Sword and the Script

The essence of the PR's drama

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:10:00 +0000

“Art is why I get up in the morning; my definition ends there. You know it doesn't seem fair, that I'm living for something I can't even define. And there you are right there, in the mean time.” Ani DiFranco

def·i·ni·tion: a : a statement expressing the essential nature of something Merriam-Webster

Ask 10 PR professionals to define public relations, you’ll likely get 10 different responses. Ten different responses can only mean the essence is not known. If the essence of PR is unknown, then like silence in a crisis, the function and industry will continue to be defined for us.

There’s an acute problem with the unknown: It is impossible to present a consistent and cohesive value proposition around a function that we cannot define.

This is the motivation behind PRSA’s well-intended attempt to tackle the definition of PR. However, the resulting PR definitions have left much to be desired. They are not suitable PR definitions. While there's several discussions aimed at improving these definitions, I think there's a subconscious catalyst for how we arrived here: an aversion to PR’s history and lineage of propaganda.

A pioneer of PR, Edward Bernays unabashedly referred to public relations as propaganda. It’s important to point out this occurred before propaganda earned a negative connotation (Bernays attributes this to Nazi Germany). Needless to say that connotation took hold and consequently, the industry today tip-toes around the essential nature of PR by merely adding more lipstick on the proverbial pig.

The challenge here isn’t that we don’t understand the definition, it’s that because of its history, we shy from saying what it in fact is out loud.

It seems to me, PR is ashamed to say we are trying convince people to buy something (business), join something (association), support something (government or non profit) or vote for something (political). The industry gets wrapped up in this idea that we are impartial, liken ourselves to journalists, and focus on “mutually beneficial relationships.”

We are not impartial. We should not pretend to be impartial. We should not strive to be impartial. And if we think we’ll be invited to sit with senior management to discuss “mutual understanding” with “publics” -- then we are collectively on a fool’s errand.

We are advocates for a particular point of view, product or idea. Our job is to convince people to say nice things about whatever it is we are representing, in person, in news, in blogs, or on social media. PR is about third party validation. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that! Further, it should not prevent us from developing a statement that expresses the essential nature of PR.

Rest assured, if we do not define PR, or we do a poor job of defining it, everyone but us will continue to define it:

“Yet, after a century of spinning, PR Man remains uncertain of his proper role. Is he a master manipulator? Is he the devil’s advocate (as long as Satan pays his fees)? Or is he a benign bridge-builder between the corporate world and the public?” The Economist, December 16, 2010

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PRSA’s #PRdefined: please don't redefine failure

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:48:00 +0000

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

That’s the old definition.

There are three options for a new definition:

“Public relations is the management function of researching, communicating and collaborating with publics to build mutually beneficial relationships."

-or-

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

-or-

“Public relations is the strategic process of engagement between organizations and publics to achieve mutual understanding and realize goals.”

PRSA has listed these definitions here; notice there’s not a single comment on a post that so far has garnered a mere 25 tweets (currently) according to the counter PRSA has implemented on the site. Redefining PR? 25 tweets? That alone should be a red flag that something is wrong.

For a project that was announced | with | so | much | fanfare, was months in the making, involving 12 organizations and reviewing 1,000 suggestions, according to David Rickey, it didn’t get very far. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Criticism | has | been | sharp -- even CIPR, an initial partner in the project, has distanced itself from PRSA’s proposed definitions. Consequently, PRSA turned on its damage control machine and has put its project “Task Force” on DEFCON | ridiculous. For security purposes, everyone is getting patted down in the blog comments, you’d better have your membership card, and don’t dare try to smuggle in any new apples from afar.

The messages, as I assess them, from the various posts linked above (besides the fact “Task Force” chair publicly agreed with one commenter that the new definitions “suck”) are:

1. We’ll never get 100% consensus.
2. We didn’t make the definition, you did.
3. This was never about changing the professions image.
4. The academics agree with us.

Really? PRSA’s spin sucks too. Rotten apples.

Did we all read the same New York Times article that announced the project?

“The public relations industry has decided that it may be a good time for, well, a public relations initiative,” read the story lede. Further, the new chair Gerard F. Corbett said in an interview with The Drum, "In essence, we in PR admittedly have a PR challenge.”

PRSA’s messages in announcing the project and defending the results are not aligned.

With so many competing ideas, no one would expect 100% consensus, but I’m willing to bet PRSA doesn’t have the votes for a simple majority.

As for academics (and I really do love communications theory), scholarly citations are useful for a literary review, but are a poor substitute for a thesis: Grunig, Wilcox, Kent, Taylor, Hugh Rank (my personal favorite) et al., are indeed all great scholars, but academia trails the profession. Example: show me their social media contributions. They hardly exist, yet social media is not new anymore and it is an enormous part of a PR professional's focus.

I contend PRSA's method for soliciting input -- its crowd source methodology -- was biased. The PR community was asked to fill in the blanks on a sentence that was already three-quarters complete. That's a leading question and suggests to me the committee started with a prejudicial definition. It’s not research yet PRSA’s defense is that we’ll hey, everyone else is doing it.

So much for differentiation. It reminds me of the famous psychology experiment with monkeys, bananas and a sprinkler system. The monkeys end up avoiding something new, but do not understand why.

That is not research and I find it absolutely mind-numbing that PRSA publicly agrees the new definitions “suck," yet has resolved to stay the course.

“Regardless of what you think of the final candidate definitions, you can rest easy no one is forcing you to adopt the 'winning' definition,” wrote David Rickey in a SpinSucks blog post defending the definitions. “PRSA will, and if you’d like to do the same, great; if not, that’s fine too.”

“Wow,” wrote Maddie Grant in a comment beneath Rickey’s words. “If that's not a 'F you' then I don't know what is.”

So PRSA is thumbing the eye of its community and is stubbornly going to stay the course. It doesn’t care what the community has to say and it’s going to adopt one of these three tragic manifestations of a definition anyway. The trouble with that logic is if no one else adopts PRSA’s definition, then by definition, it’s not a definition. If that happens, everyone loses.

Why should PR pros care?
The PR market accounts for roughly $10 billion annually -- PR is a very small part of a much larger $1 trillion dollar market. This is because there is so much confusion in the space that prospective customers do not understand PR -- and people don’t buy (or hire) services they don’t understand. It’s like PR is stuck in a perpetual early adopter side of Geoffrey Moore’s market chasm.

How have PR people adapted? PR pros have dropped PR from their titles. Rickey wrote in his post earlier that only about 15 percent of leaders in the District Chapter had “PR” or “public relations” in their title. I recall Brian Solis, a long time PR practitioner, openly stating during a presentation to PR pros I attended, that he avoided the term PR because it kept him from getting the ear of business leaders. He said he’s a “recovering” PR person.

Solis may have been joking about recovering, but these facts should send a chill down PRSA’s overly rigid spine. This definition matters. Words matter. And if the leading PR organization in the US goes forward with this farcical definition, then we -- you and me -- are just letting this opportunity slip away.

My challenge to PRSA
On SpinSucks, I’ve already publicly challenged PRSA in the comments to at least stop and consider what they are doing. Get feedback -- real feedback -- from the PR community both members and non-members. I propose they do the following:

1. Publish all the notes, interviews and data PRSA has compiled. Who you talked to, what questions were asked and the unedited answers.

2. Invite bloggers from all ranks -- make it big -- 20 of them -- to post on ComPRehension. The split should be 50-50 -- for and against.

3. Conduct a survey, open to the public, as to whether or not these proposed definitions are worth pursuing. Ensure the community sees the questions and has a chance to comment before you use them -- most of us in PR are smart enough to recognize bias in market research surveys.

What can you do?
If this bothers you as much as it bothers me, do something -- take action. Comment on every blog post you see. Tweet every story published about the project. Write your own blog posts as Jayme Soulati has: We Cannot Define PR.

PRSA would like to label me, and others who tore into the comments on Rickey’s blog post as “detractors.” I think PRSA is not only insulting its own community, it is misguided -- there’s a groundswell -- and ask you to take part in it. I'm doing this because I give a shit. I care about the profession, I love my job, this is a great line of work. I can't see doing anything else...well maybe a diving instructor one day. I chose this path because I think the PR industry desperately needs an industry organization that leads. I want to believe in PRSA.

