From the desk of Patrick Ward…

A lot has been written about Steve Jobs today and yesterday and it's hard to generate enough ego to pile on, but since I have had a few run-ins with him over the years, some close encounters and others from one or two degrees of separation, I thought it was at least worth a few lines.

My first encounter with Jobs was sometime in the early 90s, I'm really not sure exactly when.  It was at the old MacWorld, when they used to stage it in the hot New England summers in Boston.  I somehow found myself at a private luncheon at a table close to the dais where Jobs was on a panel.  For some reason, Esther Dyson was at my table, which must have been by chance.  When Jobs started to take questions, Esther's hand shot up and she asked something pointed.  I can't remember the question, but I remember Jobs bristled.  He shot back.  Esther, herself no wilting flower, re-engaged.  It was on.  My memory is that it lasted a while, but it was probably a short exchange, and I do recall feeling uncomfortable.  I walked out not sensing it was historic, but certainly memorable.  It was the first time I had been close to Jobs' intimidating mind, but not the last.
 
In 1997, I met John Sculley.  John was involved as an investor and non-executive chairman of LivePicture, an early player in the digital photo world that emerged in the late 1990s, and I was his PR agency guy.  I found Sculley an affable guy with an almost patrician style.  I didn't ask much about Jobs, but the subject came up in every press interview we did, which were many.  I remember he always seemed to shake his head and look forlorn at the subject of Steve Jobs.  I always sensed that he was disappointed more than anything else at the way their relationship had devolved, almost like the way an older brother thinks of his brash younger sibling.
 
My relationship with another early Apple employee, Trip Hawkins, runs much deeper.  I met Hawkins around the same time I met Sculley.  Hawkins was a polar opposite to Sculley. Steve's impact on Trip could not have been more different.  He was employee 56 or something at Apple, so he was in the thick of business culture upheaval that Jobs brought to technology and at that time relatively stale Silicon Valley.  For Hawkins, Jobs was all inspiration.  Trip had always conceived of the computer as a gaming device and he gleaned so much about starting a business and understanding how to be different from Jobs.  Trip is a proud guy, something I have always liked about him in the 15 years I have known him, and he will eagerly enumerate the business and technical inventions he made after founding EA.  But you can tell when he talks about Jobs, that there is reverence there.  When, some 20 years after they stopped working together, Hawkins' games company, Digital Chocolate sported the top positions on Jobs' latest -- and perhaps greatest -- invention, the iPhone, I could see a sense of satisfaction in Trip.  The falcon had come home to the falconer.
 
My closest encounter with Jobs came in 1997 at a San Francisco event to launch the Mac edition of Microsoft Office.  Steve was deep in his own wilderness and his beloved company was there with him.  NeXt had ostensibly failed.  Pixar had one hit and was on its way, but none of us could tell how great it would be.  And there was Steve on stage with his trademark minimalist slides touting not only the new software but also the $150 million investment Microsoft had recently made.  After the speech, long before his most recent celebrity, Steve was standing near the stage in a gaggle of reporters, holding court.  I was standing with a new friend, (who is now an old friend) and a senior national reporter covering Apple.  As Steve spoke, answering a variety of questions in a pretty intimate setting, my friend became agitated, paralyzed in the presence of Jobs, wanting to ask a question, but feeling inadequate.  He was intimating, just as he had been in Boston just a few years before.  But I remember thinking there was a certain humility this time.  He was witty, confident and persuasive, but he was on a different mission than he had been before.  He was older and probably wiser.
 
The last time I saw Jobs in person was at D – All Things Digital, just a few years ago in what has become a famous series of interviews.  He had been very sick but his clothes weren't yet draping on him like they do on a wire hanger.  Everything, except his mind, seemed to move a little slower.  Everything was a little less intense than in my other encounters, except his eyes, which glistened in the refraction of his glasses.  I saw him both in his individual interview, in his historic dual interview with Bill Gates and then hanging around the conference that evening.  I was never close to him, never spoke to him (I may have in San Francisco that night years before, but probably said something silly or at best forgettable) but unlike the other times, now I knew I was in the company of true genius.  
 
I can't say Steve Jobs has had some great impact on me or my life. I buy Apple products and love them.  I converted my company to all Mac PCs.  And my experiences are probably close to a lot of people's.  Famous people get around and everyone in their sphere feels touched somehow.  But I have memories that will stick with me and I will tell my grandchildren some day that I stood that close to Jobs once or twice and they will look at me like we might look at someone who saw Edison demonstrate the phonograph.  And they'll be right.  I may not make history in my life, but I stood pretty close to it once.

