Flack's Revenge

More on Influencer Relationship Management

As promised, I am following up my post from last week - Cultivating Non-traditional Influencers in Tech PR - with this interview of Stephen Andrews, a VP here at Fusion PR who has done some great work in the area.

Stephen is an all around brilliant PR pro who is also a former Arthur Andersen consultant and managed influencer relations for IBM in a previous life

Thanks, Stephen, for enlightening us on this important topic.

Please define IRM for non-traditional influencers
IRM stands for Influencer Relationship Management and in practice refers to the logistics of creating and implementing a successful program that draws upon non-traditional experts, and by this I mean those experts external to your client’s organization, for their general industry or specific expertise. The purpose of seeking and engaging influencers is, at its essence, to leverage these outside opinion leaders to help drive a dialogue within your industry. It’s the ultimate form of expert validation of your client’s messages that goes far beyond the simple supportive quote and can encompass everything from ongoing co-branded thought leadership materials to events and even campaigns.

How does an IRM program work?
The mechanics of an IRM program closely resemble those of any well thought out media campaign, though is often much more focused.  As with any media based campaign a solid IRM program begins with an understanding of what it is your client wishes to accomplish from a communications perspective; what message do they wish to communicate, to whom and in what fashion.  It’s also necessary to understand that when you engage influencers or opinion leaders you will be ceding some message control to the influencer(s) you choose. From there it’s all about the research, finding those people who are, in fact, influential and whose opinions closely match the strategic direction of your messaging. Once you have your influencers chosen it’s time to make the initial outreach, essentially pitching the influencers to become a partner of your client.  Usually the higher the level of executive initially reaching out to potential influencers, the greater the chance of success.  This is known as the engagement phase.

Once the influencers are engaged it’s time to meet with them and speak about the actual event, campaign or collateral piece you plan to execute, brief the influencer and ensure alignment with the client's objectives.

What do companies stand to gain through better IRM?
IRM offers companies three main benefits; first it’s an opportunity to drive an entire industry’s discussion and ultimately direction, second it offers a level of validation far beyond anything a company can achieve with internal experts, and finally it offers companies an industry voice one step removed from the corporate entity which can open a far broader range of things and degrees of messages which the company can have a hand in.

How do you measure effectiveness?
IRM programs fall closer to other thought leadership tactics as far as measurement goes in that they tend to have less of “flash-bang” effect and more of a long slow burn.  The results depend on the actual event, collateral or campaign and its goals, but in general IRM affects the long-term attitudes of customers, media, analysts and competitors within the specific area where the program is targeted. It is most often used in conjunction with other communications tactics to form the basis for fundamental directing of an industry or industry segment.

PR Pitch Spam - An Inconvenient Truth

Spring is in the air, the flowers are blooming and... wait, what's that smell?  That stink of rot and decay?  Could it be the bloated corpse of old school PR tactics and the latest rants about PR pitch spam?

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease used to be the operative mode for PR firms.  Now, the squeaks may get the wrong kind of attention, which can echo online and throughout the blogosphere.

The stakes are higher now and there is less room for error.  The traditional media have always had a somewhat love-hate relationship with PR but at least the lines were pretty clearly drawn and it worked on some level.  Now the old rules are out the window.

Try Fugu, the Tasty new PR Pitch Delicacy

Brian Solis wrote a long, heartfelt Mea Culpa on the PR 2.0 blog regarding some unfortunate blog blow back about a pitch.  Things went awry even though the person on his team did due diligence in terms of researching targets and tailoring pitches.

As Brian said:

In their defense this person did not blast a generic media list... nor did this person send information to someone who doesn't cover or write about products in the space.

Further, he proposes a new definition that seeks to elevate tailored pitches above Bacn, the term Chris Brogan invented to label email that is subscribed to but almost never read (like newsletters and such).

Tofu (new category – suggested name) is email that is sent individually to people who are pre-qualified or identified as being related to, or interested in, a particular category or topic. Or, they have made their email publicly available on their site, thus intentionally or inadvertently inviting contact. I’m not sure what to call it, but the idea for tofu was inspired by the fact that we can almost make it taste like something else, but at the end of the day, it’s still not the real thing.

Well I will one up Solis.  I propose a new PR pitch category called Fugu, inspired by the Japanese fish delicacy that is at one enticing but also poisonous.  You are hungry again one half hour after you digest a Fugu pitch, that is if you don't die first.