It's not dramatic to say the future of PR is on the line. This definition will either be a rallying cry, or it will continue to see the words "PR" dropped from many more job titles. It is my hope it’s the former.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like: The essence of the PR's drama

Additional posts on PRSA’s definition: Krista Giuffi: The Silver Lining to PR Defined
Linsky Istatkova: A battle staged, the modern definition of PR
Donna Chessum: PR’s problem: How to put PR in a nutshell
Chris Nahil: The Fight to Redefine Public Relations
Jeff Domansky: Doh! The PR definition you can’t resist…
Paul Roberts: PR Undefined and PRAS Born (calls for a new PR association!!!)
Jeff Domansky: PRSA’s PR Definitions: So Now What?
Maddie Grant: Why this PRSA situation is important
Lippe Taylor: PRSA: Redefining Public Relations?
Anthony Rodriguez: Public relations definition has a PR problem

Maddie Grant: Why can't we define public relations?
Noemi Pollack: And The Winner Is – a New PR Definition
Steve Crescenzo: Nailing jelly to the wall (also published in the PRDaily)
PR Daily: The role of PR has ‘barely changed’
Gini Dietrich: Redefining Public Relations (also published in Ragan.com)
PR Daily: Why are some PR pros so angry about the 'PR Defined' campaign?

A few more compelling thoughts on influence vs. popularity

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:50:00 +0000

Last week Arik Hanson published a guest blog I wrote on the difference between influence and popularity. The post boils down to these two paragraphs:

Ashton Kutcher, though intensely popular, probably lacks the credibility to pitch expensive Nikon cameras to professional photographers. However, change the context and market segment to the more affordable CoolPix S60, and he’ll likely earn sales because it fits the financial means and photographic experience level of his fan base.

If Nikon wants a lot of clicks, followers and buzz, Kutcher is a great choice no matter what the pitch, but measurable results may vary. However, if Nikon wants to influence buyers to exchange dollars for Nikon’s cameras, motivation, context, timing, and credibility — all factors of influence that tools cannot measure — matter greatly.

In seeking input for the post, had actually reached out to Arik for his thoughts on the topic when he turned the tables on me and asked for a guest post; obviously, I was happy to oblige. However, several people did provide their input, including Ike Pigott who sent this short, but straight to the point response in the form of a video (which is an Ike specialty, albeit usually from behind the wheel of a parked car).

Since the post has gone live, I’ve had quite a few engagements, like the tweet embedded above, with people on the topic, and that’s only served to stir my interest further. So I’ve dug through perhaps 20 or so articles, studies and blog posts and have found three I thought were especially worth sharing:

1. Don Bartholomew writes that confusion on the difference between influence and popularity stems from the distinction in Bringing Some Clarity to Social Media Influence:

A primary source of influence confusion is failing to distinguish between a simple act of engagement and the process of being influenced. Engagement is a necessary pre-condition to Influence. (This social media measurement model addresses the distinction) Without engagement you don’t have the opportunity to influence. Influence, however, only occurs if that engagement leads to a change in attitudes, opinions, beliefs and behavior.

2. Matthew Creamer, of Advertising Age, breaks down a research project that finds, contrary to Malcom Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” theory, reaching many of us common folk with a message might have greater impact than reaching a few powerful influencers; Your Followers Are No Measure of Your Influence:

In other words, reaching a large number of more ordinary Joes and Janes with a message might be more effective than trying to tap into Bieber fever.

3. Geoff Livingston, in one of the most compelling posts I’ve read and wish now I had read ealier, lays out the idea that “the hyper-engaged online personality with an authentic story is the one to succeed.” He provides several powerful examples of which I’ve taken just three; PayPal Research Shows Strength of Community Trumps Popularity:

a) A campaign on Facebook’s Causes to raise money for a new children’s hospital. In it, a 9-year-old cancer patient with virtually no online presence generated more donations than any other individual, including television star Ashton Kutcher.

b) A DonorsChoose.org fundraising competition among bloggers —- including TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and All Things D’s Kara Swisher —- was dominated by a blogger offering to parade around in a tomato suit.

c) The launch competition of Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees social giving website: Despite recruiting more than 60 celebrities to create “charity badges” on the site —- including Nicole Kidman and Ashley Judd -— the top fundraiser was a woman who blogs about scrapbooking and has an autistic son.

The confusion over influence and popularity isn’t likely to go away soon. The allure of numbers, of masses of followers has an appeal that even experienced professionals can’t seem to ignore. The only fix for that is to read, study and experience.

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Smart things: Pinterest, cogs, frogs and mackerel 2.10.12

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:40:00 +0000

This weekly post is usually about the smart things I’ve read or heard over the course of the week, but I’m shaking it up first with one thing that doesn’t quite fit that category.

Pawgo, an online pawnshop from Denver, which sent would-be guerrilla marketers to Boston to dump a pile of Butterfinger candybars in the middle of Copley Square with a sign that said, “Thank you Wes Welker.”

The reference is to, as blogger George F. Snell III, summed up, “As many fans know, Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker dropped an admittedly difficult pass from quarterback Tom Brady that could have sealed a victory for the Patriots. During the press conference after the game, Welker was holding back tears and took full blame for missing the catch.”

Like many fans from the New England area, I’m still mourning the Patriots loss. I’m no fan of PR flame outs, but insulting prospective customers, especially those especially, fanatically passionate Beantown fans, is no way to convince people to bring oddities from the attic to your online store. Hat tip to O’Dwyer’s reporters for sharing the link.

Now, on to the smart things.

1. Pinterest reminds us we are the product. Lots of chatter this week about Pinterest’s alleged business model this week. Pinterest is using an affiliate program to change links to photos that are “pinned” by users from anywhere to ecommerce sites. For example, a picture of a new pair of running shoes found in a photo album on Flickr would be linked to an ecommerce site that actually sells them, which makes it easy for anyone in the mood for buying. Unfortunately, Pinterest hasn’t disclosed to users that its making these changes, a problem that could easily be fixed. I’m intrigued by the model -- it’s something new and different and could develop a stronger tie between social media and sales. TechCrunch had an inside story that’s worth reading, but writer Mike Butcher summed up a succint reminder to us all about these free services:

“After all, on free services, we are the product, right?”

2. Cog of the machine. Nieman Journalism Lab cites a media analyst who says that every journalist’s biggest fear is being a cog of the machine -- espeically in a social media world. When Charlie Sheen was up to his Twitter antics, several reporters within a circle of each other were all tweeting the same link to a story about Charlie’s actions. It’s the result of a real-time world where the margin of quality drops dramatically in order to be first to publish. The epiphany Nieman is suggesting probably applies to all of us -- bona fide journalists and marketing or PR types:

"publish less, and focus instead on producing original, high-impact journalism"

3. Optimization - a frog in boiling water. Tom Webster wrote an intriguing post called The Venn Diagram that could Destroy your Business, on how optimizing content for people talking about your brand, may in fact distance you from the people that are actually interested in buying your stuff -- what he calls the “optimization trap.”

“With each optimization, you’ve actually veered further and further away from the dead center of your market.”

4. Holy Mackerel that’s creative! TechDirt tipped me off to Terry Border’s thought-provoking post that really made me pause. “Think about the art of writing for a minute,” he wrote, “Think about creative, or biographical, or whatever kind of writing. Before blogging, how many people wrote any more than it took to fill the space of postcard?” The idea he was espousing was summed up in TechDirt’s headline:

“We're Living In the Most Creative Time In History”

5. Feeling viral? I’ve seen two solid posts this week on viral marketing. Christian of SmartBoyDesigns wrote a post called Stop Trying to Go Viral and the ever prolific Gini Dietrich f SpinSucks wrote, How to Make your Content go Viral. Christian calls viral marketing powerful, but undefinable, while Gini says viralicious-ness (h/t Lisa) is “about great creative, great content, and some fairy magic dust.” Bottom line? Viral can’t be made and the word is fast becoming overused:

“The phrase ‘go viral’ has become the new ‘synergy.’”

What smart things have you heard this week?

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Sales? PR doesn’t do sales! Or marketing.

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:58:00 +0000

Source: google.com via Frank_Strong on Pinterest

Note: an earlier version of this post originally ran on Spin Sucks: Breaking Down the Communication Silos

Sales. It’s about as far away from PR as you can be, and still be in business. But maybe not for long.

PR pros should not develop campaigns to drive sales. PR should not use calls-to-action. PR should not be measured by leads. Most importantly, PR should not be measured by sales. That’s marketing.

PR is better served by measuring awareness. In fact, “an ideal PR objective specifies desired outcomes within target publics, such as increased knowledge and/or awareness, or changed opinions, attitudes, and behavior.”

Believe it or not, there are those that call themselves PR pros in these modern times, who espouse such nonsense. The irony is that PR can succeed in building awareness, and the business can still fall short – the same way a company can book sales one month and go bankrupt the next for lack of cash flow.

