It’s not uncommon to sit down with a startup technology company for an initial discussion about a potential PR engagement and have a conversation that goes something like this:

Tech company exec: “I think we need to start doing some PR and I’d like you to present us with some ideas.”

PR agency: “Er, okay, but can you first give us some idea of why it is that you think PR will help your business at this time?”

Exec: “Well, I was hoping that you could tell us that …”

Of course, at this point the conversation typically becomes an exercise that should really have been started before the agency even entered the equation. That is, to explore what are the primary reasons for engaging a PR program, and what it is ultimately supposed to achieve.

Yes, the PR firm brings the expertise needed to plan and execute an effective program, but they are not the experts in your business … you are. Can you really expect a PR agency to sit down at the first meeting and tell you how they can help you achieve your goals or overcome certain challenges, when they have little idea what those goals and challenges are? Of course not. PR is not a cookie-cutter proposition, and its practitioners work best when they can apply their knowledge to a specific scenario, which invariably changes dramatically from company to company.

This doesn’t have to be an extensive exercise, and the information needed to get things rolling is probably common knowledge within your organization. Simply ensure that you have a fairly clear idea of what it is that you expect from doing PR, and then you can expect to have a valuable conversation about what the experts can do to help you.

Technorati Tags: public relations, strategy, business plan, technology company

There is no better time than now to start a technology company in Canada, Montreal-based serial entrepreneur Austin Hill told a sold-out crowd at last night’s inaugural Ottawa Founders and Funders dinner.

Hill told the entrepreneurs and various investors gathered at the Velvet Room how he raised US$25 million on a US$100-million pre-revenue valuation of his company Zero-Knowledge Systems Inc. (now called RadialPoint) just as the whole tech sector was going kaflooie at the beginning of this decade. The tough times that followed taught him very difficult lessons about being an entrepreneur as he was obliged to lay off employees he had personally recruited and induced to move to Montreal.

RadialPoint emerged from the meltdown as a much stronger company, Hill said, because of this focus on creating value. And the same opportunity exists today, he insisted.

“People who understand technology and people who have money and know how to make it work effectively have never existed together in Canada like they do today,” he said, making this “a great time for Canadian startups.”

Hill got chuckles from at least the founders in the room when he asked what you get when “you cross a lemming with a sheep?” The answer, of course, is a venture capitalist, and the current economic meltdown means only the truly committed risk-takers will be left standing. Tough times have a way of “washing out some of the people who weren’t serious about our sector in the first place,” he said.

I managed a brief aside with Hill that I used to ask him about his latest venture, Akoha. I have been curious ever since I signed on to the game whether it was purely a philanthropic undertaking or whether there was a revenue model behind it somewhere. “A very powerful revenue model,” Hill assured me before going into some fascinating details I won’t spill here since I neglected to get his permission to do so. But go take a look at the site for yourself.

Curiously, I was just this morning able to personally experience a sharp contradiction to one of Hill’s contentions, although I suspect he’d be happy to hear about it. Ottawa and other tech-heavy Canadians cities lack the kind of meeting places, like coffee shops, where you can wander in and be sure to run into people you need to meet, he suggested, saying that was his common experience in California. Well, for what it’s worth, I wandered into my friendly neighbourhood Bridgehead this morning only to run into Scott Lake. We spent a good 40 minutes chatting about his newest venture, ThinkSM. While we were doing so, I pointed out the head of one of Ottawa’s largest integrated communications agencies who wandered in while Scott recognised some major investor who was also at Bridgehead having a meeting over coffee. So maybe we do have some of that gravitational pull Hill was pining for.

The dinner itself was a good room and full kudos need to go to Allan Isfan of FaveQuest who pulled it together.

Technorati Tags: Founders and Funders, Austin Hill, RadialPoint, Zero-Knowledge, Akoha, FaveQuest, ThinkSM, entrepreneurship, venture capital

“I’ve just come to expect that my (public relations) agency can’t write,” was the astonishing admission I heard a few weeks back from a vice president at one of Ottawa’s larger technology companies who called us to see if we’d be interested in participating in an agency review process.

(I’ve promised not to name him (or her) for reasons that will be obvious as you read the rest of this post.)

I could hardly believe my ears. But yes, he said, it had long been his experience that the PR practitioners he had been dealing with from a range of different agencies and across a number of companies just weren’t very good writers, and so it fell to him to write most of the materials used in his campaigns. One of the key reasons he was approaching inmedia, he told me, was our very strong reputation in the marketplace as superb writers, a reputation he said was confirmed when he read our blog and web site.

