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New Report: ‘Public Relations 2011: Issues, Insights, Ideas’

March 12th, 2011 by Daniel Young | 1 Comment | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

Last week chums Craig Pearce and Guy Downes and potential chum Noel Pennington released a report entitled, ‘Public Relations 2011: Issues Insight Ideas’. This 30+ page PR resource features contributions and commentary from a variety of communications, digital and marketing industry luminaries and me.

You can click on the cover page to get stuck in.

Tags: 2011, csr, digital, Influence, PR, reputation, Search, socialmedia, trends, trust

Business should tighten grip on social media by beginning to take it seriously

September 4th, 2010 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

I won't abide it Jess!

Organisations need to spread their social media function across their business and stop thinking about it purely as a ‘task’ to be ‘managed’ by the marketing department.

That’s my reaction to Nina Hendy’s story in the SMH this week on the question of whether its appropriate for brands to outsource their social media programs to agency partners.

Outsourcing social media is ghost posting. As voters, we don’t accept it from politicians and as consumers we shouldn’t accept it from business. As advisors to brands we should push back against it.

I don’t blame marketers that look to agencies to help them engage in social media. In most cases, those outside of the marketing department are failing to ‘get’ the role of social media in business and an even smaller number are prepared (or they’re unable) to provide resources (human or $) in support of social media programs. Social media has no mandate in many organisations, despite everyone’s general sense ‘that they should be doing something’.

‘It’s the marketing department’s problem’

In an ideal world (which is a place I hope we’ll eventually get to at least in the context of this issue) the responsibility for brand engagement within social media is insourced, its shared amongst multiple departments within an organisation i.e. customer service, product development, sales, product management etc. These customer facing functions or specific individuals within them would represent the organisation in accordance with a set of social media policies.

Responsibility for social media engagement is built into job descriptions. The organisation is demonstrably open and communicative, it has a scalable engagement strategy that doesn’t come to a screaming halt because the marketing manager is on holiday or the agency has used up its retainer for the month!

It’s authentic. Employees learn directly from customers. The list of advantages goes on.

In fact, I’d argue that the marketing team shouldn’t be engaging in social media as brand representatives. Consumers want to hear from specialists in their field with the authority to take action and provide information, in the same way that media and analysts don’t want to speak to marketing people.

The role of the marketing team in this best practice scenario is to create the strategies and the policies, oversee the process, advise on issues, create content, track results and design and deliver training content.

And the role of the agency?

The agency (probably PR agency):

Supports the marketing team by providing advice, creative ideas and scalability across each of these areas
Plays a key role as an advisor in the event of a reputational issue or crisis.
Is responsible for managing the social media monitoring program, including benchmarketing
Provides the client with advice on strategy as the program evolves
Provides direction and inspiration in the form of campaigns that supplement day to day engagement
Creates content for the program
Delivers training and advises on trends and developments in social media

Simples!

This is best practice (if you ask me).

Fundamentally, I believe that employees should be representing organisations in social media, not agencies.

Not only is it more authentic and credible, it will also provide your customers with a more valuable experience and most importantly, its sustainable. Even better, if managed in the right way it can become a strategy for employee engagement.

Social media provides the opportunity to bring brands to life online by directly engaging with individual consumers – this is a whole-of-business function, which cannot be dependant on the unpredictable and often transient relationships that exist between client and agency.

Marketing people should be advocating this approach and they should be knocking on their CEOs door to make it happen. For a case study, look at Ford Motor Company in the US, which has a goal to get 1% of its global workforce (2,000 people) active in social media sharing their own perspectives, experiences, thoughts and knowledge as Ford employees.

Tags: brands, engagement, SMH, socialmedia, strategy

Twitter is one social media platform; is it right for your business?

August 28th, 2010 by Daniel Young | 2 Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media, Technology

A recent research project by Edelman and Brandtology identified Twitter as the top channel for technology brand mentions in Australia. The Whirlpool and Overclockers forums ranked in second and third place respectively. I believe that these findings are reflective of a mature social media environment for technology brands in Australia.