If you’ve made people aware of your company’s product, well, hey, your job is done. It’s marketing’s fault they didn’t capture the lead. It’s sale’s fault they didn’t close the deal. It’s customer service’s fault they didn’t retain the customer.

Point fingers. Deny the overlap. Oppose the cross-talk. Avoid integration, cooperation or collaboration. After all, a narrow and focused view is the best way to meet the broadest of goals.

The net effect of this misguided view rests in overhead, excessive cost and worse, lost opportunity. It’s silo-ed thinking. Marketing stays on their side of the room, PR stays in their corner – nobody crosses the line. Nobody.

This may have worked in the past. PR fielded media calls, stamped out press releases and maybe wrote a speech or two. Marketing worked on slogans, direct mail and advertising campaigns. Sure, integration between the two disciplines could have improved results, but campaigns surely didn’t fail for lack of streamline; they had different goals.

Then something changed: the world went digital – which meant new rules for marketing and PR. Word spread faster – now is gone. It became social – engage or die. Trust agents became a key to influence. Content was – and is – like currency, bartered for attention on the world’s largest exchange, which in turn is becoming more and more segmented.

These dynamics are forcing a tighter link between PR and marketing, and though I’ve argued that generally, marketing looks more like PR, the reality is, it doesn’t matter who made who. What matters are results. It’s giving rise to the notion of, as Deirdre Breakenridge puts it, the hybrid professional.

If traditionalists worry about shattered boundaries, then the hybrid professional is a frightening prospect.

This is because the hybrid professional is more than just the blending of marketing and PR. It’s the confluence of those AND customer service AND sales.

For example, what function is being performed in the following:

- When a sales person tweets a link to your company’s blog?

- When a PR pro answers a product question on Facebook?

- When a customer service representative shares a recap of a Webinar?

- When the custodian links to the company’s product page from his blog?

The question is rhetorical, because it’s integration, by force, design or accident. Sales people are doing a little PR, PR people are doing a little sales and customer service is doing a little marketing.

Perhaps in this decade, we’ll reengineer the corporation and flatten processes for total quality management of this evolving method of business, let alone communications, but until we do, these functions will enjoy considerable overlap. The companies that develop well-rounded employees focused on the single overarching goal of sales as the benchmark of success will be best poised to succeed. Everyone wears a marketing hat. Every employee wears a sales hat. And every soul has an obligation to customer service.

So if traditional PR wants to build awareness, have at it. It might have missed Plurk, Freindster and Friendfeed, but there’s still time to collect impressions in the form of Retweets, Likes and +1’s. After all, if the tribes click “like,” opinions have been swayed in a measurable way.

But maybe not for long. It is my contention, as a PR pro that grew up in a traditional world, but seeks to adopt to the realities of today, that PR would be better served by getting comfortable with sales if we still want to be in business.

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10 leadership tips for 1:1 meetings with employees

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:33:00 +0000

The military places an enormous emphasis on “counseling” -- 1:1 meetings between leaders and subordinates that define the tasks, conditions and standards. That is to say clearly defining the job to be done, the conditions in which those tasks will be carried out, and the standard or measurement to be achieved.

The same leadership principles are easily transferable to management in the civilian world, and I always enjoy writing about how my part-time work in the Army relates to my full-time work in PR. To that end, here are 10 tips for 1:1 meetings.

1. Be disciplined. The best thing that manager can provide to an employee is their undivided attention. Turn your phone off...whatever it is can wait 30 minutes.

2. Establish goals. Goals should include both their contributions to the organization and to their own professional development.

3. Seal it in ink. The sheer virtue of putting your discussions in writing, where both parties acknowledge the conversation with a signature, ensures a higher level of commitment. Things slip that are not sealed in ink.

4. Measure goals. Peter Drucker is famous for the philosopy that, “What gets measured, gets done.” Review the established goals quarterly for progress or completion.

5. Just say it. Don't shy from a tough conversation. Managers cannot expect a change if they don't clearly identify the issue. If there's a problem or an issue, tell them clearly what the issue is and prescribe corrective action.

6. Remove obstacles. A key part of a manager’s job should be to remove obstacles so their employees can do their jobs. Junior managers ought to have the ability to solve their own problems with little intervention and when they seek a senior manager’s help, it’s because something is blocking them from doing their job -- and by extension blocking you from doing yours.

7. Atta-boy or Atta-girl. The most underutilized tool in a manager's toolkit is a compliment. If someone’s doing a great job – tell them.

8. Say what not how. Tell an employee what you want done, not how to do it, unless they are seeking your help. Often employees will surprise you with ingenuity or creativity and as they grow they will gain confidence. This is an important part a manager’s responsibility to facilitate the growth of his or her employees.

9. Second chance at success. My father, who has long since passed, used to say, “You’ve got to fall down 1,000 times before you’re an expert.” When an employee fails, gain something from that investment by asking them, "What did you learn?"

10. Performance and potential. This might ring of Jack Welch, because I first heard the term from a friend who was part of GE’s management program: pay for performance, promote for potential.

An earlier version of this post on 1:1 employee meetings was posted to Quora - and there are other submissions well worth reviewing. What tips would you add?

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Smart things: From Giraffes to CMOs (2.3.12)

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:57:00 +0000

New numbers from Facebook, a toddler with marketing genius and the CMO Council’s lastest survey are part of this week’s “Smart Things” post -- a weekly wrap up with commentary of some of the most interesting things I’ve seen, read or heard about marketing and PR this week.

1. The 3 year-old brand m\anager. Sainsbury may be the oldest retailer in London, but it’s clearly open to new ideas. According to The Telegraph, Sainsbury renamed it’s fresh baked bread from “Tiger” to “Giraffe” after a 3 year-old, with parental help, responded to a Facebook campaign aimed at re-branding the product. Reportedly the little girl felt the delicious spots on the bread bore a stronger resemblance to a giraffe’s spots than tiger stripes. The company has enjoyed positive coverage in trades, the HuffPost and at least 145 comments in one Reddit thread. Add Sainsbury’s efforts to similar campaigns, like well-conceived contests, to the line up of especially effective and creative PR moves (Photo credit: Sainsbury’s Facebook page).

“It should be c\alled Giraffe bread.”

2. The genius of humor. Snarketing 2.0 rolls humor into it’s analysis of marketing with social media. In a post called RIP Social Media Gurus, author Ron Shevlin argues companies don’t need social media strategies, they need better marketing strategies.

“Social media does not make you a good marketer. Good marketers figure out how to effectively use social media.”

3. New Facebook numbers. Since Facebook’s S-1 filing announcing it’s IPO there’s a slew of new data out about the company. Brian Solis noted the company had $1 billion in profits in 2011, up 65% year-over-year. The Economist produced a graphic that shows while Facebook’s user count eclipes the population of the United States, and has a market capitalization that rivals McDonald’s -- the company has very few employees, just 3,000. That’s not counting you, of course.

“Analysts are quick to point out that the site’s users effectively act as employees, adding content and value for others.”

4. Google’s IPO vs. Facebook’s IPO. Some financial analysts take exception to Facebook’s enormous valuation, and it’s a similar story line from Google’s IPO. We’re all wishing now we purchased GOOG at 80 bucks a pop given it’s currently trading at nearly $600 per share. However, Forrester’s Nate Eliot really pinpointed the issue when compared the two in a post called How Facebook’s IPO Could Transform Marketing.

“In 2004, even the least sophisticated marketers were generating enormous ROI on Google; today, even the savviest marketers often struggle to do likewise on Facebook.”

5. CMOs down on ad agencies. Scott Brinker wrote about the CMO Council’s new survey of 6,000 corporate marketers that found just 9% believe their ad agencies is adapting to digital age. As a result nearly half are planning to consolidate the agencies they retain. It’s unbelievable that in 2012, this is still a topic of discussion: social media is not new!

“When 91% of your customers think you're a dinosaur, that can't be good.”

What smart things have your heard this week?

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Fewer corporate bloggers means more opportunity

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:33:00 +0000

A new study out of UMASS Dartmouth suggests that blogging among the Inc. 500 is down. The percentage of corporations blogging dropped 13% from 2010 to 2011 and marks the first time a decline has been spotted since 2007.

There’s irony here since 92% of those using a business blog say it’s successful and that’s up several points from last year.

Conclusion? The companies that are blogging are doing so with good success, but blogging overall has fallen from favor as compared with the previous years.

