As part of our 25^th anniversary celebration, we invited 12 thoughts leaders from diverse industries to participate in our guest blog monthly series, which was posted on the 25th of every month. The blog posts covered a wide scope of topics that included forecasts and trends surrounding social media, business solutions, communications, among others. We present our guests’ thoughts, which in turn, might trigger other thoughts and ideas… –compiled by Noemi Pollack

The Transformation Decade Written by David Houle on January 25, 2010. David Houle, author of The Shift Age is one of the top futurists in the country and a much-sought after speaker. Houle spent more than 20 years in media and entertainment having worked at NBC, CBS and a member of the senior executive team that created and launched MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and CNN Headline News. “We are entering the first full decade of the Shift Age, even though it has already taken root in the last 4 years. This new age has launched incredible shift and upheaval already. This current Great Recession can only be fully understood when seen as the reorganizational recession between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age.” Read More–>

What’s So Social About Social Media? How Social Are You? Written by Jeffrey Gitomer on February 25, 2010.Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling and president of Charlotte-based BuyGitomer, gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings and conducts Internet training programs on selling and customer service. “Social media is fluid – it moves and changes daily. It’s text, audio, photo, and video. It’s every media and it’s every second. It’s current and it’s constant. Ever see a section of a website labeled “latest news” and when you click it, the last update is from 2004? Not good. The Internet is instant. Social media is instant. And you have to be ready to participate consistently, and in a meaningful way.”Read More–>

2 Letters Make All the Difference Written by Jay Baer on March 25, 2010. Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert social media blog is consistently ranked among the top business blogs. Founder of five companies, he’s a digital marketing pioneer that started online in 1994. He’s worked with more than 700 brands since then, including 25 of the Fortune 1000 (Nike, Pepsi, Sony, Cadbury, Conoco/Phillips, Procter & Gamble). “The difference between “selling” and “helping” is only two letters, but the gap is in reality, much larger. The best – and most effective – social media programs aren’t based on promotions and message distribution. Instead, they revolve around removing friction and uncertainty for potential or current customers.” Read More–>

Living Naked Written by Tom Searcy on April 25, 2010. Tom Searcy, co-author of “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company”, author of “RFPs Suck!” and founder of Hunt Big Sales, is a sought after business solutions expert for small to mid-sized companies. “YouTube™, Flickr™, Digg™, Twitter™, Facebook™, LinkedIn™ and the rest of the usual suspects of the social media revolution are creating a naked world. Each touchpoint in the chain of your business is open for scrutiny and discussion. So what is your strategy?” Read More–>

How Not To Market on Facebook Written by Kathleen Kaufman on May 25, 2010. Kathleen Kaufman is the author of environmental fiction and an inner city educator. She is well known in the social media community as a Facebook influencer and entertaining blogger. She can be found on her publisher’s website, The Way Things Are Publications.” “Facebook marketing is a dirty word. No one wants to feel like they’re friends with a person who is trying to sell them a product, be it a book or a copyedit. The most successful Facebookers, the ones who have converted their page into actualized business, are not marketing, rather they are participating.” Read More–>

Linking PR to Business Results Written by Paul Holmes on June 25, 2010. Paul Holmes is editor and publisher of The Holmes Report, which provides knowledge and insight to public relations professionals, and manages the SABRE Awards, recognizing Superior Achievement in Branding & Reputation. “I believe PR is uniquely positioned to create brand advocates. It is hard for me to imagine an ad campaign that would make me more likely to recommend a product to others, but there are plenty of PR campaigns that have done this: communicating a commitment to CSR, linking products with causes, special events that touch people directly.” Read More–>

A Business Journalist on PR: Business is a Human Story Written by James Flanigan on July 25, 2010. James Flanigan is a business columnist for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other publications and has covered national and international business and economics for 46 years. “I didn’t write and declined offers of interviews because reporting is not stenography and interviews, even with CEOs, and they do not necessarily a story make. The point is that business is a human story and the most important quality a company can convey in any PR campaign is integrity.” Read More–>

The Need For Speed Written by Michael Pranikoff on August 25, 2010.Michael Pranikoff, is Global Director of Emerging Media at PR Newswire. Prior to joining PR Newswire, Michael worked for MacNeil / Lehrer Productions which produces the PBS NewsHour. “Communications professionals today must be empowered to communicate quickly. In order to do that, we must earn the trust of the corporation.” Read More–>

Unsettled Times for Journalism and Public Relations Written by Geneva Overholser on September 25, 2010. Geneva Overholser is director of the U.S.C. Annenberg School of Journalism.  She is former editor of the Des Moines Register, ombudsman for the Washington Post and editorial board member of the New York Times. “Those who partner with others, link to others, aggregate the material of others, concentrate on what they alone can do best and point their news consumers to those who can offer them the rest – that’s what’s coming. Those who participate and collaborate are likeliest to thrive.” Read More–>

