The Measurement Standard: Blog Edition

Public Relations Measurement Technique Sheds Light on Companies' Environmental Reputations

Jim Macnamara's 'Measuring Up'

 

Media Analysis Shows Companies Need to Set
and Achieve Measurable
Climate Change Goals
Environmental performance will be a key driver of reputation.

A major new study of public debate and discussion on energy completed by my company, Media Monitors – CARMA Asia Pacific, presents some important warnings and advice for companies, organizations and governments and concludes that environmental performance is likely to increasingly be a key driver of reputation. We used content analysis to examine statements and commentary by organizations, spokespersons and consumers in leading mainstream media and blogs in Australia and major Asian countries including China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The analysis covered discussions of nuclear, coal, wind, solar and other alternative sources appearing in more than 1,500 print news articles, radio and TV program segments and 170 blogs appearing between May and July 2007. It focused on Asia Pacific because China is fast becoming the world's leading polluter. Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal and uranium, and 16 of 29 nuclear power plants under construction or proposed worldwide are due to come into operation in Asia in the next 10-15 years.

Overall Results:
Companies must achieve measurable targets on the environment or their reputations will suffer.

The report found mild optimism that solutions will be found to balance environmental and economic interests, although serious fears and concerns also abound in relation to safety, the environment and consumer protection.

Specifically of interest to companies and organizations is a finding that they face widespread criticism if they do not implement meaningful measures to reduce carbon emissions. Environmental performance is likely to increasingly be a key driver of reputation, the report says.

The report concluded that companies adopting policies and planning measures to address climate change need to set and achieve significant measurable targets. "Broad unspecific policies and 'aspirational goals' are not going to cut it and may backfire leading to public criticism. There are signs of this already happening," the report warns.

Also:

• Positive messages outweighed negative messages about energy production and use – albeit the margin was narrow. (The analysis examined discussion and comment from the perspective of a balanced position between protecting the environment and maintaining economic development and standards of living.)
• Nuclear energy is the most discussed form of energy and is mired in controversy and near evenly divided opinion for and against, the analysis found. Most opposition and concerns in relation to nuclear power are about safety.
• Solar and wind power are being actively promoted by environmentalists, but are described in most discussions as not being able to make a substantial contribution to energy needs.

Carbon Trading:
Despite a number of initiatives, governments are generally not seen to be doing enough.

Carbon trading is one initiative that is being welcomed by a majority of spokespersons and commentators and is set to become a multi-billion dollar industry over the next few years. However, some are warning that it is still uncertain whether carbon trading will stimulate a net reduction in carbon emissions. Some energy producers and consumer groups have pointed to lessons in Europe where too many permits were issued, resulting in a price collapse below levels necessary to stimulate investment in carbon reducing initiatives.

Also, concerns are being expressed that carbon trading is insufficiently regulated and could lead to scams and fraudulent schemes. One leading environment group has warned that some companies are selling trees without accreditation and that their claims of carbon credits or neutrality are not substantiated. Consumer groups are also expressing concern that consumers may be paying levies and surcharges with no guarantee that their money will be used to address climate change.

The report says:

"While the efforts of some companies to reduce their carbon footprint may be commendable and genuine, there is considerable concern over a lack of safeguards for consumers on how extra charges will be used and whether they will reduce carbon emissions... With carbon trading set to become the next big thing in the financial world, strict regulation of the carbon trading industry, including accreditation and monitoring of carbon offset providers, is seen as necessary to avoid scams and corruption... and to ensure that offsets are real and effective."

Clean coal technology (CCT) is also creating some optimism that a balance can be achieved between reducing greenhouse gases and continuing to exploit vast coal reserves. However, environmental groups and some commentators are cynical, pointing out that the technology is still unproven.

Blog Analysis

Blogs were found to be more unfavorable than mainstream media coverage (48% unfavorable compared with 30% of mainstream media content unfavorable). However, 30% of blog discussion was favorable. While much of this was supportive of renewable forms of energy, some bloggers support clean coal technology and carbon trading – albeit with the same concerns as mainstream media commentators and spokespersons.

