David Brain

The Democratisation
of Everything
hen I was asked to write this piece on trends in PR and communica-
tions I was reminded of a David Ogilvy quotation: "It's easier to write a
great a speech about advertising than it is to write a great ad." He was right
on that as on so many things.
I was also aware that I've heard many people speak or write as if the
world we have all happily lived in for years is about to change completely
at that very moment and everything we have always done is wrong and
whatever brand of communications snake-oil the writer or the speaker is
offering is our only hope of salvation. And it can be really annoying and
patronising. So with these two little grains of self awareness out of the way,
let me clear my throat and claim with gleaming eye and foaming mouth
that: "this is the most exciting and challenging time I have witnessed in our
business for the 22 years I have been in it and the changes that have just
begun will fundamentally alter what we do and the role that PR plays."
If this was a speech and not an article there would now be an
embarrassed silence and the sound of polite coughing.
Bear with me. Take a look at www.ihatedell.net when you get a chance.
A little over a year ago a blogger named Jeffjarvis complained on his blog
about a Dell pc he had bought and the service he had received. Within
minutes hundreds responded and within days there were thousands
agreeing and weighing in with their own stories. In Jeff's words he had
set off a "raging mob with pitchforks" and they were determined to storm
'Castle Dell'. They came together on the www.ihatedell.net site and a strange
thing happened. After they got over complaining a number of them began
helping each other, technically in terms of fixing faults mainly, but also
on how to get the best out of their machines. Dell did nothing. Well
officially, Dell did nothing. Unofficially Dell employees started responding
and as you can see from the site they chipped in with advice and com-
ments, totally separately to the official help-lines (many of which were
outsourced, which added some spice). And another odd thing happened.
When people 'Googled' Dell they discovered pretty high up the results
table the www.ihatedell.net site and if you look at it now you can see conver-
sations between employees and people that are about to be interviewed

From sixtysecondview.com, October 18, 2006. Copyright © 2006 by David Brain. Reprinted by
permission of the author.