The Next 25 Years (If We Do It Right, Now) Written by Kathy Cripps on October 25, 2010. Kathy Cripps is president of the Council of Public Relations Firms, the U. S. employer-based trade association. Kathy worked with multinational public relations firms and had her own firm for many years; she and the Council are strong advocates for PR firms and the value they bring to clients around the globe. “While the continued economic uncertainty has led to slower-than-hoped-for industry growth, public relations is more relevant and integrated than ever.” Read More–>

Pssst, Did You Know Most Word of Mouth is Offline, Not on Social Media? Written by Ed Keller on November 25, 2010.Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, a specialist market research firm focused exclusively on word of mouth marketing.  He is a Board member and past President of the Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and a board member of the Advertising Research Foundation, among others. Keller speaks frequently to business audiences about word of mouth marketing, and is quoted frequently in the trade press. “Marketing success in the 21st century requires new approaches.  But just because the pace of technological innovation is often dizzying, don’t overlook the power of basic human connections to drive your brand success.” Read More–>

How the ‘New Citizen’ Consumes News Written by Amy S. Mitchell on December 23, 2010. Amy S. Mitchell, Deputy Director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) is involved in all as pects of the PEJ, with a primary focus on designing, managing new projects and in writing the Project’s in-depth research reports. Ms. Mitchell, who has been with the Project since its inception in 1997, speaks frequently to groups ranging from journalists of all types to press relation professionals to heads of various organizations. “The social component in the flow of information today – the sharing, passing along and adding to reports – leads to another critical concept for all information providers in that they have much less control over what happens to information once it is released. Understanding information in the 21st Century means understanding, the ‘new citizen’, the function news plays in our lives and the multiple types of audience & content.” Read More–>

We introduce our final guest blogger of our monthly series, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Amy Mitchell, Deputy Director, The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Amy S. Mitchell is Deputy Director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. She is involved in all aspects of the PEJ, with a primary focus on designing, managing new projects and in writing the Project’s in-depth research reports. This includes the Annual Report on the State of the News Media, more specific studies such as the new ecosystem of news, the development of the New Media Index and earlier the News Coverage Index. Ms. Mitchell, who has been with the Project since its inception in 1997, speaks frequently to groups ranging from journalists of all types to press relation professionals to heads of various organizations.

As we close out 2010 and hunker down to prepare for 2011, I offer a few thoughts on the news consumer of today and what that means for you as information providers. These are based on research done here at the Pew Research Center’s PEJ and our sister organization, the Pew Research Center’s People and the Press.

First, people today are consuming more news than a decade ago.  A Pew Research Survey conducted in June, 2010 found that people spend on average 70 min’s with news each day. This is one of the highest totals since the mid 1990’s – and it does not include time spent with news on mobile devices like cell phones or tablets.

As was the case in 2000, people today spend 57 minutes a day getting news from TV, radio or newspaper. They then spend another 13 getting news via the Web.

As Tom Rosenstiel points out in a commentary about the survey, this reinforces something our research from earlier in the year revealed – the notion that news consumers today are what we refer to as News Grazers — cutting across different platforms and outlets over the course of the day.  Fully 92% use multiple platforms daily (platforms, not just outlets). Close to half use four to six platforms daily.  And they are turning to multiple outlets in doing so.

So their methods and means of accessing news are expanding, not narrowing.

But how conscience are people of these choices, of why they turn to different platforms and outlets? Do they recognize why they turn to Keith Olberman at one point in time and the local television broadcast or newspaper website at another?

To try to get at this, we worked with the survey group to ask a new series of questions on the June survey regarding why people turn to certain news programs or outlets. What we see is educated selection.

Consumers understand differences among the various platforms and outlets within those platforms.

People go to CNN for the latest news and headlines, the Wall Street Journal mostly for in-depth reporting, NPR for a wide mix and the Daily Show for Entertainment. This may sound elementary, but it is a powerful finding.

What does this mean for communication managers and press relations people?

Content produced should not be platform agnostic but platform specific.  News Organ’s are beginning to understand this –using different voices, different styles and methods for telling the story. This applies to organizational communicators as well — being prepared to adapt your information, your news, to multiple platforms. A traditional print account might include a more in-depth explanation of the information while a PC-based version may have links to raw data or background information and a mobile version will be shorter with fewer graphical elements. Really, how many of you put together multiple releases for any one news item?

Just as you have multiple platforms today, information providers also have multiple audiences – the loyal followers that join your listerve or your e-letters, those that check in now and then and those that find your information or organization while searching the Web.  It is important to understand the value of what audiences can add. One development in the news media this year was a realization of the potential value embedded in those dreaded “comments sections” on the Web sites.  More news organizations are now devoting resources to digging into those comment to find the ones the value – and then using them for sources, story ideas and added insight about areas of coverage.

Finally, the social component in the flow of information today – the sharing, passing along and adding to reports – leads to another critical concept for all information providers: Information providers have much less control over what happens to information once it is released. This makes it all the more important for that information to be correct, verified and complete the first time it goes out.