Analysis also showed that bloggers often include scientists and technical experts and, therefore, blogs need to be recognized as an increasingly important medium, reflecting the viewpoints of influencers and thought-leaders.

Dr. Jim Macnamara BA, MA, PhD is Group Research Director with Media Monitors – CARMA Asia Pacific which conducts media monitoring, media analysis, e-surveys, reputation research and sponsorship analysis. He has a 30-year career in the media and PR in Asia Pacific and is the author of 11 books on media and communication. In August 2007 he was appointed Professor of Public Communication at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Greater Transparency Is the Key to Building Greater Trust

Trust Measurement

Trust and Transparency
Go Hand In Hand
Brad Rawlins' research shows that doing things right isn't nearly as important as doing the right thing.

by Katie Delahaye Paine

About five years ago, Linda Hon, Jim Grunig and I wrote a white paper about measuring trust that set out some pretty clear steps as to how organizations could do it. At the time, we gave some general advice on what to do if you found that trust in your organization was less than what you wanted it to be.

To be honest, most of these recommendations fell somewhere between "duh," and "of course," and mostly had to do with doing things right:

• Articulate a set of ethical principles,
• Create a process for transparency that is appropriate for current and future operations, and
• Establish a formal system of trust measurement.

And they are all perfectly acceptable things to do.

However, new research by Brad Rawlins (he is our Measurement Maven of the Month for this month), shows that doing things right isn't nearly as important as doing the right thing, and that being transparent is a driving factor in the fostering of trust.

In a recent presentation at the Universidad Del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia, Dr. Rawlins outlined his findings, and we summarize them below. (You can read the whole paper here, excerpted from the IPRRC proceedings of last spring. Read my blog coverage of that presentation here.)

The overall results of the study demonstrate that transparency and trust are highly correlated, and, "one could conclude that as organizations become more transparent they will also become more trusted." Although the study was limited to employees, the results are strong enough to imply that the correlation between trust and transparency will hold for other stakeholder groups as well.

Definitions

For definitions of trust, see our paper above, since Rawlins uses the same terminology. For transparency, Rawlins starts with the 2005 Mirriam-Webster definition:

• Free from pretense or deceit
• Easily detected or seen through
• Readily understood

He then supplements it with one from Anne Florini of the Brookings Institution:

The opposite of secrecy. Secrecy means deliberately hiding your actions; transparency means deliberately revealing them.

According to Rawlins, there are three aspects of transparency:

1. Informational Transparency means openness, making publicly available all legally releasable information -- whether positive or negative in nature -- in a manner which is accurate, timely, balanced, and unequivocal. Information must be substantial to meet stakeholders needs. Disclosure by itself does not equal transparency, in fact some forms of disclosure can defeat the purposes of transparency.
2. Participatory Transparency is what separates transparency from disclosure. Transparency cannot be successful unless you know what stakeholders want and need to know. So, to ensure that the information shared is relevant and useful, stakeholders must be allowed to identify what they need to know.
3. Accountability Transparency. Transparency holds people accountable for their actions, words and decisions. Rawlins cited The Naked Corporation: If you're going to be naked, you'd better be buff. In other words, if you want to shine, you have to clean up your act.

In addition, Rawlins suggests that each organization might experience differing levels of transparency:

• Active transparency, where transparency is simply part of the culture;
• Forced transparency, in response to Sarbanes-Oxley or other legislation; and
• Pseudo transparency, in which an organization obfuscates through disclosure and greenwashing, which is self-promotion disguised as transparency.

Methodology

1200 employees of a large regional healthcare organization were surveyed on issues of trust and transparency. 385 surveys were completed for a 32% response rate. Twenty-four surveys were deleted because they were incomplete, leaving 361 surveys for analysis. The sample demographics matched approximately those of the healthcare organization's population.

Conclusions

1. Trust and transparency are significantly and strongly correlated.

Trust was closely connected with transparency and the two are positively related. According to Rawlins, "As employee perceptions of organizational transparency increased so did trust. Additionally, the three components of trust (competence, integrity, and goodwill) and three components of transparency (participation, substantial information, and accountability) are positively related."

