It’s clear that we’re bad summertime bloggers. Sorry about that.

Occasionally there have been topics that have crossed my path in the last month and a bit that I thought could be ruminated on in a blog post, but when the spirit struck, it was usually when I was unplugged completely for a week-plus (No phone, no internet, no email, no television … heavenly!) or too swamped with client commitments to dedicate the time required to write it up. As I recently Tweeted, I haven’t blogged in so long that I suffered a brief case of performance anxiety about picking up the virtual pen once again.

I’m over it now.

I’ve been doing significant outreach in the UK for one of our clients and I’m noticing that journalists over there are far more eager to have a phone conversation with me than many of their North American counterparts. At outlets big and small, I’ve been greeted with enthusiasm, courtesy and appreciation for the information I’m providing, rather than being avoiding altogether, relegated to voicemail hell or, at worst, berated or abused because I deigned to call. All this latter negative experience has been all-too-common with some North American journalists I’ve dealt with in my decade plus as a PR practitioner. This has been a lovely experience and has resulted in some tangible and impactful coverage for my client.

Many of these same editors and reporters weren’t at all responsive to my emails, a distinct change from my experience in North America where calls and voicemails predominantly go unanswered and unresponded to, but emails fare far better. It was refreshing to have so many productive phone calls that resulted in good things for my clients.

I’d posit that the phone calls themselves went so well because we pride ourselves on building out a media list of pertinent, relevant and interested media targets so that we know all of the angles and all of the data points that are likely to result in coverage of our client. Or perhaps I just seemed exotic with my North American accent and that’s why they were so nice to me, eh?

Having had such a good string of calls, I was particularly interested about the articles I read this week about the death of the phone call. At least that’s the snazzy spin that’s put on the article, but the content rather suggests a more integrated communications approach - using the multiple channels available to us to best communicate with one another. The latter resonates strongly with my daily experience, while the former is hyperbolic and not at all what’s truly going on.

In my recent UK experience, I had indeed sent emails to the folks I later spoke with on the phone. For some, they’d read my email and highlighted as something to follow up at some nebulous point in the future, while others fully admitted that they hadn’t read it. That they had it in their mail and could call it up as we were speaking was very useful as they were provided with more information than I could succinctly deliver on the phone.

The rumours of the telephone call’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Telephone calls still play an important role in the PR practitioner’s day-to-day practice; I will agree that their ranking in the grand scheme of all of the tools available may have slipped, but make no mistake - there’s nothing quite like speaking to someone to get your point across. Whether it’s through Skype or an old rotary dial or anything in between, don’t count the phone call out just yet.

As an aside, there’s an interesting corollary to this phenomenon in the world of popular music. When I was growing up, there were scads of popular songs that highlighted the importance of the phone call - from Blondie’s “Call Me”, Phil Collins’ “Don’t Lose My Number”, and Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309.” The only popular song of late that references the telephone (at least the only one that’s coming to mind at the moment) is Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” with the repeated chorus of “stop calling, stop calling, I don’t want to talk anymore.” Pop music’s just reflecting our shared experience and indicating that the honeymoon’s over when it comes to our love affair with the telephone.

Technorati Tags: Telephone, phone calls, voicemail, email, media relations

Well, yesterday was interesting. Ottawa was the major city nearest to the epicenter of a 5.0 (heavily disputed) magnitude earthquake.

A friend who has traveled extensively was rolling his eyes at us meek Canucks, saying he felt quakes like this in Japan all the time. Suffice to say, I’d be a shaky mess if that was a regular occurrence.

Not used to seismic events of any magnitude happening in this area, at first, like so many, I thought there must be a big truck outside making all that noise, but as the shaking intensified, I began to think it might in fact be an earthquake and ran outside. When the quake subsided, I immediately picked up the phone to call the daycare just around the bend to see if either a) I was crazy, or b) did they feel it there too? (I’m not crazy.)

Then, purveyor of media that I am, I instantly began visiting media websites to see if there were any details on what had happened. I went to CFRA’s website, CBC.ca, Google News, Ottawa Citizen - nothing. I checked Twitter and bingo - there was instantaneous, regularly updated information available in real-time, people sharing experiences, jokes, links, statistics…

I was lucky to have spoken with both my daycare provider and my husband, because immediately afterwards, the phone lines were down - both cell and landline - as everyone else in the affected area called their spouses and daycare providers.