The conflict will certainly draw lots of headlines and it's hard to say this is a trend. Mark Schaefer has a solid analysis, to couple a dramatic headline, as to the reasons why this survey should be viewed with a critical eye.

But wait there’s more...

In addition, there is a data point that’s getting lost in the shuffle: 56% of respondents listed blogging as a social media channel they are not using but plan to in the future. That’s up 14% from last year and it’s higher on the list than any other single social media channel (see screenshot nearby from the study).

Different conclusion? The companies that are blogging are doing so with success, and other companies are seeing that success and are planning to begin blogging in the future.

The business case for corporate blogging is clear, compelling and continuous. The web is literally sprawling with case studies as to the benefits of blogging -- from the SEO value to media relations. If there are fewer voices competing for the finite amount of attention on the web, then that simply spells opportunity for the savvy marketing and PR types that continue to blog for their businesses.

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Smart things: buzz and snappy science (1.26.12)

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:14:00 +0000

Smart things – bookmark them, write them down and turn them into a blog post. In hopes of sharing some content I’ve found interesting and noteworthy, here are five smart things I’ve heard lately.

1. Negative buzz vs. crisis on social media. “Brands with social media experience know they don’t need to respond to every ounce of negative buzz in the social sphere; often, letting consumer brand advocates do it for them can address the problem while also showing how loyal some customers are to the company.” eMarketer: Do Social Media Postings Always Require a Brand Response?

2. The few dominate the many. "Twitter provides both an overwhelming amount of data and is dominated by a minority of influential users." Melissa Parrish's Forrester blog: Twitter: Is Anybody Doing It "Right"?

3. Calling out PR in PR blogs. “When we flame "PR Fail" incidents, we (consciously or subconsciously) send a few messages:

* I keep abreast of the latest trends in PR, so I'd be a great PR pro for you to hire.

* Since I'm showing you an example of "bad" PR, you should assume that, conversely, I practice "good" PR...so I'd be a great PR pro for you to hire.

* Other well-respected PR pros wrote about this, and by weighing in on it, I can earn an invitation to a conversation with these leaders of our industry. And since I converse with the pioneers in our field...I'd be a great PR pro for you to hire.

As much as I hate that we dredge up examples of people behaving badly, we created the economy where this stuff is the currency.” Scott Hepburn in a comment on Arik Hanson’s blog: Are we helping or hurting by blogging about PR flame-outs?

4. The science of snappy writing. “The takeaway from all this is that you should maximize the match of your tagline to the nature of your product and the orientation of your customers. Your message should build on that, with promotion-oriented messages expressed in positive, gain-oriented terms and prevention-oriented messages framed in terms of loss. If your marketing style permits and if you can identify customer segments with different promotion/prevention orientations, craft different messages for each group.” Roger Dooley on Neuromarketing: How to Write Taglines That Double Sales

5. Long live the Web! “Why does the rise of Facebook affect the web? Because it isn’t a part of the open WWW. Facebook exists behind a walled garden. You need to log in to use it. Content or software developers who want to build products that work in Facebook have got to develop inside of Facebook’s framework rather than working on open, Internet standards.” Mark Suster on Both Sides of the Table: The End of the Web? Don’t Bet on It. Here’s Why

Heard or read something smart lately? Please feel free to share.

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7 Creative PR and Marketing Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:53:00 +0000

Not everyone gets feedback from David Pouge or Robert Scoble for their PR pitches, but creative PR and marketing ideas do have a way of earning the right attention all on their own – and hopefully from customers. I like to keep an eye out for those really creative ideas, but the reality is they don’t come along every day: The list of seven below was nearly a year in the making.

1. Earning more blog comments. “Commenting seems to have decreased over the past six years,” wrote Geoff Livingston on his blog recently. You wouldn’t know it by the number of quality comments on Adam Singer’s blog, The Future Buzz. Perhaps that’s because Adam does something very clever in rewarding great commenters: every so often, he turns the best comments on his blog into a blog post. It’s a savvy tactic I’ve also observed elsewhere, like Mack Collier’s blog. People like to be acknowledged for their thoughts and this is certainly a nice way of doing it; bonus for re-using great content to develop an easy, but value added blog post.

2. Think outside the template. Now and again a clever PR person comes up with a creative idea for a press release that earns praise; here are three examples: 1) The National Zoo caught my eye by publishing a press release that described animal reactions to a rare earthquake in Washington, DC. 2) HubSpot earned David Meerman Scott’s attention with a press release comprised entirely of Tweets to announce its acquisition of a social media marketing company. Wire to Ear snagged consideration from the Dallas Observer for their client, a band called Slider Pines, in part, by overtly using a press release template, with a creative twist (screen shot nearby; credit: Dallas Observer). Observer writer Pete Freedman apologized for a slow news day, but the headline screamed, “The Most Creative Press Release We've Seen In A Long Time...”

3. Marketing materials with double duty. Mares, which makes SCUBA equipment has appointed its clothing and product tags with an additional duty: bumper sticker. Divers tend to be fanatical about diving and have a strong affinity to gear manufacturers. A tag that doubles as a sticker is liable to wind up on a refrigerator, the bumper on a Jeep Wrangler or a suitcase containing dive gear. Any clothing retailer could adopt this tactic. The GAP, for example, which seems to have customers with deeply passionate convictions about its logo design, could easily find its tried and true logo voluntarily affixed to its customers’ most prized possessions. And maybe even a suitcase of their own.

4. Stopping SOPA. The outcry against SOPA took several forms, but one I found especially creative was “Stop SOPA” tagline included in Twitter profile photos. According to CNET, at least 14,000 people added that tag line to their Twitter photo and the message may have reached millions. Any awareness campaign from cause-marketing to politics could incorporate this idea into marketing tactics. I first saw it when my buddy, Abbas Haider Ali, a former work colleague, retweeted a link I had posted to Twitter. It’s his photo I’ve posted nearby and I’ve linked his name to his Twitter account for any product management types interested in following a pragmatic product strategy guy. By the way, if you think SOPA is dead, I'd caution you to think again ('cause it ain't over). Better yet, take action and stop SOPA with three emails.

5. Make them feel good. “The best marketing or advertising success stories are exactly that – real stories,” wrote DannyBrown in a blog post about a creative marketing idea from smoyz, a creative boutique, working on behalf of Kleenex. The firms monitored Facebook for references of being sick and sent a “Kleenex Kit” to 50 people by courier within 1-2 hours according to a video (nearby) that recaps the campaign. All 50 people – or 100% – of recipients posted a photo about receiving the kit to their Facebook page and earned Kleenex 1,800 interactions. If you have ever wondered how a brand like Kleenex can tally up 70,000+ Facebook fans, with nearly 1,000 talking about them on an idle Saturday, take note, this is how you do it:

6. Power in numbers. Ever have the urge to celebrate Christmas in Birmingham England? Few people probably did before the city launched an integrated campaign with PR, advertising and digital media to attract visitors for 2010. The campaign published an array of videos, an online game and teamed up “with restaurants, theatres, and attractions” in order “to pool the city’s marketing resources,” according The Guardian. The city’s online game netted 70,000 downloads and its website received some 265,000 visitors as a result according to the same article. More importantly, 70% of visitors surveyed said they intend to return in the next 12 months. It must have worked, because Birmingham repeated the campaign in 2011, with another twist for YouTube.

7. Build it with Staples and they will come. Hat tip to O’Dwyer’s Greg Hazley for spotting this creative video by Hill and Knowlton on behalf of Staples Sydney – I bookmarked his link on Delicious nearly a year ago. The firm used common office supplies to build a replica of a new store location in preparation for its grand opening and earned more than 100,000 views.

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Prediction #3: Marketers regain sense of control

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Note: this is the third and final prediction in a series of predictions I’m making for 2012. The first two can be read here: Prediction #2: Favor tips towards credible media and Prediction #1: Social media slides down the pedestal.

Marketers are no longer in control of their brands. Do you believe it? I did. But as in my first prediction, my thinking is changing.

As I’ve spent nearly a year away from my day job in PR, I’ve found the distance has given me a new perspective. Sometimes we need to step back to see things in perspective. Geoff Livingston’s post (the photo credit also belongs to Geoff via Flickr), The Customer Is Not Your CMO, made it click in my mind:

Companies that don’t understand and listen to their customers experience problems because not only are the ignoring their customer, but also the flaws in their offering. That’s because customer service is usually activated when people are pissed, not when they are happy.

What about the vast majority of happy customers who never call? How can customer service represent them.

