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Friday, February 27, 2015

A History of Public Relations -- OR -- The Good, the Bad and How We Wish it Was

A recent discussion among PR folks about our profession’s humble origins got me thinking about, well… our origins, the myth, the mythos and whatever historical “truth-claims” we may make.  So here’s my take on the age old question “Where did we come from?” 

I suppose our professional line extends from something like the Sophists of ancient Greece who spoke on behalf of Citizens for compensation through to Ivy Lee, and Edward Bernays one or both of whom most Western academics agree was the founder of modern PR. For my money Edward’s wife, Doris Fleischman, was just as, if not more responsible for many of the early pioneering techniques Bernays is credited with.   One thing is for sure we all have Edward to thank for convincing millions of women to start smoking and millions of Americans that it was perfectly socially acceptable for women to smoke in public places.  Thanks Ed.  In a horrible irony Edward lived more than 100 years… no smoking related diseases snuffed his life out early.

At any rate most of the pioneering techniques credited to Lee and Bernays originally were practiced by none other than the evil prince of our profession many years prior to either Bernays or Lee taking credit.  I’m speaking of the Nazi Joseph Goebbles – the first PR man to utilize many of the techniques we take for granted today.  It’s tough to get accurate information on Goebbles’ contributions to mass communications and I’m okay with that.  Whatever contributions he may have made, given who he was and what he stood for are just as well credited to others as far as I’m concerned. 

Interesting your mention of the cult of the CEO, particularly in light of the recent and ongoing canonization (the Catholic Church’s process for declaring an individual a Saint) of Steve Jobs, soon to be St. Steve of Apple, I suppose. Interesting how so many folks come out of the woodwork with so much information about Steve.  I mean I worked with the guy, actually worked directly with him, knew him, etc… and well; the Steve Jobs I knew was no saint.  But that’s a story no one wants to hear. 

Regardless of what one may have thought about Steve Jobs he exemplifies the CEO as a cult figure and Apple, for all its faults, is one of the few brands that transcends mere brand-hood and has become a true lifestyle.  And so we arrive, quickly I admit, to the present status of our profession. 

Except for this social media thing; what my company, Outlaw Communications, calls the Social Biosphere.  Now we have more than a new mere communications channel emerging we have the next evolution of digital communications intersecting with various business or market place ecosystems to create an overarching business operating environment, or Social Biosphere.

In the Social Biosphere transparency becomes the name of the game and a leveling or democratization of the message happens.  In other words when everyone who receives your message has the ability to dissect, research, check and share that message in real-time.  Well folks it gets harder and harder to pull the old Lee / Bernays wool over stakeholders’ eyes.

As the Social Biosphere matures and grows it will be interesting to watch how this next evolution in our profession plays out. 



Wednesday, February 25, 2015

LIVING IN A FISHBOWL –OR— HOW SOCIAL MEDIA FORCES TRANSPARENCY UPON YOUR BUSINESS

Anything you say can and will be Tweeted against your will.

Social media can shatter traditional bunkered and protected ecosystems; in this example the sanctity of a high school principal’s office is violated initially by a student’s Tweet and ongoing by the Social Biosphere itself.  It’s a new power dynamic old dogs need to face, plan for and acknowledge in organizational strategy and factor into the risk communication equation.

 In the Social Biosphere there is always the potential for transparency, organizations need to act accordingly and incorporate the realities of the social operating environment into their risk assessment planning and risk communications planning operations.

Case in point, Republican fiasco in Kansas.  Gov. Brownback received a negative Tweet while delivering a speech to students at Shawnee Mission East High School located in Prairie Village Kansas.  No doubt the governor’s speech was full of the usual hypocrisy and outright lies we’ve come to expect from all politicians however, it’s the utter Gestapo-like tactics employed by the Republican Governor’s staff that were exposed for the entire world to see and that business need take note.