In sum, understanding information in the 21^st Century means understanding, the new citizen, the function news plays in our lives and the multiple types of audience & content. We have a first level of understanding now. These are all areas that we at PEJ will continue to explore in 2011 and certainly beyond.

Happy holidays and wishing you all a wonderful 2011.

We introduce our next guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Ed Keller, CEO, The Keller Fay Group.

Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, a specialist market research firm focused exclusively on word of mouth marketing.  He is a Board member and past President of the Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), a board member of the Advertising Research Foundation, a board member of Bazaarvoice, and a member of the U of Pa’s Annenberg School’s Alumni Advisory Board.  He is Past President of the Market Research Council, and has lectured on word of mouth marketing at Wharton, Columbia Business School, NYU’s Stern School, and other leading universities. Keller speaks frequently to business audiences about word of mouth marketing, and is quoted frequently in the trade press.

Social media is all the rage today among marketers and communicators.  The allure of Facebook, Twitter, Four Square, and other social networking sites, along with all the apps that help to fuel conversation and allow marketers to connect to consumers, is a powerful draw.

But here is something that might come as a big surprise to some of you.  Despite the tremendous attention being paid to social media, and the meteoric rise in the number of people using social media, when it comes to brand-related conversation, the overwhelming majority of word of mouth (WOM) still takes place the good old fashioned way – face-to-face.  In fact, over 90% of WOM is offline, and less than 10% is online.  And of that 10% which happens online, only 1-2% comes via social networking sites or blogs.

How do I know this?  Because every week since 2006 my firm conducts research with Americans ages 13-69 and asks them to report to us about brand-related conversations in 15 different product category areas ranging from fast-moving consumer goods such as food/dining, beverages, personal care products, and household products, to higher consideration categories such as automotive, technology, and travel.  And in every single category, the story is the same.

How could this be, you might be asking?  Are the statistics about the 500 million people who have Facebook accounts somehow incorrect?  Or the fact that people are spending a growing amount of time each day on Facebook?

No, they are not wrong.  But what is not as well documented is the literally billions of brand impressions that are created daily (yes, daily) via offline conversations.  The online stats are easily measured, and therefore well reported.  Offline, while harder to measure and therefore less well reported day in and day out by the marketing and tech press, is massively larger.

What is more, our research shows that offline WOM is more credible, and more likely to lead to purchases than online WOM.

This research does not mean that online-oriented strategies are wrong or a waste of money.  In fact, the internet is playing a growing role in helping to fuel word of mouth.  Over the last few years, the internet has become just about as important as a medium that sparks conversation as TV.  But it’s not the medium via which the conversations actually happen.  If you want to know more about the different roles that TV, the internet and print all play, I would encourage you to read the research we have published recently about this.

The conclusion that I hope you will draw from our research is that in an era when word of mouth is the dominant force in driving purchase decisions, brand marketers need to think holistically.  It’s not enough to focus just on social media.  Think about your online strategy, yes, but that should include your website, and internet content, and ratings and review sites, and online advertising – in addition to Facebook and Twitter.  Think, as well, about ways to encourage offline conversation.  This can come via experiential marketing or in-store activity, whereby people can see, feel, and touch your product.  (Apple stores are a great example.)  Advertising can and does act as a powerful conversational spark, as well.   In fact, more than 20% of conversations are driven by ads.  Advertising plus word of mouth is a powerful combination.

Marketing success in the 21^st century requires new approaches.  But just because the pace of technological innovation is often dizzying, don’t overlook the power of basic human connections to drive your brand success.

We introduce our next guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Kathy Cripps, President, Council of Public Relations Firms.

Kathy Cripps is president of the Council of Public Relations Firms, the U. S. employer-based trade association. Kathy worked with multinational public relations firms and had her own firm for many years; she and the Council are strong advocates for PR firms and the value they bring to clients around the globe.

In two days (October 27) Marc Pritchard, Global Marketing & Brand Building Officer for Procter & Gamble, will speak at the Council’s Critical Issues Forum. The room will be filled with PR agency executives, their staffs and their clients from many different industries. We are thrilled Marc will address the group because when P&G speaks, people listen. Marketers and their public relations firms care what P&G has to say.

There’s a larger significance here as well. Public Relations is important to organizations like P&G.  I’m referring to the strategic relevance of our industry to organizations, whether in relation to reputation management, employee communications, crisis mitigation, marketing or public affairs. While the continued economic uncertainty has led to slower-than-hoped-for industry growth, public relations is more relevant and integrated than ever.

As the president of the Council of Public Relations Firms, the U.S. trade association for PR agencies, I have the opportunity to speak with firms around the country about what keeps them up at night, and what excites them about the future.  I know public relations is a hard business;  running a firm provides its own set of unique challenges, from servicing clients to managing and motivating talent.  It’s great to see firms like Pollack and others celebrate significant milestones.

