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.

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.

Special guest post by Chris Paine. Chris directed “Who Killed the Electric Car?” His next film, “Revenge of the Electric Car” is set for release 2011.  Currently, he is working on two projects related to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. http://www.facebook.com/revengeoftheelectriccar http://www.facebook.com/chris.paine

Exxon Valdez veteran marine toxicologist and author Riki Ott (“Not One Drop”) laid out some disturbing comparisons of the two oil disasters during our recent shoot in Louisiana.

BP is using the same playbook Exxon used on us in Alaska.  It’s all about minimizing liability and damages in court. So right off the bat, BP is underestimating how much is spilling, understating harm to the environment, claiming  dispersants are “safe” and “not toxic” to marine life, and putting workers at risk because BP doesn’t want to supply respirators. BP says it will pay all “legitimate” claims, but what this means is ‘see you in court.’ Same old story with Exxon.

Here are a few examples:

1). Broken Promises:  The oil industry makes false promises to get permits:

-Exxon: Promise: Double hull tankers and advanced vessel tracking so ‘not one drop’ of oil would spill in Alaska.  Actuality: Single hull tanker grounds, destroying pristine ecosystem and fishing industry for decades.

-BP:  Promise: State of the art drilling platforms with fail-safe safety procedures. Actuality: Multiple reckless decisions lead to massive oil spill threatening wide destruction of Gulf ecosystem, fishing  and tourism.

2). Manipulate Government Regulations

-Exxon:  Manipulate government regulatory bodies to receive multiple exemptions. Examples: A) Take advantage of OSHA exemptions for colds and flus to mask chemical poisonings of cleanup workers  B) Convince EPA and Coast Guard to rubber stamp contingency plans like using low grade “mill pond” buoys instead of “ocean grade” buoys. C)   Circumvent vastly variable effectiveness  of dispersants for different oil grades by persuading EPA to create one “compromise” effectiveness rating D) Convince EPA to sign off on toxicologist reports for dispersants that have only  been tested on older animals, not juveniles.

-BP: Examples A-D above still apply.

3). Spiller in Charge

The oil polluter becomes a ‘super state’ in charge of running response and cleanup. America leaves spiller in charge of cleanup. The Coast Guard sides with industry.

-Exxon:  USCG signed off on “miles of beaches” treated. USCG backed up Exxon’s control of images.

-BP: Signs of similar activity.

4). Under-Reporting Spill:

-Exxon:   In Alaska, Exxon reported up to 3 times less oil spilt then estimated by independent experts.

-BP:  IN Gulf, BP at first estimated  its spill at 1000 barrels of crude oil per day, then increased it to 5000 once researchers said it was at least this much. Now independent researchers using satellite images estimate as much as  70,000 barrels a day.

5). Under-Reporting  Cleanup

-Exxon: Said that it recovered 10 to 12% of oil on beaches in Prince William Sound but this was based on its own underreported spill size. When you take actual spill size into account, Exxon actually only cleaned up about 4%.   Eyewitnesses reported as much of 80% of recovered “oil” as being water in the last of three tankers that off-loaded “oil” from the stricken Exxon Valdez.

-BP:  Initially claimed to be recovering 20% of spill with its first siphon but this was based on inaccurate flow meter data . Later estimates for recovered oil per day are considerably lower

6).  Minimize public perception of impact

- Exxon: immediately put a flight restriction over area to prevent photography. It also required cleanup crews and workers not to talk to media or take photographs

-BP:  Many reports of similar measures. Dispersants used to prevent visible oil slick. Massive messaging effort to minimize public and government reaction.

7). Sick wildlife

-Exxon.  Ecosystem collapsed 4 years after Exxon Valdez spill.  Pink Salmon eventually recovered but Herring fishery utterly collapsed and 15 of 24 species have not recovered 21 years later

-BP:  Effect of oil and dispersants still unknown — and NOAA has not yet initiated comprehensive ecosystem studies despite vast extent of oiled estuaries and marshes.

8). Sick Communities

-Exxon.   Medical and social trauma caused by collapse of fishing industry never anticipated or compensated.   Domestic violence, divorce, suicide, drugs, and depression rates due to financial stress and cultural dislocation were at historic highs for 20 years with PTSD as high as 99% increases.

-BP.  Hospitalized oil clean up workers.  Already signs of severe financial stress amongst unemployed fisherman just recovering from Hurricanes Katrina/Rita.  Cleanup workers facing illness without proper protection.

9). Minimize liability, Write off legal costs

-Exxon.   Exxon appeals $5 billion punitive fine for 20 years until claim to reduced to $507 million – about 10% of original claims. Legal fees become a business expense, written off against revenue from taxpayers.

BP: ‘We will pay all legitimate claims’.  “Translation?” says Ott, “See you in court.”

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.

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?

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).

We introduce our second guest blogger of our new monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary, who encourages, in the below blog, those who are still hesitating to engage in social media to do so.

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 at www.trainone.com. He can be reached at salesman@gitomer.com.

It started like a small bunch of burning leaves. A little MySpace, here and there  –  a blog or two. And then the wind picked up. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Growing from a windstorm to a firestorm, social media is a tornado running wild over the Internet plains.

How social are you?

