High-Tech PR Blog >> Beyond the Hype

The "I'm Sorry" Defense

We regularly advise our clients to always be well prepared for any interaction that could potentially be reported publicly about yourself or your company.  We tell them that really good reporters are never off duty and the off-hand conversation on a plane or in line at Starbucks could be captured and reported.  It pays to be cautious.  We haven't gone so far as to warn them to beware reporters setting up sting operations, which is advice that could have helped the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.  This morning she had to do damage control for a humiliating video capturing her attempt to sell connections with her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, for a British reporter posing as a UK business executive.  The particular sensitivity surrounding this is that it appears to be influence peddling charge due to Prince Andrew's role as a UK Trade Envoy.

The unethical approach of the publication aside, the Duchess's apology this morning -- which one assumes the British Royals demanded -- furthered the embarrassment, however:

“I very deeply regret the situation and the embarrassment caused,” she said. “It is true that my financial situation is under stress. However, that is no excuse for a serious lapse in judgment, and I am very sorry that this has happened.”

The incident revealed to the public Ferguson's money problems and the surprisingly stingy divorce settlement she received from Prince Andrew.

Although the proffered half-million pounds wasn't real, one assumes the publicity surrounding Ferguson's latest 15 minutes of fame will net her some lucrative offers or, at the very least, a better settlement from Prince Andrew to encourage her to stay out of the limelight in the future.  The phrase "penny-wise, pound foolish" seems apropos, don't you think?

And to add another entry in the "what were they thinking" department: the PR firm, that shall remain nameless -- whose case study about BP and social responsibility is one of the first items that appears when you "Google" BP and PR.  That's something that someone should have taken care of when the recent oil spill occurred and the crisis began swirling, literally and figuratively.  It's a good reminder for all of us that whatever is posted on the Web can live forever and pop up during the most unexpected times.

Death to performance reviews? No, but know where employees hearts lie.

Last week, I read a "death to performance reviews" article that made some bold claims about the value of performance reviews. Basically, it said corporate America needs to rid itself of the "bogus" and "most insidious" practice of holding annual reviews if it really wants to get the best out of its people and see them grow within an organization.

I always love a good radical viewpoint, but I also know in reality this is pretty much a pipe dream. People need regular feedback and most companies need a process on how to manage, reward and evaluate their people.

One of his points that resonated was the theory that people need to be having more genuine conversations with each other, and managers need to be listening to what their direct reports are saying. He explained that having on-going dialogue with a person versus one-sided instruction and demands on certain dates of the year will yield far better results from an individual's performance.

It reminded me of a CEO panel I attended in Austin last month. There were 7 CEOs sitting around the table, and the primary topic was managing/leading people. The moderator, Robert Neilson, CEO of LeaderLabs, has spent his career studying the attributes of leaders in the corporate, academic, military and political spectrums.

The consensus at the table was that managers and/or leaders must possess "emotional intelligence." In other words, you need to understand where people's hearts are - not their heads, in order to make them shine.

Neilson explained that in all of his 25 years in reviewing surveys, reports and research on leadership, one attribute trumped all others in terms of what makes a good leader. Guess what it was? Intelligence, drive, vision? No - it was empathy. Empathy, the ability to put yourself in other people's shoes and actually hear and understand what they are thinking.

It makes sense, when you think about it. When it gets down to it, everyone wants to feel heard. I'm not sure we should kick the performance reviews to the curb, but the skill you learned in elementary school (learn how to listen) is a more powerful trait than people sometimes think.

State of social media (part 2)

Not surprisingly, the iPad reality has not met the hype.

Ah, well.  Arguably, there is more anticipation for tonight's State of the Union, so to coincide with that I'd like to conclude our two-part series on the state of social media -- particularly from where we sit in the B2B tech and life sciences work.  Yesterday, I wrote about how our clients should approach their company-level social networking efforts and how to take action on the listening they have been doing for how the buying public is talking about them online.  Today, I'll cover the two other major areas we can support.

PR as an important part of inbound marketing

The business climate still is very uncertain.  The business need our clients tell us more than any other that PR needs to support is lead generation.  For a long time, PR in our world has revolved mostly around outbound media relations -- reaching buyers through targeted media coverage.  It's no secret what's happened to the media landscape, and I agree with many colleagues in the industry that this has put focus for PR directly on the buying public vs. the media.

For most marketers, search has been an important component of their programs because it's how so many prospects find companies.  Late last year, the game changed when Google became a real-time search engine, so the information presented in search results now includes the opinions of the buying public about a brand.  In addition, the previously search-optimized company web pages are not going to appear where they once did unless a company thinks about how social media can work to its advantage in this context.

