Entries have just opened for the UK Social Media Awards 2013 which are now in their fourth year having previously been known as the Some Comms Awards. I’ve been a judge since the start and am pleased to say that I’m judging again this year alongside some great people including: PRCA chair Sally Costerton; Frank PR chair Graham Goodkind; Paul Fabretti, head of social media for O2 Telefonica and Stephen Waddington, European director of digital and social media for Ketchum.

The UK Social Media Awards are particularly special for me for as well as the usual ‘Best Use of’… Twitter, Facebook, social media in a crisis, community engagement etc type awards there is a very important one.

The Mark Hanson Award honours my former colleague and good friend who we tragically lost in 2011. It recognises the “brightest and most promising social media communicator under 30 years old”. This award is free to enter and you can self-nominate. So if you’re under 30 and doing great things then please don’t be bashful and put your name forward. If you know someone who is eligible please make sure they enter as too many folk are typically British and too reserved to put their names forward.

The awards are sponsored by PR Moment and supported by both the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA).

This viral video digital public affairs campaign from the Campaign for Equal Marriage was the winner of last year’s Best Viral Campaign and the overall Grand Prix prize.

The Communications on Top World Communication Forum 2013 and (C4F) Communication for Future Awards in Davos take place this week.

There is great line-up of speakers including: Paul Holmes, founder and CEO of The Holmes Report and SABRE awards; Andre Manning, vice president corporate communications for Royal Philips Electronics; Anne Villemoes, head of communications for global meat producer Danish Crown; Dr Leandro Herrero, CEO of The Chalfont Project and Managing Partner of Viral Change Global; Rui Martins, corporate communications and public affairs director at Dianova Portugal; and Francis Ingham, director general of the UK Public Relations Consultants Association and executive director of the International Communications Consultancy Association.

I’m speaking on the first day on ‘Online and social media: Smart PR and communications solutions’. It will be a short presentation followed by an interactive question and answer session. WCF Davos is attended by senior communications and public relations professionals from all around the world.

I’m also one of the 2013 nominees for the C4F Communication for Future Awards are annual global excellence awards for communications professional. The official news release says:

Among the nominees for 2013 are: Dr. Leandro Herrero, CEO The Chalfont Project Ltd. & Managing Partner Viral Change Global LLP, (UK) Gianni Catalfamo, Founder at cc:catalfamo (Italy), Evgeny Kuznetsov, Director Development & Communications Department at Russian Venture Company, Alfred Koblinger, CEO of BBDO Holding, (Austria), Anne Villemoes, Director of Corporate Communications at Danish Crown company (Denmark), Andre Manning, Global Head Corporate Communications at Philips, Global HQ (Netherlands), Jason Ng, Blogger, Twitter activist, COO of geekpark.net, Founder of Twittalk.net, Start-Upper, (China), Yogesh Joshi, President of the Association of Business Communicators of India(ABCI), Nurul Ashiqin Shamsuri, CEO of Lubri Oil Corporation Malaysia SB, and Stuart Bruce, digital corporate communications and online PR blogger, trainer and consultant (UK).

C4F Davos Awards include 6 categories, two of which will be presented for the first time:

• Titan of the future  is given to people, who are creative in every aspect, available 24/7 and committed to the high business and ethical standards of true global leaders. Some call them multi-taskers, but we consider them to be the re-born Leonardo da Vinci-s.
• Image of the future‘s nominees are professionals who create stunning images and develop the visual communications of the future, just as Steve Jobs did.
• Media of the future is mobile, interactive and social. The award in this category is granted to those who foresee the next step in media development.
• Relations of the future category recognizes the masters in Reputation Management, Crisis Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility, who help building up competitive advantages.
• Idea of the future‘s nominees are representatives of the creative economy, where communicating what does not yet existhas become a key factor in the development of adequate communications for innovations.
• Grand Davos Award is to be granted to key figures and thought leaders for their whole contribution to the communications industry.

