Speech
Public Relations Institute Conference
I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand, in English, Māori, Cook Island Māori, Niuean, Tokelauan and New Zealand Sign Language. Greetings, Kia Ora, Kia Orana, Fakalofa Lahi Atu, Taloha Ni and as it is the morning (Sign)
I then specifically greet you: Graeme Purches, National President of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand and your fellow national executive members; Paul Dryden, Executive Director of the Institute and your fellow staff; Distinguished Guests otherwise; Ladies and Gentlemen.
Thank you for inviting me to attend the Annual Conference of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand here in Auckland this morning.
In preparing what I might say this morning, I turned naturally to the tag line of your conference, Taming the Tiger, which draws its name from this being the Chinese Year of the Tiger, the third animal in the Chinese Zodiac cycle.
If one goes online searching for the qualities of a person born in the Year of the Tiger, like all horoscopes, Chinese or otherwise, one is confronted with a diverse array of qualities, not all of them necessarily consistent. It is said, for example, that people born in the year of the Tiger can exhibit courage, vehemence, self-reliance, friendliness, hopefulness, resilience, vanity and disregard.
And so it seems to be with public relations. As the conference programme reveals, modern communication professionals have charge of many and varied “tigers” that need to be “tamed”. The issues vary from the hardy annuals of crisis management, maintenance of reputation, ethics and measuring the effectiveness of public relations initiatives through to emerging issues like social media and e-democracy to the complexities of doing business in Asia. No doubt it often seems instead of taming the tiger, you have literally got it by the tail and are experiencing the ride.
My comments this morning will touch, at least tangentially, on some of these topics. One of the tigers that I believe needs taming, or at the very least understanding, are some of the challenges and opportunities in our nation’s increasing diversity and the need for engagement with those communities. They are issues that might concern an audience of communication professionals and I will close with a challenge to you all.
Communication is something we all take for granted. Communication occurs consciously and directly, in conversations face-to-face, by telephone, by means of computer, and more indirectly in letters, reports and emails.
Communication also occurs, albeit less consciously, when we read, see or hear news stories or advertisements in the media or see billboards on the road. There are words on the clothes we wear and even on the biscuits we nibble at morning tea, and other food we eat. We have become, both literally and figuratively, “consumers” of communication.
Because we are constantly communicating, everyone considers themselves to be an expert. As “experts”—and I place the word in quotes here—many are ready and willing to proffer an opinion on what makes for good communication. The opinions are even quicker to fly when the communication in question is perceived to be poor.
And yet if we are all experts in communication, why is it that almost every report into a troubled organisation or report on some disaster that might befall a community reveals as a fundamental issue, a failing in communication?
Likewise, one hears regular complaints in the media from disgruntled members of the public or community groups, which a company, organisation or government agency has failed to communicate with them. Equally, one often hears in response, suggestions from the organisation accused of this failure, of having tried, sometimes valiantly, to communicate, only for their messages not to have been heard. The best example I can offer is how New Zealanders view the term “to flag” something compared with people from North America “flagging” something. This conundrum reminds me of the comment by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw who quipped: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
As communication professionals, you deal with these perplexing issues everyday. I am conscious I am only giving an opening address, and not undertaking a year long lecture tour, so I will avoid the temptation to go into too much detail! An enormous amount of academic literature has been generated on the complexities of communication and I will readily admit to not being an expert.
But suffice to say the reasons are many and varied and include the specific characteristics of those involved in communication, the ability of those involved in the communication to interact and the medium or media being used to communicate.
Throughout my career, I have seen New Zealand and New Zealanders in a great many settings. As a lawyer, judge or ombudsman, I freely admit that those associations frequently involved focusing on or resolving inherently negative matters and looking for the error, blemish, mistake or bad act. As a lawyer it was prosecuting or defending someone accused of a criminal offence. As a judge, presiding over trials and sentencing those convicted. As an ombudsman, it was attempting to mediate and resolve grievances between members of the public and governmental agencies whether to do with actions or provision of official information.
As Governor-General, my wife Susan and I have been privileged to see New Zealand and New Zealanders at their best. Whether it is in presenting New Zealand Honours or other awards or in visiting regions as diverse as Westland, Otago and Taranaki, from the smallest settlements to the main centres throughout the country, opening new hospitals and school facilities, we continue to be impressed by our meetings with New Zealanders from many walks of life.
What has also become readily apparent to me is how much New Zealand continues to change. The New Zealand and Auckland where I was born and grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, is not the same New Zealand that its people inhabit today.
New Zealanders are a highly literate rights conscious people and increasingly well-educated. According to the last Census, three-quarters of New Zealanders hold a qualification, with about 40 percent having gained their qualification after leaving secondary school. All these figures were significantly higher than they had been a decade earlier.
Not surprisingly, as a highly educated people, New Zealanders are also highly conscious of the world around them. We are avid readers of newspapers, books and other media and, despite our nation’s relative isolation, widely travelled as well. We are also being bombarded with messages from an increasingly diverse media. Many aged under 30 would be surprised to learn that until 1975 New Zealand had just one national television channel and just two until 1989.
New Zealanders have also been quick adopters of new technologies, whether it has been the microwave, eftpos or internet banking or the new means of communication. One only has to look at the technical skills portrayed in movies such as The Lord of the Rings to see New Zealanders’ abilities on display.
