Schwartz MSL Feeds

The Pot & The Kettle: Media, Politicians & the DOE Loan Program

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-13T06:53:28-05:00

"The government shouldn't pick winners and losers."

This is the common refrain whenever a critic of the Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program explains why federal government loans to private industry is a bad thing. Some have even used it to explain why they believe there should be no tax credits, treasury grants or portfolio standards for renewable energy.

But these same critics, which include media outlets and politicians, have zero problem picking winning facts (cited in their arguments) and losing facts (uncited) to support their case. Take the Solyndra myopia, which has existed ever since the company folded.

Solyndra was a technology company with a unique proprietary technology in an emerging and soon-to-be maturing market. There was a significant amount of risk involved in making the loan to Solyndra, just as there was in providing Tesla with a loan (which recently paid off its loan with interest). But critics have serially ignored the fact that failed investments like Solyndra make up less than two percent of the total loans allocated for the program. Reporters and critics also frequently cite the total amounts announced by the DOE, but ignore that less than 50 percent of the program loans have actually been paid out in total to companies.

Like Dan Primack who wrote the aforelinked Fortune piece, I am not saying that I believe the program was the best approach. The point is that individual loan recipients have been sensationalized and used as poster children for positions which are not well supported by facts. What are the facts?

Solyndra was a bad investment by VCs, the government and the customers who bought product from the company. But it is a tiny, tiny fraction of the program. It's like picking the worst performing stock in a portfolio and saying equities stink. Anyone who makes Solyndra the poster child for solar industry health (which has been done) is again not doing their homework or has an agenda.

Another fact: Greentech Media reported this week that solar installations in the US hit record levels in Q1 thanks to rapidly falling prices which has made solar cost competitive with grid electricity prices in some states, even without subsidies.

Companies fail all of the time. And the failures of Solyndra, Fisker and Beacon Power do not mean that the renewable energy, EVs and advances in energy storage are doomed. The cleantech revolution is in its infancy and is about where the auto industry was at around 1910. How many auto companies have gone under since then? I stopped counting at 100...that start with the letter A.

The jury is still out on the loan guarantee program, the solar industry, and the broader cleantech market in general. But history always delivers an unkind verdict to those that ignore facts and sensationalize to support myopic positions.

Schwartz MSL Boston Wins Six Bell Ringer Awards at 45th Annual Bell Ringer Awards Ceremony

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-13T00:00:00-05:00

The ABCs of Social Media Excellence

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-12T09:49:25-05:00

One of the most common questions I am asked is “What do we need to do to have a successful social media program.”Anyone who has been doing PR well for the past few years can answer that question and be ready to re-educate around the follow on question “So what should our [x] strategy be?”

Today engagement, authenticity and transparency are common buzzwords, but there is so much more to successfully engaging in social media and transforming your company to the possibilities it provides.

This was in the back of my mind as I was re-watching Glengarry Glen Ross and saw the Alec Baldwin scene where he drives home the “Always Be Closing”message. This was a topic at the recent PRSA Boston Social Media Summit in May as well.

That sparked an idea in my head. What would the “Always Be…”for social media be?

Ethical?

Engaged?

Transparent?

Honest?

Then I realized that was too limiting. So I expanded it to the ABCs of social media. I took a first pass, and many of my colleagues at Schwartz MSL shared great suggestions. That resulted in a second generation of the list.

So without further ado, following are my ABCs of social media:

What do you like? What words are missing? What should be removed? Share your thoughts by commenting here or via Twitter using #socialabc.

IT'S GAME TIME! Let the Trash Talking Begin

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-12T09:08:24-05:00

4, 5, 6…

Oh! Hello MSL Chicago! We didn’t see you there…we were too busy counting the championships that Boston teams have won over the past dozen years. In case you were wondering, it’s seven. And in case you were wondering which of our two cities has more total championships in the four major sports? That would be Boston, by a score of 33-24. How do you like those apples?

But we digress.

In the spirit of good sportsmanship, we wanted to extend our heartfelt congratulations on your Blackhawks making the Stanley Cup Finals. For an expansion team to make two Finals appearances in four years? Well, that is an impressive feat.

Wait a second. You’re not an expansion team? Are you sure? You’re one of the Original Six NHL teams? Really?

Oops. Listen, we feel awful. It’s just that according to a totally biased survey that we commissioned this morning, 97.6 percent of Chicagoans weren’t aware they had a hockey team until 2009. If you take that statistic and combine it with the fact that average attendance at Blackhawks games for much of the last 20 years was 139 fans, you can understand how we could make that mistake. Sorry about that.

Maybe we should talk about the road that our teams traveled to get here. For the Bruins, they came out of the gate slowly in the first round but also faced a white-hot Maple Leafs goaltender. Then they thumped the Rangers, who were playing lights out when the regular season ended. After that, they swept (SWEPT!) the mighty Penguins, the most offensively dynamic team in the league and consensus favorites to win it all.

As for the Blackhawks, they defeated the Wild and the Red Wings, two squads who couldn’t score against Mrs. McGillicuddy’s third grade field hockey team. To be fair though, they did defeat the defending champion Kings, who were so banged up that they canceled their hotel reservations and stayed in the hospital between games. So you have that going for you.

On the ice, our two teams appear pretty evenly matched: talented forwards, excellent defense and dynamite goaltending. Of course, our goaltender is playing a little out of his mind. Perhaps you’ve heard of him: Tuukka Rask. That’s 2 u’s, 2 k’s and 2 goals in four games against the most prolific scoring team in years.

Finally, seeing as how you are relatively new to this hockey thing, we - as one of the best hockey towns in America - thought it might be helpful if we offered a few suggestions for your fellow fans:

The little round black thing is called a puck.
There is no ivy growing along the boards in your arena.
Google “off sides.” That way you won’t be cheering wildly during an offensive breakout after the linesman blows the whistle.
Don’t yell “hit him!” when your team has the puck, which, once again, is that little round black thing.
It’s pronounced “Taves.”

OK, so that’s enough good-natured trash talk, because we’re all on the same side. Here’s hoping for a spirited, fun and physical series and may the best team win.

Oh, and we prefer IPA’s.

Sincerely,
Your Friends at Schwartz MSL Boston

#AskForbes Twitter Chat Tackles Anonymous and Hacktivism Questions

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-07T08:37:41-05:00

On June 5th, the security PR pros at Schwartz MSL tuned in to a Twitter chat with Forbes Writer Parmy Olson as she fielded 30 minutes of questions about Anonymous and hacktivism from the @Forbes handle.

@Parmy, thanks for the great insights!

In case you missed the live chat, here is a rundown of the 10 questions people asked that we found to be the most interesting, along with the corresponding answers from Parmy.

Q: If there were a new social network dedicated to activism do you think it would attract the type of people who support anonymous?
A: Probably yes. Anon has been moving more towards activism and vigilantism lately, and supporters wear many hats.

Q: What do you think of all those #OP by Anon that are popping around?
A: The most recent Anon attacks have been smaller, more fragmented, and more 'vigilante' than trolling.

Q: What is the source of funding of hacktivists & Anonymous?
A: LulzSec took Bitcoin donations (prob worth a bunch now), but most ops don't need funding - IRC chats are cheap.

Q: Has Anonymous' account been ever hacked by someone?
A: Doxing is already rife in Anon. Feds also watch the Twitter accounts & yes, some get hacked: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/anonymous-twitter-hacked_n_3366660.html.

Q: What do you think drives a group like Anonymous + would you say the effects are lasting and positive?
A: Many motivations: desire for notoriety, camaraderie, activism, a need to hack. Lasting effects lean toward positive.

Q: What if different hacktivists have different, opposing agendas? How do you reconcile that?
A: Often you can't, hence much discordance in Anon and unfinished ops. Some just want to troll, or hack or protest.

Q: Do you think a government agency will eventually try to shut down the #Anonymous movement?
A: Govs would like that but it's impossible - Anon's not a group but a fluid network. Supporters come and go.

Q: What is the primary driving forces of #Anonymous and #Hacktivists? How do #wikileaks become so visible to public?
A: 1. To have their voices heard, and it works. 2. Wikileaks struck a nerve by tackling the biggest institutions & secrets.

Q: Should the US hire members of Anonymous and others to fight cyberwars with China?
A: Could well happen one day - greyhat Hackers who've dabbled in Anon often move into cyber security anyway.

Q: Any guess what the typical profile of a hacktivist is? Age, education, etc... I'm fascinated by them.
A: I've seen a variety - men, women, kids, parents. The most impassioned are young men, often isolated or unemployed.

You can check out the full transcript of this Twitter chat on the Forbes website here.

Stop, Look, and Listen

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-06T10:18:28-05:00

It just might help you land that big customer you’ve been dreaming of.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” - Stephen R. Covey

This is where we fail as communicators and marketers. If we are only listening because we are waiting to speak next we miss out on the true value of conversation – learning. Nowhere does this hold truer than in social media. Thanks to advances in big data analytics we can gain oodles of insights from social media communities – whether we participate in the conversation or not.

Let’s say your company is an enterprise technology solutions provider, you have a limited marketing budget and even more limited staff resources. It might not be the best use of your staff time and budget to embark on an extensive social media marketing effort. But, you should at least be listening. Why? Quite simply the conversation is going to happen whether you participate in it or not. By listening you can learn what your customers like about your product or service and what they have issues with; even more importantly you can learn what potential customers are looking for and even when they are looking. Wouldn’t your sales team like to know the exact moment a potential client has an issue that your product could solve? Or the exact day a target of yours has started looking into options for the very service you provide? This is the kind of information you can get by simply listening.

Listening becomes even more powerful for marketing and branding purposes. The industry is abuzz about “influencer marketing.” But what is it and how do you do it? When I first entered public relations the answer was easy… just get Oprah to talk about your product or company and that was all the influence you needed (or so most people thought). But now the media landscape has changed and anyone with a blog or a Twitter handle has the potential to become a powerful influencer. So how do you identify the individuals who have the ability to reach your targeted audience, drive the conversation and ultimately impact purchasing behavior? By listening. Listen to the conversations, who is talking about what subject; who do the masses respect, follow and reference when they speak? These people are your influencers and they are the ones you want to engage with.

If your marketing communications strategy includes engaging in social media, listening becomes even more crucial. After all you should not just enter a dialog without knowing who is participating and what they are talking about. Imagine you are at a cocktail party talking about movies and the discussion is centered on “The Great Gatsby” when someone comes up halfway through the conversation and starts ranting about how Rose just lets Jack die when there was clearly enough room for two on that slab of wood in “Titanic.” That person will quickly be dismissed as irrelevant and possibly rude. The same holds true in social media, if you want to join the conversation you actually have to know what the conversation is about first.

Okay, by now I hope I have convinced you that you should give listening a try. How do you do it? Do you hire an entry level marketing person and have them sit in front of a computer searching keywords all day? Well, you could if you want only half of the information available – and serious turnover at the entry level due to the feeling of never being able to complete a task that is as mundane and monotonous as it is overwhelming.

See, as great as we humans are, not one of us can possibly locate and analyze the entire Twitter fire hose – let alone the rest of the conversations happening online. Just like the caveman recognized, you need tools. Schwartz MSL uses cutting edge tools that can do lots more than they ever could in the past. Let us help you use big data analytics to identify trends before they become one, spot potential spikes in sales and even recognize potential crises before they begin. It all starts with listening.

Have questions about how to get started? Contact us here or tweet your question to @SchwartzMSL. We’re listening.

The Importance of Listening in Social Media

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-06T09:34:02-05:00

Everyone knows social media is important, but what that doesn’t tell you is how to use it effectively. Before jumping into the conversation with your social guns blazing, have you thought to…listen? In the latest Wait a Minute, Schwartz MSL’s Laura Finlayson tells you the many benefits of simply listening to the social conversation, and how monitoring tools can help lay the groundwork for an effective, efficient social media strategy. Watch the video and check out the blog here.

PR Pros Are Getting Better, but Release Headlines Are Too Long

Schwartz MSL — 2013-06-03T06:47:21-05:00

The best content is useless if people can’t find it. Yet when it comes to the basic content companies produce the most, news releases, they often fail to optimize the most fundamental element – the headline.

For the past three years, the Schwartz MSL Research and Insights Group, with invaluable help from BusinessWire, has analyzed the headlines of more than 11,000 news releases issued over BusinessWire throughout a 31-day period.

Writing for SEO and for Google is not just a matter of keyword optimization and social engagement. If a release headline is greater than 65 characters, it doesn’t display fully. If a headline is more than 23 words, Google News may not pick it up. But too frequently, PR professionals ignore these guidelines.

This year, the study found that PR pros are getting better, but we still have a long, long way to go. Specifically:

21% of news releases are ignored by Google News.
Only 21% of all releases have headlines with 65 characters or fewer (an increase of just 1.5% over last year).
On a positive note: For the first time ever, the majority of release headlines were under 100 characters (the majority were under 150 characters in 2011).
Some people really love their words. Approximately 2% of releases are still egregious cases with headlines in excess of 300 characters. In 2012, the longest headline was 2,141 characters, an increase of 19%.

For more insights into headline optimization for SEO, what buzzwords are (over)used the most, and other tips for release optimization, download the new Schwartz MSL 2012-2013 News Release Headline Optimization Report.

Health Reform and Innovation: Revolution or Bubble?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-31T05:50:35-05:00

In Thomas Friedman's recent New York Times Op-Ed, "Obamacare's Other Surprise," the Pulitzer-winning columnist takes a wait-and-see attitude on whether the Affordable Care Act, which goes into effect next year, will realize its ambitious goals of providing better care to more people while bending the healthcare cost curve. The surprise about Obamacare, he posits, is not that, but "the number of healthcare information start-ups [that health reform] is spurring. This is a big deal."

Here at Schwartz MSL we've seen firsthand the talent, energy, resources and money being harnessed to meet the goals and opportunities presented by the Affordable Care Act. This energy will no doubt be on display at next weeks' Health Datapalooza confab in Washington, D.C., which will bring together policy gurus, entrepreneurs, payers, providers, investors and a few of our own clients.

Federal incentives rewarding the "meaningful" adoption of healthcare IT have been a catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship, and there are many stats to prove it. For example, in a recent blog post, Todd Park, CTO for the U.S., writes "more than half of all doctors and other eligible providers and nearly 80 percent of hospitals are using electronic health records to improve care, an increase of more than 200 percent since 2008."

But there are other factors at play, which Friedman points out, including the explosion of readily available healthcare data from the Department of Health and Human Services, among other sources. This "big data" boom has led to the creation of numerous start-ups offering solutions to mine, make sense of, store, and share the right data with the right folks at the right time. This could be a doctor receiving clinical decision support at the point of care, a patient receiving a healthcare consultation via smartphone, or even an administrator monitoring a population of patients and targeting those most in need of immediate care.

Of course there are naysayers who are skeptical about Obamacare and caution that the surge in innovation is merely a government-created "bubble." But the intense focus on data-driven care, the rise in new technologies promoting information sharing, transparency, collaboration, interoperability and health information exchange, paired with new models of encouraging outcomes-based care and measuring those outcomes, are only moving forward and should ultimately benefit all Americans.

Using Purpose-Led Marketing in Your Brand's Communications

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-23T11:14:13-05:00

Brands today are realizing that it’s no longer just about what you sell, but also what you stand for. By integrating purpose-led marketing into your communications strategy, your corporate story will be more meaningful, memorable and credible to your audiences. In this week’s Wait A Minute video, Schwartz MSL’s Heather McIntyre talks about why it is crucial to incorporate purpose-led marketing strategies into your communications plan to be relevant in today’s market place. Watch the video and read the blog here.

Identifying Your Brand's Causes with the Fifth "P" -- Purpose-Led Marketing

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-23T10:13:52-05:00

As transparency, responsibility and the authenticity of a brand’s communications take on greater importance in today’s marketplace, brands need to get out of the selling business and into the business of improving lives. Today, it’s about purpose-led marketing. In the past, having a purpose may have been considered “nice,” but it is now crucial to winning in business. Brands are realizing that it is no longer just about what you sell, but also “what you stand for.” As such, purpose is taking its rightful place as the fifth “P” in the traditional marketing mix – along with product, price, place and promotion. Global companies and leading brands are seeking to identify their purpose and communicate it in ways that enhance reputation and drive emotional points of difference among competitors.

Within purpose-led marketing, a company’s support of social issues remains a critical component to help bring that purpose to life in real time for stakeholders. This may include cause marketing, NGO partnerships and corporate responsibility practices. In fact, 68 percent of consumers expect companies they do business with to support causes according to MSLGROUP’s 2011 Social Purpose Index.

