Phillips D., Young P. Online Public Relations
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196
Risks and
opportunities
Public relations is a management discipline and as such has to apply man-
agement techniques to what it does. So far we have shown a number of
such techniques used to optimize campaigning. We have also frequently
mentioned the need for risk management.
Even today, many management teams are wary of the internet and many
see it as a threat. For some, there is no doubt that it is a threat and needs
management.
New channels for communication emerge and o�en with great speed;
the internet is driven by many people and there is much presence that is
not controlled by organizations. Much internet activity does not follow
the usual linear models for management. The sequence of events can be
as easily disrupted by the online community as by internal departmental
interference from, for example the marketing or finance departments.
The lesson is obvious: plans have to be fluid. We need to be able to master
the unknown. We have to grasp opportunities quickly and we need tools to
help us make judgments – o�en at short notice.
The solution is to adopt practices from other disciplines in which ‘man-
agement of the unknown’ is common. Some of the greatest benefits to
modern living have become possible because we know how to manage
where there is uncertainty. There is a great deal of useful experience in this
field, and De Meyer et al, for example, offer insights that can be used by
21
Risks and opportunities
197
relationship management practitioners. We offer an adaptation for use in
online public relations.
1
So what does uncertainty look like in the fast-moving online environ-
ment? De Meyer et al offer four uncertainty types: variation, foreseen un-
certainty, unforeseen uncertainty and chaos.
Internet traffic data, displayed in time series (a sequence of events, meas-
ured typically at successive times, spaced at o�en uniform time intervals
such as daily or monthly), have a number of characteristic properties,
widely known as ‘stylized facts’, which are different from other kinds of
time series:
They tend to be long-tailed; in other words, there is a higher frequency
of very extreme events that have a long life and tail off slowly.
They tend to show long-range dependence; for example, search engines
will find content that is old and present it today, people will remember
and bring content to the fore long a�er it was news to another group and
so forth (the internet has a ‘long memory’ and ‘time-shi�s’ information
– and reputation).
They exhibit volatility; in other words, the apparent variance (from the
plan or anticipated outcome) is not a constant but tends to fluctuate
irregularly, something the internet has in common with traditional
media that can bring back old news to support a new story.
These are challenging concepts, but can be visualized by thinking about
books or recordings sold through an outlet such as Amazon. Traditionally,
a band might release a single that was bought contemporaneously by a lot
of people, making it a ‘hit’, before it slipped out fashion. Traditional record
shops stocked the big sellers and knew it was not cost effective to maintain
stocks when the song dropped out the charts. But the economies of scale
offered by Amazon, allied with the infinite amount of virtual shelf space
it commands, mean that songs that most have forgo�en are still available.
OK, they will sell in very small quantities but, they are sales nonetheless
and the cost of storage and display is minimal on the website. This is the
well-noted ‘long-tail’ effect.
2
The same long-tail effect can be applied to news stories. Whereas once
most people would read a story when it was splashed across the front
page of a print newspaper and then discard it, such stories are now part
of the digital archive, quickly accessible to search engines. An individual
story may not be read by a huge volume of people on any one day, but its
readership stretches down the long tail (the ‘value’ of the story has a very
long ‘shelf life’). This too has implications for PR, in that today the news
never quite goes away. It may be forgo�en by most readers, but Google has
a long memory and is always ready to serve up scraps that organizations
might imagine had long vanished.
Building blocks for online PR
198
In other words we are not quite sure where and when our online pro-
gramme will pop up or in which platform or channel.
RISK AND OPPORTUNITY
The practitioner can use some well-known techniques to second-guess
what will be fashionable or will work (and those things that won’t) using
risk and opportunity techniques well established in other disciplines.
3
One thing we know is that risk and opportunity changes are dependent
on complexity. If a programme is very complicated there is more to go
wrong, and online PR with its range of platforms, channels and contexts is
quite complicated. But as we now know, the opportunities for considerable
incremental success are greater.
Figure 21.1 The relationships between complexity, criticality size and
complexity
Technical complexity
Campaign size
Business criticality
Increased impact of risk
Business complexity
Increased liklihood of risk
As complexity increases, so does the probability (likelihood of risk); as size
and criticality increases so does the impact of risk
In most PR work there are risks and opportunities. To manage them we
need to identify them. This can be done by an individual, a focus group
or management team, or they can be established from research. It’s a great
opportunity for a brainstorm, with someone making notes!
In preparing a strategy for a programme, it is worth looking at where
there may be influences that can affect it. In online public relations it is
possible to second-guess many of the potential influences. The recession of
Risks and opportunities
199
2008 is a classic case in point. For a number of companies, strategy had to
change to maintain presence but at a much lower cost. Promotion budgets
were slashed and PR had to take the strain. With reduced advertising, many
publications just did not have the space for stories they would have run
only months before. Online there were fewer constraints and so budgets
shi�ed.
In PR there are some pre�y well established influences that affect practice
(see Figure 21.2)
Figure 21.2 The range of known influences that can affect online
PR programmes
Potential
causes of
risk
Change in
objectives
Legislation
Change
in corporation
direction
Added/changed
publics
A
new (changed)
communication
tool
Unexpected
change to a team
member
Action by a
competitor
Problem with
implementation
Change in
resource
available
A
problem
that was not
anticipated
Corporate
reorganization
Management
directive
It is also possible to evaluate risk and asses its influence in terms of probab-
ility and impact. An example might be confidential product information
that could leak out of the organization and into the public domain because
an employee has a blog.
Having described risks and potential for effects, the practitioner (evalu-
ation team) will assess each element in terms of likelihood of occurrence
and impact. This helps put the risk or opportunity into perspective, and is
a technique used by many voluntary and public sector organizations. It is
the kind of matrix that might be used to assess risk for a school outing and
is also used in project management (Figure 21.3).
Building blocks for online PR
200
The next part of the process is to create a mitigation (or contingency) plan,
process or protocol to reduce either or both of the likelihood and impact
risks. This might be the introduction of, say, a company-wide blogging
policy, or regulating the use of data on home computers.
Once a mitigation plan has been worked out, a new assessment is made
of the likelihood or impact to see if the proposed actions for mitigation
have had an effect that makes the risk acceptable within the campaign. The
process is quite simple and effective and is valuable when a�empting to
identify competitive advantage versus doubts.
These methodologies can be used in making all manner of decisions,
including those about the extent to which the internet should be made
available during working hours (knowing that most people have access on
their mobile phones anyway). The structured approach shown in Figure
21.4 helps inform such decisions.
Using such a process through each part of the planning process reduces
risk to a manageable level and also helps to make precise projections of
expected outcomes.
Figure 21.3 Assessing the impact of events that can be estimated before any
action is taken and again a�er mitigating policies are proposed to see if the
potential for risk is lowered (acceptable) prior to implementation or exposure
High
Medium Low
High 1 2
Medium 1 4
Low 1
Impact
Probability
The Risk Matrix presents a pictorial view of the risk profile for the campaign
and increases visibility and aids management decision making
Risks and opportunities
201
Risk management is a process and can be applied to strategy as well as
tactics.
Of course, for each risk there is an opportunity. By applying the same
technique but looking for opportunities and means to optimize them, the
practitioner can enhance the effectiveness of any approach to a campaign.
It is all too easy to imagine events in stark black and white answers. There
is seldom only one solution and practitioners can work on contingency
planning.
There are a lot of techniques that can be applied to ameliorate risk and
optimize opportunity (Figure 21.5) and, affecting the programme strategy
by using techniques adopted from other disciplines, PR can ensure greater
certainty in online activities.
Disaster seldom comes unannounced for most organizations. There tend
to be a number of indicators that presage the public event. The key is to be
able to identify the stages as they present themselves. They are outlined
below.
Figure 21.4 The process for risk management
Identify/brainstorm
actual/potential risk
Risk management
process
Assess risk
Identify suitable
resources that will
mitigate risk
Review and
communicate
Plan and execute
response
Choose approriate
response/procedure
Building blocks for online PR
202
Variation
All plans have expected outcomes, financial budgets and timescales. These
are o�en identified by using aids for project planning (see above).
Monitoring such plans will identify where plans are going awry. O�en
such occurrences are small. These are ‘variations’ to the plan. Good monit-
oring will give teams notice that remedial action has to take place, and
contingency can be built into the plan. An example might be providing a
contingency sum in a budget and allowing for some flexibility in delivery
time.
Foreseen uncertainties
There are some variations that are identifiable and understood but that
the team cannot be sure will occur or when they might arise. To mitigate
Figure 21.5 An amelioration matrix for managing PR risk
Prevent
impact on
client
Counter-
measures to
stop the
threat
Planned
response
when event
happens
Reduce
probability
Limit impact
Pass to third
party
Insure
against
eventuality
Manage
expectations
Accept
possibility
and proceed
Prepare
crisis plan
How to
respond to risk
Prevention Accept
Reduction Contingency
Transfer
Risks and opportunities
203
foreseen uncertainties, the plan will need to include the capability to iden-
tify the event and to deploy a pre-planned contingency programme. An
example might be unscheduled maintenance of a computer that is running
the campaign blog. One big issue is website uptime, with issues such as a
slowing of response times of the organization’s website or, disaster of all
disasters, the website being so overwhelmed that it stops responding (in
retail, this is the equivalent of one in 10 shops being closed).
