Two “C” Framework: Content and Credibility
This essay is built upon a relatively parsimonious model to explain the opportunity for the strengthening and advancement of professional communications education. It has been prepared, in part, for a course taught at the graduate level, to integrated marketing students. The objective of the essay is to engage the students in a dialogue on why communications is a critical factor in business and other organizations.
The model is offered to create a possible new “unique strategic position” (new USP) for that would integrate the best traditions of the School toward a newer substantive educational future.
The report asks the general question: Can the unique values and skills of academic journalism developed nearly 100 years ago be established, sustained and celebrated more formally in non-journalism based or non-news organizations?
The model shows what unique value journalism can offer by demonstrating its ability to produce viable content in all forms of new media channels. It also demonstrates how to produce credible content that will appeal to students and to the managers of their hiring organizations.
The essay examines the decline in traditional journalism content sources and explores how content can be provided to serve the public through an increasing number of non-journalism channels and organizations. The report notes the recent research surveys from the Pew Foundation and Edelman Communications and others that demonstrate the fluctuating and nearly incredible loss of credibility over the past decade in public and private institutions.
The report asks three specific, researchable questions:
1. Can the large volume of information content formerly produced by journalists be created by a new generation of educated professionals?
2. Can future information content strengthened with journalistic standards be offered in non-journalism/press organizations?
3. Can “credible content” become an educational goal for a non-news degree?
The logic for new journalistic laws applied in non-journalistic organizations derives from Sir Isaac Asminov’s extraordinarily logical “First of law of Robots”. Introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", the “Laws”:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
An alternative set of laws may be established:
Now, the First Law of the New Degree (with apologies to Isaac Asimov)
#1. An organizational journalist may not actively provide content that is not credible or through inaction allow content that is not credible to be communicated.
#2. An organizational journalist must adhere to the policies of their organization and orders except where such policies and orders would conflict with the first law.
#3. An organizational journalist must protect his or her own journalistic reputation as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law
he
First “C”: Content
The first issue of “who will provide content” is a contemporary issue that is argued by surviving members of the press, by researchers in the automated delivery of journalism, by journalism educators and by investors in new media systems.
For example, the well publicized “test” announced October 16 2009 by the Chicago Tribune of the value of the AP wire service, the sharing of stories and content across an Ohio network of newspapers and media as suggest that content supply and demand are in flux(Owen Youngman). If a precipitous decline in the numbers of traditional news hunters and gatherers means a relative decline in content; then new sources for news content, information and even entertainment content will have to be developed, staffed and supported. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/oct/16/bsiness/chicago-tribune-ap-oct16u
The new content may be needed for the rapidly increasing numbers of newer channels of communications. However, while traditional journalistic channels are dying in some countries, they are growing rapidly in others such as China. The growth and demand for content includes the growth of advertising and public relations to feed the dragon...http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703816204574485044128954298.html
Whether traditional journalism is dying or just changing in some economies, the demand for original content and new communication pipelines may be expected to outstrip the ability of even traditional journalistic content providers to have created and disseminated information. Journalism has always adapted to the demand for information by expanding it sources, using websites as sources and relying on other professionals for information.
Journalism has always been an experimenter in new media as has public relationsTechnology Shifts
• From broadsheets, to tabloid to newspapers and back to tabloid
• From paper to computer screens to digital readers
• From print to electronic to digital
• From print to sound to video to digital forms
• From community to national to global and back to community
A somewhat useful search of Google for November 4, 2009 locates 167,000 searches for the phrase “who will provide content”. The more serious uses of the phrase and the concept of content are identified in two following examples that 1. "operationalize" journalism as the professional provider of content and 2. "operationalize" public relations and corporate communications as professional careers providing content for multiple stakeholder organizations. . From a mirror perspective both fields have served the public and their audiences with credible communication standards.