The research also revealed that despite lofty expectations for corporate responsibility, consumer skepticism is at an all-time high. While we know stakeholders want companies to support causes, and will reward those that do it well, many believe companies only do it to sell more. Almost 75 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed say there is a disconnect between the causes brands support and the products they sell. Fifty-four percent claim that it seems like every company supports a cause, and 78 percent find it difficult to follow who is doing what. In addition, Americans are dealing with uncertain economic times. As unemployment remains high, and gas and food prices continue to rise, 79 percent of consumers agree: “I care about societal issues, but times are tough and I am worried about ensuring my family has everything they need.” This slice of socially conscious consumers represents a big opportunity for companies to more deeply engage targets in their purpose, and it does not have to mean supporting causes buyers care most about.

Gone are the days of simply putting pink ribbons on packaging to stand out or sell more products. Gone are the days of safe, status quo, or short-lived cause efforts. Rather, in order to garner attention, corporate causes should extend from a well-defined purpose and make a meaningful, memorable, credible link to brand values, products and services. And, to more deeply engage consumers’ hearts, minds and wallets, companies must not only connect to a meaningful purpose, but go beyond that purpose to deliver on a deeper promise for society.

I'll take a side of inspiration with those scrambled eggs, thank you.

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-22T07:02:06-05:00

Yesterday, my day started out a bit differently than usual. I was up much earlier in order to get to the Boston Seaport Hotel for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Women’s Network Breakfast. Schwartz MSL Boston was the event’s corporate sponsor. Well, the traffic was awful (I intend to call the MassPike to suggest that the FAST PASS be accepted at the Cash Only toll booth)… but I digress.
It was definitely worth the ride in. Our guest of honor and featured speaker that morning was Carmen Ortiz, United States Attorney. If you don’t know, Ms. Ortiz was nominated by President Barack Obama as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2009. She is the first Hispanic and the first woman to represent Massachusetts as United States Attorney.

Wow! These events typically feature amazing, interesting, successful women, but I must say Ms. Ortiz was all that and more. She was genuine and “real.” She gave us advice, she told some stories and most importantly—she inspired us. She inspired us to be mentors, to take risks, to lead by example, to be role models for young girls, to remember our roots and to believe in ourselves. Ms. Ortiz was “leaning in” long before Sheryl Sandberg coined the phrase.

Ms. Ortiz talked about management style, suggesting that a manager inspires her team to produce and to succeed. An inspiring manager brings out the best in her team; she can make you laugh but also challenge you. A manager puts the organization first; she leads by example—rolling up her sleeves doing the work alongside her team, not just delegating every task. And by doing so that manager inspires every team member to bring their best game.

Leadership—good leadership—is a delicate balance of honest feedback and appreciation. Make sure your team/staff knows you value them.

Women tend to second guess themselves. I think she’s absolutely right about that. Before you go for that new job or promotion, you question your resume, your accomplishments—you may even doubt your ability to do the job. Men tend not to have these issues. So, as Ms. Ortiz recommends: take risks. We may not pick the family we are born into, but we do get to choose our spouse, our friends, our work colleagues—so choose wisely and surround yourself with family, friends, colleagues who support you, who believe in you. It’s a sign of strength to ask for help. Know yourself and know enough to get help when you need it.

And when you do succeed, don’t forget to send the elevator back down for the next woman to ride up.

Schwartz MSL Brings Heart Health to Denver

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-21T10:12:08-05:00

There are some times in your career that you feel like you are truly making a difference and the first week of May was one of those times for the Schwartz MSL Healthcare team.

We had the opportunity to once again work with the wonderful folks at the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) to raise consumer awareness in Denver and surrounding cities about the importance of heart health, and, most notably, help educate the public about two serious yet widely misunderstood arrhythmia disorders: atrial fibrillation (AFib) and sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). This patient education and awareness campaign was HRS’ way of giving back to Denver, host city for Heart Rhythm 2013, the organization’s prestigious annual scientific conference.

The Schwartz MSL team recognized that in order to reach a large and diverse audience and truly make an impact, we needed a surround sound approach that leveraged, but didn’t rely solely on, local media coverage and advertising. More than that, we wanted to put residents in touch with experts for live conversations about warning signs, symptoms and treatment options. Similar to our campaign last year in Boston, we set out to hold a public awareness event.

With a little more than a month to plan and execute, the Schwartz MSL team quickly mobilized, securing a location in downtown Denver with lots of foot traffic, making sure we had all the necessary permits from the City, and hiring tent and furniture vendors. Keep in mind that we did this all from almost two thousand miles away in Boston with none of the team ever having visited Denver! We often tell our clients that in today’s always-on world, location really doesn’t matter, and nowhere was this mantra more apparent than in planning the HRS event. The Schwartz MSL team quickly was able to establish relationships with key local departments in Denver — Park & Recreation, Chamber of Commerce, Travel and Visitor Bureau, and Mayor and Governor’s offices—enabling us to get the intel and influence we needed to pull off a great event.

To help promote the event and drive attendance, Schwartz MSL conducted traditional and social media outreach to local outlets, including the Denver Post, and local broadcast stations tweeted and shared on Facebook about it to their followers. In addition, we secured more than a dozen calendar listings in outlets in and around Denver and developed a flyer about the event that was distributed by street teams in the city in the days leading up to the main event.

We also wanted the experience for people who attended to be interactive, so we worked with HRS on patient risk assessments that were loaded onto iPads. Using these online quizzes, the Schwartz MSL team guided people through a short series of questions about their health, family history and lifestyle. Armed with a topline assessment of each individual’s risk for SCA and/or AFib, our team then connected each attendee with a member of our team of cardiologists, nurses and allied health professionals who had volunteered their time for one-on-one conversations. Then, thanks to HRS partner AliveCor, attendees were also able to get their EKGs taken right on an iPhone. As a result, each attendee left not just with information, but personalized data on their own heart health, risk and steps they can and should take to protect themselves.

The Schwartz MSL team also didn’t stop at just an event. We developed and rolled out three weeks’ worth of radio ads throughout Denver promoting the event and helping to educate listeners about cardiac arrhythmias, AFib and SCA. We worked with HRS to sponsor a local Denver Rapids professional soccer game where HRS’ PSA was played for several thousand attendees. We also worked with Denver Governor John Hickenlooper’s office to secure a proclamation declaring the month of May as Cardiac Rhythm Awareness Month in Colorado, and with Mayor Michael Hancock’s office to proclaim May 8, the day of our event, as Cardiac Rhythm Awareness Day in Denver. These proclamations also gave a level of timeliness to our media pitches around local patient stories and local physician experts.

Despite a raw and rainy morning, the event on May 8 was a success. Attendees completed the risk assessment, met with a health professional and left armed with the information they garnered from these conversations so they could make follow-up appointments with their own doctors if needed. One woman even commented that she was having trouble getting an appointment with a cardiologist about AFib, so she came to this event and the one-on-one time she got with a physician was incredibly valuable. Many more people came by simply to learn about AFib and SCA and left with materials that will help them better understand these conditions. The Schwartz MSL team also distributed several hundred magnets developed to provide the public with simple steps for monitoring their heart rhythm at home, a simple task that can help close the gap between early detection and the life-threatening consequences if these conditions are left untreated.

The Schwartz MSL team really felt like we made a difference in spreading the word about SCA and AFib to local residents in Denver at this fun and educational event. Plus, the multi-faceted campaign continues to yield results with additional patient stories, expert physician commentary, PSA viewings and social media buzz that are still appearing.

Thanks Denver and HRS for a great event!

Key Takeaways From PRSA's Social Media Summit

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-21T07:27:15-05:00

Local PR practitioners gathered last Tuesday for the second annual Social Media Summit hosted by PRSA Boston. The agenda featured a variety of social media experts and bloggers broken out into the following sessions: Engagement, Content Creation, Brand-Blogger Relations and, finally, Measurement. While these topics are not new, the panelists did provide some interesting new insights and perspectives regarding their social media programs. Overall it was an informative day with lots of great discussion. Below are a few of our favorite takeaways:

From the panel "Creating Content"

Live and Die by the Editorial Calendar
An occurring theme emerged from the panelists who spoke on content creation…all programs will need a strategic plan. Corinne Kovalsky of Raytheon and Thom Lyltle of EMC both agreed that mapping out a content strategy plan is a must have when starting any social media program. Kovalsky runs her digital and social media team like a newsroom where they live and die by their editorial calendar. The calendar allows for thoughtful planning and the ability to leverage company assets throughout the year. Once the plan is in place, it’s critical to have content that people will actually find compelling and will want to read and share. As Kovalsky said, “It’s not enough to reach your target audience; you need content good enough that causes your audience to want to share it.”

From the panel "Driving Engagement"

Stop to Listen
Today, powerful communication can happen in 140 characters or less. With everything at our fingertips, sometimes the basics are lost. When it comes to driving engagement, members of the panel agreed that a critical first step is to listen to what your customers are saying. A company should think of their social media program like attending a party. You can chose to sit on the couch emerged in your phone, or you can get up and introduce yourself to those around you and strike up a conversation.

Once a dialogue has been established, a simple ask can go a long way. Be sure to ask fans and followers what they like, or what they want to see more of as this will allow for better, targeted communication down the road.

From "The Brand-Blogger Connection"

Develop Relationships
Unlike the majority of reporters, bloggers can cover a variety of different “beats,” which is why it is critical to avoid the assumption that they only cover one topic. As PR practitioners, we should understand how to connect with these influencers, determine what resources they need and what they seek from brands. Regarding pitches, the subject line and how you address the blogger is important. In a recent research report, long-time Community Manager for Isis Maternity and blogger Cindy Meltzer found that bloggers are inundated with pitches that are not associated with their blog. Cindy says, “Forty percent of bloggers surveyed say the pitches they get are not relevant.”

Another key factor to consider when approaching bloggers is that they not only publish blogs, but utilize multiple channels for sharing content. Jodi Grundig who blogs about parenting and family travel says that it can be very time consuming to manage multiple blog posts. As a result, these influencers are not just sharing on targeted blogging sites but also simultaneously on their Facebook (personal and blog) pages, Twitter as well as other emerging social media channels. The research also revealed 34 percent of bloggers say compensation “rarely” or “never” matches the amount of work required.

From “Measuring Impact"

How to Define Success
In order to measure the level of success for a social media program, it is critical to define and map back to the marketing objectives. As the momentum of a social media program begins, executives are eager to know the level of impact of the effort as well as its ROI. The pain point with measuring impact can be too much data, too little content, real-time and lack of visibility. However, there is an assortment of tools for measurement and monitoring your social media programs. Utilizing these tools will help measure within and across channels. Key performance indicators (KPI) are another type of useful performance measurement. Companies can use KPIs to gauge a program’s success, or to evaluate the success of a particular activity in which it is engaged.

By Stacy Nartker and Kendra Dorr

SEO for PR Content: Ace the Essential Tactics

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-16T10:58:11-05:00

Next Tuesday PR News is hosting a webinar on a topic some public relations pros know a bit about, but nearly all of us would like to learn more: SEO for PR.

The topic couldn't be timelier as organizations across industries are pouring substantial energy and money into creating sophisticated content strategies because if target audiences can't find that content online, it has limited value. As luck would have it, PR people--who create a lot of the documents, videos, social media posts and graphics that companies intend for widespread consumption--are in a great position to support SEO.

David Cockburn, SEO and online marketing analyst at Texas Instruments, will provide tips on tools and talk about how to make time for SEO and Jolina Pettice, executive director of operations at TopRank Online Marketing, will offer pointers on things like how to identify keywords and optimize social content. I'll chat about how to optimize press releases, make PR support link building strategies and generally keep up with Google when it's not your full-time job.

I hope to see a few Schwartz MSL friends and family members there.

For more info, check out PR News.

P.S. If you work in the healthcare industry, you may also want to download Schwartz MSL's ebook on SEO for healthcare organizations.

Which Social Media Tools Do Healthcare IT Influencers Use?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-09T08:41:26-05:00

It's important to keep a close eye on trends in social media, especially as adoption rates grow and communities begin to form on a range of topics. That thought process is what prompted me to reach out to a friendly group of health IT influencers on Twitter to learn more about how and if they use Facebook to stay on top of relevant companies and industry topics for their jobs as journalists.

Curious how much #healthIT reporters use Facebook to watch companies & follow news. @ahier @kenonhit @donfluckinger @nversel thoughts?
— Jordon Cloud Goulder (@jordoncloud) March 29, 2013

Less than an hour after sending my tweet, I received responses from five different journalists who verified that they do utilize social media for work, but that they each used social media a bit differently. The Healthcare practice at Schwartz MSL was interested in learning more so we developed a survey to connect with an even larger group of influencers. We asked the group to tell us if they use social media for professional use and which channels they use for this purpose. We decided to focus on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, as our clients have seen the most success with these sites.

Social media skeptics might be surprised to learn that a healthy 82.6 percent of our survey respondents are not only using social media for personal use, but they're using it to gain knowledge about companies and topics that they may later report on. This means that they're following status updates, reading consumer responses and participating in the health IT conversations on their own accounts.

Which social media tools were the most popular for professional use among our health IT influencers? Find out here:

Twitter is clearly the king when it comes to social media participation for reporters, with 94.7 percent of our social media users stating that they use the popular social media site for professional use.
Coming up behind Twitter was LinkedIn, not surprisingly, as the social networking site is a great way to stay apprised of news and events related to companies of all sizes. And 68.4 percent of our social media-touting influencers say they log onto the site to do just that.
Google+ proved to be popular with 42.1 percent of our survey's social media users, a number that may be surprising to some until taking a step back to understand the level of interaction encouraged on the site. Reporters, The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, vendors and more have been known to gather on the still young social media channel for interactive health IT-related Google+ Hangouts.
Facebook is a site that many still reserve for personal use only. Our survey results reveal that only 31.6 percent of influencers use the site for professional purposes.

Our survey is truly a testament to the power of social media for both B2B and B2C companies. Many B2B companies tend to shy away from prioritizing social media accounts, however, the fact that 82.6 percent of the boldest and brightest health IT influencers use social media in some capacity for their jobs should encourage social media skeptics to log on and share pertinent company information with targeted communities. After all, you don’t want a reporter to see a customer complaint on social media before you do!

If you would like to learn more about how to integrate social media into your healthcare business, feel free to contact our Healthcare Social Media Practice Group at hcsmg@schwartzmsl.com.

Social and Substance: Green and Sustainable PR Best Practices

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-08T11:34:17-05:00

In recent years, the cleantech industry has faced more than its fair share of challenges—from high profile company failures to bankruptcies to reduced VC investments.

For the journalists and industry analysts covering this emerging space, reporting on the highs and lows has made them even savvier, more critical and more demanding on the businesses they research and the executives they interview.

At Schwartz MSL we work with these professionals every day, suggesting the story ideas, offering the data and providing the access to thought leaders that feed their reports. To even better understand how their perspectives are changing and how they want PR folks to work with them, we conducted a survey.

We uncovered some pretty interesting facts that any organization wanting to publicize a sustainability or green story will want to know. Here are a few:

Survey Says Don’t Believe the Hype: 48% of survey respondents felt the biggest perception challenges facing the industry are high-profile flameouts (e.g. Solyndra) and too much hype around early stage, unproven companies.

No coincidence: 65% felt overhyping technology or milestones or a lack of transparency are the biggest communication mistakes a company can make.
- Schwartz MSL Says: PR programs must be built on a foundation of credibility and transparency. Most media and analysts have been burned by hyperbolic claims or unsubstantiated data, and would rather cover a bold, interesting company with substance that under promises and over delivers.

Survey Says Follow the (Thought) Leader: 55% of respondents cite interviews with industry experts among the sources they most frequently rely on for article ideas and other content.
- Schwartz MSL Says: Thought leadership programs are the cornerstone to our media and industry analyst relations efforts. Arranging interviews on emerging trends, breaking news or policy needs (and not the new solution offering) deliver many of the most valuable results for our clients.

Survey Says Social is the New Normal: 34% of respondents cited Twitter or LinkedIn as the best ways to get their attention, and 27% cited social media as a major source for story ideas.
- Schwartz MSL Says: Even we were surprised that Twitter tied with desk phones as the second most popular way to contact reporters. And with a quarter of media and analysts getting ideas from social means every company should be budgeting for social media PR in 2013.

What PR Pros Should Know About Cleantech Journalists and Analysts

Schwartz MSL — 2013-05-08T11:16:19-05:00

Here at Schwartz MSL, we work with journalists and analysts in the cleantech industry on a regular basis, but to keep up with changing interests, headlines and perspectives, we want to know more. We conducted a survey, and uncovered some interesting facts. Schwartz MSL VP Erin Del Llano talks about our findings, and what you’ll want to know when publicizing any sustainability or green story, in this week’s Wait A Minute video and blog post.

