Flack's Revenge

NY Times Covers PR and VCs

The NY Times covered the addition of Outcast Communications co-founder Margit Wennmachers to the partner ranks of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.  The article mentioned the dearth of marketing executives in top VC roles, and the importance of PR:

Several other venture capital firms have marketing executives, but few are at the partner level...  Public relations plays a critical role for tech start-ups, especially Web companies aimed at the general population, because they have little money for advertising and rely on getting attention in order to find users, employees and investors.

Perhaps this marks the start of a trend, and we will hear about more PR executives joining VC firms in senior roles.

"We're a B2B Company. Why should we care about Social Media?"

I have a post on the Social Fluency blog that refutes the notion that social media is not relevant for B2B companies.  In my post Social Media and B2B: Hit or Myth? I write:

Regardless of whether you are a B2B or B2C, you can rest assured that your business prospects go online to find information related to your business...

So, you need to consider search engine optimization and online industry media, that much is clear.  But it is also true that people are increasingly discovering and sharing content through various forms of social media...

Business and tech stories that originate in traditional media can be buzzed about endlessly online, and this can effect future coverage and the trajectory of the story.   Bloggers are increasingly becoming sources for stories and breaking news on their own.

While it is true that the networks and forums might vary – and you simply need to take the time to understand these – in my experience, in just about every tech industry (and non tech, too, I would guess) there are forms of social media that are very important for B2B...

Right now, while you are reading this, people are buzzing about issues related to your area of business – and very likely about you and your competitors (don’t just take my word for it; you can go ahead and plug the right key word or brand name searches into the following social search sites: Social Mention, Same Point, uberVU, Twitter search, Google blog search, etc.)

Don’t you want to take part in the conversation?

When Spokespeople Attack: Whitman Victim's Unit

It can sometimes get a little intense when preparing clients to meet with the media, whether via general media training sessions, or coaching for one off interviews.

Clients just want to get their stories across, and may not be used to the tough questions that can come with interviews. They might not like being challenged, or confronted with the reality that the reporter might intentionally try to get a reaction. Or, they may be nervous in anticipation of an interview with a reporter that is known to be an aggressive cross examiner.

The media trainer, on the other hand, just wants to do a good and thorough job in preparing the spokesperson to meet with the press.  We are the messengers, and prefer not to be the proverbial ones that get shot or caught in the cross fire.  Yet that is what the NY Times says happened at eBay when Meg Whitman reportedly shoved an employee who was preparing her for an interview.  According to the Times

In June 2007, an eBay employee claimed that Ms. Whitman became angry and forcefully pushed her in an executive conference room at eBay’s headquarters, according to multiple former eBay employees with knowledge of the incident... The employee, Young Mi Kim, was preparing Ms. Whitman for a news media interview that day.

You can call it "Chevy" or "Chevrolet" - Just Don't Call it Late for Dinner

So was it just a plain old bad idea? Was it a "rough draft" and a "bit of fun," as a senior Chevrolet executive explained, regarding a memo disclosed by the NY Times yesterday in which the company exhorted against use of Chevy in favor of the full name?  Or was it something more sinister, even clever, a stunt designed to get fresh attention for the old brand?

The company wasted little time in responding to the negative public reaction in response to the NY Times article, which reported:

Bye-bye, indeed, Miss American Pie. If General Motors has its way, you won't be driving your Chevy to the levee ever again.On Tuesday, G.M. sent a memo to Chevrolet employees at its Detroit headquarters, promoting the importance of "consistency" for the brand, which was the nation's best-selling line of cars and trucks for more than half a century after World War II.

And one way to present a consistent brand message, the memo suggested, is to stop saying "Chevy," though the word is one of the world's best-known, longest-lived product nicknames.

In today's paper, there was a follow-up piece, which said:

But after a strong public reaction to a report in The New York Times on the note, G.M. issued a statement on Thursday that said the memorandum had been “poorly worded.” The statement said that the memorandum reflected Chevrolet’s strategy as it expanded internationally, but that the company was not “discouraging customers or fans from using” Chevy.

Got crisis? Don't bother us with more than one at a time, please

It is marketing conventional wisdom: when it comes to brand awareness, there is only room for two or three leaders in any product category. All others are pretty much disregarded - people just can't seem to make sense of or remember so many product choices.

