Archive for the ‘Public Relations’ Category

Change in Australia’s corporate culture is required to drive social media

December 1st, 2009 by Daniel Young | 3 Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

Over the past two months, I have been working with a small team at Burson-Marsteller in Sydney (my agency) on a PR research project which looked at the use of social media by the biggest brands in Australia. This has been a very enjoyable and interesting project, which resulted in some great media exposure for the agency this week:

The Australian: Big Brands Are Failing Social Media Test (Simon Canning)
Marketing Magazine: Social Media Still Misunderstood by Brands
Campaign Brief: Australian Social Media Study of Top 20 Brands Shows a High Number of Inactive Accounts

One of the challenges that we encountered with this study was sourcing a list of the top brands in Australia. Initially, our intention was to survey the ASX100 but this presented us with a few challenges, not least the increase in project scope that this would lead to. Many of the companies in the ASX100 own multiple brands and so we would have been presented with a challenge of what to include and what not to include. Including everything was not an option.

Ultimately, we opted for the Interbrand Top Twenty Australian Brands report for 2009. Although relatively limited in scope we felt that this was a good option as it covered a broad spectrum of Australian brands in various sectors while enabling us to identify some industry sector trends in financial services and retail.

Our thoughts on the findings are included in the media coverage and in our release/ report.

Ultimately, my view is that many social media campaigns continue to be the preserve of the PR and marketing department. I don’t believe that business leaders have recognised the need for authentic communications or the benefits of social media, as a component of PR strategy. The vast majority seem focused on the risk over the reward. The US is a different story. Corporations are far more advanced when it comes to social media. Its becoming ingrained within standard business and comms practice, we’re yet to see this in Australia.

I think there are a couple of reasons for this if we put the fact that Australia has a more conservative business culture to one side. First, the majority of the world’s IT industry is based in the US. Clearly, the IT sector has been an early adopter, leading the way for many other American industries.

Second, many large American corporations faced serious PR and reputational issues as a result of the GFC and social media provided them with the tools they needed to begin re-building and re-orienting their reputations and corporate culture.

Neither of these factors apply in Australia.

We’re seeing a lot of interest from our clients and are actively engaged in this space with many organisations. I am looking forward to seeing a more flattended, transparent and communicative corporate culture in Australia. We are hoping to speed up the process by providing good advice and compelling insights.

The fact that corporate blogging is virtually non-existent is evidence, for me, that we are yet to see this change at the highest levels of Australian business.

We produced the following report of the results and developed a media release, which was offered to The Australian as an exclusive. There’s more where this came from. B-M Australia will be announcing additional research over the coming weeks and months.

Social Media Use by Australia’s Best Brands 2009

View more presentations from Burson-Marsteller Australia.

Social media Compliance is another complicating factor for marketers and PR

December 1st, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Public Relations

BzzAgent is a WOM agency that manages a network of 600,000 highly engaged consumer volunteers located throughout the US, Canada and the UK. The WOM company has just announced a series of Compliance services to ensure that its clients in PR and marketing departments do not contravene the FTC’s Guides on endorsements in social media, which come into effect today.

I wrote an article in favour of these guidelines for Mumbrella.

BzzAgent refers to its network members as volunteers. I thought volunteers worked for not-for-profits. I think its inevitable that the WOM agencies will have to make full disclosure and transparency core to their service offering in order to stay on the right side of the FTC and similar enforcement agencies in other countries and for the reasons that I pointed out in the article for Mumbrella.

This graphic from BzzAgent provides a neat summary of the obligations under the FTC Guides and the steps that PR professionals and marketers can take to ensure compliance.

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Tags: compliance, disclosure, FTC, Government, marketing, PR, Public Relations, transparency, WOM

Google Sidewiki causes a PR headache

November 21st, 2009 by Daniel Young | 2 Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

Julian Lee at the Sydney Morning Herald interviewed me a week or so ago for a story on Google Sidewiki and the implications for PR advisers and businesses, more generally. The story also ran in the The Age, the Melbourne daily.

Julian posed the question: Is Google Sidewiki a threat or an opportunity? I think that it is both and made the point that active participation in conversation via Sidewiki provided another PR opportunity for organisations to communicate with their customers.

I also suggested that businesses develop a policy for Sidewiki and that they publish this so that customers know what to expect when using this form of feedback. Brian Giesen makes a great suggestion when he says that companies should ‘claim’ their Sidewiki by making the first comment (if possible).

