The Obama code – not suitable for everyone

Barak Obama’s 2008 election campaign has among other things been hailed for its innovative use of social media and online technology. Especially voters aged 18-29 can be hard to reach with your message, as they may not read traditional media, or watch political broadcasts on TV. So Obama took his message to them, to where they were, to the internet.

Through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and his webpage he was looking like the first two-way presidential candidate and he managed to excite and engage people with his messages of change. The result was a whopping 65% election participation, the highest turnout since the election in 1908, and a comfortable win to Mr Obama himself.

Was this all due to getting his campaign online? Of course not. In politics, as in real life, if you’re going to convince anyone of anything you have to be believable and credible. You have to have a message that resonates with the people you need to convince, and you actually have to be yourself.

When David Cameron tried to copy the success through his YouTube channel “WebCameron”, it failed dramatically. Trying to prove he was a “regular guy” just busy with his kids and the dishes like every other father, just didn’t ring true. The obviously staged clip (if communicating with the British people was so important, why not do it in his office, or somewhere else where he wouldn’t be occupied with his kids and the household chores) just annoyed voters as it seemed dishonest and fake, and at complete odds with his posh image.

See WebCameron here:

The point is, social media no magic potion in politics either. It’s just another platform to reach people who may have been hard to reach before. The rules are still the same: You still have to have an appropriate, engaging message, credibility and trust. It's about being genuine.

I follow Norway's Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, on Twitter. He states on his page that most of the tweets are written by him personally, and the rest are dictated by him but written by his assistants (who he names). He tweets about politics, his party and his opinions and the odd personal tweet about the Norwegian football team or the nice weather we're having. In short it seems like genuine stuff, and he also occasionally engages in conversation with other twitter members.


Jens Stoltenberg is a popular politician in Norway. He has
also succeeded in building a reputation as a "normal guy".
Photo: Erik F. Brandsborg, Aktiv I Oslo.no


I know his presence on twitter is a carefully thought through PR strategy, but I'm still falling for it. I still feel that I know him better now, and that, if I should so desire, telling him how I feel about something is only a tweet away. It's a transparency that invokes trust.

However, should I one day find out that Stoltenberg hasn't tweeted a single thing himself, that whole trust disappears and I will feel cheated. So unless you can be yourself, be genuine and be transparent as a politician, you should probably not try to conquer the social media scene. Voters are not stupid, and cheating is not accepted.

Sources: PR Media Blog and Brian Solis.

Social media vs. traditional media: A trust issue

By a lot of PR practitioners social media, is seen as this fantastical new tool that will trump all traditional media when it comes to getting your message out. In their book "Online Public Relations", David Phillips and Philip Young goes as far as claiming that "everything will change" now that we have social media. 

Trust takes time

Recent research indicates that most people might not agree, at least not yet, with that assessment.



Public relations as all about building relationships and creating (good) reputations. An important aspect of both, is trust. Bombarding your stakeholders with your message will not achieve anything unless the stakeholders trust the information.

Not unexpectedly Edelman Trust Barometer shows that different sources have different levels of trust. Most trusted are academics and "experts", and at the other end of the scale we find employees, government officials and CEOs. The advantage of third party endorsement is in other words still alive and kicking.

Another piece of research that is even more interesting when it comes to the topic of social media and traditional media, is that where the source is delivering his message is also of great importance.

While there are many good reasons for getting your messages out through social media, it appears that creating trust should not be high on that list. Social Media is the second-to-last media platform, beaten only by advertisement when it comes to not being trusted.

Traditional media, and those who work for them, often show up on lists like these of untrustworthy sources. But this recent research shows that they are still more trusted than information we get from social media. My teacher, Pam Williams, mentioned an article she read where it said that while people might have gotten a piece of news first on Twitter or Facebook, they wouldn't trust it until they saw it confirmed in traditional media.

Choose your media platform

If you’re looking to traditional media to make sure your message is trusted, it’s also useful to realize that some traditional media is more trusted than others.

Business magazines are at number two, only beaten by stock or industry analyst rapports. We then find radio at number four, TV at number six and newspapers down at number eight.

