The EuroComm Blog 2008

by Ulrich Gartner

When flipping through a free newspaper on the tube in Stockholm yesterday, my attention got caught by a headline reading ‘Emailing will have disappeared by the end of this year’. Kids nowadays think that emails are just for business, and used by ‘old people’. They, instead, use websites, notice boards, and social platforms to communicate with each other.

I shared the story with some colleagues who have teenage children. We had a lively conversation which, at the end, confirmed that email is practically dead with the younger generation.

I felt this situation provided some deep insight into communications: A newspaper (declared dead a hundred times but still alive and kicking) predicting the irrelevance of what just recently was the latest gadget in communication (I was so proud when I got the email function on my mobile phone last year!). The story was so interesting that it created word-of-mouth (I told it to my colleagues), and subsequently drove some buzz around the office.

I believe this is exactly what communicators today have to deal with. You can’t just keep doing the stuff you’ve known so well for many years; but you can’t exclusively run after the latest trends either. After all, you’ll have to play different tunes to make a sound that people will listen to.

When I went home in the evening, I looked around in the underground and saw a lot of the kids, who supposedly think email is old news, reading– guess what: the good old newspaper. Exciting times for communicators, aren’t they? See you in Barcelona.

Ulrich Gartner (Sweden) is Vice President Communications Europe at AB Electrolux, a global leader in home appliances. Electrolux has worked intensively with social media over the past years. Most recently, Gartner’s in-house PR team has been honoured with an IRPA Golden World Award 2007 for the best e-PR campaign.

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Ulrich will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference on:

Engage! Making Social Media an Integrated Part of a PR Campaign

Social media, still, are much too often used as a separate, even slightly disconnected communication channel for very specifi c target audiences. This session will show how they can, instead, become a truly integrated element of broader PR campaigns, delivering on a number of objectives ranging from consumer engagement to media coverage. Two case studies will be presented: Electrolux Design Lab, a global competition for design students, and Electrolux Kitchenstage, the world’s fi rst online reality show
in a kitchen. The session will discuss strategies, techniques used, results delivered, and learnings gained, with special emphasis on how traditional PR techniques and the use of social media were integrated in order to create maximum impact.

by Suzanne Salvo

“There were the huge printing shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs” - 1984

Photo manipulation existed long before the age of digital photography, as this famous George Orwell quote written in 1949 implies. Photo technology may have changed since his day, but does that mean the ethics behind photo manipulation has also changed?

When George Orwell wrote those words nearly 60 years ago, news photography was still in its early years. Cameras were still huge and heavy. Photojournalists carried sacks of flashbulbs that had to be painstakingly changed out with each exposure. In the pre-digital world, it took hours in the darkroom to produce a single print.

And it took many more hours to successfully alter an image before Photoshop made it child’s play. With only pre-digital technology, even experts with years of experience had trouble making photo changes that could pass for real. But that didn’t stop them from trying, and succeeding.

What we now call photography was invented around the mid 1800s. For the first 50 years there were hardly any amateurs and only a few “professionals” were willing to operate the giant, finicky, and not very portable machines. At the beginning of the 1900s that changed when George Eastman developed the technology of film to replace the cumbersome photographic plates used up until then. Cameras became smaller, more portable and quicker to use, heralding in the age of photojournalism. For the first time in history on-the-scene, real life visual coverage of events and breaking news was possible, and people just couldn’t get enough of it. High public interest and the subsequent money it spawned created heated competition among photojournalist. That led to some extremely unorthodox photo-reporting techniques.

Test your ethics: what would you do?

Newspaper photographers back in the 20s, 30s and 40s were well known for their exceedingly competitive and questionable ethical practices. There are numerousstories of photojournalists manipulating crime scenes to make more dynamic images. Some were know to carry teddy bears or dolls in their camera bags to use in photos of house fires or train wrecks. By implying a child was involved, the image became emotionally charged and more poignant, which helped sell more papers. There are even ocumented reports of corpses being repositioned to make better photo compositions. Ask yourself: Is it OK for a photographer to change where he/she stands to take a newsphoto if that change provides a more dynamic, interesting view? What if the change of position naturally emphasizes only one aspect of the scene over other important details?

Politicians have long recognized the power of the image for propaganda purposes. Some have tried to literally change history by changing photographs. In one of the better known examples, Stalin had former comrades deemed enemies eradicated from life and either cropped out or “photoshopped” out of existing images. On the other end of the political ethics scale is the photo treatment of former US President Franklin Roosevelt. Very few photos exist showing FDR as disabled. In most cases his image was shot or cropped to show him only from the waist up. As a result a large percentage of the American public was unaware that he was severely crippled. Ask yourself: Is cropping to fit a publication&’s format acceptable? Does cropping constitute unethical manipulation in one or both of the above political scenarios? Does the fact that in the case of FDR it was done “to be nice” change the ethical consideration?