How serious are you about social media?

REALITY: You can’t ignore it. Hundreds of millions of people are involved so far, and it’s just a few years old.

I tried to ignore it for a while, but it soon became apparent that this was the new, new wave – about a year ago I became a player.

I admit I have an edge. I have a lot of readers and followers who are interested in what I have to say and want to know what my immediate thinking is. That’s two of the values in social media – it’s immediate and it’s informative. It’s also fun – that’s why Facebook and YouTube are worth BILLIONS

The major networks in social media are growing by the second…

• For photos, it’s Flickr – worth billions

• For videos, it’s YouTube – worth billions

• Social networking for the younger set starts with MySpace – an original

• Social networking for the growing and grown set, it’s Facebook – worth billions

• To get connected and network with the business set, it’s LinkedIn.

And for that private message, there’s texting – it’s easy for me – I have an iPhone.

And that is just a partial picture. There’s more…

• For individual expressions, there are weblogs, or blogs.

• If you want to say a few words, there’s micro-blogging and interconnecting – also known as Twitter – worth billions.

• For chronologging, it’s Wikipedia – worth billions.

• And, of course, there are your personal website and business website. Priceless.

All of these medias are, or try to be, socially engaging – sticky if you will. All of them are, or try to be, passed on – viral if you will. Or, better stated, if you tweet, are you good enough or bad enough to be re-tweeted?

I have made a serious commitment to “socialize,” in other words, to expose more of my personal self and my business self through social media. I will still maintain my value-based philosophy, but I will personalize it, and humanize it to a point that others are attracted to it, benefit from it, and want to pass it on to others.

I will be social and viral at the same time.

So, what does this mean to you?

What’s the opportunity to you and for you?

Why should you get involved?

Social media is an opportunity, a new frontier, a space in cyberspace that gives you an individual place to play, build awareness of you and for you, brand yourself, and potentially profit.

You have to ask yourself …

Where’s the beef?

Where’s the fun?

What’s the value, both to you and others?

And how – if desired – do you monetize it?

Well, unless you’re one of the few people in an ownership or founding position of these social medias, your monetizing opportunities are at the moment limited – in spite of various claims by “experts.”

Here’s what I recommend to get going and get positioned, so that your value – either in social, business, fun, or money — can be realized:

• Sign on.

• Establish an account on each of the major medias.

• Post something.

• Tweet something.

• Connect with someone.

• Do it yourself.

• Do it every day.

And learn by updating as much as you can on your own.

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, if you want to win.

Please don’t wait.

© 2009 All Rights Reserved

We introduce our first guest blogger of our new monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary.

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.

This new decade, 2010-2020, will be known as the Transformation Decade. The definitions of transformation are several: the act or process of transforming, the state of being transformed, change in form, appearance, nature, or character.

Don’t those definitions feel like what has been already going on in your life and the world? Many of us have already been living in this state. Many of us have only recently felt the impending alterations, disruptions and reorganizations that have begun. Everything seems to be in a transforming state of shift.

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. It is not unlike the recessions of the 1970s, which was the decade of transition between the Industrial and Information Ages. Almost everything is in a state of shift, in a state of being transformed.

To those that may think we are still in the Information Age let me ask you a question I often ask audiences: raise your hand if you don’t have enough information in your life? Of course no one raises their hand. Value, to some degree, is base upon scarcity. If there is too much information, it no longer has value. What will have value in the Shift Age and this new Transformation Decade is attention. The information you put your attention on is what becomes valuable. The question PR professionals must dynamically answer is how can you create attention that therefore creates value?

Think about all that is going on in your life and in the world. The way we communicate has and will continue to change in form, appearance (our gadgets are vastly different that even five years ago) and character (how many of you text or tweet regularly versus even three years ago). The shape of our relationships is changing. The shape of how we work, how we live and how and in what we travel are all changing. The economy and the workplace are changing and being reshaped.

In the next ten years there will be a level of transformation probably unmatched in human history. Just take a look at some disruptions that will transform the PR business:

• Humanity’s relationship to communication technology is rapidly changing and will bring on-going transformation socially, culturally and economically.
• Media will be completely different than it is today. We are only at the initial creative destruction phase of it now
• The workplace will be transformed as the place part becomes less and less relevant. Human beings will only need to be in the same place to collaborate, as work is increasingly defined as collaborative.
• The Internet and our rapid fire use of mobile digital devices to access it has created a pulsing, synaptic place of unprecedented interactivity that on a global scale is starting to feel like a global brain. It is a live, morphing place called the Neurosphere that is not only transforming us now, but could well be the technological model for a new level of human consciousness in 10-20 years. That is an evolutionary level of transformation. An evolution shift of transformative effect.. It may be hard for you to envision, but we are rapidly moving in that direction.

The list could go on and on as to what will be transformed. Take a snapshot look at your life now with all your relationships, ways of thinking, ways of living and ways of looking at the world I promise you that when you take the same snapshot in ten years you will astounded as to the transformation that will have occurred. The speed of change is now both constantly accelerating and environmental. It may feel uncomfortable as familiar things and ways of living are disintegrating. Transformation, to varying degrees, is always uncomfortable. We are and will be transformed in the next ten years.

We have entered the Transformation Decade.