An aid to the Gov-A-Fuhrer, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, ratted out the offending student for exercising her First Amendment rights to the school’s principal, Karl Krawitz. Now think back to your school days and remember just how closed a system schools operate within.  In-fact I’d say, based on Constitution-Killer-Karl’s actions, he counted on none but the student ever knowing what actions he took to curb her First Amendment rights.

Chief RAT to Gov-A-Fuhrer Brownback - Sherriene Jones-Sontag

Enter the Social Biosphere, bringer of light and transparency even to formerly closed ecosystems such as our schools, and even in Topeka Kansas, home of those other most Anti-Americans the Westboro Baptist Church (Fred Phelps and co) most famous for demonstrating at our veterans’’ funerals. So it’s probably no accident that Gov Yellow-back, oops I mean Brownback and his Gestapo RAT aid, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, along with Constitution Killer Karl, a little Hitler in the making if ever there was, felt secure in: 1. trampling the Constitutional rights of students, and 2. believing they’d get off scott free because who could ever violate the sanctity of their little world.



Kudos to the Wichita Eagle for running the story and the Social Biosphere for giving it legs.   

The moral here for all businesses, politicians and organizations is as simple as it is hard to grasp: in the Social Biosphere anything you say can and will be Tweeted to millions of people.  And most probably used against you, your brand and all the hard work you’ve done and millions of dollars you’ve spent crafting a reputation within your ecosystem.

There is no bunker deep enough or ecosystem impervious to the potential for damage wrought by the complete transparency social media brings to stakeholders of all stripes, even 18 year-old students. 

Ladies and gentlemen, information is power and within the Social Biosphere, the power dynamic has changed forever.  Ignore this reality at your businesses peril.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Where Does This Social Media Thing Begin and End – OR – It’s a Business Revolution, Welcome to the Social Biosphere


Unlike Business Process Transformation and all the various snake oil we’ve bought over the last few decades – the Social Biosphere presents us with a genuinely transformative business environment.

The best part, okay the two best parts: first the Social Biosphere is PR driven just like the digital business revolution was 15 years ago, and second it is inevitable and happening now.

Traditional PR and communications thinking knows the game has changed, they just can’t figure out how.  They continue to stumble about like drunken frat boys wondering how it all fits together at intra-organizational and inter-organizational levels.  In short you PR firm doesn’t understand the social business environment you’re seeking their aid in dominating or at least surviving.

So we see traditional PR and communications adapting traditional models, which isn’t necessarily the worst thing they could be doing.  They’re just adapting backwards, reflecting their lack of understanding of the environment.  You can liken it to the global warming debate.

One side shows us data of melting glaciers or ambient temperature rise, the other side counters with a growing glacier and chaos mathematics of 10,000 year global weather cycles. And so mirrors how big PR deals with social media. 

It doesn’t matter if glaciers are expanding or contracting, it doesn’t matter if ambient temperatures are rising or at what point we fall in our current 10,000 year weather cycle.  All that matters is what is happening in our daily environments and seeing what is most likely to happen given our current course.

PR agencies understanding and interactions within the social biosphere are no less absurd than those who think we can continue business-as-usual from a resource consumption perspective. 

Sure it will work for awhile. It’s just unfortunate that big PR, seems committed to clinging to dated media tactics that simply no longer fit the reality of our existing business environment.  Sure your agency team is still producing results for those whopping retainers they charge.  Environments don’t completely change overnight, nor will they ever completely leave the old behind, they grow and evolve, like… uh, any BIOSPHERE does.

But here’s the kicker, you see it and your agency sees it, except they see an ongoing hemorrhaging of revenues they’re helpless to stop and a traditional media system that has been in its death throes for the last 20 years. 

And still despite being repeatedly smacked in their collective income statements and balance sheets for years big PR’s best answer to all of this change, is… AHH YOU NEED TO TWITTER! 