C4F Davos Awards are the first of their kind to express recognition of outstanding communicators with creative approach and innovative visions on the future of communications. They are given to individuals with huge influence on the improvement of communications and truly effective contribution in fostering new trends in the development of the communications industry worldwide. All C4F Award holders are visionaries, challenging the status quo with their perception about future and leaving their unique impact on the world.

In December I took part in a fascinating panel debate on ‘Defining ethics for today’s communicators’ at the European Association of Communication Directors‘ forum in Amsterdam. It was facilitated by Mike Cooper, editor-in-chief of the Holland Herald and the other panellists were Andre Manning, the vice president and global head of external communications at Royal Philips; Nicole Gorfer, the head of communications at Roche Pharma AG Germany; and Professor Rosa Chun, Chair of Global Leadership and Responsibility at University College Dublin.

Much of the discussion focused on the importance of ethical codes of conduct for communications professionals. From the audience Philippe Borremans, chief social media officer and CSR coordinator at Van Marcke Group, asked how many of those in the room had signed the Code of Athens (PDF). Not a lot was the answer. Although personally I don’t believe that means people don’t subscribe to it. My own hand stayed down as I haven’t signed the Code of Athens, mainly because I had no idea you needed to. If Phillipe had asked if I was aware of it and abided by its principles then I could have given an unequivocal yes.

Many of the principles of the Code of Athens has since been incorporated into the codes of conducts of many of the world’s professional public relations and corporate communications organisations.  I joined the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in 1988 when I was still a communications student (although it hadn’t yet achieved chartered status) and have abided by its professional code of conduct throughout my entire career.

One of the points that I made was that codes of conduct were pointless unless they were enforced with sufficient vigour. Despite the existence of codes PR and communications people still have a dubious reputation and are constantly maligned in the media with phrases like “PR spin” common parlance. The danger for ethical public relations and communications professionals is that we are too often confused with the often far more high profile unethical communicators and publicists.

We must demonstrate that membership of professional bodies means something. This means rigorously enforcing codes of conduct and sanctions against those who transgress them. At the moment we still have professional PR organisations whose members appear to transgress yet ‘internal investigations’ clear them of wrong doing. The processes need to be far more transparent. The UK PRCA’s investigations into potential malpractice by Bell Pottinger simply reported that “there was no credible evidence of wrong-doing”. The actual report (Word) was slightly more critical, but couldn’t be termed an in-depth investigation.

However, stricter enforcement isn’t the whole answer as most of the ‘PR’ practitioners engaging in unethical behaviour are the 80% who aren’t members of a professional organisation. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations needs to be more vigorous in promoting chartered status and help clients and employers understand that the benefits of employing a PR professional who is a member of a chartered institute are the same as employing a chartered accountant rather than a bookkeeper.

In a recent PRmoment article the CIPR’s director of policy and communications Phil Morgan said:

“The CIPR’s Royal Charter recognises that professional standards in public relations are in the public interest. The status of public relations depends on gaining respect for the quality of the work we deliver and for the integrity with which it is carried out. Vital to this is the accountability provided through codes of conduct such as the one that all CIPR members make a commitment to when they join.

“Ethics within such codes are expressed in general terms – honesty, integrity, transparency, confidence and competence. These concepts need to be applied in a rapidly changing world and both professionals and the public need access to resources that keep them relevant. In key areas, especially digital and social, where the profession is changing continuously and expectations around disclosure and transparency are increasing, everyone needs access to best practice and resources that explains the central ethical concepts in terms of their day-to-day work.”

During the EACD debate I also made the point that indications from the UK were that unless the public relations profession put its own house in order then government might step in and do it by regulation. The Leveson Inquiry and subsequent report into press standards shows that there is appetite for statutory regulation. Likewise the public affairs and lobbying profession is facing statutory legislation to force it to publish a proper register of clients. In both instances it is because the industries have failed to provide adequate self-regulation.

