RepMan

I highly recommend it

Public relations is in the midst of unprecedented change. Traditional media relations, while still important, has been equaled, if not surpassed by social media. Indeed, we’re seeing more and more clients ask about word-of-mouth. How does one inspire, motivate and encourage a prospective or current customer to ‘recommend’ an organization’s product or service to a peer? The answer  to that single question contains the key to the future of marketing communications.

 

Like many forward-looking organizations, we’re grappling with how one goes about ‘encouraging’ or ‘enabling’ recommendations. We don’t know the full answer, but we have some ideas. In the spirit of openness and transparency, we’d like to get your perspective as well.

So, if you don’t mind, click the survey link below and let me know what you think. I promise to share the findings in a future blog that, I hope, you’ll highly recommend to others.

Check out the survey here.

Reach Out and Touch Someone

Guest Post by Anonymous

Once upon a time, people relied on this cool invention called a telephone to remotely communicate with others. Then, e-mail came onto the scene and people practically forgot about this nifty communication device. While e-mail can be a time-saving method for getting messages out, it can also be unreliable ― an aspect that can be a reputation killer in today’s fast-paced business world.

For example, a reporter recently sent me a request via e-mail, which I gladly would have replied to if I had received it. However, due to the mysteries of e-mail servers and fiber optic cables, the message never reached my inbox.  Instead, it ended up in that black hole known as “cyberspace.”

Now, you may think this seems harmless, but this reporter was extremely offended by my lack of response (mind you, I was completely unaware of his request). Rather than pick up the phone to determine if I received his message, he decided to email the head of my company and bash my PR skills. Thankfully, my boss knows I would never be so unprofessional so he did not take this to heart. However, if I did not build this rapport with him this email could have completely damaged my reputation. 

All that said, my advice to everyone is to remember that e-mail is not always reliable. So whether you are managing your reputation or others’, if  e-mail is not getting the job done, take AT&T’s advice: “Reach out and touch someone.” 

Thank god it's not being called the Flack Flu

The world's pig population has to be in full panic. Governments from Mexico to Egypt are ordering mass extermination of the bovine creatures because of their suspected involvement in spreading swine flu. World health officials are trying to intervene, but the machetes are being wielded nonetheless as the blogosphere blissfully tweets away.

Now if I were a pig (and, some have suggested the moniker fits), I would be more upset with the media and less so at the executioners (not that I'd be greeting any gun-totting militiaman with a welcoming squeal, mind you).

The media have really outdone themselves with their incredible 24x7 frenzy over what's now being called the H1N1 flu (and, god, let's hope there isn't some unsuspecting family with that surname).

Despite calls for calm by the White House, we continue to see reporters gleefully extort their viewers, listeners and readers to hunker down and avoid crowded, enclosed areas. Other 'journalists' proudly display maps depicting the hundreds of school closings around the country. And the talk show hosts trot out all sorts of medical history wonks who are only to happy to compare and contrast the global pandemics of 1918-19 and today.

Sure, some people have gotten sick and, sadly, a few have even died. But, the hype is way, way over the top. Worried moms are keeping their kids home, and school superintendents are shuttering their establishments, all while the makers of TamiFlu and Dove soap rack up record sales (hey, somebody has to benefit from a holocaust).

Meanwhile, the poor, little pigs are being rounded up and slaughtered. Where's the Pig Protection Society (PPS) when you really need them? Rutting around in the mud, no doubt. What about the all-powerful Friends of Swine and Whine (FSW) lobby? Probably munching on pigs in a blanket at some swanky Georgetown party.

There's a new, and terrifying, Boer War underway. While I'm genuinely sad to see my four-legged friends being cut down in their prime, I can only breathe a sigh of relief that some lab technician at the Centers for Disease Control didn't decide to call this particular outbreak the Flack Flu. Now, that would take PR industry downsizing to a whole new level.