Traditional media were not quick enough to provide the information needed, traditional forms of communication were unreliable, but social media saved the day. Within minutes of the quake, thanks to Twitter, I knew where the epicenter was, the magnitude, the affected areas, and more. Twitter really proved its mettle to me beyond a shadow of a doubt as an important, relevant and succinct communications channel. While I’ve been using Twitter as part of my outreach for clients and networking for myself for two years now, I had recently grown tired of the endless witticisms, location updates and general narcissistic tone of some of its users but when push came to shove, Twitter was the most important communications channel where others lagged or failed entirely.

–

Before the earth moved yesterday, the power of the media made a technicolour display when Stanley McChrystal, the top general in charge of the U.S. military in Afghanistan had his feet held to the flames for outrageous, disrespectful and unpatriotic comments made in a disastrous forthcoming Rolling Stone article. He had a decidedly uncomfortable meeting with President Obama wherein he tendered his resignation, certainly milliseconds before he was fired.

The article is truly scandalous and worth a read.

As a PR professional, my first thought was HOW did this happen? Are there no communications professionals involved with the highest strata of the U.S. military that would have overseen the opportunity and decided what could be gained by profiling a top general in a rock and roll magazine? If they then decided to move forward, would they not have been along every step of the way, providing both strategic and tactical counsel to the general about what he’s to say and what not to say, key messages, likely lines of questioning, etc.? Surely with an organization so reliant on security and secrecy, the PR team would have also had the opportunity to review the copy for approval prior to publication? Anyone? Bueller?

The most egregious of the comments were off the cuff, said not during any formal interview but when perhaps the general and his team thought comments would be off the record. As we’ve discussed previously, the interview is never over. The journalist was interviewed in the aftermath, also worth a watch.

I’m flabbergasted not only at the comments of the general and his staff but also at the incredible failing of the communications function of the U.S. military in this instance. By contrast, there was a brilliant article on McChrystal’s successor David Petraeus in a recent Vanity Fair. Whether it was better journalism, a better communications team that managed the process more carefully, or just a better man as the subject, we’ll never know.

Technorati Tags: Rolling Stone, earthquake, Ottawa, Petraeus, McChrystal, pr

Oh dear.

The standards editor at the New York Times (@nytimes) has banned usage of the word Tweet, insisting that its use flies in the face of the paper’s general avoidance of “colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon.” His reasoning is that Twitter might be next year’s proverbial bird-cage liner and the Times will have egg on its face for adopting this word before its usage was properly established and therefore considered “ordinary.”

Just today, the Oxford English Dictionary added a number of words to its tome - data center among them. Until now, was that just jargon? When I consider the OED more closely, however, maybe it’s not the best arbiter of what’s ridiculous and what’s not, as evidenced by this meant to be comical but rather frighting piece. I’d be very interested in the standards editor’s position on muggle and gaydar. Perhaps the paper could devote an On Language feature to Frankenfood or bouncebackability… Here’s an interesting article where the columnist behind On Language reports on the fact that Tweet was 2009’s WORD OF THE YEAR. That would indicate that the word is in common usage, would it not?

If it’s familiarity with terms that the editor is worried about he can rest easy in the knowledge that fully 87% of Americans know what Twitter is; you can be assured that fewer people than that know what paleolithic means, Mr. Standards Editor. And paleolithic is exactly how you seem to the 105 million registered users of the platform.

What truly strikes me as comical, however, is that this comes despite of the great extent to which the NY Times itself Tweets, er, writes on Twitter. The paper as a whole, various sections and, according to @nytimes, 96 staffers all have distinct Twitter accounts. I hate to tell you, Phil, but this thing’s catching on.

What I fear is that this indicates a larger problem - how out of touch the media can be with, well, how to be successful in the modern media marketplace. Heaven knows Rupert Murdoch’s plans to rip the Wall Street Journal content from search engines as they erect a paywall is doomed to failure. Should be interesting to watch. The Times itself is planning on employing a metered pay system itself next January. Too late. People have been enjoying your content for free for far too long to want to pay for it now.

This does remind me of a time in 1999 when I was privy to a tour of one of the major record label HQs and the president, when asked what their online strategy was, said “we’ve got a couple of guys working on it. Nobody really knows what they do, but I’m sure this ‘Internet’ thing will be short-lived anyway and we’ve got it well in hand.” We know how that worked out. It would be a shame if the New York Times suffered the same sad fate, but this obtuse move doesn’t bode well for its future.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, New York Times, Tweet

Many moons ago, we wrote a post that gave a general overview of how awards fit into an integrated PR program. All of this information still rings true. Awards can be a worthwhile part of your communications program, but make sure that the ROI is worth it if it’s something you have to pay steep fees to enter. The best kind of award is the one where entry isn’t even necessary, where you’re singled out by experts in your field for being the best at what you do. You can’t buy that kind of third-party validation from reputable sources and it may cause prospects and competitors to both sit up and take notice of you.

