Tag: Digital Public Affairs

Digital public affairs: do not rush into information delivery – assess risk mitigation first

This post is an extract from an eBook I shall be publishing soon: watch this space.

When utilising digital to support their programmes, corporate public affairs practitioners often fixate on how it can help deliver information at high speed and volumes. Understandably. Reaching policy folk is a challenge, so the notion of doing it at the click of a button is tantalising.

But it is important to first look beyond information delivery and consider the risks posed by digital, especially its celebrated progeny: social media.

Due to mistrust in elites and shifting societal values, corporations are expected to be paradigms of virtue. If they are not, social media is at hand to let citizens and activists express their discontentment. Moreover, a story can no longer be ‘killed’ given that social media means we have one perpetual news cycle. If a story is big enough, it will keep on running through likes and shares, and be amplified through petitions and campaigns. Social media does not even respect geographic boundaries, with salacious hearsay from a far-away continent likely breaking faster than a less juicy local story.

In public affairs, this all matters because it is now easier for opponents and activists to leverage corporate misdeeds from across the world (real or perceived) to gain political advantage.

Many argue that we should take protest in the digital age with an enormous pinch of salt given how easy it is to express indignation on Facebook or sign multiple petitions (the slacktivist phenomenon). But sometimes online protest does balloon, and with decision-makers eager to convey democratic legitimacy by following the tide of public opinion (and, one would hope, wishing to do the right thing), such protest can sway policy.

The most oft-quoted recent EU examples are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the much-vaunted trade deal between the EU and the US, and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a treaty aimed at cementing international standards for intellectual property rights.

I shall not enter into the merits of either package, but merely say that while both had seemed shoe-ins at the offset, they were derailed by large scale protests which would not have escalated so fast and attracted such numbers were it not for online mobilisation and petitions (Avaaz petitions against TTIP and ACTA were signed by 3.5 and 3 million people respectively).

What to do about it all? Beyond being virtuous corporate citizens, being better equipped to handle the risks posed by the spread of potentially perilous information online is the obvious starting point. This involves a melange of operational and cultural remedies which we shall scratch the surface of here:

  • Public affairs should work closely with counterparts globally – EU functions tend to be quite isolated – and with marketing-communications (not just legal, as is frequently the case). Working with marketing-communications – the main brand and reputation ‘owners’ – will ensure alignment and joint plans on reputation-building (proactive), and the ability to act quickly when trouble arises (reactive).
  • Organisations should make crisis mitigation global and cross-functional. Issue monitoring, scenario planning, and messaging should be shared. In practice, this should help public affairs professionals keep track of events outside their backyard which could affect policy. And vice-versa: knowledge of policy developments which could affect broader reputation will help corporate communicators.
  • Organisations should strive to institute greater transparency, including a willingness to be open and publicly engaged around policy priorities and advocacy activities (on and offline).
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Three ways to improve the effectiveness of digital public affairs

Many public affairs practitioners who utilise digital and social media to enhance reach and impact, will at some point ask a variation of this question: “this isn’t working well enough – what should I do better?”

Three handy starting points:

  1. Audience first: I come across countless organisations that invest heavily in digital public affairs, but do not know how their audiences wish to consume information. Simple vs. complex? Offline vs. online? If online: social media vs. long-form? Text vs. audio-visual? Determining what is most useful to audiences, ideally by talking to them, and when considering online channels, examining how they currently use them, is the indisputable starting point.
  2. Don’t waste your time: “audience first” leads neatly onto “don’t waste your time”. I’m frequently asked what online channel someone should be on, what tactics work best, or how frequently they should be publishing. I don’t know. Maybe they shouldn’t be on any channels? Maybe they have an audience of 10 and have them all on speed-dial? Every single communications activity (every tweet, speech, press release, meeting) should fulfil a specific audience need, tied to a specific If it doesn’t tick both boxes – then don’t waste your time; focus purely on activities you know bring results.
  3. Understand best in class: within any given sector or issue, someone has probably sussed out what key audiences require, and is communicating effectively. You’ll usually know who. Analyse them in detail: what do they say, how they say it, who says it, where, how often, and in what tone. We don’t benchmark nearly enough. We should: online communications is largely public, meaning best practice is there for all to see.

