It’s a term used by writer Steven Johnson in his book Where Good Ideas Come From (which I haven’t read but is now on my Amazon wishlist. I have read his previous book – Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, which is great).

In a Wall Street Journal piece, in which Johnson explains the concept, he reveals how ‘good ideas’ are:

“inevitably, constrained by the parts and skills that surround them. We have a natural tendency to romanticize breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas transcending their surroundings, a gifted mind somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified tradition. But ideas are works of bricolage. They are, almost inevitably, networks of other ideas. We take the ideas we’ve inherited or stumbled across, and we jigger them together into some new shape.”

As Jed explains, the phrase wasn’t coined by Johnson but by the scientist Stuart Kauffman to describe this very idea. As Johnson states, the adjacent possible:

“…captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation. In the case of prebiotic chemistry, the adjacent possible defines all those molecular reactions that were directly achievable in the primordial soup. Sunflowers and mosquitoes and brains exist outside that circle of possibility. The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.”

To crystalise this concept in a phrase, Johnson states that the adjacent possible is the “premise that innovation prospers when ideas can serendipitously connect and recombine with other ideas”.

To PR, business and beyond…

This phrase particularly struck me as I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about creativity/inspiration, the role it plays for us generally and in the work we do in business (and for me personally in business, marketing and PR). As a professionally trained musician (in a previous life) I’ve always thought of myself as quite a creative person and yet often I find that, in the routine of the day-to-day, it is easy to lose sight of the need for and importance of being creative and innovative. And, if we pull that firmly back to business, it seems amazing that so many businesses fall into a rut of ‘this is how things have always been and always will do’ and seem afraid to innovate and try new things.

It is why I love working with startup/disruptive companies. Companies that are not afraid to try to do things differently. It doesn’t always work but, when it does, the results can be phenomenal.

And I guess I have a toying feeling that the PR industry suffers from this inability to innovate and be creative too. It is easy in PR to get tied up in the routine, in the day-to-day or traditional ways of doing things. Whereas other marketing disciplines such as advertising bet a great deal of money, resource and reputation on creativity and ideas, the same just often doesn’t happen as much in PR.

[And as aside I must just say that I'm not just talking about billion dollar ad campaigns and/or wacky stunts. I mean creativity and innovation in its broadest sense - creating something new and original.]

A means to an end

So, to bring this back full circle, if you buy into the idea of the adjacent possible, you see that it is only by opening ourselves up to ideas, innovations and developments that we too can be creative and innovative ourselves.

That means sharing ideas and being inspired by the work of others. Even taking concepts from elsewhere and adapting them to be used in other ways.

So in business, as Johnson states, the idea of closely protecting your innovations and developments is perhaps not the most fruitful way to secure further innovation.

And in PR and marketing, being open to and learning new technologies, ideas, ways of working can and should inspire.

Finally, in a wider context this is all just a realisation that, as humans, we learn best from others and from external influences. Like magpies, we acquire and reuse ideas, techniques and technologies to create and develop new things and new ways of thinking about things.

So rather than sitting around searching for that elusive ‘big idea’ in splendid isolation, we should be opening our minds to other ideas and influences as a way to create and innovate ourselves.

Danny Whatmough

I’ve played around with website coding since I was pretty young and even built a (albeit primitive) website when still in my early teens.

Learn to code in 2012

So I was interested today to see numerous tweets doing the rounds encouraging followers to learn how to code in 2012. The initiative is being launched by Codecademy – a code-teaching website – and encourages anyone to sign-up to a yearly course that will deliver a weekly email with a different module. The idea is that, in time, you’ll be building your own apps and websites.

It’s a good PR campaign for the website and, if the tweets in my feed were anything to go by today, is getting some good viral traction. A counter on the website shows that 98,014 have signed up so far – good data capture return if nothing else!

Coding PRs?

I sent this round the office today with a note saying that I think PRs of the future (and arguably today) would benefit from knowing how to code. I’m not saying they’ll need to be able to build a website or application, but having an even basic knowledge of the main web languages certainly helps me on a daily basis and I’m sure would help others too.

In addition I think that, generally in the future, those with a wide range of skills will be far more employable, especially in the PR industry (a post for another day). And this is also pertinent at a time when jobs in the PR industry are more sought after than ever. Digital skills are becoming commonplace amongst graduates (something that was really brought home to me recently) and, increasingly, expected by employers.