A day in the life

The following is a guest blog by Sophie Hanson, AE, Peppercom London

Hanging out in the poolside sauna yesterday I thought I definitely had the best deal from my job swap with the CEO of Peppercom, Steve Cody.

Last time I saw him he was holed up at my desk knee deep in news searches and press releases in his role as "Sophie, Account Executive for the day."

After some laps of the pool, sitting in the steam room I got to thinking about where you could go with the whole job swap premise. Imagine swapping with your client for the day and having them come into your office. As much as we try to make every client feel most important, the reality there's a responsibility juggling act going on behind the scenes.

If you flip over from client side to agency side as I have, it's an eye-opening switch. Working for a large media owner I had incredible expectations of what our agencies should be doing for us, whether PR, advertising or other marketing brethren. Demanding would be an understatement yet they always delivered with a smile. It could have been the steam making me light headed but I was suddenly hit by the realization that yes, I probably was the client from hell.

As a client I'm not sure one ever fully appreciates the art of account handling, but now I realize that the ability to remain positive, enthusiastic and "can-do" even when faced with the most demanding of clients is a skill that can be learned and improved on.

Making the switch to agency side is almost like learning a new language, we don't just get hits, we "secure" coverage. I'm acutely aware of the need to reinforce pro-activity and have learnt to transfer my client side outlook to the other side. That said, the insight remains unbeatable.

So here's the thing, I dare a client to spend even just a morning job swapping with an agency contact and prepare to be amazed at how much time we spend working on accounts, and the little things you don't see us do that deliver such quality work. And similarly, if PROs spent a day in their clients' office they would soon learn what makes them tick.

As for being CEO for the day, I was surprised that down time wasn't nearly as relaxing as I imagined, as I constantly wondered how things were going back at the office. Having someone else come do your job is a reality check, it's easy to get preoccupied with shuttling from one task to another and forget to take a step back to enjoy the fun and creative aspects of the job. Ultimately I learned that all you really need is a blackberry, a phone, self confidence, good team spirit and you can dive right into anything and achieve results from anywhere in the world.

Today I'm back to being Sophie, Account Executive, but as my last CEO task and in true Steve Cody style, I write this guest blog from the train en route to the office.

Time travel is so much fun

In anticipation of our firm's Spring cleaning this Thursday, I started rifling through some old files and deep-sixing unnecessary clutter. As I did, I came across a true relic that presented a mini time portal to another era that, thankfully, is dead and buried.

The artifact was the January 11, 1999 issue of PR Week, which I had held onto because of a page-six article heralding Peppercom's winning the GE Financial Assurance account (beating Fleishman and Bozell Worldwide in the process. Bozell Worldwide? Where are they now?).

Anyway, as I scanned the entire issue, I came across some real time-period gems, including:

- An editorial presumably penned by then Editor-In-Chief Adam Leyland bemoaning the fact that national business publications had been missing the boat on the huge, upcoming Y2K crisis. He wrote: "The Millennium Bug is not just a technology problem; as much as anything it is a problem of communication. He cited a recent USA Today survey in which 46 percent of respondents expected air traffic control systems to fail. Yet, Leyland said, most airlines were "...adopting little more than a cautiously reactive approach to media inquiries." The text goes on and on to warn about the major business disruptions about to occur and industry's seeming lack of proactive communications outreach. He felt Y2K was a huge opportunity for the PR industry to shine. In fact, as we now know, Y2K was much ado about nothing and Y2K preparedness was one of the major hoaxes of the late 1990s.

Ad industry should do its homework first before asking PR: why can't we all just get along?

I'm reading more and more articles in the ad trades about PR's growing importance and its seeming 'encroachment' into such 'traditional' advertising domains as word-of-mouth.

This week's Ad Age contains an interesting piece by Noelle Weaver that asks, in effect, why we can't all just get along. Alongside it, though, is a telling list of comments from various readers, that explain, in part, why the disconnect continues.