A quick scan of major corporate websites highlights the fact that Sidewiki is yet to take off in a big way. Potential commenters need the latest version of the Google Toolbar and they also need to be aware of the service. The digerati set will be well aware of this but I am not convinced that Joe Bloggs has this on their radar. There is more activity around social media related news sites and social networks, check out Facebook as an example of a active Sidewiki.

Google Sidewiki is an extension of an existing service from Google; which is the ability to place comments on search results. This didn’t take off or hasn’t taken off as yet (it continues to be available – check out the speech bubble icon below organic search results in Google).

Radian6 announced last week that it now offers the ability to monitor Sidewiki, an important development for businesses that need now to be aware of conversation in a wide range of digital tools.

I think Sidewiki represents a major PR opportunity for small businesses, who may not necessarily want to invest in discussion boards, recommendation and feedback mechanisms for their websites but are provided a free infrastructure for exactly that via Google Sidewiki.

Sidewiki causes a PR headache

JULIAN LEE

November 13, 2009

ALREADY struggling with the mountain of blogs, forums and social networks, public relations consultants are weighing up whether a new Google tool that enables consumers to leave comments next to a brand’s website is a threat or a challenge.

Google Sidewiki gives a new and very transparent avenue for disgruntled customers to air their grievances against companies.

Travel websites already carry customer reviews of hotels and resorts.

Google says it is all about ”facilitating the conversation on the internet” between general users and experts but the PR industry is watching closely to see if Sidewiki will become as popular and as powerful a tool for opinionated internet users as Twitter and Facebook.

Gabriel McDowell, the managing director of Res Publica, said companies that failed to understand Sidewiki risked damage to their image and reputation. ”This is going to sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to managing corporate reputation,” Mr McDowell said.

Although Sidewiki presented ”yet another channel for them [corporations] to manage”, Daniel Young, the digital director of Burson-Marsteller, said it could be a useful tool. ”If one person has a complaint and you respond to it then, in a way you are answering others before the question has even been asked,” he says.

Brian Giesen, who heads the digital consultancy in the Asia-Pacific for Ogilvy PR, says Sidewiki could prove to be a handy way to spot potentially hot issues and the pressure groups pushing them.

”It just reinforces the need for brands to listen to such media. This is also a useful way for companies to find out who are the people who are making the comments and then to reach out to them,” said Mr Giesen, who recommends companies race to be the first to make a Sidewiki comment on a page, a privilege Google extends to website owners.

Mr McDowell said Sidewiki could also provide an avenue of redress by corporations that felt they misrepresented in the mainstream media. For example, a public relations consultant could post the entire statement given to a journalist, rather than the truncated version that might appear in an article. ”One of the major complaints about the media is the time it takes to get a correction up. This could go some way to rectifying that.”

But there are concerns that because Sidewiki is ”completely unregulated and uncontrollable”, as Mr Young put it, it will be harder for companies to sort out the legitimate complaints from the serial sledgers. Deciding on whether to answer was going to be key, he said.

Mr Giesen said Google ”needs to take greater responsibility for the comments that appear on Sidewiki”.

A spokeswoman for Google Australia said it had not received any concerns from Australian publishers. ”Website owners and publishers here and abroad have told us that they see this as another way to connect with their users, similar to conversations they’re already having on their blogs, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.”

Tags: australia, corporate, Google, PR, Public Relations, social, Social media

Simplicity still the key to effective marketing in an increasingly complex, regularly interrupted and noisy world

October 28th, 2009 by Daniel Young | 2 Comments | Filed in Public Relations

We were lucky enough to have a very senior and highly respected planner from the WPP Group come in to the office today. He talked to the agency on a wide range of issues including the fundamentals of communication, effective presentations, new business pitching, planning and creativity.

This individual has had a stellar career working for leading advertising agencies in the US, London and Europe. He is now based in Australia.

Planners, as I understand it, act as a point person between the client and the creatives – they facilitate the process which seeks to identify the connections between people and culture and brands They unearth insights that form the basis of really effective campaigns, concepts and messages. These insights are based on facts (i.e. research) and emotion, as our speaker explained. The insight should be able to be expressed, very simply.

The need to get to the nub of a communications challenge and to capture the essence of the connection between people and brands or products is something that all marketers should remember at a time when fragmentation, immediacy, multi-media, interactivity, technology and globalisation are grabbing the headlines and commanding mind-share in our industry.

The ability to see the woods for the trees and present knowledge or an idea in a way that is compelling and actionable is what clients pay for at the end of the day, as is the ability to make connections.