I chalked this one up to what I assumed was just an unfortunate experience on the part of one technology marketing executive until I relayed the story to a colleague last week, a CEO at another technology company here in Ottawa and an insightful marketer in his own right. I was again utterly gobsmacked when he said he didn’t view writing as a core requirement in the PR function, that the ability to pitch the story was far more important.

“And what do you do,” I asked him, “When the pitch is initially well received and the next words out of the reporter or editor’s mouth are, ‘Sounds good, send me something about it.’?”

Here’s the thing. To work at inmedia and, I believe, to be an effective media relations practitioner anywhere, you must be able to write at an expert level and you must be able to effectively pitch what you’ve written. There is no hierarchy between these two fundamental skills. Lack one, and you’re out of the game.

And here’s why.

To believe, as these two otherwise successful technology marketers clearly do, that writing is either not terribly important or that your PR function, whether internal or an agency, can be permitted to be lousy writers, is to completely beggar the entire communications process.

In the first instance, despite all the wonderful new communications tools at our disposal, most journalists still want to see something in cold, hard black and white, even if it is delivered electronically. And even if they don’t ask for it, it’s just gotta be in your best interests to give them well-written material so they have the complete story, with all the relevant facts and accurate spellings of company, product and people’s names to which they can refer. This is just so basic I’m staggered it needs stating.

Second, how in the heck does a PR practitioner demonstrate her or his understanding of the story without writing about it? Yes, a properly written document proves the communicator can — gasp! — communicate. That is, the words run together in some sort of comprehensible order, everything is spelled correctly and the commas and periods are in the right places. But it still won’t be any good unless the person writing it actually has a thorough grasp of the subject matter.

Effective writing is not a case of cutting and pasting bits and pieces from other documents to make a different document and it needs to be more than a merely technically accurate use of words, grammar and punctuation. Effective writing is the process of distilling what has been learned — from other documents, certainly, but also, and critically, from interviews with a range of subject-matter experts — into a new piece of work. It not only communicates the story to all who read it, it also demonstrates understanding.

Bottom line: If your agency can’t write about it well, they almost certainly can’t pitch it well. And even worse, they probably don’t even understand it well.

So, did we get the business? Well, that’s another story that I cover here: The Ottawa inferiority complex theorem strikes again.

Technorati Tags: writing, pitching, media relations, business development

Over on TechCrunch yesterday, Michael Arrington hit back at those who have condemned his site and others for their policy of reporting on tech companies that are failing in the downturn.

Arrington states: “Reporting on layoffs or a dead company isn’t tabloid journalism. We do not take pleasure in seeing companies fail. But it’s inevitable that most will. And not only is it news, but readers have a right to know about it.”

And, while no self-respecting PR person wishes to see the details of their company’s demise being covered in the news, I have to support Arrington’s position on this.

Every day, I awake to the early business news on BBC radio and, for the past couple of months, every story has been filled with doom and gloom: companies and banks going to wall, layoffs, falling house prices, and so on. And yet I don’t expect the Beeb to ignore the facts of the downturn and to focus only on positive stories, so why should we expect anything different from a blog like TechCrunch?

As consumers of news, we expect the media (and bloggers) to bring us the important facts about the world we live in, and it just so happens that the business world is going through some major turmoil right now. No one likes the current situation, but facing up to reality is the only way companies will come through this successfully. News covers both the good and the bad, and we should not condemn the media for reporting on the uglier facts, just because we don’t feel like hearing them.

Technorati Tags: media, economy, journalism, news coverage, TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, BBC 

Most of us in Canada are no doubt familiar with that amusing commercial from Rogers about a fellow bragging to his friend about his new high-definition flatscreen television, despite the fact that the picture quality is horrible because he lacks the HD box for his television to display a true HD signal.

Well, this week my eight-year-old antique gave up the ghost. I had long ago decided that, should the day come, I would go with a Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD television. Within 24 hours of the old TV’s death, I had the new one on the wall.

Now, to set up the new TV, I simply connected my standard cable without any HD box, fully expecting to be confronted by god-awful picture quality that would be unbearable to watch.

But, to my utter amazement, the picture quality was at least as good as it was on my old TV. There was none of the blurry distortion dramatized in that Rogers commercial. Maybe I am not enjoying the full HD experience, but I certainly do not feel a pressing need to rush out and buy the HD box.

Granted, this is my personal experience after having the new TV set up for only an hour. Perhaps I am missing something.

But before I even got the TV home, I was in the electronics store shaking my head at a split screen comparison of the quality difference between a regular DVD picture and a high-definition Blu-ray disc picture. Again, there appeared to be a little exaggeration at work. Later at home, I played a standard DVD movie on my standard DVD player through the new LCD TV. When compared to the split-screen comparison I saw in the store, the picture quality was much closer to that of the Blu-ray than it was to the standard DVD as it was portrayed.