Well sure Twitter might be an important piece of your interactions within the social biosphere but, I can promise you – NOT Twitter nor any one other tactical idea or communications plan – is anywhere near enough to integrate your business into the Social Biosphere.

Social media may be our window into the Social Biosphere, but once inside you’ll find a whole new business environment. 

It WILL be frightening and you WILL stumble and make mistakes - but like any new environment those in first and most committed WILL WIN!

When you’re ready to WIN find an OUTLAW.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Damn Lazy Freaks – OR – The Birth of a Culture Rededicated to Freedom and the American Dream

Call the Occupy Wall Street phenomena what you will, protestors, losers, heroes, revolutionaries, rebels, it doesn’t really matter.  History will ultimately decide who and what they are and what their purpose was. And that’s not going to happen until the affects and repercussions are long underway, thoroughly felt by all and normalized and sanitized within our collective societal gestalt.



What’s fascinating, as both a student of and consultant to organizations great and small within this Social Biosphere (what your PR agency still calls social media) is  much more basic, simple and yet infinitely more important and sublimely complex.  If you understand any of this, you’re already smarter about social media than your PR agency team.

I’ve spent several days tramping around Wall Street, circulating in the park, avoiding being arrested and realized this is the Social Biosphere in action and in real-time; it’s a physical manifestation to be sure but is no less a socialized environment than FaceBook, Twitter or Tumblr 



I’m a sociologist first and foremost, literally, my degree line runs; BA Hon Sociology, MBA, and BPR (Bachelors of Public Relations), and just as I’ve witnessed online for several years, so now am witnessing in real-time in the physical world.

Occupy Wall Street may be and will continue to be many things to many people all over the world however, what it is at its most fundamental is an embryonic culture forming before our very eyes. It has a core of collective values, a true purpose and exponentially growing number of voluntary adherents spanning the physical and digital realms – yes this is the SOCIAL BIOSPHERE.

Marketers need to be paying as much attention or more than police and politicians to this group of rebels staking out a community in Lower Manhattan. This is how the Social Biosphere works, this is how a culture is formed and this is what it looks like in real-time.



PR folks in particular need to pay heed not only as humans and Americans who should care about what these folks care about, nope that will only be a bonus. 

If you’re confused about the Social Biosphere, and by the number of large PR agencies consulting with me about social communications, I know you’re confused – get your ivory-tower asses down there and witness a social culture being born and taking shape.

You’ll be a better communicator for it, better able to advise your clients about the Social Biosphere and you might just learn something about yourself.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

GOTTCHA – OR—REDISCOVERING THE SUBTLE ART OF CONVERSATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Gottcha!  Made you stop by my blog first, violating nearly every conventional communications professional’s advice you’ve ever heard regardless if you paid for the advice or not.

Truly I wanted to write slightly more than 140 characters for this Tweet. Thanks to my FBF – (FaceBook Friend) Brenda WeRemember Howard for pointing me at this article. That page owner knows their stuff and is SM (Social Media) expert.  However, if you’re really in a hurry, the link for the 25 best social media resources are is here.

Still with me?  Cool.

About the article, while some of the resources are basic and fundamental all are worthwhile for anyone in the modern communications industry. I have more education than anyone requires and enough degrees and certificates to fill a storage shed and yet my shelves are filled with the most basic of business and communications books.  There are several Dummies and Idiots books on my shelves and all have proved valuable over the course of my career.

However, if you really want to learn about social media and why I and many others see an inevitable future where SM plays a significant if not dominant role in our professional and personal lives – it is simple. 

Just get started.  Begin by immersing yourself in the social world… whenever you can and however you can.  Get a FaceBook page going, start a LinkedIn profile and start exploring the landscape for yourself.  These and the myriad resources and experts on SM will never be more than tour guides to the Social Biosphere.  (All of social media, the web, tech, real life, etc… it’s called the Social Biosphere, mostly by me)

Look for topics that interest you, from commenting on NY Times articles to organizing virtual events on FaceBook and some spend time in the wilderness of the Biosphere. Read the books and listen to the experts as you venture.  As you read the words of wisdom from the high-paid pros, never forget that you know how to be social in both professional and personal environments and the rest is merely exploring and becoming familiar with this new operating terrain.

