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Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
The Galaxy Note 7 was Samsung’s most sophisticated phone ever, and many industry experts predicted that it would challenge Apple’s dominance over the market. That idea went down in flames (pardon the pun) when Note 7 phones started spontaneously combusting in early September. The risk of explosion was so great that the Federal Aviation Administration deemed the devices a fire hazard and banned them from all U.S. flights.
Since then Samsung has been digging itself out of a PR crisis that has the potential to permanently damage its brand. Samsung certainly isn’t out of the woods yet and its team is still dealing with the aftermath of the debacle, but it’s safe to say that the initial crisis is over. So, how successfully did Samsung’s PR team handle the situation?
When it was first reported that the Note 7s were exploding, Samsung responded quickly on all fronts – it immediately made public statements about the news and issued a global recall of the phones within weeks. Communicating swiftly and often with key audiences is the cornerstone of any crisis response, and Samsung nailed this. By immediately taking action the company showed its key audiences that it was taking the situation seriously. However, it’s critical that the information a company shares about the situation is accurate. This is where Samsung went wrong.
The company acted too quickly and many of its initial statements had to be retracted. Samsung initially said that Hong Kong customers’ phones were not at risk of exploding, only to take it back the next day when it was discovered that phones sold in Hong Kong were, in fact, affected. Then the company based its explanation for the cause of the explosions on incomplete evidence. Samsung confidently stated that the phone’s battery was the cause of the explosions and rushed to produce 2.5 million replacement phones. This resulted in a second and arguably worse crisis – the replacement phones started exploding, too.
Samsung finally conceded that it didn’t know the cause of the explosions and was forced to discontinue the Note 7 altogether. By providing inaccurate information and acting too quickly, Samsung lost the trust of its customers and investors, and stands to lose millions of dollars in revenue. Its stock took a nosedive in mid-September, plunging 7 percent in one day.
The Note 7 crisis has not doomed Samsung altogether – the other areas of the company’s business are doing well and its stock has bounced back – but there are some major lessons to be learned. From a PR perspective, the biggest takeaway is to share information early and often, but make sure the information you’re sharing is accurate. Samsung could have salvaged a lot of trust, and dollars, if the company had stated that they did not know the cause of the explosions but would keep the public updated as it worked to uncover the root of the problem.
Samsung’s response to the Note 7 crisis started off strong, but unfortunately a couple significant missteps led to an even bigger crisis for the company.
Moving a senior loved one to an assisted living facility is an important decision that most families will encounter one day. According to the CDC, there are more than 34 million unpaid caregivers providing care to someone in the United States today, and that number is anticipated to grow as the baby boomer generation continues to age. Sometimes, these arrangements are sustainable and families are happy to be caretakers for extended periods, but often seniors require professional care that families are unable to provide.
One major obstacle many families face when discussing senior care with an aging loved one is an inherent opposition to moving to a care facility. Many people think of assisted or senior living communities and conjure up images of sterile, hospital-esque homes where all independence and freedoms are taken away. This stigma about senior care has been around for a while and is an ever-present problem families face when finding a care solution.
As the third part of a data-focused series designed to help families plan for the future, A Place for Mom – the nation’s largest senior-living referral service – examined the reality of senior care vs. the perception of senior care to get to the truth behind the stigma. Does a senior’s quality of life go down after a move to assisted living? How do perceptions of assisted living change after someone moves in? And what is the impact on the family caregiver after a senior moves into assisted living?
Staying Home vs. Moving
Most seniors say they’d rather age at home, but the truth is that quality of life generally improves after moving. In coordination with Sage Projections – a Seattle-based research and consulting company – A Place for Mom created the “Family Quality of Life Survey,” which was designed to measure the effect of moving to an assisted-living community on quality of life for both the senior and a family member who helped them search for senior housing and care. A Place for Mom surveyed both seniors currently searching for senior housing and care as well as family members who successfully helped a loved one find assisted living. The survey also asked about the perceptions seniors and family members had about senior living before they began their search.
The results are both revealing and surprising, showing a widely favorable experience despite the generally negative stigma around elder care. Contrary to initial expectations, both seniors and family caregivers experience a positive change in overall quality of life after a senior moves to assisted living. In fact, seniors who moved are 70 percent more likely than those considering a move to assisted living to report a good overall quality of life, and 65 percent less likely to have a bad overall quality of life. Once a senior has moved, they are five times more likely to see overall quality of life improve instead of worsen, and 73 percent of families report that a senior’s quality of life got better or much better.
Additionally, 73 percent of respondents reported an improvement in the senior’s nutrition, 64 percent saw the senior’s social well-being improve, 47 percent saw emotional well-being improve, and 44 percent saw physical health improve. Over all, a worsening quality of life for the senior was the least likely outcome.