Today unethical behaviour is more likely to be exposed

Another issue that I raised is that today there is a new dimension to ethics. If we believe that public relations is about reputation then fundamentally it must be about behaviour. There has always been a divide between what is right and wrong, although where that divide lies is always open for debate and indeed might change in different circumstances. What is different today is that in the past you had a greater chance of ‘getting away’ with bad behaviour. There was a limited number of people scrutinising you and even more limited number capable of exposing your bad behaviour. Bluntly you had a chance of getting away with it.

The rise of social media and citizen journalism mean that companies and organisations are under far greater scrutiny than they ever have been. Every customer, every employee, every member of the community has the power to record what they see and to publish it in an instant. Your media statements can be analysed by experts – be they bloggers, academics, campaigners or enthusiasts – who will identify every error and have the capacity to expose your ‘spin’.

So even if you don’t subscribe to the notion of doing the ‘right’ thing because it is right you need to behave better, just because you’ll get caught and be exposed if you don’t.

Some of the panel discussion also focused on the difference between personal/professional ethics and corporate ethics. In the same PRmoment article Professor Tom Watson of Bournemouth University gives examples of how personal professional ethics in public relations are frequently violated:

“Every year, a few students coming back from placements with stories of how their PR employers had misled clients, asked them to write fake customer reviews on websites, switched account teams after winning pitches, charge high for untrained internship staff and falsified evaluation data.“

He adds:

“The route to ethical public relations lies primarily in the honesty and moral compass of individuals, especially those who are leaders and managers of PR operations; not in a heavier, quasi-judicial system.”

Professor Watson is right we should be able to rely on “the honesty and moral compass of individuals”, but we can’t make the assumption that it will always automatically kick in. There needs to be far greater emphasis in PR education and training on teaching the fundamentals of ethics and illustrated with practical examples and ‘moral maze’ type exercises. This should start with PR undergraduate and post graduate courses, but also be part of the membership induction when someone first joins a professional body like the CIPR. Philippe’s idea of signing the Code of Athens is a good one and perhaps we should look at getting new members to physically sign the CIPR code of conduct.

The debate about public relations ethics isn’t going to go away and I believe will continue to increase in importance and is an issue that the PR profession needs to take far more seriously.

Today’s announcement of the PRCA Awards 2011 shortlist reminded me of a post about top 10 tips to win a PR award that I’d started writing more than six months ago, but never got round to finishing.

Over the last 18 months or so I have judged PR and social media industry awards for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the Public Relations Consultants Association (last year, not this) and the Some Awards. As a result I have seen hundreds of award entries ranging from the brilliant to the mediocre. Over the years I have also entered and won a few modest awards of my own. These are just a few thoughts that have accumulated as a result of this experience.

1) Stick to the rules

You would be surprised how many entries you see that have simply not obeyed the rules. It shouldn’t be hard to stick to the specified word count, use the headings/sections required and provide any supporting material in the right format. If you can’t even get the basics right why should the judges waste time on your entry when there are dozens and dozens that have obeyed the rules?

2) Customise your entry

You will possibly want to enter the same piece of work into more than one category and into different sets of awards. That doesn’t mean you can just keep recycling the same old entry. On the most simple level, the rules for different sets of awards are frequently different. You’ll also need to rewrite the entry for different categories. The focus and elements that you might want to highlight for ‘Best International Campaign’ might be different to those for ‘ Best Technology Campaign’, even though it is for the same campaign.

3) Make it perfect

Do you really want an award entry that is meant to showcase your excellence to contain spelling and grammar mistakes (I know as I type this that I’ve inevitably made a mistake in this post)? In any industry sector mistakes would be a problem, but when you are entering awards for excellence in the communications industry you’ve got to show you can communicate perfectly.

4) Get permission

In the frantic dash to get your entry in before the submission deadline it is all too easy to miss getting permission from your client or boss. Don’t. Many companies and organisations have rules and policies for how, when and even if they enter awards. Your relationship with the client or your boss is far more important than winning any industry award. I’ve seen winning entries withdrawn because the PR agency didn’t get permission from the client before submitting it. Some clients are happy to just give permission, others will need to approve the entry, especially if the campaign involved more than one agency.

5) Give credit

Your excellent work is rarely, if ever, a solo effort. Make sure you give appropriate credit to everyone in the team. This includes junior team members, suppliers and freelances, as well as the in-house team at the client that made all your great work possible. It also includes other PR agencies, design or digital agencies that worked on the campaign.

6) Tell the whole story and make it standalone

When judges have to look at dozens and dozens of entries they don’t have time to go off and look at all the supporting material. The entry on its own has to be enough to grab the attention of the judge and convince him/her that the entry is worth considering. The supporting material will only become useful when sifting the final shortlist.

7) Tell the truth

However tempting it might be to ‘gild the lily’ or spin the results – don’t. It was always ethically wrong, but now it is much easier for judges to research the campaign themselves. Remember ‘Google never forgets’. The internet is also a mine of publicly available data. If judges smell a rat they can and often will check for themselves. I’ve been on judging panels where we’ve eliminated entries for inflating the results or making claims that are obviously spurious.

8) Make the objectives match the results

For me, and I do know other judges who differ from this opinion, the most important elements of an award entry are the objectives and the results/evaluation. It doesn’t matter how creative or impressive the actual campaign was unless it actually delivers tangible results that meet the objectives set. The best objectives are usually communications objectives that can be measured. Superficially setting business objectives (e.g. sales) can appear to be better, but you have to make sure that the work you actually did was the main contributor to achieving that business objective. Usually entries don’t because they can’t. And a word of warning – judges can often tell if you’ve written/altered the objectives to fit the results.

9) Say why it is different

You don’t win awards just for doing good work. All your work should be brilliant. You should win awards for doing things that go that one step beyond. Perhaps it is that the odds were stacked against you and you overcame them. Maybe it was a frantically short timescale to deliver. Is it the first time something has been done this way? Whatever it is, make it clear why it is different.

10) Explain what challenges you had to overcome

Judges live in the real world. We know that things rarely go 100% to plan. S**t happens. It’s how you pick yourself up and fix the problem that is impressive. Don’t be afraid to use your entry to share what went wrong, just remember to say how you turned adversity into victory.

These are just a few quick tips off the top of my head. If you’ve got any more tips then please leave them in the comments.

Dear Alec

I am writing to you asking for your help as a concerned constituent following the Court of Appeal’s decision on the 27 July regarding ‘temporary copying’. The decision means that millions of UK citizens will unwittingly be infringing copyright as they surf the Internet.

This situation has arisen as a result of a wider judgement in Newspaper Licensing Authority Ltd. (NLA) v Meltwater Group and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA). Further details of the case can be found here (http://bit.ly/oqhEoX) but the principle on temporary copies extends far beyond this case.

By ruling that the process of displaying a web page on screen is legally the same as making a copy, and that anyone browsing the Internet is subject to the terms and conditions of that site by browsing it (even if they have not accepted the terms and conditions), the repercussions of the Court’s judgment will either be to change the culture of the Internet in the UK or to unwittingly outlaw millions of users of the Internet.

While the owner of a website can use a paywall or other mechanism to stop anyone visiting their site, I cannot know what site I am visiting until it has appeared on my screen, by which time I have made a copy. The onus must logically be on the owner of the content to restrict access to that content, rather than on me to try to avoid pages where I might be infringing copyright or incidentally accepting terms and conditions simply by clicking on a URL.

I agree with the need to protect intellectual property and to reward effort put in to generating content. However putting the onus on users of the Internet to avoid infringing the rights of these owners is counter-intuitive and will severely hamper both my and my employer’s productivity. If owners of intellectual property wish to limit access to their content or generate revenues from internet users then they can easily do so by putting the content behind a login or paywall, without the far reaching consequences of this ruling.

The above interpretation of the ruling is shared by Professor Bently, Emeritus of Intellectual Property, Cambridge University. If you would like to find out more there is further information here: (http://bit.ly/r9F12U)

Please would you confirm that you share my concern around this issue? And please help me to raise it with the relevant decision makers. In particular, I know that following the Hargreaves Review (http://bit.ly/e7jPxQ), the Secretary of State for Business and Intellectual Property will be potentially implementing a range of issues in this area, and this issue requires further attention. Please would you ensure the issue of temporary copies is raised as part of that process?

This is an example of legislation being unable to keep pace with technological advances. Browsing content online must fall within a temporary copy exemption and should not require a right-holder’s consent, unless the end user has expressly accepted any contractual terms required by the right-holder.

Thank you in advance for your help and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Yours sincerely

Stuart Bruce MCIPR

Letters to MPs

MPs can only deal with cases for their own constituents, which is why this open letter is addressed to Alec Shelbrooke MP who represents my constituency of Elmet and Rothwell. But I wanted to publish it here as I know that there are lots of other MPs who I count as friends, colleagues, comrades and acquaintances who sometimes read this blog and/or follow me on Twitter and I’d like you to take notice and act as well.

You can find out more about the campaign by the PRCA and Meltwater here.

cc @AlecShelbrooke @tom_watson @KerryMP @andyburnhammp @TomHarrisMP @jreedmp @CarolineFlintMP @edballsmp @HazelBlearsMP @jimpknight @marycreagh_mp @YvetteCooperMP @StuartAndrewMP @RachelReevesMP – not a full list and sorry for no links, but takes too long on dodgy @NRE_EastCoast wifi!

The court has ruled that ‘anyone who clicks on a link and reads a news article on a public website in a commercial setting will infringe copyright unless licensed by the publisher.’

Think about that for a moment as it potentially could proved very costly for UK business and undermine the UK’s competitiveness as a global economy. The court has said that the technological process of displaying a web page on a computer is not ‘temporary copy’ exempt from copyright. This ruling means that millions of professionals will unwittingly infringe copyright legislation on a daily basis by simply browsing the web.

‘The ability to browse the Internet without fear of infringing copyright is a fundamental Internet principle,’ said Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater. ‘Society is not served by this ruling and it would be absurd if interpretation of the law should clash so fundamentally with how millions of people use the internet every day.’ As a result, Meltwater and the PRCA will seek permission to appeal this part of the decision to the UK Supreme Court.

The name of the Newspaper Licensing Agency implies that it is some sort of legitimate official organisation. In fact, it’s simply by a private profit making company owned by eight national newspaper publishing houses.

The judgment wasn’t wholly negative as it did modify the original high court ruling.

‘We welcome the Court of Appeal recognising that the High Court judgment went further than was warranted when it comes to the copyright of news article headlines. The Court of Appeal  ruled that it will be very rare that headlines are copyrightable, which is something we’ve been saying from the start,’ said Francis Ingham, chief executive of the PRCA. ‘Going back hundreds of years, no court has ever found a title worthy of copyright protection.”

‘Last word in this case has not been said,’ says Lyseggen. ‘In September, the Copyright Tribunal is scheduled to rule on the fairness of the licensing scheme pushed by the NLA. We are confident that the Copyright Tribunal will rule the NLA licensing scheme is over-reaching and unreasonable.’

The PRCA website has a video by Markettiers4dc that contains a great quote from Francis Ingham:

‘There is no point in being an industry body if you are too scared, or too lazy, or too arrogant or too indifferent to stand up for your industry.’

UPDATE: This is the video:

Meltwater also deserves enormous praise for not just being content to be a simple supplier to the public relations industry, but for standing up for the industry and putting its money where its mouth is.

An FAQ on the issues surrounding the case may be found here.

The thrust of the arguments against Burson-Marsteller are that 1) It’s wrong to ‘smear’ or point out negatives about your competitors and 2) It’s wrong not to disclose who you’re working for.

There have been lots of references to the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) code of conduct but in the UK it is more relevant for us to look at the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) and PRCA (Public Relations Consultants Association) codes.

The CIPR code of conduct doesn’t make any explicit reference to either negative briefing or lack of disclosure. It does call on members to ‘Maintain the highest standards of professional endeavour, integrity…’ and to ‘Deal honestly and fairly in business…’. Rather bizarrely the section of the code that covers transparency is bracketed with conflicts of interest and appears to be solely concerned with disclosure to ‘employers, clients or potential clients’. This is something that I’d like the CIPR to take a fresh look at and I will raise it at the next CIPR Social Media panel meeting, especially as the PRCA code is much clearer.

The PRCA code of conduct starts with stating that member firms shall ‘Have a positive duty to observe the highest standards in the practice of public relations.’ The PRCA code is also very explicit about disclosure:

’2.3 Have a duty to ensure that the actual interest of any organisation with which it might be professionally concerned is adequately declared.’

My personal view is that although it can be ethically acceptable to brief negative information about competitors, it is very rare that you’d actually need to. There are two tests that I would apply before ever conducting a negative briefing:

1) Is it actually necessary or do you have a reasonable chance of achieving your objectives by remaining positive?

2) You must be open about who you are working for. If you are confident that what you’re doing is ethically correct then why would you want to hide it?

In my 20+ years career I can count on one hand when I’ve had to conduct a negative briefing. On those few occasions I think it was always for the same reason. Namely that competitors were negatively briefing about my client and journalists weren’t being particularly proactive in fact checking their stories or conducting their own research. Quite simply most journalists aren’t focussed on investigative journalism – Woodward and Bernstein are the exception rather than the rule. That’s why sometimes as a public relations professional you’ve got to assist them by informing them of facts that they don’t have the time, inclination or ability to find for themselves. The emphasis being on the word fact, it is always absolutely wrong to spread smears and half-truths.

You can nearly always find a way to achieve your public relations objectives by remaining positive. It’s an unfortunate truth that one of the reasons you might have to resort to negative briefing is because of poor journalism. If journalists are spinning their version of the truth – and some journalists have agendas and can spin just as much as PR people – then you might be forced into a negative briefing simply to stem the tide of negativity against you. Bad news is good copy, so providing negative briefings can provide the bad news that journalists crave.

So my conclusion is that Burson-Marsteller’s main offence was not the negative briefing per se, but not disclosing the client relationship.

Some other good posts worth reading:

Robert Minton-Taylor, PR lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University and former Burson-Marsteller director – The truth will out

Philip Young, senior PR lecturer at the University of Sunderland – What did B-M do wrong in the Google ‘smear’ campaign?

Terence Fane-Saunders, former UK chairman of Burson-Marsteller – Furtive and creepy

Paul Seaman – When ‘friends’ fallout over ‘dirty tricks’

It’s something that I’ve always felt strongly about and it’s one reason why I worked for Andy Burnham during the Labour Party leadership election. Like me Andy came from a background that meant he was one of those ‘kids without connections’ and that made it far, far harder to get a break. It’s especially true in professions like public relations, law, accountancy, journalism and dare I say it the increasingly professionalised world of politics, where getting that crucial work experience place so often depends on who is ‘chums with Mummy and Daddy’. That’s why there are so many people of a certain background or class working in these professions. It becomes a self-perpetuating vicious circle of elitism.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about Wolfstar Consultancy’s draft intern policy and had some really positive feedback from PR students, former students, PR lecturers, journalists, politicians and even the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). I won’t reproduce it all here, but go read it as it well help you understand the rest of this post.

But despite the positive feedback the policy still isn’t good enough for me. In a perfect world I’d want to pay everyone who did work experience for us a ‘living wage’ (for the uninitiated that’s more than the minimum wage). But the brutal commercial reality is that if we did that then we couldn’t offer work experience to as many people as we do. For us providing work experience opportunities isn’t about getting the job done on the cheap. It’s about contributing something back to the profession and giving ‘kids without connections’ a break. It could actually be far more cost effective simply to employ someone as then you wouldn’t have the constant learning curve and need for close supervision and support which takes up a huge amount of time. But that would deny dozens of people the opportunity to get the experience they so desperately need. Even our policy of considering every CV and doing proper interviews is a significant cost as it takes up a lot of time. But it’s the only fair way to do it.

I welcome the news that Francis Ingham at the PRCA (Disclosure: Wolfstar Consultancy is a member) has set-up an Access Commission to look into this issue. In John Lehal, Danny Rogers and Robert Minton-Taylor he’s pulled together some really good people (I’ve singled them out as I ‘know’ them, see what I was saying about connections).

I’m not convinced that saying placements should always be paid is the right approach as that would certainly prevent me from offering as many opportunities. But I’m also equally concerned about the number of companies that just exploit people as cheap labour. The other issue that I want considered is what can be done to avoid excluding older people, mature students and those that might want to change careers. It’s not right that we should just focus on the traditional ‘image’ of a 18-21 year-old undergraduate student. We won’t challenge equal access and diversity unless we set our sights higher.

If you want to read about how this isn’t just an issue for the PR industry then read Kerry McCarthy’s brilliant post about the challenges she faces as an MP who wants to do the right thing for interns.

UPDATE: It’s probably also worth saying that as well as providing work experience opportunities we also have an undergraduate placement scheme and currently have Clare Callery, a student from the PR degree course at Leeds Metropolitan University, doing her paid placement year with Wolfstar Consultancy.

Since then representatives of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Advertising Standards Authority have met to try and clarify the situation. Following what was described as a ‘constructive meeting’ a joint statement was issued:

The CIPR, ASA and CAP have agreed a number of actions to clarify the ASA’s extended digital remit as far as it relates to public relations.

The ASA and CAP have confirmed that online public relations would not be covered by the CAP Code. The exclusions within the CAP Code relating to public relations, including ‘press releases, other public relations material and editorial content’, underline this. The ASA is concerned only with marketing communications, which includes advertising, sales promotion and direct marketing.

As discussions around some boundaries are particularly complex in the online environment, the CIPR will provide the ASA and CAP with a clear description of current public relations practice and activity examples, including social media activities. That input will provide the basis for further discussions between the CIPR, ASA and CAP on where boundaries should be drawn between marketing communications and public relations. Marketing communications will fall within the Code; ‘press releases, other public relations material and editorial content’ will fall outside the Code.

The CIPR, ASA and CAP are committed to continuing productive discussions.

Personally I’m not totally comfortable with the statement (disclaimer I sit on the CIPR’s Social Media Panel) as it’s far too ‘woolly’ – a bit like the ASA’s guidelines. The sentence that really grates with me is ‘The exclusions within the CAP Code relating to public relations, including ‘press releases, other public relations material and editorial content’, underline this.’ It’s just clueless to separate out ‘press releases’ from ‘other public relations material’ and gives entirely the wrong impression about our profession.

It’s the age old problem of some marketing people people not truly understanding what public relations actually is. The idea promoted by some marketing people that ‘press releases’ are a form of marketing communications is simply daft – some are and some aren’t. The best most definitely aren’t.

I look forward to seeing how this discussion develops as the CIPR provides the ASA and CAP with a ‘clear description of current public relations practice and activity examples’. My view is that as this happens it will simply highlight how difficult it will be to actually implement/enforce the code.

It’s also hard to see what the point of it is. Responsible public relations people already abide by the CIPR and PRCA codes of conduct which set out clear ethical guidelines. Activity is also covered by legislation in the form of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. It’s hard to see quite what the ASA is capable of adding to this.

And surely the reason the ASA exists is because of the sheer amount of dodgy practice by the advertising industry. Even a casual viewer of consumer TV shows like Watchdog will note that it’s advertising that is constantly being called out as misleading customers. And frequently the ASA is so lenient that it considers some of the misleading advertising to be acceptable. Want to advertise a hair care product using a model with fake hair extensions, that’s fine according to the ASA so longer as you put a disclaimer in tiny print. In my book it’s dishonest and unethical and I’m not sure I want people who think it’s OK to be involved in regulating my professional practice.