Most viable digital approaches and tactics in technical vs. political public affairs

I’ve recently written about different communications requirements (digital and other) on technical vs. politicised public affairs dossiers here and here.

On the same subject, here is a table that outlines, in basic terms, different viable strategies and digital methods that are most likely to be utilised on technical vs. political issues in EU public affairs. In summary: digital remains relevant on technical dossiers, but on a more discreet level and with fewer tactical options. NB: clearly, items in either column could quite easily also fit in the other, depending on issue, stakeholders and environment. Food for thought, I hope.

digital-pa-tech-vs-political

Internal evaluation of digital public affairs activities

Evaluation of communications activity tends to centre on external reach and impact, measuring basics like awareness, and ideally outcome related metrics like shifts in opinion of target audiences as well as genuine impact on communications, policy and business objectives.

A further useful form of evaluation which we often neglect is internal, revolving around questions like:

  • What should we actually be evaluating from an internal perspective?
  • What constitutes best practice (and poor practice?)
  • How are we performing?

The (hopefully visible) table below lists five core components of digital public affairs along with a short description of what constitutes basic, good and great for each, which I’ve used as a benchmark to assess activity.

I’ve arguably been conservative: some public affairs and communications professionals will likely think that some items in good or great should be considered basic in 2016. Perhaps, but I’d argue that given the cultures inherent in most public affairs functions – technical/legalistic and government-relations centric, and operated by policy wonks rather than marketing-communications professionals – I think it’s realistic. Happy to hear thoughts, as ever.

Digital PA grid

Using digital and social media in technical vs. communications driven EU public affairs

I recently wrote about the nuance between technical/legal and public interest driven dossiers in EU public affairs. In short, high-quality technical information provision is the key determinant for success on technical dossiers, while on politicised issues in which public sentiment plays a role, a successful PA programme will likely need to include more of the marketing-communications toolkit.

This same nuance affects the use of digital and social media in public affairs. On communications-driven dossiers, strategies will frequently have considerable digital components. Run-of-the-mill examples might include:

  • An online-centred rebuttal programme when a public affairs goal is being hampered by a specific item of misinformation.
  • Leveraging public support from a specific constituency – people who live in a certain place, work for an affected company or industry, or have a certain set of values – with the help of online tactics like petitions and social networks.
  • Utilising digital storytelling techniques to raise awareness amongst diverse stakeholders in a cluttered information space.

In legal-technical public affairs activity, like tracking and analysing ramifications of policy or drafting and advising on policy-related texts, such strategies may seem irrelevant. And in all honesty they often are, at least on a large scale.

But by no stretch does that make digital channels as a whole irrelevant, as they remain viable tools across three core components of all public affairs activity:

  1. Intelligence tracking and analysis

While the use of data in public affairs remains rudimentary, quick wins may be found in areas such as proof point identification (e.g. what do people in a key decision-maker’s constituency think of your issue and can this be leveraged) and analysing the opinions, habits and communications preferences of targeted decision-makers active on social media.

  1. Message delivery

Providing policy-related information online is obviously key. Even on the most procedural of topics involving limited stakeholders, information will be sought online. Meanwhile, highly targeted digital marketing methods can help get relevant content to the narrowest of audiences.

  1. Relationship-building

Last but not least, if target decision-makers are engaged in social media, it presents an alternative channel for reach and influence. There are only so many meetings one can attend.

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The use of digital and social as one minor cog in technical/legal-centred public affairs programme may seem unexciting and perhaps even irrelevant. Undoubtedly, the options available when campaigning to influence a wider set of influencers will appear more enticing to most communications professionals. But don’t underestimate the value that digital and social can provide in shifting the pin even on under-the-radar PA, be it through a piece of intelligence uncovered online, first-rate content, or because of reputational capital and relationships built up over time in part via social media.

US vs. EU digital public affairs: different stages of maturity or just different markets?

Digital public affairs, incorporating methods like grassroots mobilisation, use of data to guide bespoke content creation, and advanced use of paid media to narrow-target audiences, is more advanced in the US than it is in Europe.

Some assume this is the case because we are at different stages of maturity. With a few notable exceptions, we probably are, but a few further factors explain why Europeans embrace digital public affairs to a lesser extent than our American cousins.