From the desk of Ben Johnson…

One key advantage of social media is to use it as a new channel. So while companies, and particularly B2B companies, should continue broadcasting via webinars, speaking at industry events – all of the traditional t  ools, why not host these types of events on Twitter?

I started thinking about this after participating in a weekly Twitter chat about social media. A few days before the chat, the moderator tweeted the hashtag that would be used during the event and then asked for specific questions that the “speaker” would answer during the designated chat time. During the actual chat, participants retweeted, replied, and shared information using the pre-designated hashtag.

This made me wonder, if an individual could be a moderator for a Twitter chat, why couldn’t a brand? As an individual, I want to, typically, step away from my Twitter account with a significant increase in new followers weekly. Again, this is what the companies I work with also want.

So, why aren’t companies utilizing these types of activities more often? Is it because they‘re hesitant to turn to social media for such conversations? Obviously their Twitter followers are invested in what they have to say online.

It can sometimes take weeks to get feedback or any type of measurement on how successful a webinar or a speaking engagement was for a company. Not to mention the obvious hard costs associated with developing a webinar or attending a tradeshow or event. But, with a Twitter chat, there aren’t any real hard costs. Feedback is immediate and much more engaging – a dialogue vs. a monologue. Measurement happens more from a “real-time” perspective by tracking and monitoring the reach, replies, and retweets of the individual chats.

And how about the increases in discovery of new customers, partners, followers, etc. through existing online communities furthering engagement? This is just Twitter, imagine the possibilities if you continue the conversation on other social networks, or a corporate blog.

While Twitter chats are not a new concept, many companies are not taking advantage. I thought maybe some tips to help initiate and organize a Twitter chat would be helpful.

• Create a designated hashtag to identify the chat
• Use a free tool such as TweetChat to follow the conversation in real-time
• Promote the chat on other social networks and Twitter prior to the chat
• Field questions prior to the chat to help with an organized agenda
• Measure the reach of your tweets using TweetReach to see how effective the chat was on reaching new followers

I also thought I would recommend two weekly Twitter chats that I like and are currently taking place:

#BWEchat Twitter Party
Wednesdays at 9:00 PM EST/6:00 PST
Description: A Twitter chat run by BlogWorld and features guest speakers and panels about conference-related topics.

#LeadershipChat
Tuesdays at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PST
Description: A chat with over 180 active participants, Leadership Chat focuses on various topics each week.

I am looking for way to incorporate Twitter chats into what I am doing for our clients. So, I would love to hear what you think or if you come across any that are interesting, please share it with me on the 104 West Facebook page.

From the desk of Jennifer Roane…

Is it May already? I can’t tell. With all this rain and cold in Colorado it seems more like November in Boston. But, it is spring in Colorado and we almost missed it. Not because of the rain, but because we hit the ground running at the beginning of 2011 and haven’t looked up until now. 

Since we launched Content Delivery Optimization late last year, we have been working hard with existing clients to create PR programing based on this process. We have also been out talking to new prospects and as many companies as we can about why CDO is creating value and tangible returns to our existing clients’ businesses. 

Over the course of the past six months, we have learned that our CDO process is providing clients with a modern form of communication and engagement. By using CDO as the basis for all of the programs we create, we are building rich communications platforms and are able to translate these into campaigns that provide the right mix of connection with audiences. 

It is a twist on the way big brands create their corporate communication strategy, but tailored to smaller companies, budgets and the new normal landscape we find in the world of public relations.

We are seeing this translating into exciting work with existing clients, as well as helping us bring on new clients. In fact, we just announced three new clients on Wednesday -- eWise, North Plains and Smartling. All three companies chose to work with us because of this approach to communications. 

You can read more about these new clients in the press release. All are strong additions to our current mix. They all are innovating in their respective markets and making exciting moves – a combination that is energizing. 

We think that 104 West CDO process is ready-made for delivering strategic messaging that takes advantage of all the myriad communications channels we now have, and opens up more delivery mechanisms for our clients.

Now that CDO is up and running successfully for clients, we will continue to evolve it to make it work even harder for companies. 

From the desk of Patrick Ward...

