Although no inmedianauts were stranded yesterday when Ottawa-based Zoom Airlines suspended operations as it sought bankruptcy protection in the face of actions by several of its leaseholders and creditors, we very easily could have been. Ever since our Danny Sullivan repatriated himself to his native Scotland and set up office for us in Glasgow a few years back, we have been enthusiastic and regular passengers on this quirky little airline that offered good prices, excellent service and a peculiar schedule that gave us direct, non-stop flights for most of the year between Ottawa and Glasgow. It’s as though Zoom was made for us.

Our best experience happened when we flew Danny on Zoom to Ottawa on fairly short notice when a long-time client hired a new marketing vice president and wanted to talk about an aggressive new program. The veep, who had flown in from San Jose, did not believe that Danny had come to town just for that meeting. Turned out, however, that it cost less and took less time for Danny to get there than it did for the veep!

Zoom was a favoured carrier for my family, too. In the winter, Zoom used to offer non-stop weekend service between Ottawa and St. Maarten that could see a winter-weary citizen of this frozen northern capital get on a plane at about 6:30 a.m. and be frolicking in the warm Caribbean by noon. And three summers ago, we flew Zoom to Scotland for a family vacation in England, Scotland and Ireland.

From a PR and crisis communications perspective, though, Zoom does not seem to be managing this potentially fatal setback nearly as well as it managed its early growth and success. News stories have focused on the suddeness of the shut down, the lack of communication to stranded passengers and the apparent abandoning of their posts by Zoom personnel at airports. This does not create the kind of forgiveness and understanding a company needs to successfully emerge from such a crisis. And that would be too bad for Zoom and those of us who enjoyed flying with them.

Technorati Tags: Zoom Airlines, travel, bankruptcy protection, crisis communications

One battle-ready sword with really, really blunt edges (hey, common sense still has to prevail): $120

One chain mail hauberk and coif (that’s a shirt and hood for the uninitiated): $300

One shield: $150

Getting some adrenaline-pumping exercise that reminds us of the time when a man’s sword had to be as sharp as his wit: Priceless

As a wordsmith by profession and preference, there is nonetheless only so much time I can spend in front of a computer weaving words into artful prose. I need to take a break and try my hand at something else for awhile, usually something that involves sweat and sore muscles. Everything in moderation, after all.

For the past several years, its been one home improvement project or another. This time around, I am finally pursuing a long-held intention to take a course with the disarming title of “Chivalrous Sword Handling,” which will inevitably lead to a greater investment in arms and armor for regular engagements sparring with actual steel weapons (With all practical considerations made for safety, of course).

Whatever your particular bent, there is no underestimating the value of regular physical activity to burn off stress and the calories accumulated from sitting at a desk all day. I’ve known more than one workaholic, with a tummy only Timmy’s could make, hit with a heart attack or similar lifestyle-related illness at far too young an age.

So a note of caution as we say goodbye to August and head into September and the flurry of work-related activity that usually goes with it. Don’t let long and busy days at the office lead you to flop for the evening at home. Even a 30-minute walk after supper can work wonders. Even better, add another 10 or 15 minutes over lunch to refocus the mind and shake out the lethargy of sitting at the desk.

It’s a cliche because its true: If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.

Technorati Tags: health, exercise, working,  sword handling

I was hoping to find the time today to blog about how Canadian packaged goods company Maple Leaf Foods Inc. has been responding to the outbreak of listeriosis linked to one of its meat-processing plants. In general, I have been impressed by the company’s upfront and forthright approach.

However, I really can’t improve on what Dave Fleet has written so I’m happy to provide this link to his post.

Technorati Tags: Maple Leaf Foods Inc., listeria, listeriosis, food poisoning, crisis communications

While we here at inmedia have long maintained there is little difference between bloggers and conventional journalists when it comes to pitching, we do appreciate that many bloggers do not care at all to be pitched by us PR types. That’s not usually an issue for us; as an agency specialising in business-to-business marketing public relations for technology companies, we’re interested only in those bloggers who have real influence in our clients’ markets. These folks are often journalists who have simply moved to this new channel, or de facto technology news sites, like engadget or gizmodo, that welcome properly crafted pitches.

Still, many bloggers are looking for a nice, polite way to tell us PR folk to stay away and Todd Defren is again advocating that bloggers be explicit about their wishes. It’s an approach, as Defren says, worth looking at.

Technorati Tags: bloggers, blogger relations, pitching bloggers, Todd Defren

The majority of smaller tech companies approach dealing with technology analysts in much the same way. That is, brief them on key milestones such as new products, major customer wins and so on, and hope to eventually make the breakthrough into one of the industry reports covering your sector. 