Similarly, is our ability to focus on too many crises at a time limited?  That is what an article in yesterday's New York Times says.

There’s no obvious link between an American bank, a British oil driller and a Japanese car maker. But the reputational struggles of these three global giants suggest one lesson that won’t be lost on shrewd corporations: the court of public opinion — led by the political class and including the media — appears capable of coping with only one villain at a time.

The reporter (no byline, a Reuters story) came to this conclusion by examining media coverage of Toyota, BP and Goldman Sachs in recent months.

Using Social Media to Build Influencer Relationships

I have a post on the Social Fluency blog today: Getting on the Radars of Influencers via Social Media.

It covers ways that you can use social media, e.g. blogs and Twitter, to build relationships with influencers.  Please see below for an excerpt, and visit Social fluency to read the full post.

For all the challenges the PR profession faces amidst the transition to an online-centric media world, it is important to realize that there are new opportunities too.

One example is in the realm of media and analyst relations.  While it is true that the influencers we want to court have more distractions than ever (just like everyone else) it is also true that there are now more ways to get on their radars – especially if they (and you) are active online.

Here are some examples:

For influencers who blog (or whose articles appear online):

• Comment on their posts/articles
• Link to their posts/articles
• Add their blog to your/client’s blogroll
• Write posts that mention and link to their posts/article
• Invite them to subscribe to your (or client’s) blog
• Invite them to guest post on your (or client’s) blog

For influencers who tweet:

• Follow them
• Call out and comment on their tweets via retweets and mentions
• Thank them if they follow you
• Use direct messages (carefully)
• Use hash tags to align with topical areas
• Tweet about topics relevant to their beats

Would You Believe: Press Release Chip Shot the Cure for the Gulf Oil Mess?

The Gulf oil spill has given the world a taste of oil industry jargon. 

Jargon is something that we deal with and take for granted every day in the tech PR world.  It is sometimes interesting and fun to see families and friends chew on unfamiliar terms as related technologies start to enter the mainstream - e.g. I have had to explain blogging and Twitter to my dad, who is almost 80.

With the Gulf oil mess, the language used to describe potential fixes seems almost designed to capture attention. The whole episode reminds me of scenes from the old TV show Get Smart - the ones where Agent Smart, played by Don Adams, tries to get out of difficult situations through hollow threats, each one prefaced by "Would you believe..." Such as (when a KAOS agent is holding Smart at gunpoint and it is pretty clear that the cavalry is not coming to save him) "Would you believe this building is now surrounded by angry boy scouts?"

They say that laughter is the best medicine (and I would laugh if it weren't so sad), but just for yucks I thought I'd imagine a riff on oil spill cures tried so far - and one additional cure: would you believe a wad consisting of all the paper created by all press releases that are cast aside could plug that hole?

So is it a Geek Thing? / Facebook Friend Limit

I love words, and used to love William Safire's NY Times Magazine On Language column when he was around. I also enjoy other parts of the Sunday NY Times (although it often takes me the better part of the week to get through it).

The longer articles in the weekend paper analyze news of the week and provide context. This week's issue had two articles of that really caught my attention (so far).

The first, Follow My Logic? A Connective Word Takes the Lead, caught my eyes because of said word passion. It starts:

So this is about the word "so"

and goes on to describe the growing trend to use the word "so" at the beginning of a sentence:

“So” may be the new “well,” “um,” “oh” and “like.” No longer content to lurk in the middle of sentences, it has jumped to the beginning, where it can portend many things: transition, certitude, logic, attentiveness, a major insight.

The article quotes no less a prim and proper figure as Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of the word in this way. A little later, it states that the convention began in Silicon Valley:

So it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of “so” began in Silicon Valley. The journalist Michael Lewis picked it up when researching his 1999 book “The New New Thing”: “When a computer programmer answers a question,” he wrote, “he often begins with the word ‘so.’ ” Microsoft employees have long argued that the “so” boom began with them.

This jibes with my experiences, as I am sure I have run into this more in my conversations in tech circles than elsewhere.

Another article caught my attention because of my enthusiasm for all things related to social media. Are 5001 Facebook Friends One too Many? discusses the theoretical and very real limits to the number of friendships one can maintain.

