Insights for Leaders Navigating
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.
In the time I have been at Communiqué PR, I have realized that I can apply many of the lessons I have learned from golf to public relations. Both golf and PR have landscapes that are constantly changing, however, are full of opportunities. Opportunities that through precise execution and careful planning (or practice), can achieve great results.
I am new to PR, but having played golf for 15 years, I am finding that my experience with the sport is helping me navigate the world of PR. Whether you are standing on the tee box or sending out a pitch, there are similarities in the approach. Although the equipment might be different, both benefit from these four approaches:
Break down your goals
The most obvious goal in golf is to lower your score; however, this is easier said than done. Rather than looking at it as 18 holes, it is more effective to break down your goals into achievable specific goals, like getting your approach shots within 15 feet of the flagstick or taking fewer shots on all the greens. In PR, one way that you can break down a goal is to focus on building a relationship with certain reporters or outlets over time. When working in PR, you always want amazing results for your clients and it is helpful to indentify smaller achievable goals that will lead to the overall success and great results that you are working toward.
One hole at a time
When you play a round of golf, remember to play one hole at a time. Do not mourn your previous hole or warily anticipate the next hole; you must simply focus on the hole that you are playing as if it is the only hole on the course. This mindset is helpful in PR. Rather than thinking about previous wins or losses, it is best to focus on the current pitch. Do not be discouraged if a journalist was not interested in the last pitch you sent them. Take a step back, analyze the elements of your new pitch, and focus on the new story or information you are sharing. Keeping a fresh focus and positive outlook will benefit your work and the outcome.
Keep score (in the back of your head)
In golf, focusing on your score can be a bad thing. It is often best just to focus on playing your best golf rather than focusing on the numbers. When you focus too much on your score, suddenly you are miss-hitting your shots and positioning yourself to play worse than you would have if you had not been keeping a constant minute-to-minute tally.
Similarly in PR, you can keep score of how many articles have been published or how many media or analysts briefings your client has had, but overall you need to just focus on the quality of the work you are doing and how it helps them reach their business goals. It may not mean securing 40 articles; it may mean building one really strong media relationship. Keeping tally just for the sake of having good numbers is not nearly as important as having meaningful results.
Know proper etiquette
Whether you are playing golf for a university or playing with your buddies on a Saturday morning, you are not the only player on the course. There is important golf etiquette to follow. It is important to know the rules. Including not talking while others are hitting or not walking through someone’s putting line. Golf is more enjoyable for all the players on the course when everyone knows the common courtesies and golf etiquette. When you practice PR, there are common courtesies, as well, including respecting journalist’s feedback and schedule, and respecting client’s objectives. And PR etiquette is something we learn from being part of a top-notch PR firm like Communiqué PR.
2015 was a record-breaking year for worldwide deal making, with $4.7 trillion in announced mergers and acquisitions (M&A), according to data from Thomson Reuters. This figure is up 42 percent from 2014, and beats the previous record of $4.4 trillion set in 2007.
This explosion of activity and deal value is due in large part to mega-deals—deals that are over $5 billion, such as Pfizer’s $191.6 billion offer for Allergan PLC—which account for 51 percent of the overall M&A value in 2015. However, plenty of mid-size companies in sectors including healthcare, technology, consumer products, and retail made deals to consolidate to become more competitive in 2015.
As a firm providing PR counsel to growing technology companies, the team at Communiqué PR has assisted numerous clients through M&A transitions, with at least one client per year being acquired, on average. Keeping with the 2015 trend, we saw an increase in client acquisitions last year, with former clients Volometrix and Mobidia being acquired by Microsoft and AppAnnie, respectively. And, as each of our clients have entered into M&A deals, we have had the opportunity to witness first-hand the excitement, anticipation and frankly, the anxiety that such a situation can bring to a workforce.
Employee Development Programs are Critical During M&A Transitions
According to America’s Job Exchange, the merging of company cultures can have a negative impact on employees, which can lead to a lack of motivation or the loss of top talent who may feel uncertain about their future role in the company. For instance, employees may be concerned about whether their job is becoming redundant and if they may be facing a layoff. Or perhaps they might wonder if they will have to relocate, or whether they will receive the same benefits package with the new company. Increasingly, employees going through this transition want to know whether the new company is invested in their individual long-term success and professional advancement.