New Zealand has also become a substantially diverse nation, not only in culture and ethnicity, but as well as in religion and in our personal and family relationships.
Again, the last Census gives a window into some of those changes. For example, in 2006, almost 23 percent of those who call New Zealand home were born overseas, compared with 17 percent in 1996. A century ago, most of those overseas-born New Zealanders would have hailed from Britain or Ireland. In 2006, the proportion hailing from those isles, at 28.6 percent exactly equalled with those migrating from Asia. These figures are now four years old, but I think it unlikely there will be any reversal of these trends when the next census is held next year.
Likewise, if one looks at the data for religious adherence there is a similar story, with about 55 percent of New Zealanders describing themselves as Christians. Of those who say they are Christians, there is a greater diversity of belief systems represented, with increasing numbers of Orthodox, Evangelical and Pentecostal adherents.
Reflecting migration from Asia, the numbers of followers of Islam, Buddhism and Hindu religions has also increased. Equally as important, by rarely commented on in discussions about religion, are the number of people who profess no faith at all. This figure has steadily increased and now sits at more than a third of all New Zealanders.
The structure of families and of personal relationships has become equally diverse, with increased levels of divorce, single-parent families and blended families. Not all couples choose to marry. Some remain in de facto relationships and others, including same-sex couples, have chosen to enter civil unions. In many relationships with children, both partners are usually working.
These forces, and many others, have created communities than are increasingly heterogeneous, while through the use of communication technologies, people are forming communities that are based around shared interests rather than a shared geographical location. While they are different from the communities of the 1950s and 1960s, that does not make them any better or worse. Looking back at the past, it is so easy to see it with rose-tinted glasses. As the American writer Franklin Pierce Adams' wryly noted: "Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory."
So what does this all mean for professional communicators? For starters, it certainly has not made your work any easier! From a practical perspective, a modern public relations practitioner has to be adept at using a wide array of communication tools and tactics to ensure that your client’s message is heard. Social media—Facebook and Twitter—are not only new tools for staying in touch with friends, but are also posing many challenges, as New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff has noted in the media recently.
However, from a wider perspective, it also requires recognition that if there is to be effective two-way communication, different communities and cultural groups need to be engaged on their own terms. There also needs to be a recognition that with increasing numbers of New Zealanders for whom English is a second language, that the likelihood of confusion or misunderstanding increases exponentially. Ensuring that these divergent communities are engaged takes time, concerted effort and thinking outside one’s cultural comfort zone.
Ensuring effective communication also raises ethical issues. How ethical, for example, is it to distribute information about a client’s activity in English when it is known that significant parts of the community to be affected use that language as a second language?
As communicators, it is your role to represent your client’s interests. There are some practitioners who would argue that so long as they do not break the law, anything is fair game. This extreme point of view was bluntly put by a British practitioner in a 2005 article, Spinners or Sinners?:
“What public relations is actually all about (is) the advocacy and dissemination of the partisan viewpoints of those who engage our services, for the benefit of those who engage our services. We agree to use our expertise to promote the interests of our client – as ultimately defined by the client – within the parameters of the law, in exchange for which they compensate us.”
This view of public relations has often resulted in it being cast in a poor light with the term “spin doctor” readily springing to mind. Admittedly, a lot of the criticism of public relations comes from the news media, whose work is also often subject to criticism.
However, I would argue that as professionals—and in this I see much symmetry with my own career as a lawyer—there is a higher calling. An American public relations academic David Martinson noted a few years ago that if public relations practitioners were to claim the mantle of being professionals, they also had to accept the obligations and responsibilities that go with it. Martinson said: “Society grants professionals allowances to serve clients partially because genuine professionals in serving their clients partially also serve society generally. The professional by definition is much more than one who earns a salary by doing the client’s bidding.”
It is pleasing to see that this is a view of the work of the communications professional that is endorsed by the Institute. I understand that in 2005, PRINZ adopted the Global Alliance Protocol on Ethics and I note that your own Code states at the outset that:
“Public relations professionals use communications to develop or maintain trusting, productive relationships between our clients or employers and their stakeholders. We promote the views of those we represent to contribute to public debate and informed decision making in a democratic society.”
This is commendable and I in this context, I can note that New Zealanders are a people who are highly conscious of their rights. New Zealand has a proud history of democratic participation and longevity that few other nations can match. We also have a society, government and economy that international studies and surveys regularly describe as open, transparent and largely free of the corruption that blights some countries.
And just as our expectations as consumers of goods and services continue to rise, so too do our expectations relating to how businesses, organisations and government agencies communicate and engage with us. Poor communication like poor service will quickly be seized upon, and the next thing that will happen is that a client is being criticised in a blog, that is picked up by Facebook and it all spreads like wildfire—as many organisations have learnt to their cost.
I commend the Institute for its work to maintain high ethical standards and in its encouragement of professional development and education among public relations practitioners.
However, ensuring that a code of ethics is more than just words on paper—or a website—requires an ongoing commitment to the notion that being a professional involves giving more to the community than you might necessarily receive in return. As is the case with the exercise in taming the tiger, it is a life long commitment.
And thus on what I hope is a satisfying note of expectation and wishing you all the best for your conference, I will close in our country’s first language Māori, offering everyone greetings and wishing everyone good health and fortitude in your endeavours. No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tēnā koutou katoa.