Brand Anarchy: This Summer's PR & Social Media 50 Shades of Grey
Brand Anarchy is the latest in a rapidly-growing area of social media advice books in the UK, brought to readers by the experienced PR hands of Stephen Waddington and Steve Earl, known to many as two of the team at the well-regarded Speed Communications. But being good at PR doesn't make you an author, so is the book any good? And will it help you win a Social Buzz Award (entries closing soon)?
Cover
The 208 page book contains a number of surprises, starting with the price (which admittedly is probably beyond the authors' control). If you head over to Amazon, the paperback is £9.09 with the Kindle version costing £8.64. It's a poor show when you consider that the digital version has none of the costs associated with a physical version - printing, storage, postage and so on.
To be fair though, at under a tenner either way, the book is good value. While aimed at communicators - internal and external, inhouse and agency - it also appears pitched to be an undertstanding read for the C-suite, many of whom are still terrified of the PR and communication implications of social media. But that's not to say everyone will get the same level of value out of the book.
For those well versed in social media - those who don't need introductions to the likes of Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Olivier Blanchard, Guy Clapperton, Brian Solis, Rob Brown and so on, there may not be a lot new in the theory side book.
For the PR newbie (perhaps even ex-journalists crossing into PR) to the senior account director, there's plenty here. While the more senior social media practitioner may know the theory the authors present, the new interviews dotted about the book give it a freshness and exclusive content.
The UK slant from the authors works well as the book avoids for the most part talking about the standard Social Media case studies - Coke, Zappos and so on and that's very refreshing.
Similarly, the whole outlook of the book, talking about the importance of online conversations and how PRs and brands can be involved, is written from a very practical viewpoint and not the more Californian head-in-the-air attitude of many US books which are written as if everyone is already drinking the social media Kool Aid thinking it's the most important thing ever.
It's also a book not ashamed to take some potshots at some popular beliefs like pointing out why a social media strategy is not what your business needs and pointing out that the PR industry was really late to the digital engagement arena. There's certainly a few talking points in the book - no doubt deliberate to give the book reason for engagement in the digital arenas post-publication (and praise to the authors for making it so).
Appropriately for a book aimed at all communicators, Internal Comms also gets, in Scottish parlance, "a good kick of the ball" in the book and it devotes a good chunk of space talking, not only about the idea of staff being a firm's best brand ambassadors, but how to get them engaged and make the most of them, keeping them feeling rewarded, motivated and interested. Many social media books underplay the internal communications element so it's a delight to see this chapter.
Equally refreshing is the element of social future proofing contained within the book as it talks in very simple to understand steps how to take the transition from being a business doing social media (something it seems to espouse throughout) to being a genuine social business.
Overall, it's a must-read for most in the PR industry. As noted, experienced social media commentators may not get as much out of it, but for the majority of the PRs in the UK, this should be their main summer read. If they're embaressed to be seen reading work books on holiday hide it under a cover of 50 Shades or Grey or put it on your Kindle and pretend your reading the sex book instead (if anyone asks what's happening in the book and you are pretending to read 50 Shades, just say the following "Girl meets rich billionaire, they seem to have sex now and then and there's talk about foils ripping and inner goddesses." That pretty much sums it up and covers you.)
What the book manages to avoid - unlike many others in the field - is turning into an advert for the services of the authors (compared to the recent Velocity, which is a good book but at times comes across like a long advertisement for Nike) and it gains respect for that because both men are, in the UK sense, amongst the pioneers of social media adoption and could easily have abused the book to be a showcase for themselves and their clients.
But it's not a book without flaws. At one point it states there's no need for a social media strategy yet a few chapters later it talks about creating a social media strategy. In another part of the book it's not clear if a company with an online crisis solves the crisis by ignoring it or confronting the issue.
And while the book in many parts seems perfectly written to be handed to the C-suite by the PR exec trying to convince them of social media, interviews by the likes of BP's Tony Hayward may have the opposite effect (Hayward talks about being "at war" with the media - a phrase which will give anyone on the C-Suite chills.)
Similarly, at the end while discussing one of the flaws of the UK PR industry it feels as if the book is on a recruiting drive for the CIPR and other professional PR ogranisations, but it's a small niggle in one of the better professional books of 2012.