As PR professionals, our team frequently helps clients develop communications plans with messaging developed specifically to help address the concerns of employees during a merger, however, ensuring that companies retain their top talent during a transition requires having a well thought-out employee development plan.
According to Sherry Tiao at Chronus, a provider of talent and career development software for enterprise-scale organizations, employee development programs often give employees goals to work toward and visibility into their potential career path. This increased perspective helps employees feel engaged and invested in their jobs and their company’s mission. In addition, an employee’s motivation is important to a company’s success, as disengaged employees can have a significant impact on productivity. According to a Gallup report cited by Tiao, estimates show that actively disengaged employees cost U.S. businesses between $450-$550 billion each year in productivity.
As M&A deals become more and more common, businesses aiming to retain the best talent and ensure a more seamless transition will need to invest time and resources into communications and development plans that help prepare employees for culture shifts and ensure individual motivation. Fortunately, business leaders seeking advice in this area can access a wealth of valuable resources online and from experts in career development, such as Chronus, which offers award-winning technology solutions and best practices used by organizations including Comcast, Coca-Cola, Kaiser Permanente and others to employer mentoring, coaching, and other training and development initiatives.
For insights and examples on how to establish and successfully manage an effective employee development program for your enterprise or merging company, check out Chronus’ published case studies and blog posts. For insights into developing effective messaging, internal communications plans, or for more about how Communiqué PR has helped clients facing M&A transitions, visit the Communiqué PR blog.
After writing my last blog post, “Considerations to Stay Competitive in Creative Content Marketing,” I learned just how overwhelming analyzing and distinguishing which method of the vast number of available content marketing platforms to utilize can be. The decision of selecting the platform or platforms needs to be thoughtful and requires critical thinking around which method will drive meaningful results and derive results that will ultimately satisfy a company’s business and communication objectives.
CMS, or content management systems, is an intriguing topic. TechTarget defines CMS as a “system used to manage the content of a website,” offering that “the features of a CMS system vary, but most include Web-based publishing, format management, revision control, and indexing, search, and retrieval.”
My mind was swamped with a laundry list of questions. First, how should marketing teams approach such a long list of content management platforms? In what way can companies organize the procedures for content creation and distribution? What are the best CMS programs out there for my business and industry? Are these “best” programs easy to manage and practical for my projects and content? Lastly, what best practices should a company implement in order to get the most from these programs?
After doing some research, I pulled together a list of the four CMS programs that repeatedly occurred throughout my searches. The first two are best suited for website development and the third and fourth programs expand on the sectors of digital publishing and digital asset management (DAM). Below I have outlined these programs with some suggested practices for employing.
- WordPress. Top ranked on nearly every article I researched, WordPress enables companies to create websites, blogs and mobile applications. An extremely helpful article, on wpmudev breaks down the best practices for managing WordPress in order to successfully engage with your target audience and maintain a level of organization around marketing content. As the Communique employee who assists in managing our company blog, I give WordPress double thumbs up. Not only is it easy to navigate, the features allow for great ease in organization and managing scheduling.
- Joomla! Similar to WordPress, Joomla! is often used in website development and enables companies to easily manage user accounts, media, content, article copy, menus and overall design. IT World released an article interviewing Mitch Pirtle, the co-founder of Joomla! where he shares eight tips and best practices from the developers of Joomla!
- WebDAM. Aside from helping companies manage their in-bound marketing efforts and increasing brand impact, WedDAM has an extremely helpful “Resource” section on their website that provides companies with guided direction and powerful examples in digital asset management, brand management, and even shares creative inspiration to exploit WebDAM’s full potential.
- WoodWing. The tagline says it all: “Create. Manage. Publish.” WoodWing’s software functions as a multichannel publishing system, a digital asset management guide, provides support in digital content production and supports brand management. The solution helps companies produce and organize content for websites, mobile apps, social media channels and more.
These programs not only help marketing teams streamline the publishing processes, they aid with the production of content. Implementing these CMS solutions reduces the cost and time required for developing creative content. Depending on the marketing platforms and strategies selected for sharing creative content, these four and many other content management systems will come to the rescue in assuring that all creative content marketing efforts are smooth and implemented most efficiently.
Huge shout out to these informative articles for the inspiration and providing me with a crash course on CMS: 10 Most Popular Content Management Systems Online, Top Content Management Software (CMS), Content management systems: A business buyer’s guide and Top 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems.