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for a job at Dell. And journalists went there, and business partners and
families of employees and, of course, customers. It became a landing site
for anybody disaffected with Dell and very soon after that, a site for any-
one interested in anything to do with Dell—only Dell had nothing to do
with it themselves. The whole incident became totemic for the company's
corporate and product brand and was related and re-told in many news
stories.
So what does it mean? It means I think that the days of trying to
control corporate message from the top down are gone. Spokespeople in
this new age are increasingly customers, employees, interviewees and,
occasionally also senior management. Dell's corporate reputation was
turned inside out by some angry customers and their own employees. It
was democratised.
Another example. [There were] picture[s] from the London Tube on
July 7th last year after the bombs went off. [Shots] of passengers walking
along the track to safety [were taken] on a mobile phone camera. [These
images and others like it were] run on news outlets around the world and
it highlighted that people armed with digital devices can now bring us
personal views of big news events that the traditional news organisations
can't get to or don't have the resources to deliver. Check these sites out
for an on-the-ground perspective of what is happening in Lebanon and
Iraq at the moment: http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org/, http://colddesert.blogspot.
com/, http://lebanesebloggers.blogspot.com/ and if you can't be bothered then
let me tell you that they include very personal views of what it is like on
the ground in those conflicts; views you will not and cannot really get on
TV or mainstream media. The point of all this? People can tell the news
and with no more than a mobile phone and pc connected to the web,
they can broadcast the news. To each other via social network media and
to traditional news organisations who are now very happy to take their
footage and comments. News is being democratized too.
And it's not just the sources of news; it's the editorial decision-making
as well. The BBC is tracked by 13 different blogs (last time I looked) each
of which analyse the TV news bulletins within minutes for perceived bias
and wrong facts. Any journalist will tell you that they take pride in get-
ting facts and tone right, and these sites which track many major news
outlets in Europe and around the world now, do have an affect on editorial
decision-making. BBC editors now blog daily on their own news policy
and editorial decision-making. News is also much more democratic than it
used to be. Richard Sambrook of the BBC said "the crowd are now well and
truly on the pitch" (see my interview with Kevin Bakhurst of BBC news
| 24 on www.sixtysecondview.com) for his view on this.
Entertainment is becoming democratized too. Look at Rocketboom
i and YouTube (www.rocketboom.com and www.YouTube.com) which have become
global phenomena and have massive viewing figures eclipsing those of
I many national broadcasters. People making shows and broadcasting them-
selves with equipment that can be bought for a couple of hundred euros,
if you do get onto YouTube, take a look at the footage by combatants in
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Iran, Afghanistan and Lebanon .. . soldiers (on all sides) filming themselves
fighting and making that film available to everyone with a pc and a broad-
band connection and an interest in the issue. The coverage of war has also
become democratized.
Your friends these days do not have to be restricted to the people that
live near you or you met at school or work. MySpace (www.myspace.com) has
getting on for 70 million subscribers, most of whom have not physically
met; but who would tell you that they have (in some cases) long and rich
relationships with each other.
Ebay democratized commerce . . . we don't need shops or middle-
men any more; we can just trade with each other. Ask any author and he
or she will tell you that the reviews they crave most are positive ones on
Amazon, not from a newspaper art critic writing for a tiny and highly in-
formed audience. The same goes for the reviews of music on iTunes. The
democratization of opinion?
Personal blogs are increasing at a rate of 70,000 a day (doubling every
five months). They are mad, bad, brilliant and indifferent but they are
being written and they are being read some by thousands of people. They
are of course 'just' conversations and we have always talked to each other,
but we have never had the potential for so many to listen to us if we really
are engaged in a particular issue or have a perspective that is interesting to
others. Who knew that conversation needed democratizing too?
Ask any doctor about the main difference between their patients today
and just a few years ago and the answer is: "information." Patients enter
surgeries all over the world now clutching printouts from the net and have
often tried not only to diagnose themselves, but have views on the their
treatment or prescription. Does this mean they are qualified to diagnose
and prescribe? No, but it does mean that doctors and health professionals
have now to engage patients in the process and make them understand
their decisions. The democratization of healthcare is arguably one of the
most important of these changes for every country in the world.
And I know I have focused on the on-line world but it's not just there.
Many countries in Europe have their version of the TV show Big Brother
where we are fascinated to witness normal people being elevated to celebrity
status; and sometimes in Celebrity Big Brother, celebrities being reduced to
citizen level. More people voted for the winner of the last American Idol than
did for George Bush. Celebrity too has been democratised.
And all this at a time when participation in the traditional field of
democracy (i.e. politics and voting) is at record lows pretty much every-
where. Established authority in the form of governments, politicians and
business leaders score badly in terms of trust. According to the Edelman
annual Trust Barometer, a CEO is trusted to "do the right thing" by only
29 percent of people in Europe. However, a 'regular' employee of a com-
pany is trusted by 33 percent. But a 'person like myself is trusted by a huge
61 percent of people in Europe.
So what? So in communications and in the way brands and compa-
nies deport themselves to their customers and to their stakeholders the
 YES / David Brain 289

