Your PR Campaign is Too Short

Algorithms are faster—but also slower.

Cover photo: @jerrysilfwer

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Your PR cam­paign is prob­ably too short.

Many organ­isa­tions under­es­tim­ate how long it takes for cor­por­ate mes­saging to propag­ate through a population.

Information has many oppor­tun­it­ies to spread fast and wide through­out online social net­works, but the revolu­tion of algorithms has less to do with speed and breadth than many of us think.

Here we go:

The Glory Days of Mass Media

As mass media estab­lished dom­in­ance in the lat­ter half of the 20th cen­tury, edit­or­i­al pub­lish­ing was always a weak busi­ness mod­el. To mit­ig­ate this weak­ness, the mass media had to rely on vari­ous forms of advert­ising to enable their edit­or­i­al efforts.

There’s an inher­ent com­plex­ity to this rela­tion­ship. The mass media audi­ence wasn’t keen on pay­ing enough money for edit­or­i­al con­tent. Instead, they paid with anoth­er valu­able form of com­pens­a­tion — their attention.

Of course, edit­or­i­al out­lets had to trans­form the immense value of mass atten­tion some­how. And there was no short­age of spe­cial interests ready to pay for a slice of all that attention:

  • An organ­isa­tion, starved of atten­tion, trust, and loy­alty, is com­pelled to wage a per­petu­al struggle for its con­tin­ued existence.

So, the audi­ence pays for con­tent with their atten­tion, advert­isers pay for atten­tion with their money, and the edit­or­i­al out­let pays their staff with ad revenue.

In its not-so-mod­est Madison Avenue begin­nings, advert­ising had con­sid­er­able strengths as a busi­ness mod­el. Given the nature of mass media, huge audi­ences could be reached at any one time. It’s also reas­on­able to argue that tra­di­tion­al advert­ising had more prom­in­ent effects on the audi­ence back then.

It was a great time to advert­ise.
And PR was allowed to piggyback.

But noth­ing lasts forever.

The Advent of Network Propagation

Now, most of us have some sense of how events unfol­ded. With the advent of the digit­al era, our media land­scape under­went a fun­da­ment­al trans­form­a­tion. Anyone stuck in tra­di­tion­al busi­ness mod­els depend­ent on mass media is still strug­gling to find the right way to nego­ti­ate our many new online realities.

In this art­icle, I’d like to dir­ect your atten­tion to such a spe­cif­ic change — net­work propagation.

The basic com­mu­nic­a­tion mod­el describes a) the sender, b) the sig­nal, c) the medi­um, and d) the receiv­er. The idea of a con­sid­er­able time dis­place­ment between when the sig­nal is sent and received is not nov­el; many books are read even mil­len­nia after they were first cre­ated. But this dis­place­ment has rarely been a con­sid­er­able consideration.

For a long time through­out human his­tory, the time it has taken for sig­nals to propag­ate through­out a pop­u­la­tion has expo­nen­tially decreased due to ever more effi­cient means of medi­ation, from cave paint­ings and word-of-mouth by the camp­fire to glob­al mass media conglomerates.

The Power of Signal Propagation Delay

But this is where it gets com­plic­ated. With the inter­net, sig­nals were able to propag­ate faster than ever before. And any­one, not just mass media con­glom­er­ates, could sud­denly reach glob­al audi­ences at light speeds. But at this point, some­thing had to give.

Our men­tal band­width as humans is remark­able, but not without its lim­its. Also, our brains haven’t exactly evolved in tan­dem with our means of mediation.

Although rarely dis­cussed in such terms, the solu­tion to the prob­lem of lim­ited men­tal band­width and the explo­sion of avail­able sig­nals was noth­ing short of a revolu­tion. Human gate­keep­ers were replaced with algorithms. For whatever reas­on, mass media con­glom­er­ates refused to imple­ment algorithms, leav­ing the play­ing field open to algorithm-driv­en tech giants like Google (now Alphabet) and Facebook (now Meta).