The Social Biosphere is about dialogue and conversations it is not about top-down, push or supply-side thinking or communicating.  You cannot talk at people when they have absolutely no barriers to ignoring you.  You must engage occupants of the Social Biosphere in conversation.  Even if you want to sell something, it must be a conversation not an advertisement.

Ultimately I believe the SM and the Social Biosphere it is feeding will help re-humanize business as we become integrated into its culture, a culture where conversation is fundamental.




Friday, February 13, 2015

Message Consistency Across All Platforms – More Important Than Ever In the Social Biosphere – OR – Do I Have to be Nice to That Asshole?

Some fundamentals never change, I can still here my coach screaming, “KEEP DRIVING THOSE LEGS, DON’T QUIT, DON’T EVER STOP.”  Advice that serves just as well in the social biosphere of today’s business as it did on the football field so many years ago in college.

After witnessing an amazing and cowardly retreat by my local Republican at Westchester Republican HQ this afternoon it hit me just how frightening the social biosphere must be to the traditional masters of public relations. 

Big PR agencies and their clients continue to stumble all around social media (their term – not mine) like drunken frat boys searching for their next keg.

It is this very fear of real-time conversations continuing to stifle both innovation within the public relations industry and holding businesses back from truly leveraging the opportunities within the social biosphere.

Specific politics aside, politicians represent some of the greatest PR practitioners of all time, true masters of the communications craft from the simple, repeat until we give up and believe, to the subtle and sublime audacity of hopers. 

Big PR’s ultimate triumph and shining golden moment must be encapsulated by political communications – that never stray from the fundamental principal of consistent messaging.  Even though it makes publics sick from repetition, being “on message” is the life blood for politicians and the better they are at staying on message, the further their careers go. 

It’s always been a simple and direct linear relationship that could be properly crafted and managed with help of “press people,” big PR; both agencies and in-house counsel. 

Until something went horribly wrong, now enter the social biosphere where real folks carry on real conversations in real time.  Good grief, it’s anarchy!

What a nightmare for professional liars; oops I mean professional communicators.  Now we’re faced with too many touch points to control and no client (not even our well-trained pet politicians) can maintain the façade of contrived message consistency throughout the social biosphere.

Back to Westchester Republican HQ on a September afternoon and witness the gaping hole in the message façade; a small, frightened little man running from a voter and citizen because he could not control the message or the rules of engagement for our encounter. 

In big PR’s traditional linear world this encounter wouldn’t count, there’s an old saying in PR, “If it doesn’t happen on TV, it didn’t happen.”  This is the world our scared little Republican is accustomed to, it’s the world his “press people” at the agencies and at Republican HQ tell him still exists.  

But he’s a politician and he senses something is not right, things are changing and the fright factor of change is directly proportional to how much you have to lose from the looming change.

It’s a little sad to see lumbering giants groping about for purpose and meaning within the new social biosphere, but the fundamentals remain.

Keep your message consistent across all channels but understand within the social biosphere that any and every encounter occurs within a medium and with some sort of distribution channel available to any participants.

So don’t panic, don’t quit, and keep your messages clear, concise and consistent and remember that in the social biosphere even a lowly voter has media power.  

And maybe, just maybe that’s not such a bad thing.




Wednesday, February 11, 2015

ARE WE LOST IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE – OR – WHEN UNDERSTANDING COMES PROCESS BRINGS SUCCESS

Over the weekend I’ve been involved in an interesting conversation with some very savvy and experienced marketers hailing from all corners of our industry from advertisers to PR gurus to social media agencies, large and small, academic and business. While most of my colleagues identify and call out the issues constraining social media fairly well there seems to be a lack of big a picture overview, at the topographical mapping level.