Technical vs. public interest dossiers

At the EU level especially, a majority of dossiers are technical, with limited public interest or involvement. Influence is more easily attained through the provision of high-quality technical information that facilitates policy making rather than campaigning aimed at affecting the environment in which policy is made. While there is still a place for digital, albeit on a narrow scale – e.g. high-quality online content and some social media if stakeholders are that way inclined – broader campaign methods like grassroots become somewhat obsolete. On most EU dossiers, there are few grassroots to mobilise, frankly.

Scale at national level

Publics may not exist at EU level, but they do at national level. But most European markets are small which makes organisations less inclined to explore new methods. This might seem counter-intuitive given that small markets means smaller budgets, and thus surely more scope for targeted and cost-effective digital tactics. However, small also means smaller teams covering more ground, fewer experts to drive new approaches, less saturated media markets meaning easier reach via traditional methods, and fewer degrees of separation between public affairs professionals and targets, making personal outreach more viable.

Lack of Pan-European issues

Scale would be easy if Pan-European campaigns were feasible. But Europe is too heterogeneous. Beyond obvious barriers like culture and language, campaign strategies would often need to differ even on the same issue. I remember exploring options for a campaign in German and Poland for an energy client a few years back. Seems obvious in retrospect, but local sensibilities to energy are polar opposites, with the environment and energy security the respective dominant concerns. Clearly a one-size-fits all would not work.

Availability of data

European campaigners envy the ability of their US counterparts to utilise all manner of third-party data sources in order to generate, and then target, a very narrow list of key targets. Given our history, it is perhaps unsurprising that Europeans are less comfortable with sharing data: our far stricter data protection and privacy rules preclude pesky campaigners from obtaining data that would facilitate deep segmentation and micro-targeting.

Digital public affairs is dead, long live digital public affairs

There was an embarrassing time a few years back when I’d be invited to meetings with PA folk in Brussels, introduced as a guru or ninja, and be expected to provide an Obama-esque digital strategy that would ensure victory on every lobbying battle around unpronounceable chemical X (or whatever) by the following Tuesday.

The logic was twofold. First, given that online methods could bolster political campaigns by mobilising constituencies who might otherwise have been powerless, this could be translated to public affairs. It ignored the fact that a number of public affairs dossiers in Brussels are technical and uninteresting to the layman, meaning there are limited constituencies to mobilise, or that organisations are often on the wrong side of the public debate. Second, it assumed that access to a whole new set of channels would facilitate message penetration and influence. It would not matter that decision makers were unable to fit yet another meeting in their diary or journalists were unwilling to report on an issue, as we would now be able to circumvent both and reach them via a social network. Magic!

The days of absurd expectations are thankfully long gone, and digital and social media are to some extent better understood and utilised in public affairs across three areas: impact, strategy and execution.

Impact

As implied above, digital and social media are too often seen within the prism of communications outputs i.e. their value in delivering a message (and hopefully imparting influence). Obviously, digital and social media can be useful in this regard, but the excitement clouds what is arguably more critical: their role in making organisations more vulnerable, and the ensuing operational, structural and cultural changes required to mitigate this.

The increased power and zeal of activists, eager and able to drum up public support to defeat legislation, often through digital means, is ever more prevalent. Illustrious examples include ACTA and Fish Fight. In parallel, we face growing mistrust in representatives of the so-called elite, including government and business, amplified through social media.

Result? Eager to convey democratic legitimacy, decision makers follow the tide of public opinion, which can shift fast and unexpectedly. Consequently, public affairs professionals need to operate beyond their previously narrow cocoon and become adept at tracking and ideally shaping the environment in which that opinion is formed, which may involve disciplines that had previously only been the domain of corporate communications, like reputation and crisis management, beyond the geographic domains they are accustomed to.

Broadly speaking, this propels the need for change in three areas in the practice of public affairs:

  1. Improved integration with brand and reputation owners to ensure alignment and joint plans of action, and the ability to act quickly, often by digital means.
  2. Better risk management, including global issue monitoring (mainly online) and more varied scenario planning, looking to circumvent problems arising elsewhere.
  3. Greater transparency, including a willingness to be open and publicly engaged around policy priorities and lobbying activities.