This is still a valid approach to dealing with analysts, but there are other ways of addressing them. Beyond being advocates of technologies and observers of trends, analysts are recognised thought leaders in the sectors that they cover. As such, they are always interested in new perspectives and visionary approaches to addressing the challenges in their markets.

Tackling this does not necessarily mean using a briefing to explain in depth how your latest product addresses these challenges - you may be better served by organising a briefing where your company’s top thought leader will simply raise the concept and discuss it in detail in a non-commercial conversation.

Why do this? Well, analysts have to sit through countless briefings and often are rarely engaged more than to silently take in the information being fed to them. By hopefully engaging them in more of a discussion of a concept than a barely altered sales pitch, you may raise your company’s estimation in their eyes, but more importantly, you may bring some influence to the perspective of a key thought leader in your market. Even if you don’t receive direct coverage, your reward may be that your vision sparks debate and commentary at the analyst level… Not a bad return on a conversation.

For more on working with analysts, check out my previous posts titled Analyze This and Analyze This (continued).

Technorati Tags: analyst relations, thought leadership

“Do what you’re supposed to do to the best of your ability and be content with the results.”

Okay, that isn’t a catchy quote from some luminary of historical note. I just made it up. But it is along the same lines of the general theme that Francis espoused the other day with that comment from Canada’s oldest Olympian, 61-year-old Ian Millar, “If you persevere long enough, if you do the right things long enough, good things will happen to you.”

These are words to take to heart for any pursuit in order to reach a state of acceptance and satisfaction, as opposed to a stressed-out state of frustrated discontent. Do the best that your skills, experience and resources allow and find satisfaction in the fact that you’ve done all you can do, rather than feel miserable that the outcome of your effort was less than desired. It’s the best way to evaluate objectively how the results could be improved and muster the courage to try again.

I raise the point because John Greer at Catching Flack blogged today about Five Ways to Make Pitching More Productive and Less Painful. He talks about how many PR people dread pitching the media due to fear of rejection and the expectation of a churlish response.

Well, as any of us in this business know, churlish rejection is a fact of life. There’s no way around it. However, as John points out, if you’ve done the necessary homework to understand the story you’re pitching, to provide relevant and factual information, and know why the journalist should be interested, there’s no reason for fear and stress. You’ve done your job to the best of your ability. If this fish won’t bite, reel in the hook and cast in another direction.

Like they say in sales, every “no” is a step closer to a “yes.”

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, media relations, pitching

“If you persevere long enough, if you do the right things long enough, good things will happen to you.”

This is such a gorgeous quote, I simply couldn’t resist blogging about it even though it has absolutely nothing to do with technology or public relations.

This marvelous sentiment came yesterday from Canada’s oldest Olympian, Ian Millar, who, at 61, has finally snagged an Olympic medal, the only significant trophy in equestrian competition that had evaded him. It wasn’t for lack of trying; Millar has competed at nine games stretching all the way from the era of Spitz in Munich in 1972 to Phelps in Beijing in 2008.

Congratulations, Ian. You’re an inspiration and a testament to the value of perseverance.

[tag] Ian Millar, perseverence, Olympics [/tags]

I still remember the day on the schoolyard when I picked up a pair of bent twigs to serve as an imaginary pistols and offered one to my classmate for an impromptu game of cops and robbers.

“I’m not allowed to do that,” he told me solemnly.

“Do what?”

“Play with guns.”

“But it’s just a stick,” I said.  “It’s not a real gun.”

I was around eight years old at the time and it came as quite a shock to learn his parent’s religious convictions precluded my classmate from participating in what I considered to be a harmless bit of fun. Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians and various other activities now tarnished by PC’s broad brush were an integral part of my childhood.

But, thirty years later, with a boy of my own, that perspective has obviously changed. That’s not to say my son won’t enjoy these kinds of activities with his old man (he is the proud owner of a plastic sword complete with light and sound effects, after all), but I’ve become much more sensitive over the years to the insidious influence of the almighty dollar on the marketing agenda of big business, especially when it comes to marketing merchandise to children.

Case in point. My wife is a volunteer tester for the Canadian Toy Testing Council. Every month there’s a new batch of toys that are supposed to be appropriate for children my son’s age (three+), to be tested, reviewed and, well, played with.

A recent item was a pair of over-sized foam Incredible Hulk Smash Hands that kids wear like boxing gloves. The kid is encouraged to smash and bash, with each impact generating some suitable sound effect or a quote from the Hulk’s extensive vocabulary. My son hates the things. One parent for whom my wife provides home daycare services said they wouldn’t even have accepted them for testing.

