IPRRC 2015: What Do You Think About These Proposed Standards for Content Marketing, Influence, and Transparency?

This article is part of The Measurement Advisor’s series on the 2015 International Public Relations Research Conference last month in Miami. Here’s more:

• Can We Talk? 5 Lessons for CEOs from the Newest Public Relations Research
• Internal Communications and Managing Millennials: Research from IPRRC on What Works
• IPRRC 2015: Is CSR Still a Thing?
• Scandal? PRSA Silver Anvil Award Winners Ignore Barcelona and Measurement Standards
• IPRRC 2015: A Treasure Trove of Ideas, Research, and Information
• IPRRC 2015: What Do You Think About These Proposed Standards for Content Marketing, Influence, and Transparency?

The theme of this year’s IPRRC actually had “standards” in the title, so it wasn’t surprising that there were a number of different papers proposing standards. One of them, by yours truly, suggested that actually implementing standards with an organization can be alot harder than you think.

Standards for content marketing and transparency

Perhaps the most needed arena for standards is the field of content marketing and transparency. This subject was tackled by Kimmo Taiminen and Vilma Luoma-ha of the University of Jybaskyla, Finland, and Katerina Tsetsura of the University of Oklahoma in their paper Transparency self-evaluation for hybrid PR. Tsetsura was a pioneer in the area of measuring transparency a decade ago, working with Dean Kruckeberg on the Bribery Index, which rated countries on corruption in their media. (We’ll reveal the shocking conclusions of her study on America’s performance on the Bribery Index in another story.)

Taiminen et al. have proposed the following series of questions that organizations can ask themselves about their sponsored content and native advertising. These questions represent the standards for transparency. How you answer the questions determines if your content is valid content, or just sales promotion. Depending on the answers, content marketers should adjust their content to be more authentic and transparent. (Download Transparency self-evaluation for hybrid PR to see this section in context.)

Audited content quality

• Is the content presented from brand point of view or includes multiple points of view?
• Is the content subjective by nature?
• Does the brand have enough expertise and understanding on the topic?
• Is the content accurate enough?
• Is the content based on facts?
• Is the content understandable enough? Will the incorrect information be revised?
• Does the content go through an editorial review process?

Decreased promotionality

• Does content include endorsing or promoting the brand?
• Is the brand purposely included in the story?

Obeys ethical standards

• Are the industry standards and ethical guidelines followed?

Ensures editorial integrity 

• Has editorial staff been involved in the content production?
• Is it acceptable for freelancers to create both branded and editorial content at the same time?

 Supported media autonomy

• Has the editorial staff complete autonomy over advertisers about the content of the native ad and its publication?
• Has the advertiser the possibility to reframe the media produced content?

 Confirmed reader needs

•  Are transparency efforts based on identified consumer needs?

Commercial identification

• Is the content clearly labelled as paid content or does it involve unclear paraphrases?
• Is the labeling spotted with one eye glance?
• Is the commercial nature of the content identifiable after sharing it via social media?

 Disclosed division of labor

• Are the content production process roles between the brand and the media explained?
• Is the producer of the content disclosed?
• Is the payer of the content disclosed?
• Is the writer of the content disclosed?
• Is brand logo added next to the content to reveal the advertiser?
• Can readers easily find more information about the commercial content creation and media cooperation?

 Graphical separation

• Is there a clear out-text graphical differentiation from editorial content (e.g., background color, borders)?
• Or there a clear in-text graphical differentiation from editorial content (e.g., fonts)?
• Do search results involve graphical separation between ads and editorial content?

Section separation

• Is the content separated into own section in the newspaper?

Enabled reader engagement 

• Do consumers have the ability to give feedback on the content?
• Are consumers allowed to give comments?
• Are the comments being moderated?

 Searchability

•  Is the ad discoverable from search results in the same way as original content?
• Is the ad still discoverable even if the campaign has ended?

Standards for ethics in public relations research

On a closely related note, Shannon Bowen of the University of South Carolina proposed standards for ethics in public relations research in her paper Towards standards in how we talk about ethics: Authenticity, geniuses, values, transparency, character, consistency, codes of ethics, compliance and moral courage. 

Dr. Bowen, a member of the IPR Measurement Commission and co-author of The Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research, conducted 28 in-depth interviews with members of the Arthur W. Page society who hold the title of Chief Communications Officer or the equivalent. She found little consensus in how terms are used, so there is clearly a need to formulate some standard definitions.

In her paper, Bowen proposes standard definitions, which standards-setting groups like The Conclave and the IPR Measurement Commission will be taking under consideration. Some of them are listed below (see her paper for the full list with references):

• Ethics involves the systematic application of moral principles and analytical constructs to the concept of right and wrong behavior.
• Normative ethics involves creating analytical frameworks for determining right from wrong behavior with a goal of consistency.
• Applied ethics seeks to apply normative ethics to specific cases, situations common topics currently at hand in the real world.
• Trust is the ability to believe in and rely upon another party or organization.
• Consistency is the goal of ethics, both in ethical analyses and in the outcomes of decision-making.
• Most researchers defined transparency as being visible, revealing, accessible, and easily understood.
• Legal compliance should be differentiated from ethical discernment about the most responsible course of action independent from legal considerations. Ethical analyses often go much further than mere legal compliance would dictate.
• Codes of ethics are documents that specify prescribed and restricted behavior.
• Ethics statements outline the mission, responsibilities, and beliefs that constitute the identity of an organization, spelled out in terms of core values, responsibilities, and key ethical considerations.
• Moral courage is the ability to stand independently on one’s analysis of ethics. Moral courage relies upon the concept of moral autonomy meaning an independent moral analysis, uninfluenced by concerns that may bias decision making.
• Character is a summation of values, belief system, ideology, moral development, principles, experiences, rationality, and integrity.

Standards for online influence

Sean D. Williams of Kent State University, with his paper Beyond Klout: Explorations of online influence, tackled another area in which standards have been proposed by The Conclave, but little academic research has been done.

His research, based on in-depth interviews with 25 senior communicators, found that there is no consensus on definitions or ways to measure influence, but rather that influence is highly personal and depends on perceptions of strength, salience, and importance. Williams recommends that the best way to measure influence is traditional primary research focused on both the influencer and the influenced, to perhaps develop proxy measures. ∞