Just like the army doesn't want GI Joe managing a supply line, international troop deployment, and war strategy, I don’t want customer service driving marketing. While feedback can lead to innovation, overall I think the effect would be stymied, reactive products that don’t advance anywhere nearly as quickly as they currently do.

Did Old Spice cede control? How about Vitaminwater? Or Blendtec? Skeptics will point to the likes of the Gap fiasco and say, look, marketing lost control. It’s a popular mantra; don’t dare to think anything different.

The Gap didn’t lose control of their brand. They failed to 1) listen and 2) provide leadership. We’ve diagnose a problem based on one or two symptoms when there are multiple symptoms that are interrelated.

Listening is little more than a 30-year-old principle, if not older – its savvy market research. Marketing is the art and science of determining which ideas are worth pursuing, developing and leading.

Leadership in marketing – especially in social media – is the concept Seth Godin describes in his book Tribes.

“Leadership isn’t difficult, but you’ve been trained for years to avoid it,” write Godin. He draws a distinction between leadership and management which he defines as “manipulating recourses to get a known job done.”

Making widgets faster is a management problem. Ensuring all widgets are precisely the same is a management problem. Ensuring the supplies to make the widget are delivered on time is a management problem.

Change doesn’t come without leadership. Leadership by virtue grants control.

Old Spice did it differently. Vitaminwater was unconventional. Blendtec still gets mileage out of an aging but unique concept. These companies are leading – and leading with marketing.

Marketing hasn’t lost control; it needs to hone its leadership skills.

Prediction #2: Favor tips towards credible media

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:11:00 +0000

Note: this is the second of three predications I’m making for 2012. The first one is out and can be read here: Prediction #1: Social media slides down the pedestal.

There’s a growing backlash against infographics. The backlash scale ranges from the inevitable call for the death of infographics to mere issues with aesthetics, but I think The Atlantic was the most scathing. It classified infographics as a plague.

“95% of infographics from unknown sites are full of distortions and lies inserted by internet marketers to get you to link to their websites,” reads a presumably satirical infographic. The article continues by pointing out the factual in accuracies of several popular infographics including the “Hazards of Hospitals” and the “Prison/Princeton.”

To PR pros, this criticism is similar to that of surveys (here’s a little anecdote about the Pope and surveys that sums it up this criticism). However, this time I think it’s different – and it’s indicative of an underlying theme: a trend towards credible media.

While in years past, some predicted the democratizing effects of social media would replace traditional media, I’ve long advocated for a balanced view. PR programs should remain inclusive of mainstream media (and traditional tactics) for one compelling reason: it’s clear that mainstream coverage drives social media conversations.

Certainly the inverse can also true but the threshold is much higher; an order of magnitude higher. One clear example is the fact that in many ways, Twitter owes much of its user growth to media coverage.

“What I really found interesting is that for all the talk about traditional media having lost its luster due to the rise of social media, the report proves that Twitter, in fact, owes some of its popularity and growth to traditional media,” wrote Farida Harianawala in response to a blog post on the topic. “I think traditional media becomes more and not less important with all the information and content overload, as we will need credible sources of information that can cut through all the social media noise.”

I agree, but might add it’s not information overload per se – it’s a filtering problem. One easy filter is to go with the media you trust, which is why many information consumers have favorite blogs they visit over and over. This is an important nuance in my prediction which says credible media, not simply mainstream media.

The mainstream media has credibility. Sure there’s bias in reporting, but by far and large, the ethics of the media community are stringent, and enforcement is largely peer driven and self-policing. It’s shameful to get the facts wrong and carries serious career ending implications.

That the trend favors credible media is indicative of the idea that content producers can earn the trust of a community but the fast growing and wildly successful communities will be fewer and far between. Trust is one of those terms coined early, and bantered around the social web with ease, but the hard work is in the action…consistent, well-conceived ideas grounded in accurate facts and methodical research. The visualization of data – whether it’s pretty or pretty ugly – is but just one more step in this direction.

Prediction #1: Social media slides down the pedestal

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:31:00 +0000

Blog posts on predictions are predictable and common. Forecasts range from what sort of content will flourish, what networks will thrive and how the behavior of consumers – and by extension marketers – will change are plentiful.

Many of these predictions are well-grounded, but even as a social media enthusiast, I’m beginning to get a sense that the allure of social media is waning.

In making predictions I offer a caveat: social media will continue to be an important part of content consumption and marketing. However, I tend to think of social media behavior in the context of Tuckman’s stages for group development.

People are after all, a collective group, connected over a social network and the basis for my predictions is we are in the “storming” stage of development, where “different ideas compete for consideration.” Here is the first of my three contrarian predictions I’ll roll out over the next week or so.

#1 Social media slides down the pedestal

Malcolm Gladwell stirred controversy this year when he rejected the conventional idea that social media enabled political revolution across the Middle East. As Wired’s Bill Wasik deftly points out, Gladwell’s argument boils down to the inability to convincingly claim, “that in the absence of social media, those uprisings would not have been possible.”

Few agreed with Gladwell and even I was, at the time, critical of his analysis but the year in passing, notwithstanding having actually visited Egypt, my thinking is changing: Gladwell is right.

For all the laudatory praise, social media traffic during the Egyptian revolution accounted for less than 1% of the total population, according to Stratfor. If users of social media stoked a revolution, albeit a leaderless one, their longer-term success has been limited – one only needs to look at the Egyptian voting data being returned for validation. The election winners rode on the coattail of the revolution – they did not engineer it.

We do not need to look to oversees to see that this statistic is also true elsewhere. As Forrester’s Melissa Parrish wrote in a recent blog post, "Twitter provides both an overwhelming amount of data and is dominated by a minority of influential users."

“Twitter is a fishbowl,” Beth Harte once said to me in a face-to-face conversation. Those words have stuck with me for many months and I was recently reminded of them when I read Infinite Stupidity, a long but fascinating read by evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel that suggests, despite our self-perceptions to the contrary, only a small number of people are truly innovative.

“What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet,” wrote Pagel. “We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by.”

So when I predict social media will slide down the pedestal, I’m suggesting it will drop a notch or two. I’m not proposing social media is dead, or a waste of time, but rather we’ll begin to view it as a more tempered necessity.

Social media will still play a role, especially among Geoffrey Moore’s population of early adopters, but we’ll begin to understand that earning a social head-nod from the social media elite, is a means and not an end. In other words, social media will facilitate initial growth among early adopters, but that market acceptance must be bridged to the early majority if it’s to be withstanding.

Media coverage drove Twitter’s growth, report says

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Media coverage drove Twitter’s user base, which now rests at about 300 million. That’s the conclusion of a new report which analyzed the site's growth pattern from 2006 to 2009.

In case it’s overlooked, it wasn’t a self-anointed PR measurement guru that drew this quaint conclusion, but rather MIT civil and environmental engineers that used the analogy of contagion, which epidemiologists and viral marketers alike, will find familiar. Contagion is the process of how diseases are transmitted.

Twitter’s no avian flu, but the study, which used Google Insights for Search as a research tool, cites a positive correlation between the media coverage of Ashton Kutcher’s challenge to CNN about which Twitter account would attract a million followers first. That led to a splash of news including a spot on Oprah where she “ceremoniously” sent her first tweet. Consequently, “the pace of new news stories picked up again, and so did new Twitter accounts.”

Who says celebrities aren’t influential?

Twitter’s germination, at least, “in the United States actually relied primarily on media attention and traditional social networks based on geographic proximity and socioeconomic similarity” according to the study.

While the coverage of the study focuses on the spike in media coverage there are a few points worth driving home.

1. Favor consistency over spikes. Sure big news on Mashable will make you a hero for a day, and a PR pro can ride the Tweet volume high for a week, but the best PR pros are already working on the next story. The demand never ends, and it’s up to the PR pro to be continuously thinking about what makes the company, its product and its customers unique.

2. Media momentum builds media momentum. Nobody likes to write about media like the media, this very story about Twitter’s media coverage notwithstanding. If it’s your small hometown newspaper, or the Wall Street Journal, treat every inquiry, every reporter, every blogger as if they are the most important person in the world. When you are pitching a story, they are…

3. Consistency and momentum together. It takes time to earn regular coverage. Just look at the graph line in the video. Twitter didn’t earn USA Today headlines in the beginning. It took the evangelists at tech pubs and social media enthusiasts years to reach that critical mass – 13.5 percent according to the study. It’s worth remembering that while Twitter is a media darling today but it started out just like any other start-up. Can you imagine explaining 140 character messaging service in 2005 to a business reporter? I remember a time when I thought Twitter was a waste of time, and perhaps it was, until people stopped sharing what they had for lunch.