So what are you waiting for….

Danny Whatmough

This is part of a link up between the PRCA and 12 Universities throughout the country. I’ve often wondered whether PR courses at higher education need to have more input from the industry so that students have a clear idea about what working in PR actually feels like and this initiative seems to me to be a fantastic step in this direction.

My slides from the session are below, but might not make too much sense without my accompanying ramblings! The main thrust of what I was saying was that digital PR offers professionals exciting new opportunities to reach audiences and also measure and evaluate what it is that we do for the brands we work for.

Chatting to the lecturers afterwards it was interesting to learn that PR students seem to be very open to using social media in the campaign ideas they put together as part of their course. What they apparently find more difficult is putting the use of social and digital in a more strategic setting and also how to integrate traditional media as well. At a time when many in the industry seem to be struggling with the adoption of social media and digital, I thought this was a fascinating observation and one that bodes well for the future of the industry.

These guys are right at home with social media and it was encouraging to see them using a range of online tools such as Klout and Google Analytics already.

Danny Whatmough

There’s nothing more predictable than the PR industry’s constant urge to ‘define itself’. So today, true to form, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has announced that it is to develop a new ‘modern definition’ of PR (again). Following attempts in 2003 and 2007, this time, there’s a microsite, a piece in the New York Times and even a crowd-sourcing initiative.

Why do we need to define PR? It’s a great question; the last time the PRSA tried to find a new definition was four years ago. PRSA CEO Rosanna Fiske laments that it is hard for her to explain to her mum what she does. Will a definition really help here? This is the current one:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

However, if you can’t explain to your mum what a PR does, then the issue seems to me to be wider than merely an industry definition.

The fundamentals of this run far deeper. Our constant need to redefine what it is we do could be seen as an indication of the fast-moving digital world we find ourselves in. And it would be hard to argue against this. But is it really necessary? Does it happen in other industries? In other marketing sectors?

I think there is something else at work here: fear. There is immense fear in the PR industry about what it actually means to do PR these days. The reason I was drawn to PR in the first place was because of the interesting position the industry finds itself in. There are so many drivers that make this an incredibly rich sector to be working in, from the democratisation of media to the socalisation of the web. But fear still pervades. And I am constantly frustrated by how slow sections of the industry are to reinvent themselves.

Maybe that is the problem with trying to find a definition because, apart from a few good agencies and practitioners doing great, pioneering work, there is too much burying of heads in the sand and hoping that the ‘same old’ will continue to be enough.

It won’t be.

The ironic thing is that the fundamentals of PR haven’t really changed – building relationships with publics is as relevant now as it has always been. Yes, some of the tactics may have changed and strategies may have shifted, but the fundamentals are the same. So changing the definition just feels like papering over the cracks.

In light of the recent furore about the role of professional bodies in the industry, then maybe we should welcome this development as a chance to raise the debate around what it is that PR is all about.

I’m just not sure whether sitting around debating high level definitions is the thing that is going to transform the industry and its reputation.

Danny Whatmough

That’s what it might feel like for Facebook today. Yesterday the social giant launched a tie up with Skype where it will offer 1:1 video right on the network through its existing chat functionality.

It’s a good innovation and one that I’m sure will be used a lot.

But the problem for Facebook is that Google had, as part of its Google+ announcement, launched a feature called Hangouts, where groups of up to ten could have online video chats together. The Google tool was better, slicker and announced earlier.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, Facebook shouldn’t be too worried as, at the moment, it’s 600m active users will care much more about this announcement than about Hangouts.

But, I still think Facebook’s embattled PR team failed to approach this announcement in the best way.

An ‘awesome’ mistake

As soon as Google+ launched last week the comparisons with Facebook have been fast and furious. And rightly so. The fact that Facebook’s first post-Google+ announcement saw the network fail in a very obvious way to match Google+ is unfortunate.

Not least because of the way Facebook touted the press conference yesterday. Speaking in Seattle last week, Zuckerberg called it ‘awesome’ which clearly raised expectations to meteoric levels. The announcement certainly wasn’t awesome which has left the media reaction today less than positive.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Facebook. Clearly, as stated above, this is good news for their users. And the link up with Skype (read: Microsoft) is certainly interesting.

