Sunday 8 July 2007

Crisis Communication

A crisis is any situation that threatens the integrity or reputation of your company, usually brought on by adverse or negative media attention.

The most challenging part of crisis communication management is reacting - with the right response - quickly. This is because behavior always precedes communication. Non-behavior or inappropriate behavior leads to spin, not communication. In emergencies, it's the non-action and the resulting spin that cause embarrassment, humiliation, prolonged visibility, and unnecessary litigation.

Common elements of crises:

  • The element of surprise
  • Insufficient information
  • The quick pace of events
  • Intense scrutiny

Example of crises: -

11 sep 2001:terror attack on world trade center
1982 Johnson &Johnson’s Tylenol recall
1990:The Perrier benzene scare

Examining the dimensions of a crisis, which executives can clearly recognize and relate to, helps the public relations counselor provide truly meaningful, strategic advice. It is this kind of analytical approach that helps senior management avoid career-defining moments, unless the moments are deserved.

The Dimensions of a Crisis

True crises have several critical dimensions in common, any one of which, if handled poorly, can disrupt or perhaps destroy best efforts at managing any remaining opportunities to resolve the situation and recover, rehabilitate, or retain reputation. Failure to respond and communicate in ways that meet community standards and expectations will result in a series of negative outcomes. This article focuses on seven critical dimensions of crisis communication management: Operations; Victims; Trust/credibility; Behavior; Professional expectations;
Ethics; and Lessons learned.

http://www.e911.com/monos/A001.html

21st Century Communication Trends

“As we are moving towards Globalization from local production and distribution, diversification problem is also occurring."

http://stconsultant.blogspot.com/2007/04/foresight-s-knowledge-trends-in-21st.html

Less developed nations, however, are not only increasing GDP, but increasing the portion of GDP spent on R&D as they progress economically. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are expected to enter the list of the most powerful economies of the world by 2050, and with other developing nations invest much more in research and development.Satellite communications

Satellite communications

Satellite communications have been in service for more than 40 years and represent by far the largest space industry, with annual revenues now at $30 billion a year and over 35,000 employees worldwide. Satellite technology may be viewed by some as a mature market; but this book will explore many exciting new technologies and services yet to be developed. A new demand for advanced Internet and IP services, entertainment, and multi casting services as well as advanced applications related to multimedia, telecommuting, etc. are the driving forces behind new satellite and communications research and development.


INFLATION

So far, 2007 is not unfolding in the Federal Reserve’s favor. Growth is
Slower, but inflation pressures are increasing; “stagflation,” with a small
“S”. Since bottoming in December, the net percent of firms raising prices
Has risen from eight percent to 18 percent in April. Unadjusted, 31 percent
Reported raising average selling prices, up three points, and 11 percent
Reported lower selling prices, unchanged.

PROFITS AND WAGES

The net percent of firms reporting earnings improvements fell four points
From February levels in spite of a four-point gain in reports of higher sales
And nearly one in five owners reporting higher average selling prices. On
The negative side, 26 percent reported higher employee compensation.
And energy costs are on the rise. Labor compensation will be pressuring
Profit margins all year.

CREDIT MARKETS

Regular borrowing activity was reported by 37 percent of the owners.
There is no sign that borrowing activity has picked up, even with the
Problems in the housing sector. Reported borrowing activity among
Construction firms were 10 points lower than March. The net percent of
Owners reporting loans harder to get in recent months fell slightly,
Dropping two points to a net five percent (six percent said “harder,” one
Percent said “easier”), typical of recent readings.

Green Power: The environment trend has been around and been a struggle for many companies, such as automakers with electric cars trying to capitalize on the green awareness. The care of Mother Earth is still a big concern of society. According to a recent Harris Poll, over 74% of American adults believe in the global warming theory. Over 73% of U.S. citizens approve of the Kyoto agreement for countries to limit their carbon monoxide and greenhouse gas emissions. Although, the United States has not signed the accord, countries like Canada, that have accepted, the accord will be a watch place for the impact. http://sbinformation.about.com/cs/bestpractices/a/aa122202a.htm


Total Quality Management

The quest to maximize customer satisfaction led some firms to adopt total quality management principles. Total quality management (TQM) is an organization-wide approach to continuously improving the quality of all the organization's processes, products, and services.

Internal Communications

Internal communications strengthen the relationships of the organizations with its employees. managers have to interact with the people who are working for them and get to know them .

Changing environment affects the internal communication in many ways. There are certain goals for effective communication which are to be done so that it supports the overall mission of the organization. ultimately the employees should believe that they are assets to the organization. internal communication must work with external communication to integrate the messages disseminated to both internal and external audiences.


Face to face meetings should be held frequently with large groups of employees and it should be used as an opportunity to share company’s results and progress. Employees basically want personal contact with their managers and this should be understood by the managers to have a good internal communications.