This is a great story that demonstrates the value of PR. If Twitter could only tie its media coverage to revenue, then we could calculate the ROI.

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Twitter’s aimpoint centers on clients

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 20:20:00 +0000

Several years ago, a client of mine and venture capitalist said to me there were three reasons for one company to acquire another: to acquire technology, to acquire customers, or to kill the competition.

Few were surprised then when Twitter acquired Tweetdeck for a reported $40 million because they were addressing a trend: more and more users were using unofficial client applications to interact on Twitter rather than using Twitter.com. Actual numbers were conflicting. At the low end, about 40% of users were estimated to be using clients (i.e. Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, CoTweet, listing), while at the high end, insiders at Twitter said that number was upwards of 90%. In any case, at least 40 million users enjoyed the service, but avoided the interface.

Tweetdeck was among the most popular clients and for good reason: the application functioned faster on a desk, meaning a user didn’t have to wait for an action to resolve. It added shorting services, picture services, the ability to schedule tweets and the capacity to manage multiple accounts. It was easy to use, slick and had an interface, as a heavy user, I found to be fluid.

So like many Tweetdeck users, I was looking forward to seeing what the acquisition might bring. I’d be sorely disappointed.

In the last few weeks, Twitter has launched new code for its mobile app, something it desperately needed, and also for Tweetdeck. The two look very similar in my view. Gone is the slick Adobe Air to the extent, Tweetdeck no longer feels like a client, but an extension of the Web. In many ways, it is, for example you can log into Tweetdeck.com and see the same view.

The rationale behind this is simple: if you can get all the interfaces to function in the same way (Web, client and mobile app), it becomes much more cost effective to develop updates. In order to do that, some features, even the better ones are cut out, or left aside.

Gone is the URL shortener extension for Bitly, useful features like marking obnoxious posts as spam, and the interface is very different: direct messages are buried, ill-categorized and it’s difficult to compose a new direct message, the ability to scroll through lists is clumsy, moves faster than my eye can follow, and the ability to edit messages I’d like to Retweet has become more cumbersome.

I can only imagine that the motivation behind this is that Twitter.com wants users back. The acquisition was something akin to killing the competition, melding a client with the Web in hopes of luring customers back. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that logging on to Tweetdeck.com resolves to Twitter in 2012.

In taking out one client, it leaves room for new growth and to that end I find myself using HootSuite on the road, BufferApp for posting, and Twitter.com to interact and respond. Maybe Twitter has succeeded for now, but I’m keeping my eyes peeled though for a new tool for the desktop.

Are you finding yourself using Twitter.com more now? If not, what clients are you using?

Additional reading:
Tech N' Marketing: Four Unfortunate Ways Twitter Is Killing Tweetdeck

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The market opportunity: sizing up the PR market

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:12:00 +0000

As an industry PR is challenged: it struggles with who we are, what we do and how to measure our work. It should be no surprise then that there’s a great deal of discrepancy to be found in the methods and results of sizing up the PR industry.

Case in point? The latest VSS Communications Industry Forecast:

“The only Traditional Marketing segment to outperform the economy, Public Relations & Word-of-Mouth Marketing, will see CAGR of 14.0% in the forecast period to $10.96 billion in 2015, as the role of PR in integrated marketing campaigns expands and social media fuels gains in WoMM spending.”

If you can get past the verb “outperform” as applied to categorization of “traditional marketing,” you’ll see the data was part of a report that will cost you a mere $4,000 to read, produced by PQ Media, which sells research services, and commissioned by private equity Veronhis Suhler Stevenson, which funds debt for leveraged buyouts.

Thankfully, snipits of it including the part I cited were published in a press release on September 8, 2011 and others were rebroadcast everywhere on the Web – in news, blogs and social media. As a result, these numbers are being bantered around the social web as if they were handed down on stone carved in heaven, but as I’ll explain in a bit, $10.96 billion really isn’t big enough for heavenly engraving.

PRSA, in citing numbers from the same report on its website, breaks out spending in 2010, the base year for the market forecast, like this: Word of Mouth totaled $2 billion in spending in 2010, while traditional PR services accounted for $3.7 for a combined total of $5.7 billion at the end of last year.

So what’s wrong with that? The Holmes Report’s annual survey of about 300 mostly public PR firms, says these firms alone earned revenue of $8.8 billion in 2010. This means Holmes looked at a partial segment of the PR industry and determined a number anywhere from 35 percent to nearly 60 percent larger than that of the VSS report, depending on whether or not word of mouth marketing is included or excluded.

While Holmes’ market sizing is significantly larger than VSS, it’s important to underscore that it’s a mere fraction of the PR industry. This is because it openly excludes revenue from private PR firms – the hundreds, or even thousands of solo, small- and mid-sized PR firms – but also corporate spending on PR. I’d venture to say that corporate spending on PR easily rivals, and perhaps outweighs, the revenue figures Holmes reviewed – my last two gigs have been in-house.

Just think of how much Facebook, Microsoft and GE spend on PR – and then consider we’ve got other sectors of spending in associations, non-profits and government. In addition, put on your international hat to include Europe, or growing PR markets like China or India – and it becomes easy to see how VSS’ forecast looks extremely conservative. As Paul Holmes wrote of his own report, “it is clear that the PR agency business generates at least $8.8 billion in worldwide revenues – and probably considerably more.”

The good news is that the PR industry is probably larger today than VSS estimates and is likely to be growing at a pretty good clip – but also making up lost ground over the last couple years. For example, two years ago I (very unscientifically) estimated the market was about $10 billion, but any way you look at it, PR is still in a larger context, a relatively small market.

PR accounts for less than one percent of $1.120 trillion (yes, with a T) of the all-inclusive communications industry VSS analyzed. Or to put it another way, it’s about 1/16^th the size of spending in direct marketing which comes in at about $160 billion.

Maybe if PR were better defined, we’d have an easier time measuring the market size and forecasting the opportunity. For now, it’s mostly guess work, published in reports and debated in blogs.

PS: for those cynics that say PR isn’t a profession, your right, it’s something that requires far more commitment – PR isn’t a profession, it’s a lifestyle.

Unintended consequences: don’t blink, it’s buyology

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:53:00 +0000

Ever see cigarette warning labels in Europe? They’re pretty gross (pictured nearby). Think they work? Surveys of smokers say yes, but interviews with their brains say no. In fact, researchers have found that warning labels actually trigger smoking stimulus. Talk about unintended consequences.

So says Martin Lindstrom in a new book called Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. Market researchers scanned the brains (think MRI) of smokers and found that warning labels seemed to indicate an inclination, rather than aversion, to smoking during viewing. This despite indicating on a survey that those same smokers felt warning labels had the same effect. What does that mean for your market research survey?

What’s more fascinating is that Lindstrom suggests the survey takers weren’t lying, but rather the marketing messages we see every day influence our brains subliminally and often in ways our conscious cognitive reasoning would otherwise reject. Meet neuromarketing.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2007 book Blink, about how we “think without thinking” Gladwell describes a taste test conducted by Pepsi that demonstrated cola drinkers overwhelmingly preferred Pepsi to Coke, yet in just about every market, Coke is by far the dominate soft-drink maker. How can this be true? Perhaps it’s just a sip – and that drinkers prefer a sweeter drink when sipping, but less sugar when downing the whole can – hence Pepsi wins the sip battles but loses the cola war to Coke.

In Buyology, Lindstrom drives deeper to uncover how marketing, packaging and brand power may just subliminally influence cola drinkers to favor one over the latter.

It’s a fascinating read, and if you’re looking for a new marketing book to devour, this one just might be your ticket. Separately, the Foreword is written by Paco Underhill, who several years ago published a book called “Why We Buy: the science of shopping,” which is another great read I’d highly recommend.

Pressed for time and can’t read them all? Try the audio book on iTunes and listen to it while you get a workout done or drive to work.

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Feedback wanted: do you like this new blog design?

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:05:00 +0000

Taking a tip from @adamsinger, who also recently launched a redesign of his blog The Future Buzz, I've hired the same company to redesign this blog. They've offered a mock up of a potential template and while I started to provide feedback, it occurred to me I should share the design here before it do: What do you think of the design? What feedback do you have?

Reloaded: deliciously purity of social sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:09:00 +0000

Web 2.0 is delicious. Delicious in the intellectual sense: how it’s weaved, related and repeated. It’s been a relatively short life that feels like ages -- a continuous ideation, yet reinvented.