My beef is in the way this was handled. Simple PR rules were broken: don’t overhype, manage your timing and make sure you match up to your competitors.

There’s nothing Facebook can do to influence how and when Google does things, but a good PR department would have the strength and courage of its convictions to speak out when an announcement looks doomed to #fail.

Danny Whatmough

I was also equally interested in an event run by the CIPR last week entitled ‘How to measure beyond AVE‘. The event was so-so with the thrust of the argument seemingly being to use digital channels and social media because these are more measurable and, hey, AVE doesn’t work on them anyway!

For me, this is slightly missing the point. Every PR agency still focuses a lot on traditional online and print media and will do so for sometime. Rather than just encouraging everyone to use more digital media, we should be showing how AVE still remains a stupid way to measure coverage – offline or online.

Another aspect of the event which really surprised me was when the speaker asked the 100 or so delegates in the room whether they use other metrics apart from AVE. Only three of us put our hands up! I’m seriously hoping that the rest were just being shy, because that is a massive problem for our industry if it is true.

Then I did some searching and found this blog post from Octopus: “until an equally simplistic measurement tool is developed, PRs have little choice but to soldier on with AVE regardless of its many faults.”

Huh? So, it is up to the industry to find an equally ‘simplistic’ way of measuring what we do?

I’m proud to say I have never used AVE as a measurement metric in all the years I have been in PR and have only been asked whether we use it by clients on a handful of occasions.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to reveal to agencies that are struggling to find other ‘simplistic’ measurement metrics the numerous ways they can give their clients proper ROI based on business results rather than just whether your campaign does or does not stack up against what an advertising agency could do. That relegates PR to the bottom of the heap.

I really hope I don’t have to write a blog post like this again, but I’m sure I will.

picture credit

Danny Whatmough

So I was intrigued by a blog post from Steve Rubel that was highlighted to me yesterday by Drew Benvie.

Systems Thinking

The gist of Steve’s thinking is that despite the current trend towards specialisation – e.g. people that are ‘experts’ in digital and social media – there is an argument that ‘generalists’ will actually be more critical at senior levels in the future. So while specialists will always be important, having an idea of the ‘bigger picture’ and how all these specialisms interlink is also vital.

He refers to this as Systems Thinking:

“Systems Thinking isn’t new. It’s a tried and true process of seeing the entire ecosystem and how all of its different parts impact each other. It allows us to see how if a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it can cause a storm in another. This all starts with seeing things through the lens of the end customer, rather than through the view of the business. Some of the most successful businesses of the digital age were built around ecosystems.”

The agency pyramid

In his post, Drew demonstrates how this thinking could be brought into an agency setting:

“I see a more complex future for the corporate communications professional. At the top of a pyramid will be the systems thinker – the few good generalists, or the specialists in everything – who have a broad range of skills and experiences, and social and digital media will need to feature strongly in their skill set. Lower down the pyramid will be the operators – skilled managers with specialisms, all diverse in their roles and experiences. Then the foundations of the pyramid will be a large number of technical specialists. A good team will have a balance of skills and personnel from each level, and I think the all star team will have the perfect balance from top to bottom.”

PRs shouldn’t be created equal

I think there is a lot to this theory. As I said in my previous post on the future of agencies: “With PRs increasingly having to deal with multiple specialisms, from SEO and social to traditional media, bloggers and analysts, is it just too much to expect everyone to be proficient in everything? Do they even need to be?”

The ‘Systems Thinking’ answer would be that yes, we do need specialists, but we also need generalists – or strategists – to make everything fit together. If we pull this back to the advertising agency model, I guess generalists are perhaps project managers or senior account people. But I think there’s maybe more to this role.

In most traditional PR agencies today, all PRs are created equal. I have my doubts about whether this model is workable in the long term. Systems Thinking seems to be one possible solution.

picture credit

Danny Whatmough

This (as these things do) turned into a blog post and got a fair amount of pick up across the industry.

I was therefore delighted when the PRCA took up the baton and decided to take the debate offline…

That moment has now arrived! Next Wednesday, an esteemed panel including Richard Millar, Marshall Manson, Mark Pinsent (@markpinsent), Robin Grant (@robingrant), James Murphy and Richard Stephenson (@rmgstephenson) will convene to discuss and debate this very issue.

It should be a great event. Tickets are limited, but are free and available now from the PRCA website.