Luckily, many organisations recognise this and are acting accordingly.

Strategy

Strategy in communications need not be complex, but crucially, it needs to explain how to deliver against an objective. Common communications strategies applied to support public affairs ends include: differentiation vs. competition, leveraging an influential supporting constituency, or repositioning vs. a previously held stance.

Amidst the early enthusiasm for digital and social media, outputs too often trumped strategy. “Engaging with stakeholders on social media” or “raising awareness through content marketing” were cited as strategies. They are not: they are methods for delivering information. But information provision is unlikely to drive influence or action if not contained within a strategy that addresses how it is going to do so.

It is not as if digital eradicated strategy in public affairs. We’re traditionally poor at strategy, blinded by the complexity of our issues. This is reflected by the PA professional’s affection for messaging. Countless hours are spent distilling complex issues down to a set of preferred messages, with no inkling of whether they can drive influence or action.

Based on my own experience and what I hear on the grapevine, strategy development based on audience analysis and sensible evaluations of desired vs. likely change is back in vogue. Presumably it has been driven by professionalisation and reduced budgets, meaning PA professionals need to prove the value they bring in € terms more than before. A happy by-product has been the near-extinction of tweeting as strategy.

Execution

PA professionals’ shiny new object affliction resulted in the set-up of multiple social media channels and the production of monumental amounts of content with no strategy or appropriate resourcing. Net result: zero impact, channels with little to no following, and overworked staff wondering why they’re wasting hours every day on a Twitter feed followed by 10 salesmen, 5 bots and a couple of strippers.

Channels are increasingly seen for what they are: just channels, and there is greater realism about what they can achieve. The same goes for content that feeds the channels. There is no value in producing content for multiple channels if we are not driving impact that ultimately helps generate a desired political outcome.

Instead, the right questions are increasingly being asked, and if the answers to these questions indicate that there is value in communicating, but only then, should a PA professional bother. Smart questions include (in some guise):

  • What is our overall strategy and how (if at all) can each channel (on and offline) potentially support it?
  • Where are our audiences active and how do they like to be reached?
  • What are our audience’s needs or pain points? Can communications somehow address these? If so how?

As a result, we are witnessing more sensible use of online channels in support of PA programmes. Twitter feeds that do not try to be everything to everyone but deliver useful information to a specific group that has demonstrated an interest in receiving said information; longer-form online content that fits a specific strategy (e.g. humanising an unpopular organisation or simplifying the complex for non-expert but key audiences); or engagement when those being engaged might actually respond (some journalists and a few youngish MEPs have shown a propensity for exchanging thoughts on Twitter even with the most fervent lobbyists).

Plenty of time and money is still wasted on pointless activity that is passed off as digital public affairs, but does not deliver value i.e. some level of influence on policy. Meanwhile, it is ignored in areas where it could probably deliver greater benefits, like tracking potential issues online or meeting greater demands for transparency; and discounted by some who were starry-eyed a few years ago but disillusioned once a couple of tweets did not magically win a major lobbying battle. But we are certainly a lot closer to realistic, sensible and impactful digital public affairs than just a few years ago.

Does EU public affairs “campaigning” still represent the future? Yes and no.

We’ve been told for years now that traditional public affairs (face to face, technical lobbying) is not as effective as it used to be in Brussels. The logic is that many issues, and even entire industries like financial services or oil and gas, are now “political”, meaning decision-making on legislative matters is no longer based on the rational analysis of available information, but rather, the tide of public opinion.

For this reason, the adage goes, public affairs professionals need the support of marketing-communications professionals more adept at applying techniques that can affect the opinion of constituencies, with a view to shaping the environment in which decision-making takes place, rather than just the decision-making itself.

In other words, PA professionals need to run “campaigns” that seek to build and/or showcase some level of public support in parallel to lobbying on policy. Good campaigns should be focussed and simple: channel agnostic, definable in a single sentence, with a single and specific goal, a visual identity and end-date. Fish Fight was a PA campaign, aimed at banning fish discards. As are Renovate Europe and Keep me Posted in the UK, looking to set deep renovation targets for buildings and banning email only billing, respectively.

So does campaigning represent the future of EU public affairs? Yes and no.