Earlier this month Instagram traded its classic brown camera logo – an icon recognized worldwide—for an updated sunburst design. While users, design professionals, and others in the industry had their fair share of opinions and mixed reviews, Instagram made a bold, and needed, change, embracing the dynamic social media landscape and evolving its branding accordingly.
The updated logo and, more importantly, the logic for doing so, was clearly communicated via Instagram’s blog, its Twitter, a Medium post by Instagram’s head of design Ian Spalter, and, obviously, an Instagram post. The social media platform that so many have come to love carefully weighed this decision and highlighted its process for arriving at the new brand look in a video—used across the various mediums mentioned above.
In addition, Spatler highlighted an important point in his Medium post, asserting that “brands, logos and products develop deep connections and associations with people, so you don’t just want to change them for the sake of novelty. But the Instagram icon and design was beginning to feel, well … not reflective of the community, and we thought we could make it better.”
I think it’s important to take a moment to reflect on other leading brands that have undergone similar logo refreshes. Nintendo, Starbucks, Apple, McDonalds, Google and Coca-Cola, to name a few, have all evolved their company branding. The Instagram team felt that the logo needed to reflect how vibrant and diverse the platform’s users and content has become, and this was a decision that was not simply arrived at overnight.
Beginning last year, the team thoughtfully determined which elements would be incorporated into its new look, asking Instagram employees to draw the old icon from memory in five seconds. The most recalled elements were the rainbow, lens, and viewfinder, which were fused into the new design. Instagram’s sister apps – Layout, Boomerang and Hyperlapse – also incorporated similar looks and feels in order to create uniformity within the suite. In addition, the app’s user interface was updated to a simple black and white layout that, according to Spatler’s blog, helps users’ photos and videos “shine.”
As an industry evolves and a company matures, changes are inevitable, particularly in the fast-paced social media landscape. Complacent companies are rarely successful, as new innovative ones will take their place. The successful companies are those that continue to reflect on strategy and adjust according to changes in the marketplace, and Instagram did just that.
While I’m not a huge fan of the updated logo, I am a proponent of and appreciate Instagram’s evolution. Further, the communications around Instagram’s new look and, more importantly, the thought process for doing so and how the new icon was arrived at, were well executed. Here’s to a new Instagram era!
Since the publication of Susan Cain’s 2012 bestselling book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” introverts have become downright popular. What used to be stereotyped as the quintessential shy, socially awkward personality type, introverts have now become a force to be reckoned with, albeit in a quieter, less social way than their extroverted counterparts.
There have been thousands of articles written over the past few years extolling the traits and benefits of introversion, explaining how the more solitary and reflective types among us (myself included) can thrive in business and leadership, in school settings, as parents, and even in dating. If you’re curious, BuzzFeed has more than a dozen quizzes available to test just how introverted you might be.
Who are the introverts? Cain defines them as people having a preference for “a quiet, more minimally stimulating environment.” They are typically individuals who listen more often than they speak and are generally more avoidant of risk. Small talk can be a nightmare for many introverts because it lacks depth or any real connection. Introverts value having a smaller number of close relationships over several casual acquaintances, and they want their work to be meaningful.
So when it comes to a field like public relations – one that, by definition, relates to the public, is there room for the introverted personality type? It might be easier to imagine a classic extrovert – with their naturally outgoing and social personality – in a PR role. After all, extroverts are the folks who typically have no issues working a crowded room or trade show booth, or making cold calls to strangers and easily building a rapport for their clients. Make no mistake – extroverts are absolutely a critical part of a PR team. However, I would argue there are few career choices better suited for an introvert than public relations.
Take these common introvert traits, for example, and how they can be applied to PR:
Listen and think before you speak. Journalists work under tight deadlines and need answers and information quickly – this is the nature of our business. But all too often people prioritize reacting quickly or loudly or first, rather than reacting thoughtfully. Working too fast is how careless mistakes are made, and in PR, those mistakes can end up on the evening news. Consider that in the vast, vast majority of situations, there’s always time to pause and think critically.
