I love networking and I was impressed by what I found at Guernsey’s B4-8 Club today where my short presentation might well have been entitled: “PR, CSR, Social Media and The Princess Anne principle”.
B4-8 is a group of around 60 people from a wide variety of business sectors who meet together to listen to each other, share their expertise and experiences and, well, network.
Today’s talk looked at how far the media has moved from the traditional press and broadcast outlets that existed 15 years ago when I started Orchard.
It is more important than ever today to manage the external perception of an organisation because digital and social media have made everyone a potential journalist with access to an immediate medium. Also, clients and customers are more clued up and if businesses do not think and act in line with the thoughts and actions of their customers the latter will go elsewhere.
Corporate social responsibility must extend beyond charitable acts (as welcome and valid as they are) to an alignment of corporate conscience with that of the market.
And as for Princess Anne? I was managing the media surrounding her visit to Guernsey in June 2007 when she slipped and fell over in the centre of St Peter Port. The newspaper photographer missed it but the Channel Television footage was syndicated around the world over the subsequent 24 hours. If that happened today it would have been captured on a mobile phone and Tweeted or Facebooked around the globe in a matter of minutes.
It’s not an option to say: “We don’t do PR”. People are watching what you say and what you do – and they have the means to tell the world!
Posted by Steve.
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