The Council of PR Firms’ Q3 Quick Survey (of member firms) revealed some interesting statistics as firms and clients move into 2011 planning mode.  When asked what new business trends firms believe will be most important in 2011,  our members cited “more requests for digital and social media expertise” most often (80%), followed by “more competitive pitches” (57%) “a shift away from traditional media relations toward online influencers”  (56%) and “integrated campaign development “( 54%).  These responses are primarily good news as they represent not only a robust business environment but the expansive platform from which PR now operates.

Twenty five years in business, represents a time to reflect on growth, change and what’s ahead.  I don’t think I need to list the many ways the public relations business has changed since 1985. Suffice to say, staying competitive is one of the biggest challenges a PR firm faces today.

Here’s what I suggest to keep a firm healthy — and moving toward the next significant milestone:

• Don’t give away your thinking. I know, I know, competitive pitches require that you come to the table with creative ideas. Before you get into the trap, encourage the client to select a firm, or narrow the list, using the firms’ capabilities. Clients who challenge the finalist(s) to answer 2-3 strategic questions learn enough about the firm to select a partner.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for fair compensation. This applies not only to new business, but ongoing client work. Help your staff understand why it’s more than OK to be paid for work outside the agreed upon scope, and equally important to be paid in a timely manner (you are not a bank, right?)
• Help your staff get excited about public relations, especially working at a firm and making it a long-term career.  There are so many opportunities with the right public relations firm. With proper training and career guidance, today’s account executives can be tomorrow’s CEOs.
• Diversify your firm. Staff differences in experience, ethnic background, gender and skills will make your firm a richer source of ideas.
• Really listen to clients (and their competitors). Knowing your clients’ business will help you get new assignments because you will be an invaluable resource.
• Learn to say no. If your firm doesn’t have the required expertise, invest in it, partner with a firm that does or don’t accept the work.
• Be ethical. Following a moral compass is good business; it’s important to your clients and your employees.

As an industry we’re poised for growth – in size and responsibility.  Let’s go for it.

Following is the next video as part of our year-long celebration of The Pollack PR Marketing Group’s 25th Anniversary. Happy Halloween!

On Saturday 10/2/10, The Pollack PR Marketing Group participated in PRSA Los Angeles Chapter’s annual Quality Time with PR Minds event. The entire agency staff supported the event as part of its commitment, during its 25th anniversary year, to support the community in which it does business.  Staff professionals broke out into separate groups and worked with a variety of non-profit organizations individually, counseling them as to what tools, mechanisms and strategies to use to expand  their communications efforts.

Non-profits could take advantage of different perspectives, creative ideas, and candid snapshot analyses of their situation and ways to improve their situation through strategic redirection, tactical ideas, or tips and tricks on how to get a message out. Simply having a fresh perspective can go tremendously far with a non-profit who is too often strapped for time and resources.

The agency was able to meet with many non-profits on Saturday and deliver an exchange of ideas, along with other professionals, that contributed to the expanded success of these needed and highly-valued community organizations.

We introduce our next guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Geneva Overholser, director of the U.S.C. Annenberg School of Journalism.

Geneva Overholser is director of the U.S.C. Annenberg School of Journalism.  She is former editor of the Des Moines Register, ombudsman for the Washington Post and editorial board member of the New York Times.

As the director of a Journalism School lucky enough to include a distinguished and growing department of strategic public relations, I’m struck by the many similarities in the ways our two fields – journalism and public relations – are experiencing today’s fast-changing times.  Since I figure we need all the help we can during this Time of Unsettlement, I thought I might share with the blog’s readers my top five thoughts to keep in mind amid the change. They’re journalism-based, it’s true, but I hope you might find them helpful as we confront the many (similar) opportunities and challenges before us.  And hearty congratulations on your 25 years!

1. It’s about the public.  Change is hard, especially when the good old monopoly days were so generous to journalists.  Still, how well journalists’ 401k’s are doing and whether we get to wear the fedora with the press pass is not the primary question.  Rather, it ‘s whether or not the public is going to continue to get a high-quality flow of reliable information.  When you cast your eye in this direction, the terrain still looks scary, but it also looks wide open and far more promising. And those good old legacy journalists will still, I’m betting, have a powerful role to play.

2.  Traditions aren’t what matter; principles are. Here’s an example: I fought with all my might, when I was a newspaper editor, to keep ads off the front page.  Now I’d welcome them hungrily – though I’d want to be sure they weren’t designed to deceive anyone.  Ad-free front pages were a tradition; being transparent with readers is a principle.  Other traditions?  The inverted pyramid.  The ink-on-paper platform. Paying little attention to what readers have to say.  These, we must remember, are not the heart of the matter.  Verification, transparency, proportionality, and comprehensiveness: These are what count.

3. Collaboration and participation are the future. Those who partner with others, link to others, aggregate the material of others, concentrate on what they alone can do best and point their news consumers to those who can offer them the rest – that’s what’s coming. Those who participate and collaborate are likeliest to thrive.

