They say mistakes are often the cost of learning what not to do…

But sometimes the price of those mistakes are simply too steep. Such was the case with the Gap when it rolled out its new logo design last October. It received a very public outcry of protests that flooded the Internet with derisions, mockeries, parodies as well as amateur re-design suggestions. It cost the company two years of work in developing the new logo, oodles of money for its retraction as well as damage control, not to speak of a solid dent in reputation and loyal customer base.

The lesson learnt at that time had little to do with the logo itself and everything to do with the manner in which the new logo was introduced — autocratic and not inclusive. In short, they misjudged their 2010 customer. In my blog of October 12, 2010, and similarly in a blog about the Starbucks logo change, I posed the question as to who owns a brand — the company or its customers?

The answer became very clear, very quickly…

So now in mid-2011, and in the face of poor quarterly profit showings, the Gap is happily changing course, with a new focus on Millennials – the more than 60 million 18-to-35-year olds in the United States, about 20 percent of the population, according to the recent census. This is a sharp shift in focus for a company that had traditionally lured a wide audience with neutral workplace basics, classic denim and bright scarves. The clothes, however lost their allure in recent years. Still, anyone under 30 has most likely never worn Gap jeans and it could either be an uphill battle to unseat that generation from its favorites such as Abercrombie & Fitch Co., American Eagle Outfitters Inc., Aeropostale Inc. and Urban Outfitters Inc. or prove to be a lucrative untapped market.

But this time around, the Gap’s campaign seems to be heading in the right direction, making engagement a key component of its new campaign roll out.

The focus is on interactivity, inclusivity and transparency — much valued elements by this generation. Videos showing “real” stories of how Gap clothing is designed and manufactured in their redesigned “start-up look” LA design studio, will be released on blogs and social media websites, making them available to influential bloggers and other social media mavens. The videos will appear on websites frequented by the young crowd such as Daily Candy, Hulu, Pandora and Rolling Stone. Even the traditional aspects of the campaign have social, digital tweaks in that Gap’s new print ads will feature real-live people dressed in Gap clothes found on the street, in places from NY and Texas to Manchester, England and Nakameguro, Japan, for they will direct people to the online videos.

But the Gap is not above using some time-honored lures, as in feeding people. Taco trucks will be parked in front of stores in major U.S. cities, some with celebrity chefs on board who will create gourmet concoctions at cheap prices and offer free food to anyone wearing Gap clothing, And yes, the photographer will be waiting to take their pictures of anyone wearing Gap clothing for the Gap’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

Clearly, Millenials will decide for themselves if the Gap is to become a cool brand once again. But wouldn’t it be cool for the marketing “poster child” of 2010 to now roll out a marketing template for engagement that other manufacturers could adopt as their own?

It’s always true that a good idea bears repeating…

Richard Block

Richard Block is Vice President of Marketing for Haier America. In that capacity he leads all marketing initiatives, as well as company and product promotions, through a variety of marketing platforms. He also directs the company’s relationship with the National Basketball Association, in which Haier is named the Official HDTV of the NBA. With 30 years of experience as a marketing veteran, Mr. Block joined Haier America in June of 2006.

Q: Given that Haier has so many different product categories, how does product marketing work at Haier – does the company form different silos for the marketing of each brand, with different goals, strategies and tactics or does it all fall under one company umbrella? Does each category work with its own team, whether in house or outsourced?

A: What it really comes down to is as follows: there are many different factories, all with their own teams; marketing, product merchandising and otherwise and, everyone runs their own individual company. It’s pretty much that simple… Once the product comes to market, I work with the product marketing groups that are responsible for each individual product and discuss strategy with them. Then, based on what they (in the factory) want, I execute that strategy. As such, I don’t own that strategy, they do. I do own the Haier brand, so when it comes strictly to branding, that’s something that I can execute outside of their realm.

When you look at the NBA official partnership relationship with Haier, that’s something that I execute and do for the entire Haier brand.

When I first started here five years ago, Haier had an “unaided” awareness of about 7%; it’s tripled to almost 20%; “aided” awareness is now up to almost 40%. The truth of the matter is that I believe the NBA partnership is great for the television factory. For example, I chose to use the designation of the NBA, as an official marketing partner, for nine categories because it just sounds better, works better, looks better and feels better. Most think that it’s a very strong vehicle for the TV division, but I think the whole company benefits as well.

Q: Are all your products/product categories branded under the Haier name globally or does it differ according to regions?

A: Most of what we do is branded as Haier; however, there are sub-brands. There are many companies we’ve done business with, and even here, we have sub-brands. The only part that is a bit disappointing is that because of this, we don’t have 100% of the effort going in the same direction. When you’re doing sales for a sub-brand, you cannot really market under that brand, so the investment goes to the overall pie, and gets taken down by a notch because all the monies are not going toward one goal.

Q: Haier was recently ranked by Euromonitor International, the world’s leading independent provider of business intelligence on industries, as the number one brand of major appliances in the world. What overall strategies does your company employ to retain that position, most specifically, in the US? Does social media play an important role in connecting to your customers?

A: We are very proud of that designation. Especially so, when you take into account that Haier America is a fairly young player in the United States (almost 12 years old), and that this designation is worldwide.

