Currie Communications

By Gabrielle Sheehan, Senior Consultant

Does spending Saturday night in a creepy old building filled with mad scientists and escaped lunatics sound like fun to you? 

Me neither, yet that’s exactly what I did, and it was amazing.

Courtesy of Melbourne’s Underground Cinema, I attended a screening of the 1997 film ‘Twelve Monkeys’ staged at the Newport substation. The space was fully themed drawing on various aspects of the sci-fi thriller, now cult movie.

Scary-looking performers interacted with the crowd creating mini situations and experiences for us. Lighting, audio and props completed the surreal atmosphere. I had no idea what was going to happen next. It was freaky – and totally engrossing.

Essentially, Underground Cinema is guerrilla entertainment. The date and the theme (this time, ‘future’) are set weeks in advance but the location is unknown until a couple of days before screening. After all this anticipation, the movie is only revealed with the opening scenes.

Underground Cinema succeeded in creating real drama for their guests. I did have to clutch at my partner-in-crime more than once. It reminded me of the power of surprise, and using the unexpected to achieve that all-important ‘cut through’.

And here I am telling you about it, so it seems they succeeded.

By Jenny Littlewood, Director Strategy

As a woman working in the public relations industry I was struck by Kate Ellis’ comment in last night’s Q&A “Adventures in Democracy” http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3151089.htm

The Minister for the Status of Women said, “There’s no point electing women to parliament if we’re going to pretend we’re middle-aged men.”

It made me think about my own profession.  Are there women out there in our line of work that feel they have to behave like middle-aged men to succeed? And does the PR industry display gender equality?

In my quest to find out I discovered an article: Working girls: Revisiting the gendering of public relations (2010) by Kate Fitch, Murdoch University and Amanda Third, University of Western Sydney.  The authors observe that although women make up the majority (73 percent) of members of the Public Relations Institute of Australia [PRIA] (J. Kenny, personal communication, September 14, 2010), they are under-represented in the most senior membership category, the Fellows.

Fellows are recognised for their outstanding service to the public relations profession and are proposed by PRIA members.  Only 39.5% of Fellows are women, just over half of the proportion of female members (J. Kenny, personal communication, September 14, 2010).

In our company we have 12 employees, four are men and of those two are Fellows.  None of the women have that status.  Yet, we do have a female general manager and three female board members. 

The authors of the Working girls paper also highlight that men tend to dominate in senior positions and are paid more than women in equivalent roles (“An industry of equals”, 2009; Mercer Human Resource Consulting, 2004).

Perhaps public relations is no different to other industries after all in terms of gender equality and maybe it’s just the dominance of women rather than their position that makes it feel more equal. 

Yet for me that does count – being surrounded by women means I don’t feel like I have to display male characteristics to succeed.

Today is International Women’s Day. 

And to all the women out there whether they are in politics, public relations, or any profession I echo Kate Ellis’ line, be yourself and don’t feel you have to behave like a middle-aged man to get ahead.

By Fiona Davis, Consultant

Other people with three days off might go to the beach or catch up on some movies.

Not me. Like any true nerd armed with time off, last week I attended a writing workshop at Melbourne University run by the very talented Simon Clews.

It was set up for graduating PhD students just like me and for a fee comparable to a tank of petrol and a couple of movie tickets they’d let me in. How could I resist?

Here’s what I learned.

There are two key steps to improving your writing and they’re pretty simple.

Step one is to read more.

Find writers you like and look at how they do it. Read widely and read often.

Step two is to practice.

I suspect all of us write every day, even if it’s just an email. Pick something and spend time on it: take pride in what you produce.

How do you write something you’re proud of?

Edit your work

Realise that your first draft should never be your last: finish writing then slash your word count by 30 to 50 per cent.

When writing for a general audience, the public read because they want to not because they have to. You’ve got all of about 12 seconds to hook them in before they’re off to the next story. We need to think shorter: shorter words, shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs and shorter documents.

Choose active over passive

Often this means including an actor in your sentence: i.e. “Fiona was annoyed by the drivers on her ride to work” becomes “The drivers annoyed Fiona on her ride to work”.