Paul Gillin wrote about the future of journalism in a world the role of journalists will be substantially pared: “For one thing, the craft of journalism will evolve to include far more aggregation and organization than it has in the past. Editors will assemble their reports from a vast library of resources located across the Internet. Information will come from paid staff writers, others from freelancers and still more from reports and opinions published by independent third parties. Editors will still have a critical role, but their value will increasingly be in assembling and organizing information for readers who don’t have the time to sort through the vast Web”.http://paulgillin.com/gillin/how-the-coming-newspaper-industry-collapse-will-reinvent-journalism/
The future of the creation and dissemination of content was also described by Gillian under the title which parallels the work of this report as “How the Coming Newspaper Industry Collapse Will Reinvent Journalism”
Gillian wrote that “Editorial content is outsourced to an army of individual enthusiasts, former journalists working for a wide range of organizations and bloggers who find interesting information on the Web or original information from organizations and feed it to the site operators. Editorial expenses, which account for about a third of the operating costs of a daily newspaper, are practically zero”.
What Gillian misses in both his creative predictions is the logical placement of traditional journalists and new journalists into a wide range of organizations from hospitals, to NGOs, to churches, to government and politics to the largest potential content provider - business. His “third party” journalists may be former journalists and new crops of young journalist able and willing to deliver content from their catbird seat in many legitimate organizations with huge quantities of digital information to share for free. His editors in surviving journalistic pipelines may be charged with determining the credibility of the content of the wider and wider range of content providers (rather than simply tossing the past high percent of public relations generated content. http://paulgillin.com/gillin/how-the-coming-newspaper-industry-collapse-will-reinvent-journalism/
The content provider issue is on-going. Even the decline of reporting on business by the press was illustrated by David Carr’s November 1 and 2, 2009 stories in the New York Times:
“Fortune magazine had already cut back to 18 issues a year from 25 and this week will be whacking anew at staff along with other Time Inc. magazines. BusinessWeek was sold for parts to Bloomberg a few weeks ago.”
“Instead, Forbes, a magazine that sells a beau idéal of capitalism, announced last week that it was cutting a quarter of its already decimated staff. The Wall Street Journal’s Boston bureau — historically a hothouse of game-changing business coverage — is being closed.”
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/the-media-equation-no-rally-for-business-media/?pagemode=print, http://bx.businessweek.com/magazine-industry/business-is-a-beat-deflated/6777786051928429494-75b532ee469e37c690aac826af91df26/
A practical example may also suggest that “assisted” traditional media 2009 is an important trend for public relations. . Lindsey Miller reporting for a PR newsletter (Ragan) notes that the shortage of journalists in traditional media may have opened opportunities for PR:
‘While you’ve been off discovering the latest trends in social media, your local newspapers, TV, and radio stations have been laying people off. That puts you, the corporate communicator, in line to give them an extra hand while getting the exposure you need.
“They (TV and newspapers) don't have any reporters anymore,” said Rhonda Mann, Beth Israel’s director of marketing communications, at the recent Mayo Clinic-Ragan Social Media Summit. “In Boston, everyone has laid off writing staff, but they still have columns to fill or airtime to fill, and they need content.”
Mann has used that reality to her advantage: She’s given stations much-needed health content in return for the hospital’s name mentioned on the show. Mann knew that Boston’s Fox affiliate cut almost all of its morning show writers but still had a four-hour morning show to fill… “They’re looking for good health content. There’s a need for health because a lot of the first people laid off covered a beat, health in particular,” Mann said.’ http://www.ragan.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=5AA50C55146B4C8C98F903986BC02C56&tier=4&id=4617815D2F4040EBA594436E71B6BADC&AudID=3FF14703FD8C4AE98B9B4365B978201A
The diminished source of traditional journalism content could be augmented with content information from NGOs, healthcare, government, business, religion, military, education, investors, communities, and many serious issue related organizations. The challenge does not appear to be our society’s ability to simply provide content. The credibility of organizational content may be a greater challenge.
It is clear that content is of important value to the future of our society. The source of the content may widely fluctuate from traditional sources lead by the press and journalists, but providing content is not enough.