However detached Brussels may be from real European publics, its legislators gain legitimacy in part by demonstrating that they respect and represent public constituencies. Hence why some activist campaigns have been so successful. Fish Fight and ACTA campaigners took issues that were not on the public agenda, put them there, and flipped decisions that had previously not been in doubt. On the corporate side, scrutinised organisations need to build and harness the support of specific constituencies, often through campaigns, in order to legitimise their policy objectives. Think pharma and health care professionals or patients, agrochemicals and farmers, or tech and entrepreneurs. But campaigning is not the dominion of corporates on the defensive. There is real value in campaigning when one is on the “right” side of the public debate, or even when no “right” or “wrong” sides have been defined and early mover advantage may be gained.

Having said all that, organisations should be less hasty at hiring marketers and creative agencies while eschewing technical expertise. Traditional public affairs remains dominant in Brussels.

In her study of interest group activity in Brussels, Heike Kluwer concludes that the quality of technical information provision remains the foremost determinant of lobbying success, ahead of demonstrating market power and public support. Her work is admittedly not very recent, but there’s little reason to assume much has changed.

Apart from certain issues (the likes of GMOs and shale gas), national publics remain largely disengaged, and legislative activity remains highly technical. Put simply, on most issues, there is no public debate and no constituency to mobilise, so campaigning would not provide a competitive advantage to public affairs practitioners

And even when an issue has been politicised, better lobbying can still win the day. The most notable example is probably that of mandatory food labelling around the turn of the decade, when better lobbying arguably meant the food industry’s favoured system, guideline daily amounts (GDA), prevailed over the traffic light system endorsed by consumer groups and health advocates.

So which is it: to campaign or not to campaign? As ever, it depends. If an issue has been highly politicised and external forces are reducing prospects for lobbying success, there may be no choice. If an issue is slightly off the radar but campaigning can improve the likelihood of success, it should probably be added to the mix. But with three major caveats: 1) campaigning is usually expensive and difficult, so adequate resources need to be available, which is often tricky given intractable siloes (e.g. PA and legal vs. marketing and communications); 2) campaign success relies on building and showcasing support from a key constituency, whether small or large, so at least one such constituency needs to exist; and (controversially) 3) if the other side is ineffective and failing to win over a major constituency, campaigning may not be necessary even on a somewhat politicised matter (e.g. food labelling).

Updated digital public affairs wheel (model)

I’ve made a couple of further tweaks to my original digital public affairs wheel, in which I linked three components of day-to-day PA (delivering a message to policy-makers and related audiences; building relationships; intelligence gathering and analysis) with relevant online activities and tools. Since 2014, the wheel has included two further disciplines – campaigning (building and mobilising support) and the oft-overlooked internal communications (informing and engaging internal stakeholders) – and this is a slightly cleaned up version of that. Any glaring omissions etc. please give me a shout.

Digital Public Affairs

 

Data in public affairs: proof points over targeting

Public affairs practitioners like politics. Obviously. Hence why clever political campaign tools excite us. Data is one such tool. Current (and potential) uses of data in political campaigning are very impressive indeed. In particular, the ability to use data to identify, then target and mobilise very specific audience segments.

Applied to public affairs, the logic is clear. Improve the likelihood of success on an issue by identifying sympathetic groups, ideally in a target politician’s constituency. Then target them with very specific messaging and perhaps even mobilise them into joining forces and doing the lobbying for you.

The reality is (usually) different. Our work usually involves far fewer stakeholders so we know our “segments” already and don’t need data to identify them. Frankly, in many cases these segments are very small, especially on technical issues, issues on which we’re on the wrong side of the public debate, or on which there is no public debate.

And perhaps most pertinently, on most issues, mobilising potential supporters in constituencies is costly and difficult, and unlikely to yield as much value as effective lobbying.

Which brings us to where data can be valuable. It should be utilised to generate proof points that can improve the likelihood of lobbying success. In other words, rather than harbouring unrealistic expectations about mobilising hoards of supporters, we use data to showcase that X number of people within a certain constituency (e.g. citizens in a certain locale, employees of a certain industry, students, academics etc.) have expressed views in line with our own. In this way we are showcasing public support from a key constituency, which is a determinant of lobbying success, without having to generate that support ourselves.

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