Fugu is comprised of nutritional components that make it look, think and act like genuine thought, and is genetically engineered to be produced on a mass customization basis.  As such, Fugu meets the old school PR person's need to feel like they have accomplished something by carpet bombing, meets news school PR needs to adapt to the conversation and hot buttons of each target, and in any event detractors won't be around too long to bellyache.

On a slightly more serious note, perhaps we can agree on a real definition of Fugu - anything boilerplate that is intended to be mass produced and distributed regardless of how well the list is researched.  Fugu stinks, is deadly and should be banished from the PR lexicon

Is MicroPR the Answer?

I can sympathize with Brian because I have found myself in a similar position, i.e. people on my team have occasionally generated unfavorable blogger attention in our zeal.  So what is the answer?

Not Tofu, according to Stowe Boyd, in his post: The Growing Backlash Against PR Spam, and the Rationale for MicroPR

Brian Solis attempts to make the case that PR folks sending things we might want -- based on their decisions -- should be considered 'Tofu' not 'Spam'. I am sorry Brian, but there is no Tofu, there is only Spam.

Boyd makes a compelling argument for what he calls MicroPR (actually, my first reaction was "oh brother, what next? NanoPR? And then no PR at all?"  Which some people might actually celebrate, that is until it comes time to promote their book, or they join a start up that needs to make some noise).

So, this is an ... argument for MicroPR: forcing PR firms to approach us in the open, on open social flow apps like Twitter, and in the small, where they have to jettison all the claptrap of the old press release model. In the open, that can't lie easily, or they will be caught on it. In the small, they have to junk the meaningless superlatives, the bogus quotes that no CEO ever mouthed, the run-on phrases, the disembodied third party mumbo jumbo, as if the press release were edited by God.

On Twitter, I will simply block people that abuse my willingness to have an open dialog about products with PR folks, or basically anyone else, for that matter. And I am implicitly inviting everyone in my Twitter sphere of influence to participate, too. I want it to be a shared space for investigation into new tools, so by all means, twitpitch me!

Boyd focuses on the mechanics of pitching but his idea seems to be in sync with the new, blog-driven ethos of transparency.

I blogged in detail about the subject of PR pitch spam and won't repeat the full post here.  I will say, however, that there are a few key things PR people should focus on when approaching bloggers:

Relevancy, relevancy, relevancy

In short, know your audience, know what they like to blog about, and don't send them Fugu.

Folks, this is easy, it is not hard.  Bloggers wear their preferences on their sleeves, and sometimes even spell out specific instructions on how to best approach them.

And, while some might object to getting any unsolicited emails, it is hard to see how you can go wrong if you truly listen and engage in the ongoing conversation on their blogs.  Why email a pitch when you can comment on the blog?  Why flog information if it might be shrill and dissonant with the forum?

Most news-oriented bloggers - especially those who cover fast moving spaces like tech - love to get tips about relevant news stories.  The lines might be less clear with bloggers who tend to be more selective in their topics and focus on opinion and analysis.  Approach these types at your own peril. 

But if you are truly listening and know your audience, and take the time to demonstrate this understanding in your approach, it is hard to see how you can go wrong - you will already be so far ahead of the Old School herd and on your way to earning respect and getting the attention of these bloggers.

This might seem like more work, and perhaps you will feel less productive in taking this approach.  But in the long run you will actually achieve better results and are less likely to run into blow back and public humiliation.

Bonfire of the Merger Vanities

(Fair and balanced in love and war)

The drama and anticlimactic ending of Microsoft's play for Yahoo made me realize how much I love to read about mergers.  Not so much for the news, but for stories that the media loves to tell about the personalities, companies and industries involved.

Let's face it, if it were just about the uncolored dry facts, you'd see a few news items around the major milestones of the deals.

Instead we see tons of commentary, analysis and sweeping narratives.  The personalities involved are often painted as larger than life, with Shakespearean brush strokes.

You see some of the same types of coverage when the media starts a war (or as a I am sure they would protest, just covers one), i.e. pits one company against another (Microsoft vs. Google).

But usually, with mergers, the narrative arc is different because there is a shorter time frame, deals don't get better with age and they either just happen or don't within some finite time frame.  Also, news about deals tends to focus more on the personalities involved.

There are of course some very important PR implications because , no matter what happens, the players will be judged and portrayed as winners or losers.

In this case, no one came out looking very good, least of all Ballmer.  He should take a page from Oracle chief Larry Ellison's book, Ellison is the master of the art of the deal.