The future of meaningful content provided by professional sources depends not just on its distribution but its credibility. It may be clear that journalism can provide content. The challenge that the Asimovian rules state at the beginning of the report is to provide both content and credibility
Second “C”: Credibility
In the past decade most of our cherished institutions have lost their credibility as defined by trust (Edelman Trust Barometer) or according to the public view (Pew Research). There are a number of views of the importance of the survival of the same set of organizations whether they 1. challenge the public’s trust in key institutions and demand new communications and behavior, 2. open doors for Medill students and faculty to apply journalistic values and skills in a wider range of stakeholder organizations and 3. constitute a shift in the power of new “estates” beyond the simpler 4th estate model where credible content is needed to reestablish the credibility of our basic institutions. The institutions and common controversial issues include:
• Religion (Catholic priest behavior, Christian fundamentalism politics),
• Government, (sexual behavior of members of Congress and President Clinton,
• Employees (unemployment, entitlement values)
• Consumers (economic failures, housing crisis)
• Investors (Wall Street, executive compensation, fraud)
• Labor (automotive industry, retraining)
• Healthcare (national healthcare debate, fraud)
• Media (accuracy, Pew studies of trust)
• Universities (public/private school tuition raises, clout, Innocence Project)
• Arts (MCA board donation controversy in Chicago, economic failure of theaters)
• NGOs (highest ratings)
• Others
For over a decade the Edelman Communications agency has produced the Edelman Trustbarometer. The reliable research global surveys have established strong metrics for following the “ups and downs” of the public’s faith in a wide range of institutions. For example in July 2009 Edelman reported that 48% of U.S. respondents were affirmative on the question of “How much do you trust business to do what is right?” While the number suggests that there is great room to improve it was a 12% increase over the number reported only 6 months prior. The numbers for Government were 30% in January and 42% in July for the same question. NGOs, on the other hand, scored the highest with young and older members of the world public. The work is worth greater reporting detail. (see charts and www.edelman.com/trustbarometer).
Another series of well known and substantial surveys from the Pew Research Center confirms the general premise of this report: “Americans express increasingly negative views of a wide range of major institutions, reflecting strong discontent with national conditions (October 25, 1 2005). The series of studies are naturally more policy oriented. They confirm, again, the general decline in what can be translated to represent a precipitous loss of credibility in our institutions (stakeholders). http://www.people-press.org.
The data (appendix) raises an important question about how to improve the public’s view of a wide range of organizations. Called by a range of terms depending on the viewer these stakeholders, organizations, institutions and even “estates” are critical to the professional career future of university students, teachers, administrators and staff.
Some observers consider the loss of credibility* or trust as merely a “PR” problem. The statement is like the proclamation of a mining official attributing a labor strike and threats of death to both the management and labor and gun shots as a “PR problem” (Fortune magazine over 30 years ago).
A more recent link to a story on Medellin Columbia was titled: Aint No Way to Go: Just a PR Problem
But Medellin isn't just any beautiful city. It is variously known as the world's "murder capital," "cocaine capital," and "kidnap capital. ...www.aintnowaytogo.com/medellin.htm
Obviously, these institutions have more serious issues. It might be naïve, but even the most outspoken critic of public relations can hardly logically blame a single professional field for the errors in judgment or corruption of the leadership of many of the world’s leading institutions (so, it might be very naïve). However, academic and practitioner public relations professionals still realize that the acronym PR is not the most popular or accepted professional term. The legally required use of the words “public information” rather than PR (U.S. federal government), strategic communications (Columbia School of Continuing Education), public affairs (YUM! Brands, Abbott) is tantamount to disavowal of the term public relations (PRSA).http://archive.corporatewatch.org/newsletter/issue19/newsletter19.pdf.pdf
Not all authors or organizations in the field have denied their roots. The field of public relations is defined by Caywood as “the profitable integration of an organization’s new and continuing relationships with stakeholders including customers by managing all communication contacts with the organization that create and protect the brand and reputation of the organization:. “Caywood, 1997 (Kindle Edition 2009) and “Public relations helps an organization and its publics
adapt mutually to each other.” PRSA.org 2009,)...
Clearly the value that PR proffers is to build two and multiple-way relationships between key institutional stakeholders such as: consumers, NGOs, employees, investors, community, government, press, religion, labor, competitors, suppliers, education and others (See Caywood in Calder, 2008 and Caywood 1997.) The stakeholder illustration below lists the range of stakeholder organizations that may have a “stake” in the success or failure of universities' offering a new degree. The list can be expanded to include departments and many more organizations.
Public relations like marketing, law and community organizing are often criticized for their advocacy of a single (one-way) point of view. However, the research and values of modern public relations and organizational communications has established the honest broker, exchange, credible, ethical and two-way and mutual exchange nature of the relationship. (Grunig et al. 1992 Excellence).