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Things to talk about when waiting for a journalist to arrive for an executive interview

October 8th, 2009 by Daniel Young | 1 Comment | Filed in Public Relations

The members of the press are busy people and they don’t always arrive for appointments on time, God bless them. Any given day could consist of a press conference, editorial meetings, interviews, research, launch events and the unforgiving deadlines of print media or the relentless deadlines of online media.

As a PR person its important to remain cool, calm and collected when sitting with your spokesperson or spokespeople and waiting for your journalist to arrive. You know they were confirmed by phone or email on the morning of or afternoon before the briefing.

Here are some things that PRs can do to fill the time when waiting for a journalist to arrive for a briefing. I am assuming that the executive briefing has been completed and the two or more of you are literally sitting in room waiting for the journalist to arrive.

Re-cap over the key messages for the briefing. Ask your spokespeople to repeat – succinctly – the key messages that you want to convey in the briefing.
Role play the journalist for five minutes. Ask your spokesperson a red flag question and see how they respond. Advise them on how they might improve the response – if possible.
Ask your spokespeople which questions they don’t want to be asked and work with them to develop the appropriate response.
Talk about your industry. Use the time as an opportunity to ask intelligent questions about your client’s industry sector and current issues and trends. Demonstrate your understanding of the industry and your opinions.
Provide some insight and information about the journalist that they are about to meet. What have they written about lately, where are they coming from (you may know that they are a specific event). This is a good way to provide your spokesperson with some ice breakers if they have not met the journo before.
Put a call into the journalist or his co-workers to try and find out their ETA.
Highlight some recent team successes. Talk about something that has gone well recently and provide some suggestions on how you might extend or repeat the success.
Remind your spokesperson that the journalist will likely ask if there is anything they want to add at the very end of the questions and provide some suggestions on strong answers, incorporating the key message.
Work with your spokesperson to develop some analogies that help bring the story to life or try to tease out some examples (i.e. customer stories) that they can build into their answers to illustrate a point.
Ask your spokesperson to explain something about their business that you have never understood.
Get Personal. People love to talk about themselves. Use this time as an opportunity to find out more about your spokesperson, their family, interest, hobbies, background.

You’re in trouble if you find that you’ve used up all of these and the journalist still hasn’t arrived. You’ve obviously been trying to reach your journalist throughout this process via text, SMS, email.

Next step:

Apologise on behalf of the journalist and provide a deadline when you will get back to the spokesperson to re-schedule the meeting. Apologise for wasting their time but highlight the fact that you’ve made use of the time and the fact that they are fully prepared for the re-scheduled briefing.

Follow up and demonstrate how you have put the insights and information provided by your spokesperson to good use.

Tags: briefing, interviews, journalists, PR, preparation, Public Relations, punctuality, relationships

Lessons learnt from the Kraft naming experiment from iSnack 2.0 to Cheesybite

October 7th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Media, Public Relations

Kraft today announced that Australians have voted for a name to replace the seriously unpopular and high criticised iSnack 2.0.

Kraft gave customers the opportunity to vote for one of six names in response to the negative publicity. We’re told that around 10,000 customers voted for Cheesybite, equivalent to 36% of the total vote making it the most popular name - just pipping ‘none of the above’.

Kraft poll What seemed like a good idea to involve its customers in the process of naming a new product has turned into a significant issue for the marketing team and senior management.

On the upside, the fiasco has garnered fantastic exposure for the product and extended the lifespan of the campaign (though not by design). It seems fairly obvious that the Cheesybite name would have generated far less collumn inches had the iSnack 2.0 debacle been avoided all together.

On the downside, Kraft has lost credibility with the media, the blogging community and other influencers. But does that matter? The grocery decision maker would probably have discussed the iSnack 2.0 name as a result of the media coverage. I doubt that the name change will have a negative influence on buying decisions, quite the opposite in terms of awareness.

The product has apparently sold in high volume as a result of the ‘name me’ campaign. The net result of this is probably increased exposure for the product and some valuable lessons learnt by Kraft.

On the downside, Australian brands will approach any kind of crowdsourcing program with a high degree of caution as a result of these events. Many will be less likely to involve their customers in product development and branding decisions, which is a shame as it is a proven method of building loyalty and generating word of mouth.

The marketing industry is naturally conflicted when it comes to promoting its own successes. The digital revolution (if you like) means that many different types of agencies are competing for the same dollars, which makes them very proactive when it comes to finger pointing when things go wrong and less likely to celebrate success when things go well, unless its their own.