Don’t make assumptions

Assumptions alienate the reader. Same goes for talking down to your audience. Assume the reader is as intelligent as you but hasn’t had the time to do the research you have. Avoid jargon and acronyms and remember to qualify unknown concepts, people and places.

Use your imagination

Imagination makes your ideas seem interesting, inspiring and inviting. Resist using metaphors or phrases that you see all the time.

It’s classic stuff – George Orwell gave similar advice back in the first half of the twentieth century. But it does take time and energy and to most people is far less fun than going to the beach.

I think it’s worth it.

Do you?

By David Dickeson, Senior Consultant

For many years, advertising and public relations have had a love-hate relationship.

Professionals from each discipline considered themselves more relevant than the other. Both have often undertaken research to emphasise the value of their own contribution to justify the client’s investment.

At times this has led to frustration and bewilderment of clients who struggled to ascertain which communication was generating the response and to accurately weigh up the benefit of each.

The reality is that each discipline serves a different purpose. As agency principal Paul Flowers, of Flowers and Partners, Dallas, Texas, says:  “Traditional consumers receiving an advertising message understand they are being sold something, whereas a PR story is seen as a third-party offer which is viewed differently.”

Complicating matters further has been the emergence of the vast online communications space which is now a legitimate channel in its own right (a recent anti-smoking campaign aimed at teenagers in the US, using online communications only, achieved a positive outcome in 79% of the 1128-strong cohort).

Traditionally, in a typical marketing high profile communications campaign, point-of-sale, direct mail, events, television, radio and print media, and PR would be incorporated and evaluated element by element.

The recent Oprah Australia tour programme used all of the above and generated a massive audience of 10 million viewers in Australia (population: 22 million), proving the benefit of an integrated program of advertising and public relations.

With the expansion of online promotions the number of potential vehicles is extrapolated and the line between public relations and advertising has blurred more than ever.

It’s this online convergence of the two disciplines that sees the ‘turf protection’ mentality becoming totally out-dated.

A new broom of cooperation and joint strategy development between both advertising and public relations – and one that incorporates an online element – is evolving, and from which the client can only benefit.

With the recent international GFC impacting on almost all marketing budgets, many clients will take heart from this new approach. We can anticipate a favourable return on investment

Public relations and advertising, as with any discipline, including digital, work best when developed in conjunction. Integration within an over-arching strategy ensures messages that are consistent and compatible.

Most importantly, bringing advertising and public relations together from the outset of a campaign, guarantees a client the best ‘bang for their buck’, as the success of the promotion for Oprah’s Downunder Adventure so clearly demonstrates.

We can but hope that there will be no ‘love lost’ as this maturing process evolves.

Or ‘How qualifications in commerce and public relations will never serve you as well as a grounding in history, philosophy and a three-quarter time address by Ken ‘Boo’ Radley’.

By Craig Little, Senior Consultant

Public relations is taking a beating¹ – and not an overdue or undeserved one.

At backyard barbeques, friends of mine no longer refer to politicians without also referring to their cabal of spinners².

“…what rubbish we hear from them; what hollow, vacuous, witless rubbish.”³

It illustrates that in PR, too often verisimilitude matters more than veracity.

Surely, I wasn’t taught this?

Truth is, I remember very little of the PR texts I studied at university… actually, there’s a lot I don’t remember from university. Most of what I’ve retained centres mainly on girls, cheap counter meals at the Caledonian Hotel and a memorable year playing ruck-rover for the winless Deakin Uni Sharks.⁴

Ken ‘Boo’ Radley was the coach of the Sharks that year and I warmed to him from our first night of pre-season training⁵. Boo also inadvertently taught me much of what I apply to my trade today – namely that metaphors and storytelling are powerful tools of persuasion. 

Boo’s three-quarter time addresses weren’t slapped together stats or a reflection of the score, but metaphors that helped us understand where we were at and what we needed to do. That we didn’t win a game for the year⁶ may cast some doubt on his methods, but he never failed to convey the message to me.