Comparisons can be a very effective means of selling buyers on the merits of your product or service, but in the bid to create that ”wow” factor that allows your product to fly off the shelves, be cautious about massaging the facts. Your product may clearly be better than your competitor’s, or the status quo, but be careful about trying to present those advantages more dramatically than they really are. Sure, you may dupe the unsophisticated buyer, but, guaranteed, there are plenty of savvy people who will see through the gimmick and out you on — oh, I don’t know — a blog, perhaps?

Technorati Tags: high definition, HD, Sharp Aquos, LCD, Blu-ray,  DVD, Rogers, marketing, advertising, product comparison

A frequent challenge with the classic pitch approach to technology trade media is that, while you may have crafted a well thought out and punchy line to approach them with, you have no idea what it is the editors are actually looking for. Sure, you may sometimes find your approach is successful, but many of your failures could have been averted by following a simple procedure: Ask the media about what elements they see in your story that are of interest to them.

In addition to being a less aggressive tactic than trying to sell a specific story angle every time, this kind of approach is also often welcomed by the editor or reporter, who is fed up with fending off pitches that don’t hold any interest whatsoever.

I am not throwing the concept of the story pitch out the window - some of the best hits come through bringing an innovative story idea to editors that they had not previously considered. But asking questions can help even the best pitchers to improve their game.

Once you have established a clear idea of what your various targets are looking for, then your pitches can be tailored to fit the needs of those targets. It sounds obvious, but this is about more than just going to the web site and reading the “how to get coverage” section. It is about approaching a specific person and getting them to provide you with their perspective on what elements of your company or product story could be useful to them.

Coupling this information with your knowledge of what you can deliver gives you a clear view of how to work with this target. It may mean that you have to wait for six months for some kind of milestone or industry event to occur, but the important fact is that you know what the opportunity is.

Technorati Tags: pitching, media relations, trade media

Labarge Weinstein hosted yet another well-attended and informative Startup Drop-in event last night for The Ottawa Network, and the theme of the evening demonstrated how seemingly innocuous things can have a most profound impact when duplicated on a large scale.

The theme was cleantech, featuring Ron Dizy of Sempa Power Systems, a Vancouver firm that specializes in hybrid power systems that help cut utility bills for commercial and industrial buildings. Ron talked about how customers can cut their power bills by 10 to 30 per cent by switching to electrical heating during off-peak hours and back to fossil fuel-based heating when the demand for, and the cost of, electricity is at its highest.

The evening also featured three of Ottawa’s rising stars in the cleantech sphere.

Energate, which helps consumers and utilities manage and reduce energy use in the home, was represented by chairman and CEO Niraj Bhargava. He emphasized the simple truth that we’re all creatures of habit unlikely to adopt methods of energy conservation if they mean curbing our use of the domestic comforts we’ve all come to take for granted, such as heating and air-conditioning. Energate’s speciality is managing energy use in ways we can bear to live with.

Dave Gerwing, president of Menova Energy, talked about how much power there is untapped in the rays of the sun. (I believe he said enough sunlight strikes the earth in one minute to power the planet for six months. Any error in that statement is entirely mine). But the trick is to capture it. Menova has developed a high-efficiency solar concentrator that captures this clean power source for electrical power, heating and lighting, hundreds of times more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost of traditional solar power technology.

But the most profound illustration of how the little things can add up to monumental proportions came from Scott Feagan, CEO of TireStamp. His company is in the business of making devices that allow corporate fleets to monitor and manage tire pressure and condition. Sounds like a practical enough solution, but not much of a “Wow” factor, is there?

Well, then Scott started talking about how quickly an under-inflated tire wears out, how under-inflation impacts fuel efficiency, how many gallons of oil are needed to make a replacement tire, the highway fatalities attributed every year to blowouts on commercial vehicles, and the billions some of the big parcel companies pay each year in fuel, no one in that room was left with any doubt that proper tire inflation and maintenance is a huge factor in reducing global pollution and resource consumption.

As individuals, we often wonder what we can do to make a difference. The truth is, there is no magic bullet to cure our environmental challenges. But, as last night’s event demonstrated, all those little things we can do, either at home, on the road or in the workplace, can add up in a big way.

Technorati Tags: The Ottawa Network, Start Up Drop-in, Labarge Weinstein, Tirestamp, Energate, Menova, Sempa Power, clean tech, green tech

The Ottawa Citizen’s Mark Anderson wrote an entertaining and insightful piece this week about the tribulations of being a generalist business and technology reporter confronted by media releases loaded with tongue-twisting jargon.