When a senior moves to an assisted living facility, there is also a positive impact on the caregiver’s quality of life and even their finances. Of family caregivers who had a parent or loved one move, 60 percent say their own quality of life improved. And, perhaps most importantly, half of families who helped a parent or loved one move say their relationship with the senior improved.
It’s also important to note that the financial well-being of caregivers is largely unaffected after a senior moves, with more than 70 percent of families feeling no change in their financial situation, despite many having concerns about paying for the cost of assisted living. The transition also opens the door for greater earning potential for caregivers. Out of families who helped a love one make a move, 39 percent report less impact of caregiving on their careers.
Media Interest in the Survey
Understanding the differences in the reality vs. perception of assisted living proved to be a hit with the media. The press release alone was featured on 150 different media outlets, reaching a potential audience of more than 85 million, including being featured on websites such as: Yahoo! Finance, Health Executive Today, Med Tech News and The Street. Highlights from the original media coverage include:
- Long-Term Living Survey: Assisted living improves quality of life
- HomeCare Magazine: Quality of Life Improves After Move to Assisted Living, New Survey Reveals
- Senior Housing News: Most Seniors View Assisted Living Negatively—Until Moving In
- McKnight’s Senior Living: Seniors, families benefit from move to assisted living, survey finds
- NBC KCWY 13: Senior Care
Communiqué PR congratulates APFM for their continuing efforts to provide resources and information so that families can plan for senior care.
Our client, Spaceflight Industries, has had several big announcements over the few several weeks—the latest was a major customer announcement. Spaceflight, the launch services and mission management arm of Spaceflight Industries, announced that Terra Bella will serve as a co-lead on Spaceflight’s first-ever dedicated rideshare mission, SSO-A. The mission is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in late 2017 with more than 20 payloads from 10 countries manifested aboard the rocket.
Spaceflight’s SSO-A mission is not only Spaceflight’s first dedicated rideshare mission, it is the industry’s first-ever dedicated rideshare mission. Because this is an industry first and a revolutionary approach to accessing space, people are wildly interested in its developments. We initially announced Spaceflight’s plans for a dedicated rideshare mission in October 2015 when they purchased a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the mission. Since then, we have not shared any updates about the mission. Given that this is a highly anticipated event, we want to maintain journalists’ interest by sharing developments and progress leading up to the 2017 launch. With Spaceflight’s marketing team, we decided one of the best ways to do that was through an announcement that shared information about scheduled, contracted customers.
With a dedicated rideshare mission that is near capacity, there is a significant number of payload customers aboard this mission. Rather than listing all the contracted customers, we reasoned that announcing a co-lead payload and several secondary payloads would provide the media with a sense of the customers on the mission without overcrowding the release with the full list of customers.
Another thing we considered when making that decision was approvals. When announcing partnerships, new customers, or anything that involves multiple brands, you need to gain approval from each party included in the release. Gaining approvals from all of the customers in this situation would have been a lengthy process that would have consumed a significant amount of time.
As always, we developed a targeted, yet comprehensive press list and delivered the release to those contacts. We also placed the release on the wire to maximize awareness and reach. We’re pleased to report that the announcement garnered 13 pieces of coverage in a number of top industry publications and a local broadcast segment. Below is a list of the coverage:
- Spaceflight signs up Google’s Terra Bella for satellite launch on SpaceX rocket—GeekWire, 10/11/16
- Terra Bella and Spaceflight Ind. contract SpaceX for Falcon 9 Launch in 2017—NewSpace Global, 10/11/16
- Terra Bella & Spaceflight Industries Sign The Big Bird To Launch Small Imaging Satellites—SatNews, 10/11/16
- Terra Bella and Spaceflight Industries Sign Agreement for Falcon 9 Launch for Small Imaging Satellites—Parabolic Arc, 10/11/16
- Spaceflight to launch Terra Bella satellites on Falcon 9 mission—SpaceNews, 10/11/16
- SpeedNews Defense & Space—Aviation Week, 10/12/16
- Spaceflight to launch Terra Bella satellite on Falcon 9 rocket—Aerospace Technology, 10/12/16
- Spaceflight Industries Signs Satellite Launch Deal With Google’s Terra Bella—Northwest Innovation, 10/12/16
- SpaceX to Launch Terra Bella Satellites Through Spaceflight Industries—Via Satellite, 10/12/16
- Spaceflight to Launch Terra Bella Satellites on Falcon 9 Mission—Florida Space Report, 10/12/16
- Terra Bella and Spaceflight Industries to launch small imaging satellites—Space Daily, 10/13/16
- Seattle company sends satellites into orbit—KING 5, 10/14/16
- Seattle Week in Review: Read It While You Still Can—Xconomy, 10/14/16
Last month, BlackSky, a business belonging to our client Spaceflight Industries, successfully launched and confirmed signal acquisition of its first satellite, Pathfinder-1.