That people are more likely to remember stories than facts (because stories tap into our emotions) is hardly a revelation. It also reveals a shortcoming in the way PR is taught.

The lessons contained within Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric⁷ and the parables of Jesus contained in the New Testament⁸ are among those every student of public relations should learn.

The power of the use of story-telling and metaphor was recently exemplified in Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union address⁹.

Included in an hour-long speech that covered many topics, was a brief Reaganesque-folksy anecdote about fish to illustrate how the government is so big and complicated.

“The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water,” the president noted, “but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in salt water. I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.” Why do two different departments regulate one humble fish?”¹⁰

After the address, NPR¹¹ asked their listeners what they heard in the President’s State of the Union address.

Here’s the resulting ‘word-cloud’.¹²

Notes:

1. Just one of a number of recent commentaries can be found here.

2. Granted that given my profession, I may be a lightning rod for such topics of conversation.

3. John Harms, backyard barbeque in Northcote, Melbourne, January 2011.

4. The Deakin University Sharks’ history is primarily as a ‘cellar dwellers’, not least because they are an amateur club in a competition (the Warrnambool District Football League) which is not amateur. During the 80s and early 90s, any District Club that finished below the Sharks on the ladder has disbanded next season. Though the Sharks were crap on the field they were stars off the field. They had their own dance – The Shark Shuffle – and a whole swag of social traditions.

5. When other Warrnambool teams would meet at the foreshore for a pre-season beach run, our first pre-season session involved meeting at the foreshore to go to a Paul Kelly concert at the Lady Bay Hotel.

6. Refer to 4.

7. According to Aristotle, a speaker or writer has three ways to persuade his audience:
Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

8. Take for example the Parable of the Mustard Seed – to explain in Paul Kelly terms that ‘from little things big things grow, Jesus said “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field; which indeed is smaller than all seeds. But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-32

9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZdEmjtF6HE

10. More information on the US regulations of Salmon can be found here.

11. NPR is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organisation that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the USA.

12. http://www.wordle.net/

By Derek Jones, Principal

It seems in some jurisdictions around the world parents no longer need to be responsible for watching what their children eat, so they don’t become obese.

Now, the Food Police will do it for them.

News reports emanating from the United States of America indicate that at least in the normally free-spirited city on the bay, the much-publicised obesification of the US has become a matter for the lawmakers.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who was recently installed as lieutenant governor of California, fought the law, yet his more powerful colleagues on the Board of Supervisors over-rode his veto and passed the law anyway. 

San Francisco isn’t the first locality to do something like this — Santa Clara County, just south of the city, passed a similar law last year — but San Francisco is the first major American city to do so

The new law is targeted directly at McDonald’s restaurants, which has prompted a rare, aggressive response from its Chief Executive Jim Skinner. They have decided to stand up to the “food police” concerned that this catch on in other major cities not only in the US but around the world. 

Mr Skinner described critics of the company who have tried to curtail the sale of Happy Meals aimed at children as “food police” and accused them of undermining parents in making decisions for their families.

He said the new rule really takes personal choice away from families who are more than capable of making their own decisions.

Although it is uncertain if the National Restaurant Association is going to challenge the law in court, it not only affects McDonald’s but any corner store, fish and chip shop or café that may want to promote its children’s fare.

Under the new rule toys can only be given away with kids’ meals that (1) contain less than 650 calories or 35% of their calories from fat, (2) include fruits and vegetables, and (3) come with drinks that are low or moderate in fat and sugar content. 

To give McDonald’s (affectionately known as Macca’s in Australia) a fair measure of respect, it has been quite transparent in its marketing to children – diversifying Happy Meals to include more healthy choices, cutting back on children’s advertising, and listing nutritional ingredients at several customer points. 

But, it seems the wise municipal sages of San Francisco say that isn’t enough and that parents can’t be held accountable for their children’s obesity. 

On another front, another law went into place on January 1, 2011 that requires all restaurants with more than 30 outlets to list calorie counts for all products on menu boards or menus. 