Cultivating Non-traditional Influencers in Tech PR

For anyone seeking to promote a company, cause, product or service, it is often helpful to to get the support of independent authorities such as high profile consultants, researchers, and educators.

But where to start?  Most PR people are very comfortable approaching the media, analysts and increasingly bloggers.  But what is the pitch for independent experts who are not obligated by their job descriptions to report on and analyze developments in a given field?

It's a topic in which the rules are not as straightforward, and there are as many approaches as there are types of experts and related fields.  Also, the subject is fraught with potential conflicts and ethical perils, which I touch upon in more detail below.

One approach is called Value Exchange.  It is a process in which you seek to gain positive attention from the influencer by offering something of value in return.

Say, for example, that your are a leading vendor of business activity monitoring software (technology that can monitor transaction streams in real time and flag potentially fraudulent activities).  Suppose further that there is a noted authority on security technology and compliance who just came out with a book on the subject and is working the news circuit to promote it.

The first step would be to determine alignment of interests.   Are there specific issues in which the vendor and expert are in synch?  Could the expert gain by learning more the vendors' offering?  Assuming that this is the case, what would the approach be?  And what specifically would each party hope to gain?

As a first step, the vendor's communications team could approach the expert to discuss possible alignment of interests.

Assuming the expert is receptive, there are a number of possible tactics:

• Invite the expert or experts to an informal briefing over dinner
• Play to their desire for more visibility by involving them in a round table event on a provocative security topic in which you also invite key media and customers to observe.
• Offer the expert early access to your intellectual property
• Discuss the possibility of teaming up to write articles or speak at events

Although the goal is to get referrals and positive mentions - the halo effect that comes from having your brand associated with a top expert in the field - in each case you are not asking for something for nothing.  The expert will benefit from the association too, especially if your company is seen to be a forward thinking leader in the field, and you offer information, contacts or technology that can be helpful to them.

These soft incentives can be more powerful than hard incentives like money because the media quickly ferret out paid endorsers, and together with the blogosphere sniff out those who try to hide it (recall the Armstrong Williams fiasco, reported in this USA Today piece: Education Dept. Paid Commentator to Promote Law among many other outlets).  And people who are paid to endorse products just don't lend the same credibility.

And as I said in my post Stepford Wonks, it is possible to take the practice to Orwellian extremes - such as when the the Pentagon was recently outed by the NY Times for currying favor from retired military officers by offering high level access, in return for vocal support of the administration's Iraqi policies on the news shows.

Note: I am indebted to Fusion PR colleague Stephen Andrews for these ideas, he is an all around brilliant PR guy who is also a former Arthur Andersen consultant and managed influencer relations for IBM in a previous life.

I'll be interviewing Stephen on the topic next week, so please stay tuned.

WSJ Catalogs the Über Influencers

The WSJ journal had a great article yesterday, New Breed of Business Guru Rises.  It identified the top thinkers that business leaders look to for advice:

Psychologists, journalists and celebrity chief executives crowd the top of a ranking of influential business thinkers compiled for The Wall Street Journal. The results, based on Google hits, media mentions and academic citations, ranked author and consultant Gary Hamel No. 1.

But Dr. Hamel is the only traditional business guru in the top five, which includes two journalists, Thomas Friedman and Malcolm Gladwell, and a former CEO, Bill Gates.

It further describes  how the list has changed since 2003, when Thomas Davenport, a professor at Babson College, compiled a similar ranking for his book What's the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking.  He compiled the list for this article as well.

The writer, Erin White, looks to Davenport and others for reasons that some of the old guard management gurus were displaced in the rankings by an eclectic new group.

Dr. Davenport says the changes show that time-strapped managers are hungry for easily digestible advice wherever they can find it. Today, the most pressing themes include globalization, motivation and innovation. Traditional business gurus writing "weighty tomes" are in decline, he says.

Managers say it's no coincidence they tap a broad range of thinkers. "The demands on all of us for decision-making have grown exponentially," says Susan Flygare, a sales-strategy executive at Blue Cross and Blue Shield..."

Not too surprising, I guess. 

Also, I found the methodology to be interesting.  It is one thing to call someone an influential business thinker - but how do you identify these people and rank them?  As I have blogged before, this is one area where providers of STM (scientific, technology and medical) databases like Elsevier have a leg up; they have made a science out of identifying the scientists, journalists and institutions with the most influence.

So what is the connection with PR?  Later this week I will be exploring ways of working non-traditional influencers into the communications mix.