I’m not sure why people perceive newspaper journalists less trustworthy than their colleagues on the radio, but I will guess that in Britain the BBC might have something to do with it, as one of the most trusted media institutions in the country. Radio (and also TV) is perhaps seen as a more sombre medium than newspapers with their tabloid shenanigans.

Readers build relationships with newspapers, radio programmes and TV News for years. It's no wonder they tend to trust them more than a new media outlet.

For PR practitioners the lesson is that not everything that glimmers is gold. Just because social media is new and shiny and exciting, doesn’t mean that we should completely turn our backs on traditional approaches. I think the best practice is to combine the two, and to find out in which situations we should chose social media and in which situations we should go with traditional media.

Here is another piece of research from 2008 that suggests that spending a lot of time on corporate blogs, might not be worth it…

Webcast about current trends in PR: Trust and transparency

As part of our master degree in public relations, we've been asked to produce a video adressing a current trend in PR. We are to pretend that we work for a PR agency and that the video is meant for our clients.

So while *Firefly PR is completely made up, the research is all real.

Transparency and accountability is becoming a key aspect of gaining trust, and the PR industry should definitly pay attention.

Power to the Twitter people

Back when I was in high school I’d bought a camera at a local photo store. It constantly broke, yet they refused to give me a new one. Both me and the shop knew that I was by law entitled to one (as I had gone down there with a book of Norwegian law, and read them the relevant paragraphs), but it wasn’t until my mum went down and threatened to contact the local paper, or the Norwegian version of “Watchdog”, that they gave in.

Everyone involved knew that there was a very slim chance my broken camera-story was spicy enough to be picked up by any media we might contact, but I suppose they still didn’t want to risk it.

I fear the art of writing a strongly
worded letter is a dying skill.

Back in those days, before Facebook, Twitter and well, internet for most of us, newspapers, TV consumer shows, or the government consumer council were the only way to create a reputation crisis for a company that had treated us badly.

These days, it’s a brave new world for consumers, a world with a lot more consumer power.  Instead of taking time to write a strongly worded letter, or wait for an hour on the phone to get through to customer service, the internet will in many cases provide you with a much swifter reply.

If you have the slightest celebrity status, you can create a media frenzy in minutes!

About a year ago filmmaker Kevin Smith (creator of cult classics like Dogma, Clerks and Chasing Amy), got thrown off a Southwest Airline flight to Burbank, because he was apparently to overweight to fit in his seat. The airline’s guidelines for “customers of size” stated that if you can’t lower both armrests while seated, you have to book two seats. As it were, only one seat was available, and an enraged Smith had to leave the flight.

Furiously her tweeted a series of angry tweets about the incident, tagged the airline in them, and sent them out to his 1.6 million followers. The reaction was instant, and as the rant was retweeted around the world, Southwest Airlines was suddenly facing tide wave of complaints from people who sympathised with Smith, and thousands of newspaper articles potentially giving people a very negative view of the company.

Too fat? The verdict is inconclusive.

Southwest quickly realized they had a PR crisis on their hands, and after frantically trying to apologise via Twitter, Southwest was forced to issue a lengthy, public apology and a refund to the film director. They also explained their decision on their blog, in a careful attempt of self-defence.

This case wasn’t entirely a win for Smith and a loss for Southwest though, proving that you can’t always count on the people backing you up against companies.

As anyone who’s ever been on a flight next to a “person of size” can vouch for, it is quite annoying to have your own, already small, personal space crowded by someone else’s fat, and many people applauded Southwest on their guidelines, and told Smith to go on a diet.

Now, most of us do not have nearly 2 million followers on Twitter, nor would our predicament cause worldwide media attention, but stories like the Smith-incident have caused many companies to pay close attention to what is said about them on Twitter and Facebook, and firing off a complaint on social media can be wise.

Chicago Tribune tells the story of completely normal consumers who got their complaint dealt with instantly by tweeting. It’s a good way to get noticed.

Southwest Airlines now have two employees devoted to their Twitter page, and three people monitoring their Facebook fan page.

The advantage of online complaining is that your predicament is visible to everyone on the internet, and companies are aware of the possible crisis arising from angry consumers united. In a consumer world where reputation is key and crisis can be generated from the smallest incident, the power is continuing to grow for the consumer.

PR practitoners will ignore this trend at their own peril...