A lower rate of attrition, employee engagement and satisfaction levels (determined through surveys) are all pointers to an organization’s successful internal communication initiative. This success can be judged in three ways, believes Raja Gopalakrishnan, SVP, Global Service Delivery & Operations, and Managing Director, India; EFD eFunds:

Bad internal communication:
  • Long-term impact
  • Dissatisfaction among employees leads to higher attrition.
  • Lack of coherent and shared vision.
  • Low employee morale results in lower productivity.
  • Impact on company's stocks.
  • Organization’s external brand value suffers.
Ways and means

The channels of communication are intranets, e-mail, newsletters, periodic speeches by the CEO / managing director, open house sessions, etc. Sridharan asserts that while formal channels are important, it is imperative to make informal communication a continuous effort.

The following factors should be taken care of:
  • The purpose should be clear.
  • The timing and medium are important.
  • Language must be used carefully.
  • The tools of communication should be effective.
  • When people are vulnerable, their tolerance for ambiguity decreases, so they need to be told clearly to feel secure.
Communication has to be supported by action.

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20070326/technologylife01.shtml

Media Relations

Media relations is a critical area in any corporate communication function and every company has a media relations department .it helps the companies in getting their message out clearly and makes sure their voice is heard. increased media and public interest had an effect on business and its relationship with the media.

Business coverage in media has grown exponentially today from what it was before the seventies where there was virtually no coverage at all in the tv broadcasts. To conduct research for targeting the media ,many considerations have to be taken into account and then the company would look for a right place to place the story.


The critical component in media relations is developing and maintaining contacts with the media. using in house media relations staff is much better in the long run than using consultants. the blogs also must be taken seriously and also one should respond quickly to a blog.

11 tips for using photos and graphics for public relations.

1. Make sure you have good-quality, above-the-shoulders photos of all your experts who are likely to be interviewed by the media.

2. Consider asking your photographer to shoot "environmental portraits" of your experts. An architect, for example, might be shown holding several rolled up architect's renderings under her arm. A construction executive can be shown holding a hard hat or other tools of his trade. Weekly newspapers that don't have big photo staffs would probably welcome these photos.

3. Have interior and exterior shots of your company available for the media. The interior shots can show people at work. Please, no cliche "on the telephone" or "working at the computer" shots.

4. Submit photos with news releases about routine announcements such as new hires, promotions, retirements, awards, etc.

5. Pie charts, bar charts and other graphics can often help readers understand complicated issues such as budgets. Offer to supply information to media outlets so they can create their own graphics to accompany the article they're writing about.

6. If you're sponsoring an event that doesn't necessarily warrant a story, call the photo desk at your local newspaper and let photographers know what's happening.

7. If a photographer from a newspaper or magazine takes photos at your company, never demand to see the negatives, or dictate what photo they should use with the article, or ask for free copies of prints. The negatives are the property of the media outlet, and the media maintain full control over their use. If you want prints, expect to pay for them.

8. Make sure all photos are scanned at print-quality 300 dots per inch and available for instant download at your website, preferably under a button called "Media Room" that can be accessed from the homepage.

9. Avoid using big clunky photos at your website because they slow down the time it takes a page to load.

10. Never, ever ask a newspaper or magazine to take photos of a check-passing, ground-breaking or ribbon-cutting ceremony. The media hate these staged events. And don't wimp out by uploading these cheesy-looking photos to your expensive website.

11. Offer an architect's rendering instead of a ground-breaking shot. In place of a check-passing photo, take a photo that illustrates what the money will be used for. Instead of a ribbon-cutting photo, how about a photo of a business person with a customer on the first day of business?


Media Interview Tips

Keep answers short
Avoid “No Comment!” response
Listen to each question
Use “bridging” to move closer to your objective
Use anecdotes
Keep body language in mind
Perrier Role Play
Executive
Financial News Network Reporter
Hard Copy Reporter
30 minutes to prepare
Select one person from group to play role
3 minutes to present


http://www.mediarelationsblog.com/
http://www.aboutpublicrelations.net/ucstewart1.htm

Communication Technology

Communication is a process that allows beings - in particular humans - to exchange information by one of several methods. Communication requires that some kinds of symbols from a kind of language are exchanged. There are auditory means, such as speaking or singing, and nonverbal, physical means, such as body language, sign language, para language, touch or eye contact.

Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many different ways, and for all beings, and some machines. Many or all, fields of study dedicate some attention to communication, so when speaking about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspect of communication one is speaking about. Some definitions are broad, recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human beings, and some are more narrow, only including human beings within the parameters of human symbolic interaction.

The beginning of human communication through artificial channels, i.e. not vocalization or gestures, goes back to ancient cave paintings, drawn maps, and writing.