Drawing Attention By Drawing a Line

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-25T09:55:11-05:00

Driving in to work this morning, I heard the news that GE Capital has announced that it has stopped financing gun retailers. It was reported that the company, based in Fairfield, Conn., made the move in a sign of solidarity with its neighbors in nearby Newtown, where Adam Lanza senselessly killed 27 people, including 20 children, just before Christmas last year.

"Wow," I thought. "Way to take a stand!" Until the story went a little deeper... It turns out GE Capital's new policy affects only retailers that exclusively sell firemarms and doesn't affect retailers—such as Wal-Mart—that sell guns in addition to a variety of other products.

In fact, the decision affects less than 75 retailers, which USA Today quotes GE spokesperson Russell Wilkerson as saying was "an immaterial part of our sales volume."

Oh. So what's the point of the big announcement then? Well, the point is mostly symbolic. GE Capital is essentially sending a not-so-subtle message to its employees, its customers, investors and the community at large that things need to change. We need to figure out how to get a handle on gun violence in this country and put an end to tragic events such as what happened in Newtown.

Are they sticking their necks out for this? Not really. But they are drawing an (albeit faint) line in the sand. What's more, they're keeping the conversation going, with media outlets reporting on it from coast to coast this morning (and even a mention in this humble blog). At the end of the day, we're all going to remember that GE Capital acted on principle. We're less likely to remember it was a mitigated risk in the first place. And, that's what they hoped to achieve.

It got me thinking about my clients and even the company I work for. What can each of our businesses do to put a stake in the ground -- to make good business decisions that are also based on principle and the kind of companies we want to be? How can we use these decisions to position ourselves as thought leaders and inspire others to follow suit?

Media Relations After a National Tragedy: Proceed With Caution

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-24T15:20:11-05:00

Sometimes conducting media outreach can be a difficult activity for PR practitioners during a normal working environment, but in the aftermath of a national tragedy, such as the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt for the suspects, the playbook becomes more complex. Should there be a grace period when reaching out to reporters? If so, how long should it last? Is there an opportunity to become a valuable resource for the media without looking like you’re leveraging a calamity?

There’s no easy answer, but in this case, in many industries such as entertainment, high-tech and cleantech normal communications activities resume quickly. However, in others such as sports and healthcare, reporters were quickly consumed in Marathon-related stories. This means that PR pros had to be more sensitive to the scope of the news. PR pros and their clients in those fields were best served by erring on the side of caution.

The Marathon tragedy also presented an opportunity for some public relations representatives to offer assets to reporters. This is no time to push for a product or company feature, but there are people with expertise who can help reporters bring perspective and new insights to the public. For instance, trauma physicians or experts in limb amputation can offer important insight. The same can be said for terrorism and security experts. However, the line between helpful and insensitive is narrow. Pitching a product or service to reporters with the positioning that “XYZ could have helped save lives” would be in extremely poor taste. The sensible approach is to proceed with caution, and the paramount concern should be helping the public, selflessly.

The events of last week created an interesting dilemma for one of Schwartz MSL’s account teams. Our client markets a treatment for blocked arteries caused by peripheral artery disease (PAD) and recently launched a campaign that centered on the prevention of limb loss (if left untreated, PAD often leads to amputation). It is a noble and important effort, given that PAD is strongly linked to diabetes, a condition whose prevalence is rising rapidly among U.S. residents.

However, more than a dozen of the injured spectators at the Marathon lost one or both of their legs. In the immediate aftermath of these events, could we justify pitching a story on a treatment to prevent limb loss?

At the time of the tragedy, our media outreach efforts were focused on national consumer freelancers and local health reporters in New Haven, Conn. and Lexington, Ky. We could have resumed our normal activities in short order without tying in the events in Boston, and perhaps we could have generated some interest in a story on PAD. But it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. It was too soon.

We decided to cease all media relations activities for the week. This week, we are treading carefully and contacting reporters only when we are certain they are no longer covering Marathon-related health stories. We are proceeding with caution. Ethically and professionally, it’s the right thing to do.

LinkedIn - The Forgotten Social Media Channel

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-24T10:37:04-05:00

Marketers and communication professionals alike agree that social media is here to stay. Facebook and Twitter have proven to be an effective tool to reach a targeted audience and to engage in a conversation that’s relative and important to business, often resulting in an impactful ROI.

However, there’s one social media channel that all too often is overlooked. I don’t know if it’s because we associate it with our own personal brand, but with more than 200 million users, LinkedIn is an often underutilized resource for B2B marketing.

If you haven’t already engaged in a LinkedIn influence campaign—think about this:

Access to a Targeted, Engaged Audience

Who are you trying to reach? As PR practitioners we hear it all the time: “We want to reach human resource professionals, dentists, surgeons, building property managers, we need a Facebook page!” Wrong. Facebook is a great resource to reach consumers, but not the most effective at influencing strategic business level decisions.

LinkedIn is the biggest professional social network in the world; the Group space within the network creates a forum for colleagues to exchange best practices with industry experts and is a prime platform to exchange ideas and information for marketers. For example, a quick group search on LinkedIn for “human resources” shows more than 3,800 groups with thousands of members and active discussions. It’s an easy opportunity to directly engage with a target audience.

Bolster Your Image

Before you engage first make sure your own LinkedIn page is up to snuff. Are you following relevant third party groups, or industry organizations? Are your employees following you? Your own page is a perfect platform to develop expertise and thought leadership. Create a weekly/biweekly editorial strategy, identify relevant topics and trends and have several different employees post a discussion to engage followers. Remember, it’s not a one-way street, be sure to monitor what’s being said with other groups and chime in.

Evaluate

How do I know it’s working? When communicating with different audiences, include a bit.ly or Google URL tracker to allow for trackable/measureable results. This will permit you to see how many people clicked on the information and if your message is resonating. For example, if your business has an annual award and you’d like to drive nominations, tracking your group discussion posts makes for an easy way to see which group is engaged and interested in the award and furthermore, which of your messages is resonating with them. Be sure to mix it up, post at different times with different messages, rather than using the same message.

Don’t Be a Quitter

Like all social media programs, it takes time and consistent engagement to see results. With a strong strategy in place, active engagement, a clear direction, goals, objectives and a touch of patience, you’ll be a LinkedIn groupie before you know it. And you’ll even have measurable results to support your latest addiction.

The Importance of LinkedIn to PR Pros

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-24T09:58:39-05:00

Social media is an important part of any PR strategy, but while many are focused on Facebook and Twitter, there's another channel that often goes overlooked—LinkedIn. In this week's Wait A Minute post, Schwartz MSL's Stacy Nartker discusses why LinkedIn should not be forgotten about, and how to use the platform most effectively to achieve your marketing and communications goals. Watch the video below and read the full blog post here.

Suddenly Good Writing is the Best Way to Impact SEO

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-10T04:07:04-05:00

Two SEO experts and a nice crew of PR practitioners gathered at Schwartz MSL last night to discuss the best ways for PR peeps to help clients achieve better results with Google search. The topic is not new, but conventional wisdom has changed dramatically in recent years and months. Here's what we learned last night:

1) Paid search (PPC) is very hard for B2B companies. The two experts, Lora Kratchounova from Scratch Marketing & Media and Ian Klein from inSegment, agreed that paying for placement in Google search results is difficult for B2B companies. It seems as though it's hard to sort out key words that are specific to a B2B audience against the backdrop of those terms appearing in Google searches for other reasons.

2) A company *should* bid for PPC placement on its own name. Apparently, Google offers discounted rates for companies to place PPC bids on their own company names (awfully nice of Google to do that). And even though a given company should have excellent organic SEO for its own name, it's a best practice to secure top paid placement for that company name as well.

3) BIG: For PR people, the little SEO press release tricks no longer matter. My co-worker Mark McClennan publishes an annual report on how PR pros fail to optimize their press releases for SEO. The numbers are stark. Three-quarters of press release headlines are too long, given that Google seems to prioritize terms that appear in about the first 65 characters. Well, as it turns out, the SEO tips and tricks I learned several years back are no longer applicable. Google is smart enough to understand context and to make very good guesses about the quality of writing. In general, PR pros don't need to worry about keyword density, links, etc.

4) What does matter is good writing. As Ian Klein mentioned, if a PR pro writes a solid press release that is clear and includes appropriate links to supporting content, then that pro will be rewarded from an SEO perspective. It's that simple.

I have experienced this fourth rule a few times. Sometimes, when I read an especially good press release or blog post written by one of my teams, I run a keyword density check on that writing. And I find a near perfect density for the keywords the client cares about. In these cases, the writer is merely trying to write something good; they are not paying attention to the SEO "rules."

It would appear that Google has improved its algorithms so that it can serve its users best--the best content is given the best authority. I guess that's the way it really should be.

Lora Kratchounova agreed that good content is key. However, she expanded the concept of content to include other deliverables besides writing. It could be visuals or games, even.

5) Media placements that link to client websites or pages significantly impact SEO. For good old fashioned media relations experts, Ian Klein nailed it. A high-profile placement with a link back to a client's site might take a lot of time and a lot of effort. The SEO benefit from that placement (and link) is equal to the effort that went into the process.

So the big takeaways for PR people affecting SEO? It's about good writing and media placements that refer to my clients.

Infosecurity PR Tips--in Less Than 150 Seconds

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-09T12:00:16-05:00

The Schwartz MSL digital team put me on camera to walk through the highlights of an eBook MSLGROUP recently published providing tips and tricks for Infosecurity PR. Infosecurity is the largest IT security show in Europe.

To download the free eBook from the MSLGROUP Technology Practice outlining tips for Infosecurity PR, click here.

Social Media Financial Disclosure - New SEC Guidance Opens It Up, Kind Of

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-08T10:35:25-05:00

If you’re an SEC geek like me, the developments over the past few days concerning social media and simultaneous disclosure have been fascinating. This new SEC guidance, triggered by something Netflix CEO Reed Hastings did last July 3, has resulted in a short SEC document that is actually reasonably easy to understand (not always the case). This is a topic that often comes up with publicly traded companies so I’ll summarize it here, and include a few related links on the topic as well: the NYT Dealbook story and the CFO magazine story, as well as the SEC document (above).

(Caveat: I’m not an SEC or Reg FD specialist, but I’ve followed this for years and I play one on TV. NOTE: we are not an IR firm and we cannot give binding advice about regulated financial matters.)

So here’s a summary. In 2000 the SEC updated its ancient (1934) rules regarding disclosure of information that could impact trading of public company equities. This was a 584-page document usually referred to as Reg FD, or “the aircraft carrier.” With the rise of blogs and social media the SEC updated some of this in 2008 to address the trend of companies using online communications to convey material information. This was referred to as the Commission’s 2008 Guidance. This helped, but social media has evolved at a furious pace since 2008.

Then, in July 2012, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings used his personal Facebook page to brag that Netflix had provided one billion hours of streaming content in the month of June. This represented an enormous increase in Netflix streaming, and because previously Hastings had said that hours of streaming was a good metric for the company’s performance, the SEC viewed the Facebook posting as a potentially non-simultaneous disclosure of a key material fact. Hastings has 200,000 Facebook followers but the information took a few hours to spread and the stock rose 13% during that time. Netflix did not make an SEC filing of this information. So the issue was: did this violate SEC rules by being non-simultaneous, or is social media now so widespread that you could view this Facebook posting as simultaneous disclosure of material information?

On April 2, 2013 the Commission’s Division of Enforcement issued an eight-page report that reviewed all of this. To boil it way down: social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and company blogs are now acceptable ways for a company to disclose this type of information, but there’s a big “If.” Which is: a company must announce its social media disclosure strategy, specifying the channels it may use, so investors will know how to follow the company’s announcements. Also, a company must be consistent in using these channels, and if it changes its approach it must announce that change. Basically, if a company says something like: “we might use our Facebook page, Twitter or blog to announce material information” then interested investors can follow all those channels and the disclosures will be simultaneous.

Interestingly, the wire services that distribute press releases are all making the case this week that disclosure through social media is still is still too spotty and inconsistent, and there’s nothing like the good old-fashioned press release. They’re probably right, but now the SEC has cleared the way for companies to make social media channels a key element of their financial disclosure strategy.

Here are two useful sections from the Commission’s April 2 finding:

Specifically, in light of the direct and immediate communication from issuers to investors that is now possible through social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, we expect issuers to examine rigorously the factors indicating whether a particular channel is a “recognized channel of distribution” for communicating with their investors. We emphasize for issuers that the steps taken to alert the market about which forms of communication a company intends to use for the dissemination of material, non-public information, including the social media channels that may be used and the types of information that may be disclosed through these channels, are critical to the fair and efficient disclosure of information. Without such notice, the investing public would be forced to keep pace with a changing and expanding universe of potential disclosure channels, a virtually impossible task…

There has been a rapid proliferation of social media channels for corporate communication since the issuance of the Commission’s 2008 Guidance. An increasing number of public companies are using social media to communicate with their shareholders and the investing public. We appreciate the value and prevalence of social media channels in contemporary market communications, and the Commission supports companies seeking new ways to communicate and engage with shareholders and the market. This Report is not aimed at inhibiting corporate communication through evolving social media channels. To the contrary, we seek to remind issuers that disclosures to persons enumerated in Regulation FD, even if made through evolving social media channels, must still be analyzed for compliance with Regulation FD. Moreover, we emphasize that the Commission’s 2008 Guidance, though largely focused on the use of web sites, is equally applicable to current and evolving social media channels of corporate communication. The 2008 Guidance explained that issuers must take steps sufficient to alert investors and the market to the channels it will use for the dissemination of material, nonpublic information. We believe that adherence to this guidance will help, with minimal burden, to assure compliance with Regulation FD and the fair and efficient operation of the market.

Executing Global PR Programs

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-03T09:49:23-05:00

Rolling out a truly global PR campaign can be difficult, and can quickly lead to blurred messages and disparate results from country to country. Here at Schwartz MSL, we employ a "hub and spoke" model to execute global PR programs for some of our largest clients. In this week's Wait A Minute video and blog, Schwartz MSL Account Director Mercedes Carrasco dives into the details of this model, and the many benefits it provides to clients. Watch the video and read the full blog post here.

HIPAA, Privacy & Security at HIMSS - Its All Connected

Schwartz MSL — 2013-04-02T07:58:15-05:00

Schwartz MSL had another significant presence at HIMSS in New Orleans this year. We had a record 15 clients exhibiting, who offer an array of solutions aimed at consumers (mHealth), payers/brokers (claims management software, analytics), hospitals and health systems (health information exchange, security), healthcare providers (electronic medical records, clinical decision support) and even employers (benefits management).

Although HIMSS is not a security-focused show, three security themes had strong resonance:

Securing protected health information (PHI) and keeping it compliant with the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Interoperability and secure delivery of information across diverse healthcare networks.
- Perhaps the biggest announcement at HIMSS13 was when five marquee Electronic Health Record vendors (Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, Greenway and McKesson, which collectively represent more than 40% of the hospital EHR market) launched the CommonWell Alliance to promote greater access to health data through improved interoperability. To quote the press release, the initiative is designed to create “a national and trusted health information exchange to break down information silos in healthcare (and) improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of care delivery.”
- There was also a very popular “HIMSS Interoperability Showcase” which featured live demos and education sessions. Key panels, education sessions and exhibitions included:
  - “Introducing the Blue Button Plus” by Pierce Graham-Jones, West Health Innovator-in-Residence (HHS), and Ryan Panchadsaram, Presidential Innovation Fellow, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Blue Button+ is a blueprint for the structured and secure transmission of personal health data on behalf of an individual consumer. It meets and builds on the view, download and transmit requirements in Meaningful Use Stage 2 for certified EHR technology.
  - “Extra-Sensitive PHI: Appropriate Sharing Using Data Segmentation for Privacy” by Scott Weinstein, JD, Presidential Management Fellow, Office of the Chief Privacy Officer , Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Discussed the types of healthcare data that require additional protection and special handling beyond HIPAA requirements, the applicability of Privacy Metadata as a means to enable electronic implementation of various disclosure policies, the common attributes of Privacy disclosure policies, and how standards can be used to electronically enforce a prohibition on redisclosure.
  - “Malice, Mistake and Misuse: Managing Privacy and Security in an Insecure World” a Lunch & Learn session sponsored by PwC
  - “Locking Down the Cloud for Healthcare: Security is Not a Myth” a Lunch & Learn session sponsored by FireHost
Getting a handle on the growing BYOD trend in hospitals and creating policies that ensure collaborative care that utilize smartphones and other devices does not compromise security.
- Schwartz MSL client Imprivata demonstrated both Imprivata OneSign and Imprivata Cortext, a free HIPAA-compliant texting solution, and had nine hospital and health system customers on hand giving presentations.
- Like the “Interoperability Showcase,” the dedicated “Mobile Health Knowledge Center” area was also a hit at HIMSS. Sessions and demos included:
  - “Mobility and BYOD: An Uneasy and Inevitable Relationship” sponsored by Gartner
  - “Leveraging Smartphones to Simplify Communication across Multiple Systems”
  - “Mobile and Wireless Technologies in the Hospital – Now & Soon”
  - “Tackling the ‘Achilles Heel’ of Mobile Medicine”
  - “Top Five Information Risk, Security, and Privacy Considerations for BYOD"

Since security is a major challenge for the healthcare industry, we’re likely to see more security firms attending HIMSS. There are many opportunities to foster thought leadership, including exhibiting, speaking, offering a Lunch and Learn session or participating in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase. If you would like to learn more about planning for HIMSS14 in Orlando, please contact me at doug.russell@schwartzmsl.com or 781-684-0770.