Since many of our clients have had the good fortune lately of winning some prestigious awards and being singled out as some of the best at what they do, and since I’m working on a report for a new client that maps out appropriate awards opportunities for the year ahead, safe to say that I’ve got awards on the brain.

I’d like to publicly congratulate several of our clients for recent distinctions bestowed upon them:

UNIT4 Business Software, a top-six provider of ERP software worldwide, was named Employer of the Year at last week’s VIATeC Awards, which honour Vancouver Island technology companies. We like working for them; they must also be a pretty good place at which to work.

PerspecSys, whose hybrid cloud platform that mitigates the data privacy, residency and security concerns inherent to using SaaS applications in the public cloud, was both feted as one of Gartner Group’s “Cool Vendor in Cloud Security Services 2010” and named as finalist in the Global Cloud Security Challenge 2010. We’ll be telling the world a lot more about PerspecSys starting tomorrow.

Touch Bionics, the company behind cutting edge bionic technology like the i-LIMB Hand and ProDigits, was recently awarded the Queen’s Award for innovation, the most prestigious award in the UK for business performance. It’s another nice nod for a client that, it is safe to say, is the most decorated of any we’ve ever worked with.

Keep up the great work!

Technorati Tags: awards, UNIT4 Business Software, PerspecSys, Touch Bionics

In this round-up, I’d like to highlight where to find examples of good PR campaigns, as well as cautionary tales on what not to do.

The Good

Bulldog Reporter has a feature called Winning PR Campaigns that highlights recent successful campaigns.

PRWeek highlights successful campaigns every week, like this recent Seventh Generation feature (subscription required).

Sadly, it seems an attempt to launch a Good Pitch Blog was unsuccessful. The “cobbler’s kids who have no shoes” anecdote rings true - we’re too busy getting good publicity for our clients to promote the good work we’re doing, to highlight our own successes.

The Bad

As any savvy PR person knows, the BadPitchBlog is one place where you don’t want your work to show up. It’s entertaining, to be sure, but also terrifying that these practitioners are sullying our industry’s reputation in this fashion.

PRdisasters.com operates under a similar mandate.

Another PR firm has been collecting what it sees as the biggest 15 corporate PR mistakes of the last decade. There are some doozies.

And here’s some advice on what to do if a PR disaster strikes.

Technorati Tags: public relations, bad PR, good PR

Last night, I happened upon a special on CNBC about Coca-Cola called The Real Story Behind the Real Thing. It was a fascinating look at the soft-drink company whose grasp and usage of marketing is legendary. Legendary also is the grave misstep it made in the 1980s when it launched New Coke.

Pepsi came on the scene and was holding blind taste tests called the Pepsi Challenge. When asked, the majority of participants noted that they liked the taste of Pepsi better than Coke. This caused Coca-Cola to conduct its own tests, the results of which mirrored the Pepsi Challenge. Despite the fact that the recipe for Coke hadn’t changed considerably in the previous hundred years (the initial recipe contained cocaine, but just for the first few years on the market), the powers that be at the company panicked and ordered the recipe to change so that the flavour more closely mirrored that of Pepsi. Big mistake.

New Coke failed spectacularly and within months, the original Coke was brought back to market, branded as Coca-Cola Classic. Funnily enough, Coke gained significant market share when all was said and done, though the company’s mistake had the potential to sink the entire operation.

When one executive was asked whether it was all a stunt, whether Coke had planned it, he said that they weren’t that smart, and they weren’t that dumb.

While it all worked out in the company’s favour in the end, it could have easily gone the other way. Many lessons can be learned from this and I’m sure many an MBA student has written their thesis on the New Coke experiment.

Here, I’ll try to distill a few lessons that we as marketers can take from it:

1. Don’t panic. What Coke did was react hastily to competition that was offering a similar product at a lower price and that was using an innovative marketing message. Rather than assess its own branding and marketing issues, it immediately destroyed whatever brand loyalty existed for its products. Consumer products such as soft drinks have a more personal meaning than what the companies often give them credit for. Know your product, know your market, know your customers and act based on what’s best for those three, rather than solely based on what your competitors are doing.

