Posts Tagged ‘PR’

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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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Ask your spokespeople which questions they don’t want to be asked and work with them to develop the appropriate response.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Put a call into the journalist or his co-workers to try and find out their ETA.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. Ask your spokesperson to explain something about their business that you have never understood.
  11. 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.

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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 pollWhat 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.

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Ten reasons why Public Relations should play the central role in Social Media

September 26th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Social media

bering_leader_home

The ongoing debate about who ‘owns social media’ continues apace. Here is my pitch for the PR industry, which I believe has a very strong claim.

Ultimately, all of the back and forth is irrelevant. The sector (or individuals) that gets closest to owning social media will be the one that delivers the most value over time.

Here are my thoughts…

  1. PR’s heritage isn’t selling. It seeks to influence and build relationships. This makes it more suited and better equipped to initiate, engage and hold a conversation.
  2. PR is expert in content creation. They can’t be blamed for trying to get involved with social media but what expertise do media buying agencies have in content creation? Content creation is a central component of marketing and specifically social media.
  3. The advertising industry is focused on promotions, launches and campaigns. I heard an advertising executive at a conference last year talk about their ability to ‘turn on’ and ‘turn off’ the community that they had successfully built for an FMCG client. This is a great illustration of the point.  This attitude shows a high degree of arrogance and a low degree of empathy.  The community would quickly see through this kind of approach to managing relationships. The advertising industry isn’t set up culturally or operationally (including its fee structure) to maintain an ongoing or continuous dialogue.
  4. The PR industry is subtle. The sector gets a lot of flack for spinning but subtlety is at the core of spin. Digital media requires subtlety, including the ability to understand context and respond accordingly.
  5. The PR industry is close to the business leaders. The C-suite calls on PR in a crisis and is reliant on PR when the organisation’s reputation is threatened. PR has a central role to play in educating the C-suite about the benefits of social media and is a trusted advisor on reputation management, unlike other marketing disciplines.
  6. The PR industry is something of a sole operator when compared with the other marketing disciplines. Communication often functions as a stand-alone department along side Marketing but is part of the mix. One of the key challenges for the social media strategists is that they are on the outside, they may have deep expertise in their field but few things operate in a vacuum and its clear that social media is most effective when  integrated with offline marketing efforts.
  7. Strategy is at the heart of good PR. It could be argued that PR has a been a little slow to come to the  (socialmedia) party. There are lots of reasons for this. PR’s approach is always circumspect, it has to add value when your dealing with corporate reputations otherwise its not worth doing. I think  this will play out well for the PR industry in the long term.
  8. The culture of the PR industry is to allow others to create content. i.e. journalists. The industry has been built on this fundamental characteristic. The key message is designed to assert as much control as possible over the process of content creation. The approach changes in the context of social media but I think this is one of the strongest arguments in PRs favour. PR has never had control of the message when it comes to the end result.
  9. Search. I think the PR industry has a long way to go in this space but that content is fundamental to search strategy – see point 2. Search seeks to ‘game a system’. The tool of the gaming is content, which has to be of the highest quality.
  10. Most (all?) organisations need to adapt culturally to engage their customers in authentic conversations. I genuinely believe that the businesses that most effectively listen to customers and is able to incorporate their insights into product development and services will be the most successful. This requires an organisational change and is not something that a snazzy social media program can deliver. This, for me, is PRs biggest opportunity as the function that advises and implements change management strategies. PR has a great opportunity to take the lead in making this change happen – the outbound social media campaigns will become the natural output and realisation of this cultural and organisational change in business.

As ever, keen to hear your thoughts and disagreements. Here is a good analysis of the debate from the AdAge.

 

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General update, this and that

September 24th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life

I suppose I should intersperse all of these recent Twitter updates (a new plug-in) with some intelligent commentary about something or other or perhaps just a simple old update about this and that.

We went live with a new website for Burson-Marsteller Australia. You can find it at www.bm.com/australia.

Its about time that we had a local web presence given the fact that we are advising many clients on digital PR and social media strategy. The site is a starting point, which we will add to and develop over time. The site is based on Microsoft Sharepoint, which I found to be an ‘OK but slightly frustrating’ content management tool.

We are currently working on a really exciting research project for Australia and working with clients on a number of digital projects and some cool new business projects. More on this later.

I am also judging a competition for the International Advertising Association and have a medium sized cardboard box of entries from teams of University students to read through over the weekend.