As a former business journalist, I can certainly empathize with the challenges faced by those on the receiving end of the pitch machine. Attention spans are pinched by the news demands of the day and the host of other pitches clogging up voicemail and email inboxes. That which isn’t easily understood is easily trashed in favour of that which can be deciphered in five seconds or less.

As Mark emphasizes, this doesn’t mean that you have to try and provide the Dummy’s Guide to your client’s technology in the brief time you have to make your pitch. What you must do is convey in clear dollars and cents terms the significance of the news. Companies don’t peddle products and services unless there is an obvious financial benefit (well, they shouldn’t anyway). There’s the benefit to themselves in terms of the value they are bringing to the market, and there is the value to their clients to improve their own service offerings or drive greater efficiencies that will boost profit margins.

As we say at inmedia, it’s about the business case for the technology. Follow the money and find your story.

Technorati Tags: public relations, media relations, pitching, jargon, Ottawa Citizen, Mark Anderson 

“Life has a way of making the foreseeable that which never happens … and the unforeseeable that which your life becomes.”

I heard that line on Thursday evening last week when I went to see the new movie, Appaloosa, a terrific duster starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen as two gunslingers hired to keep the peace in the town that gives the movie its title.

But the words could just as easily have been spoken by Stephen Poloz, senior vice-president of financing at Export Development Canada, who earlier the same day gave the keynote luncheon address at the Ottawa Venture and Technology Summit.

For a banker, Poloz had lots of funny lines as he delivered a logical explanation of how a bit of a live-for-today spending spree by American consumers in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks led inevitably to the near-collapse of the entire capitalist system.

If your world can be randomly eviscerated by unimaginable events well beyond your control, he argued, “what’s the point of having a credit card paid off?” This attitude led Americans to “spend every nickle they earned and every nickle they could borrow.”

The banks played along. “You can’t have a good speculative bubble without a good bank,” Poloz said, adding that the key thing the banks did was redefine what once was known as “uncreditworthy.” “Now we just call them sub-prime, and give them a loan.” Those loans were packaged up and sold off as well-rated and secure investments, adding further leverage to a situation that was already cranked way beyond sustainability.

And when housing prices stopped rising, the blow that American consumers feared would come from terrorists ended up being a self-inflicted wound. This last bit is my take, not Poloz’s.

What Poloz could not do, however, was give any counsel, and this is where he started sounding like novelist Robert B. Parker’s enigmatic retired soldier Everett Hitch. “The most important insight here is, we don’t know” what’s going to happen, Poloz said. “The models don’t explain what happened and they can’t explain what’s going to happen.”

Trouble is, he then started applying those broken models by way of reassuring his audience.

For example, he said the $700-billion package put together by the U.S. government would be enough to counter the $7 trillion he said speculators had blown into the markets because banks can take a dollar of fresh capital and lever $10 in new loans from it. Well, maybe under the old model they could.

Further, he said the meltdown of the U.S. economy would not have the same repercussions as those experienced by Latin American countries or Japan or others in decades past because, unlike then, the economy is not fragile, the regulatory regime is strong and the government has a good balance sheet. I’m not sure which American government he was referring to, but none of those three sound anything like they apply to the government that runs a big country just south of here.

For all of us who have been whipsawed by the markets over the past several weeks, the unforeseeable truly has been made into what our lives have become.

Technorati Tags: Export Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz, Ottawa Venture and Technology Summit, Appaloosa, economy

Before I head off to a long weekend of turkey, ham and all the various and sundry other foodstuffs that go along with it, I’m joining what promises to be an A-list crowd peppered with big names from the NHL for tonight is the annual CEO of the Year gala hosted by my former colleagues at the Ottawa Business Journal.

It promises to be a memorable evening, even for one such as myself who has only a lukewarm interest in the professional hockey season, with tributes from Wayne Gretzky and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

They’re coming, of course, to honour the 2008 CEO of the Year, Ottawa Senators chief executive Roy Mlakar. This year’s pick, as determined by OBJ senior staff and the winners from previous years, is a departure from the typical private-sector executive one would expect in a tech-heavy town like Ottawa, but as this week’s profile in the OBJ attests,  Mlakar has proven himself a savvy and successful CEO who has confidently guided the franchise through some shaky times.

Congrats to Mlakar and hats off to the team at the OBJ for the work they do to recognize business excellence in our fair city.

Technorati Tags: Roy Mlakar, Ottawa Business Journal, CEO of the Year, NHL, Ottawa Senators, Wayne Gretzky, Gary Bettman