Luke Armour – Digital Marketing and Public Relations Observations, Commentary, Frivolity

Trust and Control seem to be two major concepts that are affecting PR in a variety of fashions. Trust is defined (in part) on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as:

1 a : assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something b : one in which confidence is placed
2 a : dependence on something future or contingent

Control is defined (in part) by the M-W as:

1 a : an act or instance of controlling; also : power or authority to guide or manage b : skill in the use of a tool, instrument, technique, or artistic medium

• Edelman’s Feb. 9, 2006, earSHOT podcast goes into some detail about their global study which Richard Edelman posted about here (there are links to the study results, too on Richard’s blog). Trust and Control become two major issues that Richard focuses on.
• Tom Murphy posted about Don’t Panic‘s “Delivering the New PR” conference in Manchester this February. Tom raises the issue of losing some control.
• My recent post about Lego is about control. The Blog Run summarizes the issue pretty well.

My favorite part of this ongoing process is how correlated these two variables are. It seems that when control is relaxed, trust goes up. I don’t have any empirical research to back that up as of yet, but call it a thesis statement. Is there implied causality? I wouldn’t presume to indicate that, but it is possible.

This was noted in some of the links above, but I want to point out that the first two definitions of the word “control” as shown above do not carry the weight I think a lot of us attribute to the word “control.” Many of us have negative connotations of the word. It is somehow a bad thing to have control as if it were dominance or supremacy, which I think we would agree do carry the stereotypes we would expect our organizations not to have. But the definition above refers to guidance, management, and having skill in a particular medium. Isn’t that what we’d like public relations to be? Skill to foster and maintain relationships? Skill to guide and manage our clients and organizations? Sounds a lot like a welcome mentor, to me.

I’m stretching the boundaries of what people refer to when they say “let go of control” I am aware of that. And I do agree that – as communicators – we need to embrace the discussion, soak in the conversations, and quit talking at people. I’m on board. But we should let go while retaining a tendril of guidance or a wisp of mentoring. And we should do it with full disclosure, completely transparent. Then we’ll see a lot more trust, upon which relationships are built.