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Preview of JIMC essay
For 20 years the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications has been the policy, strategy and tactics voice of the Medill School’s Department of Integrated Marketing Communications. The JIMC has been supported by thousands of hours of volunteer time by IMC students and nearly 200 authors to produce its annual content. It has also been supported by more than 500 graduate students who raised more than a quarter of million dollars to fund 90% of the cost of the Journal’s publication. Over the last two decades, the distribution and readership have grown to a total of nearly eighty thousand.
IMC faculty are strengthening the communications standards of graduate (and now undergraduate) IMC education at Northwestern. The core graduate classes such as marketing are requiring that the graduate student be as strong in rigorous research methods (statistically analytical as well as ethnographically precise) as they are in persuasively communicating the results or interpretation of the research.
With this celebration comes a warning that the cost of graduate professional education may be exceeding its value and benefit to some students. My concern is not as a naysayer but as a professor concerned that the rapidly increasing tuition and total costs of graduate education are rapidly exceeding the value to the student of earning an advanced degree in management, journalism, law, education, IMC and other fields.
Of course the decision of the value of earning an advanced degree belongs to the student - not to the school. However, some schools need to reexamine the marginal costs of earning a degree from their programs. A recent article in The Economist (October 17th 2009) noted that, for the elite school MBA, “(t)he long term benefits sound substantial…But the short-term costs are also weighty.” The Economist concludes that “on balance, the benefits probably outweigh the cost, particularly in straitened times”. What The Economist surprisingly missed is even a rudimentary effort to help a student decision-maker to calculate the short-term and lifetime costs and benefits of an advanced degree. Ironically,the same skills to calculate the ROI are taught to our IMC students and many MBA students. However the corporate teaching does not offer a personal tool or widget for a student to “run the numbers”. I will quote a new graduate professional student from a midwestern public school that I spoke with recently. After I asked him if he had calculated the cost and value of his degree, he responded, “No, I assumed that a prestigious university and school would not offer a degree that was not economically viable”. His comment cut to the quick.
We should be terribly concerned for the future of colleges and universities that are either private or “pubvate” (historically public state universities embarrassingly nearly unfunded by state taxpayer dollars). The cost of education at a 6% increase for many years for my grandchildren or your children may well exceed any rational logic of earning an advanced degree or, even more frighteningly, an undergraduate degree. The necessary formula for a student to make an informed decision is on this blog as a “return-on-investment calculator. Of course educators and economists have long demonstrated the long-term value of graduate education. However, I don’t believe these generalized models are specific enough to permit a student to estimate the actual and expected costs for their decision. My colleague Jim Carey and I offer the interactive tool with the hope that students will find it useful to make a specific decision about a full-time or part-time advanced degree.
My confidence in the next generation is often stronger than my confidence in my own generation of educators and leaders who seem so dutifully wedded to the past trappings of higher education. We seem to still see the Gothic towers, large, tiered lecture halls, book driven libraries, full-time degrees, country club campuses, entertainment, upscale living units, restaurants and super sports for alumni as core purposes of an antiquated educational model.
I should probably leave my concerns to the next generation of university students, leaders and faculty in hopes that they will consider more part-time degrees, challenging digital distance learning and other learning and delivery systems. However, I don’t want to be worrying about this topic when I author the publisher’s essay for the JIMC’s 40th anniversary edition. Finally, for 2009 and 2010, please follow my best advice: Hire my students!
IMC faculty are strengthening the communications standards of graduate (and now undergraduate) IMC education at Northwestern. The core graduate classes such as marketing are requiring that the graduate student be as strong in rigorous research methods (statistically analytical as well as ethnographically precise) as they are in persuasively communicating the results or interpretation of the research.
With this celebration comes a warning that the cost of graduate professional education may be exceeding its value and benefit to some students. My concern is not as a naysayer but as a professor concerned that the rapidly increasing tuition and total costs of graduate education are rapidly exceeding the value to the student of earning an advanced degree in management, journalism, law, education, IMC and other fields.