As a daily habit, I have started reading www.techmeme.com in the morning. I am finding that its a great way to keep up to date with what’s happening in digital and tech generally.

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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.

Future of Influence

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.

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AHT launches Social Media Strategy Framework

July 21st, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Social media

Ross Dawson (Advanced Human Technologies) today launched the Social Media Strategy Framework.

Click on the image below for a larger version.

SMSframework_500w

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Options Still on the Table to Support the Future of Quality Journalism

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

Simon Sharwood, a freelance journalist in Australia, recently blogged two out of his three ideas for new business models in print journalism. Both ideas are based on the concept of industry funding.

In the first, funding would come from industry associations and industry groups. In the second, the PR industry funds print journalism via a licensing system, which grants the license holder access to those journalists – similar to the registration of lobbyists.

newspaper-kiosk

Both concepts seem to create dependencies that would undermine journalistic independence and integrity, although the risk of this occurring in the second model could be minimised: “…to be a registered PR, one would stump up a fee that goes into an independently administered fund that is then redistributed to publishers with oversight to ensure it goes on wages” (Simon – in comments).

Putting aside the practical challenges of this model, some of which are discussed in the post, I doubt that the model would be sustainable. Funding from the PR industry would be a diminishing return as media relations become a smaller part of what PR agencies do.

Here’s where I come up with my alternative solve all solution.

I might need to get back to you on that but here are some other funding alternatives:

  • Newspapers earn not for profit status and the associated financial and tax breaks
  • Introduction of a subscription/ micro-payment system that covers multiple competing publications. Check out ViewPass, which would process payments and collect data to drive targeted advertising or trade content for information about the reader’s preferences and interest.
  • Newspapers regulate the re-use of content – in the same way that the music industry does.
  • Philanthropy may sustain some publications.

The subject is such an emotive and complex issue. I am definitely in the ‘newspapers are a good thing’ camp – but at the end of the day if the model ceases to work then we have to let ‘nature’ take its course.  Consolidation is inevitable but I think that the concept of a newspaper-less society is somewhat alarmist.

By the way, newspapers are flourishing in the developing world.  man-reading-newspaper

Ultimately, I see a small number of print publications containing analysis and opinion available internationally, nationally and in major cities. They’ll play a key role in holding institutions, business and Government to account and would be supported by the not-for-profit- funding model if advertising revenue alone was not sufficient.

I am positive that the pendulum will swing back from digital to traditional media and that things will balance themselves out.

Quality print journalism will survive even if the industry is vastly consolidated and readers will turn to the Web for breaking news, trade/niche content,  entertainment and video. I don’t personally have an issue with a micro-pay scheme – I’d be happy to pay a small amount for quality content from someone that ‘appreciated the technical nuances of the fields concerned’.

There continues to be considerable opportunity for the newspaper industry to reduce cost which makes this scenario seem feasible. Moody’s estimates that just 14% of newspaper operating costs are related to content creation. It’s not all doom and gloom – there are still workable options.

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Twitter still talk of the town

June 2nd, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

We held a digital workshop for a client today, which was very enjoyable. It was a 101 session that looked at best in class case studies across various facets of digital PR – social media releases, Twitter (covering hashtagging, wefollow and various add-on applications), social networking, virals, corporate blogging, integrated campaigns and so on. We also profiled some high ranking Australian bloggers, discussed social media policy and presented a high level strategic approach. Looking forward to next steps…

Elsewhere in the B-M world, we (not me) launched TweetElect09 – a real-time European election monitor and dashboard that is tracking – you guessed it – the European elections.

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Gordon Brown on YouTube does more harm than good

April 26th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Politics, Public Relations, Social media

On Thursday, we had UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on YouTube talking about the introduction of new reforms to deal with the issue of MP expenses.  Apparently, Gordon rarely meets young people that want to become MPs and he feels that refoming expenses rules for MPs is one of the reasons for this.

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Food tampering and political smear campaigns: Dominos and Labour Government online

April 23rd, 2009 by Daniel Young | 1 Comment | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

Two ‘case studies’ in social media have been high on the agenda in the last few weeks. They are:

  1. Wayward Dominos’ employees in Conover, North Carolina
  2. The UK Labour Government’s political smear campaign

I have heard much discussion about the brand and political impact of these unfortunate exposes and lots of experts talking about the need for the victims (or culprits) to engage social media to clean up the mess caused by these indiscretions.

All of this is interesting to a point.

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