So now when you order a Big Mac, you know it’s going to add about 560 calories to the old waistline.  The law was first instituted in New York and is being adopted now in many states and cities.  So, that is pretty much saying that, yes, a Big Mac will cause obesity.

All of us in the business of marketing what we eat, are striving to promote good, healthy eating and we want to give people the correct information they need to make informed choices.  But most of us would expect people to take individual responsibility for their and their children’s eating habits. 

Macca’s is often cast as public enemy number one when it comes to obesity, but what people don’t want to accept is that one of their cheeseburgers has fewer calories than a peanut butter and jam (jelly in the US) sandwich, for starters. 

It would seem to make more sense to teach people how to be more educated consumers than to restrict their options.

Perhaps the nutritionists in countries like Australia and the US should take a hard look at themselves if they can’t get the message across to ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’.

By Derek Jones, Principal

While many companies invest sizeable chunks of time, resources, and money on marketing and corporate communications, including crisis and issues management strategies, the practice of financial management communications is virtually unknown.

Yet, the risks associated with ignoring the importance of sound financial management communications can be catastrophic for small to medium-sized companies and has proven to be fatal for many publicly-listed companies.

In one of the best-known examples of appalling financial management communications and lack of financial rigour by a board of directors, the US-based Enron company’s Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, and other executives not only misled Enron’s board and its audit committee on high-risk accounting practices, but also pressured auditors Arthur Andersen to ignore many high- risk investment practices.

And in Australia several years ago, the long- serving and trusted senior financial manager of national freight industry company Scott’s Transport was nabbed after siphoning off $20 million over 15 years.

Clearly, directors did not have the faintest idea of their financial position on a weekly basis, were placing blind faith in the financial statements from their CFO and were not carefully checking cash in and out, on a regular basis.

A program of frequent and reliable communications internally would have raised awareness (and concern) about the financial management at these organisations.

How simple would it have been to check the company’s cash movements and communicate openly about them?

Together with a financial communication plan, a financial management plan is a vital tool in the monitoring of your business income, expenditure and retention.  The starting point for good financial management is to understand and have accurate forecasts of business outgoings and receivables.

Contrary to popular belief, cash management should not be the sole province of the finance department. It requires the cooperation and participation of every major functional area of an organisation.

Strong, involved and effective cash management is critical to the health of any business. Yet, even though the financial health of the company should be something that is micro-managed by the owners and CEOs of businesses, few pay careful attention to cash inflow, outflow and retention.

Managers of small to medium-size businesses and major company CEOs and company directors often make the mistake of delegating total financial management down the management chain.

They rely on financial statements which they seldom test, even though it would be so easy to do so by seeking verification from their bankers and other financial institutions.

The secret of safe and secure financial management is to keep a watchful eye on the cash and monitor transactions weekly. How simple can it be for the CEO to receive original bank statements and financial statements from financial institutions and investment companies?

It does not matter if you are a milk bar owner or the head of a top 100 company, there is absolutely no excuse for not closely-scrutinised reports that come from your bookkeeper, accountant or CFO, and ensuring that they are backed up by documented, supporting ‘proof’.

Every manager should know where the company’s cash resides and the current cash position, including interest bearing accounts, investments in stocks and shares, working capital and cash at bank.

What could be simpler than making sure you see a bank statement every week, and ensuring that it checks out with the financial reports from your accountant!

If you don’t have a financial management communications plan and you are not closely monitoring your cash movements at least on a monthly basis, Mr Manager, then you are running the risk of serious losses from internal and external predators.

By Gabrielle Sheehan

My friend Dan once said to me, “never put in an email what you would not wear on a tee-shirt”. I have found this to be sage advice as what is supposed to be private can sometimes become public. Never has there been a more spectacular example than the recent revelations on Wiki-leaks.

From the truly frightening (nuclear capacity of nations), to the downright embarrassing (“when we said you were an idiot, what we meant was…”) and all spiced up by the salacious (those Saudi royal parties!), Wiki-leaks has effectively printed those tee-shirts. And we’ve only seen the early collection.