4. The good old days had their problems. We left out wide swaths of the community – the poor, people of color, most folks (for that matter) who weren’t in power or hadn’t done something criminal.  As we journalists became more and more comfortable, we began to lose track of the old responsibility to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Moreover, our content was too top-down driven, and  we tended to get stuck in conventional thinking.

5.  We can do it BETTER this time. The people formerly known as the audience want to be (and are!) part of creating information in the public interest now. Helping them become better informed about how to do that (news literacy is key) will make our work ever richer, and our democracy ever stronger.

We introduce our next guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Michael Pranikoff, emerging media director for PR Newswire.

Michael Pranikoff, Global Director of Emerging Media at PR Newswire, is responsible for educating PR Newswire staff and customers about the role emerging media in marketing / communications.  Michael is also involved in the development of products and services for PR Newswire in the area of emerging media.  Michael joined PR Newswire in 1998. Prior to joining PR Newswire, Michael worked for MacNeil / Lehrer Productions which produces the PBS NewsHour. Michael graduated from Syracuse University.  Michael maintains profiles across many social networks and social media outlets, connect with him at http://card.ly/MichaelPranikoff.

As I write this, I’m speeding though Germany on the high-speed ICE train from Hamburg to Berlin.   I just finished a two-day tour of speaking and throughout this time, I’ve been working on a piece about managing corporate identity in a crisis situation.

Speed has been the underlying theme to just about everything in the past few days.  The speed of our communications and the reactions to those messages are faster – and travel further — than they ever have before.

Since the 1950s, when the first press release ran across a wire service (PR Newswire – my employer), the pace of communications has been rapidly changing.  Just 20 years ago we all were just getting acquainted with email.  Today, we can’t go anywhere without it.

It’s important we listen effectively and react or communicate quickly and efficiently.  Unfortunately, that seems like an impossible thing to do for many organizations.

In my discussions around the world with communications professionals, there is always a sense of frustration at how long it takes to get a message together and push it out the door.   I’ve heard countless stories about how a news release is written, sent around for approval, and two days later it’s returned as a completely different version  with a few more messages and several hundred words longer.    If this is really the process, then how do we react in a crisis situation?

We’ve all seen examples, where it takes days for a company to react to a situation publicly.  Does this sound familiar? This just won’t do anymore.   Communications professionals today must be empowered to communicate quickly. In order to do that, we must earn the trust of the corporation.

One way to gain this trust is to design a program that makes it easy for our peers and superiors to see that we know what we are doing.  Design a flow chart that shows the steps to take when responding to something, the channels to use, and when to step back and examine further.

The best example of this that I’ve seen comes from an unlikely source – the United States Air Force.   In reality, it shouldn’t be surprising that they would come up with a process. What is more surprising is that they’ve been so public and transparent with it, and I applaud them for it.

There are still other stunning examples of companies and organizations that have been responded quickly and effectively to kill a potential crisis situation.  Last year, the Transportation Security Administration was able to thwart a potentially damaging story in a matter of hours when a mommy blogger posted a story entitled “TSA Agents Took My Son”.  In less than half a day – lightning speed for almost any organization – TSA was able to research the situation and use proper channels (in this case, their blog) to combat this false story.

As my high-speed train starts to slow down to approach Berlin, I’m reminded that while we need to quickly react and respond today, TSA shows us that it only works when the right analysis has been done.

Having a process will immensely help, and I encourage everyone to think with L.A.S.E.R precision: Listen. Analyze. Strategize. Engage. Repeat.

Special guest post by James Flanigan. James Flanigan is a business columnist for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and other publications and has covered national and international business and economics for 46 years. James’ blog and information about his current book can by found at: http://jamesflanigan.com/.

For almost half a century, I’ve experienced public relations from the other side of the table, as a business journalist. So I’m going to tell a few stories, parables if you will, with points about PR in each one.

I’ll begin with a public relations man who did his job well and helped me at the same time. I broke in as a business reporter with the New York Herald Tribune, assigned to cover the oil, chemical, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries. Jack Gillespie was public relations for Socony Mobil, as the company was then called, and he figured it would be good if a reporter covering the industry also understood it. So he set up interviews not with top executives but with working oil men who were on temporary assignment in Mobil’s New York offices. Typically, a crusty fellow, uncomfortable behind a desk, would explain the economics of exploration, say, or how natural gas occurs along with oil and can be recovered.

Gillespie didn’t gild the lily; there was seldom a direct connection to a story about Mobil, but there was an indirect one in that industry stories were at least knowledgeable. In any event, no story comes from a single source and critical comment is always available–in those days it was from upstarts like Occidental Petroleum or ENI, the Italian state oil company, which were shaking up the solid front of the major oil corporations.      A contrast is a story about British Petroleum, which has run into horrendous public relations trouble currently. In the late 1990s, after BP had acquired Amoco and was preparing to buy Arco, I interviewed its chief executive John Browne, later Lord Browne. Browne, to be sure, had intelligent perspective about the industry, but he was already preaching the company’s “beyond petroleum” environmental message.  I wrote a column in the Los Angeles Times after that interview but in subsequent meetings it seemed to a skeptical reporter that image building grew into hype. I didn’t write and declined later offers of interviews because reporting is not stenography and interviews, even with CEOs, do not necessarily a story make. The point is that business is a human story and the most important quality a company can convey in any PR campaign is integrity.