For the record, the Incredible Hulk was rated a relatively kid-friendly PG-13 (not that I put much faith in the movie ratings system. A rant on that subject you can find here from my days at the Ottawa Business Journal). There are plenty of toys out there too for the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, which also gets off easy, despite its dark and violent tone, with a PG-13 rating. The recommended age range for these toys starts at four years old.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a problem with toys being marketed to a kid who can’t even see the movie for another nine birthdays.  I’m glad the marketing PR services I provide usually involve technologies and products that would bore a four-year-old to tears.

Technorati Tags: marketing, merchandising, toys, Canadian Toy Testing Council

Who’d have thunk that my self-professed word nerdiness could come together with my social conscience on a single web site with a terribly addictive premise?

Well, in the world of the web, all mash-ups are possible, and the quirky but fascinating site Free Rice manages to marry these seemingly disparate interests of mine with a little game that sees rice donated to feed hungry people with every correct answer visitors give to a vocabulary question. For every word you get right, the site’s backers donate 20 grains of rice through the United Nations World Food Program to help feed hungry people. The money to buy the rice is generated through banner ads on the site.

Twenty grains of rice doesn’t sound like much, but since launching the site in October 2007, Free Rice has donated more than 41 billion grains of rice to people in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Uganda, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar. That’s an amount approaching 900 metric tonnes of rice!

And the game is dangerously addictive. You rise through levels as you play, climbing one level every time you correctly answer three questions in a row. Get one wrong, though, and you slip down a level. A little counter at the bottom tracks your progress. I got to level 48 before having to quit yesterday evening so I could join my family in that other highly addictive current preoccupation, the Olympics.

(I am indebted — I think! — to Nicole Ferraro over at Internet Evolution for bringing this site to my attention. I am afraid, Nicole, to go anywhere near the other great time-wasters you list…!)

Technorati Tags: vocabulary, hunger, feed the world, Free Rice

I originally wrote this post for DangleTech, Canada’s largest community-sponsored website dedicated to the issues surrounding Canada’s technology sector, where I contribute a weekly blog called “In the media: It’s where you need to be.” But my editor here at inmedialog, who’s been itching all week to see a post on this subject, decided we should also post it here.

One of the most frequent and, to tell the truth, most boring and least helpful, themes in the blogosphere is the all-too-common declaration by one blogger or another that PR is dead. With all the authority of his well-read blog, Robert Scoble started the ball rolling again this week with a post Monday that celebrated the fact that he actually heard about a new company – more of a raw beta concept, really – from some source other than a PR or corporate flack.

Leaving aside for the moment the question why this should be so noteworthy – Hey, Robert: It’s a rare day I don’t learn something new or hear about a new company, product or service with no involvement whatsoever from a PR or corporate flack. I call it waking up, opening my eyes and walking down the street! – he went on to extrapolate from this that PR is dead.

I’m not going to weigh in with comments on all the arguments raised both pro and con the silly idea. If you really have nothing better to do, if Canada’s not doing well enough at the Olympics to draw you in to all the TV coverage and you have time to kill, then you can see a good round-up here.

Notwithstanding the tediousness of this apparent fixation on the part of a lot of the blogosphere to bury PR and speak its eulogy, two useful points emerge.

The first is that when it comes to understanding public relations, the full scope of activities that fall under its rubric and the even fuller scope of marketing activities of which PR is merely a subset, Robert Scoble is strictly a blind man touching an elephant. Like many of his blog brethren, all Scoble ever sees (touches) is the story pitch. And since they are on the receiving end of a staggering number of poorly written and badly targeted pitches, it’s no wonder these guys see no value in what most PR people are doing with them.

In fact, the pitch is the very end of a lengthy and intensive process that, if done properly, creates tremendous value, both for the idea being pitched and for the person to whom it is being pitched. It’s merely one arrow in a PR quiver that, in turn, is merely one weapon in a marketing armoury.

The second useful point is that in many ways, Scoble and his colleagues are right. PR is dead. At least, PR – as it has been practiced by too many for far too long – is dead. That old way saw (mal)practitioners source huge lists of so-called contacts from commercial media directories, mail-merge them with their news release or story pitch, and then blast it out to hundreds, if not thousands. It didn’t work in the old days any better than it does now. All that has changed is that the targets of those useless pitches are naming and shaming those who do it. (I did weigh in on the death of the media directory.)

Far from the blogosphere sounding the death knell for PR, it has focused attention on the most egregious practices of the industry. While I still find most of the arguments tendentious and silly, at least they’re serving this one useful public service.

Technorati Tags: Death of PR, public relations, marketing communications, Scoble