Within the marketing communications industry there is a fundamental lack of understanding about social media in both businesses and organizations from the Fortune 10 through start-ups to government, political and military organizations.

A recent Accenture survey found 60% of CMOs believe SM will lead to new revenue streams while only 8% of CEOs are willing to invest in SM programs.  The delta is the exactly the lack of understanding and ability to measure and plan SM programs with proper process and metrics.

Much of the problem is exacerbated, if not caused, by marketers, advertisers, public relations folks (like me) and especially the so-called social media specialists. 

PR folks do not understand and treat SM much like another set of traditional media channels through which they attempt jam supply-side or push messaging, just as they’ve always done, through traditional media properties. In fact much of my business is consulting to global PR agencies’ regarding SM and even though they all have “SM” practice areas their collective understanding of how their clients need to be engaging within the Social Biosphere is seriously lacking.  Most big agencies are fairly good at building blogger and SM site lists but that’s generally where their expertise drops of the deep end.

Remember I’m speaking here about the 90% of the bell curve, so obviously there are exceptions to what I’m saying.

The SM specialty shops are primarily focused on the tactical and technology aspects of SM and can build you FaceBook, Tumblr, SU, Twitter, WordPress and 20 other properties you’ve never heard of (and neither will most of your customers) but have little or no real understanding about the strategy, business goals and processes needed to drive any successful communications engagement.

Our old friends the advertisers perhaps pose the greatest barrier to advancing the SM cause since a truly functional Social Biosphere is an anathema to the ancient and fortified traditional ad-approach to business.  After all who needs a multi-million dollar ad campaign when the conversations you need to influence are already taking place and simply awaiting your participation?  Of course the problem is traditional advertisers have all the marketing money and power and will fight to the death to keep things the way they are.

One of the issues I continually run into when speaking to traditional “big PR” are metrics.  Our industry, PR, has traditionally been absolutely abysmal at developing measurement and ROI processes for our clients and coupled with our lack of understanding and outright fear of the Social Biosphere, we fail miserably at delivering consistent and replicateable ROI and business processes for our SM clients.

My experience continually demonstrates a fundamental and strategic lack of understanding of what the Social Biosphere is and how best to integrate and operate within this frightening new socialized frontier with legacy business models.  Add to this that most of the “experts” have a huge vested interest in maintaining the status-quo of communications and those evangelists for SM tend to be younger professionals with little or no knowledge apart from the tactical and technical and we’ve got some serious barriers to overcome before the Social Biosphere realizes its true potential as a business environment.

Monday, February 9, 2015

The New Face of Networking –OR- Building Business Value Networks (BVNs) in a Social Environment


Traditional business networking generally flows from the premise of working your way up, in support of organizational or personal goals. With the ultimate purpose of building a collection of valuable resources that help an organization or person, build Business Value Networks BVNs.  So simple, like chess and golf are simple games.

Most networking efforts are designed to work our way up to something better or more; a better job, more business, a higher status or ranking within a group, more perks or money.   Regardless of what the specific goal may be, the general and acknowledged purpose of networking traditionally has been to progress in a sort of direct linear upward direction towards a goal, essentially to metaphorically climb “the” ladder.

And now we find ourselves and our organizations falling through the looking glass into this strange and new socialized operating environment, or Social Biosphere. This new environment seems destined to eclipse our every business function and in the process throw so many of our tried and true, overly ordered business processes into complete chaos, or so goes the perception, judging by the fear and loathing many clients feel towards social media. 

In a socialized environment each and every stakeholder has the potential to derail all our careful planning and investments in information flow should they choose to and manage to hijack the information once solely the province of our organizations.  It’s sort of like quantum physics; each and every photon (stakeholder) has the potential, though not the likelihood, to completely reset both our organizational and communications agendas.

How do we build BVNs in a socialized environment where every stakeholder is also a potential information and business terrorist and threat to our organizations?  Networking up no longer satisfies our BVN needs in the socialized environment.

Often and, generally fondly, referred to as “The Democratization of Media and Information” by those who study these things and make such pronouncements, this new media-driven cultural paradigm really upsets our collective organizational apple carts or, in techno-business-speak; represents a disruptive threat and challenge to traditional businesses and communications models.

In all our collective organizational memories businesses have relied on a one-way asymmetrical communications model, as outlined by one of communications’ founding fathers, James Grunig.

Sure we make forays into and pay lip service to more inclusive communications and business models by reaching out to influencers and incorporating various stakeholders’ into our Business Value Networks and content creation and business planning processes but, we always knew we ultimately controlled the information content and flow.  From corporate social responsibility campaigns through product announcements and reviews to crises planning we have always maintained ultimate control to both access and the content and timing of information we released to stakeholders through BVN and other communications channels.

For example in a recent discussion on information operations with a group of colleagues, I posed the following question.  Imagine President Kennedy’s assassination took place in today’s Social Biosphere.  Rather than a single Zaprudar 8mm film, we would have hundreds of videos and thousands of pictures of both the murder and the crowd.  Further complicating the ability to control the information content and flow,  these films and pictures would be relayed to the rest of the Biosphere in real-time and be accompanied  by commentary via Twitter from thousands of sources.  

I cannot say how the outcome would be different but, I can say with absolute certainty the Warren Commission could never have sold America and the World the report it did. It could not have relied on tightly controlled BVNs for predictable information flow.

What does any of this have to do with networking in a socialized environment?  It a fair question. In the Biosphere we need to rethink how we engage with stakeholders and one the primary methods for organizing these engagements has been through BVNs.  We fed information to our networks knowing how the information would flow and what direction it follows through the networks.

In a socialized environment we need to rethink how we use BVNs and our very ability to create and control these networks.  It makes much more sense to view BVNs as collections of matrixed groups organized around various intersecting points of interest. That’s not really a new idea but, the ability of these groups to exchange information and build their own BVNs has most assuredly changed.

It’s no longer enough for organizations or individuals to build liner networks aimed at climbing to the next level.  It is essential we look to join existing BVNs and help form the connective tissues that bring BVNs together and this is how we can bring real value from our networking activities in a socialized environment.

After all the junior person or small business we ignore today, may well be a member or the custodian of a massive business value network that can have serious repercussions on our business futures.


Friday, February 6, 2015

Harnessing the Power of Social Media - OR - Avoiding the Barrier of Scale


In an Interesting discussion with some fellow social media communicators the topic of LinkedIn and what it could be doing to better serve its user came up. It highlighted what to me is the single greatest strength of social media but, it’s also the point where nearly every existing social media engagement from organizations breaks down.  It highlights the barrier of scale. 

While we happened to be discussing LinkedIn specifically the barrier of scale is a systemic social media challenge faced by both organizations and those of us tasked to create and implement social information operations and communications.

In my experience and observations I believe we users forget, just as LI and other big network hubs want us to forget, that LinkedIn is NOT a social network or a business networking site.

In fact LinkedIn is not particularly interested in serving the needs of its “members” at all.  LinkedIn is, as Google and Facebook are, an advertising network plain and simple. 

LI’s customers are not us, the users, beyond LI’s need to maintain a critical mass of user numbers to provide data and traffic we’re incidental individually though necessary as a whole but not beyond our willingness to surrender terabytes of personal and business information to LI’s true customers – advertisers.

It’s ironic that LI while at least partially positioning itself as a technology driven business networking hub uses technology to keep its users far, far away from help, support or any sort of interaction with the entity LinkedIn.

This does give us a small glimpse into one of social media’s most challenging barriers; the barrier of scale.  Social media is an ideal vehicle to truly engage stakeholders in real and meaningful conversations verses push or one-way communications, the problem is scale. 