Our indebtedness to the Ancient Romans in the field of communication does not end with the Latin root "communicare". They devised what might be described as the first real mail or postal system in order to centralize control of the empire from Rome. This allowed for personal letters and for Rome to gather knowledge about events in its many widespread provinces.

The adoption of a dominant communication medium is important enough that historians have folded civilization into "ages" according to the medium most widely used. A book titled "Five Epochs of Civilization" by William McGaughey (Thistlerose, 2000) divides history into the following stages: Ideographic writing produced the first civilization; alphabetic writing, the second; printing, the third; electronic recording and broadcasting, the fourth; and computer communication, the fifth. The media effects what people think about themselves and how they perceive people as well. What we think about self image and what others should look like comes from the media.

While it could be argued that these "Epochs" are just a historian's construction, digital and computer communication shows concrete evidence of changing the way humans organize. The latest trend in communication, termed smartmobbing, involves ad-hoc organization through

Electronic media

In the last century, a revolution in telecommunications has greatly altered communication by providing new media for long distance communication. The first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast occurred on July 25, 1920 and led to common communication via analogue and digital media:

  • Analog telecommunications include traditional telephony, radio, and TV broadcasts.
  • Digital telecommunications allow for computer-mediated communication, telegraphy, and computer networks.

Communications media impact more than the reach of messages. They impact content and customs; for example, Thomas Edison had to discover that hello was the least ambiguous greeting by voice over a distance; previous greetings such as hail tended to be garbled in the transmission. Similarly, the terseness of e-mail and chat rooms produced the need for the emoticon.

Modern communication media now allow for intense long-distance exchanges between larger numbers of people (many-to-many communication via e-mail, Internet forums). On the other hand, many traditional broadcast media and mass media favor one-to-many communication (television, cinema, radio, newspaper, magazines).


Mass media

Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks and of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. The mass-media audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda.


Who

Communication in many of its facets is not limited to humans or even primates. Every information exchange between living organisms, a transmission of signals involving a living sender and receiver, can count as communication. Most of this, necessarily, is nonverbal. Thus, there is the wide field of animal communication that is the basis of most of the issues in ethology, but we also know about, Cell signaling, Cellular communication (biology), chemical communication between primitive organisms like bacteria and within the plant and [[fungi|fungal kingdoms. One distinctive non-intrinsic feature of these types of communication in contrast to human communication is allegedly the absence of emotional features, and a limitation to the pure informational level.


Sources and Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication

Corporate vs. Product Advertising

Corporate advertising is used by many large corporations to enhance their image as a whole and any corporate advertising should be strategic and consistent. Corporate advertising should provide a clear image about the organization and is classified into three categories: image advertising ,financial advertising and issue advocacy.

Many managers do not use them because of the costs and problems in analyzing their effects on sales . if the objectives like enhancing and creating a stronger reputation, influence opinions and retain employees are accomplished ,an organizations financial situation will improve.

Corporate advertising is used by more than half of the largest industrial and non industrial companies in the united states; bigger the company ,more likely it is to have corporate advertising .it enhances a company’s reputation and gives a position to the company .


We all are aware of advertising, but the two main important kinds of advertising are corporate and product. Corporate advertising enhances the image of the corporation as a whole and product advertising promotes the companies product. Basically company’s marketing department is responsible for product advertising. Corporate advertising is done by corporate communication department and is paid for by the CEO’s office.

The different types of corporate advertising are :-
  • Advertising to reinforce identity or reputation
  • Advertising to attract investors and advertising to influence opinions.

In the recent Cola controversy that Coca Cola had been through, the company used well actor for advertisement to reinforce corporate image. Generally organizations use advertisements to Capture more investors. Issue advertising is used to respond to external threats such as environment, government etc. Off lately such advertisements are done on a regular basis to create a greater social image of an organization and to build good citizenship globally. Corporate advertising defines and enhance a company’s reputation.

The purpose of product advertisement is to increase sales and explain the need of the product. The relationship between corporate advertising and sales is less clear than that between product advertising and sales, because corporate advertising is meant to do things that eventually boost but likely won’t directly or immediately do so.

Communication Theories

"Communication is the production and exchange of information and meaning by use of signs and symbols. It involves encoding and sending messages, receiving and decoding them, and synthesizing information and meaning. Communication permeates all levels of human experience and it is central to understanding human behavior.”

Encyclopedia of Public Health

There is much discussion in the academic world of communication as to what actually constitutes communication. Currently, many definitions of communication are used in order to conceptualize the processes by which people navigate and assign meaning.

We might say that communication consists of transmitting information from one person to another. In fact, many scholars of communication take this as a working definition, and use Lasswell's maxim, "who says what to whom in what channel with what effect," as a means of circumscribing the field of communication theory.