Infographic: Infosecurity Thoughts

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-28T06:52:22-05:00

If you've read this far, you should download our eBook of tips/tricks for Infosecurity Europe PR. It also compares Infosecurity Europe to RSA Conference.

RSA Conference PR vs. Infosecurity Europe PR

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-27T05:06:19-05:00

We might both speak the same language (sort of), but certainly there are differences between Americans and our friends across the pond in Britain. I was in London last month and found it perplexing that they serve beans at breakfast, and pudding isn't a liquid. Then again, I am sure London natives are equally perplexed by American bad habits.

MSLGROUP represents IT security vendors around the world, and IT security pros often work hand-in-hand across Schwartz MSL and MSL London offices. This time of year, we collaborate even more frequently, given that two of the largest IT security trade shows on the planet are happening. RSA Conference 2013 was in San Francisco in late February (practically March), and Infosecurity Europe kicks off next month in London.

We wondered-- What are the differences between RSA Conference and Infosecurity? Are they the same from a PR perspective? Ahead of RSA Conference, the Schwartz MSL IT Security practice surveyed several IT security reporters in the U.S. to ask them about the show; recently MSLGROUP similarly surveyed U.K. reporters to get their thoughts on the Infosecurity event.

One glaring result of our research-- Key reporters are attending these conferences. Seventy-five percent of U.K. security reporters are planning to go to Infosecurity. While that's lower than the share of the U.S. security media contingent that attended RSA Conference, it's an impressive number, especially given all the talk of reduced travel budgets and remote working.

So what are the major differences between RSA Conference and Infosecurity? What are the similarities? And how should that affect planning for Infosecurity, given that show is about a month away?

MSLGROUP IT security pros pored through the results of the surveys and locked ourselves in a room to compare notes. The result is an eBook outlining Infosecurity PR best practices while reviewing how that show compares to RSA Conference from an IT security PR perspective. And the price is right for this eBook-- F-R-E-E. We invite you to download the eBook and share your feebdack.

Three Months In, Did You Forget Your PR Resolutions?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-20T08:19:40-05:00

It's March...how are you doing with your new years resolutions? It's easy to forget about resolutions and get distracted as the crush of daily business comes at us in the first quarter. Find out what Schwartz MSL Senior Vice President Meghan Gross suggests to stay on strategy in this week's Wait A Minute video and blog!

Is Your PR Program Still On Track, Or Becoming The Unused Gym Membership?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-20T07:42:01-05:00

When January rolls around, resolutions are top-of-mind: eat healthier, work out more, watch less TV. The first few weeks of the year pass in a flurry of activity. However, surveys often show that by March, most people have abandoned their resolutions and slipped back into old habits because they haven’t set realistic goals, and also haven’t integrated them into their lives in a manageable way.

That got me thinking about work. How many times do we all go through this mantra in January or at the beginning of the fiscal year: stay on strategy, stay on message, measure results. But it’s easy to get distracted as the crush of daily business comes at us in the first quarter.

It’s March, and maybe it’s time to take a look: is your PR program on track or has it become the unused gym membership? If it has, here are a few tips to get it back on track.

A first step is stop trying to be all things to all people. While we need to be mindful of tailoring messages to our most important stakeholder groups, it shouldn’t turn into positioning du jour. Once a year (why not first quarter?) review your messaging platform. Is it resilient? Will it work as well on an upswing as it will when your company is facing a tough road? Can it be customized yet maintain its integrity?
Try not to bite off more than you can chew. Experts say that we stick to resolutions better when they’re small, manageable and we can see progress quickly. Similarly, many organizations have layers and layers of performance plans, management objectives, strategic priorities and special initiatives. Pile on one unexpected crisis or one new project and you not only face more work than your team can handle, but you may also face competing aims: one seemingly innocuous press release contradicts something else that was planned, and you’ve got to make a tough choice. While it can be difficult, say “no” occasionally. As PR people, we have to make those tough calls in order to make progress.
And finally: stick to your plan, no matter what comes your way. By April or May, you’ll already be thinking about how to handle that big fall sponsorship, filling in for your colleagues’ vacations this summer or planning a new series of internal communications. Your colleagues could be launching similar initiatives and you could be asked to support them. Resist “shiny object syndrome” and do your best to keep the commitments you put on paper regardless of what comes your way.

Reputation management is a tough job. PR practitioners are on the front lines juggling a lot of important stakeholder communications. It can be difficult to stay on track with so many competing priorities, but with diligence, discipline and a few reminders along the way, you can make your corporate communications program a resolution success story.

Media Coaching: Apple Violates PR 101 in iPhone's Battle with the Samsung Galaxy S4

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-14T07:30:24-05:00

In a story today by Henry Blodget, Apple makes a PR 101 mistake that reinforces why you don't directly criticize your competitors in public forums. Even worse, Apple PR made this mistake in the week Samsung is launching the Galaxy S4, a product many already predict will challenge the iPhone's perceived dominance.

Does criticizing competitors make good copy and generate buzz? Sure. I still remember Marc Benioff's quote in ZDNet 7.5 years after he made it about Oracle's acquisition of Siebel, "Even dinosaurs mate a few times before they die." Was it funny and quotable? Absolutely.

But in that same post, David Berlind discussed the fact that Siebel was adding almost as many seats per quarter as SalesForce had total. I don't think Benioff necessarily lived to regret his comments since SFDC has continued to grow and prosper, but was a little of his message--that SaaS was the future--lost by Berlind's reminder of just how small the company was at the time? I think so.

But back to today: Blodget's article discusses how an Apple executive directly criticized the Android operating system and the challenges users face when they activate an Android phone. Blodget points out that Apple's comments seem defensive, which is a good reminder that though a spokesperson's intent may be to hit on key differentiating messages, direct criticisms are often lost in speculation of why the comments are being made in the first place.

When we media train executives, we often will advise that executives avoid directly criticizing competitors. You can criticize competing approaches, but never call out individual executives or companies. Why not? For several good reasons beyond this one example:

It is petty--taking aim at another company in public seems petty and beneath confident companies and executives.
The message will be lost--you may think you are making a good point and juxtaposing your strengths against a competitor's weaknesses, but instead the journalist will focus on the defensiveness of the comments and assume that the company you're criticizing has you worried.
It gives a competitor free PR--the comments often legitimize your competition more than damaging them. In this case, it created yet another news cycle around the Galaxy S4 launch.
No company stays on top forever--Business is like a sport where today's market champion is tomorrow's also-ran. Even if you're not vulnerable today, you will be at some point and that is where the bill comes due on public mocking of and perceived arrogance toward competitors.

So what to do instead? If you really think you have a good point to get across, arm the journalists or the analysts with the questions you would ask your competitors.

"One question I would love to see answered by other mobile OS providers, is how do they plan to reconcile the activation experience for their customers when things are not particularly well integrated or intuitive? I think it is a good topic to research since we're past the point of early adoption and looking more at general users adopting the latest smart phone technologies. Are those new customers going to enjoy that experience? It's a key question moving forward."

But that is a comment in an interview during a proactive PR campaign and not during the week of a competitor's major launch. I am an iPhone user and our household is definitely Apple-centric, but do these comments mean that I should check out the Galaxy S4? I am definitely intrigued.

Measuring PR Campaign Success

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-06T06:01:16-05:00

Measuring the success of any PR program makes sense, but measuring campaign success at the onset versus after completion can lead to more success and greater knowledge about how your program is working...or not! Find out what Schwartz MSL Senior Vice President Mark McClennan has to say about measurement strategies in this week's Wait A Minute video and blog.

Full Disclosure of Breaches? An IT Security PR Perspective

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-06T04:30:24-05:00

Just ahead of last week's RSA Conference, the New York Times reviewed a recent trend: More and more companies are telling the world that their computer systems have been compromised, even if those companies are under no obligation to do so. Just days earlier, the Times published its own mea culpa, admitting hackers penetrated the publication's systems. Nicole Perlroth penned both stories.

What is to make of the recent rise in self-effacement? From an IT security PR perspective, the crisis communications playbook rather quixotically proclaims that disclosing bad news is a good thing. PR pros are taught the virtures of telling the truth and "getting it out and getting it over with" when troubling news arises. It would appear such best practices are making their way into the thoughts of CIOs and CISOs faced with word of compromised systems.

[Note: While many state laws and other legal requirements dictate that companies disclose data breaches, there still are many circumstances when specific IT security incidents are out of the scope of these rules, such as if the data compromised was encrypted or did not contain personally identifiable information. Further note: I am not a lawyer, and questions regarding data breach notification requirements are best left to legal departments.]

The rationale for coming full circle with data breaches goes beyond nobility or ethics; it turns out most people appreciate brutal honesty. By taking the initiative to admit a breach and fix the problem, companies can end up benefitting from positive PR in the end.

Consider Heartland Payment Systems, a company discussed in the New York Times story. Heartland was at the center of one of the most infamous data breaches of all time, when it disclosed in early 2009 that its credit card processing systems had been inflitrated, potentially compromising card information for millions of people.

Heartland disclosed the breach, set up a website to communicate directly with interested parties, and then began discussing how it was addressing the news. Over the course of several months, Heartland announced relationships with companies providing innovative security technologies as a way to show its commitment to preventing any sort of breach in the future. It turned Heartland-- a company few even knew of before the breach-- into a security innovator.

While more and more companies are disclosing breaches, it still takes some time between when the breach is discovered and when the company announces it to the world. Some would argue that it is a bit of a disservice to the public to wait. I argue that PR disclosure at any point is much preferred to no disclosure at all.

Schwartz MSL IT Security PR Pros at RSA 2013

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-05T08:46:19-05:00

Roughly 40 Schwartz MSL staffers were involved in RSA Conference 2013 for our IT security practice. Above are a few that were able to take a break during the show for a team photo. From left to right: Nina Gill, Iris Herrera Whitney, Dara Sklar, Sam Katzen, Laura Finlayson, Ross Levanto, David Broughton, Bill Keeler, Nicole Solera, Dave Bowker, Dan O'Mahony. [Photo Credit: Bill Reber, Schwartz MSL Digital]

Undercover Boss = Undercover Brand?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-03-04T11:02:57-05:00

During the post-Superbowl, pre-Hollywood awards television schedule I was flipping channels one night and stumbled on an episode of Undercover Boss. For those of you who have not seen it, the CBS show features company CEOs from organizations like 7-11, Waste Management, Choice Hotels and Modells who disguise themselves, pose as newbie recruits, and go out in the field with rank-and-file employees to job shadow and train for the new position.

For a moment, let’s suspend what we know about reality TV’s partial scripting. If this were true reality, the employees believe that the person is a new colleague and is there ostensibly to get training from the seasoned veteran. As a result, the CEO usually gets the unvarnished truth, whether it is one employee’s (usually negative) take on corporate culture and policies, or a very personal glimpse into that person’s individual work-life struggles.

The end of the show results in the CEO summoning the three or four employees to headquarters and personally addressing their struggles and concerns by announing an overhaul of corporate policy and often, showering them with bonuses. It’s often a feel-good moment and ostensibly, good visibility for the company. Or is it?

As a lifetime student of corporate reputation, I’ve become intrigued by the gradual shift we’ve seen in employee engagement over the years. Whether it is fueled by changing workforce or social media, employees know when companies are walking the walk and talking the talk. So what does it say when a leader is so unrecognizable throughout the enterprise that he or she can pose as a new employee with no more than a wig, baseball hat or makeup to disguise his appearance? It suggests to me that these leaders have not been as engaged with the employee base as they should have.

It’s true, no one person can carry a corporate culture. It takes years to create, and diligence to maintain. But it can be strongly influenced top-down: so if the C-suite isn’t visible to the employees, I wonder whether the rest of the senior managers are? And are the front-line managers in on the joke?

Whether this is typical reality TV and everyone behind-the-scenes is in on the joke or not, the premise of the show does bring up an important point and that is how, when and where the C-suite engages with the employees. To create a truly engaged workforce, leaders should make a regular point to get out from behind their desks, put down the tablets and the smartphones, and live the brand for a day. It’s those employees behind the cash register, cleaning rooms, and stocking shelves who create the brand promise for the consumers. It should take more than a baseball hat or makeup or a different haircut for them to not recognize the CEO.

Solar Financing Stays Hot, Is The Rest Of The Industry Heating Up Too?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-28T12:57:39-05:00

The good news just keeps rolling in for solar financiers. Today, residential solar financing company OneRoof Energy announced an impressive $100 million in financing from Morgan Stanley and Main Street Power Company.

As Greentech Media reports:

“This fund brings the total announced funds for residential solar projects in the U.S. to $3.6 billion, and $350 million already in 2013, according to Shayle Kann, Vice President at GTM Research and author of a just-published report on the U.S. residential solar PV financing industry.”

OneRoof’s model is a little different, in terms of solar financing – they work with the roofing industry to target homeowners replacing their roof, as that’s usually a cheaper way to add solar. But they’re a part of a larger trend, which is the maturation of solar financing and the continuing intertwining of global financial entities and solar.

We’ve been discussing the solar financing industry as a bright spot in solar for a while, but more upstream players have had some great PR lately too. Citigroup recently began coverage of seven solar companies, which included four buy ratings, including on module companies like SunPower and First Solar, which have suffered pretty much across the board over the last two years. (Full disclosure, one company highlighted is Advanced Energy, a Schwartz MSL client).

No one would argue that the solar industry as a whole is out of the woods yet, but this validation from financial players is important—If it keeps up, it will help move solar past the combination of hyperbole and doubt it has suffered from, and establish solar as a valuable and reliable energy technology for the long-term.

Next Stop...NOLA

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-27T09:11:41-05:00

The biggest challenge for HIMSS 2013 attendees will be to break away from the Morial Convention Center to sample New Orleans’ many delights. We encourage you to sample New Orleans’ rich cultural experience. If you are a runner or walker, grab a map and sketch a route for a morning walk or run. Better yet, invite a client or prospect to join you.
Here are a few suggestions:

Stroll through the French Quarter: The historic French Quarter is filled with shopping, dining, entertainment and fantastic architecture. Start your day with breakfast at Mother’s or Café Du Monde, grab a muffuletta sandwich at Central Grocery and end the day with traditional jazz while dining at Palm Court Jazz Café.

A sweet note: Open your ears and explore the abundance of NOLA music venues such as the venerable Preservation Hall (for classic jazz), Maple Leaf Bar, Tipitina’s Uptown, House of Blues, Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro and Club 300 Jazz Bistro.

Those with families are sure to enjoy the Audubon Zoo, Aquarium of the Americas, Carousel Gardens Amusement Park in New Orleans City Park or a ride on the St. Charles Streetcar.

Get in the mood for your visit by reading John Kennedy Toole’s masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces, or viewing A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. Those with an iron constitution and love of colorful nightlife may wish to replicate Anthony Bourdain’s itinerary in “The Layover: 36 Hours in New Orleans.”

Or, visit one of the more than 1,150 restaurants within the city limits. The renowned chefs of New Orleans are a passionate bunch. So go ahead and try a creole, Cajun or French signature dish during your stay.

Mapping Environmental Coverage, PR Lessons Learned

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-26T11:52:33-05:00

A recent report caught our eye, called “Environmental Coverage in the Mainstream News,” which details environmental news coverage in the United States. There are some interesting conclusions on which outlets and publications are prioritizing the beat.

This is valuable for PR practitioners: In a time when coverage is often determined by the audience’s tastes, paying attention to where environmental coverage is strongest might also point to where the right audience is for your message.

Key findings:

Among broadcast outlets Fox News had the highest percentage of headline environmental stories (1.57 percent), beating out PBS (1.43 percent) and CNN with the lowest (0.36 percent).
Local newspapers prioritize environmental coverage nearly three times more on average
The Huffington Post was the environmental coverage leader for nationally focused news organizations with three percent of headlines (nearly three times the national average).
Independent news organizations prioritize environmental coverage five times more than the national, on average.