How Google ranks this information comes down to reputation -- namely how important is the source of insights and opinions about a product or company?  Earning reputation in this context is based on how well you can tell your story in an authentic way that the buying public -- and influencers -- want to share with others.  This is a key aspect to how PR should support inbound marketing.

Publish or perish

The opportunity that companies have to tell their story directly to the buying public has never been better.  In particular, companies must embrace the opportunity to drive content that conveys their perspective on the market.  They also must avoid the natural instinct to always sell and promote their product and company in the content they generate.  The buying public increasingly is turning to peers on social networks for help with buying decisions.  Companies must understand this and approach the content they publish in a way that helps prospects buy.

This means leveraging the active listening discussed yesterday to understand what kind of insights company experts can offer that answer questions from customers or address the challenges that prospects in the market face.  It also means letting the personality of the company come through.  For example, we have a client who considers one of its characteristics to be irreverent, so we're advising them on publishing off-beat, humorous content through a cartoon series that engenders sharing and drives prospects to their site.

This is where we see many of our clients focused in the coming year and we'll be exploring these four areas in more depth on this blog during that time.  In the meantime, I'd love to know how you are thinking about these areas in the comments.

The elephant in the room for service companies

Partway through 2009, the year we're all trying to forget, a great YouTube video was making the rounds at our agency (and many others I would bet), called "The Vendor Client Relationship -- in Real Life". For anyone who's ever worked in a service capacity, from a consulting organization to a retail clerk, waitress or hairdresser, this video is sure to evoke some laughs and, sadly, some recognition of past customers. The vignettes show a series of demands for more goods than are being paid for, such as the filet mignon at hamburger prices. 

I thought of this video when one of my colleagues sent me an article from PR Week in early December entitled "Calling Time on Over-Servicing."  This article talks about the very real issue agencies like ours -- and all service organizations -- face about the need to maintain good relationships with their clients without providing so much free service that it negatively affects the profit margin and team morale. 

With 2010 bringing early signs of recovery, all of us need to make sure we're making good decisions for our respective businesses.  I know we have been guilty of not holding the line appropriately on over-servicing, particularly during tough economic periods.  Interestingly, I've always held the belief that extreme and chronic over-servicing does not necessarily yield happy client relationships.  As I'm reading through our client surveys for 2010, this fact is being borne out by the early returns.  The best client relationships are built on a partnership where expectations and budgets are matched and constant communication keeps everyone clearly informed about both. 

A former PR person turned client contact referenced in the PR Week piece stated this well:

Neither over-servicing nor under-servicing benefits either client or PR agency. Both can generate a bad relationship, and be something of a gray area when it comes to billing.

She believes many of the discrepancies that do arise can be avoided by building completely transparent relationships between client and agency. "The key is to agree realistic targets at the outset," she says. "This, combined with a healthy dose of honesty from all parties, means that when it comes to finding the extra cash to pay for additional hours that have gone into a project, it's a lot more justifiable."

Here's to a 2010 of great results for our clients based on mutually respectful and profitable relationships with our agency.  In the meantime, I would value a discussion with you about your views on this issue in the comments.

There's always plenty for which to be thankful

In addition to figuring out how to simplify the Thanksgiving Day preparations -- which never really happens -- I always try to use this annual event to consider what I need to be thankful for this year.

I'm thankful for the great people at our agency who have pulled together during a tough economic year and worked as a team to deliver great work for their clients.  This amazing group even voted for us as one of the best places to work both in Austin and in Boston during a year in which we could not do as much financially for our employees as they deserved.

I'm thankful for the clients who really have worked with us and been respectful of us during this economic downturn.  These are the ones who have stayed the course and made PR a priority when others in their organizations have tried to co-opt or cut their budgets.  The clients who could have taken advantage of tough times to be unreasonable, but instead treated us like valued partners.  The ones who recognized that it was the agency's great work on their behalf that helped them achieve the kind of value that attracted strategic acquisitions at large multiples and worked hard to make us part of their continued success.

I'm thankful for the fun and creativity that the advances in social media are bringing to our industry.

I'm thankful for the advances in mobile technology and connectivity that truly are making it irrelevant where you are doing your work.

I'm thankful that the economy seems to be stabilizing and that real improvements seem to be just ahead a piece for all of us, if we can all just hang on.

I'm particularly thankful that this upcoming holiday weekend gives all of us a great opportunity to relax, enjoy ourselves and recharge before the race to year-end and a much brighter New Year.

Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. friends!  If you would like to share what you are thankful for, I'd love to hear it.

Make Sure PR Hasn't Passed its Expiration Date

A good friend of mine moved to the corporate PR side after many years as an agency PR person.  In a recent email exchange, this person's comment really struck me:

"I try to be a really nice client but when they peddle the same old rubbish that I saw in 2004, it does grate a little!"

