Canadian public relations practitioner Dave Fleet believes the Twitter microblogging service has moved through the Gartner Hype Cycle to the point where it will now quickly become unfashionable. In his  Five Potential Effects Of Twitter’s Shift To The Trough Of Disillusionment Fleet charts the technology’s progress and makes some predictions about what will happen next.

Fleet’s analysis is on the money. But there’s something else going on with Twitter. After a period of stability, the service appears to be changing. Earlier this week the company altered the way users propagate messages – a process known as retweeting.

In other words, Twitter is still evolving. It will probably be a different beast by the time it resumes its progress through the later stages of the Garter Hype Cycle. Or maybe it will be replaced by something else.

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When they want to create something that looks like a grass roots campaign, but isn’t, big companies often turn to a strategy known as astroturfing. The Drop the Rate campaign that began yesterday with support from Consumer, Tuanz and 2degrees is a classic example.

At first sight it’s aims are laudable. Lord knows New Zealanders pay way over the odds for mobile phone services. Ostensibly the campaign aims to put pressure on Vodafone and Telecom to cut the mobile termination rate or MTR. This is the amount one phone company has to pay another when customers call between networks.

There’s no question New Zealand’s MTRs are high by international standards. That’s only part of the reason why mobile phones are far more expensive to run here than in Australia – or just about anywhere else. It’s also a major brake on the economy – calls that could be made, possibly should be made, are going unmade because of the high costs involved.

Yet despite it being worthy in principle, there’s something phony (or should that be phoney?) about the Drop the Rate campaign.

For a start, there’s an expensive PR company behind it.

Who is paying Matthew Hooton’s fee? Good on him for getting the job, but you can bet your bottom dollar Exceltium isn’t collecting money from cake stands and sausage sizzles for this work.

Second, 2degrees doesn’t want to talk about the MTRs it pays to Vodafone and Telecom and has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure grass roots, that’s real grass, not astroturf, New Zealanders don’t get to know the rate.

Of course no-one can blame 2degrees for taking part in this kind of stunt. Telecom and Vodafone play hardball. And both can be less than snow-white in their marketing and political lobbying.

Campaign gets wide media coverage

Hooton certainly proved his PR skills. The Kiwi specialist press was full of the story. At The National Business Review Chris Keall expressed some weariness about the campaign in 2degrees again a little sneaky on MTRs at the National Business Review. The story got a good run in the New Zealand Herald and the Dominion Post.

At Computerworld Rob O’Neill seems more willing to take the campaign at face value. His Drop the rate mate’ campaign targets MTRs offers no comment. Paul Clearwater at The Line reports that Vodafone disputes the information on the campaign’s web site in ‘Drop the rate mate’ campaign begins. Telecommunications Review has a couple of stories on the campaign. The un-bylined Public campaign to lower Mobile Termination Rates is little more than an announcement while Sarah Putt’s “Rates are already falling mate” – Telecom gives the main telecommunication carrier’s dismissive response.

Update: Computerworld reports on Hooton’s attack on Telecom and Vodafone in Mobile termination row goes nuclear. The story finishes;

Hooton has words for Telecom, too, as the MTR debate goes white hot.
“Telecom now seems to be saying that it needs to rip off mobile consumers in order to fund more investment in the industry,” he said. “Good luck to Telecom arguing that a cosy duopoly leads to more investment in services and coverage than a more competitive environment.”

My opinion: Hooton proves he is a worthy campaigner against the arrogance of Telecom and Vodafone – clearly he was the right man for the campaign. Despite this, I’m still not comfortable with the astroturfing.

Australian tech journalist Renai LeMay says Twitter is journalism. He’s right but only up to a point.

LeMay writes;

Journalists are not simply using Twitter to promote their own work and get news tips. This is nowhere near to being the whole truth. In fact, audiences are using Twitter as a powerful tool to engage with journalists directly and force a renewal of journalism and media along lines that audiences have long demanded.

Well some are.

I follow about 25 Australian and New Zealand journalist on Twitter, about the same number of public relations people and a handful of both from elsewhere in the world. As an unscientific rule of thumb, I’d say only 40 percent of journalists are using Twitter in the way LeMay suggests.