2. Regression analyses indicate that employees found integrity and goodwill more important to overall trust than competency.

Employee participation that leads to an organization sharing information that employees find useful and substantial, and that holds an organization accountable, is the strongest predictor of overall transparency.

3. Employees see sharing information as a sign of integrity.

Sharing substantial information and being accountable was tied to employee perceptions of organizational integrity.

4. Employee participation and willingness to be accountable was tied to perception of goodwill.

Final Thoughts

Dr. Rawlins is the only speaker I've heard of late that closed his presentation with a quote from the bible that I actually found to be entirely relevant to the presentation.   Would that more of our corporations heed these words:

And this is the condemnation. That light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil, for everyone that doest evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved, but he that doest a Truth cometh to the light that his deeds maybe e manifest, that they are wrought in God.  John 3:19-21

Can the Votes of a Panel Measure Trust, Reputation, and Other Tricky Things?

How do you measure trust? I just read about an innovative social media approach as applied to news media, (thanks to PR Watch.org). NewsTrust, now still in beta, is "...a social network model which uses the intellect of the masses to rate all manner of news content and news sources..." So, as I take it, news sources will be rated by many readers to result in an overall score that roughly translates to "trustworthiness."

And that brings up an interesting thought: If you can derive a useful measure of trustworthiness by having a bunch of people just vote on it, then why couldn't we measure all kinds of tricky things by having people vote on them? Could we compare the trustworthiness of companies or politicians just by combining ratings from enough people?

And if so, then why go to all the media analysis effort of compiling a Reputation Index for big companies when you could just get a bunch of people to rate the companies? Hey, maybe there's already a social media site called YourRep.com or something where everyone can rank companies to provide an overall reputation score.

I guess if we can use Wikipedia to provide accurate information on, say, Total Quality Management (which I happen to have looked up there just a little while ago, and I feel more or less confident that what I read was accurate), then perhaps we can use a similar consensus-of-many approach to defining (or at least getting a handle on) more nebulous concepts as well. --WTP

Can This Reputation Be Saved? The Public Relations Profession

Can This Reputation Be Saved?

The Public Relations Profession

Always look on the bright side.

Here at The Measurement Standard we often ask whether or not PR's reputation can be saved. After all, what better PR measurement than the reputation of the profession itself? Almost invariably our answer is a definitive "Maybe." Today, the answer is still the same, but even more definitively.

In this new era of social media, where marketing is all about conversations and relationships, you'd think PR would be King of the Hill. Word of mouth, positioning, the framing of discussions -- heck, these are all things that PR does best.

But look around, what is PR actually up to? It's busy creating fake blogs and trying to manipulate the media with VNRs. It's pulling off stupid stunts, like the Aqua Teens episode in Boston, that indicate it really hasn't come very far at all since the early days of Hollywood publicists. And the result is that the reputation of PR is just as low as ever. Hey, at least it makes for good cinema: Have you seen "Thank You For Smoking?"

The good news is that a growing number of PR professionals are getting a seat at the table, and are truly acting as counselors for their CEOs. What I worry about is what will happen when these senior practitioners retire. Will their place be taken by publicists? Or will we have somehow educated enough people to value (and measure) relationships instead of column inches and AVEs?

Regardless of whether or not the overall trend is up or down, PR's reputation is usually in a state of flux. KDPaine & Partners is running an ongoing study of PR firms' reputations in the blogosphere. (See the directions at the end of this previously published article to view a customizable dashboard displaying the current results.) As of this writing, it appears that the hostility generated by Edelman with its Wal-Mart and Microsoft stunts, and by Burson-Marsteller for its role in the aspartame story, seem to have dissipated a bit.

But we expect another scandal just around the corner. Odds are that PR's reputation will always need to be saved. --KDP

Can This Reputation Be Saved? Consumer Reports

This article was published in our Feb 8 issue
CAN THIS REPUTATION BE SAVED?
Consumer Reports
Product testing organization slips up, but recovers nicely.
Consumer Reports released a report concluding that most child car seats were dangerous, but then had to recall the report after discovering that the research methodology was flawed. Ouch! It's a researcher's worst nightmare...