Of course the decision of the value of earning an advanced degree belongs to the student - not to the school. However, some schools need to reexamine the marginal costs of earning a degree from their programs. A recent article in The Economist (October 17th 2009) noted that, for the elite school MBA, “(t)he long term benefits sound substantial…But the short-term costs are also weighty.” The Economist concludes that “on balance, the benefits probably outweigh the cost, particularly in straitened times”. What The Economist surprisingly missed is even a rudimentary effort to help a student decision-maker to calculate the short-term and lifetime costs and benefits of an advanced degree. Ironically,the same skills to calculate the ROI are taught to our IMC students and many MBA students. However the corporate teaching does not offer a personal tool or widget for a student to “run the numbers”. I will quote a new graduate professional student from a midwestern public school that I spoke with recently. After I asked him if he had calculated the cost and value of his degree, he responded, “No, I assumed that a prestigious university and school would not offer a degree that was not economically viable”. His comment cut to the quick.
We should be terribly concerned for the future of colleges and universities that are either private or “pubvate” (historically public state universities embarrassingly nearly unfunded by state taxpayer dollars). The cost of education at a 6% increase for many years for my grandchildren or your children may well exceed any rational logic of earning an advanced degree or, even more frighteningly, an undergraduate degree. The necessary formula for a student to make an informed decision is on this blog as a “return-on-investment calculator. Of course educators and economists have long demonstrated the long-term value of graduate education. However, I don’t believe these generalized models are specific enough to permit a student to estimate the actual and expected costs for their decision. My colleague Jim Carey and I offer the interactive tool with the hope that students will find it useful to make a specific decision about a full-time or part-time advanced degree.
My confidence in the next generation is often stronger than my confidence in my own generation of educators and leaders who seem so dutifully wedded to the past trappings of higher education. We seem to still see the Gothic towers, large, tiered lecture halls, book driven libraries, full-time degrees, country club campuses, entertainment, upscale living units, restaurants and super sports for alumni as core purposes of an antiquated educational model.
I should probably leave my concerns to the next generation of university students, leaders and faculty in hopes that they will consider more part-time degrees, challenging digital distance learning and other learning and delivery systems. However, I don’t want to be worrying about this topic when I author the publisher’s essay for the JIMC’s 40th anniversary edition. Finally, for 2009 and 2010, please follow my best advice: Hire my students!
Friday, October 2, 2009
Teaching communications in MBA programs may be moot
Reference to debate over more PR being taught in MBA programs athttp://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/comments/pr_education_a_most_un_businesslike_proposition1/
This is one of the longest discussions we have had on the evergreen topic. Given the economic realities of the market and the cost of education; I will argue that we may be too late to even include communications in business schools. First, I have some history for you.
Our A.W. Page B-School Committee has debated the topic for over a decade with all the frustrations demonstrated above. At a personal level most of you know that I moved from teaching at the Business School at Wisconsin-Madison to the Medill School of Journalism. With a joint doctorate in Business Management and in Journalism Mass Communications (PR and Advertising and similar joint undergraduate work), I was recruited to teach graduate PR, marketing and management. Our goal was to create the new Integrated Marketing Communications program in response to chaos in the industry and in Schools of Journalism and Communications. We knew that we could offer the best of a business management degree since we had been on the campus long before Kellogg and could make an agreement to use communications as the strategic field of study. We received a great deal of valued publicity when our work was attacked by the biggest academic names in Communications and PR for “getting in bed with marketing”.
We have not looked back since that time and have given students tremendous opportunities to use communications as a strategic advantage in business and complex organizations. Our agreement with the Kellogg School of Management (including joint appointments for IMC faculty there and in Engineering) have given our students a competitive advantage. Our students are “terminal degree” candidates with business and political experience like MBAs who don’t want to use the masters as a pre-doctoral degree. At Medill IMC we now offer a program for undergraduates in IMC with PR since Kellogg does not have an undergraduate degree (they have a very small certificate program for some undergrads).
However, in the business schools and other professional schools; the issue has dramatically changed. The private schools may face the issue of “return-on-investment” for a professional graduate degree not being worth the risk. Even the “pubvate” schools (a term for public schools that are no longer substantially supported by state aid) are raising tuition and fees more rapidly than the private schools. The issue is compounded the failure of state taxpayers and legislators to support higher education but to still muddle in the work of the university. For example, only 20% of the support for the University of Ilinois-Urbana is from state funding. The private schools like Northwestern consider all pubvates direct competitors for federal money, grants, alumni dollars, tuition. At many private schools and increasing numbers of pubvates tuition costs for an MBA or IMC degree exceed a reasonable payback period. I am developing a website “widget” for students to calculate before returning to school the real costs and benefits of a professional graduate degree. The breakeven point on the degree can be over a decade which means that many students may never pay back the degree costs from their career income. They also still have loans outstanding from their undergraduate work which I do not challenge with the ROI message. While education has some non-fiscal values, we are asking the same questions that allowed the preparation of economic impact and social impact statements on national and state legislation. My preliminary conclusions are that the only business related graduate degree that has a potentially positive ROI is a part-time degree that allows the student to work and avoid the opportunity costs of leaving their income producing job.