But this is also where the time dis­place­ment between sent and received stopped propagat­ing expo­nen­tially. Instead, sig­nal propaga­tion rever­ted to a time of cave paint­ings and word-of-mouth by the campfire.

In crude terms, gate­keep­ers had the power to sort mes­sages but lacked the tech­no­logy to send sig­nals at points in time determ­ined by receiv­ers indi­vidu­ally. The mar­vel of algorithms is, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, not their abil­ity to sort sig­nals. Their revolu­tion­ary prowess stems from their abil­ity to delay mes­sages through­out social graphs. 1Signal propaga­tion delay. (2023, April 13). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​S​i​g​n​a​l​_​p​r​o​p​a​g​a​t​i​o​n​_​d​e​lay

Propagating Faster — and Slower

For a long time, sig­nals were con­tinu­ously spread­ing faster to lar­ger audi­ences. At the algorithmic break, sig­nals have learnt to wait patiently at nodes in a net­work before mov­ing along. Today, sig­nals can some­times move fast, some­times slow — and pass vari­ous socially con­struc­ted fil­ters, allow­ing an often uncanny tar­get­ing precision.

Even the algorithms them­selves have under­gone vari­ous evol­u­tions (such as the silent shift). But their net­worked nature estab­lishes new rules for suc­cess­fully propagat­ing tar­geted signals.

What does the time dis­place­ment of net­work propaga­tion mean for pub­lic rela­tions and mar­ket­ing? Well, for one thing — your cam­paigns are prob­ably too short today.

It’s a non-sequit­ur to say that sig­nals must propag­ate faster or slower today. A more pre­cise way of think­ing of net­work propaga­tion through online social net­works of algorithms is to real­ise that sig­nals are get­ting more effi­cient at tak­ing the time they need to propag­ate.

A Humility Check for Your PR Campaign

For cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions and mar­ket­ing, this should be a humil­ity check. A press release or an ad might be sig­ni­fic­ant to a spe­cif­ic audi­ence. In a wired world, such sig­nals stand a good chance of reach­ing their recip­i­ents even­tu­ally. How long this takes will be dic­tated by indi­vidu­al needs that might not fit with ambi­tious cor­por­ate timelines.

The out­come is straightforward:

Most PR cam­paigns today are way too short. They’re cre­ated based on the sender­’s needs in a media land­scape where propaga­tion is entirely dic­tated by the recip­i­ents’ needs.

Yes, the inter­net is “fast.” But rela­tion­ships take time to build. It takes time to shift per­cep­tions. Individual audi­ence mem­bers will only pro­cess your cor­por­ate mes­saging if or when they need them. And our brains have lim­ited bandwidths.

  • Despite the swift cur­rent of mod­ern tech­no­logy, the cul­tiv­a­tion of human rela­tion­ships remains anchored in the unhur­ried pas­sage of time.

Brands must be patient and have the struc­tur­al forti­tude to stay con­sist­ent for their PR mes­saging to propag­ate prop­erly and thor­oughly before jump­ing onto the next PR campaign.

Don’t go for a huge splash tomor­row.
Go for over-the-top rel­ev­ancy day-in and day-out.

Signature - Jerry Silfwer - Doctor Spin

Thanks for read­ing. Please sup­port my blog by shar­ing art­icles with oth­er com­mu­nic­a­tions and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als. You might also con­sider my PR ser­vices or speak­ing engage­ments.

PR Resource: The Silent Switch

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Algorithms: The Silent Switch

Not that long ago, social media algorithms would deliv­er organ­ic reach accord­ing to a dis­tri­bu­tion that looked like this:

The Silent Switch - Doctor Spin - The PR Blog.001
Social media algorithms before the silent switch (click to enlarge).

Today, social media algorithms deliv­er organ­ic reach more like this:

The Silent Switch - Doctor Spin - The PR Blog.002
Social media algorithms after the silent switch (click to enlarge).

It’s the Silent Switch where social net­works have demoted the pub­lish­er­’s author­ity and repu­ta­tion and pro­moted single con­tent per­form­ance instead.