Tech PR Secrets of the Serial Entrepreneurs

In my post The Thrill of the Startup in Tech PR I wrote about some of the benefits (as well as challenges) of providing PR services for these types of companies.

I now realize that I may have neglected one of the biggest benefits of all.  Let me explain.

In the agency world, we instruct our staff that they need to be consultants.  Our clients look to us for counsel.  One of the signs that you have "arrived" as an accounts person is that this becomes second nature.  You feel comfortable giving advice, the advice is good advice, you think on your feet, can answer the tough questions and have the sometimes tough conversations in which you need to give less than flattering feedback to the client or push back on some of their ideas.

It is clear that you are being taken seriously as a consultant when the client takes his or her medicine, takes your advice (without constantly demanding attention from top agency brass), and the combined agency and client side teams collaborate to do good PR and produce the desired results.

As important as it is to be an effective PR consultant, we should also instruct our teams that there is no shame in learning from the client. Especially those clients who have been through multiple successful ventures and are now on to the next ones.

I am thinking about the ones who have been up and down the industry, know the major conferences and how to leverage them and often have invaluable contacts amongst VCs, analysts and media. 

Of course your advice is (hopefully) still valued by these types of clients, but your advice should be tempered and show an appreciation for their know how.  Hopefully you can learn a thing or two from them and benefit by some of their contacts and down-in-the-trenches experiences of what works well in tech marketing.

I was reminded of this when my team worked with one of our newer clients - a serial entrepreneur as described above - to plan for last week's Interop show (I am only holding back on the name because I haven't received the client's permission to divulge it).

At any rate this client is a real showman, he has been a DEMO God multiple times, and knows how to best work the tech trade shows.  I thought I had seen it all over my long career but this client captivated our team with ideas on how to generate buzz at trade shows that we had not considered before.

So even though we did not have an announcement at the show we got lots of attention from media, analysts and they got some excellent sales leads.

Get Ready for Real Time, Zero Latency PR

As I started to hint at in my post Introducing the Mob formerly Known as the Audience, we are entering an age which requires real time PR skills and zero latency response times.

As much as this places pressures like never before on PR teams, we must remember that the targets of our communications also feel the heat and are calibrating their approaches accordingly.

This is at a macro level - many news organizations are adapting to shorter news cycles and investing more in the online world - and a micro level.  Journalists and other targets of our communications are trying to decide when and how to best use instant online communications tools.

Indeed I saw a post earlier this week on WashingtonPost.com: Facebook adds Chat: Count me out for Now.

Rob Pegoraro wrote:

At the start of this month, the social-networking site Facebook began adding an instant-messaging application. It's not a separate program, or even a separate Web page that you need to launch to start zipping notes back and forth in real time. Instead, this little Web widget pops in and out of the bottom right corner of the Facebook page.

...And yet I'm not going to use this capability...

Considering how many tech-PR types already use Facebook friend requests and messages to get my attention, things could get out of hand in a hurry.

I'll be blogging quite a bit about zero latency, real time PR, so please stay tuned

Introducing the Mob Formerly Known as the Audience

Online media, blogs and 24 hour cable news have all contributed to drastically compressed news cycles over the past few years.  Now, new tools that give people ways to broadcast updates in real time or near real time are threatening to further quicken the pace of communications, challenging PR pros like never before.

This will force us to sharpen our skills and tools when it comes to measurement and monitoring.  Not all chatter is created equal.  How do we know if the chatter about our brand is idle, or if it will stick and spread virally?  Gone will be leisurely planning cycles and reactive campaigns that stretch out over days.

E.g., there was lots of coverage of the disastrous Sarah Lacy interview of Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg at the South by Southwest conference last month (see Audience Atwitter... on the Muckety blog).  The sidebar to the news was the role of the mob formerly known as the audience that twittered their dissatisfaction in real time.  This part of the story crept into the headlines and colored coverage of the main topic.

Peter Blackshaw  of ClickZ wrote a nice piece several weeks ago on the subject (Customer Service Meets "Lord of the Twitters"):

Tools like Twitter remove virtually all barriers to saying a product, call-center rep, or whatever trips you up sucks. If you feel it, release it!

Your mobile device is just as good, if not more cathartic, than your computer. Just say it! Write before you think! Don't wait, not even for a second. Oh, and don't waste time with fluff. You have 140 characters to work with, period!

If you're on the receiving end of such feedback, it's hard to dismiss or ignore...