2.  Be willing to admit mistakes and correct course. The fact that Coke recognized the error of its ways and quickly corrected itself saved the company and the brand. If you make a misstep, it just proves that a) you’re human and b) you’ve got work to do.

3. Competition can drive innovation. Cola is cola, when it comes down to it. Pepsi and Coke don’t actually compete so much on taste or price as they do on marketing. The curvy Coca-Cola bottle is so iconic and distinct that in 1993, when the company changed its plastic bottles to mirror the shape of its glass bottles, sales were boosted by more than 40%.

4. Be authentic. When Coke tried to be something it wasn’t, as is so often the case, it didn’t work. Know who your company is, what your brand is and stick to your knitting. Especially in challenging economic times, companies tend to deviate from their branding. So often it seems as though diversification is the solution and so often the offering becomes too watered down or too off message and fails. If you don’t know who you are and what you have to offer the market, neither will your customers or prospects.

Technorati Tags: Coca-Cola, Coke, Pepsi, innovation, competition, branding, marketing

I used to be in the music business, many moons ago, and so it was with mild interest that I tuned into the Juno Awards, Canada’s national music awards show, last Sunday evening.

They were, in my humble opinion, a dreadful mess. Bieber Fever meant that viewership was up 31 percent over the previous year, but many an 11-year-old heart was broken and, no doubt, many a fervent angry letter-writing campaign begun over the fact that the Canada’s own teenybopper sensation left the awards empty handed. CARAS, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the outfit that puts on the Junos, should hang its head in shame that those 1.6M viewers had to stomach such dreck.

Whether it was a cost-saving measure, I don’t know, but the program had no host. No stalwart Canadian comedian to lighten the mood between the handful of on-screen awards being doled out, no Canadian music superstar for viewers to ogle, no nothing but a whole lot of, “Who is that?” and, “Have you ever heard of this performer?”

Which leads me (mercifully) to my point: the importance of gatekeepers.

Once upon a time, there were something called record labels that acted as the gatekeepers, marketers, distributors and more for music. Artists who were deemed worthy were taken under a label’s wing, polished and supported, and given the opportunity to put their best foot forward, all the while being financially supported by the label. Those days, in the main, are long done.

The fact that every Mac sold comes loaded with GarageBand, a bare-bones software that can make a recording artist out of anyone, means that if you’ve got a few minutes and the inclination, you too can release into the market your own, original music, no matter how crappy sounding. Upload it to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube. Tweet about your new song. Congratulations - you’ve just increased the noise in the signal to noise ratio and muddied the musical landscape! I couldn’t help but think of how the gatekeepers have been removed while watching a parade of such self-created unknowns at the Junos.

I’ve written before about music industry pundit Bob Lefsetz and his thoughts on how the vast amounts of media are making us more isolated from one another.

How does this apply to media relations? While I was bemoaning how wretched the Junos had been, @francismoran brought up a fair point about the removal of gatekeepers in the media as well.

Once upon a time, back when record labels did artist development, there were also lots and lots of publishers of newspapers and magazines that had editors and professional journalists and a whole bunch of other talented people whose very existence is now endangered. These professionals filtered the content that came their way and put together (most times, at least) insightful, informative, comprehensive news pieces.

Now, thanks to the Internet, blogs, microblogs and what have you, anybody can self publish anything. Want to write shoddy articles that haven’t been fact checked? Go ahead! Want to slag a person, company or product? Go for it! Care to distribute completely false information out of spite, lack of knowledge or poor journalistic standards? Today’s your lucky day!

Gatekeepers were there to filter the noise and ensure integrity of signal. It’s a shame that there is a trend toward eliminating these useful roles from so many industries. When gatekeepers remain in place in the media, as is written about in this fabulous article, the results can be positive for both the media and the consumer. New technology is incorporated into an existing information model, rather than viewed as a completely greenfield wherein everyone runs amok.

Technorati Tags: Junos, blogging, music, journalism

I had a long and interesting chat with the publisher of a specialized trade publication this morning, the results of which turned my thoughts to the importance of getting a return on investment in PR. I mean this in two ways: first, getting the most value for your dollars spent with a PR practitioner or agency and second, getting the most eyeballs on your coverage.