BlackSky is an earth-imaging company with a geospatial intelligence platform that Spaceflight Industries conceived in 2013 and officially began operations in July 2015. Since then, the company has focused on the construction of its first satellite, Pathfinder-1, and development of a platform that allows customers to observe, analyze and act on critical global events and data in near-real time. Pathfinder-1 and Pathfinder-2, which is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base later this year, are demonstration satellites that are vital to informing the development of the remaining satellites in the company’s planned 60-satellite constellation.
The successful launch of Pathfinder-1 was a significant milestone for the company, being that it was the first step to operating satellites that will gather images and data to access through the platform. Given the importance of this accomplishment, normally we would have opted to release the news under embargo to select journalists before releasing it on the wire. However, working in the space industry presents unique circumstances to consider when executing launch announcements.
Reaching space is still a very complicated process and there are several possible outcomes for satellite launch and operations. First, the launch could be entirely unsuccessful. Second, the launch could be successful, but there might be operational issues with the satellite once it is in space. Lastly, the entire mission could be a complete success, which in this case, it was (though we never doubted that!). Due to the potential outcomes, we opted to hold the news until BlackSky could confirm a successful mission.
The key to a successful announcement with a variety of outcomes is preparation. We focused on creating a plan for each possible scenario and developed all of our materials in advance of the launch date. This included statements for the two scenarios that were not complete successes. If either the launch or the signal acquisition had been unsuccessful, our plan was to acknowledge the setback and the company’s next step through a statement issued via social media.
Our approach to announcing a completely successful mission involved placing a press release on the wire and sending the release to a comprehensive press list consisting of relevant business, technology and space industry journalists. We are pleased to say that we received confirmation from the BlackSky team that the satellite was operational and were able to proceed with distribution of the news.
There was significant interest and excitement around the news resulting in 17 pieces of coverage including local television and radio segments. Here’s a list of the coverage:
- Satnews, “Spaceflight’s Pathfinder-1 Is Accomplishing Just That…,” Sept. 27, 2016
- Sat PR News, “PSLV DELIVERED TO ORBIT 8 SATELLITES DURING ITS 37TH FLIGHT !,” Sept. 27, 2016
- KING 5, “Seattle-based BlackSky to sell affordable, real time space photos,” Sept. 27, 2016 (6:30 p.m. show)
- KING 5, “Seattle-based BlackSky to sell affordable, real time space photos,” Sept. 27, 2016 (5:30 p.m. show)
- KOMO Radio, **Segment not being posted online, however, we are allowed to share the audio (attached) via social media with attribution to KOMO**
- Spaceflight Now, “India declares success on PSLV’s most complex mission,” Sept. 26, 2016
- SpaceNews, “India’s PSLV launches 8 satellites in a record fifth mission this year,” Sept.26, 2016
- Parabolic Arc, “Spaceflight Industries Successfully Launches BlackSky Pathfinder Satellite,” Sept. 26, 2016
- Behind the Black, “Pathfinder 1 communications confirmed,” Sept. 26, 2016
- Spaceflight Insider, “INDIA’S PSLV ROCKET SENDS EIGHT SATELLITES INTO TWO DIFFERENT ORBITS,” Sept. 26, 2016
- Seattle Times, “Spaceflight Industries says first satellite put in orbit,” Sept. 26, 2016
- Jargan Josh, “ISRO launched 8 satellites in two different Orbits,” Sept. 26, 2016
- One India, “ISRO’s complex, historic launch: From students’ to weather satellites,” Sept.26, 2016
- The Wire, “Seven Reasons ISRO’s Latest PSLV Launch Was Significant,” Sept. 26, 2016
- Geekwire, “India’s PSLV rocket sends BlackSky Global’s first Earth-watching Pathfinder satellite into orbit,” Sept. 25, 2016
- NASASpaceflight.com, “ISRO PSLV conducts SCATSAT-1 launch,” Sept. 25, 2016
- PC Tablet, “ISRO’s PSLV rocket set to launch eight satellites on Monday: Things you shouldn’t miss,” Sept. 24, 2016
We are extremely excited for the BlackSky team and look forward to their many successes to come!
With 2017 just around the corner (it’s hard to believe, I know), marketers and journalists are already predicting trends set to take off in the coming year.
I recently read an article in Forbes highlighting the top 10 marketing predictions for 2017 and found the following predictions to be particularly on point:
- Data scientists will become “the new marketing lieutenants.” Given the rise of data scientists across numerous other fields, from people analytics to banking, it’s no surprise that there’s going to be an increased demand for data scientists in marketing. According to the author, data scientists will be key players in bolstering marketing strategies by ensuring initiatives are evidence-based and data-driven. Marketing will become increasingly programmatic – less an art than a science.