This algorithmic change has likely had pro­found and severe media logic amplifications:

Classic Media Logic Effects

Media logic is hypo­thes­ised to influ­ence the news media in the fol­low­ing ways: 2Nord, L., & Strömbäck, J. (2002, January). Tio dagar som skakade världen. En stud­ie av medi­ernas beskrivningar av ter­ror­at­tack­erna mot USA och kri­get i Afghanistan hösten 2001. … Continue read­ing

  • Aggravation. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will exag­ger­ate events, con­cepts, and ideas to make them seem more ser­i­ous and/​or dan­ger­ous than they are.
  • Simplification. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will dumb down events, con­cepts, and ideas to make them seem more under­stand­able than they are.
  • Polarisation. Because of media logic, the news media por­trays events, con­cepts, and ideas as more conflicting/​provocative than they are.
  • Intensification. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will sen­sa­tion­al­ise events, con­cepts, and ideas to make them more inter­est­ing than they are.
  • Concreteness. Because of media logic, news media will report events, con­cepts, and ideas more straight­for­wardly than they are.
  • Personalisation. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will over-emphas­ise the role of named indi­vidu­als in con­junc­tion with events, con­cepts, and ideas.
  • Stereotypisation. Because of media logic, the news media frames events, con­cepts, and ideas as more aligned with con­ven­tion­al perceptions/​opinions than they are.

Social Media Logic Effects

  • Programmability. Social media logic enables and encour­ages users to cre­ate and manip­u­late con­tent, lead­ing to a tailored por­tray­al of events, con­cepts, and ideas that might not fully rep­res­ent reality.
  • Popularity. Driven by social media logic, con­tent that gains ini­tial pop­ular­ity can dis­pro­por­tion­ately influ­ence pub­lic per­cep­tion, regard­less of accur­acy or completeness.
  • Connectivity. Social medi­a’s inter­con­nec­ted nature, rein­forced by social media logic, facil­it­ates the rap­id spread of inform­a­tion, often without suf­fi­cient veri­fic­a­tion, lead­ing to a dis­tor­ted under­stand­ing of events and ideas.
  • Datafication. The social media logic of con­vert­ing inter­ac­tions into data points emphas­ises quan­ti­fi­able aspects of events, con­cepts, and ideas, poten­tially over­look­ing their qual­it­at­ive nuances.

Our job as PR pro­fes­sion­als is to help organ­isa­tions nav­ig­ate the media land­scape and com­mu­nic­ate more effi­ciently, espe­cially dur­ing times of change.

Learn more: The Silent Switch: How Algorithms Have Changed

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PR Resource: The 7 Graphs of Algorithms

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Types of Algorithm Graphs

Search engines, social net­works, and online ser­vices typ­ic­ally have a wealth of user data to optim­ise the user experience.

Here are examples of dif­fer­ent types of graphs that social media algorithms use to shape desired behaviours:

  • Social graph. The media com­pany can access your friend list and push their con­tent (or favoured con­tent) into your feed.
  • Interest graph. The media com­pany can access your interests (top­ics, per­sons of interest, dif­fi­culty level, format pref­er­ences, on-plat­form-spe­cif­ic beha­viours, etc.) from your usage history.
  • Predictive graph. The media com­pany can access all graphs from users not con­nec­ted to you but with whom you share a stat­ist­ic­al like­ness and show their pre­ferred con­tent to you.
  • Prescriptive graph. The media com­pany can push con­tent into your feed to manip­u­late your over­all emo­tion­al exper­i­ence when using the platform.
  • Trend graph. The media com­pany can push con­tent into your feed based on what seems to be trend­ing on the platform.
  • Contextual graph. The media com­pany can access con­tex­tu­al data like loc­a­tion, weath­er, cal­en­dar events, affil­i­ations, world events, and loc­al events.
  • Commercial graph. The media com­pany can access data on how you and oth­ers like you inter­act with com­mer­cial content.