With regards to the first, this was the particular scenario that I was discussing with the aforementioned publisher. Having pitched a series of contributed articles by email, I was calling to follow up and discuss the level of interest in my proposition. The publisher, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Canadian publishing world, talked about shrinking editorial space and how he’s unable to commit to publishing an article, however appropriate for his readership. With shrinking ad budgets, increasing competition from exclusively online publications and other factors, it’s not feasible for him to accept and commit, based on an abstract, to publishing something that would take up precious room on his pages. Rather, he’s suggested that we develop an article purely on spec, and that once submitted, he’ll review it and if he’s got the room and inclination, he’ll publish it.

This is an eminently reasonable proposition and he’s not alone in this position. However, look at it from my standpoint as a content developer for hire, and that of my client. It’s no easy feat writing a 1,000-plus-word article and the creation of said article would cost not inconsiderable time and money. Is this the best use of my limited time, given that each hour spent on the account has a dollar figure attached? Would my time be better spent creating content that I am certain will be published? This is calculus that has to be figured out on each and every opportunity that comes along: Is this the best use of my time and my client’s dollars?

Then there is the other half of the equation: the potential value of the coverage in terms of prospective customers, partners, channels and others who will see the article and pick up the phone. Trade publications can be highly focused propositions; they come as niche as you like. So, if you’re trying to reach a small specialized group and this opportunity, if it comes to fruition, will get your message out to them effectively, perhaps it’s worth your time and effort to develop a piece on spec.

Just a few weeks ago, another of my clients flat out turned down the opportunity to submit an article for an exclusively online publication. Having reviewed the circulation numbers for the print edition and the number of site visitors, it just didn’t make sense to them for me to spend my time writing an article that would be seen by limited readers, especially in an industry where hard copies get read far more frequently than virtual ones. For this client, it simply didn’t provide the return on investment that they were looking for, and that’s just fine. There are plenty of other opportunities to pursue on their behalf where the ROI is higher.

Each opportunity needs to be assessed and then harsh decisions made. There’s no right or wrong answer here; each circumstance requires each client and each PR practitioner to weigh the pros and cons of the situation and make an informed decision about how best to invest time and effort for the most return.

Technorati Tags: ROI, PR investment, contributed articles

I’ll admit it. I fell for a couple of doozies this morning when reading my morning email.

The first one really had me. I subscribe to HARO, Help a Reporter Out, which is a free service where PR professionals are sent pitching opportunities from reporters. I scan these email reports several times daily to see if there’s anything suitable for my clients. This one caught my eye and infuriated me no end:

Summary: Why don’t PR people listen?

Name: April Phules (Business Magazine)

Category: General

Email: query-7cc@helpareporter.com

Media Outlet: Business Magazine

Deadline: 07:00 PM EST - 1 April

Query: I’m doing a story about PR people, and why they have a much lower ability to listen or follow directions than regular people. Is this something they’re born with, or something they learn once getting into PR? All answers welcome.

Okay, so the reporter’s name should have tipped me off, but I haven’t had my coffee yet so I’m a little slow.

Still fuming from reading that outrageous query, I clicked over to another newsletter from parenting site Babble, which suggested 10 ways to raise a genius. Putting little stock in such things, but curious nonetheless, I clicked through. Needless to say by the time I got to #4 I knew that something was up.

PRNewser tipped its hat to some of the best corporate April Fool’s jokes here.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Technorati Tags: April Fool’s Day, Babble, HARO, Help A Reporter Out

It’s been a while since we pointed to other blogs that address public relations issues, so here’s a round-up of some recent posts of note:

Next Communications, in honour of the blogger’s 34th birthday, recently posted 34 Unforgettable Posts for PR People

Journalistics writes about building a better online newsroom whether you’re a big player or a small business.

While it seems that most of the marketplace easily forgets, PR Pros are People, Too, reminds Todd Defren in his post about clients thanking PR pros for doing exceptional work. I was lucky enough to work for a classy outfit called Six Degrees Records, a widely respected world music label for whom I did Canadian publicity  many moons ago. After a very successful album launch and a ton of press, the label sent me, quite unexpectedly, a big flower arrangement and a card of thanks. To this day, just the thought of that small gesture makes me smile.

Here’s an article on how the publicity machine keeps on chugging for those who seemingly will say anything to keep their name in the media. Apparently being a blowhard can be a quite lucrative profession. As I Tweeted yesterday, if we stop giving Ann Coulter an audience, she’ll just go away. There is such a thing as bad publicity - the kind that continues to give a forum to people who don’t deserve our attention (see also: Kate Gosselin).

Tip of the hat to Media Monitoring News for directing me to some of these posts (even though the links in its newsletter weren’t working properly…)

Technorati Tags: Public relations, high tech PR, B2B, blogging