From newspapers to iPads - the way we consume and interact with media has changed. How often do you find interesting stories through your Facebook friends or Twitter feeds? Fueled by the increasing pervasiveness of social media, the discovery and sharing of news has changed for good.

We, at 104 West, think this marks an exciting opportunity for communications.

Harnessing the power of social media, 104 West has introduced Content Delivery Optimization (CDO), a proprietary, patent-pending methodology for creating comprehensive communications programs that go beyond traditional public relations approaches. CDO is a program that melds public relations, social media, marketing, content generation and delivery with lead generation and marketing metrics. This type of program enables businesses to directly and persistently reach their audiences where they consume and share news the most, on the web and through social media.

In short, a CDO campaign involves the development of original content concerning a single issue and engages both traditional and social media channels to achieve a persistent stream of communication to critical audiences.

How is it done?

Critical components of a CDO campaign include:

• Creation of original and curated content

• The establishment, improvement or refinement of social media channels

• Development of a proprietary website landing page where all content is housed

• Distribution of content to target audiences with mechanisms to drive traffic back to a client’s website

• Development of specific metrics like lead generation and ongoing reporting/analysis for the life of the campaign

CDO is results oriented and highly measurable, ensuring that your communications efforts are making an impact.

“Everywhere you look people in marketing and communications are talking about social media, but it has been virtually impossible for us to identify a focused and productive social media approach for a business like ours,” said John Hoholik, executive vice president, New Business Development and Marketing at Evolv. “After running our first CDO campaign, we were able to draw a direct line from that focused campaign to significant, qualified sales leads, as well as a more engaged community following –- these are the kinds of the results we have wanted from a communications strategy.”

If you have been struggling to see how your business can utilize social media or just want to bolster your existing efforts, CDO is the program for your business.

From the desk of Patrick Ward...

It is by now a hackneyed cliché that the communications world is changing. It is almost equally hackneyed for PR people to say that our industry and discipline need to change with it.  Today, 104 West is acting instead of talking.

We are pleased to launch our latest service, Content Delivery Optimization (CDO), as well as an entirely re-tooled web site.

Anyone who has read this blog for the last six months, and I know that is a small group, has followed our building argument for clients to re-think their relationship with content and communications.  CDO is the payoff of that discussion.  We have an entire post dedicated to CDO, so I won’t burden anyone with another narrative on it here.

We are also very pleased to unveil our new web site.  So many firms simply bolt on new services to their existing web site, partly, we imagine, to dip their toes in the water, and partly to avoid the inconvenience and expense of new perspectives.  We have gone all in.  We are committed to CDO as a new communications strategy for our clients and believed that the most public commitment we could show was to demonstrate it on our own web site.  We want to thank our friends at Chronos Interactive for their partnership on the site. They did a fantastic job.

When we first entered into this persistent recession, my good friend and the former philosopher-CEO at Webroot, David Moll, said that any business who could weather through would be better on the other side.  I retorted that, for us at 104 West,  it wasn’t just the economy that was changing, but also the very nature of the news industry and PR.  I worried that instead of blue skies and calm seas on the other side, it would be more like some Denver neighborhoods after those late summer afternoon micro-bursts. The sky will clear only to reveal that the winds picked up your all deck and lawn furniture, pushed it around for a while and strewn it all over the yard.  Sure, the storm has passed, but the aftermath presents a lot of work.  Unfortunately, I think I was closer to reality than my pal.  But today, we start to put the yard back together....

Thanks to everyone at 104 West who helped in this birth of CDO and our website.  A special note of thanks to Herb Leifer who helped us and me remain true to our idea and kept spinning the wheel as the clay began to take shape. His guidance and patience and persistence were all immeasurable and invaluable.

Peggy Orenstein’s insightful piece in the New York Times Magazine yesterday (I Tweet Therefore I Am) examined the narcissism of Twitter from a psychological perspective.  In the piece, she recounts her struggle to refrain from tweeting while enjoying a quiet family moment and extrapolates that anecdote into a full reflection on one’s desire to create personas in modern life and how Twitter is a near-perfect medium for perfecting one’s assumed presence in the world.

She also reflects on the issues with creating these masks as potentially negative, wondering aloud if Twitter is in fact adversely affecting some coping mechanism by further shrouding our true selves in a 140-character spurts of who we want to be.