The report’s authors address the issue of quality over quantity, saying that “improved environmental coverage is dependent upon both, better quality of coverage, a greater quantity, and a higher visibility of that coverage.” Environmental issues are increasingly becoming intertwined with political, economic and health issues and news rooms are changing to reflect that — this fact underscored by the New York Times’ recent decision to disband its environmental desk and allocate it’s reporters to various other focus areas.

The report also details some findings (which reiterate the above thoughts) based on an advisory group of prominent journalists including Bryan Walsh from TIME Magazine and Jennifer Grayson from the Huffington Post:

Integrate the environmental angle into other stories and make that connection explicit
Make environmental stories appealing to a larger cross section of society
Focus more on solutions
Increase the visibility of environmental stories.

These strategies are invaluable for PR pros, with two main takeaways:

The first two points both show that PR practitioners need to tie their products and technologies to global trends and issues outside of your niche. That’s a no-brainer, and certainly not exclusive to cleantech, but always worth reiterating
The third and fourth points should be great news for anyone in cleantech marketing or PR— the goal is to focus on solutions and increase visibility of environmental stories. That means outlets want more people to see their environmental stories, and for those stories to cover solutions (i.e. your technology) more.

The report was funded by nonprofit SEE Innovation (standing for social, environmental and economic) relied on outlet-by-outlet tracking data from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Industry Analysts, Healthcare IT & Influencers to Know

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-20T11:07:18-05:00

Back in November, we published a blog post and Wait A Minute video describing why industry analyst relations are important to so many of our client engagements.

Today, with the HIMSS13 Annual Conference & Expo in New Orleans less than two weeks away, we thought we'd revisit that post, and expand upon it with a short list of some of the key industry analysts we've worked with in our healthcare IT practice. For those interested in information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare, these are some of the industry's leading influencers and thought leaders. They are worth getting to know.

(Click image to enlarge)

Forrester

While the departure of Forrester's Elizabeth Boehm, Principal Analyst, Healthcare & Life Sciences last year was a significant move, others of note at that noted firm include:

Craig Le Clair, VP, Principal Analyst serving Enterprise Architecture Professionals, covers a range of topics including invoice management, medical health records, information management, customer communications management and financial compliance.
Ellen Carney, Senior Analyst serving eBusiness and Channel Strategy Professionals, focuses on the eBusiness strategies, technologies, adoption trends, and best practices of property and casualty, life, group, and health insurers globally.

Gartner

Joanne Galimi, Managing Partner in Gartner's Consulting Organization. Covers healthcare and insurance.
Robert H. Booz, VP and Distinguished Analyst. Monitors business and technology trends in the health payer industry.
Thomas J. Handler, M.D., Research Director for the Healthcare Provider Analyst Group. Covers everything from telemedicine to EHR systems to clinical applications.
Wes Rishel, VP and Distinguished Analyst, Healthcare Provider Research Practice. Covers electronic medical records, interoperability, health information exchanges and the underlying technologies of healthcare IT, including application integration and standards. Follow Rishel on Twitter at @wrishel
Barry Runyon, VP, Healthcare Provider Research. Covers mobility, clinical and patient portals, vendor neutral archives, legacy decommissioning, remote hosting and cloud service delivery models, and enterprise awareness.
Vi Shaffer, Research VP and Global Industry Services Director for Healthcare Providers.

IDC Health Insights

Scott Lundstrom, Group Vice President, IDC Health Insight's research-based advisory and consulting offerings, covering payer, provider and life science segments.
Lynne A. Dunbrack, Program Director, Connected Health IT Strategies Program.
Judy Hanover, Research Director, Provider IT Strategies.
Janice W. Young, Program Director, Payer IT Strategies.

Chilmark Research

John Moore, Founder and Managing Partner - Follow John Moore on Twitter (@john_chilmark) and on his blog.

If you have further questions, or want to learn more about industry analyst relations and the programs we offer, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Give us at call at (781) 684-0770 to arrange a meeting at the upcoming HIMSS show in New Orleans.

What's Up with Meaningful Use Stage 3?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-15T07:58:11-05:00

Many healthcare IT companies are wondering if federal regulators will drop Meaningful Use news during the upcoming HIMSS13 conference. It’s a reasonable concern, since last year the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) unexpectedly announced Meaningful Use Stage 2 rules on the third day of the conference.

However, hospitals, health systems and physician's practices can breathe a sigh of relief. While the ONC has drafted preliminary recommendations for the final stage of the federal electronic health record (EHR) incentive program, the earliest the industry will see Meaningful Use Stage 3 is 2016. Stage 2 won’t even begin until 2014 for the earliest adopters.

Draft Stage 3 Rules: A Higher Threshold

Released in November 2012, the public comment period for the draft Stage 3 rules has already ended. The early stage objectives largely reaffirm Stage 2 goals and place higher thresholds for showing Meaningful Use. For example, the draft Stage 3 rules require hospitals and physicians to:

Use computerized provider order entry (CPOE) for referrals/transition of care orders directly entered by qualified licensed healthcare professionals. Stage 2 required CPOE only for medication, laboratory and radiology orders.
Implement 15 clinical decision support interventions or guidance related to five or more clinical quality measures that are presented at a relevant point in patient care for the entire EHR reporting period. This is an increase from the five required in Stage 2.

In addition, some Meaningful Use objectives and measures may be retired, including:

Recording patient demographics;
Recording and charting changes in vital signs; and
Recording smoking status for patients 13-years-old and older.

Too Ambitious?

Many in the industry criticize other new objectives as being too difficult to achieve. For example, one new item would require providers to give 10 percent of patients the ability to submit patient-generated health information and request an amendment to their health record online. The rule is designed to either improve performance on high-priority health conditions and/or increase patient engagement in care. However, some physicians don't have control over patient behavior and may find it difficult to meet this requirement.

Another tentative Stage 3 rule could require physicians and hospitals to provide care synopses, setting-specific goals, and instructions for care during transitions of care. However, not all EHRs can be programmed to extract this additional data automatically.

Some organizations, like the American Medical Association, say that much of the Stage 3 criteria would be extremely difficult for physicians to meet, causing some practices to fall short of requirements and exposing them to lower Medicare payments.

Similarly, John Halamka, vice chair of the Standards Committee and CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said that while the Standards Committee generally agrees with ONC’s current goals for Stage 3, it is concerned about whether they are realistically achievable, considering that standards and interoperability for certain EHR functions and clinical procedures are still evolving.

The American Academy of Family Physicians went so far as to send a letter requesting that ONC delay implementation of Stage 3 until 2017. Glen Stream, AAFP board chair, wrote, "We remain concerned that HHS is attempting to raise the bar for what constitutes meaningful use before the majority of physicians and hospitals are able to achieve the meaningful use Stage 1 or 2 objectives"

A group of EMR vendors also want Meaningful Use Stage 3 deadlines be moved up to a later date and the focus shifted to put a greater emphasis on interoperability. The group, the HIMSS EHR Association (EHRA), represents 40 vendors pulled together by HIMSS that include both enterprise and physician-oriented vendors, such as: athenahealth, Cerner, Epic, eClinicalWorks, Emdeon, Meditech, McKesson, Siemens, GE Healthcare IT and Practice Fusion.

According to a letter by EHRA: “The EHRA strongly recommends that Stage 3 focus primarily on encouraging and assisting providers to take advantage of the substantial capabilities established in Stage 1 and especially Stage 2, rather than adding new meaningful use requirements and product certification criteria. In particular, we believe that any meaningful use and functionality changes should focus primarily on interoperability and building on accelerated momentum and more extensive use of Stage 2 capabilities and clinical quality measurement.”

Ushering in New Models of Care

Overall, ONC designed Stage 3 to support new collaborative care models, with shared responsibility and accountability. ONC said that "Stage 3 is the time to begin to transition from a setting-specific focus to a collaborative, patient- and family- centric approach." Just how ONC will go about this should become clear as the healthcare industry trudges the road forward.

There will be several sessions pertaining to Meaningful Use at HIMSS13, and new to the show is the Meaningful Use Experience. This dedicated area for EHR vendors and providers will make it easy for attendees to find Meaningful Use products that have been certified to meet all mandatory criteria.

Thea Lavin, vice president at Schwartz MSL, will be at HIMSS and would be pleased to meet you to talk about meaningful use and other healthcare IT issues. You can reach her at 415-512-0770 or thea.lavin@schwartzmsl.com.

by Thea Lavin

President, U.S. Public Both Advocate Action On Climate Change

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-14T11:12:20-05:00

As expected, President Barack Obama followed up his inaugural address with stronger climate and energy rhetoric during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. He urged Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, but also pressed the issue further:

“But if Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take now and in the future to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

Though Congress remains divided on the topic, a national poll conducted immediately after the speech by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Public Policy Polling found that the majority (65 percent) of Americans think that climate change is a serious problem, and that 60 percent of Americans also support the president in using his authority to reduce dangerous carbon pollution.

In PR and communication terms, "climate" has become a bit of a no-no over the last few years when addressing the purpose of the cleantech movement. To avoid skepticism, "climate" was replaced with other benefits like "green jobs," "energy independence," and even "national security."

With Obama in his second term and no longer operating under the possibility of re-election, he's made a notable shift in his communication around climate change—an issue he seemingly hasn’t mentioned since his original presidential campaign. Tuesday’s speech was the clearest call for action against climate change by any U.S. president, ever. This support is a positive for the cleantech industry—which is working to regain the unanimous support it enjoyed a few years ago.

Cybersecurity Executive Order - Is This It?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-13T06:38:56-05:00

Well, the White House issued the Cybersecurity Executive Order on Tuesday and many are wondering if that's it?

Here are a few key takeaways from the EO. It will be interesting to see the unclassified documents showing specific cyber threats already attempted on critical infrastructure sites. One year from today a final Cybersecurity Framework will be published per the EO.

Did you think there would be more or less sizzle in the EO?

Sec. 4. Cybersecurity Information Sharing. (a) It is the policy of the United States Government to increase the volume, timeliness, and quality of cyber threat information shared with U.S. private sector entities so that these entities may better protect and defend themselves against cyber threats. Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security (the "Secretary"), and the Director of National Intelligence shall each issue instructions consistent with their authorities and with the requirements of section 12(c) of this order to ensure the timely production of unclassified reports of cyber threats to the U.S. homeland that identify a specific targeted entity. The instructions shall address the need to protect intelligence and law enforcement sources, methods, operations, and investigations.

Takeaway: By June 12 the government will share unclassified reports of attacks on specific critical infrastructure sites with the owners. This should be interesting if there is an alarmingly high volume and we find out bridges, water treatment plants, etc., are being heavily targeted.

Sec. 7. Baseline Framework to Reduce Cyber Risk to Critical Infrastructure. (a) The Secretary of Commerce shall direct the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (the "Director") to lead the development of a framework to reduce cyber risks to critical infrastructure (the "Cybersecurity Framework"). The Cybersecurity Framework shall include a set of standards, methodologies, procedures, and processes that align policy, business, and technological approaches to address cyber risks. The Cybersecurity Framework shall incorporate voluntary consensus standards and industry best practices to the fullest extent possible.

Takeaway: By October 12, the government will release a draft of the framework. By February 12, 2014, the final Cybersecurity Framework will be published. With DHS Secretary Napolitano and other gov't officials openly discussing the imminent possibility of the Cyber 9-11 type event, the next 12 months could seem like an eternity for many owners of critical infrastructure sights. The timeframe is probably the most realistic it can be considering the type of input, planning and debating of the key issues that will have to take place.

Sec. 9. Identification of Critical Infrastructure at Greatest Risk. (a) Within 150 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall use a risk-based approach to identify critical infrastructure where a cybersecurity incident could reasonably result in catastrophic regional or national effects on public health or safety, economic security, or national security. In identifying critical infrastructure for this purpose, the Secretary shall use the consultative process established in section 6 of this order and draw upon the expertise of Sector-Specific Agencies. The Secretary shall apply consistent, objective criteria in identifying such critical infrastructure. The Secretary shall not identify any commercial information technology products or consumer information technology services under this section.

Takeaway: Technology vendors will not publicly be identified by the gov't as having commercial solutions to combat attacks against mission critical sites. By July 12 a list of critical infrastructure sights that, if hit, could be catastrophic to the safety and health of Americans, will be released. Expect the list to include:

Subways (NYC, Philadelphia, Boston and other large cities)
Trains: Amtrak operates more than 22,000 miles of track in 46 American states
Nuclear power plants (There are 65 commercially operating nuke plants within the US in 31 states with 104 nuclear reactors. The plants generate 20 percent of U.S. electricity)
Power plants: There are hundreds of other power plants in the US, including hydroelectric power, coal burning power, oil-fired power, geothermal power, natural gas power and wind farms
Federal Reserve: The central banking system for the U.S.

Sec. 12. General Provisions. (a) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations. Nothing in this order shall be construed to provide an agency with authority for regulating the security of critical infrastructure in addition to or to a greater extent than the authority the agency has under existing law. Nothing in this order shall be construed to alter or limit any authority or responsibility of an agency under existing law. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Takeaway: Nothing in the final Critical Framework is enforceable by law.

The Road to HIMSS 2013: Maximize Your Visibility At The Show

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-12T07:03:52-05:00

The HIMSS13 Annual Conference & Exhibition is a must-attend event for any healthcare technology (HCIT) company. From March 3 – 7, 2013, key decision makers from the world’s leading innovators will meet in New Orleans to discuss hot topics, meet with colleagues and set the agenda for the year in HCIT.

There will be more than 200 sessions to choose from, allowing healthcare professionals to customize their own agenda to meet their individual needs. Topics taking the stage include: mobile health, clinical and business analytics, HIE, EHR best practices, care coordination, ICD-10, accountability for care and meaningful use. Keynotes include familiar faces from industry, politics and the media.

Planning early and maximizing your strategic communications program before, during and after the event is an absolute must. When it comes to public relations and media relations, there are more than 100 respected journalists and industry analysts on site. Schwartz MSL is helping its existing clients and can help other companies navigate the waters of media relations

This Schwartz MSL Road to HIMSS 2013 Guidebook is designed to help you navigate the PR and marketing opportunities at the show and offer insights on scheduling reporter meetings and what reporters are looking to cover. In addition, we include the names and Twitter handles of top influential reporters so you can follow them at the show. We even offer tips on fun things to do in New Orleans.

For further advice or information on how Schwartz MSL can partner with you, please contact Doug Russell at 781-684-0770 or doug.russell@schwartzmsl.com.

We're here to help so let us know if you have any questions. Enjoy and have a great show.

Are Your Clients Up-To-Speed On The Top Seven Energy Trends To Watch In 2013?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-08T12:58:23-05:00

Yesterday, GigaOM's cleantech guru Katie Fehrenbacher succinctly highlighted what David Sandalow, the Department of Energy's Under Secretary of Energy (Acting) and Assistant Secretary for Policy & International Affairs (seriously, that’s his title, try and fit that on a business card) is seeing as the energy trends to watch in 2013.

If you’re in cleantech, it’s worth checking out everything Katie covered. The trends highlighted point to the changes happening—positive and negative—in the cleantech industry.

Here’s a few of the areas we thought most important, with some PR analysis peppered in:

Grid resiliency and modernization:

Both the Superbowl blackouts and hurricane Katrina have highlighted how important it is to make the grid much more resilient to blackouts as well as cyber events. The threat of cyber attacks “is real,” and it’ll be the private sector who mostly will lead the response against these situations, said Sandalow. Having a much more robust grid will also be needed as utilities add more clean power, like wind and solar, onto the grid.

PR pros are always looking for ways to tie their client’s technology to larger trends. The Super Bowl Blackout hype may be fizzling now, but keeping an eye out for similar high-profile incidents and being equipped to offer reporters your clients' take and/or expertise on the event can result in inclusion in large trend stories.

Low cost natural gas:

Cheap U.S. natural gas, which has emerged through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, is the “hottest topic in the energy area,” said Sandalow. The DOE is accepting comments right now for whether or not the U.S. should export liquid natural gas. We have 16 applications for companies that want to export it, said Sandalow.

Natural gas is touted as a cleantech killer by many. We at Renewablog don’t believe that, but it’s important that more traditional cleantech companies are prepared to discuss why they’re suited to compete with natural gas.

The dropping cost of solar:

The DOE has its SunShot program, which looks to lower the cost of solar panels, but there’s a lot more work left to do. Germany has a 50 percent lower cost to install solar panels because it removed a lot of the red tape, said Sandalow. He explained, “I want to know when solar will become viral in the way that cell phones did, and what will it take, energy storage?”

Everyone is talking about the dropping cost of solar. If your client is in the solar industry, finding a way to point out how they are part of the cost-reduction solution should be a priority.