- ROI measurement will become more effective. Measuring the impact of PR and marketing is critical to prove its value, but metrics often establish correlation versus causality. Current metrics feel imprecise, providing an opportunity to iterate and arrive at more accurate measurement. In 2017, measurement will likely tie marketing initiatives to profit, revenue, customer retention and client satisfaction more clearly than in years’ past.
- Content will become increasingly personalized. With the current buzz around the internet of things and connected devices, it’s no surprise that marketing initiatives will become increasingly personalized, with the goal of delivering the right content to the right prospect at the right time. Sensors, edge devices, fitness wearables and more are arming brands with user-specific data that’s ripe for leveraging in marketing initiatives. According to Forbes, “For some businesses, this will mean ensuring touch points are specific and individual. For others, it’s simply streamlining the purchasing process and making it more responsive.”
- AI has arrived. While there’s been talk about AI and its role in marketing for some time, we’ll start to see the business impact of AI and its actualized potential in 2017. “Imagine a chatbot who knows your likes, dislikes, and needs and can guide you on where to eat, how to travel, or where to shop.” The possibilities to use AI to guide consumer behavior are seemingly endless.
- More (and better) video content. With the success of Pokémon Go, virtual reality, augmented reality and video will become increasingly central to brands’ marketing strategies. According to the author, “Social content, reviews, blogs, papers, and eBooks are all still crucial aspects of marketing, but video will be the rage moving forward.”
For more articles on marketing, please take a look at the following posts, if you’d like:
As one of the most contentious and theatrical presidential elections in U.S. history unfolds before our eyes, many citizens are thinking about what it truly means to be a democracy. Equitable, factual media is one of the most significant markers of a democratic society, and for those of us working in the industry, it may be a suitable time to reflect on our part in upholding this ideal.
PR people and journalists in particular have been pitted in a lasting rivalry that has inspired many media professionals to refer to public relations as “the dark side” (in varying degrees of seriousness). Some have even suggested that PR is killing journalism and that the rise of PR is a “threat to democracy” (in all seriousness).
For us to treat this complex debate with the thoughtfulness it deserves, we must first raise clarifications against some common misconceptions:
- The rise of PR has resulted in the decline of journalism
Indeed, the journalism sector has seen a decline in recent years, while the public relations sector has simultaneously grown. Last year, there were 4.8 PR people for every one reporter. However, the two trends are not causally related.
Unfortunately, job availability for reporters is shrinking for a number of reasons. One of the most profound is the decentralization of media. Before the internet era, news was only available through a few major sources, including TV and newspapers. Today, news and content are disseminated across an increasingly massive array of channels, which are all fighting for the attention of readers. People can now find desired information in smartphone apps or blogs, for example, which has subsequently decreased the demand for traditional newsroom journalists.
Additionally, this radical change in media structure has lowered newspaper valuations, forcing newsroom budgets to drop as much as 10 percent in recent years.
- Public relations is the source of media bias
Of course, it is the job of PR professionals to represent their clients in the most positive and diplomatic manner possible. However, the No. 1 source of bias in any story will always be human subjectivity. This can come from anybody – whether accidental or not, PR people and journalists alike are capable of letting their own perspectives and intentions show up in published media.
- Journalists and PR people work together begrudgingly
While the two positions are popularly characterized as a dysfunctional, sometimes adversarial relationship, the truth is that we need each other. Without reporters, PR pros would not be able to do their job of spreading awareness of their clients’ activities. Without PR pros, reporters would be less in tune with the internal news and buzz of the beat they cover. Rather than think of the two as “a broken marriage,” a better description would be that they are two sides of the same coin – roles that are distinct, but cannot exist without each other.
No matter what your stance is on this longstanding discourse, one thing is certain: The decline in journalism is a bad thing for society at large, including and especially PR professionals. The uneven reporter-to-PR ratio means that each individual reporter gets flooded with pitches, on top of their burden of having to produce content like a machine.
This is bad news for PR people because their pitches are significantly less likely to get interest, let alone coverage. There may be a lot of meaningful news that would be valuable to readers, but not enough reporters to cover it all.
Media consumers are negatively affected because what they see might not be an accurate depiction of the big picture. As long as there are significantly fewer journalists than PR people, citizens will only ever be able to see what manages to make it through the tumultuous media relations cycle. Given the mutually dependent relationship of PR and journalism, it’s vital that the two are equally powerful and populated so that they can keep each other accountable.
If we’re thinking about a more democratic media system that upholds truth and reflects reality in the fullest capacity, we need to invest more money and resources in honest journalism.