So, I’ll tell one more story about an executive and the late, great business editor James W. Michaels of Forbes Magazine. Each year at Forbes, staff writers had to contact CEOs to compile information for the Jan. 1 industrial rankings. It was tedious work, often to get a boilerplate quote from the CEO. But I called Nathan Cummings, the founder of Consolidated Foods (later Sara Lee Corp.) and he was delightful and informative about the industry and the company. So I asked Michaels why if this guy is so informative, are others dull and evasive? And Jim explained: “Nate owns the company” (which was nonetheless public). “The other people are just hired hands, afraid if they say something in Forbes, they’ll lose their job or be in hot water at the country club.” In PR terms, that tells you not only what you want in a client but what to understand about editors.

Following is the next video in a series celebrating The Pollack PR Marketing Group’s 25th Anniversary:

Following is the next video in a series celebrating The Pollack PR Marketing Group’s 25th Anniversary:

We introduce our sixth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Paul Holmes, the highly regarded PR industry analyst.

Paul Holmes is editor and publisher of The Holmes Report, which provides knowledge and insight to public relations professionals, and manages the SABRE Awards, recognizing Superior Achievement in Branding & Reputation.

I just returned from Barcelona, where more than 200 PR practitioners and evaluation experts gathered to pass the “Barcelona declaration” of research principles, an attempt to set global standards for the measurement of PR.

The principles are much needed. My publication runs the SABRE Awards competition in North America, EMEA and Asia, and so I see something like 3,000 PR campaign summaries a year, and measurement is far from standardized. I see everything from clip counts to advertising value equivalency (roundly condemned by the Barcelona delegates), while relatively few seek to link PR to business results.

I have long believed that public relations is about what the words say it is about: building, maintaining and leveraging relationships between an organization and its publics. As a result, I believe the best measure of success is the impact a campaign has on relationships.

The past few years have seen the emergence of new evidence suggesting a strong correlation between an organization’s relationships and business performance. Specifically, Bain & Company’s Fred Reichheld has looked at the connection between advocacy (the likelihood that someone will recommend a company to a friend or colleague) and performance, and found that advocacy (or what he calls net promoter score: the number of advocates minus the number of detractors) is a strong predictor of future success.

This ought to be great news for the profession, because I believe PR is uniquely positioned to create brand advocates. It is hard for me to imagine an ad campaign that would make me more likely to recommend a product to others, but there are plenty of PR campaigns that have done this: communicating a commitment to CSR, linking products with causes, special events that touch people directly. (It’s also easy to imagine PR failures that create brand detractors: BP being the most obvious recent example.)

There are two obstacles to progress on evaluation, however: agencies and clients: agencies, because they all want a proprietary measurement tool that differentiates them from competitors, at a time when we badly need an industry standard; clients, because they remain fixated on traditional reach and frequency measures at a time when social media are demonstrating that engagement and advocacy are what really matters.

As an industry, we need to develop a standard and sell it to clients if we are going to take advantage of the opportunity for leadership offered by this new social media age.

The next video by The Pollack PR Marketing Group as part of our monthly 25th anniversary celebration:

We introduce our fifth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Kathleen Kaufman, published author and educator.

Kathleen Kaufman is the author of environmental fiction and an inner city educator. She is well known in the social media community as a Facebook influencer and entertaining blogger. She can be found on her publisher’s website, The Way Things Are Publications, on Facebook and on her website.

Facebook marketing is a dirty word. No one wants to feel like they’re friends with a person who is trying to sell them a product, be it a book or a copyedit.  The most successful Facebookers, the ones who have converted their page into actualized business, are not marketing, rather they are participating.   It’s not as easy as it sounds; for one, you have to mean it.  The simple act of being genuine on Facebook is easier said than done.

I am certainly not an expert on how to juggle professionalism and sincerity in a virtual world, but I have learned a few lessons along the way as to what not to do.

1.  Mass Emails: I currently have approximately seventy-three messages waiting for me on my page.  I have no intention of reading them, for the most part, because they are all invites to ‘The Best Opening Night Of The Best Play Ever!’ or ‘Open Mic Night At The Improv!”   Thus, most of them are for events that are in Boston, Chicago, or New York.  It becomes painfully obvious that the sender has no idea that I live in Los Angeles, and even more painfully obvious that I am just a number, a member of their growing horde, an inadvertent member of a fan club.

We introduce our fourth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Tom Searcy, who helps companies in finding business solutions.

Tom Searcy, co-author of  “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company”, author of “RFPs Suck!” and founder of Hunt Big Sales, is a sought after business solutions expert for small to mid-sized companies.  Follow Tom’s thought leadership through his blog: www.huntingbigsales.com or access his resources at www.huntbigsales.com.