Delicious – the social bookmarking site – is an icon in that sense. It was an idea that manifested early and became, as the New York Times said today, “popular among the technorati, but failed to catch on with a broader audience.”

Born too soon, Delicious was conceived prior to the social enlightenment, circa 2003, just as the groundswell was filling over the echo from Geoffrey Moore’s chasm.

Like an artist whose genius was only discovered long after passing, Delicious was an idea reborn, replicated and reproduced; there are dozens of social bookmarking sites now. It never died as a social network, like Friendster, however it never quite became a verb, like Digg, or a noun, like a Stumbler, or a developed a shadowy editorial mystery, like Quora.

And while the Web world moved on to the next friend-something network, Delicious was bought, languished and sold – changing money – billions worth – among somehow familiar hands.

Delicious was Web 2.0, it is Web 2.0 and if the people that had a vision for Web video have anything to say about it – the future maybe Web 2.0 as well. The Web is not dead -- and surely Web 2.0 has patches in the making before the new version is released. According to the same Times article the new regime, amid a social revolution with a twist, aims “to introduce Delicious to the rest of the world.”

This is a welcome reincarnation, no reinvention, because as far as social sharing goes, Delicious one of the most useful mediums on the Web. Why? Because Delicious has found a way to take selfish ends, like social media karate, and use them to promote a higher quality of sharing.

A few days ago in a loosely related conversation on Google+, Danny Brown asked me a follow up question, “Do you still find Digg as a viable share option, mate?” Yes, was my answer then, but in reflecting now, I didn’t answer his question completely. He didn’t ask me if Digg was a viable option, he asked me if it was a viable sharing option. Digg is the former, it’s not the latter. Not today.

Social fishbowl

Digging is the social fishbowl at its finest with bloggers, including me, filling the site with our own links to the point the once popular referral source is sliding into diminishing returns. This is true of other social networks. MySpace became dizzying with advertising – corporate noise rather than user-generated noise -- and its fans jumped ship to Facebook. Even StumbleUpon stumbles its own stuff, but at least you can Stumble and find a blog post from someone other than those in your own network.

Twitter, the one-time supposed RSS killer may also walking on thin ice. It has “become noisy,” said Valeria Maltoni, “I can hardly even exchange messages on here w/o [without] them being drowned.” If Google+ is the reboot for popular social networkers – with an acquaintance too many to follow – then perhaps Delicious too can reboot with the advantage of eight years of Web 2.0 experience behind its rebirth.

Eight long social years is a credential few social networks can claim.

A selfish return

Delicious is unique in that it’s a useful place to catalog, tag and archive content for future reference – from anywhere there’s a Web connection. The blessing of a popular share button is that it takes little effort to share content – and that’s also the curse that I think leads to volume, noise and ultimately, disenchantment.

Fewer are the links on Delicious that rack up 500 bookmarks – so the value of those links are fleeting. Likewise, fewer are the links on Delicious which account for noise, which means the value of those links is long tail. Further, like-minded people in your Delicious network, are also saving articles in a similar way – and that’s a beautiful thing: an act of selfishness leads to purity in social sharing.

By the virtue of effort it takes -- not too much, like Reddit or BizSugar, not too little, like the rest -- ensures a higher quality of links.

“There’s a waterfall of content that you’re missing out on,” read the Times, quoting Steve Chen, a co-founder of YouTube and now co-leading the Delicious matrix.

It'll be good reading, delicious in fact.

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A post about posts about dead press releases

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:10:00 +0000

This “press releases are dead” thing just won’t die. It’s too bad because it’s killing me…figuratively of course. In reality, these conversations are ridiculous. Sure, I’ve engaged in them, again, and again and again, and I worry I actually wind up a little dumber when they are over.

So here are a few things about press release posts on my mind tonight (its 10 pm in where I am).

1. Press releases don’t equal PR. PR stands for Public Relations, or perhaps Puerto Rico, but certainly not press release. Writing a post that insinuates otherwise is hardly the vehicle of choice for drumming up new business.

2. News release or press release? Oh. My. God. Really? Want to argue about that? Let’s argue instead about whether ketchup qualifies as a vegetable. That way, the snarky blog comments could point out that technically, a tomato is a fruit. Personally, I'd rather watch paint dry.

3. That press release – or social media release – is in the wrong format. Really? Says who? Where is this elected executive that signed the press release format legislation into law? Some of the most talked about and creative press releases I’ve seen buck the conventional press release wisdom.

4. Reporters hate press releases. Yes…when PR people stuff erroneous stuffing that’s not related to their work in their email inbox. Research your contacts. It’s your friggin’ job! You are supposed to know these people and what they write about. I empathize because I hate getting emails proposing an international business venture, cheap Viagra and or how I can get rich quick helping some dude on another continent get his inheritance by giving him my bank account number. I delete them. Immediately. And sometimes angrily. And I feel better when I’m done. Oh, yeah, consider for a moment, that a press release is NOT only intended for reporters.

5. What’s the ROI of a press release? I give up. If I construe a point from Adam Singer’s post today, this online thing…it’s probably not for you. You can’t catch up now. It’s too late. You’re a decade behind. Or maybe you can find a print publisher looking for a publicist. That might be fun.

6. Finally, and most importantly, if press releases are dead, don’t use them. Why waste your time writing press releases or blog posts about dead press releases are when you could be writing about the Sony Walkman instead.

Sorry for the rant. I’m usually more disciplined about resisting that urge and I’m done now. I acknowledge the irony of my own post. It represents 30 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like the other posts I wrote while wasting minutes of my life away:
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Communicating without words

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:50:00 +0000

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” - Mark Twain

Words. Words are overused. Words are disposable. Words should be banned.

Words can be spoken, but are not always understood. Sometimes we struggle to find the right words, while at others those around us complete our sentences.

Words provide a common operating picture. The alphabet is our programming language, our minds the open source operating system.

Actions may provide effect, but no matter the medium – the quill, the telephone, email or Twitter – meaning travels in words.

If as Mark Twain once alluded, fewer words produced more meaningful prose, then no words would force us to think even harder about what we wanted to say. Imagine communicating without words.

What would you say?

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Reputation Management Tips for Small Businesses

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:35:00 +0000

Note: This first guest post is penned by Jiyan Wei, a former work colleague of mine at Vocus, which owns PRWeb and HARO which is STILL free, BTW). As I’ve often found with most product managers, he has a keen observations: observing habits, inclinations and trends in order to make educated guesses about the market direction and where to take a product. He’s recently taken the helm as CEO of BuildZoom, a site that matches contractors with home improvement enthusiasts.

>>> While driving to work one morning, I listened to a radio ad from a notable Silicon Valley company (which has raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $60m over the past few years), promising to help consumers monitor and manage their online reputation.

Reputation management, once a term only relevant to mid and large market businesses, has hit the mainstream.

It wasn’t too long ago that I was working for a public relations agency, helping to build and implement a reputation management product for several Fortune 500 companies with some serious reputation management issues. It’s startling that in such a short amount of time, the media landscape has evolved to the point where companies are finding success selling reputation management to consumers.

Granted, the current value of reputation management for the majority of individuals is somewhat debatable however what is not up for debate is that reputation management has become extremely relevant to small businesses. If you’re a local business that relies largely on word-of-mouth, a few bad Yelp reviews have the potential to impact your bottom line and this dawning realization is what has investors lining up to fund reputation management services.

However, the price tag for these services can be high and given the reality of how most reputation management services work, it can be far more economical and effective to take matters into your own hands.

Fundamentally speaking, reputation management is about exerting influence on what prospective customers see when they go online to find out about your business. The various tactics range however these days, most still focus primarily on SEO, which means getting supportive content above the fold in search so when consumers research your company name, they will see results that you can influence – either directly or indirectly.

The following mix of tactics can be used by any small business to take control of your reputation online without having to make a significant financial investment:

1. Create a presence in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – If you haven’t done so already, it’s a good idea to create a company page on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn allow users to create actual company pages while on Twitter you will just want to create an account for your company. All three of these services are high authority domains that will be instantly visible in organic search.

2. Create or claim your profile on Google Places – When it comes to local search, Google Places is the dominant player. If Google Places already has a profile on your company, you can “claim” your profile through a phone or postal verification system and update your profile with keyword rich content. If you don’t already have a profile on Google Places, you should create one in order to add one more piece of content on a high authority domain that you exert control over.

3. Create or claim a profile on review sites – If you are in the restaurant business, claim your profile on Yelp. If you are in the home improvement business, you can build or claim your profile on BuildZoom (disclaimer – I co-founded BuildZoom). There are countless other free directory sites out there that represent opportunities to create content, optimized for your brand, on domains with existing authority.