game is changing fast. The new model citizen who is increasingly partici-
pating and demanding a say and respect and, even a relationship, is not
the person we used to know. They don't believe us in the way the way they
used to (just like they don't believe a doctor enough not to check the net
before visiting the surgery) and the change required is not just about a new
media buying strategy it is fundamental for most companies, brands, PR
people and communicators.
We used to drive brand preference through awareness vehicles like
advertising. But advertising can't reach people like it used to and it is one-
way and it is not trusted or believed as it used to be anywhere in Europe.
And we used to drive corporate preference through the idea of a few mes-
sages, strictly controlled and repeated as often as possible through top
down opinion forming media most often by the CEO themselves.
For the new model citizens increasingly used to making more and
more decisions for themselves (or at least having a say) being shouted at
in traditional forms of static bought media is often a jarring experience.
They don't want to hear from the CEO about his product or his latest CSR
initiative because "he would say that wouldn't he" (for most CEOs for most
of the time, in today's world, formal communication should be restricted
to financial results, company strategy announcement and crisis—though
informally they can say much more as I'll discuss later).
Much more effective in driving corporate or brand preference are the
techniques of dialogue, loyalty and involvement. And that brings me to
the re-emergence of an old friend. Word of mouth marketing.
Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, some years ago illustrated
the power of word of mouth in moving markets and changing behaviour
on a mass scale. It was a book before it's time, because in a world popu-
lated by these new model citizens, who trust each other's opinions and
are very happy to say what they think, word of mouth is more powerful
than ever.
Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon said; "Word of mouth has been
incredibly important to us, and ultimately that's what a brand is; the things
people say about you when you are not there." The net (but not the net
alone) gives a powerful boost to word of mouth (through viral techniques
and the blogosphere), but more importantly, people seem more willing to
make up their own view on brands and companies and [are] much more
willing to tell other people (and again the increasing availability of the net
and broadband access boost this affect).
Word of mouth now influences around 80 percent of purchase deci-
sions according to NOP and has an impact on 67 percent of the US econ-
omy according to McKinsey.
And of course, PR has always been about this. In the corporate, business-
| to-business, tech, health and brand areas, the power of what we do is related
|to how successful we are at getting third parties to speak on our behalf. But
lere is a mass dimension to this now which is different. And many of the
a
ew web-based social media mean for the first time that we can directly com-
and have relationships with customers, end users or the people we
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want to influence. That is new and brings fresh challenges and some issues to
deal with—PR is out of the back-room and onto the front line.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating according to my mum (who
I trust in all things by the way). Does all this change anything in how we
do what we do for our companies and clients? Demonstrably yes I believe
Take a look at some of the Edelman case studies on Edelman movies on
www.edelmanfilms.com and especially the Microsoft Xbox and Halo 2 cases
where anticipation, massive awareness and then sales were created through
word-of-mouth. In the most successful of these for brands, there are some
common elements:

• Make use of people's most trusted source of information—other

people
• Identify the most influential and active and get them to act as
catalysts (the Halo 2 case is a good example of that)
• Give them reasons to talk on your behalf

This last point is often the most difficult. Increasingly this is about
having content that is either interesting and useful or just plain entertaining.
People pass things on verbally or virally on-line if they are invested enough in
it; if it makes them look "in the know"; if they think they can do a service to
other people; if they think they have something funny or amazing that will
get that second or two of amazement from the person they are addressing it
to. Or if they believe it and are passionate about it.
The band the Arctic Monkeys became huge in the US (they are Brit-
ish) because they were adopted by a few people on MySpace who then
passed them on to others and they quickly became a phenomena, without
the formal and traditional backing of a big record label. There is some
debate about how accidental or not this vkal affect was for them, but the
principle remains the same whether planned or accidental.
In the more traditional media realm, Dove's Real Beauty campaign
worked because the PR and advertising created a real 'talk factor' and gave
the brand a hero role in that . . . again, great case on Edelman movies on
www.edelmanfilms.com.
Much of what we do on PR is about this obviously, but the impact
we can now have in all areas of our business is far greater. In the corporate
realm blogs are having a huge affect in many sectors. Dell shows how this
can be a challenge but look at how some companies through blogging of
staff and CEO can be a huge asset for corporate reputation. Robert Scoble
(http://scobleizer.wordpress.com) who until recently blogged about his then
employer Microsoft is credited with a lot of that firm's improved corpo-
rate image. CEO bloggers like Federico at Ducati in Italy and Bob Lutz at
General Motors have succeeded in putting a very human face on some
of the heavy corporate challenges that face them and their firms (CEOs
seem to be better believed on bloggs, possibly because of their frequent
and informal conversational style and so have a better chance of being
"trusted").
 YES / David Brain 291

And around any major corporate event now like an IPO or merger or
acquisition, check out the blogs that are putting investors together with
management (on both sides) with employees with political groups and
media.
These are some of the reasons why I think that we are living through
the era of greatest change our industry has seen. It's not just as the old
monolithic broadcasting and publishing blocs are crumbling and that the
channels that have principally served them (advertising) are struggling to
find new ways of targeting people . . . it is more a fundamental shift in who
people are believing and how they want to be treated. The agencies and
companies that figure this out and begin to listen and enter conversations
with customers and stakeholders will be the winners.