Hard news was not the only thing being manipulated in images in the pre-digital world. The classic depression era photos by Margaret Bourke-White and Lewis Hine are known to have been posed by the photographer in many instances. Ask yourself: Using real people and real settings, the photographer directs a subject to straighten his tie, or asks the subject to look in a certain direction, or removes a distracting piece of trash in the background - is that unethical? Does it make the intended message less true? Knowing the subjects and the situations were real but posed, does it make the image less compelling to you? Does it render the image ethically unusable? Some of these images are credited with helping to rewrite the child labor laws in the USA. When the cause is just, or is “news”, does the amount of photo manipulation allowable change?

The public’s fascination with photography has led to some interesting and sometimes outlandish photo alterations. In 1917 Elsie Wright, 15, borrowed her father’s camera and innocently took pictures of some paper-cutout fairies. She used a simple hat-pin devise to cause the cutouts to fall over during the exposure. On the final print this movement made it look like the fairies were realistically dancing. By a strange twist of fate, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, became involved in the fairy story lending it credibility. The photos became internationally well known and for many years were widely believed to be proof of the existence of fairies. In more modern times images of The Loch Ness Monster, now largely held to be fakes, have been used to promote Scottish tourism. Question: Is it ethical to alter an image destined only for marketing or advertising purposes? Or should the same guidelines apply to both news and photo illustrations?

Each of the above photo altering scenarios was accomplished without a pixel in sight, using film, negatives and darkroom echniques. It is now much easier to alter images, making the temptation to do so greater. The question communicators face today is deciding if and how much they should manipulate, not is it possible to manipulate.

Has the ethics behind photo usage changed for corporate communicators? Digital technology didn’t create the ethical dilemma, it only put a big spotlight on it. I’ve asked more questions than I’ve answered in this article. Where ethics are concerned there are seldom clear-cut answers and that is certainly true with photo manipulation ethics.

The subject has sparked a huge debate with widely opposing viewpoints. The topic is so hot, Hollywood has picked up on it in films like Flags of Our Fathers and Spiderman III. As a professional communicator who uses images, you have a stake in the outcome of the debate. Won’t you join the conversation regarding photo ethics? Post your comments here.

And I hope you will join me at the IABC EuroComm. “Seeing is NOT believing.” See you there.

Suzanne Salvo and her husband/partner Chris are co-owners of Salvo Photography, an international award-winning studio with bases in Italy and the U.S. The Salvos has traveled to nearly 60 countries on assignments ranging from ad campaigns, annual reports and editorial. At IABC, Suzanne has served on the 2003-2004 International Executive Board and she is a past president of IABC/ Houston, which named her Volunteer of the Year in 2002. Suzanne writes an informative on-line monthly column, called “Visually Speaking” in IABC’s CW Bulletin, conducts action-packed workshops on photo topics throughout North America and Europe and is a multiple Gold Quill winner. Suzanne is the recipient of the 2007 IABC Chairman’s Award.

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Suzanne will be speaking at the EuroComm conference on:

Seeing is NOT Believing. Real world Photo Manipulation Ethics

We live in a photoshop world where pyramids can be moved to suit a layout and CEOs enjoy instant weight loss and wrinkle removal - until they get caught. Photos are a great way to bolster your company’s brand and positively affect reputation, right? Right – unless an image has been inappropriately manipulated. The fallout can be costly in terms of company brand and the bottomline. When is it OK legally and/or ethically to manipulate and when is it not? What are the consequences to your company’s reputation?

In this session you will learn:

• How to differentiate between photojournalism and photo illustration
• What the photonews groups advise
• Practical quidelines for when, where and how much manipulation is acceptable
• What companies are doing right now to insure their reputation is protected

by Ulrike Bleistein

When they think of IT most people think of computer geeks who sit around in dark rooms, isolated from the rest of the world passionately investigating the inner landscape of computers. Of course, this is not the case. Today, Informatics in a pharmaceutical company is about the clever application of technology to business. Relationships with customers and understanding their needs are key. Communications has moved up the ranks and is today considered a critical capability for this new generation of IT professionals. However, coming from a technology environment, communications does not always come easily to them. As a former scientist with a strong interest in technology, I can bridge the gap. That’s where my job starts.