4. Syndicate content – There are a variety of services like PRWeb that will syndicate articles and stories that you write, to a network of Web sites. These stories (either the original or the syndicate version) will often be hosted on high authority sites and you can bank on at least one of the versions showing up in organic search for your company name, provided you use your company name in the title of the story.

5. Optimize your own site – Finally, your own Web site is going to be your best shot at showing up #1 in Google for queries of your company name for a variety of reasons but most importantly, because Google wants to show your site #1 in their search results when someone is searching for your company name. Obviously the various SEO tactics for optimizing your site can fill up a series of novels however you should at a minimum, pick a good domain name and ensure that your home page has title tags, H1 tags and page content that contain your business name. If you can link all the other channels you are using back to your site, it will help ensure that long-term, your site will show up #1 for queries of your company name.

About the author
Jiyan Naghshineh Wei is the CEO and Co-Founder of BuildZoom, a site that helps consumers find reliable home improvement businesses. Prior to BuildZoom, he spent four years as Director of product management at Vocus, where he helped PRWeb grow into a leading online marketing tool.

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A creative press release you’ll love

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:06:00 +0000

Press releases sometimes get a bad rap. Sometimes they are confusing. Sometimes they are both.

For example, if you type “press releases are” into Google, the search engine suggests press releases are "not a PR strategy” or are "spam.”

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo bucked conventional wisdom today with a pretty creative idea for a press release: National Zoo Animals React to the Earthquake.

There are many accounts of the earthquake’s impact. From the Californian sneer, to journalist apathy, to the tangible damage to the Washington Monument. I wrote my own take, of getting information on the earthquake via social media while wondering if my friends and home were okay.

But animals' reaction? Of course. Brilliant! Who wouldn’t be interested in the science of animal reactions?

“About three seconds before the quake, Mandara (a gorilla) let out a shriek and collected her baby,” reads the press release. “Kibibi, and moved to the top of the tree structure as well.” (Note: photo of Mandara and Kibibi nearby, credit to Smithsonian's National Zoo’s Flickr account)

Amazing – a mother’s first instinct to protect her offspring.

Perhaps even animals can serve as an early warning detection, since the release notes that “red ruffed lemurs sounded an alarm call about 15 minutes before the quake and then again just after it occurred.”

And snakes? Who isn’t fascinated by snakes? Even people that despise snakes can’t help but be mesmerized by their movement, their mastery of ambush, evolution for hunting, or more imaginatively, their lethality if venomous. According to the press release, the snakes at the zoo “began writhing during the quake.”

It’s a job well done by the PR team at the zoo – and seems to be one with legs. Nearly 300 Diggs and 30 comments at last count and some 1,200 Tweets according to Backtype. Too bad the release doesn’t have share buttons on it.

As for results? I’d love to see if the Zoo can measure an increase in attendance.

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Earthquakes, news and the pace of social networks

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:06:00 +0000

We've seen many cases of social media outpacing the traditional news media. Word from the Iranian protests, the Tunisian and other Arab revolutions and more recently, the riots in London, traveled much faster than the news could report.

Its one thing when the news is an ocean away, but it’s another when it hits closer to home. Even if you are an ocean away.

I am an ocean away. As many of my personal and professional contacts know, I’m deployed again and have been for several months. Tonight, at dinner, news broke that a 5.8 scale earthquake struck DC. News was piped in over the Armed Forces Network to a flat screen TV in the chow hall.

Fox had little substance to add other than an alert posted on screen with a talking head. MSNBC offered more of the same, though they trumped Fox’s story with a report of 6.0. The volume was low and so the audio was not audible over the roar of chow hall noise.

Then reports that the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol buildings were evacuated started to flash on screen. Since I live in the area, I started to get nervous.

I exited and on my way to the nearest Internet connection, called my boss who I know also lives in the area, and my First Sergeant, to start thinking about who among my troops might need to make a phone call home.

I logged into Google and searched. The first story that ranked was an Associated Press story posted to ABC News’ Website. Headline aside, it was a single line that read, “5.8 earthquake in Virginia felt in Washington, New York City, North Carolina.” A screen capture is posted nearby.

I turned to social networks – all of them. Several friends had posted status comments. One simply read, “Earthquake.” Another read, “EARTHQUAKE!! Holy schnikies was that freaky.” A third read, “Just experienced a 5.8 earthquake and it was SCARY!”

Quickly, I commented back “Everyone okay?” or “Any damage?” Answers came back rather quickly. “Not that I know of. Unless you count things falling off walls.” Or this one, “Nothing I know of. But it was 'shaky'. They evacuated all the buildings in DC, just in case.”

Next came an official alert via email from the local municipal government, which read, “Nat'l Capitol Region has experienced an earthquake. There is no reports of major damage at this time. Local government authorities are assessing the situation. Further information will be sent as it become available.”

I breathed easier.

All of this (online action) happened in a span of about three or four minutes and long before I found this somewhat informative article, under the circumstances, by the Washington Post.

News travels fast by social media word-of-mouth. The news media has no edge on the speed of social networks. What’s left is to evaluate the analysis.

Coke, Target, rumors, SEO and crisis communications

noreply@blogger.com (Frank Strong) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:43:00 +0000

My dear mother forwarded me an email today with the subject line, “Target Says "Veterans do not meet our area of giving." It was one of those emails that had been flashed around the world and the string was filled with vows to never shop again at Target.

According to the email, “Recently we asked the local TARGET store to be a proud sponsor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall during our spring recognition event. We received the following reply from the local TARGET management: ‘Veterans do not meet our area of giving. We only donate to the arts, social action groups, gay & lesbian causes, and education.’ ”

Five things entered my mind at that moment: 1) I’m a veteran. 2) I shop at Target. 3) I recall Target made headlines last Christmas for not allowing the Salvation Army to chime bells outside their store fronts. 4) Such an act of affronting veterans is a sure path to a PR crisis that even a large corporation couldn’t possibly botch. 5) I don’t believe everything I read on the Interweb.

So I did a quick search, which demonstrated to me that both PR and SEO have a role in modern crisis communications.

A search for “target” and “veterans” and saw five links disproving the contention made in that email. The first three links were to venerable Web-myth-busting sites Snopes and Urban Legends. Links four and five were to Target’s own site dedicated to veterans, which featured a brief stating that Target was named a “2011 Top 20 Military Friendly Company” by head-hunting giant Orion.

The email wasn’t true and Target, in my view, had been successful in getting its message out. I sent a note back – a reply all – to my mother and the dozen or so people she had forwarded her note to with a short paragraph and links indicating it wasn’t true. Sorry Mom, if I put you out there like that, but isn’t your granddaughter cute?

Not a bad result, but contrast this with the crisis communications advice three professors offered to Coke, which has a similar problem, in The Economist on February 10, 2011:

“Such rebuttals are unwise, argue Derek Rucker and David Dubois, of the Kellogg School of Management, and Zakary Tormala, of Stanford business school, three psychologists. By restating the rumours, Coke helps to propagate them. Its web page is a magnet for search engines. And people who read rebuttals tend to forget the denial and remember only the rumour, says Mr Rucker.”

The article referred to an ongoing struggle The Coca-Cola Company faces in the Middle East, where “For example, some people believe that if you read Coke’s Arabic logo backwards, it says: “No Muhammad, No Mecca,” according to the article. I can read Arabic (at a kindergarten level). It says no such thing.

According to SEOmoz’s link tracking tool, Open Site Explorer, Target’s veteran site has a page authority of 45 on a scale of 100 and just 50 inbound links – the majority of which are from other Target sites that cross-link to the veteran’s site. Just one link among the first 26 came from an outside domain – an AM news talk radio station.

Coca-Cola’s crisis page has a higher authority ranking at 54, but with a similar breakdown of inbound links – the first five stem from other Coca-Cola sites. Recall that Coke’s page ranks first in search and this is likely because the organization, by virtue of its page, has been successful in obtaining other inbound links including a story from Forbes, and longtime PR pub, The Bulldog Reporter.

These pages have a number of practical applications for crisis – in the short term, it’s a place to both communicate directly with interested market segments – including reporters, investors and consumers, while in the long run, these sites attract links or votes of confidence on the Web that slow or stop potential future crisis that these companies may not even be aware are taking root. These votes include your own company’s links – and they can weigh heavily.

Both Target and Coke hold top search spots for key words related to their respective crisis cases and cross-linking tactics. Despite what the academics say, I tend to believe in Lanny Davis’ school of thought, “Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself.”

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