In order for large entities (Be they LinkedIn, the US Government or anything in between) to make a case for wide-spread adoption of any technology social or other that technology must be scalable to encompass the intended organizational targets. 

In other words there needs to be a way to deliver the technology or use it to deliver information and services to a wide range of users with relatively little need for real-time human intervention or management. 

Think auto-attendants and self-service kiosks verses the person who used to answer a business’ phone or help you check in for a flight. To truly leverage the real and true advantages of social media we need to get at the value it provides which is one-one engagements with stakeholders; and this, of course, is impossible when you automate.

How many conversations can any one person carry on simultaneously?  That’s the real answer to how aggressive you can be with  a social media program and ultimately how much you can scale it and still extract the value it provides– not how many followers, friends or what your Klout score happens to be.

The real question then becomes how we can tap this power of social media without bankrupting organizations with swelled payrolls of social media operators.  Technology certainly helps with dashboards and various aggregators but the real answer is pushing both the social monitoring and engagement down to the individual level within an organization. 

The only way to overcome the barrier of scale in a socialized environment is to mobilize each and every employee as a social ambassador for the organization and create a process-driven system so they can both monitor and engage within the social environment.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

The Pen, the Sword and Social Media – OR – The Social Biosphere, the Next Global Battle Field

The Social Biosphere is where the next World War will be fought and won. The only question is what type of organization is most committed and capable of winning within this new and daunting digital operating environment.

Imagine a world where Citibank and Goldman Sachs are victorious in the Social Biosphere wars and think just how absolutely horrible all our lives will become. But fortunately, as imperfect as our US Government may be, I prefer the prospect of a continued future as Citizen of the United States of America verses the Republic of Greed offered by Citibank, Goldman Sachs and other corporations of their ilk.

The Axis of Greed may have tons of money, literally they have tons of money, but it’s our money and we have, the US Military and our Special Forces Community of Operators. I know you’re thinking wait-a-minute, the military, our military to fight Goldman Sachs, Citibank and the rest of the Axis of Greed, it sounds a bit far-fetched. Maybe not.

The old quote made popular in Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm and more recently in Operation Iraqi Freedom, “Capture their minds and their hearts and souls will follow,” is neither so old nor benign as the endless media repetition might lead us believe.

It most likely comes from a man named, Major Ed Rouse (US Army Ret) and one of the founding fathers of modern psychological warfare.  Major Rouse is considered an expert source by nearly every media outlet on the planet on exactly how to get inside our “enemies’’ heads and have our way with them. 

The long tradition of PSYOPS as a combat weapon predates Major Rouse, the USA and modern warfare. From Alexander the Great leaving armor on the battlefield designed for 8 foot men to intimidate enemies and Sun Tsu’s instructions to generals on how to make an enemy surrender to the perception or greater force through the Nazi’s use of Mildred Gillars, better know as Axis Sally, and Japan’s use of the better remembered Tokyo Rose, pictured below. PSYOPS has a long tradition in combat operations that transcends epochs, eras and cultures.  As a tactic it has always worked and will always work as it plays to the most basic instincts we have as human beings.

During the Gulf War and the Iraqi War the idea of capturing the hearts and minds of the civilian populations was generally presented as a positive thing as the media hammered us with repeated images of friendly soldiers handing rations to children.

Nothing could be further from the truth or from the real mission of Psychological Warfare Operations. Make no mistake, PSYOPS in the US fall under the US Army Special Operations Command, better known to most of us as Special Forces including such legendary outfits as, Army Delta and others.  PSYOPS is a Special Operations unit, with a serious offensive, ass-kicking mandate. 

So sheds a different light on “winning the hearts and minds,” more like capturing and reprogramming those enemy hearts and minds.  There are no Geneva Conventions rules governing what we can or cannot say to enemy combatants and civilians.