The Dunbar number, based on research (I have blogged about this) says that the number of friendships one can realistically maintain maxes out at 150. Facebook, on the other hand, seems to scoff at this number, and does not discourage gratuitous friending - that is until you hit 5000 friends. The article says:

What would be an impressive, even exhaustive, number of friends in real life is bush league for Facebook’s high rollers, who have thousands. Other social networks use less-intimate terminology to portray contacts (LinkedIn has “connections,” Twitter has “followers”), but Facebook famously co-opted the word “friend” and created a new verb.

Facebook discourages adding strangers as friends, adding that only a tiny fraction of its 400 million users have reached the 5,000 threshold, at which point Facebook wags its digital finger and says: That’s enough. The company cites behind-the-scenes “back-end technology” as the reason for the cutoff, implying that the system will implode at the sight of a 5,001st friend.

I found another great article to include in my roundup - this one on journalist blogs and editorial standards, and featured as today's post on the Social Fluency blog,

Off to the Clios Tonight

I am going to the Clio Awards (the ad industry bash) tonight and am excited about this for a couple of reasons.

Why should a PR guy care about something that is generally regarded as an advertising industry event? First, it really does seem like a great lineup.

Here is the overview for tonight:

The Interactive & Innovative Awards will honor work in the following mediums: Interactive; Innovative Media; Integrated Campaign; Content & Contact; Design; Strategic Communications/Public Relations and Student. At this time, CLIO will also recognize the Agency of the Year, Advertiser of the Year, Network of the Year, Production Company of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Award winners.

Rob Riggle is hosting, which is pretty cool.  And PR is part of the agenda.

Second, the event marks the first time I have been invited to an industry event because of my role as a blogger. Below I list some other posts that mark my evolution as a blogger.

Why I like getting pitches

More on Blogging and PR

Wired Magazine Says Science Needs to Up its PR Game

While providing PR support for a publisher of science journals, textbooks and online search and social media tools, I executed a number of campaigns that targeted researchers a couple of years ago. Part of the project involved studying the social media habits of this group, to better understand how many use various online tools and maintain blogs,for example.

We determined that researchers are (or at least were, at the time) a reclusive bunch when it comes to blogging. The competitive nature of their work compels scientists to keep their information cards close to the vest when it comes to online communications about topics they study.

So it did not surprise me to see the Wired article "Appeal to the Heart" in the latest issue that maintains that scientists need to do a better job communicating, and that they are losing the information war with pseudo science.

The article reported that attendees of a meeting of American Association for Advancement of Science discussed the challenges posed by climate change deniers. According to the piece:

...the answer isn't more science, it's better PR.  When celebrities like Tiger Woods or Tom Cruise lose control of their image... they hire an expert. What the climatology community needs is a crackerjack Hollywood PR team.

It goes on to quote an entertainment industry PR expert, from the firm that represents Ellen Page and Pee Wee Herman.

First off, I am not sure there is a problem here. There will always be extremists and true believers regardless of what hard science reveals.  It does raise a compelling question: who really is ahead in shaping public opinion on various issues that pit hard science results against alternative views?

Assuming there is something to be worried about, I am not sure I buy into the cure discussed in the article. Science cannot be reduced to a brand like cottage cheese or Pee Wee Herman, in my view. The issues are much more complex. The challenge is more akin to one that a tech PR firm would probably be well equipped to handle, as an example. Or perhaps a political PR firm, because to do this right you might need to mix it up, roll up your sleeves and possibly get tough. I am not sure if the seemingly straightforward but genteel tactics (recruit celebrity spokespeople, work harder to get the facts out) espoused in the article would have much of an impact.

Could there be anything more dry or boring than a contingent of white coated lab researchers lecturing the American public across all forms of media? Do celebrities have any credibility here? You need to wake people up, shake them by their lapels and get them to care. Al Gore and other high profile figures have been out there forever to little effect.

My advice is be dramatic and take no prisoners.  E.g. why not make it personal and publicize the views and leanings of the pseudo scientists to show how extreme they are?

I am not sure if the scientists would play along though; according to the article

"Scientists hate the word spin. They get bent out of shape by the concept that they should frame their message," says Jeniffer Ouellette, director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a National Academy of Science Program that helps connect the entertainment industry with technical consultants

(Yes, there apparently really is an organization like this.)

What do you think? Who is winning the information war and what approach should scientists take to better communicate their findings?