The dif­fer­ent graphs are typ­ic­ally weighted dif­fer­ently. For instance, some media com­pan­ies allow a fair degree of social graph con­tent, while oth­ers offer almost none. Changes are con­stantly being enforced, and the silent switch might be the most not­able example of a media com­pany shift­ing away from the social graph. 3Silfwer, J. (2021, December 7). The Silent Switch — A Stealthy Death for the Social Graph. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​i​l​e​n​t​-​s​w​i​t​ch/

The media com­pany can lever­age these graphs using two main approaches:

  • Matching. The media com­pany can use vari­ous graphs to gen­er­ate your social feed. Depending on the com­plex­ity of the ana­lys­is, this approach is slow and expens­ive with react­ive (unpre­dict­able) results.
  • Profiling. The media com­pany can use vari­ous graphs to place you in stat­ist­ic­al sub­groups, allow­ing con­tent to iter­ate to the right audi­ence. This approach is fast and cheap with pro­act­ive (pre­dict­able) results.

Today, pro­fil­ing seems to be the dom­in­ant approach amongst media companies.

Learn more: The 7 Graphs of Algorithms: You’re Not Unknown

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PR Resource: The Anatomy of Attention

There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
— Oscar Wilde

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The Anatomy of Attention

Attention is an essen­tial com­pon­ent of pub­lic relations:

  • An organ­isa­tion, starved of atten­tion, trust, and loy­alty, is com­pelled to wage a per­petu­al struggle for its con­tin­ued existence.

And it’s not just organ­isa­tions. We all seem to crave atten­tion in some form or another:

People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

It’s fear of social isol­a­tion— and atten­tion star­va­tion.

But what con­sti­tutes ‘atten­tion’?

Attention is a com­plex, real neur­al archi­tec­ture (‘RNA’) mod­el that integ­rates vari­ous cog­nit­ive mod­els and brain cen­ters to per­form tasks like visu­al search.”
Source: Trends in cog­nit­ive sci­ences 4Shipp, S. (2004). The brain cir­cuitry of atten­tion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 223 – 230. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​t​i​c​s​.​2​0​0​4​.​0​3​.​004

Each of the below terms refers to a spe­cif­ic aspect or type of atten­tion (“men­tal band­width”), a com­plex cog­nit­ive pro­cess. 5Schweizer, K., Moosbrugger, H., & Goldhammer, F. (2005). The struc­ture of the rela­tion­ship between atten­tion and intel­li­gence. Intelligence, 33(6), 589 – 611. … Continue read­ing

Let’s explore dif­fer­ent types of attention:

  • Alertness. This is the state of being watch­ful and ready to respond. It’s the most basic form of atten­tion, rep­res­ent­ing our read­i­ness to per­ceive and pro­cess inform­a­tion from the environment.
  • Sustained atten­tion. This involves focus­ing on a spe­cif­ic task or stim­u­lus over a pro­longed peri­od. It’s cru­cial for tasks that require ongo­ing con­cen­tra­tion, like read­ing or driving.
  • Focused atten­tion. This refers to the abil­ity to con­cen­trate on one par­tic­u­lar stim­u­lus or task while ignor­ing oth­ers. It’s the abil­ity to focus nar­rowly on a single thing.
  • Attentional switch­ing. Also known as task switch­ing or cog­nit­ive flex­ib­il­ity, this involves shift­ing focus from one task to anoth­er. It’s crit­ic­al for mul­ti­task­ing and adapt­ing to chan­ging demands or priorities.
  • Divided atten­tion. This is the abil­ity to pro­cess two or more responses or react to mul­tiple tasks sim­ul­tan­eously. It’s often tested by ask­ing people to per­form two tasks sim­ul­tan­eously, like listen­ing to a con­ver­sa­tion while writing.
  • Attention accord­ing to the super­vis­ory atten­tion­al sys­tem. This concept, derived from cog­nit­ive psy­cho­logy, refers to a high­er-level con­trol sys­tem that reg­u­lates the alloc­a­tion of atten­tion, par­tic­u­larly in situ­ations requir­ing plan­ning or decision-making.
  • Attention as inhib­i­tion. This aspect of atten­tion involves sup­press­ing irrel­ev­ant or dis­tract­ing stim­uli. It’s a cru­cial com­pon­ent of focused atten­tion and self-regulation.
  • Spatial atten­tion. This type of atten­tion focuses on a spe­cif­ic area with­in the visu­al field. It’s like a spot­light that enhances inform­a­tion pro­cessing in a par­tic­u­lar location.
  • Attention as plan­ning. This per­spect­ive views atten­tion as a resource that needs to be alloc­ated effi­ciently, espe­cially in com­plex tasks requir­ing stra­tegic plan­ning and organization.
  • Interference. In the con­text of atten­tion, inter­fer­ence refers to the pro­cess by which irrel­ev­ant inform­a­tion or dis­trac­tions impede the effi­ciency of cog­nit­ive processing.
  • Attention as arous­al. This con­siders atten­tion in the con­text of the gen­er­al level of alert­ness or arous­al. It’s about the read­i­ness of the brain to engage with stim­uli or tasks.
  • Attention accord­ing to the assess­ment tra­di­tion. This refers to meas­ur­ing and eval­u­at­ing atten­tion­al pro­cesses, often in clin­ic­al or edu­ca­tion­al set­tings, to identi­fy atten­tion defi­cits or disorders.

