, no matter how niche an issue is, still use the web to conduct research. So content and search are always relevant.
  2. Beyond content and search, the engagement piece is increasingly important. On some issues (ICT especially) Twitter advocacy is already fairly mature, and it’s just a question of time before the same becomes the case in other sectors.
  3. Lastly, there’s the fact that the line between PR and PA is blurring: issues are increasingly influenced by players beyond Brussels, meaning that success in PA will depend on a government relations “plus” approach involving more audiences, across Europe, and across channels (including digital).

“If only they knew what we were really like they’d be nice to us”

This statement underlies a significant proportion of the comms briefs which agencies receive in Brussels. The thinking is as follows – “Pressure groups are more effective communicators and have shattered our reputation because we’ve never spoken up. Now, after 20 years of keeping quiet, we’re finally allowed to communicate. Excellent. Once we’ve said that our product is safe because the report we funded says so and/or that our industry employs X million people in Europe, we’ll be fine.”

No you won’t. The myth that misinformation amongst the elite drives policy that damages industry is one of Brussels’ biggest crocks of s***.

First, people – including MEPs or whoever – are entitled to a difference in opinion. Your product may be safe/beneficial, but the alternative is so too and is biodegradable to match. Or cheaper. Your industry may employ X million but the alternative industry employs Y million.

Second, believe it or not, public opinion matters. Sending your MEP a report won’t do if his/her constituents loathe you, even if they believe every word of your report. So the far bigger part of the puzzle becomes ensuring that whoever influences said MEP – constituents and whoever else – changes their mind. That calls for far-reaching reputation management programmes and a lot of perseverance. Daunting, but bury your head in the sand at your peril.

PA and corporate communications converging: comparing London and Brussels

One of the running themes of this blog is that PA as we once knew it – the government relations centric model – is being superseded by one where government relations lives side by side with a range of other communications disciplines. An organisation’s reputation, often beyond Brussels, is increasingly important in determining how that organisation is perceived by decision makers, as is the extent to which it is aligned with public opinion on any given issue.

However, when I was asked just last week by a London-based Public Affairs professional to what extent corporate communications and PA are converging in Brussels, my reply was: probably not as much as in London.

That is not to say that I’ve done a volte-face on the statement above. However, the extent to which corporate communications and PA converge is not consistent: it depends on the nature of the issue. The more the issue is in the public domain, the greater the convergence, and the fact of the matter is that fewer issues are in the public domain in Brussels than in London.

In a previous post, I outlined three issue realities and the appropriate digital response, and I think the same separation is pertinent here. The three are, in short, the very technical issue which only a few policy wonks know about, the slightly less technical issue which is being discussed widely in policy circles, and the issue which affects a lot of people and has people talking beyond policy circles.

Arguably, only the latter reality requires highly proactive corporate communications, and the fact of the matter is that more issues fall into that bracket in London than in Brussels.

Why? Generally, because there is less interest in and scrutiny of the legislative process in Brussels than there is in London. Here are a few reasons why that might be:

  • Many of the meatier issues which tend to attract public interest are beyond the EU’s remit (immigration, tax, social security, most foreign policy etc.) Instead, the EU deals with many highly technical and – in the eyes of most people – dull dossiers.
  • MEPs have low profiles nationally and in their constituencies: they don’t necessarily need to prove themselves to their electorates based on issue alignment and so probably make decisions based on facts and figures more so than their MP counterparts, who are perennially busy courting voters.
  • The way legislation is put together in Brussels is based heavily on compromise and attaining the lowest common denominator in a drawn-out process, which is frankly less interesting (slow; fewer dog-fights).
  • A red thread here is the fact that the UK media has little interest in EU affairs, meaning most stuff passes under the radar in any case.
Anything I’ve left out?

It’s a content strategy you want, not social media

This recent post by Will Davis entitled “Why Companies That Say They Want Social Media Really Want Content Marketing” struck a chord. A lot of times, organisations operating in the Brussels regulatory space will ask me: “how do we start engaging in social media?” rather than “should we engage in social media?”

FH’s survey on how Members of the European Parliament – clearly a key Brussels constituency – use the web, illustrates in no uncertain terms that MEPs mainly look for content, not engagement. For instance, we found that while only 34% use Twitter (and only 31% state that it is effective or very effective as a means of communication – presumably because they use it as a megaphone rather than a mechanism for dialogue), 99% of them use a search engine several times a week to find content on policy.

Sure, in some policy areas, like ICT, MEPs, Commissioners, officials and other people engaging on the issues are fervently exchanging information via social media/social networks. In the majority of areas, this is not the case. And anyhow, you still ideally need content as a starting point for feeding information into the engagement loop to provide value and ensure that people take notice of you.

So if you’re doing online outreach in Brussels, take these steps:

  1. Develop a relevant content strategy and make sure you’re found via search.
  2. Figure out who is active in social media amongst your key audiences on your issues and track them.
  3. Determine how these people choose to engage: if they are demonstrably open to listening and sharing, by all means engage with them, but don’t jump straight in the deep end.7BMA5AEWAW6

“We do government relations, we don’t need digital”

To people in PA hubs like Brussels who understand the value of communicating on issues (fewer than you’d think, given the status of traditional government relations), digital is no longer treated with suspicion. Although there is plenty of confusion around what digital actually entails and an annoying propensity to approach it tactically rather than strategically (i.e. “let’s do Twitter” rather than “who do we need to talk to and what do we need to say”), it’s generally regarded as an important part of the toolbox.

And yet “we do government relations, we don’t need digital” is still frequently heard around Brussels. Why? In actual fact, it’s got anything to with digital per se: the people who say it used to claim, “we do government relations, we don’t need communications.” In an environment where that just won’t stick anymore, given that the need for integration of government relations/advocacy and wider communications can not be disputed in polite company, the naysayers have found something new to dismiss: digital. They like the comfort zone they’ve developed over the years. One where long-term client reputation matters little compared to the ability to get a half-hour sit-down with the right official or MEP.

Wake up and smell the coffee. The sit-down will not matter if you haven’t got a credible storyline to back it up. The storyline needs to respond to real-world matters, and should be delivered to the right audiences via the right channels – including digital.