We can worry about communications being a critical function in business (and I agree) but the key issues are whether your companies will 1. support education and training for your employees, 2. how students can repay outrageous business degree costs (compared to your degree costs many years ago), 3. support higher wages for professional degree holder from MBA and IMC programs to get the talent you want, 4. support extensive research (not just case studies) on the real value of communications in business decision-making, crisis management, political risks to business, etc.
By Clarke L. Caywood, Ph.D. on October, 02 2009
This is one of the longest discussions we have had on the evergreen topic. Given the economic realities of the market and the cost of education; I will argue that we may be too late to even include communications in business schools. First, I have some history for you.
Our A.W. Page B-School Committee has debated the topic for over a decade with all the frustrations demonstrated above. At a personal level most of you know that I moved from teaching at the Business School at Wisconsin-Madison to the Medill School of Journalism. With a joint doctorate in Business Management and in Journalism Mass Communications (PR and Advertising and similar joint undergraduate work), I was recruited to teach graduate PR, marketing and management. Our goal was to create the new Integrated Marketing Communications program in response to chaos in the industry and in Schools of Journalism and Communications. We knew that we could offer the best of a business management degree since we had been on the campus long before Kellogg and could make an agreement to use communications as the strategic field of study. We received a great deal of valued publicity when our work was attacked by the biggest academic names in Communications and PR for “getting in bed with marketing”.
We have not looked back since that time and have given students tremendous opportunities to use communications as a strategic advantage in business and complex organizations. Our agreement with the Kellogg School of Management (including joint appointments for IMC faculty there and in Engineering) have given our students a competitive advantage. Our students are “terminal degree” candidates with business and political experience like MBAs who don’t want to use the masters as a pre-doctoral degree. At Medill IMC we now offer a program for undergraduates in IMC with PR since Kellogg does not have an undergraduate degree (they have a very small certificate program for some undergrads).
However, in the business schools and other professional schools; the issue has dramatically changed. The private schools may face the issue of “return-on-investment” for a professional graduate degree not being worth the risk. Even the “pubvate” schools (a term for public schools that are no longer substantially supported by state aid) are raising tuition and fees more rapidly than the private schools. The issue is compounded the failure of state taxpayers and legislators to support higher education but to still muddle in the work of the university. For example, only 20% of the support for the University of Ilinois-Urbana is from state funding. The private schools like Northwestern consider all pubvates direct competitors for federal money, grants, alumni dollars, tuition. At many private schools and increasing numbers of pubvates tuition costs for an MBA or IMC degree exceed a reasonable payback period. I am developing a website “widget” for students to calculate before returning to school the real costs and benefits of a professional graduate degree. The breakeven point on the degree can be over a decade which means that many students may never pay back the degree costs from their career income. They also still have loans outstanding from their undergraduate work which I do not challenge with the ROI message. While education has some non-fiscal values, we are asking the same questions that allowed the preparation of economic impact and social impact statements on national and state legislation. My preliminary conclusions are that the only business related graduate degree that has a potentially positive ROI is a part-time degree that allows the student to work and avoid the opportunity costs of leaving their income producing job.
We can worry about communications being a critical function in business (and I agree) but the key issues are whether your companies will 1. support education and training for your employees, 2. how students can repay outrageous business degree costs (compared to your degree costs many years ago), 3. support higher wages for professional degree holder from MBA and IMC programs to get the talent you want, 4. support extensive research (not just case studies) on the real value of communications in business decision-making, crisis management, political risks to business, etc.
By Clarke L. Caywood, Ph.D. on October, 02 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Welcome to Chinese CEO Club
Welcome to Northwestern University and one of the classrooms that you will be visiting this week. My colleagues and I at Northwestern welcome you to one of the key centers of management, marketing and business education in the United States. For most of your time in Chicago you will be with your own classmates, but we will bring you together as we are doing this morning to listen to our most senior and prestigious faculty. For several business visits you will be with your classmates but for a unique visit to the Chicago Stock Exchange, a brand new opportunity to visit Navistar Headquarters who make international harvester trucks. You will hear from a manager Mr. Zheng on .....issues of world finance. You will also be together for a special wine party with several luxury stores including Louis Vitton and a Rolex jewelry store in a world class shopping mall.