One observation from an integrated marketing agency executive inadvertently nails the 'problem' on the head. Intending to illustrate how each discipline contributes thinking to the other, he writes, '.....PR people often identify the Big Idea and write great headlines and taglines, and the ad creatives come up with great promotions, events and story placement ideas.' And, therein lies the problem.

Ad people still think of PR as being limited solely to stunts, press releases and media relations. It isn't. And, it hasn't been for some time. The best PR is being leveraged to create new, and serious, dialogues with a rapidly-changing end user landscape, and ranges from viral and digital initiatives to thought leadership and strategic partnerships. As long as advertising types continue to see us as stuntmen and women, they'll continue scratching their heads wondering why we can't all just get along (and continue to lose more and more of the client's overall marketing budget).

Caveat publicist

There are oh so many positives to the digital marketing revolution. But, there's also a darker side that will occasionally rise up and bite the unresponsive companies, the non-believing medical supply executives and, most troubling of all, the unsuspecting publicists.

We'll bypass the corporations who continue to ignore the irate complaints of bloggers about their company, product or service. And, we'll raise the white flag of surrender in terms of ever convincing the naysaying surgical gloves sales guy that blogging/podcasting are more than passing fads. But, the PR industry needs to wake up and do a quick intervention before more individual careers and client/agency relationships are destroyed by young and inexperienced publicists who can't write, don't understand "digital" media relations and are being "outed" more and more often by the media.

Gawker, for example, has already pilloried a poor Fleishman-Hillard publicist for a brutally-worded   KFC pitch. And, now BusinessWeek, the Holy Grail of BtoB publicity, has entered the fray by beating the bejesus out of a well-intentioned, but poorly trained, Newman Communications publicist (article pictured). In the UK, a PR agency hired by Rupert Lowe, the embattled chairman of Southampton Football Club, was caught posting comments of support on a fanzine's web forum for Lowe ahead of an important board meeting. The forum's host got suspicious, investigated the IP addresses called the local paper and the move backfired. Lowe has subsequently resigned.

Public relations has always had its share of grammatically-challenged publicists (and executives). But, the current crop seems to have reached new lows (Lowes?). Some recent college grads not only can't write, they have no idea how to properly research or pitch a reporter. And, as a result, their ill-conceived, poorly crafted pitches are ridiculed by the media.

In the wake of such a public flogging, the client suffers, the agency suffers and, sadly, the publicist, Dave Overton, suffers.

I'm not sure if this is a Council of PR Firms issue, a PRSA challenge or something that each individual agency and corporate communications department needs to address. But, this is an industry problem. A small, but growing, problem that, left unchecked, will do a major job on our image.

The media are right to ridicule our horrific pitches. Now, it's up to us to do something about it.

What you Talkin about Willis?

Landon Thomas Jr's. article in today's NY Times was dead on in terms of CEOs needing to be more direct and concise in their comments.

Some of the quotes from the CEOs in the text reminded me of the old TV sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, in which child star Gary Coleman used his signature line, "What you talkin about Willis?" whenever he didn't understand what his older brother had just said.

Having media trained hundreds of executives over the years, I'm struck by how many of them struggle to explain their organization, its mission and its points of differentiation in a clear, concise manner. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but many senior executives tend to ramble in initial media training sessions. Some use "corporate speak" that may be understood within the confines of their business but leaves us totally baffled. Others come across as hard sell sales guys trying to close a prospect. Others still don't understand how the media work, and think that by putting on the charm they can achieve a positive story.

We make it simple for the executives we work with by instructing them to:

*Tell the reporter what's keeping your customers or prospects up at night.

*Quantify and qualify the pain as best you can. Explain how your organization provides a unique solution to the pain. Illustrate the explanation with colorful anecdotes, etc., but don't stray off message.

*If appropriate within SEC guidelines, paint a forward-looking picture for the reporter about your industry and your role within the industry. The goal here is to begin to establish a relationship with the reporter and position oneself as a thought leader.

By sticking to that format, most executives are able to "win" the interview and avoid the Gary Coleman response from reporters.