Theories of communication are actually is not something new that came into picture in twentieth century. In the history of philosophy, Aristotle first addressed the problem of communication and attempted to work out a theory of it in The Rhetoric. Aristotle represented communication as might an orator who speaks to large audiences. Although His model incorporates few elements.


Aristotle’s Model of Communication :










ike most of the other models in this section of simple models, the model proposed by Aristotle is a linear one. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle tells us that we must consider three elements in communication:
  • the speaker
  • the speech
  • the audience

If you just think for a moment about the variety of communication acts, you shouldn't have too much difficulty seeing those elements. In some cases, of course, Aristotle's vocabulary doesn't quite fit. In the example of you reading the newspaper, no one is actually 'speaking' as such, but if we use, say, the terms 'writer' and 'text', then Aristotle's elements can still be found.

Lasswells Model

The Lasswell Formula is typical of what are often referred to as transmission models of communication. For criticisms of such models, you should consult the section on criticisms of transmission models.

lasswell.gif

The sociologist, Harold Lasswell, tells us that in studying communication we should consider the elements in the graphic above.

Lasswell was primarily concerned with mass communication and propaganda, so his model is intended to direct us to the kinds of research we need to conduct to answer his questions ('control analysis', 'effects research' and so on). In fact, though, it is quite a useful model, whatever category of communication we are studying. Note, incidentally, that the Lasswell Formula consists of five major components, though this is by no means obligatory. You might be interested to look at the comments on Maletzke's model to see which components a selection of other researchers have considered essential.

Lasswell was primarily concerned with mass communication. In every form of communication, though, there must be someone (or something) that communicates.

Osgood & Schramm Circular Model

If you've already looked at the other models in this section on basic models of communication, you'll be aware that a criticism that could be made of some of them is that they present communication as a linear process, within which the rôles of sender and receiver are clearly distinguished.

Schramm stated:

In fact, it is misleading to think of the communication process as starting somewhere and ending somewhere. It is really endless. We are little switchboard centers handling and rerouting the great endless current of information....

(Schramm W. (1954) quoted in McQuail & Windahl (1981)

The Osgood and Schramm circular model is an attempt to remedy that deficiency: The model emphasizes the circular nature of communication. The participants swap between the rôles of source/encoder and receiver/decoder.

Schramos.gif



Osgood & Schramm: Interpreting

Schramos.gif

The model is particularly helpful in reminding us of the process of interpretation which takes place whenever a message is decoded.

The more mechanical models, particularly those concerned primarily with machine communication, tend to suggest that fidelity will be high as long as physical noise is reduced to a minimum or strategies (such as increasing channel redundancy) are adopted to counter the noise. This circular model reminds us that receiving a message is not simply a matter of decoding, but also of interpreting the message.

Whenever we receive data from the world around us, even in, say, the apparently very simple act of seeing what's in front of us, we are engaged in an active process of interpretation, not simply taking in information, but actively making sense of it. An important question is: what criteria are we using to make sense of what we are receiving? Since the criteria we use will inevitably differ from one person to another, there will always be semantic noise. If we can answer that question about our audience, then we stand a chance of communicating successfully.

But it's certainly not an easy question to answer, as you will see if you take a look at Berlo's SMCR Model, which is one of the most useful models as a starting point for organizing any practical work in communication.



Shannon-Weaver: The Channel

shanwea.gif

You tap on a membrane suspended above a steadily flowing jet of water. The air under the membrane causes slight deflections in the jet of water. A laser is aimed at a receiver. The jet of water flows through the laser beam, deflecting it from its target. Every time the water jet is deflected by the movement of the air, the laser beam hits its target. The laser receiver is connected to a computer which takes each 'hit' and turns it into a 1 and each miss and turns it into a 0. The computer sends these etc. etc......

You get the idea: the air waves, the jet of water and so on are all channels. The words channel and medium are often used interchangeably, if slightly inaccurately. The choice (a pretty stupid one above) of the appropriate channel is a vitally important choice in communication. It's obvious that you don't use the visual channel to communicate with the blind or the auditory channel with the deaf, but there are more subtle considerations to be taken into account as well. A colleague of mine was clearly much more responsive to visual communication than I. To elucidate his arguments he would inevitably grab a pencil and a piece of paper and sketch out complex diagrams of his arguments. Though they may have help him to clarify his ideas, they merely served to confuse me, who would have preferred a verbal exposition. It's curious that in the college where I work many students who are dyslexic or have other learning difficulties end up studying information technology in so-called flexible learning centres. Bearing in mind the statement above that "the choice of the appropriate channel is a vitally important choice in communication", it's less than obvious how a student who has difficulty reading and writing can have their needs met by a learning model which boils down in essence to 'read this; it will tell you what to write'.

Conclusion: Communication theories will evolve over time, its just a basic process which find the secrets of communication



Source:

http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/introductory/lasswell.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_theory