Embrace the calm. This is key in crisis situations or in times when patience is running thin. The last thing a stressful situation needs is a sense of panic and anxiety folded in. Since many introverts are more subdued and less reactionary, they can bring a sense of calm to a crisis. Many years ago during a performance review, a manager described me as “the office hostage negotiator” because I was able to diffuse tense or challenging situations and keep my teams focused on their immediate priorities, rather than getting distracted and spinning a crisis situation out of control. It’s only recently I realize that accolade was due largely in part to my being an introvert.
Quality over quantity. One of the worst practices in PR is the “spray and pray” mentality toward media outreach. This is when a company blasts out a press release or email pitch to the widest variety of media possible, hoping that someone, anyone, will bite and cover the news. I suppose the logic here is that your message (in theory) reaches more people, but are those people actually reading your news? Do they care at all? Introverts tend to prefer having close relationships with a few people rather than with many acquaintances. I would argue having close, long-term relationships with your clients, your news sources and your influencers is vastly more effective than casually “pinging” thousands of contacts every week.
Be prepared. For introverts, preparation is everything – it ensures we’re able to speak thoughtfully and offer something meaningful to the dialogue. In PR, preparation is also critical – it’s the main differentiator that ensures a client nails an important interview or speech, and that your account teams are well-informed about activities, budgets and priorities. I personally find “speaking off the cuff” to be tremendously stressful because it means I often don’t have time to adequately research what I’m saying, prepare my key points and think critically about my argument. Think about potential issues and questions in advance to ensure you have the right materials and resources for the task at hand. The more prepared you (and your client) are, the stronger the end result will be.
In conclusion, being an introvert doesn’t mean you’re shy. Or socially awkward. Or an asocial hermit. But it does mean that you value time alone to regroup and re-energize. It also means that you more often listen before speaking, particularly in a large or unfamiliar setting. This thoughtful, arguably more personal approach will serve introverts well in an industry like public relations – and make them a valuable part of any PR team.
Are you an introvert working in PR? What do you like most (and least!) about it? What are your biggest challenges? Tell us here in the comments.
I have a confession – I’m not big on confrontation. I typically prefer to go with the flow and be seen as easygoing rather than disruptive. However, a segment Marketplace aired on its radio program last week got me thinking I may need to reconsider my agreeable ways, at least when I’m at work anyway.
According to a Columbia University study, tension among colleagues stemming from diverse expertise and professional backgrounds led to the most innovative teams.
While it may seem counterintuitive to encourage discord over harmony, the study’s author, David Stark, explains, “Misunderstandings and breakdowns in communication can be as important as a smooth exchange of ideas.” The discussions initiated by these lapses in communication can bring clarity and lead to new solutions that may not have been apparent before.
Here are four tips on how to successfully incorporate creative tension within your organization:
- Hire employees with different working styles and experiences – At Communiqué, our team members’ experience range from working in healthcare public relations to teaching high school English, with some having spent years at larger firms before joining CPR and others who came from small agencies. This mix has yielded an intelligent, creative and resourceful group that brings unique perspectives to everyday activities such as brainstorming byline titles and mapping out a new client proposal. When interviewing candidates without tech or PR experience, we look for which skills attained from their previous roles may transfer over and benefit the firm.
- Lay a foundation of trust to ease the tension – With disagreement inevitably comes friction, so it’s important to create trust within the organization. Stark notes, “If you all ironed out your differences you wouldn’t be able to come up with something new. So it’s this kind of ability to hold tight, put up with the ambiguity, tolerate that tension, and turn it into something that’s productive.” Develop trust by always being honest and respectful and by creating a shared vision with your team.
- Experiment with account teams – Stark also encourages creativity when it comes to building out teams. Instead of even-splitting a group of 10 into two teams of five people, he suggests creating two teams of six and seven with some members serving on both teams. Stark believes this type of division is necessary as innovative organizations require overlap. In his study of video game companies, Stark found when a team included members that had worked together before and had dissimilar knowledge, their team was most likely to create inventive and critically acclaimed video games.
- Set deadlines – While different thoughts and ideas are critical to success, you must establish deadlines for revisions and commit to them. Otherwise, a draft of a press release will continue to go through endless rounds of edits without accomplishing its main purpose of reaching media.
The next time you hesitate to share your opinion with a colleague, remember that the best concepts are often a result of collaboration. Drawing from past experiences and challenging yourself to embrace the discomfort will ensure co-workers and clients increasingly value your contributions.