Clean energy financing:

There’s a lot more work to be done to finance clean power projects, though some milestones passed recently like the tax credits for wind projects. For startups clean power financing is actually a pretty hot area for investment.

This is another “everybody’s talking about it,” trend. Energy is so hot right now. Clean energy, hotter. The innovative technologies that help create clean energy are, basically, on fire. But, venture capital has dwindled, and explaining why your technology is a better fit than some previous high-profile flameouts will resonate with media and, hopefully, investors.

These trends are valuable—they’re high-level and easy for everyday people to grasp, but endorsed straight from the DOE. If your client is well-prepared to touch on them it could mean increased exposure and an elevated brand message.

Already Preparing for RSA Recovery

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-08T06:21:58-05:00

Each evening at RSA Conference features a full line-up of cocktail receptions, dinners and other private receptions. The business of the show carries on well into the night and often into the early morning. Recovery is an important concept.

The analysts at Securosis come to the rescue each year by hosting a recovery breakfast where attendees can grab a nice breakfast, drink coffee, and discuss the highlights of the show.

Schwartz MSL is sponsoring this year's breakfast, which is scheduled for Thursday of RSA week (February 28) from 8-11 a.m. at Jillian's Restaurant, which is adjacent to the Moscone Conference Center.

The Securosis event comes during the second half of the RSA Conference week. It's a week that the IT Security PR pros at Schwartz MSL know well. We've even put together an eBook to help security PR and security marketing teams as they get ready for the show. Click here to download your free copy.

For the PR pros, marketing peeps and execs at the RSA Conference, we invite you to stop by. If you are planning to attend, please RSVP by emailing rsvp (at) securosis (dot) com.

We're excited to hear the reason for Securosis's Rich Mogull's absence from this year's breakfast; He and his wife are expecting a baby!

Why Your Communications Plan Needs to Include Compelling Digital Content

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-06T09:24:52-05:00

With the right digital content, you can turn a website surfer into a buyer, a prospect into a customer and a news brief into a feature. Digital content takes many forms, but video is the most compelling, and it’s already dominating in 2013.

In this week’s Wait A Minute video, Schwartz MSL Vice President Avi Dines talks about Schwartz MSL’s new B2B Video Marketing Handbook, providing insights into why video matters, what kinds of videos to consider developing and where video can be integrated into existing PR and marketing plans. Watch the video and read the blog post here.

Security PR: RSA Conference 2013 Reporter Insights

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-04T07:00:17-05:00

February's arrival means it's not long now until the IT security world descends on San Francisco in a whirlwind of networking, deal making, chotsky collecting and Moscone Center-induced sore feet.

Here at Schwartz MSL we have decades of experience guiding our clients down the right road when it comes to maximizing their strategic communications program before, during and after RSA Conference. Connecting security company executives and researchers with top reporters for in-person meetings during the show is a key component.

As you can imagine at the industry’s marquee event, competition is fierce for face time with reporters. What does it take to land media meetings? To find out, Schwartz MSL surveyed 50 of the top information security journalists. Here is a sneak peek at the findings:

For more tips and tricks to maximize PR and marketing opportunities around RSA Conference, download the new Schwartz MSL eBook, “Road to RSA Conference 2013”. Contact us with questions or for assistance.

Good luck and have a great show!

Friday Fun-- Our San Francisco 49ers Seek to Dominate in Green Efforts, Not Just Football

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-01T09:38:28-05:00

It’s Friday, and if you’re based in the Bay Area like the Schwartz MSL Cleantech Practice, you’re probably already swept up in the Super Bowl XLVII hype that has consumed many of us.

Greentech Media posted a story today on the 49ers efforts to achieve LEED certification, via solar, at their new Santa Clara stadium.

The vendor highlighted is NRG Energy—a major energy player—and it’s clear that the work is partly an exercise in PR and marketing. A 400-kilowatt system is by no means large, especially for a company like NRG, but the notoriety and branding is potentially worth a lot more.

It’s a smart move by NRG, and they definitely are thinking awareness with this project. As Katie Tweed writes:

“The most visible solar array will be the ones that cover the pedestrian bridges that the majority of fans will have to cross to enter the stadium from the parking lot. For those that might not think to look up, there will be educational messages about solar power and clean energy.”

With environmentally-conscious Bay Area folks attending games and seeing NRG branding and info, this project could lead to loyalty amongst customers in one of the hottest solar regions in the country.

By the way, the Ravens are also seeking LEED certification but, like in the NFL, they are a footnote in the bigger story.

Happy Friday and go Niners!

Road to RSA eBook Available Now

Schwartz MSL — 2013-02-01T07:27:48-05:00

The RSA Conference 2013 is just around the corner and there is nothing more important for most companies than connecting with new prospects and re-connecting with current partners and customers. It is a place to get reacquainted with old friends and colleagues but also meet new people in order to hear their take on identifying and mitigating myriad IT Security network and mobile device threats.

Often times, companies are looking for advice and tips on how to best maximize their time during the week at RSA. When it comes to public relations and media relations, there are more than 100 respected journalists usually on site, in addition to dozens of industry analysts. Schwartz MSL is helping their existing clients and can help other companies wade through the choppy waters of media relations. The Road to RSA eBook is chock full of information on what reporters are interested in covering at the show and where they prefer taking interviews. In addition, we included the names and Twitter handles of the most influential reporters so you can follow them at the show

We're here to help so let us know if you have any questions. Enjoy!

HIMSS13 - Tips for the Final Weeks Leading up to The Show

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-31T14:59:35-05:00

Karen Malone, vice president of Meeting Services at HIMSS, has been overseeing events for more than 20 years. According to Malone, being in one place with your competitors, clients and prospective clients, as well as media, is important. Trade shows offer an effective face-to-face opportunity to see products and solutions, but also to build relationships. There are still lots of things to think about in the remaining weeks before the show, March 3-7 in New Orleans.

Scheduling Appointments - When it comes to scheduling appointments at the show, Malone has a 70/30 rule – schedule 70% of your meetings in advance, about seven to 10 days prior to the show, and leave 30% of your schedule free for last minute meetings. Malone suggests arranging meetings in the food court. Chat people up while you are standing in line for food and sit down with people to extend the conversation. “Exhibitors must take time to engage clients and prospects in conversation,” says Malone.

Visiting Booths - Is there a method to the madness of visiting booths? Malone says yes and no. Analytical people will have a show floor mapped out, while others will wing it. She also suggests visiting booths systematically. You can save a lot of time if you have a logical game plan.

Best Pre-Show To-Dos - Pre-show communications can set the tone and make or break the success of your conference participation. Let your customers and prospects know you will be at the show and schedule time to meet in advance. Create materials to take with you, such as a thumb drive of product information and press releases. Plan what you will discuss with clients and prospects. Malone advises first-time attendees or exhibitors at HIMSS to take advantage of webinars they offer which will help you prepare for the show. This year, HIMSS is also offering these conference prep webinars for show veterans.

Get Social: Lots of folks tweet during the show. HIMSS13 attendees can engage with HIMSS and get connected with industry colleagues before, during and after the conference through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. Use Twitter to get timely conference announcements and updates by following @HIMSS13 and HIMSS Staff, and build new relationships by following those who are using the hashtag #HIMSS13 in their tweets. Onsite, Twitter will be used for select educational sessions during Q&As, and the latest #HIMSS13 tweets will be displayed via screens in the Social Media Center, keynote sessions and more.

Go Green – HIMSS is trying to reach a paperless press room at the conference. Companies should consider paperless ways to distribute information to the media, prospects and partners, such as thumb drives or CDs. They can also send materials electronically after the show as part of their post-show follow up.

Be Comfortable - When you’re constantly on the go, you need to wear comfortable shoes and clothes. The current business casual styles allow you to look professional on the outside and feel relaxed on the inside.

Have Some Fun – There is so much to do in New Orleans so be sure to carve out some time for site seeing. And there is so much to do even for free --visit the French Quarter, catch some live music, take a streetcar or ferry ride, stroll the streets, sample the world-class Creole, Cajun and French cuisine. If you are a runner or walker, grab a map and sketch a route for a morning walk or run. Better yet, invite a client or prospect to join you.

What to Avoid Doing - If there is anything you should avoid it is poor booth etiquette. “We have seen exhibitors standing at the booth reading their iPad or a newspaper and not engaging with people coming to the booth,” says Malone. “Although they are at the show, they do not take full advantage of opportunities to speak with clients and prospects.”

After the Show - Post-show follow-up is critical. The real work starts when you get back to the office. Don’t just throw all those business cards in a drawer and plan to get to them soon. Instead, find creative ways to follow up as soon as you get back to your office -- connect on LinkedIn or Twitter, send prospects an interesting article. Develop ways to stay in touch that go beyond saying, "Why don't you buy something from me?"

What are you doing to plan for HIMSS? If you need help, please contact Doug Russell or Thea Lavin at 781-684-0770, doug.russell@schwartzmsl.com or thea.lavin@schwartzmsl.com. They’ll both be at the show and are happy to meet with you.

What does it mean for PR? Doubt, support and criticism over the NY Times environment desk restructuring

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-23T07:24:29-05:00

It’s been almost two weeks since Inside Climate News was the first to announce that the New York Times will be dismantling its environment desk, sending its seven reporters and two editors to other departments. Dean Baquet, the Times’ managing editor, explained that the decision was made because environmental stories have become more complex since the desk was formed in 2009, and today they are “partly business, economic, national or local, among other subjects.”

The decision has yielded a variety of reactions.

Margaret Sullivan, public editor for the Times, reports on a number of adverse reactions, including her colleague, environment editor Sandy Keenan, who was not pleased with the decision: “Of course, I’m disappointed,” [Keenan] said. “I’ll try to hold everyone to their promise that the coverage won’t suffer.”

Others, such as Christopher Mims, science and technology reporter at Quartz, believe it will indeed help environmental coverage be less isolated. Andrew Revkin, who writes the Dot Earth blog on the Times’ Op-Ed section, believes in the paper’s logic as well, saying “when the roots of environmental problems often lie half a planet away (consider the ivory trade, or the contribution of greenhouse gases and soot to Arctic ice melting) what’s needed most is collaborative post-departmental journalism, not individual desks and editors competing for the front page.”

So what does this mean for PR professionals trying to secure coveted coverage in the Times? First off, it’s important to note how often outlets change their model. Newsweek for example became an online only publication in 2013, and Forbes has shifted its online format to include what seems like thousands of contributors. Even back in 2008, CNN had a similar transition and explanation when it closed its science department. All of these changes have yielded opportunities and challenges for PR pros looking to tell their clients’ stories.

For the Times, there’s been no word on whether the Green blog, often the go-to target for PR pros, will be affected. However, Baquet has said that if it has impact and audience it will survive, so it’s unclear how much coverage will shift.

If you’re a PR pro trying to secure coverage in the New York Times, however, you should already understand the other trends your client fits into and be pushing those angles. For example, maybe you’re a solar manufacturer with some projects in India or Brazil—you should already be in touch with correspondents there. Or maybe you’re a smart grid equipment maker—utility and energy reporters are as important for you as environmental.

This move by the Times only reinforces the importance of understanding the different ways an outlet might cover a given company. As PR professionals, we need to continue to stay in touch with reporters and diligently read their work – to understand how to better tell our clients’ stories, so it will resonate with the media.

Put Your Money Where Your Roof Is

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-18T08:26:11-05:00

Even with venture capitalists pulling back the reins on investment and government subsidies for renewables drying up, the red hot solar industry continues to mature and evolve.

A recent report from the Institute For Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) projected that within a decade, more than 35 million buildings in the U.S. may generate their own solar electricity - without subsidies - at lower prices than their utilities can offer. The report, "Commercial Rooftop Revolution," says that by 2022 we could generate 300,000 MW of solar power, or nearly 10 percent of the country's power needs, from rooftops alone.

The trend this report is referring to is known as Distributed Generation—lots of small solar projects located within the beating heart of the power grid—and it has long been touted as a smart approach to transitioning to a more clean energy-centric future. And while the focus of the report is the sunny forecast for commercial rooftop solar, it also highlights that 190,000 of the 300,000 MW of unsubsidized solar power will be from residential rooftops.

That’s why it's no surprise to see the sudden rise of Solar Mosaic, a company that's been billed "the Kickstarter of Solar.”

If crowdfunding and renewable energy initially seem like odd bedfellows, consider that the company fully crowd-financed its first portfolio of four solar projects in under 24 hours. More than 400 investors in California and New York chipped in $313,000 to fund the projects, with investment amounts ranging from $25 to $30,000. The average investment amount was in the neighborhood of $700.

Katie Fehrenbacher explains in GigaOm:

"...solar panel roof systems create revenue, as the building owner pays for the solar electricity commonly provided through a lease, with a 20-year contract. The crowd-funded money goes to installing the solar panels, and then the investors get a return via the monthly electric bill."

The company has been around since late 2010, but took two years to fully test its beta platform and get registered with the SEC. Now that they're officially open for business, individual investors are jumping at the opportunity to put their money into solar and recognizing their neighbor's roof as an easy opportunity for a low-risk return.

Think of it as a solar mutual fund, but with much better rates - the initial projects offered a 4.5 percent annual over a nine-year term (good luck finding a bank offering those rates these days). In fact, the company says other projects will likely offer even higher returns. Certain types of projects could even offer up to 10 percent.

While the reactions from financial experts will likely be subtle (don’t expect Jim Cramer to start yelling “the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire”), keep an eye on the solar crowd funding space, as reporters and investors are taking notice. In related residential solar news, Oakland-based solar installer Sungevity just raised $125 million - $40 million in venture funding and $85 million to finance residential PV installations – so maybe it’s time call your portfolio manager and have them shift your money from the banana stand to your neighbor’s roof?

Mystery Facebook Announcement: Silicon Valley is Abuzz

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-15T07:22:19-05:00

In roughly 30 minutes, Facebook will end the speculation about what the company is "building" when it hosts a media event at its headquarters. These types of PR events have become more and more popular over the years, as companies try to generate pre-announcement buzz and hype, and capture the imagination of their customer bases.

So what will it be? The rumor mill is flying, with the most popular option being a Facebook phone or special phone-based application/operating system with a phone partner, like HTC. This makes a lot of sense since many think Facebook's long-term success depends on its ability to monetize mobile.

The web site of the Boston Globe has a fun slideshow on the topic that rounds up some of the rumors around the web. The irony here? I'll be using a competing social media platform to find out what the news is when Facebook finally addresses the throngs of fans, skeptics and observers at its HQ.

On second thought, maybe they should build a competing platform to Twitter?

Dealing With The Unexpected

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-09T10:12:32-05:00

If you’re like me, you drive around with a car emergency kit in the trunk of your car. I noticed mine the other day and took stock of what was in it: flares, a flashlight, an emergency blanket…All useful things to have in an emergency. And, though I hope I never have to use it, it’s good to know what I have and that it’s there in case I need it.

I was recently reminded that the same is true for business. You always want to be sure you’re prepared with a plan to handle any predicament…It’s something we remind our clients of regularly.

Nobody likes to think about bad things happening. But the truth is, you are more likely to be able to successfully weather a sporadic challenge if you have spent time preparing before it occurs. If you take the time to think about how you will communicate before it happens, when you are not under the stress of the moment, you will more likely be able to reach your employees, customers and other key audiences effectively, and even handle potentially negative media attention.

At Schwartz MSL we provide our clients with an in-depth review of the issues most likely to make them vulnerable in a precarious situation. Then, we work together to put a plan in place to help our clients respond should those issues develop into events.

But anyone can write a plan, put it on a shelf, and forget about it. The key element of any emergency reponse plan is putting it to the test before you really need it. It’s the testing that helps identify any gaps, and regular drills help familiarize a business team with the response plan so that they have practice and confidence.

Schwartz MSL recently conducted such a drill with one of our largest clients, a power utility. We gathered every communicator in one room, including those responsible for media relations, employee communications, customer relations, government relations and so on, and we took them through a simulated scenario in which a major Nor’easter crippled the entire east coast. Every communicator in the room took the drill seriously and responded just as they would in a real life situation. As the day unfolded, we continued to throw new simulated developments at them, including simulated customer issues, reporter inquiries, rumors and pressure from government officials. All of these needed to be responded to in real-time, while still ensuring that the team stayed on track with their original plan.

After the conclusion of the drill, we worked together with our client to assess:

Were they able to prioritize responsibilities and respond accordingly?
Were there any gaps? Did they have the appropriate tools to respond effectively?
Were they able to stay proactive despite the unfolding situation, or did they become too reactive?
Were they able to follow their existing response communications plan, or was it forgotten in the heat of the moment?
Did everyone take responsibility for communicating with their own jurisdiction or were any audiences forgotten?