Google, Apple and Microsoft ranked as the most talked about technology brands in the study which uncovered more than 154,000 mentions of 60 major technology brands across 581 influential online channels between April and June 2010.

The survey found that 27 of the 60 technology brands researched did not have a local presence on Twitter. This represents an ‘opportunity for brands to…become smarter about communicating through this channel,’ according to Edelman.

But is Twitter the right channel for all technology brands? I don’t think so.

Take the enterprise tech sector as an example (the study covered: ‘Internet and Software, Consumer Electronics, Mobile and Telecommunications, Business and Consulting and IT and Technology brands). This sector of the IT industry is characterised by complex technology and business issues that aren’t well suited to the open Twitter platform limited as it is to 140 character updates.

Enterprise tech brands tend to be most interested in reaching senior decision makers within medium to large organisations – individuals that are less likely to be spending time on Twitter. These brands need to demonstrate authoritative positions on commercially sensitive and strategic issues. Twitter just isn’t designed or suitable as a platform for this sort of discussion or engagement.

With these facts in mind, I would be inclined to recommend that enterprise tech brands seek to establish online communities where customers can engage with experts and product specialists but also – importantly – share ideas and experiences with other customers. I would look to the social media platforms where these targets are already active, the most obvious one being Linkedin.

It’s important that organisations monitor conversations about their brands across all forms of social media, including Twitter, but the most ‘active’ channels aren’t necesarily the best places to actually engage your target audience in a meaningful way.

Tags: australia, engagement, PR, socialmedia, Technology, twitter

Use of social video sharing sites by top brands in Australia

June 15th, 2010 by Daniel Young | 2 Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

Over the last six weeks we at Burson-Marsteller Australia have been working on a study into the use of free social video sharing sites by top brands in Australia. (more…)

Tags: australia, brand, bursonmarsteller, channels, comscore, metacafe, nielsen, online, research, socialmedia, Video, vimeo, youtube

The end of the financial year is approaching. Does your budget process support your marketing objectives?

May 16th, 2010 by Daniel Young | 4 Comments | Filed in Public Relations

We’re approaching the end of the financial year in Australia.

Have all of the leaves fallen off of your marketing program for the 2010 fiscal period?

Or, have you started stripping leaves to ensure that the full year budget is spent before the end of June?

Deciduous Marketing leads to consecutive campaigns targeting big groups of customers when simultaneous campaigns with each targetting relevant / interested groups of customers would be more effective. It is one reason why brands generally have a poor understanding of their customers.

Maybe its time your re-evaluated your marketing processes and approaches.

Will brands stand for more or less in the future?

April 20th, 2010 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Media, Public Relations, Social media

Thought leadership is something of a holy grail for the PR industry.

It is an interesting area for PR consultants to get involved with as it provides an issues rich environment for them to really add value through research, insight and execution.

The best PR practitioners recognise that thought leadership presents an opportunity for their client to add value to its customers and differentiate itself. In practice, PRs often struggle to find clients that can enunciate and commit to a thought leadership position.

Organisations encounter a number of issues when it comes to executing against a thought leadership strategy:

They believe that thought leadership exposes them to risk – what if people disagree?
They’re happy to fly below the radar – no-one else is taking a position so why should we?
They don’t have the industry insights required to take a credible position on a topic
They don’t have the individual talent to deliver the content or are unwilling to invest in it
They’re focus is lead generation and sales – they don’t see the reputational value in thought leadership
They’re not prepared to invest in the necessary research or partnerships required to establish a thought leadership strategy
They unable to take an industry view - their industry perspectives are insular, biased and self serving
Marketing investments are focused on promotional outcomes, rather than ongoing corporate objectives

Occasionally, you see organisations jumping onto an issue because it has become a business imperative, a good example of this is the Environment where many organisations are keen to be seen to be doing the right thing. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that most companies are genuine in their intention to reduce their impact on the environment but the adoption of these goals was largely responsive in nature – it become a business imperative. It was not a proactive altruistic motivation that could be described as genuine thought leadership.