I remember watching a documentary on nudists when I was of an age that I couldn’t yet buy my own “nudist” magazines at the drugstore…the ones with the brown wrappers…if they even bothered wrapping them. The documentary talked about the “freedom of nudity”, its “natural state” and “the beauty of the human form.” It was confusing as hell to me- because the human form, at least the ones at the colony, were not beautiful. Even at distance and with discreetly placed black-box-blockouts, these were some pretty unattractive people. Their nudity not only put me in a position to look at things I didn’t want too, but it answered questions about people, (surgery scars, stretch marks, the body’s response to gravity over time for example), that I was not asking.

The documentary was about a microscopic sliver of the population who had made a distinct choice. But we are all living naked now. You, me, our companies, our children. We are all naked. And we will be beyond naked very soon- (BTW, I don’t know what “beyond naked” means but I think it involves Flickr™ photos of our last set of x-rays and dental records). Are you ready to live naked?

YouTube™, Flickr™, Digg™, Twitter™, Facebook™, LinkedIn™ and the rest of the usual suspects of the social media revolution are creating a naked world. Every customer experience, every shipped product and online FAQ answer, each touchpoint in the chain of your business is open for scrutiny and discussion. You may be aware of this, which puts you ahead of the huge brands out there being lampooned every day in painful and direct ways. But what is your strategy?

I work with small to mid-sized companies who are trying to grow quickly. One of the things that we work on is their market image. One of the nice things about everyone being naked is that it’s easier to do the necessary research on a prospect company before you see them. But…It works in reverse…(sometimes when I work with companies they forget this part).

Here’s what I tell my small to mid-sized companies:

• Control – You don’t have it any more, so take a deep breath and stand tall, proud and naked. You can control your integrity and your authenticity. Focus on that. Don’t focus on the buttoning-down of over point of entry and exit to your perceived brand machine. That’s like trying to grab the wind with a sack.
• It’s Never Fair – Of course attacks are unfair. No one is trying to provide a ‘fair and balanced’ story, as if there ever is one. Don’t waste time trying to make their attacks ‘fair’ by offering your point-by-point answers. The bell has rung- you are not going to un-ring it. You can just respond.
• Fast and Good – A quick response that is reasonable is much better than a slow response that is perfect. Do you see Toyota out there floundering with the slow and perfect story? That’s because slow in the naked world is by definition imperfect.
• Find Your Voice – As a writer and speaker, I go through a number of exercises to make certain I am writing in my voice. Not what I think to be the “professional and homogenized” voice. In the heralded brands around the world, one of the key elements to the rankings is their consistency and authenticity of their voice. You need to make certain that the voice is an authentic voice.
• Be 3-D – All the movies are going 3-dimensional for the same reason; the audience expects a different experience. You have to be multi-dimensional in your market message. A website with a never-changing brochure of product/service lists doesn’t cut it. Customers want the multi-dimensional experience. Give it to them. Videos, photos, blogs and ever-changing content.
• Thousand Points of Light – Your brand is no longer just the crafted message of your marketing firm. The touchpoints are now your brand- employees, customers, vendors and competitors. You have to be out there knowing what is being said. You can’t survey once a quarter and keep track of the voices. This has to be a daily part of someone’s role. Key word searches and tracking make it easier- but it has to be done constantly.

On this blog-site, you can read past entries to see what it is like to live naked. Noemi’s blogs provide examples of how ugly in can look when big companies try to hide. This is especially true for those companies who have not yet realized that the emperor not only isn’t wearing clothes, but his wardrobe has been shredded. But the question for you should be “What is my strategy for living naked?”

When thinking through your strategy, include these questions:

1. On a simple Google search of my company’s name and my name, what comes up and in what order? Is it what I want to come up? How can I change it?
2. How do we tell our story to the world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? How is the world telling our story to us in the naked world at the level of customer, employee and supplier? What does it mean about us if no one is telling our story?
3. Who are the examples of companies, regardless of industry, that we look up too in the naked world? What can we learn from them?

Fortunately for me, living in a naked world requires neither diet, nor exercise nor surgery. But it does require confidence and a strategy. What’s yours?

The next video by The Pollack PR Marketing Group as part of our monthly 25th anniversary celebration:

We introduce our third guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary, Jay Baer,  who writes in the below blog, on forward thinking social media programs and their composition.

Jay Baer is one of the world’s most popular social media strategy consultants and bloggers. His Convince & Convert social media blog is consistently ranked among the top business blogs, and he speaks to tens of thousands of marketers annually at conferences and conventions. Founder of five companies, he’s a digital marketing pioneer that started online in 1994. He’s worked with more than 700 brands since then, including 25 of the Fortune 1000 (Nike, Pepsi, Sony, Cadbury, Conoco/Phillips, Procter & Gamble). He’s a tequila-loving forest dweller with a passion for tequila, and spreads his “strategy first, then tactics” message like a digital dandelion.