During the week you will also visit Motorola for a meeting with their leadership as well as the world's largest publicly traded distribution company Grainger. There will be some variation in your You will be with Don Schultz this morning. Don Schultz who has been called been called one of the emperors of branding in a recent book featuring his work and the father of integrated marketing communications will speak with you this morning. Don has traveled all over the world and much of China.
You will discuss consumer marketing issues with Professor Bobby Calder from the Kellogg School of Management. Professor Calder is the author editor of a new book Kellogg on Advertising and Media and also the academic genius behind one of the most commonly used management and marketing research techniques -focus groups.
Using extremely productive Kellogg and Harvard cases you will be lead by Department Chairman in Kellogg and Professor Paul Hirsh. All our faculty including me have spent significant time teaching at EMBA programs in China, Asia and the rest of the world. I have taught MBA and IMC students for 30 years. While much of my work has been with business to business issues I also appear on television to speak about politics in the U.S. and the implications of politics and business.
During your visit to Chicago (how many of you is this the first time in Chicago) you will visit our beautiful new city park, take a boat tour to see our newest and historical skyscrapers, We will take you on a tour of our campus. NU is ranked one of the top dozen universities in the U.S. for undergraduates but we rank number one in many fields including Business, fields of engineering,theater, journalism, IMC. We know that you will want to come back to Chicago for the 2016 Olympics (we will know the city on Friday). We have many more corporations to visit, many more world class faculty and much, much more to see and eat.
During the week you will also visit Motorola for a meeting with their leadership as well as the world's largest publicly traded distribution company Grainger. There will be some variation in your You will be with Don Schultz this morning. Don Schultz who has been called been called one of the emperors of branding in a recent book featuring his work and the father of integrated marketing communications will speak with you this morning. Don has traveled all over the world and much of China.
You will discuss consumer marketing issues with Professor Bobby Calder from the Kellogg School of Management. Professor Calder is the author editor of a new book Kellogg on Advertising and Media and also the academic genius behind one of the most commonly used management and marketing research techniques -focus groups.
Using extremely productive Kellogg and Harvard cases you will be lead by Department Chairman in Kellogg and Professor Paul Hirsh. All our faculty including me have spent significant time teaching at EMBA programs in China, Asia and the rest of the world. I have taught MBA and IMC students for 30 years. While much of my work has been with business to business issues I also appear on television to speak about politics in the U.S. and the implications of politics and business.
During your visit to Chicago (how many of you is this the first time in Chicago) you will visit our beautiful new city park, take a boat tour to see our newest and historical skyscrapers, We will take you on a tour of our campus. NU is ranked one of the top dozen universities in the U.S. for undergraduates but we rank number one in many fields including Business, fields of engineering,theater, journalism, IMC. We know that you will want to come back to Chicago for the 2016 Olympics (we will know the city on Friday). We have many more corporations to visit, many more world class faculty and much, much more to see and eat.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Welcome to the Graduate Class of 2010 Medill IMC Northwestern
As a member of the faculty, I have been welcoming you and your peers since 1989. My reason for coming to Northwestern was to build the new IMC program with my senior colleagues Martin Block, Ted Spiegel, Don Schultz and Paul Wang. Other faculty who are retired still advise us including Emeritus Professor Ray Ewing. Ray thankfully thought that I would be a good addition to Medill with my recent joint doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in both Business and in Mass Communications (PR and Advertising). Having taught marketing communications in schools of business, I was anxious to show students and business leaders that a program in marcom rather than only a single course would be of great value to them.
It is still our goal with new full-time faculty including senior faculty Frank Mulhern, Ed Malthouse,n to educate and train each class of this successful program that Kalyan Rama will allow you to lead in businesses and other organizations with your knowledge and skills in strategic communications. I will talk about our next generation, extremely gifted junior faculty in a forthcoming blog. No MBA candidate in the current class of 110,000 for 2010 or in past classes will have as much knowledge of business and strategic communications. No MBA will have as much knowledge of both customer purchase behavior databases and stakeholder databases of quotes, comments and promises as you will have in the next 15 months and 25 years.