In fact and let’s be honest there are no boarders to cross, nor transmitters to be commandeered or jammed – there simply are endless opportunities to reach out via social channels to citizens of the world.  It’s no longer necessary or even desirable to identify an enemy because socialized operations cause no damage – they merely capture and control minds and ultimately build our brand AKA culture.

In a recent article I sketched some very broad strokes of the history of this profession of ours and left an open end as we enter the Social Biosphere era. It’s still too early to tell how things will play out within this socialized environment. 

It is however, safe to assume that like the communications and business revolution enabled by the adoption of Web-based technologies, Social Media will give way to the Social Biosphere, an environment affecting everything it touches be it organic life, business process or political and cultural systems.  The socialized Web is and will continue to change everything in its path.

So sets the stage for modern PSYOP Warfare within the Social Biosphere.  I cannot think of an operating environment more conducive to capturing and conquering, particularly the civilian populations of not only our enemies but any country or culture in danger of falling to the Axis of Greed,  whose aims are clearly not friendly or beneficial to the United States.

The beauty of the Social Biosphere as a social warfare operational environment mirrors the myriad advantages communicators have long known exist with social media. But the real significance is the added and incalculable value of being an un-policed, lawless free-for-all environment easily dominated by the organization committing the most resources to the campaign.  It’s also what makes us and the world most vulnerable to the Axis of Greed.

In short the Social Biosphere is the new global battlefield and the organization first in and most committed will capture, conquer and control the minds and hearts of World’s populations.  Here’s hoping it’s a mostly friendly power.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Extending A Social Mindset Throughout Your Organization -- OR -- Does This Count as Social Media?



The short answer is; YES!  

And your BIG PR AGENCY and high-priced in-house counsel probably missed the opportunity.

Don’t be overly harsh with them, they’re trained to think in traditional and linear media models and modalities. But, make no mistake they are generally VERY good at performing within these traditional modalities.

Of course the problem is, we live in a very different and new business reality which even the largest PR agencies struggle to comprehend.  We're living and communicating in a true social biosphere now. Real people, real conversations in real time; that’s a social biosphere, and believe me it scares the crap out of your PR agency and in-house PR managers.

Not to worry, no one abandoned the mailed press release overnight either, or the press release itself for that matter. There’s help out there, consultants like Outlaw Communications but more importantly look within your own organization as the following story illustrates.

In the social biosphere that is business today everything your organization does and says or is thought to have done or said or is perceived to have done or said along with anything anyone remotely connected to your organization has ever done or said, will count with someone somewhere.

I’m exaggerating but only slightly to illustrate how important the seemingly most insignificant encounters can be to your organization’s social wellbeing.

I recently met with some folks from AFLAC in a mismanaged recruiting SNAFU gone horribly wrong, perpetrated by an outside consultant.  Ah, those horrible consultants, we’re always mucking up someone’s business. In this case it turns out to be true, well almost were it not for a socially tuned-in AFLAC recruiter who found and capitalized upon a social opportunity despite it being WAVED (Yes WAVED) in front of senior PR staffers.

At any rate after what rapidly descended into an experience worthy of Twitter Tattling, this single dedicated AFLAC representative took it upon herself to not only fix a situation but turn it into a social media opportunity for her company.

The traditional PR machine failed here and did not realize the potential social impact as an influencer began showing negative signs within AFLAC’s social biosphere.

Another company representative, responsible mostly for recruiting, (how social is the recruiting function nowadays?), managed to recognize the potential damage already begun within AFLAC’s social biosphere and took immediate and successful steps to change the interaction.

A socially healthy organization is much like any other healthy animal, the social mindset must be pervasive and inclusive, not because this is the future I see, it is but, because it is and will be and also happens to be the future I see and BIG PR continues to miss and ignore.

And if the fact that your traditional PR Agencies and in-house counsel, for which you spend tens of thousands of dollars monthly, is in complete denial about the social biosphere, doesn’t keep management up at night… you need to find other work for the sake of your shareholders and stakeholders.