When a website goes down, it is a PR problem. It is not an IT department
problem. Risk analysis is critical in identifying and mitigating these events.
Provision for such events has to be included in any plan. Who does what,
when and how? If they are not available or facilities are down, who else
should be part of such a plan?
Unforeseen uncertainty
This kind of event cannot be identified during project planning. There is no
Plan B.
The team will be unaware of the event’s possibility, or consider it so un-
likely that there is no in-built contingency plan. To be able to manage such
events a comprehensive monitoring and alerting process is critical.
‘Unknown unknowns,’ or ‘unk-unks,’ as they are sometimes called,
make people nervous because existing decision tools are not applicable. Un-
foreseen uncertainty is not always caused by spectacular events or issues.
Unpredicted results can arise from the unanticipated interaction of many
events, each of which might, in principle, be foreseeable. The best man-
agement practice here is a�ention to detail and constant re-evaluation of
the plan and its application.
The model described here includes risk analysis at just about every point
in planning. Mature management of PR will have to begin to include these
more complex management techniques in the future, and this will take out
a lot of the management concerns that surround the use of social media.
Here are the key elements for reducing the impact of the unforeseen:
Teams must go beyond mere crisis management and continually scan
for emerging influences – either threats or opportunities. Practitioners
should be scanning the horizon more than three months out to identify
potential problems while they can still do something about them.
Risk analysis must be an ongoing activity, with no potential hazard
excluded because it seemed wacky at the time.
With unforeseeable uncertainty, a lot of time and effort must go into
managing relationships with key publics, o�en ge�ing them to accept
unplanned changes. Knowing who to approach and how to contact key
publics is important. Good old-fashioned public relations to maintain
good and effective relationships count when the unforeseen happens.
Building blocks for online PR
204
Top-management support, negotiation techniques, team-building ex-
ercises and the practitioner’s leadership can help resolve conflicting
interests.
Trust is a core element in managing the unforeseen, which means value
systems and value system analysis are critical.
Managing variance and planning to manage foreseen uncertainty assist
in managing the unknown because contingency planning will be part
of the organization’s culture.
The unforeseen can be managed.
The US Institute for Crisis Management offers some insights into where
to look for unforeseen uncertainty, listing the most common on its website
(h�p://www.crisisexperts.com).
In an era when the internet is bringing great change in communication
(as well as in the way organizations are organized and managed), being
able to deploy these types of technique allows organizations to enter new
areas of interaction with some confidence in their ability to gain optimum
benefit at an acceptable level of exposure.
IN BRIEF
Many management teams are wary of the internet and many see it
as a threat. For some there is no doubt that it is a threat and needs
management.
The sequence of events of online programmes can be easily disrupted
by the online community.
Plans can allow organizations to grasp opportunities and manage
threats with tools that can be deployed at short notice.
The practitioner can use some well-known techniques to second-guess
what will be fashionable or will work (and those things that won’t),
using risk and opportunity techniques.
Online PR, with its range of platforms, channels and contexts, is quite
complex. But the opportunities for considerable incremental success
are greater.
Risks can be identified and conform to a number of recognized
variables.
It is possible to evaluate risk and assess its influence in terms of
probability and impact.
Development of plans to mitigate risk before implementation will
reduce threats.
Risk management is a process and can be applied to strategy as well as
tactics.
Risks and opportunities
205
Notes
1. Pich, M T, Loch, C H and De Meyer, A (2002) On uncertainty, ambiguity
and complexity in project management, Management Science, 48 (8), pp
1008–24
2. Anderson, C (2006) The Long Tail, Hyperion
3. Risk management literature includes: Chapman, C and Ward, S (1997)
Project Risk Management, Wiley; Kliem, R L and Ludin, I S (1997) Reducing
Project Risk, Gower
There are a lot of techniques that can be applied to ameliorate risk
and optimize opportunity, and intervening in the programme strategy
by using techniques adopted from other disciplines, PR can ensure
greater certainty in online activities.
Planning for programme variation, foreseeable uncertainties, unfore-
seen uncertainty and the unknown is possible and practical.