Tags: branding, cheesybite, crowds, digital, Kraft, PR, vegemite

Google and Hasbro team up to offer Monopoly game via Google Maps

September 9th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Technology

Are you concerned about Google’s market power? In recent years, there has been growing scrutiny of Google’s market position with some arguing that it is now effectively a monopoly. Unfortunately, this can be the curse for the market leader as there are challenges in delineating between leadership and monopoly – a topic that I posted on here.

I punched the keywords ’google’ + ‘monopoly’ into Google Insights for Search. The following graph shows the interest in these terms over time:

Google will announce Monopoly later today in the form of a tie up with Hasbro. Together the companies will create a live worldwide version of the classic board game using Google Maps.

This means that searchers that use these search terms together in the future are as likely to come across details of the Hasbro/ Google Maps game as they are to find information or commentary about or research into Google’s market position.

Is this an obvious application of Google Maps or a smart search strategy designed to offset negative Google commentary and limit damage to its corporate reputation?

My highlights from today’s Future of Influence Summit #foi09

September 1st, 2009 by Daniel Young | 4 Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media, Technology

The ability to effectively filter information is a new ‘literacy’ that our society requires in order to sort the valuable information online from the crap. This Crap Detection was one of the opening gambits provided by Howard Rheingold during today’s The Future of Influence Summit 2009.

My firm – Burson-Marsteller – sponsored the Summit, which took place today in Sydney and San Francisco. The event is produced by The Insight Exchange and was chaired by Ross Dawson.

The Summit covered a wide range of topics relating to the somewhat nebulous concept of Influence. It’s really hard to summarise the findings or conclusions from the event so I thought I would summarise my most interesting statements and perspectives.

The speaker list including Brian Solis, Richard Bell, Tim Burrowes and Duncan Riley:

There is a whole industry dedicated to ‘gaming Google’
We may trust people in one sphere but its hard to transfer that sense of reliability if them from one field to another
New tools are emerging that allow us to accurately measure Influence
A currency of influence is/ will emerge
Dell and Starbucks are two companies that have successfully listened to the feedback provided by their community and implemented it (i.e. made a change). One example of this in the context of Starbucks is the Raspberry Muffin, which was dropped but then brought back as a result of feedback provided by customers
Advertising and marketing industries are moving from audience measurement (readership, circulation) to influence measurement
We live in a confetti economy – high fragmentation of media and proliferation and distribution of source of information
Burson-Marsteller research with PR Week: 78% of American consumers say that advertising does not provide enough information for them to make a purchase. Approx. 60% of American consumer say that the media does not provide enough information…
Brian Solis categorised the social media community as an ‘ego-system’
Lessons are learnt in failure. Google refers to this as ‘failing wisely’
The Dell @DellOutlet Twitter concept succeeded partly as a result of very cheap products
The number of active Twitter uses is staggeringly low
Intel: Marketing industries should stop referring to ‘target audiences’ and start thinking about them as people
CBS: Economics dictate a high degree of consolidation in online media. Today’s tier one bloggers will become the trust agents of the future. We are in the adolescence of the new media industry. Power will return to marketers, as a result
80% of online news content is consumer online via Fairfax properties in Australia. New media lacks credibility in this market.
Joe Talcott: The message is the message. Technology is the focus for communications today but technology will gradually retreat into the background and content will assume its rightful position as the most important aspect of communication
80% of communication is non-verbal and 90% of conversations about brands still takes place offline

Lots of interesting thoughts and conversations here. No firm answers for a definition of influence or for a criteria or standard for measuring it.

There’s no doubt that this area of digital marketing will grow into the future, with organisations launching methods for measuring influence. I think there is a risk in using the degree to which people are inter-connected as a measure of influence. There is also a danger in placing higher value on quant. measures of influence such as delicious tags because it assumes that the community that either has access to that content or access to the Web is somehow representative of the total, when this is not necesarily the case.

At the end of the day its very easy to ‘game the system’ and today’s Summit is yet more evidence that big business will invest heavily to excert influence online – at the cost of authenticity, trust and truthfulness in some cases. I believe that we place too much faith in the Web at our peril.

Trust in institutions has eroded; we need to protect and foster the trust that we have in each other.

Tags: #foi09, Advertising, dawson, Influence, marketing, PR, social, solis, summit

Ruder Finn Intent Index

June 30th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Public Relations

http://www.ruderfinn.com/rfrelate/intent/intent-index.html#

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