As a result, our client was more prepared than ever to communicate in an emergency. Little did we know, they would soon be put to the test with the arrival of Superstorm Sandy, one of the most catastrophic storms our country has ever seen.

While it’s true that not all of our clients have to worry about severe weather events, it’s also true that any company’s reputation is much too important to leave to chance. That’s why an integrated emergency communication plan, along with simulation drills to put it to the test, is the best way to ensure you and your organization will be able to respond efficiently and effectively.

Just like my trusty car emergency kit, you hope you’ll never need it, but you’ll be glad you’re prepared in the event you do.

by Christine Milligan

Be Prepared For The Unexpected

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-09T09:29:32-05:00

You always want to be sure you’re prepared with a plan to handle any predicament--it’s something we remind our clients of regularly. Find out what Vice President Christine Milligan of Schwartz MSL has to say about being prepared to weather any storm in this week's video and blog.

Rounding-up the Round-ups: What are the Leading Cleantech Reporters Saying About 2012 and 2013?

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-09T03:00:00-05:00

As with every new year, a number of key cleantech outlets and journalists have published valuable 2012 wrap up pieces listing predictions on trends and developments for 2013. Some recurring trends include the precipitous drop in VC funding, the success of SolarCity’s IPO, and the convergence of energy and IT. Also, despite its actual collapse taking place in 2011, Solyndra was (unfortunately) still a recurring theme in 2012, specifically with the presidential election.

The general theme seems to be cautious optimism. This time last year, expectations ran high, and the tone has gotten notably less bullish. With that said, there is plenty to be excited about in terms of cleantech progress, as you’ll see in the round up articles on 2012 and 2013 listed below.

Looking Ahead

GreenBiz, VERGE Ahead: 7 trends to watch in 2013 by Derek Top (@derektop), senior editor and VERGE program director

While this piece focuses on the VERGE theme — a term GreenBiz uses to refer to data, IT and new platforms that disrupt the markets for energy, transportation and buildings — the list illustrates the possibilities urban areas have for drastically improving and better managing energy use.

MIT Technology Review, For energy startups, a glass half full or empty by Martin LaMonica (@mlamonica), contributing editor and journalists covering energy and technology

LaMonica outlines four key factors that will either drive or stymie clean technology development this year: a smaller investor pool, continued marriage of energy and IT, low-priced domestic supplies of natural gas and oil, and a focus on improving efficiency of cars rather than electrification.

Forbes, 6 green tech trends for 2013 by Todd Woody (@greenwombat), environment editor

Here Woody presents predictions from Dallas Kachan, founder of San Francisco-based clean tech market research firm and consultancy Kachan & Co, covering a range of issues, including clean coal, VC investment and the effects of climate change on big agriculture. Kachan also hypothesizes about the rate of solar and wind farm development, saying it will slow due to progress in cleaner baseload power from nuclear technologies, natural gas and cleaner coal power.

The Rear View

Greentech Media, Looking back on 2012 cleantech investing predictions by Rob Day (@cleantechvc), partner with Black Coral Capital

Day has been a cleantech private equity investor since 2004 and has been writing content for the website, Cleantech Investing, since 2005. Annually, Day looks back on how well the predictions he made the December before pan out. This year, he says he was only right 25 percent of the time, with bright spots being the launch of California’s carbon trading market, an increase of project finance and the merging of cleantech and IT/web business models.

GigaOm, The 10 best and worst things to happen to cleantech in 2012, by Katie Fehrenbacher (@katiefehren), senior writer and features editor

Calling out key players that affected the pace of growth and perception of the space — such as Tesla, Solyndra, Bill Gates, Google, Advanced Equities, SolarCity and A123 — Fehrenbacher offers an inclusive overview of what went down last year.

Silicon Valley PR: Five market predictions worth watching in 2013

Schwartz MSL — 2013-01-02T07:05:12-05:00

When your chosen profession is public relations for technology companies, you get a sense of the ebbs and flows of the markets you represent. There are times when the media makes market developments seem apocalyptic and other times when journalists make you think you are working on "The Next Big Thing."

Gartner measures these swings in technology perception and adoption in their hype cycles, which labels each stage with flowery language like the "trough of disillusionment", "peak of inflated expectations" and "slope of enlightenment." If there is one thing I have learned after seven years in the Bay Area, it's that the perception peaks are always higher and the troughs are always lower in Silicon Valley.

Here are five areas where, based on my personal observations, I think we'll see perception transitions in 2013: Cleantech, Healthcare, Social, Big Data and Mobile Security. One caveat: this is strictly related to general market perception and not customer adoption or business success.

-Cleantech

2012 perception: Major disillusionment. Solyndra. Trade wars. Bankrupt companies and struggling stocks. This was a rough 12 months for perception of Cleantech. But just as the hype in 2010 was overblown, the disillusionment in 2012 was similarly overdone. Many experts are comparing the pullback from Cleantech to the obituaries written for Internet companies during 2001 and 2002.

2013 prediction: Rebirth and steady progress. Just like the Internet revolutionized commerce, cleantech will revolutionize the manufacturing, energy and utility industries and winners will result.

-Healthcare

2012 perception: Stagnation. Speculation has been rampant the past several years about how big of an impact Obamacare would have on medical device and healthcare IT manufacturers. Will it kill market opportunities and therefore, company valuations? Or will the newly insured millions create even bigger needs for medical devices and healthcare IT upgrades?

2013 prediction: Steady growth. Boom and bust predictions are overblown, and the market will continue to thrive even with Obamacare implementation. Mobile, social, Big Data and other technology developments will continue to drive new opportunities in healthcare technology, as will an aging population.

-Big Data

2012 perception: Major hype. Big data was the king of the hill in 2012, as journalists and analysts latched onto the biggest enterprise technology movement since the introduction of hosted applications. But is Big Data poised for a big dip in 2013? Perception wise, it might be.

2013 prediction: Perception trough. From a PR perspective, we'll see media and analysts start to demand more tangible examples of Big Data success in 2013, which could be a struggle for some companies. This means companies who best execute PR programs grounded in tangibility could be the winners in 2013.

-Social

2012 perception: Major trough. The social bubble burst in 2012 as companies like Zynga and Facebook faced skepticism related to earnings growth and their ability to monetize mobile. But social technology and platform adoption is too big for these companies not to experience some longer-term success.

2013 prediction: Improved perception in the face of more realistic expectations.

-Mobile security

2012 perception: Growing hype. With near-field communication (NFC) and mobile payments in the early adopter stage, we're already hearing doom and gloom reports about the impending wave of attacks and hacks that will put the world at risk over the next 12 months.

2013 prediction: Hype will be high, but exploits low. Only 30 million of the 6 billion mobile devices in the world are NFC enabled. That means while growth of NFC is exploding, it will probably be some time before there is a high enough concentration for hacks and attacks to become mainstream.

Marketing Budget Allocation: Advertising Versus PR

Schwartz MSL — 2012-12-12T09:06:27-05:00

When deciding how to allocate a budget, it’s great to know what the differences are between marketing programs like Public Relations and Advertising. This week’s Wait A Minute video gives some insights into the differences and benefits of a well-rounded marketing program. Check out the video and full blog post here.

Decoding the PR Profession Mystery, or Not...

Schwartz MSL — 2012-09-13T09:05:26-05:00

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a swanky business networking event in the city. As many of these types of events tend to go, upon arrival you scope out the scene to see who you know and then after collecting your adult beverage you make your way to find the ideal spot to chat and meet new and interesting people. Once my colleagues and I found our prime real estate, we started chatting up two young professionals in the IT consulting business. As we got to talking and exchanging business cards and professional resumes, etc. one of them asked me a question that I realized, I’ve never been able to answer all that clearly. The question wasn’t anything too earth shattering actually, but it crystallized in my mind that not too many people outside of the PR world understand what it is that we actually do.

Upon explaining to the lovely blonde woman that I am a PR communications professional, her response was one that I’ve gotten for many years from my friends, parents and, dare I say, even my husband! And that is, “You’re in PR, so you write press releases, right”? As the words came out of her mouth, I started thinking about my answer and thinking to myself “ugh, here we go again.” Well, “that’s part of it, but there’s so much more to it.” Then it dawned on me, the PR world is still somewhat of a mystery.

I started to explain to her that writing press releases is simply one small part of what PR communicators do. I started to tell her that in addition to writing press releases, PR pros are strategic advisors to our clients. That means we not only help to spread their news, but we also advise them as to when, where, how often and through what communications channel to spread their news. As I continued, I realized I still wasn’t doing the profession the justice that it deserved and I was also getting exhausted!

This got me thinking about all of the work that PR pros do on a daily basis in addition to writing press releases. Then, my mind started racing “tell her about media relations, message development, event planning, strategic communications, oh and don’t forget, issues management and internal communications.” When I started to tell her about all of it she seemed almost surprised.

After that exchange, I realized that perhaps the reason the PR professional remains a mystery to others is not because we don’t know how to do it justice, but instead, because we are more focused on driving business forward for our clients. We are behind the scenes operators and we like it that way. Then a calm peace came over me. Satisfied with my answer, we moved onto another topic.

For those of us who work in this profession, we know what we do every day and to heck with the rest of the world if they don’t quite get it. When we’re ready to do a PR push around the PR profession, you’ll be the first one to hear about it!

Back to School, Back to Business: Is Your PR Plan Ready?

Schwartz MSL — 2012-09-12T08:52:47-05:00

Traffic is on the roads and school supplies are flying off the shelves. That means one thing: it’s September. For some people, it’s back to school and for us PR practitioners, it’s back to business.

Regardless of when your fiscal year ends, September is always a good time to revisit your plans and see what needs a refresh.

If that’s the case, then what things should PR people be reviewing now?

First: your news pipeline. Do you have enough fresh, substantive, relevant content to sustain you through a cluttered media environment? Remember: this year, in addition to the usual competition for space, you're also vying for mindshare in an election year. Spend time now to analyze your content for its “newsworthiness” and that will optimize timing and placement of each news item moving forward.

Next, what does your social media policy look like? Do you have one? By now most companies allow and many encourage employees to use social media. But platforms, not to mention habits, change so quickly these days, it’s always a good opportunity to review any governance you’ve set around employee use of social media and be sure that your employees can follow best practices without stifling the terrific dialogue that social media should encourage.

Let’s not forget crisis plans: in the next few months we’ll face a busy holiday shopping season, inclement weather, and likely some economic challenges too. Regardless of the industry sector you’re in, the spotlight is always on your resources, your technology, and your people. How nimble you are in responding to adverse events can make or break your company’s reputation to key stakeholders. Be sure that you’ve planned for the possibility of every potential scenario with a good crisis plan on the books, and a good team in place to manage it.

And finally, don’t forget CEO media training. Your CEO is in the spotlight a lot already. He or she is used to speaking in public but even the most seasoned presenters can use a refresher. Try to schedule a yearly training with your top executives to be sure they’re poised and ready when the cameras roll.

With all the innovative techniques at our disposal, it’s really easy to forget where we started with content, messages, and plans. September is a great time to get back to the basics!

Apple Learns Big Secret PR Launches are Near Impossible in Silicon Valley

Schwartz MSL — 2012-09-12T06:43:54-05:00

Is it possible to launch a device the entire world is waiting for without elements of that said device leaking beyond your control? If you're Apple and you're introducing the hotly anticipated iPhone 5, then the answer is probably no.

While the world waits for the final form factor and features of the new iPhone, the information, misinformation and ill-timed communication around the launch is having an impact on Apple PR's ability to manage the launch.

You have Apple mistakenly confirming the name and the phone's LTE support via a prematurely posted link on the Apple web site (hate to be that Apple employee if it was a mistake).

You also have a case manufacturer pre-empting the introduction with its own product launch (planned or is Seidio now in Apple's doghouse?).

It is clear that no secret is safe at the world's most valuable company. What's that old saying? Three people keep a secret when two are dead?

But don't feel too bad for the Apple PR team. There are thousands of tech companies around the globe who would kill for the opportunity to have the world care so much as to try and uncover details of a product launch.

Silicon Valley PR: Apple Trumps Samsung in Patent Fight

Schwartz MSL — 2012-08-24T14:20:21-05:00

Bad news for Fanboy haters.

Samsung infringed on six Apple patents and will have to pay $1 billion+ in damages according to a jury verdict in the "My patent can beat up your patent" legal fight between the two dominant smart phone makers.

Another big loser in this battle was Google, who saw a big Android adopter get smacked.

Samsung, who manufacturers Android-based devices, is one of the few smart phone and tablet manufacturers with the design chops to get people to consider something other than Apple. So imagine Samsung getting punched in the face and its head smacking back into Google's face, and you get the idea.

The only question this weekend is what will have Bay Area Apple opponents more depressed: a big blow to one of the few viable Apple alternatives, or the Dodgers' pending blockbuster deal to acquire Adrian Gonzalez and Josh Beckett for the stretch run against the Giants?

Bad news for Dodger haters too.

The Art of Diplomacy in Thought Leadership

Schwartz MSL — 2012-08-16T12:13:20-05:00

If you’ve visited Schwartz MSL’s other blogs, you’ve probably seen our “Wait a Minute” video blog series. My recent post about working with lawyers and the inherent difference in the way we’ve both been trained got me thinking about a frequent challenge I faced when working in-house at law firms. Without fail, most Mondays I would arrive at the office with a fresh list of thought leadership topics culled from various sources; the Sunday paper, the radio during my morning commute, random Internet surfing.

Professional services firms are brimming with raw materials for thought leadership. For the most part, at a general practice (law, accounting, consulting) firm you can find a way into nearly any story on the front page or the top of a Google news search. With that in mind, I’d shop around my ideas to everyone; corporate, labor and employment, life sciences and litigation usually based on what had happened and then how to prevent it from happening again. Most often, I would find willing participants, but as I made my rounds, inevitably someone would say “Why would I want to capitalize on someone else’s misfortune?”

Here’s why: because it’s not capitalizing on someone’s misfortune. It’s doing the rest of the business community a big favor.

Let me repeat: it is not capitalizing on someone’s misfortune. Let's reframe it.

Here’s what I think is one of the best things about professional services thought leadership. What lawyers, accountants, and consultants know is how to protect companies from exposure or how to maximize their competitive edge. It’s hard to explain that without pointing to a tangible example of what worked or didn’t work in a previous situation. It’s no different than an academic case study brought to real life. Without it, advising on the issues of the day seems a little esoteric.

Good thought leadership needs a few things. Topics need to be:

Current, if not ahead of, the curve
Full of teachable moments so readers can understand how to apply the principle to their world
A bit provocative to keep people thinking

But it also needs to be diplomatic. It needs to be done with a respect for the entities involved in the issue of the day, and not in a way that criticizes their efforts. It can be done – it’s the art of identifying those teachable moments and then using them for the good of the business community that makes the thought leaders true experts in the industry.

What 26.2 Miles and Thought Leadership Have in Common

Schwartz MSL — 2012-08-08T06:19:12-05:00

As a former marathon runner, I can’t help but follow-on to our first On Your Mark blog post with another analogy.

I also couldn’t help but watch with rapt interest at the last mile of the 2012 Olympics Women’s Marathon as a pack of four runners headed toward the finish line. While all four were close, three runners from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Russia were clearly were battling it out for the gold, silver and bronze medals. As the fourth runner, Mary Jepkosgei Keitany of Kenya (incidentally a pre-race favorite), fell increasingly behind in those final moments, she soldiered on with a relatively calm expression on her face which I can only imagine hid her disappointment.

While some people might find fourth place the most frustrating and disappointing of positions, particularly after logging more than 20 miles on foot, I actually find it a place of inspiration. Why? Because of all the runners in the field, it’s the position most poised for success from this point onward. There’s no medal to defend, no reputation to diminish, no critics to silence. There’s a solid foundation of achievement with only an upward trajectory, and that’s inspiring.

This got me thinking that thought leadership is not much different. Just like running a marathon, thought leadership can’t happen overnight. Thought leaders are cultivated and developed. For anyone who does it, you’re well aware that it takes a long time, a lot of effort, and some disappointments along the way.

However, like runner #4 heading toward the finish line, every thought leader eventually reaches that place: you’re not quite there yet, but your position is strong enough to compete with the elites and with a little more effort, you just might win.

For every struggling thought leader who wants to be on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, watch Mary Jepkosgei Keitany and remember her tenacity. Keep agreeing to those background briefings, write your blog posts, accept every speaking opportunity and jump on the rapid response programs. When your competitor gets the profile article, study it, dissect it, and do some thorough self-assessment on what you might need to make it there. Do you need a more provocative point of view? Do you need to showcase some innovation before it’s completely ready? Do you need to engage more deeply with your social media communities? What else would drive your success?

With time and effort, you too could be on the podium in 2016.