As to social media, the NBA partnership was key in growing our overall branding effort on that platform. We use other advertising and marketing vehicles that also impact the social media component. Just take a look at what was accomplished at the recently finished NBA All Star Weekend with our production of a 20-25 minute international infomercial; sponsorships of shooting stars for the 5th year before the 3-point and the Sprite Slam Dunk – all of which netted literally 1,000s of tweets and re-tweets! When I get a new analytics report following the All-Star Weekend and it shows that our onsite traffic for that weekend (or month) was the highest of the whole year — then you tell me how successful that is!

Certainly, our commitment within the digital/social media arena will continue to grow and we are already exploring and testing new programs.

Q: As a Chinese headquartered company, what are the cultural challenges that you encounter, if any, as to marketing operations?

A: Well, look there’s no question that there are challenges, but I don’t really think it’s because we are a Chinese company, rather because we are a foreign company, with people separated by social barriers and 12,000 miles. Often they just have different ways of looking at business aspects. In China, while they manufacture for a certain price, we actually have to buy it at a higher cost because we’re their customer and it costs a fortune when you consider freight, gasoline, time, energy/effort — whatever, to get it over here. So right away that’s a disadvantage. The other issue is in terms of distribution. China believes in a localized strategy. In China, there are hundreds of Haier kiosks and stores. As such, they have a built in customer distribution base, which is a tremendous advantage, especially when you consider that in the West we deal with the Best Buys, the Lowes, the Targets, the Wal-Mart’s or wherever in the world we sell. In the book, The Higher Way, it clearly delineates the Chinese localized strategy. This also works in our favor, since China believes that their partners here in the US, certainly know and understand the social ways of this country best, and while offering help/guidance/support, they do allow us to run the business from New York, as opposed to China.

Q: Haier’s partnerships with the NBA offer a great tie-in opportunity with a key target audience. Based on that, is Haier planning to expend its partnership program beyond sports?

A: We are always looking for new partnerships. I literally take hundreds of calls and emails about new opportunities every day. I can’t even begin to fathom how many people want to do business with us. Often I feel much like Michael Douglas’s character in Wall Street, when he said, “I look at hundreds of deals and I say yes to one of them.” We need to be very discerning. I don’t necessarily think that sports are the best value, nor the right targeted demographics across the board. For, at the end of the day, although we want to see our television and electronics businesses continue to grow, we also want to continue to do business as a leading air conditioner manufacturer in the United States and the number one compact refrigerator manufacturer in the United States. Really, we see the thrust, the focal point, of our growth, in major appliances. It’s no secret that we want to continue to grow as the number one appliance brand in the world and continue that strength here on the shores of the US.

Chris Hosford

Hosford began his career in journalism where he worked as a newspaper and magazine editor for more than 10 years. He then was “seduced by the dark side”, as his former auto journalist colleagues teased him, and joined Hill and Knowlton to provide support and counsel to his first client, Mazda. Now, with more than 25 years in public relations, including stints at two top ten PR agencies and two automakers, he couldn’t be happier working for Hyundai. He says that taking a brand from one that was the butt of late night comics jokes to one that today is frequently mentioned in the same breath with other top auto makers has been the most fun job he’s ever had. Exhausting, but fun.

Q: The past two years have been challenging times for the automotive industry, to say the least. Can you point to new strategies that were implemented during that time that impacted Hyundai to stay above board during these years of turmoil?

A: Our strong move into digital media has been critical in our success. While it has increased the workload, it has been vital not just in our efforts to reach more journalists and, ultimately, consumers but it has been and continues to be a great learning lab for all our staff. And, it is not just a great way to speak to the media and consumers, but also a great way to listen. However, with all that is new in our business, we can never forget that the basics — great writing, great relationships and great vision. These remain the keystones of everything we do.

While also not a new strategy, the close collaboration with our AOR Ketchum continues to be a source of strength for our overall efforts. And, let’s not forget — a VERY good sense of humor!

Q: Hyundai’s Super Bowl ad was funny and quirky. Considering that social media did much to extend the impact of many Super Bowl ads pre-, during- and post- game, did Hyundai’s corporate communications strategies create programs to tie in with the ad or was it designed as a stand alone one-time exposure?

A: At Hyundai we can’t imagine an effort today that would “stand alone.” Everything we do has to operate on multiple levels over weeks, months, sometimes years. In the case of advertising PR, our efforts soon will be further enhanced as we move into a new building where all the PR and Marketing team members will be on the same floor and, literally, right next to each other. We believe collaboration, not antagonism, with marketing is a must for success today.

In regards to speaking with the media about our advertising, a very important part of our communications efforts is to demonstrate how Hyundai in the U.S. has turned into a leader in the auto industry. We utilize some of our advertising efforts, such as those in the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards to demonstrate how dynamic the brand is becoming. Be it an eye-catching ad on the Super Bowl or selling more 40 mpg vehicles than anyone else in the industry, everything we do is designed to help consumers see Hyundai as a great brand to do business with.

Q: Hyundai has been a big player in the “hybrid” car space, and in particular, its Sonata Hybrid is significantly different from other hybrids. Is the adoption rate of such cars in general changing in pace and if so, what factors can you point to that are significant?

A: The leadership that Hyundai is beginning to assert in the auto industry can clearly be seen in the Sonata Hybrid and our company’s approach to hybrid vehicles. We were the first in the hybrid market with lithium-ion polymer batteries, where the light weight and small size of these batteries is critical to improving performance while reducing weight.

We were the first company to optimize a hybrid for highway, not city, driving. Why? Because research, including that from the federal government, showed that the average driver spends 57% of her time on the highway. We wanted the hybrid benefit to be available to the consumer on roads where they spent the majority of their time.

The question we ask in designing, engineering and selling every vehicle is: what does the customer want? It is that point of view that informs our actions and approaches in PR, just as in all other parts of the company.

Q: Hyundai has several well-established niche audiences for its products. Can you briefly discuss their separate influencers and program ideas that have attracted those influencers over and above product media relations? For example: is social media being tapped as an engagement platform and, if so, can you briefly describe tactics used to trigger conversations?

A: While Hyundai does work in several niches, it has grown into the 6th largest automaker in the U.S. and the 5th largest car company in the world. Like every major vehicle manufacturer, niche products are an important part of our portfolio of products. What we’ve observed is that no matter the niche, people want to buy a vehicle from a company they trust and respect, one that they know will stand behind their products.

Our PR efforts are always focused in helping the media and consumers see various aspects of those characteristics. Whether it is protecting an owner’s investment by providing a luxury car like the Hyundai Equus that has an unsurpassed residual value in its class or a sports car like the race-winning Genesis Coupe, the overt messages may be different but underlying those we always come back to trust, respect and safety and security. We’re still smaller than some of our competitors, so we have to be sure every messages ties back to simple key values all our customers understand and want, regardless of the niche the vehicle may occupy.

That said, we do spent significant time preparing for every product launch focusing on the most appropriate audiences and seeking the best media outlets to reach them. In that regard, we view social media as simply another branch of media and target it from that aspect. Not so long ago, media such as Facebook and Twitter were called “new media.” Today, that is old thinking. Social media are an integral part of the media and are always part of every launch plan we write and execute. The question is never “if” it is “which.”

Q: As a longtime corporate communications automotive expert, what would you have done differently, given the recall exposure that Toyota received last year? What counsel would you have given their PR department?

A: In a crisis no one bats 100%. That fact is part of the nature of a crisis. So, it is easy to criticize from the outside and Toyota has taken a lot of hits in terms of its communications regarding the crisis over the last year.

Unlike others, I think that on balance they did a superb job. They got their message points down early and stuck to those. They didn’t blame the customer, which would have been easy to do so. They didn’t expect the problem would disappear in a few days and dug in for the long haul. They put up with brutal and unfair criticism in Congress and stayed calm, if not completely unshaken. They let an appropriate amount of time pass and then used all communications channels to remind their customers that Toyota had always been a brand they could trust and that they still were.

Could they have used a more dynamic, sympathetic top spokesperson? I think so, but you work with the cards you are dealt. Last month their sales rose 45% and they remain one of the toughest competitors in the auto space. Given the severity of the crisis and the enormous amount of unavoidable negative coverage, such a rapid recovery is remarkable.

Taco Bell is now really over the top in employing defensive tactics to counter that Alabama lawsuit that claims an independent test of the fast food chain’s beef filling was actually only 35% beef, which begs the question as to what’s in the rest of the 65%.  In fact, this subject has been invaluable material for late night pundits in the last week, who ranted and joked at the company’s expense – as an example: the head writer for the Letterman show chuckled, “we’re all finally going to find out where the Taco Bell Chihuahua went.”

Given the ongoing merciless dialogue, one can only wonder at the choices that the fast food chain made in going on the offensive with an ad blitz to counterattack the claims, taking out full page ads in newspapers across the country featuring a headline that read, “Thank you for suing us” in big, bold letters.

Really?  I don’t get the purpose.  Apparently, the somewhat sarcastic shock tactic was meant as an attention grabber to set the record straight as to the “real” story about the beef ingredients of the filling, which the ads claimed are “88% beef and 12% Secret Recipe.”  I got confused with the math because the ads went on to claim that, “ours is 100% beef USDA inspected, “with water and spices added that bring the mixture’s beef quotient down to 88%.” That’s the 12%  “secret recipe?”

Unlike McDonald’s who has always marketed their “secret recipe” and Coke’s well-known “secret sauce,” this is the first we hear of Taco Bell’s “secret recipe.”

Anyway it did not convince.

Taco Bell’s next try was to shore up its reputation with the launch of a “Talk” campaign which sounds like a right move, meant to engage and reassure taco lovers.  Except that the campaign features Taco Bell’s own employees, restaurant managers and franchisees.

Not convincing. What would employees say other than sing the company’s line?

I would suggest to Taco Bell that, rather than using ads (or controlled media) to counterattack questionable claims, consider a PR solution and turn to stellar examples such as:

• Domino’s Pizza playbook, and the tactics used when responding to its own PR fiasco when a video surfaced on YouTube showing disgusting and filthy antics from a server. Domino’s response was a bold campaign showing open frankness in conversations, all over the social networks, with a “mea culpa” and aiming to do better – all of which netted the company an almost 12% increase in sales in the third quarter of 2010.
• Toyota’s crisis book with the Prius, when it was accused of safety issues.  Toyota retained an independent third party study to prove whether or not the car was in fact safe and was cleared of all safety suspicions involving that car.

Most credible would be for Taco Bell to retain a third-party independent testing lab to come up with its own conclusions.  And should the beef come up short, stop the misguided claims and embark on a campaign that engages and reassures as to taste, price, convenience and health safety.  Surely taco lovers (including me) would be appreciative.  And should the beef indeed contain the 88% that they claim – problem solved.

I would caution that a bit of media training for its CEO would go a long way for the company’s reputation.  A video posted on YouTube has the CEO quoted, in defense of the company’s recipe as, “Taco Bell = 12 pounds of food for 3 dollars. I don’t care what’s in it, everything we eat is apparently gonna give us cancer and/or kill us anyway.”

I couldn’t help thinking, while watching last night’s Jeopardy game, the purpose of it all – other than unabashed PR for IBM’s four-year accomplishment and a ratings boost for Jeopardy.

Last night’s game had, true to format, three contestants — two of the smartest winners that ever played the game, winning millions on the show, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, and the third – a machine, IBM’s Watson, that debuted as a “contestant.”  OK, not the machine itself, which takes up the space of 10 refrigerators, but its avatar which, true to corporate form, looks like IBM’s own Smarter Planet logo, that is, the globe motif and “a swarm of particles — a single “leader” chased by the others — to spin around on the globe’s surface, indicating that Watson is thinking.”

Well, the result is formidable, but for Watson to show off on Jeopardy is a pure stunt – albeit, a brilliant one for IBM.  Taking the machine out of the lab and putting it to a test in front of millions of everyday viewers who could enjoy the wonderment of it all, makes us wonder what IBM was thinking when they pitted champions against a machine…

It wasn’t much fun to watch champion Ken Jennings squirm at having a machine beat his lightning-fast speed at buzzing in answers. Apparently champions get to the buzzer first more than 60% of the time, but Watson can sometimes push that buzz-in rate above 70% and with amazing accuracy.  Look, lowly mortals were not meant to outrun cars, out calculate calculators, or outrace avatars.  For that, humans have built their machines.

For IBM to chose Jeopardy as a try out for its innovation on which it spent almost four years and millions of dollars, researching and scanning a universe of knowledge into its capacious 15 trillion-byte memory for great literature, mathematical and scientific formulas, the name of every pope and Best Actress Oscar winner, is pure silliness.

It’s not the first time that IBM has strutted out its display of artificial intelligence machines. The last stunt like this was when another IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue beat Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov at a chess game.  Noticed that interest in chess tournaments have been spiraling down?  Maybe Trebec should start looking at where public interest in trivia is heading after this.  If a machine can beat champions at their own prowess, why amass knowledge of trivia? If you can’t get even get a crack at one-third of the clues, what’s the point of being there?

Jennings said it best. “I don’t think we want to outsource our thinking to any machine.  I don’t remember phone numbers anymore because my cellphone does, can’t figure out what time of day it is by looking at the sun, but thinking and recall and analysis – these things are too central. Yes, machines save us effort; dangerous, backbreaking tasks are now performed by robots; algorithms predict and feed our musical tastes; computers fly planes and predator, drones. But there is a point at where convenience ends and laziness begins. We’re freeing up a great deal of mental space – for what?”

If you can answer any question with a keystroke, it’s no fun to be a know-it-all when everyone else is, too.

No wonder we seem worried that machines might take over.

Happily post-Jeopardy, Watson is leaving the game show arena and moving into healthcare.  It is now being prepped for its next step and being fed electronic medical records, doctors’ notes, patient histories, symptoms, the USP Pharmacopeia and such.

It will have no humans to slug against, only systems…

Tomi Holt

Tomi Holt has been director of communications for Jelly Belly Candy Company since last year. She ran a boutique agency in the Bay Area specializing in food and health for two decades and also worked in advertising for Young & Rubicam and Glamour magazine.

Q: With a very high level of brand awareness among consumers already in place, how does Jelly Belly continue to build brand relationships with its consumers in today’s competitive candy marketplace?

A: Our position is that style and good taste are eternal. Delivering on the promise of a surprisingly authentic flavor of Jelly Belly is our primary mission. We receive thousands of suggestions for new flavors from consumers, whether through post, email and social media and we welcome them all. However it’s not only the enjoyment of the eating experience. We are in the business of putting smiles on the faces of our consumers. The memories of pleasurable times, the creativity in flavor innovation, the brilliant colors are all areas that inspire participation and celebration.

We also look for new ways for consumers to have fun with Jelly Belly beans. We offer public tours and develop new ideas to use our product. Currently the marketing department is running a cupcake decorating promotion, which we announced through the trade and blogosphere. Also, we are out in the marketplace with a mobile tour and a series of sponsorships.  While we enjoy wonderful brand awareness, we are not content leaving it at that. We are still a small company, although we enjoy a large image. That means we leave no stone unturned. We actively reach out through the media, web, events, retail promotions and social media. By keeping the strategy squarely focused on what we do best, and having responsive media relations, we generate a good deal of buzz.

Q: Much like Kleenex has become synonymous for any brand of tissue, the Jelly Belly brand name has become synonymous with “Jelly Belly Beans” candy. How has PR/Marketing strategy adjusted to keep the Jelly Belly brand name from becoming “genericized?”

A: Our trademark attorneys just got a shiver down their backs with this question. We actively protect the brand name, even to the point of notifying media outlets when they have it wrong. Beyond that, a key PR strategy is to focus on innovation in flavor development. If you’re the first or only candy maker to figure out how to make an acai berry flavor, for example, then it’s an opportunity to position the brand as innovative and trend setting. We have a steady stream of new flavors that provides fodder for publicity.

Keeping the brand name at the forefront is also organic to everything we do. We print the Jelly Belly name on every bean–that’s about 15 billion beans – so consumers are assured they have an authentic Jelly Belly bean in hand. We use every avenue at our disposal to tell the story. We have produced a trade newsletter for more than two decades to share knowledge on quality candy making, point-of-purchase tips and retailing. For consumers our public tours are important environments for key messaging. When 700,000 visitors a year leave our facilities, they know it takes 7 to 21 days to make a Jelly Belly bean, a surprising fact to many.

Q: From a PR perspective, what factors are key drivers of consumer demand for Jelly Belly candy?

A: We hope it is love at first bite. When those of us who work for the company mention Jelly Belly, a common thing happens. People will smile and tell us what their favorite flavor is, and/or which one they don’t like. Sometimes they suggest a flavor they would like us to try, or one they wish we would ditch. We are dedicated to the largest variety of flavors in the world, and each is developed to deliver a unique taste. We play on the natural curiosity about “what will they think of next.”

Jelly Belly is not your average bag of beans. It is our mission to make the highest quality confection and maintain the highest quality standards in our business practices. That translates to stellar customer service and timely response to consumers.  We believe every interaction is an opportunity to make a new fan, even if they start out being upset. We are charged with a simple philosophy: “if there’s an issue or a problem, don’t just fix the problem, but make it better than before the issue arose.”

Q: Jelly Belly has “hung its hat” on its palate pleasing variety of natural flavors.  What is Jelly Belly’s approach to building brand loyalty in instances where consumers have not, or are not immediately able to sample the product?

A: The company is committed to active media outreach, responsiveness and high value media relations. From this office, we issue news on everything new, and not only Jelly Belly beans. Recently we launched a mellocreme candy called Peas & Carrots that brought us excellent coverage. At the very least, media want to try something new, whether they report on it or not each time.

The advent of tours opened whole new vistas for travel media outlets, which are excellent environments for telling our story in a full and interesting way. I also believe in collaborating with others who have a mutual interest and can carry our message further. That may take the form of building good relations with trade associations, working with PR teams assigned to trade shows, and supporting creative retailers with their own local media efforts. I agree with President Reagan when he said, “There’s no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”

Q: How did the connection between President Reagan and Jelly Belly come about? How did Jelly Belly maximize this stellar endorsement?

A: Our company began shipping mini jelly beans to Governor Reagan, around 1967 when he was in Sacramento. We learned from a colleague in the candy business that he was trying to give up pipe smoking and was eating the Jelly Belly beans we made. The company was very small then, and never attempted to seek an “endorsement” or to advertise the connection. Insiders in Sacramento knew about the Jelly Belly beans and the Governor sent a letter of thanks to the company saying he could hardly start a meeting without passing around the Jelly Belly beans.

It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan’s second attempt at the presidential race that the media noticed he was eating our Jelly Belly beans on the campaign trail. The San Jose Mercury News broke the story that those jelly beans came from a small Bay Area manufacturer, and the next thing Herm Rowland, our owner, knew was that Ronald Reagan won the election and was headed for his first inauguration. Suddenly the media wanted to know more about our company. The story went wildfire through the media with virtually every major outlet, including international media, reporting on the president and his affinity for Jelly Belly beans. The company made exclusive White House jars for the president to give as gifts.

While Herm Rowland agreed to comment on the news stories, the company did not advertise or promote the connection with the White House. The media coverage did more for the brand than any of those efforts would have done, and President Reagan’s personal charm and diplomacy were apparently extended through his gifts of Jelly Belly beans.

When I wrote my first press release for the company about three years into the Reagan presidency, I was told you can’t mention the president or the White House.  That was an interesting challenge. The company’s primary goal was to be respectful of the Office of the President, which sounds quaint in today’s world. The secondary goal was for consumers to love Jelly Belly beans for their good taste, not because they were a novelty preferred by a famous person. Another quaint notion that has stood the test of time, is that we now make more than fifteen times the number of Jelly Belly beans that were consumed during the early years of the Reagan administration.

By the reelection campaign for his second term we commissioned a portrait of the president made from thousands of Jelly Belly beans and that portrait went on display at our tour center in California in 1989. Again we did not advertise it, but allowed word of mouth to take a natural course. Some years later we donated a similar Jelly Belly portrait to the Reagan Library where it hangs today.

When President Reagan passed away we were amazed to see average Americans spontaneously leaving bags of Jelly Belly beans at memorial sites. Several major news outlets called wanting to know how we intended to capitalize on this, and we were appalled. Very quickly we managed to get our message across that our respect for the person, his legacy, his family and his memory meant we would not be issuing a special package or promote our brand in this way. The decision not to claim an endorsement on the basis of the connection to the president allowed us to side step what could have been very negative and crass coverage in the media.

This year, some forty-five years later, we have placed the first advertisement honoring the Reagan Centennial Celebration and Reagan Foundation. The company sponsored the kick off to the Centennial year with the entry of a float in the 2011 Rose Parade, which was awarded the National Trophy by the Tournament of Roses. Throughout this Centennial year we expect to give away a half million Jelly Belly samples with information attached about the life of the president. If there’s a lesson for all of us in this, it’s that good taste and style are eternal.

Don Spetner

Don Spetner is Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs, for Korn/Ferry International (NYSE: KFY).  He oversees strategic corporate initiatives including the formation of new products and solutions, the monetization of Korn/Ferry’s intellectual property and the integration of additional investments.  Mr. Spetner also serves as a search consultant in Korn/Ferry’s Corporate Affairs practice.  He joined Korn/Ferry in 2000 as SVP, Chief Marketing Officer.

Q: The proverbial “PR seat at the table” has remained aspirational for the most part to date.  What progress do you see in 2011 for that to move toward a norm?

A: There has never been a better time in history than right now for PR to gain a seat in the boardroom.  As the power of advertising and traditional marketing recedes, there is a growing demand for the ability to distill, package and distribute information – and these are all core skills of the public relations profession.

The dramatic change in the way information is distributed and accessed plays right in to the sweet spot of communications professionals.  Smart PR people are leading this charge in major organizations, and that trend should continue.

Q: You have been recently chosen by PRSA-LA as the “PR Professional of the Year.”  Considering that you have been on both, the corporate side of public relations and the agency side, are there any major differences that your dual experiences have given you that impact considerations for selecting executive leaders for each category?  Any particular character traits that play a role?

A: We love candidates that have experience on both the agency and corporate side.  My own personal bias is toward candidates that grow up on the agency side for a number of reasons.  First, they learn to work quickly and under tight deadline pressure.  Second, they must learn a variety of tools, approaches and even different industries – this teaches versatility, flexibility and breadth of knowledge.  The best candidates then translate that training in to a corporate job where they master the dynamics of getting things done in a large, corporate organization.  This requires patience, strategy and superb people skills.

Q: There seems to have been a significant decline in confidence in corporate leaders, particularly at the CEO & Board of Directors level.  Can the economy be faulted for it, or are there other factors or examples in particular that can be attributed to this decline?

A: I think the core reason behind the loss of confidence in our leaders is the length and depth of the recent recession juxtaposed against the dramatic rise in CEO compensation.  When unemployment is  hovering near 10% and underemployment is rampant, it is difficult and disillusioning to contend with CEO pay packages in the tens of millions of dollars.

Q: Recently, we have seen the emergence of a new title in the corporate structure, that of Chief Technology Marketing Officer.  Can you comment on this?

A: It’s kind of ironic, but the phrase that best explains this phenomenon was coined in 1964 by Marshall McLuhan when he said “The medium is the message.”  The point is that technology has completely reshaped the media business and created strange and powerful new channels for communicating.  This has disrupted the traditional marketing process, and thus it makes sense for technology and marketing to be closely aligned in a job function today.

Q: What are the traits that you find necessary to become an influential thought leader?  Are leaders formed by nature or nurture?

A: Good thought leadership is all about vision and strategy, coupled with the ability to communicate clearly and concisely.  There are reams of data supporting both sides of the nature or nurture argument, but my own belief is that leaders are born and that it’s very difficult to coach or develop the innate skills that are required to step up into a leadership role.

I came across a “feel good” story that made sense, as my last blog of 2010.

The Christmas season is traditionally a time for giving.  Clearly annual corporate charitable donations are planned and, as such, happily millions of dollars are donated to worldwide needy causes such as hunger, poverty, aids and more.

But children’s playgrounds as a needy cause?

That’s right. Now companies such as Kraft Foods, MetLife, CVS and Dr Pepper/Snapple Group, have recognized a need, in face of plummeting local tax revenues that support schools, and are pitching in to build new school playgrounds or re-build the decaying ones – literally.  It’s not just about a check, although that too, but about thousands of employee volunteers (as is the case with Kraft) that are actually getting into the nitty-gritty of the construction work, such as putting together a climbing wall, shoveling gravel onto walking paths, spreading a mountain of mulch beneath play equipment, or sanding newly-constructed picnic tables.  Even Kraft’s chief executive, Irene Rosenfeld, pitched in with the actual building of 13 playgrounds.

There are others, of course. Dr Pepper/Snapple Group has pledged $15 million this month to build or fix 2,000 playgrounds over the next three years. The insurance business, clearly another good fit, joined in. Foresters, the Canadian life insurance provider, recently pledged $1.5 million to build 20 playgrounds in the United States and MetLife continues to regularly finance playgrounds to promote physical fitness.

It’s smart. The companies’ savvy marketers are picking up Michelle Obama’s lead in the fight against childhood obesity and with it, the need for children to exercise.  Moreover, with charitable cash in shorter supply, volunteers can take up the slack and companies get to add volunteerism and community engagement to their giving.

If providing play spaces is a winning cause for the food and beverage companies that have come under fire for high calorie snacks and drinks, so be it, for it is a win-win situation for all.  If the companies are embracing the playground as an opportunity to make their names better known – and better liked – locally and to encourage employees to volunteer in their communities, so be it.  And if companies sound self-serving and a bit smug in doing so, as when Foresters CEO, George Mohacsi, said, “…we get more bang for the buck when we build a playground,” that, too, can be forgiven.

If the melding of charity, philanthropy and marketing helps children, then I say – It’s the American way.

Happy New Year to all…

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.

On February 9, 2009 I wrote a blog in which I cited the good: as in the courage shown by Captain Sullenberg in choosing to land his US Airways Flight #1549 in New York’s Hudson River, rather than risk the lives of his passengers; the bad: the poor taste shown by Dave Letterman in allowing impeached Governor of Illinois a national platform to rant about his innocence; and the madness of it all: the now infamous, Octuplet Mom.

Now come the new players in those categories…

The Good:

Trying a case in the media has most certainly been frowned upon, if not become downright illegal.  Well, a lawyer did just that in trying to save a single foreclosed home. Recognizing that fraud had been committed along the way of the foreclosure, she filed a suit against Bank of America with the hopes of exposing the fraud.  But she did not stop there.  She had the gumption to seek out media interest for the case.  She succeeded with NYT columnist Joe Nocera, who was equally outraged and got behind it.  So because of a dogged lawyer and a committed columnist with a heart, the fraud was exposed and the owner gets to stay in her home of 25 years. Hmmm, a feel good story and the power of the media…

The Bad:

Having a printed advertising section, fall out of a printed publication, has been around for a long time and is clearly recognized as an advertising supplement.  Not so with the latest iteration of it online. The venerable newspaper, The Washington Post, succumbed to a “content-as-advertisement strategy,” as seen in a specially paid advertising section, China Watch, on its site. However, it is so seamlessly embedded into the broader publication that it blends in and can be taken for straight news, since the structure is the same as other Post sections with its own sub-categories of content, like business, politics, opinion, and multimedia. The bylined stories can also be shared like all others, on Twitter or Facebook. The fact that China Watch is presented by China Daily, which is a government entity, which selects what it wants American readers to know regarding the latest and in-depth news and analysis about China’s business, society and culture, makes this section pure government propaganda, loosely disguised as news.  Tell that to the oblivious readers….

The Madness Of It All:

The madness of WikiLeaks… Not much more needs to be said, except to continue to wonder at how the outing of secret government cables was even possible, in the first place. It has put a chink in the trust and safety armor of the US Government. The embarrassment of it all is that this falls under the Freedom of Information Act, leaving the US Attorney General Eric Holder mulling over what possible laws exist that could accuse Assange of a crime – anything, maybe as strong as espionage, treason or whatever, but certainly not sexual assaults for which he is now incarcerated.  The real damage is yet to be assessed. The exposed cables have allies scurrying around to deny or disclaim diplomatic exchanges that are normally “behind the scenes” interchanges, but that are never open to public discourse.  I see the exposure of those secret cables as similar to the eavesdropping on diplomatic exchanges that are taken out of context, causing problems of enormous global proportions. Remember Ian McEwen’s Atonement novel/film where an eavesdropper causes disastrous results?

Of course, Assange has his defenders. Operation Payback is now on the prowl hacking into sites, threats of cyber wars are making headlines, as are promises of the release of more incriminating leaks if Assange is harmed. I do not believe that when our founding fathers gave us our constitutional inalienable right of free speech (now also information) that they ever considered the possibility that this very right could be turned against the very country that gave it as a gift to its people.

New laws need to be enacted or there will be more madness…

Bad week for both trust and transparency…

Just take a look at last week’s Facebook privacy leaks, when all of the top 10 apps on Facebook were leaking. It turns out that user IDs of six of the most popular apps, were leaked to advertising networks included FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and several card and puzzle games. According to Facebook, it knew nothing about it, and put the blame on the games’ publisher, Zynga who was doing the selling.

It’s not the first time that Facebook’s face has turned red…

It happened last May when the WSJ discovered that Facebook was leaking user IDs through its ad sales on the site. Facebook corrected that problem, albeit too late, of course, for some users. Apparently they never thought to see if its app publishers were leaking or selling the same information, leading us to the Zynga debacle of this week.  What will be the next thing that Facebook discovers?

Each chip dings users’ trust.

And then there was Google that admitted, also last week, that its Street View cars, scooped up emails and passwords from Wi Fi networks as they cruised around. The company is “mortified,” and has implemented changes, but maybe not quite as “mortified” as the people who trusted Google not to snoop in the first place.  According to Google they initially collected only “fragmentary” data, but the true extent of the Wi-Fi snooping was only uncovered recently by regulators outside of Google, in some cases looking into possible criminal charges.

How many dings does it take to lose trust?  Most cheating spouses usually only get one…

As to transparency, one has only to look at the non-transparent Wikileaks, the self-proclaimed whistle-blower’s web site, to know that transparency works both ways.  Under the guise of freedom of information, the site has now released two “troves” of classified military records, an earlier one on the Afghan conflict and the recent one on Iraq, causing vast damage without any attempt at substantiation.  The founder, Julian Assange, now a hunted man, has not found it necessary to reveal who is funding the organization, friend or foe, for what political cause, the source of their information, the process of evaluation as to what to publish, or even to what purpose. So much for transparency…

Transparency needs trust and trust demands transparency. It’s the measure of it that cannot quite be trusted, as in “to what extent is a company transparent?”  Clearly it’s a marketer’s choice as to what information is transparent and what is not, what is made public and what remains within corporate walls. But once parameters are established, transparency is all about consistency and how it is communicated, a formula that will surely elevate trust.

Classified military material, on the other hand, is an antonym to transparency and should remain outside of such a discussion…

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.

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.

It is either a brilliant marketing ploy calculated to boost the giant liquor company’s sales or a spontaneous lucky streak for Smirnoff.  Or not — for the popularity of the ‘Bros Icing Bros’ game, which originated on college campuses and quickly spread virally via all social media channels, may very well cast a shadow on Smirnoff’s public image and its stance on responsible drinking.

Although Smirnoff has denied that this might be a company-mounted marketing scheme, the jury is still out, considering that the winner clearly is the liquor giant itself and that it has remained largely silent. The game has also triggered sales of Smirnoff Ice drinks within demographics that probably never even heard about the sugary ice malt beverage.

The rules of the game, which had a murky start somewhere in either Florida or Vermont, are explicit on the web: a ‘bro’ hands a friend (or ‘bro) a Smirnoff Ice and he (most participants have been men) “has to drink it on one knee, all at once — unless he is carrying a bottle himself, in which case the ‘attacker’ must drink both bottles.” The listed rules include: “You cannot refuse an Ice.  If you refuse to drink the Ice you are instantly excommunicated and shunned and thus can never Ice another bro or be iced. If you are Iced by a fellow bro you can Ice block.  When presented with an Ice, you pull out an Ice of your own and reverse the Ice on your bro. The ultimate ice insult…”

The mercurial spread of ‘Bros Icing Bros’ from the Web to living rooms and offices around the country seems bizarre, when you consider that it has gone way past college fraternities and now includes young professionals and minor celebrities such as the rapper Coolio, the actor Dustin Diamond and members of the rock band The National.  According to the New York Times, there is even a campaign online that aims to Ice Ashton Kutcher, who often serves as a kind of Kevin Bacon of Web memes, linking disparate areas of the Internet in fewer than six degrees.

Here’s the rub…If it is a social media trend that sparked spontaneously, the game will play out virally until the next ‘thing’ comes along, that is, unless Smirnoff finds ways to disavow the game.

However, it can also end abruptly if the young ‘Bros” get a sense that they have been co-opted by the brand for its own purposes, that they’re being used, in fact, to market a drink that, by all accounts, they really don’t like. But this will surely come back to “bite” the Smirnoff brand.

It’s every company’s dream to have sales rocket through the perennial roof without spending for a marketing campaign.  But this is about a game that extols uncontrolled drinking, with one particular product, with the potential of youths of questionable drinking age, participating.

It raises doubts…

A Smirnoff company statement says, “We never want under-age ‘icing’ and we always want responsible drinking.” Well, that’s good. But if, in fact, Smirnoff had nothing to do with initiating the game, how about taking a stronger stance to distance the company from all the ‘Icing’?

Not happening as yet.  Sales are good.

Twitter can sometimes be foreboding. One logs in, takes a look at that ominous “What’s going on?” question and may think . . . “What is going on?”  And that person may not have an answer.  Sitting there? Drinking water?  Procrastinating on a project?

Looking for something to discuss, the “Twitter-blocked” may browse through the main feed searching for inspiration.

Stanlopez forget about it.

Covid My buddy broke his collar bone.

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Ronmalone My 12-year-old is great at Photoshop!

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Mikehilton Time to close the laptop.

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Nothing.

The Twitter-blocked may look around the office hoping for something to tweet about. Color of the walls maybe . . . or perhaps how quickly the coffee has gotten cold.  Nothing is clicking.

The Twitter-blocked is generally not using Twitter to talk about “coffee” or “sitting there,” instead he/she uses Twitter to build a brand presence. The Twitter-blocked understands that endless tweets about the brand won’t work and that there needs be a genuine connection with the Twitter community. A trusted network builds meaningful relationships, thereby strengthening the brand. Sounds easy, right?

But what to tweet about?

When I have “Twitter-block”, I resort to my personal “C.R.A.S.H.” formula:

Comment
Reply
Ask
Share
Help

Comment
Every time you go into Twitter, tweet something. Anything.  It could be “Good morning, Twitter,” or “Sitting down to start my day,” or anything benign.  Just write.  Once you do that, the rest comes easy. The hardest part of filling out a blank page is writing the first sentence. Just get something out and be natural.  Twitter isn’t always about broadcasting your brand; sometimes you can just talk. Casual conversation builds trust within your network and identifies that the brand is supported by real people. It is easier for people to connect with a person than it is for them to connect with a logo or product.

Reply
Reply to someone. Find a tweet and reply to it.  It doesn’t have to be Shakespearean, just say, “@neatfollower Good point!” or “@hungryfollower Yeah, pizza sounds good now” or “@Xfdgg Why do I need 10,000 followers?”

Ask
Ask a question. The question could be something like: “How does one get past Twitter-block?” Or it could be a discussion question about your industry. Or something personal like “What is going on with all of you today?” Questions encourage conversation and the more people that you respond to, the more conversations evolve. Check your @replies frequently and make sure that you aren’t missing out on connecting with someone.

Share
Share something. Either tweet a link for a blog you’ve read or retweet something interesting someone else said.  You can pipe in many RSS feeds into FriendFeed and easily post them on Twitter straight from there.  You can even tie your blog into FriendFeed so that it tweets whenever there is a new post.  There are Twitter applets and Firefox apps that will help you tweet from wherever you are browsing. Make it a habit to simply share what you find as you find it.  Link retweets are the most popular type of tweet for a reason.  Most people are there to find news and websites, and if you post interesting things people will notice you more.

Help
Help people. Use Twitter Search (or some other 3rd party search system such as Monitter.com or any of the Twitter desktop applications) and find conversations that you can contribute to. Search by whatever your expertise is and jump in – give advice, help people that are asking questions and peddle your smarts.

Use hashtags (#) on your topics so that they reach a broader base of people, such as: “Writing press releases is good for your SEO! #PR #SEO”. When you use hashtags the tweet shows up in a feed on Twitter Search, which many people follow.

Using the C.R.A.S.H. formula once a day keeps you a valuable and contributing member of Twitter. Leveraging your own expertise and the benefits of your brand in each of those steps will build awareness. But most importantly, C.R.A.S.H. will help you get rid of that dreaded Twitter-block.

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!

Numbering over 70 million and spending over 200 billion dollars annually, Gen Y has changed the playing field for marketers. Immune to traditional marketing tactics, marketers had to reinvent themselves in order to reach the Gen-Y target, effectively flipping the marketing equation in just a few years.

->Back to 25 PR Defining Moments

->View the Complete List

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.