Each type of atten­tion plays a cru­cial role in how we inter­act with and pro­cess inform­a­tion from our envir­on­ment, and under­stand­ing these dif­fer­ent aspects is key in fields like psy­cho­logy, neur­os­cience, and education.

Learn more: The Anatomy of Attention

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ANNOTATIONS
ANNOTATIONS
1 Signal propaga­tion delay. (2023, April 13). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​S​i​g​n​a​l​_​p​r​o​p​a​g​a​t​i​o​n​_​d​e​lay
2 Nord, L., & Strömbäck, J. (2002, January). Tio dagar som skakade världen. En stud­ie av medi­ernas beskrivningar av ter­ror­at­tack­erna mot USA och kri­get i Afghanistan hösten 2001. ResearchGate; Styrelsen för psyko­lo­giskt förs­var. https://​www​.researchg​ate​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​2​7​1​0​1​4​6​2​4​_​T​i​o​_​d​a​g​a​r​_​s​o​m​_​s​k​a​k​a​d​e​_​v​a​r​l​d​e​n​_​E​n​_​s​t​u​d​i​e​_​a​v​_​m​e​d​i​e​r​n​a​s​_​b​e​s​k​r​i​v​n​i​n​g​a​r​_​a​v​_​t​e​r​r​o​r​a​t​t​a​c​k​e​r​n​a​_​m​o​t​_​U​S​A​_​o​c​h​_​k​r​i​g​e​t​_​i​_​A​f​g​h​a​n​i​s​t​a​n​_​h​o​s​t​e​n​_​2​001
3 Silfwer, J. (2021, December 7). The Silent Switch — A Stealthy Death for the Social Graph. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​i​l​e​n​t​-​s​w​i​t​ch/
4 Shipp, S. (2004). The brain cir­cuitry of atten­tion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 223 – 230. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​t​i​c​s​.​2​0​0​4​.​0​3​.​004
5 Schweizer, K., Moosbrugger, H., & Goldhammer, F. (2005). The struc­ture of the rela­tion­ship between atten­tion and intel­li­gence. Intelligence, 33(6), 589 – 611. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​i​n​t​e​l​l​.​2​0​0​5​.​0​7​.​001
Jerry Silfwer
Jerry Silfwerhttps://doctorspin.net/
Jerry Silfwer, alias Doctor Spin, is an awarded senior adviser specialising in public relations and digital strategy. Currently CEO at Spin Factory and KIX Communication Index. Before that, he worked at Kaufmann, Whispr Group, Springtime PR, and Spotlight PR. Based in Stockholm, Sweden.
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The Cover Photo

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