About the same number simply use it as a way of promoting their online stories. In other words they aren’t joining the conversation, they are simply using Twitter as a broadcast medium. I suspect, but can not prove, this usually is because of dumb managerial restrictions on their use of the technology. A small percentage dabble in engagement, going on and off-line depending on their workload (I’m guilty of switching off Twitter when there’s a looming deadline and a huge number of words to write).

The rest are still in the dull “morning tweeps” and “I had muesli for breakfast” or the more disturbing narcissistic school of Twittering.

Incidentally, Mr LeMay is worth following. @renailemay

via Twitter’s impact on media and journalism « Renai LeMay.

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Journalist Simon Sharwood aimed this advice at public relations people, but the same basic principles apply to anyone new to Twitter. Basic rules are don’t be selfish, don’t be evil.

Post 7, 2009. Twitter Do’s and Don’ts for PRs « JargonMaster

You may need to answer media questions. Here’s a quick guide to help non-experts deal with media questions.

Companies need to keep communication channels open so:

• investors,
• business partners,
• employees and
• customers

stay informed.

You might think  because you are a knowledge worker, your job puts you in a backroom role and you don’t need to worry about communications. You may work for a company that thinks it has watertight external communications strategies.

You’re on the front line

But even if your employer has access to the brightest and best communications experts, you may still find yourself pitched into a spokesperson role. In fact, if your employer uses the best communications experts, you are more likely to find yourself in the front line.

That’s because experienced journalists are able to see through the platitudes and feel-good nonsense spouted by corporate spin-doctors. Although they may not immediately be able to dig deep enough to find the real story behind any smokescreen, they know what a smokescreen smells like.

Putting genuine, but trained and fully briefed, voices in front of the media works to a company’s overall advantage.

Even if your employer would rather you stayed in the background, you might well be forced to speak to the media. This means that being able to articulate a company’s position is a key skill.

Crisis management

In the public relations industry dealing with communications when things go wrong is often known as crisis management – though it has other names. The smartest firms put flexible crises management plans in place long before any anticipated problems, this saves valuable time when troubles appear.

Developing a crises management plan is best left for another time. The key elements are establishing lines of communications and putting people in place who can articulate your company’s point of view to the media.

Of course, it’s a good idea to give all senior managers media training.

Let’s assume you don’t have media training, there are no well-developed lines of communications and you know nothing of any crises management plans. Things have gone badly wrong and you are right in the thick of it.

What should you do if a journalist quizzes you about a potentially damaging news story?

Good stories, not good news

Before we go any further, I must declare a personal interest. I am a journalist, I cover technology companies, I write news. I like to write good stories.

In this context ‘good’ doesn’t necessarily mean positive. In the news media we use the word to describe stories with reader interest – from your point of view that might be anything but good.

I prefer to go straight to the most obvious news source – the man or woman in the department dealing with the matter – and ask direct questions. The idea isn’t to catch someone out or make someone look stupid – my goal is simply to get to the bottom of the story and find facts.

Most Australian or New Zealand employers would expect employees to take one of two courses of action at this point. They might prefer it if the employee said nothing, refusing to speak and blocking all questions. Alternatively, they might expect an employee to tell outright lies.

Both courses of action are equally damaging, both to the company and to the employee.

Allow me to explain.

Telling lies is dumb

Aside from any ethical considerations, telling lies is just plain stupid.

Sooner or later the truth will emerge and you will be on the record as a liar. Your employer won’t look any better.

It’s possible you’ll get away with this, that any future employer will not know, not care or even be impressed you lied to cover your previous employer’s backside. Maybe.

Other people will remember your lies. And that will harm your reputation over the long-term, maybe even your business.

At any point a rival might remember those lies and make them public. In certain circumstances your lie might be legally actionable.

On the other hand, if you block a question, it can make things sound worse than they are.

It might simply mean that you or your employer don’t get an opportunity to put the record straight. But there are worse possibilities.

Suppose you were to read in a newspaper, ‘company X refused to comment on claims that it was trading while bankrupt’? What does this make you think about the company?