Ironically, it seems to us that Orenstein’s concerns about Twitter’s ability to offer neat affectations is what we see as the actual benefit for businesses. We often talk to clients about the issue of controlling market reputation, as I am sure most PR and communications firms do.  We talk about defining that reputation before it gets defined for you; simple but important ideas. Before Twitter or other social media, the idea of persistent contact with core audiences or communities was real work.  You picked your spots in news releases, ads, publicity, speeches, etc. Find the message.  Craft the delivery. And then hope you had enough opportunity to make it stick.

Twitter turns that on its head.  Orenstein’s observations have legitimate insight for individuals, but Twitter’s ability to communicate often and directly isn’t all bad.  What she suggests are masks and personas, we contend are brands.  If pre-Twitter marketing was about well orchestrated and periodic blasts, then Twitter collapses the interim.  A series of messages can follow each other so closely that it’s now a stream.  For a person to fill that stream would almost by definition require some embellishment which can easily lead to Orenstein’s premise that your Twitter-self and true self are diverging.  But the wealth of Twitter-able information about a brand is much richer, and brands almost by their definition are embellishment.  

We continue to advise our clients to think about new ways to look at Twitter and all social media.  We are inviting them this week to read Orenstein’s piece with their brand as the protagonist and the piece now starts to read like an opportunity instead of potential admonition.

From the desk of Patrick Ward...

In this space, we have spent some time describing the shift in traditional news consumption and the impact of new and social media on traditional journalism.  Both are well-discussed concepts and, while important to note, they are familiar to all of us.

The question then becomes, now what?

We noted somewhat in passing that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of news sources people routinely consume; and that increase has undermined the traditional news brands. And we truly believe that.  But, we also believe that brands consequently have a new opportunity to become their own media company.

 A startling story made this clearer to us than ever. Last winter, a friend and colleague told us about an experience that succinctly related the dynamic relationship between the media, social media and critical audiences.  His company, GoodData, is one of the hot ones, sporting all the ingredients for a successful start-up.  Its CEO, Roman Stanek is a serial entrepreneur with a great reputation having sold a previous company to Sun and another to HP, by way of Mercury Interactive.  The company boasts people like Esther Dyson and Tim O’Reilly as individual investors and Andreesen/Horowitz, the ‘it’ VC of the moment, led a round of financing last year.  Oh, and their business plan has the word ‘cloud’ in it. Enough said?

So, when Bob Evans at InformationWeek published a glowing success story on one of GoodData's customers, no one was surprised, except the VP of Marketing, our friend, Sam Boonin, who waited to see that story translate into web traffic and potential leads.  Neither happened.  And this was a big story.  To give it some legs, the management team, all with healthy personal and professional social networks, started to push the story out to friends, colleagues and gawkers through Twitter et al. That’s when the traffic began to come and in bunches. In fact, traffic from Tweets and re-Tweets was 10 times higher than direct web traffic from InformationWeek.

We don’t think that means that these executives’ personal brands are more influential than InformationWeek’s brand that has been built over 30 years.  Or do we?  It’s probably not an either/or, but more of a complementary relationship.  We can’t deny that the magazine’s brand helped when people read the Tweets.  But, there is a clear argument to be made that GoodData’s brand and Stanek’s and other execs’ personal brands offered significant credibility.

The other thing we noted about this story was that content was a driving force.  True, the content was promotional (not in intent, but in practice) and so it should drive people to the site.  But, a series of Mashable pieces last month extolled the promise of content as a marketing vehicle and we think the preceding story bears that out.  We had a client last year, Daily Makeover that used content as a way to attract users to its online try-on tool which women used to sample virtual cosmetics.  Tips about spring looks, easy ways to look natural etc. filled their site and got four million women to that site monthly, giving Daily Makeover one of the richest databases of personal cosmetics preferences in the world.

But most business-to-business companies don’t have content as part of their everyday outreach to customers.   In a world where people are so starved for information that they have an incessant parade of alerts, and where news organizations are losing their audience daily, why shouldn’t companies fill the void with interesting and entertaining content.  We think they should and content gives PR firms, like ours, a formidable tool to advance client’s positions and/or opinions.

We are advising clients to start thinking more like media purveyors and rely less on intermediaries  — from analysts to reporters — to tell their stories for them.  That’s a radical shift for some to grasp, but in a forthcoming post, we’ll offer some insight into how that can work.