On joining Roche Pharma Informatics, I did an analysis to find out where communications are most needed to support the business effectively, where the biggest issues are, and I then decided on a step-wise approach as resources were limited.

As a first step, I wanted to get employee communications right as employees are the most important ambassadors of an organisation. Informatics had just started to globalize, coming from an environment where every site had its own IT department. There was an urgent need to create a common understanding of the Informatics strategy, goals, performance and issues. We introduced global web cast meetings, which at the time was a technological challenge for us and we had some hiccups at the beginning. Now they work really well and give us the feeling of being a single global community. Over time, more and more locations have joined the web cast and now we connect about 15 different sites at these meetings. We regularly invite speakers from other Pharma functions to help Informatics people better understand the pharmaceutical business.

The year after, I added activities aimed at the external world – articles in the trade media and speaking engagements at conferences, because we needed to attract additional talent. For a scientist, Roche is an obvious choice, but an IT professional will first think of big IT players as possible employers. Roche has exciting jobs for IT professionals, but this was not generally known or publicised.

At the same time we professionalized customer communications, rolling out communication packages on new Informatics services globally. This was highly appreciated by our colleagues around the world as it significantly reduced the resources needed for communications and helped us to speak with one voice to our end users.

At the moment our focus is on supporting middle management in communications. In many organisations middle managers struggle to explain the big picture to their employees. However, research tells us that understanding the business enhances employee performance. Lack of time, as the operational business is very demanding, as well as the need for training are some of the obvious reasons why it doesn’t happen. That’s where we are now in our journey.

Our survey data tells us that we’re a high-performance environment in terms of communicating with employees and the customer feedback on information about services is also very positive.

Ulrike Bleistein (Switzerland) is Head of Pharma Informatics Communications at Hoffman-La Roche. She established the
communications strategy for the Informatics department at Roche Pharma. Prior to this, she worked for Novartis Pharma, the World Exposition in Hanover, Germany, the Swiss Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape and as a journalist and communications consultant. Ulrike has a PhD in molecular neurobiology from the Swiss Institute of Technology and a degree in journalism.

Photo: thanks to Ulrike Bleistein

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Ulrike will be speaking at the EuroComm Conference. Details of her session are below.

Roche Pharma Global Informatics: The Power of Communications on the Road to Globalisation

This session will explore how the lobalisation of the Informatics department at Roche Pharma Global over the past five years required significant changes in leadership ehaviour, organisational design, as well as strategy. Targeted activities in the areas of employee, customer and change communications contributed significantly to the successful globalisation process, resulting in an organisation that is much more flexible and efficient than in the past.

Implemented changes included:

• Town Hall Meetings webcast globally with a common look and feel to create a sense of community,
• A CIO Award programme to recognise new leadership behaviour
• A project communications tool kit that supports managers in change activities
• Creative services communications to help increase usage of existing Informatics services
• A framework of measurement tools to proof communication effectiveness.

by Velin Velkov

Lately I have been thinking about how our profession will look like 5 to 10 years from now. If we look back within the same time horizon we will see how many things have changed. We now have so many new communications channels – wikis, blogs, podcasts and so on. They have profoundly influenced the way we communicate. Who can predict how communicators will work in 10 years? Your guess is as good as mine. One thing, however, will remain the same – communication is all about human beings.

From my experience working in the software business, I can testify to the power of the innovative technology to revolutionalize the way companies operate and communicate. This is important to us, because we professional communicators have to innovate too. The reason is that should we not do it, we will be hardly pressed to get our message across. Take employee communication for example. Unlike in the past, our employees have the opportunity to plug in to alternative communication channels, which may or may not support the official company line. For this reason we start blogs, wikis and all those social-media platforms. Again, the key word is social, meaning being interactive with other humans.

In my practice I often see communication for communication’s sake. Well, the results are far from sterling. If you get your strategic basics wrong, the coolest technology will not help your professional reputation. The challenge, therefore, is not to get carried away by the possibilities offered by innovation, but to harness this innovation in the achievement of your communication goals.

The role of professional bodies like the IABC is to drive forward innovative thinking in our profession. I see the upcoming EuroComm conference as one of the venues for this. One of the good things at these conferences is the possibility of getting together with like-minded professionals from throughout the region and even from other continents. As a volunteer leader of IABC this lets me stay in touch to the association’s members and reminds me of the importance of the human element in communication.

I hope to see you all in Barcelona.

Velin Velkov is the IABC Europe & Middle East Chairman and the Communications Manager in SAP Research, Heidelberg, Germany.