In what is shaping up to be the cause célèbre of the decade, the saga of Julian Assange’s whistleblower website continues to fascinate as the issues expand daily. The content and attendant diplomatic crises are now only one component of the story. It is about international justice, freedom of speech, freedom of the media, e-security, corporate complicity and citizenship rights.

My fear is that the nature of what has been revealed will actually have the opposite effect to what was intended, in that ultimately, transparency will be reduced.

Wiki-leaks will change how diplomats and other government officials report.  People working in these circles are now likely to be too afraid to be frank in their assessments or correspondence – leading to less documentation, less accountability. Clear and honest communication through this channel may no longer be possible.

I bet the authors of those cables wish they’d known my friend Dan. Time will tell if the world will wish the same.

By Fiona Davis, Consultant

Starving children: it’s an image many of us have grown up with: the TV ads with the flies, the potbellied kids and a-dollar-a-day catch phrase.

It’s not that we don’t care, yet it’s an unpleasant reality on the other side of the world. It has little to do with our everyday lives. For the most part, despite good intentions, we’d mostly rather ignore it.

So, how do you go about pitching a story on global hunger to the media?

This was the challenge for Currie when we sat down with the Global Change Institute (www.uq.gci.edu.au) to discuss media angles to promote a Food Security Summit and Public Forum at Brisbane.

There were so many angles we could take – one billion undernourished people, one billion over weight; the possibility of a global food crisis with a world population of 9 billion expected by 2050; or even the problem of international organisations buying up tracts of productive land.

But how to relate this to the general Australian audience, most of whom have never been hungry, who know that they’ll be among the last to be affected when food shortages start to take hold and who have grown fatigued with the issue of African starvation?

Two words: food prices.

Australians may find it difficult to relate to hunger abroad, but they do know what it feels like to balance the family budget in tough economic times. The suggestion, then, that a looming food shortage worldwide could increase the household grocery bill by 45% over the next decade was sure to attract interest.

And it did – monitoring of media coverage suggested that 90% of the Australians had access to the story. The coverage was boosted by the timing of the summit, just one week after a United Nations meeting in New York created awareness of poverty and food shortages.

Ultimately, it was the appeal to the nation’s ‘hip pocket’ that achieved cut-through.

For the average Australian, stuck in traffic, picking their kids up from school, sitting at their work desk or bringing in the washing, it’s the issues closest to home that grab our attention.

By Craig Little, Senior Consultant

Writing for the New York Herald Tribune in 1963, Jimmy Breslin wrote an article that is still used in journalism courses today. It was about the man, Clifton Pollard, who dug the grave for President John F. Kennedy.

“Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a moustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers Battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the 35th president of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honour to dig the grave.”

At the time hundreds of journalists from across the world were swarming about in Washington, talking to dignitaries and politicians. But Breslin went to the working-class man who considered it an honour to bury the president, and the story said volumes about what the death of Kennedy meant to America.

Today, we too often neglect to try to find the ‘gravedigger’ in a story, the common “man (or woman) in the street” who can add an unexpected touch of realism to a big event.

PR has a lot to learn from Jimmy Breslin’s ‘shoe-leather approach’ to his craft, which he says he learned from his days as a sportswriter with The Long Island Daily Press:

“The most important thing you have is your two feet. Your column is your two feet first … because the story is never on the first floor of the building.”

Too many of us, especially those in the political domain, are Googling or reading focus group reports – instead of using our shoe leather (climbing stairs, for example) to get stories.

Our job in PR is to tell our clients’ stories. If we simply rely on desktop research, we’re not adding anything to a story that people couldn’t find themselves – and what we find is unlikely to touch the audience.

All of us involved in public relations need to wean ourselves from the internet and focus group reports. We need to hit the streets, shopping centres and school fetes – it is in these places we find stories – what people are thinking, what they like and what they don’t like.

By talking with the ‘gravedigger’, we not only find real stories that support those we tell on behalf of our clients, but we broaden our own life experience and understanding of the audience.

Many of us in PR don’t engage beyond our sphere of influence. Again, this is particularly true in political life where the networks barely extend beyond bureaucrats and inner-city apparatchiks.