Hope to see you there!

Danny Whatmough

I had a bit of a rant on Twitter this morning.

It was prompted by a big multi-page feature in the lastest issue of PR Week on Quora. The headline asked whether this new network could become the “new Twitter” and included a range of comments from the great and the good of the online PR industry giving their thoughts on what it means for brands and PR strategies.

All well and good; Quora’s been getting a lot of attention recently.

It’s all just hot air

But, if we step back a bit and think about this objectively, it all suddenly becomes rather absurd.

Quora, despite having launched about a year ago, has only really been on most people’s radars for a few weeks maximum. And when I say “most people”, I mean the techy, social mediaites on Twitter. In terms of user numbers and general awareness, it is nowhere.

There is a real danger in the social media echo chamber in which many of us live our lives, that we gravitate towards the new and sparkly just because someone posts a blog post saying it might be a good thing.

As Vivek Wadhwa says:

“Silicon Valley is again drinking its own Kool-Aid; it is looking at the world through its own prism. This is a common problem here, where we jump from one fad to another; where venture capitalists start investing in similar technologies and drive company valuations through the roof; where TechCrunch hypes the technology du jour and causes entrepreneurs all over the world to drop what they are doing in favor of building copycat technologies.”

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at new things, play with them or keep half an eye on them. Of course, we should. I’m also not saying that Quora won’t be successful (though I do have reservations and agree with much of what is said in this New York Times review).

Second guessing the next big thing!

But, rather than just jumping on the bandwagon, we need carefully assess the service it in a responsible, considered way. It’s pretty telling that the most popular topic on Quora right now is social media! Go figure…

I think Adam Timworth gets it spot on when he says: “…my gut feeling…is that the Next Big Thing, whatever it turns out to be, won’t be this hyped. And Quora is really hyped right now. Every previous Next Big Thing, from blogging, through Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and more has gone through an extended period of quiet use by a small, but steadily growing pool of users and evangelists, before the real mainstream growth kicks in. I’ve never seen a major Next Big Thing on the web go from zero to hero in about 10 days.”

Most of the ‘big things’ in tech at the moment were game changers and I don’t think Quora is different enough from what has come before to allow it to have massive mainstream adoption.

So while I wish Quora well, I think those of us that are already dreaming up PR strategies around how it should/could be used need to give it time.

Jon Collins kindly emailed me with some of his thoughts:

“From a PR perspective, what’s needed more than an understanding of the latest, greatest thing, is a model/mechanism which can quickly evaluate the potential of all such tools. If Quora shines like a star for a week before it’s gone, for example, then the smart PR executive may be able to make the most of it. That is a very different mindset than, say, thinking ’do we need a Quora strategy’.”

Give it time

My advice to PRs looking at Quora? By all means look at it, play with it (as you should with all the new shiny tools that come alone), but don’t waste your or your clients time just yet time trying to work out how it might or might not influence what we do in the near or even distant future.

picture credit

Danny Whatmough

It also reveals that 83% of people in the UK need to hear information more than three times before they believe it, while 27% need to hear it six to ten times. This level of scepticism is rivalled only by the US.

These are all important learnings for PRs.

However, for me, the most interesting research to come out of the study centres around who we trust to get information from.

Recent politico-economic events were good for social

With the background of the economic crisis, bankers bonuses and MP’s expenses, the ‘establishment’ has taken a bashing in recent years.

It’s not hard to see how this might have had an adverse effect on the levels of trust we have in people who hold ‘official’ positions.

And, according to Edelman, this has been the case. Except that, this year, the study shows trust is returning. This year, CEOs rank among the top credible people globally. Two years ago they were in the bottom two.

The backlash continues

This is interesting, because it mirrors a move of scepticism when it comes to social media.

It’s as though as our trust in CEOs and the like recovers, we are become less trusting of social channels.

While we like to get the thoughts and opinions of our peers through social channels, when we want to get information, we naturally migrate back to ‘trusted’ sources, including traditional media.

I’ve talked before about the social media backlash more from a marketing perspective, but there seems to be a growing backlash in other quarters too. If you’re interested in learning more about this backlash, there was a really interesting article by Paul Harris in the Observer last weekend.

Clearly, it is hard to base this entire theory on the back of just one consumer survey, but it is certainly a trend I’ll be watching carefully over the next year or so.

Danny Whatmough