The challenges in this area can be mighty frustrating for the PR agency and in-house team that recognise the opportunities presented by thought leadership to:

Build positive brand perceptions
Proactively lead the media agenda and add value to media relationships
Initiate discussion and generate publicity
Provide PR campaigns with a consistent theme or message
Raise the profile of senior executives
Add value to their industry and been seen as a positive contributor
Motivate and engage employees and partner organisations
Help drive a shared agenda with stakeholders
Engage new audience groups; Government; Industry Associations; Industry Leaders

I think the importance of thought leadership will grow in the future as brands become more attuned to their customers and marketplace. Brands will need an agenda in order to ensure the sustainability of their online communities. They’ll need to have opinions and insights in order to drive activity online and empower customer advocates. They’ll also need to respond to increasing customer expectations about the role that their brand of choice plays in the community.

As a result, we’ll see brands re-assessing their thought leadership strategy and working to identify the relevant opinion platforms for their business. I think we’ll begin to see support from brands for thought leadership topics that genuinely reflect the interests of their community and, as a result, more credible, personalised, actionable and specific.

What do you think? Does this also apply to individuals online? Will it become more important to take a personal position on an issue or are we more likely to exist in communities that reinforce our own world view?

Tags: insight, leadership, Media, opinion, PR, socialmedia, thought

Deciduous marketing is a big barrier to authentic brand conversations

March 14th, 2010 by Daniel Young | 1 Comment | Filed in Advertising, Public Relations, Social media

Marketing Communications is analogous to a conversation.

It is particularly true today. The Internet has empowered consumers to challenge, advocate and interact with the companies of their choosing via readily available and inexpensive forms of mass media.

Marketing conversations were largely one dimensionl pre-Internet. Regular and hopefully relevant messages were filtered via various marketing channels and disciplines to the end customer. They were generally self serving:

Look at this new product!
Take up this offer on this new package!
Here’s what we think about this. Aren’t we smart/committed/interesting?

The conversations were intermittent and short lived – more often than not the communication existed to drive sales, acquire new customers or build a brand image. Budgets and marketing finance decisions were similarly focused on near-term outcomes. Business priorities were identified at the beginning of the year and then in quarterly planning cycles. Dollars, Pounds, Rupee, Dinar etc. would be allocated.

Most companies still manage their marketing programs in this way today.

At the end of the fiscal year, if the marketing department has done its ‘job’ properly, all of the dollars are spent. Like a deciduous tree all of the leaves have fallen off and the tree remains bare for a period of time .

The conversation goes on hold.

This isn’t a problem if the company is continually talking about itself but if the company has been successful in initiating a conversation, then consumer’s will notice – unhappily.

Many well established marketing practices are no longer relevant or useful in the context of social media, including traditional approaches to budgeting. Social media demands that brands commit fully to the online conversation – you can’t pull in and pull out when it suits you.

One way for companies to tackle this issue is to embed social media engagement (and related costs) inside standard business process.

Ford has a plan to have 2% of its workforce telling the story of their lives at Ford via social media. This combined with a dedicated resource for social media strategy and measurement allows the company to engage in authentic conversation over the l0ng term.

Failure to identify the necessary resources for social media engagement is one of the main reasons why projects fail to get off the ground, in my experience. Lack of resources is one issue but cultural and procedural structural barriers to the long term view are another.

Senior marketing professionals need to adjust their mindset, and that of their organisation, to the new dynamics of social media and continuous conversation.

Tags: Advertising, branding, Budget, conversation, finance, marketing, promotions, socialmedia

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The end of the financial year is approaching. Does your budget process support your marketing objectives?

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