Since I know this comment came from a very reasonable PR person who knows first-hand about how hard it can be to meet expectations from the agency side, it got me thinking about the best ways to keep an agency PR program fresh.  These approaches can apply as well to internal PR programs, but they tend to reflect that most delicately balanced relationship between an agency and its clients.

Erase your collective memories before brainstorming meetings.

    We do this as a matter of course if we are ever re-pitching an existing client's business.  The most dangerous knowledge can be too much awareness of all of the things one cannot do for a client -- whether because of a particularly conservative corporate or legal team or a tight handle on the budget.  If you walk into a brainstorm with a clean field and no known obstacles, you will be free to come up with that surprising new idea you may have edited out of your mind before even voicing it.  And most of us PR people can figure out ways to create brilliance on a budget, so if there's a great idea, you can work with a good client to figure out a way to afford to execute it.

Add new energy to your team through guest spots.

    Clients typically don't want team changes as they worry about investing precious time breaking in new individuals.  However, there are times when you have an opportunity to bring someone from another team into a special project or program, as they may have a specific contact or expertise that is needed at this juncture.  It's healthy for the team to hear a new voice from time to time and to introduce new thinking.  It is also great for the client to learn about other available expertise within the agency if and when they need it. 

Tear up the playbook so efficiency isn't a substitute for creativity.   

    It's fine to recycle successful programs where they perfectly match the need.  However, each new launch or activity or planning period should be addressed as a completely fresh opportunity to determine where the company sits vis a vis its competitors, what weapons it has in its arsenal that are particularly powerful, and what unique messages or viewpoints its spokespeople can make at this particular point in time.   A key planning tool should be how to get out there and make the announcement rather than just jumping to the specific plotting of timeline, logistics and audiences.  There are so many new tools to take advantage of today that an announcement could be made via a great videocast, bypassing the traditional press release approach entirely.

Keep your edge by constantly having something to prove.

    As nice as it is to have clients who turn into friends, it's much wiser to consider the most cynical person in your client organization as your ultimate client whom you have to prove yourself to every day.  Long time agency people survive and thrive because they love a challenge and they know how to bounce back from adversity.  Determine who in the client organization isn't your friend; find out what they think could be better; and then play to that tough audience until you've proven your worth to them.  The email that's forwarded to you from  your day-to-day contact that shows they have changed their mind about the agency will motivate you to move onto the next challenge.  Meanwhile, you know you are doing your best work for the entire company because you are putting that extra pressure on yourself.

Ask for feedback and demonstrate that you heard it.

    We've found that a detailed client survey each year is something that our contacts take very seriously.  They give us very specific feedback regarding what is going well and what they'd like to see improved and we act on their feedback in short order.  It isn't always easy to encourage constructive criticism, but it's a healthy way to encourage a good two-way dialogue which is the number one key to keeping your client relationship as well as your PR program fresher longer.

Shrinking the globe for 2010 Planning

 Now that it's October, 2010 planning is in full force and it's bringing great energy to our account teams and clients.  One of our clients, an extremely proactive global PR director, arranged months ago for a  2010 planning meeting of all of the marketing and PR people from around the world so this work could be done as a united team, in the same city and time-zone for once.  Although this required scrimping and saving in other areas to cover the expense and time required for this endeavor, getting people from N. America, EMEA and APAC together (their three primary geographies) for 2.5 days in Boston yielded a detailed Q4 global plan as well as a strategic framework for 2010 that was approved by marketing and can now be further localized and socialized within the regions.  Well before the end of the month, the 2010 plan will be ready for top management sign-off; actually, the CMO already has sent the preliminary plan drafted this week to the CEO for initial review.  It was masterfully done due to the leadership of this client and the effective bonding/teaming of the international team members.

In these days of travel restrictions and tight budgets, it isn't often that we get to work shoulder to shoulder with our international colleagues.  It was tremendously enlightening and mind-expanding to talk through our similar needs as well as the specific gaps and requirements of each of our regions.  Interestingly, we had more similarities than differences.   The follow-up calls will keep this tight team connected and working smoothly as we execute on a global initiative rather than regional initiatives glued together by a corporate strategy.  The company will benefit greatly from this approach, as will the individuals who had the good fortune to be part of the meeting.

I've never been a big proponent of large group meetings, as so often they can waste time and require so much disruption of business for travel.  However, this meeting was one of the most productive ones I have been part of in a long time.  The efficiency of the plan development and the benefits of the global teaming will far outweigh the costs and business disruption it required.  I polled our colleagues from Asia Pacific who are enduring 30-hour trips each way for this meeting and they agree on the ultimate value.  Social media, online connections and even video conferencing are great tools for staying connected.  But there really is no better way to shrink the globe and build strong teams and create united global plans than to do it the old-fashioned way, face-to-face. 