In my experience I’ve come up against more advanced forms of blocking, but they all amount to the same thing.  ‘The executive responsible for the exploding television monitors could not be contacted yesterday’ doesn’t sound innocent.

So what should you do when the media calls?

Rules number one, two and three are simply do not tell lies. Don’t even consider it. It is better to say nothing.

If you don’t want to answer questions or are not authorised to speak, find someone else who can.

There’s nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you aren’t able to help with enquiries but your immediate boss is.

There’s also nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you, or whoever can speak, is busy but will call back shortly – mind you it is important that person does call back shortly. This approach can buy you time to think about exactly what to say, take a deep breath and calm those nerves.

You might even want to take advice from a communications professional.

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Adam Jones at the Financial Times management blog mentioned three tips for big companies who want to maintain a good reputation while sacking workers during a recession. They come from Leslie Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist at PR firm Weber Shandwick:

• Handle job losses fairly and transparently;
• Emphasise how safe your products or services are;
• Engage with bloggers and those who post comments on blogs.

Of course, pretty much the same could be said about announcing any piece of bad news.

See:

Is Starbucks a model of how to announce redundancies?

As Darryl Kerrigan says in The Castle, this is going straight to the pool room.

Pro PR Tips is straight up and down advice from a journalist to PR people. For example:

Tip #42: Restroom pitch

I was tipped off about Pro PR Tips at Simon Sharwood’s JargonMaster blog. If I was an American I would have probably used the term “hat tip”, it’s not in my list of preferred cliches but if you’re interested in the media Simon’s site is well worth a vist.

It’s no secret that IT companies talk up their products and technologies. Let’s stop mincing words; many are hype merchants.

In fact, IT firms often go a lot further. They hire professional public relations consultants and advertising agencies to whip-up excitement on their behalf.

Sometimes they can convince people in the media to follow suit and enthuse about their new gizmos or ideas.

Occasionally the media’s constant search for hot news and interesting headlines can lead to overenthusiastic praise or a journalist gullibly swallowing a trumped-up storyline.

None of this will be news to anyone working in the business. However, what you may not know is that the IT industry’s predilection for shameless self promotion has now been formally recognised and enshrined in one of the most powerful conceptual tools for understanding IT markets: Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

About a decade ago, some Gartner analysts noticed a pattern in the way the world (and the media) viewed most new technologies. This can be summarised as a huge initial burst of excitement rapidly followed by a sigh of disillusion and, eventually, a more balanced approach.

Over time this observation evolved into the Hype Cycle, which is usually represented graphically (see diagram). Time is measured along the horizontal axis, while visibility is shown on the vertical axis.

The Hype Cycle has five distinct phases.

The first phase, Garter calls it “technology trigger”, happens when a product launch, engineering breakthrough or some other event generates an enormous amount of publicity. At first the new idea is exposed to a narrow audience, often through the specialist press, and people start thinking about its possibilities. Things snowball, before long the idea permeates to a wider audience and the mainstream media starts to pay attention.

Pretty soon this interest gets out of control until things reach the second phase, which Gartner calls “the peak of inflated expectations”. At this point the mainstream media becomes obsessed – you can expect to see muddle-headed but enthusiastic TV segments about the technology. You know things have peaked for sure when current affairs TV shows and radio presenters pay attention.

At this point people typically start to have unrealistic expectations. While there may be successful applications of the technology, there are often many more failures behind the scenes.

Once these disappointments become public, the Hype Cycle shifts into what Gartner poetically calls the “trough of disillusionment”. Most of the mainstream press will turn its back on the story, others will be critical. Sales may drop. The idea quickly falls out of favour and is tarred with the unfashionable brush.

Occasionally ideas and technologies sink beneath the waves at this point, but more often they re-emerge in the “slope of enlightenment”. This is where companies and users who persisted through the bad times come to a better understanding of the benefits on offer. As a rule of thumb, most of the media has lost interest and may even ignore things, the good stuff just happens quietly in the background.

Finally, the cycle reaches the “plateau of productivity”. This occurs when the benefits of the idea or technology are now widely understood and accepted. Things should be stable at this point. The plateau can be high or low depending on the nature of the product in question.

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• Notables in the 2008 Gartner hype cycle
• Gartner 2008 Hype Cycle