Valley PR Buzz: VCs Still Love Security

Schwartz MSL — 2012-08-07T06:49:18-05:00

Sequoia Capital has the reputation of being on the cutting edge of venture investing. It makes a lot of smart bets, from household-name examples like Google and LinkedIn, to lesser-known darlings like Stripe, Y Combinator and Instagram. The firm has a reputation for picking winners and not being afraid to double down in a market as it matures (see Yahoo! and Google).

So while on the one hand, it might be surprising to see Sequoia place a big bet in a relatively mature industry like information security, it actually makes a lot of sense: As the world becomes more digital and social, and technology continues to infiltrate our every-day lives, information becomes an even bigger target for hackers and identity thieves.

Maybe that's why almost two decades after Schwartz MSL began working with its first security clients, like Security Dynamics (which became RSA and then was acquired by EMC), Axent (acquired by Symantec) and dozens of others, VCs still love security companies as outlined by this NY Times piece (which includes Schwartz MSL clients Bit9 and Solera Networks). Even during the dotcom crash, security companies were in good shape because of emerging financial services regulations, high-profile worms and viruses like Nimda and Code Red, and database breaches that forced companies to spend even in the tightest of times.

Today, the VC community's interest in security companies is as easy as A-P-T (advanced persistant threats). With new technologies and platforms evolving each year, large security companies have to innovate to face new threats, and nimble start-ups often beat them to the punch. Security must innovate at the pace of Apple and Samsung who, when they are not in court battling over IP issues, seemingly introduce new and more powerful smart phone and tablets on a weekly basis.

Security rarely delivers the booming IPOs of social and mobile, but it also rarely sees a company go public that doesn't have good business fundamentals and a revenue model that works. The industry may not deliver a lot of investment home runs, but it certainly has its share of singles and doubles, which are important for VCs to show a good batting average when they go out and raise their next fund.

Twenty years later and security is still a hot spot for VCs. Here's guessing it still will be in another 20 years.

Welcome to Valley View: PR Buzz in Silicon Valley

Schwartz MSL — 2012-08-02T13:40:29-05:00

Silicon Valley. Now I get it and it only took me six years in Bay Area PR.

I was born and raised in Massachusetts. Got my Bachelors at Bentley in Waltham, had all three of my kids there and spent most of my young adult life in and around the Boston area, including my first 8 years at Schwartz MSL.

My first trip to the Bay Area was in 2001 with the CEO of IONA Technologies on a media tour, and though I fell in love with it immediately and would move here less than five years later, I still didn't really understand what made it unique from a technology, innovation and PR standpoint. The Boston area has MIT, Harvard and many more top universities, along with a host of great VC and private equity firms. The risk appetite tends to be a little lower, with a lot of innovation and investment success focused on medical devices, healthcare IT and technology infrastructure, which has served it well during boom and bust technology cycles.

There are a lot of similarities between the Bay State and Bay Area, including political leanings, great seafood, an innovation economy and a high concentration of brilliant people. But there is one major difference beyond climate: the local celebrity culture.

In Boston, the athletes are our celebrities. When Josh Beckett golfs before missing a start or Kevin Youkilis marries Tom Brady's sister, it is big news not only in the sports section, but in tabloids, on the airwaves and in the lifestyle section. Bob Lobel, Glenn Ordway, Peter Gammons, Dan Shaughnessy are sports journalists you love or hate. But everyone knows their names.

In the Bay Area, technologists and VCs are the celebrities. First it was Bill Gates, Jerry Yang, Steve Jobs, Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison. Today, it's Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marissa Mayer and Mark Zuckerberg. Everyone knows the names of John Doerr, Paul Graham, Vinod Khosla, Peter Fenton and Marc Andreessen, along with Michael Arrington, Sarah Lacy, Om Malik and Don Clark. In Boston, the minor leagues are in Pawtucket, Providence, Lowell and Portland. In Silicon Valley, they are Y Combinator, HAXLR8R, SVTC and the other accelerators helping technology's prospects reach the big leagues.

Boston has Yawkey Way, Gillette and The Garden. The Bay Area has Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley and SOMA. In Massachusetts, Larry Bird could be governor. In California, Meg Whitman tried.

With the launch of this new blog, Valley View, we're going to periodically offer perspective on big goings on in Silicon Valley, mainly from a PR standpoint but also some free-form posts. We'll try to get the perspectives of technology industry movers and shakers, industry insiders and journalists on the big things happening here that will impact the rest of the country and the world. We'll blend people who were born and raised in the Bay Area, and those who bring the perspective of having lived elsewhere.

Can Marissa Mayer turn around Yahoo!? Who will win the patent fight between Apple and Samsung? Will Facebook and Zynga figure out the mobile revenue model? Will a team foolishly claim Beckett on waivers before August 31 and if so, will the Red Sox just let him go?

Okay, maybe that last one doesn't fit, but you can't spell parochial without PR.

Purpose Within the Marketing Mix - Three Ways to Engage Your Target Audience

Schwartz MSL — 2012-08-01T10:18:53-05:00

There is no doubt that Purpose is the fifth "P" within the marketing mix today. A brand's purpose should define not what product or service they sell but the higher order of why they exist in society. More and more brands are realizing the importance of acting as purposeful, values-driven organizations, living that purpose through all they do and communicating it through all they say, following in the footsteps of smart, purpose-led brands like Proctor & Gamble and ANN INC.

However, because many marketers are focused on finding the next "big idea" or testing multiple cause, Corporate Social Responsibility or other issue related strategies to live out and communicate their "purpose," they often miss another critical "P" – People. Companies are run by people, it is people that invest in brands, and people that buy products and services. No matter what industry - B2B or B2C - everyone is ultimately trying to reach people in more meaningful ways. It is the combination of purpose plus people that will help brands stand out in the cause arena moving forward.

It is critically important to seek ways to engage your target audience - whether employees, consumers or other stakeholders - in your purpose-led and cause-related marketing efforts, all the way from strategy to solution.

Three places to engage your target audience in your process:

More Ps!

Preparation: Do your due diligence to really understand what makes your target tick when it comes to care and support for issues impacting their communities and society at large. Base your issues work in real audience insights to align with their interests, fears, passions and - most importantly - where they would expect your brand's resources to have significant impact.
Planning: As you develop your strategies - whether it is a promotion, a partnership or a new program - seek your target's advice on how to tackle the issue, how to communicate it and how to solve it. Test the ideas before finalizing the strategy to ensure your message will resonate and allow your team to absorb any learnings on how to make the message stronger and long-lasting.
Participation: Once you are ready to execute and bring your brilliant issue-related strategies to the marketplace, make sure you have a clear, simple, do-able call to action that invites participation from your various audiences. From fundraising, volunteering and advocating all the way to liking and fan-raising, people want to participate. They expect to be engaged. They believe brands should play a role in changing the world and want to help.

All of these critical "People" junctures in your planning process could come with small to very hefty costs. The reality is that there are ways to do research, vetting and engagement relatively inexpensively and quickly today. Thanks to agency research departments, preferred vendors and proprietary research as well as innovative ways to crowdsource and seek information online, there is no excuse not to include People, in addition to Purpose, within the marketing mix. It will pay off - leaving you with a more profound impact on both your business and on society.

Get Ready for AHIP 2010

Schwartz MSL — 2010-06-04T09:13:59-05:00

By Melissa Bruno

Don’t let the heat and the glare of flashing neon lights on the Vegas strip distract you at next week’s America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute show (June 9-11). Much like the sun-baked Nevada desert, the payer community has taken quite a beating, particularly over the last year, so it should make for an interesting environment.

Schwartz Communications caught up with Eric Wicklund, managing editor of Healthcare Finance News to get his thoughts before he heads out West. Keeping true to his healthcare finance beat, Eric will be on the lookout to see “whether any big healthcare finance deals will be made or broken on the casino floor or at the poker table.”

Like many vendors, members of the press and attendees, Eric’s most interested in the mood at the show––especially since insurers are being portrayed as the villains in Washington and on Main Street. He wants to know, “will they be apologetic or will they take a hard line on responsibility for rate increases?”

At Institute, make sure to set some time aside to catch the sessions for the latest news, challenges and trends in the payer space––many of them will examine the impact of the healthcare reform bill on payer/provider interactions, the adoption of technology, reimbursement and improving the cost and quality of care, not to mention the renewed interest in wellness and preventative care and the latest hot topic: HIEs. With all that's on the docket, there's ample opportunity to use the conference’s focus on these high-level trends to make your company––and news––relevant to the bigger stories that reporters are going to be focusing on in coming months.

Finally, we’ll leave you with a few PR tips from the strip to help you survive Vegas unscathed:

• Stay hydrated. Between air travel and high temperatures, you won’t be on you’re A-game if you aren’t getting enough H20.

• Know the show. Institute has limited exhibit hall hours––usually centered around food and drink––so if you’re planning on making the rounds to network and see the vendors, know the hours, plan ahead and avoid the snack lines to make the most of your time: Wednesday, June 9: 5-7 p.m., Thursday, June 10: 10-10:30 a.m.; 2:15-3:45 p.m. and 5:45-7:00 p.m. and Friday, June 11: 9:30-10:00 a.m.

• Gamble with money, not the media. The Institute press room is in Neopolitan IV, but keep in mind that reporters will spend most of their time in meetings or writing stories for pending deadlines, so tread carefully. If you come upon an unoccupied reporter, introduce yourself, hand over a business card and make note to follow-up with them after the show.

See you in Vegas!

FUD Factors

Schwartz MSL — 2008-10-03T06:21:02-05:00

An Envision Solutions/Kelton Research survey found that 85.6 million U.S. adults, or 38 percent of the population, have doubted the opinion of their doctors or other medical professionals when it conflicts with information found online. Forty three percent of consumers ages 18 to 34 reported they doubted their health provider's advice when it conflicted with online sources.

Only 3 percent of Americans seeking advice about how to manage a serious medical condition would view patient developed online health information as trustworthy. I’m sure this perspective would change if a consumer was faced with a serious disease or condition, hence the popularity of sites like PatientsLikeMe.com.

Few consumers listed the government, the media or non-profits as credible healthcare information sources. The survey shows that a majority of Americans still view health providers as their most trusted source of medical information overall.

Docs Rate Plans

Schwartz MSL — 2008-09-30T09:15:32-05:00

The AMA recently issued its first health insurance report card grading how quickly and accurately doctors get paid. Docs hope the report card will reduce the cost of claims processing and help in contract negotiations with the health plans.

According to the AMA, the report card compares Medicare and seven national commercial health insurers on the timeliness and accuracy of claims processing. UnitedHealthcare had the lowest rate – only 62 percent of medical services billed were paid by them at the agreed rate. Aetna came in higher at 71 percent, and the Medicare at an impressive 98 percent.

What you can do: If you are a healthcare IT physician practice management or EMR vendor who facilitates electronic coding and billing, use the AMA report to highlight how you can improve payment rates for you customers. It's likely your solution improves reimbursement rates and speed, translating into a more efficient and profitable practice.

Costs and Opportunities

Schwartz MSL — 2008-09-28T14:11:40-05:00

Health care costs are expected to rise more than 10 percent into next year, says an Aon Consulting survey of 70 national health insurers. This is actually good, considering it’s the smallest increase Aon has seen in six years.

Employers take measures to combat such increases through new designs, adoption of CDHP and HSA plans. Costs are still rising to keep up with growing patient demand for services, the needs of an aging population and prescription drug and technology costs, according to Aon.

What you can do: If you are a healthcare technology vendor whose solutions help lower costs for employers, leverage surveys such as this to highlight the savings you can provide customers. Highlight employer group success stories in the HR and benefits trades. Consider a round table of customers and experts to put your solution in a trend story context.

EHRachusetts

Schwartz MSL — 2008-09-23T12:11:14-05:00

Here in Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick signed legislation mandating hospitals and community health centers to implement interoperable electronic health records systems by Oct. 1, 2015, as a condition of their state license. The state will develop regulations to define EHRs.

The systems must be certified by Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT.) Further, the law mandates collection and reporting of quality and cost data by providers and insurers, for dissemination to consumers via a state Web portal.

For HCIT practitioners of EHR vendors, this gives you an interesting message point to weave into pitching any Massachusetts hospital or health center customers.

PHR Thoughts

Schwartz MSL — 2008-09-16T06:03:18-05:00

While it may take a decade for widespread adoption of PHRs, it will definitely happen. It is another medium for communicating your medical condition to a doctor, which today is done verbally. Data supplied into the PHR by health plans, or the doctors via EMR interchange, will be more accurate as patients memory – selective or otherwise – isn’t often reliable.

What will help doctors is a high degree of interoperability between the PHR and the EMR, otherwise it’s still easier to take down a patient’s information verbally. When the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) starts certifying PHRs this will hopefully be addressed.

Other obstacles that will be overcome with time is general technology acceptance by doctors. The old guard's resistence will be replaced by younger doctors who are more comfortable and trusting of technology. Ubiquity of PHRs via Microsoft, Google, health plans and hospitals will move PHRs from “nice to have” to “must have."

This presents PHR vendor PR folks with opportunities to highlight how their solutions are making adoption easier, helping facilitate the vision of universal PHRs.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Schwartz MSL — 2008-09-09T01:54:28-05:00

University of Missouri researchers conducted a national survey and found that the majority of health journalists have not had specialized training in health reporting and face challenges in communicating new medical science developments.

Health literacy, as defined by the American Medical Association, is ‘the ability to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions and follow instructions for treatment.’

According to the UM press release, of the journalists surveyed, only 18 percent had specialized training in health reporting and only 6.4 percent reported that a majority of their readers change health behaviors based on the information they provide. The journalists had an average of 18 years of journalism experience and seven years experience as health journalists.

Journalists reported quoting medical experts, avoiding technical terms, and providing data and statistics, as the three most important elements to making health information understandable.

According to the survey, a majority of journalists reported believing that their readers understand information from medical professionals, but are not proficient with scientific information and more prone to believe health myths. The results suggest that newspaper journalists view their roles as information providers, while magazine journalists perceive themselves more as advocates for behavioral change.

PHR Factoids

Schwartz MSL — 2008-09-02T13:39:52-05:00

A recent Markle Foundation survey found that regardless of their interest in using an online PHR service, 79 percent or more of the public believe using an online PHR would provide benefits to individuals in managing their health. Fifty six percent cited worries about privacy and confidentiality as a reason for their reluctance.

Only 2.7 percent of adults have an electronic PHR today (representing about 6.1 million persons). Most (57.3 percent) do not keep any form of personal health records, and 40 percent keep some paper health records.

What you can do: If you're a PHR vendor PR person, utilize the survey findings to support your solution. Use the statistics in press releases or collateral to help make your case. Highlight the privacy and security safeguards that your product takes, given that privacy is a major obstacle to PHR acceptance.

Most Powerful?

Schwartz MSL — 2008-08-26T07:07:23-05:00

Modern Healthcare's annual "100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare" list for 2008 has been published and includes healthcare IT vendors in the top three spots.

1) Steve Case, CEO/founder of Revolution Health

2) Eric Schmidt, Chairman/CEO of Google

3) Bill Gates

4) Hillary Clinton

5) Barack Obama

6) Ted Kennedy

7) Arnold Schwarzenegger

8) George W. Bush

9) John McCain

10) Newt Gingrich

These popularity/political contests are amusing. As a healthcare IT PR practitioner it’s good to see the vendors in the top spots, as it indirectly helps all our causes. Personally I think none of them deserve to be there. Revolution, Google and Microsoft’s consumer health efforts are so early stage with virtually no users that they really should be in the low ‘teens.

No one seems to like Bush, but you can bet that doctors have privately thanked and rooted for him in not cutting Medicare reimbursement rates. That would put Bush from #8 to #1 no question. And Newt’s quasi-political think tank which charges vendors $50,000+ for representation is in many circles (as discussed by the Associated Press on occasion) a questionable operation. I could go on. But most people will agree that in our own real world, the most powerful person in healthcare is your or your child’s very own doctor.

Cloudy Outlook for PHRs?

Schwartz MSL — 2008-08-20T09:31:40-05:00

According to market research firm Gartner, government ITexecutives should investigate the impact of personal health records (PHRs) and health information exchange programs.

PHRs, such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and ActivePHR from ActiveHealth Management, are free and controlled by the consumer and could achieve a high degree of interoperability with clinical systems operated by healthcare providers and other third parties, says Gartner. Microsoft recently announced a pilot project with Kaiser Permanente to enable data transfers between consumers' medical records and Microsoft's HealthVault online health site.

Gartner says these publicly available applications are built on important characteristics of cloud computing - they are enormously scalable resources that offer services directly to end users and to other IT products through an application program interface (API). Gartner reports they have the potential to achieve several important benefits: