New media such as blogs have hardly altered PR practice at all, say 21% of the 200 senior level communicators (including me, naturally) who make up the President’s Panel of The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).
Well, the principles may not alter but all new communication systems change the practice – some more than others however.
For example, from my office I can see part of a medieval communication system – Ditchling Beacon, one of the highest points on the South Downs – where they’d light bonfires if they saw, for example, the Spanish Armada impudently sailing up the
On the
But the system was essentially binary – either the thing was on fire or it wasn’t. Hello, Ditchling Beacon’s lit up – what does he mean? Has anyone seen my pig? The Middle Ages are over? It’s cold up here?
They must have agreed beforehand what it would mean – OK, the next time I light up my beacon it means the Spanish Armada’s coming, right?
So there will have been teams of messengers charging up and down, telling everyone what the next bonfire would mean, and meanwhile, out in the Channel, your Spanish sea captains would see the beacon blazing away – Well, they’ve spotted us then (yawn).
Of course I’m probably simplifying things. Give people a communication system and they’ll find ways to exploit it – maybe they had several fires on each beacon. Hey, he’s lit up three fires at Ditchling, so ... (looks it up) ... Tobacco’s Been Discovered.
Or maybe they varied the colour – Ho, a blue flame ... (translates) ... The Bloke on the Beacon After Yours is Sleeping With Your Wife.
Anyway, you can see why this failed to energise the nascent PR business – not enough scope for manipulating the content. What price “The Spanish Armada, sponsored by Toledo Swords SA, is coming”?
Such simple systems have survived into modern times however. During the cold war, we had a four minute warning system here, set up to inform the nation that we were about to be hit by a barrage of ghastly foreign nuclear warheads.
During these 240 seconds we were expected to get our tax affairs straight, return our library books, dig a deep underground shelter and lay in provisions. I wouldn’t have stood a chance of course, but 400 years ago I’d have been among the first to know about the Spanish Armada.
2 comments:
The thing that's getting my goat (where the hell does this phrase come from) at the moment is signal flags. In recent desperation at trying to get a director to listen to what I was saying, I thought I might use his interest in sailing to get him to listen to me. He had otherwise proved deaf. Armed with a 100 foot mast and a load of signal flags, I thought I could communicate with him more effectively by hoisting a few well chosen flags outside his office window. Deaf he may be, but blind? If it doesn't work I'll chuck him on David's Beacon and see if he warms to my ideas.
Roger - this will obviously work. We are too conservative in our choice of communication media. Many years ago a colleague and I successfully invited the editor of the Daily Star for a drink using semaphore from our office window in Fleet Street. Of course, as with beacons, you need sub-systems: we had to phone him up and wait for him to get a book of sempahore signals to help him decode the flag-waving ...
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