I suggest that you consider some resources as part of your weekly personal assignment. And, I suggest that you write to as many of your colleagues from work, your classmates, family and friends in business to tell them where you are, what you are doing and when you will graduate. Share websites,articles, lecture notes or quotes with them over the next 15 months so they can help you handle the stress of graduate school and find job opportunities for you.
1. Consider the reading room in Medill for old fashioned "ink on paper" newspapers but use our IMC reading room, the computer station there or your laptop for current trade publications in IMC including public relations, advertising, direct marketing, interactive marketing, marketing and more.
2. Use the wwww.prsa.org website for professional activities and job advice
3. Monitor this blog site IMCProf for IMC insights or Twitter "IMCProf" for more of my comments on IMC and life.
4. Sign-up today on www.linkedin.com and the IMC community on that site to maximize job and internship opportunities.
5. Read www.culprit.com, and www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/ for top notch comments on the state of marcom and PR.
6. Go to www.awpagesociety.com, www.prsa.org, http://www.instituteforpr.org/, http://www.prfirms.org/, http://www.iabc.com/, http://www.prsa.org/JobCenter, http://www.prquickstart.org/, http://www.vss.com/ more to come
7. Watch the development of the new Integrated Marketing Communications Association (you are automatically members) by following their first summit on IMC and Branding at www.GBSconference.com
8. Consider reading the books of your faculty on display in the glass case of IMC. We are a prolific faculty worth reading.
9. Work to create an IMC social action program (volunteers) to help others around the world while you are here. Take a look at www.aidmatrix.org as a possibility.
10. Sign-up for the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications. It is the most successful, longest running independent IMC student program involving the greatest number of students. Be sure to attend the 2010 JIMC "launch" this Fall.
Welcome to Northwestern University, Medill and IMC. More to come.
It is still our goal with new full-time faculty including senior faculty Frank Mulhern, Ed Malthouse,n to educate and train each class of this successful program that Kalyan Rama will allow you to lead in businesses and other organizations with your knowledge and skills in strategic communications. I will talk about our next generation, extremely gifted junior faculty in a forthcoming blog. No MBA candidate in the current class of 110,000 for 2010 or in past classes will have as much knowledge of business and strategic communications. No MBA will have as much knowledge of both customer purchase behavior databases and stakeholder databases of quotes, comments and promises as you will have in the next 15 months and 25 years.
I suggest that you consider some resources as part of your weekly personal assignment. And, I suggest that you write to as many of your colleagues from work, your classmates, family and friends in business to tell them where you are, what you are doing and when you will graduate. Share websites,articles, lecture notes or quotes with them over the next 15 months so they can help you handle the stress of graduate school and find job opportunities for you.
1. Consider the reading room in Medill for old fashioned "ink on paper" newspapers but use our IMC reading room, the computer station there or your laptop for current trade publications in IMC including public relations, advertising, direct marketing, interactive marketing, marketing and more.
2. Use the wwww.prsa.org website for professional activities and job advice
3. Monitor this blog site IMCProf for IMC insights or Twitter "IMCProf" for more of my comments on IMC and life.
4. Sign-up today on www.linkedin.com and the IMC community on that site to maximize job and internship opportunities.
5. Read www.culprit.com, and www.edelman.com/speak_up/blog/ for top notch comments on the state of marcom and PR.
6. Go to www.awpagesociety.com, www.prsa.org, http://www.instituteforpr.org/, http://www.prfirms.org/, http://www.iabc.com/, http://www.prsa.org/JobCenter, http://www.prquickstart.org/, http://www.vss.com/ more to come
7. Watch the development of the new Integrated Marketing Communications Association (you are automatically members) by following their first summit on IMC and Branding at www.GBSconference.com
8. Consider reading the books of your faculty on display in the glass case of IMC. We are a prolific faculty worth reading.
9. Work to create an IMC social action program (volunteers) to help others around the world while you are here. Take a look at www.aidmatrix.org as a possibility.
10. Sign-up for the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications. It is the most successful, longest running independent IMC student program involving the greatest number of students. Be sure to attend the 2010 JIMC "launch" this Fall.
Welcome to Northwestern University, Medill and IMC. More to come.
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