I’m sitting in a restaurant in Cincinnati last night, surrounded by televisions with the sound turned down. The bartender approaches, and asks if I’d like to hear the TV. I say “sure” expecting him to saunter over to a monitor, and turn up the volume. Instead, he reaches under the bar, and pulls out a Soundog unit.

The Soundog is an ingenious device – a small, personal speaker with switching capabilities, enabling me to listen to whichever game I prefer without bothering nearby patrons.

Happily using this handy new technology, I was struck by its utter usefulness and the fact that it neatly addressed a common (although perhaps not world-changing) problem.

Why can’t your social media program do that?

The difference between “selling” and “helping” is only two letters, but the gap is in reality, much larger.

The best – and most effective – social media programs aren’t based on promotions and message distribution. Instead, they revolve around removing friction and uncertainty for potential or current customers.

Nationwide Insurance has a terrific iPhone app that allows you to document a vehicle crash in real-time, including photos, collection of the other drivers’ insurance information, and other key details. They aren’t trying to sell you more insurance – at least not at that point – they are being helpful.

Geek Squad makes its living providing technology configuration and repair services, via BestBuy stores everywhere. But yet Geek Squad has a YouTube channel that includes hundreds of videos showing people how to do it themselves. They aren’t trying to sell you services – at least not at that point – they are being helpful.

Geek Squad Founder Robert Stephens was asked about the contradiction of a services company providing helpful videos at a conference where I spoke. He said that the reality is, their best customers are those that can do some of it themselves. If they can assist them initially, they’ll appreciate it and turn to the when they need more help.

That’s understanding the difference between selling and helping. That’s understanding that social media success is a long putt, not a tap-in. That’s measuring results on an annual basis, not a weekly basis.

That’s what you should be doing.

Start today by conducting a Helpfulness Audit for your company. Talk to your customer service department, or survey your customers and document the top 10 problems that customers have with your product or service. Then, strategize ways you could make those problems disappear by providing better content (as with Geek Squad), faster response (as with Nationwide), or better access to help (as many companies are doing by launching online customer support communities using Get Satisfaction or other systems).

Our agency opened its doors on March 25^th 1985. It’s been a quarter of a century, today. It’s our day…

We are privileged to have been a witness to some of the most accelerated changes in history — moments that occurred from 1985, the year of our founding, to today — moments in time that have impacted not only history, but the PR consciousness and subsequently changed the ‘way it was’ from that ‘moment’ forward.  Recognizing this, we set out to put it all into some perspective to crystallize these impactful moments.

Our choice of 25 PR Defining Moments, over our 25 years, is capsulated in the video below.

We sought out ideas for our list from our colleagues, PR professionals and journalists, asking them to submit their ideas.  The criteria for inclusion was that the ‘moment in time’ over the last quarter of a century, had to have found its place in history or altered the way we live our lives, and also had to have impacted change within the context of public relations.  The ‘moments’ submitted could have influenced a lifestyle change, unfurled a technology that would change the way we lead our everyday lives, spotlighted a news happening through an inadvertent camera shot, or changed a political order or the societal landscape.

What we got was astounding, way more than 25…

So we chose our moments, from the many, and listed them in random order, so that we would be free to include ‘moments’ that fit our criteria, rather than be limited to the year in which they occurred.

If you wish, please let us know about ‘your moment’ that is not on our list via: Twitter @PollackPRMktg with a #25PR hashtag, comment on the blog, or email to info@ppmgcorp.com.

• Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
• The Televised Car Chase
• September 11, 2001
• The Cola Wars of the 1980s
• US Airways Flight 1549
• Fall of the Berlin Wall
• War Time Coverage
• Demi Moore’s Cover for Vanity Fair
• Real-Time Communication
• Barack Obama’s Social Media Election Campaign of 2008
• Dan Rather Exits As News Anchor
• First Dot Com Web Domain
• Debut of Roger & Me
• Gen-Y Changes the Playing Field
• Demise of Seattle News Institution
• The Rise of Pundits
• The Oprah “Effect”
• Reality Television
• Mosaic Browser Introduction
• Entertainment As News
• Product Craze
• Death of Princess Diana Media Implications
• Faux News Scandal
• First Blog Post
• You!

First aired on September 8, 1986, nationally syndicated talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show (O) became a PR phenomenon, granting anyone who appears on it, instant fame and notoriety. It became known for its “Oprah Effect,” since it could turn the everyday into overnight sensations.

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Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore marked a moment in time where filmmakers leveraged the power of film to expose political, economic and social injustices in American society. Accountability became an inevitability for corporations and government.

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Princess Diana’s death put the news media on trial as many blamed them for creating the market and incentive that led to her death. Amidst the wall-to-wall coverage, media was put in the dichotomous position of reporting a story of which they had to become a part.

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First to register in 1985, was Symbolics, Inc. By 1997, there were 1,000,000 .coms. Still widely used, its speedy early adoption ushered in an era of instant global communications, catapulting the Information Age.

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