Also, Matt Dickman had a good post on the topic just yesterday on the Techno//Marketer blog.  He wrote about the challenge and offers some excellent advice:

Search engines are indexing content within minutes, micromedia outlets like Twitter are delivering messages real time and blogging allows mass communication to happen with very few barriers. Rumors and leaks will never go away, but companies now have the tools to be the first to provide key, relevant information...

..Here are a couple of ways that I can see companies adopting new technologies to communicate more quickly and more accurately in the future (and some are already doing this today):

• Sales force empowered by micromedia. Go beyond names like Twitter and Jaiku to the core technology behind those services. Imagine a company that has a private version of Twitter to communicate in real time with their sales force. Price changes roll out in seconds, questions are answered quickly and customer service follow up is prompt.
  
• Internal communications blog. Some companies are using internal-only blogs, but more will definitely start. This is a great way to create a two-way dialog and communicate information and changes quickly and transparently. Once information is in the open, everybody feels like they're on the same page.
  
• Targeted blogs. Companies will start creating blogs that are focused on key audiences (investors, customers, employees) and communicate to each in a more open and rapid manner.
  

Tidbits from Vacationland

I am on a lighter than my typically light posting routine because I am on vacation here in Southern Florida this week.  Since I started blogging, my vacation routine of vegging in the sun for countless hours digesting the Sunday NY Times and other reading material has morphed into the same mixed with a not-too-strenuous dose of contemplating and formulating blog posts.

I'll let you be the judge of whether the result is brilliance or perhaps sunstroke-induced.

Forbes on WPP

The April 21 issue has a great article about Martin Sorrell and WPP, the global ad and PR conglomerate.  It might not be that groundbreaking for anyone who works for any of their PR properties (which include Hill & Knowlton, Ogilvy and Burston-Marsteller).

But I found it to be a fascinating story of how a bean counter built a global powerhouse - mostly through acquisition - and of how a big company can be agile and alternately balance and leverage the sometimes competing interests of its many and varied brands.

Going Viral, via Sunday NY Times

Streeter Seidell, front page editor for CollegeHumor.com, wrote an amusing and informative article last Sunday: I Waste People's Time Online....  It speaks to the futility of guessing and predicting which online content has a chance at going viral (a subject I have blogged about quite a bit).

Each day we wade through an ocean of submitted items, selecting only 30 or so to publish. In an age when Web sites increasingly rely on complicated algorithms to rank content, we pick our stuff by hand. This very newspaper said of us in 2007, “No one can accuse this site of not understanding Web video.” So we sure seem to know what we’re doing, huh?

To be honest, though, we don’t. Nobody in the online content business truly does.

...There are certain common traits of viral content that loosely guide our selections — it should be short, easily understood, universal, nostalgic — but for every hit sharing those qualities there are millions of similar failures, not to mention stuff that simply defies explanation. A 36-second video on YouTube of a doe-eyed Japanese girl silently staring into the camera before giving the peace sign has a baffling 2.9 million views. The Internet is a strange place.

Stepford Wonks

As I said in my post Influencers Gone Wild in the Blogosphere, it would only be shrewd to consider that there might be hidden allegiances and agendas amongst the bloggers and other influencers you seek to approach for coverage.

But it takes brilliance - dark brilliance - to stack the deck of these allegiances and exploit them to the advantage of your communications program.

That is exactly what the Pentagon and Bush administration have done, according to a front page article in the Sunday NY Times: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Agenda.

According to the article, first the Pentagon and then the State Department courted and groomed key "influentials" such as retired military leaders to influence TV coverage of the Iraqi war progress and policy. 

The arrangement was convenient for all involved. The network and cable news broadcasts got their military expert talking heads, the Bush administration got to propogate their messages and talking points through proxies, and the military analysts got access to the highest levels of the Bush Administration (as well as occasional TV consulting fees.)

Very profitable access, as it turns out, since it turns out that these experts also generally had close ties to military contractors - entities which could trade on and otherwise exploit the access.

Talk about an unholy alliance! 

How compliant were these analysts? According to the article:

...In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access....

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said....

...Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions...”

...Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena...”

You have to hand it to the Bush administration.  If they were half as smart formulating and implementing policy as they were Machievallian in influencing the headlines, we'd be in a much better place as a nation today.

Although the effort was deemed to be a sucess by a number of measures, one has to ask what was gained in applying lipstick to the proverbial pig, as they did.  We don't seem to be much closer to getting out of Iraq, I think most people still consider the policy and execution of it to be misguided, and real lives have been at stake.