A solid perspective on the role of a PR firm

Why is there any reason to think that the debate about whether PR firms are relevant will ever end?  It's been going on in different forms and different market contexts as long as I've been in the industry (16 years). I find it fascinating, and always appreciate reasoned perspective from journalists.

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to Tuesday night's Web Innovators Group event in Cambridge, but have been closely following the reaction to a panel called "Bootstrapping PR for Entrepreneurs." One follow-up blog post was made by one of the panelists, Wade Roush of Xconomy.  In the post, he shares the following statement he had prepared to convey during the session about why and when a company should engage a PR agency:

A truly great PR firm would know the local news landscape, have personal relationships with the key journalists, help you craft the most interesting parts of your company’ story into a pitch, be able to reach out to journalists on a personalized (not form letter) basis, and get stories placed. They’d also help you anticipate issues (e.g. your funding is public information once you file a Form D with SEC) and deal with crises. If you are news savvy and you like journalists you can probably do a lot of this stuff on your own, or if you have angel or VC investors you can probably lean on them for help or advice. If I were an entrepreneur directly responsible to investors and to my board I probably wouldn’t start spending money on a PR firm until I was into my 2nd or 3rd year and earning some serious revenue.

Based upon the viewpoint on the same issue that we've offered on this blog, we couldn't agree with Wade more.

15 more questions to ask before you hire your PR Agency

Last week IdeaGrove put up a blog post with 25 questions to ask before you hire your PR agency. I've seen the post tweeted quite a bit over the last few days. I'm not surprised as investing in a PR agency can be one of the most important and strategic investments a company can make. And with the economy the way it is, chances are that your investment in PR may come at the expense of another marketing and sales program. It makes good sense to do due diligence to ensure you get the maximum value from your investment. That's why I recommend that you ask any potential agency (including ours) the questions from the post as well as a few more that I've listed below.

Qualifications: Can the Agency Do the Work?
10. What do the press and analysts who cover the market think of them?
11. If they say they are social media savvy, what does that mean?
12.  Do they use Twitter, do they blog, and do they leverage Facebook? 
13. What social media measurement tools do they use? 

Prioritization: Will I Be Valued as a Client?
15. What is the average length of client engagement?
16. Will you ever see senior agency management? How often?
17. How does the agency handle team changes? How often do they change teams?

Cost-Efficiency: Will I Get My Money’s Worth?
20. If the company says they will “do it all for a set amount,” do they explain their business model?
21. How do they ensure that you will get your fair share of your team?
22. Is it a "squeaky wheel" approach or does the team have hours?
23. How does the agency handle the budgeting process?
24. How does it avoid monthy budget "surprises?"

Compatibility: Will the Agency Be a Good Partner
26. How many repeat clients does the agency have?
27. Do they do a regular touchbase or survey of clients?
28. How is it used to improve service? 

LP&P has developed an RFP template that can be used for your agency search. You can download a copy here.

 

How Media Training Can Sharpen Your Product Launch

Nothing brings a family together like fill in the blank -- a wedding; a new baby; the holidays.  The adrenaline, the excitement, the new possibilities -- all of these things help people focus and appreciate each other and bond and meet the new challenge or opportunity.

Well, fresh from a 10-person session with one of our client teams, I'm here to add a new expression: nothing focuses a product announcement's positioning like media training.  Let me tell you why.

We are at least a month ahead of an announcement from one of the companies we work with so we decided to use the preparation for the upcoming news to prepare our customized media training workshop exercises and individual mock interview scenarios.  We only had preliminary and, frankly, very feature-focus information about the upcoming news to work with as we prepared our materials accordingly.  The workshop we used, which forces the trainees to team up for exercises to build a compelling story for the media with their upcoming news, really shone a light on the more interesting elements of the pending announcement.  It also uncovered some differing views of the most important elements of the news. 

By the end of the day of training, our internal and external PR team walked away with the type of high level context, business benefit and specific colorful anecdotes that will support this announcement that a series of pure product briefings would never yield for us.  The spokespeople also realized, first-hand how much news they are getting ready to convey and how they need to focus this to help the media they will be speaking with understand the most important pieces of the announcement.  In addition, we now have a fired up team of spokespeople who are excited to use what they learned to not only make this announcement as impactful as possible, but also do follow-up briefings around trends and issues they also discussed in the course of the day.

I will be very surprised if the upcoming launch with this company is not one of the smoothest ones we have done with them because of the bonding effect of this training.  I will definitely keep you posted on how it goes in a few blog posts.