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From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Yesterday I was reading PR Week’s 15th anniversary issue and came across an article entitled “What will a PR agency look like in 15 years?” It was a compilation of comments about the future from some of today’s industry leaders: Gail Heimann, president of Weber Shandwick; Kim Hunter, president and CEO, Lagrant Communications; and Patrick Sandusky, chief communications and public affairs office with the US Olympic Committee, among others.
The article got me daydreaming about 2028. The United Nation has forecast that India will be the worlds’ most populous nation, scientists tell us a one-mile-wide asteroid will pass close to earth, and maybe we will all be driving electric cars. In terms of public relations, analysts project that the industry will grow. According to PR Week, the annual spend on public relations and word-of-mouth marketing services in the U.S. will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14 percent between 2010 and 2015.
However, over the size of the industry, I am more curious about what the agency of the future will look like. What types of services will agencies offer? How will the mix of services differ in small, medium and large agencies? What will the talent pool look like?
Gail Heimann with Weber Shandwick thinks, “PR organizations will meet the need for true global activation and team flexibility by operating 24 hours a day, enabling people to work at whatever set of hours suits the needs of their clients and their own lifestyles.”
While I agree with Gail’s statement, I would be surprised, and frankly, disappointed, if it took us 15 years to get to true global activation and team flexibility. With the advancement of technology, I think firms are on the cusp of better global collaboration, activation and flexibility in the near future.
Perhaps I think this future is closer because of Communiqué PR’s own advancement in the past year with Smartsheet. Today, we are using Smartsheet’s cloud-based collaboration technology and it is transforming how we work. How we interact with partners, co-workers and clients has drastically changed in our past year using this tool. We use the intuitive project management tool to share information in real-time with our international PR partners, including agencies in the U.K., Germany and South Africa. The tool has also helped us more effectively leverage a talented team of freelancers in multiple states.
Collaborating with overseas partners or freelancers in our pre-Smartsheet era was arduous. It involved a lot of sorting through email to track information. With freelancers, we were swapping Excel spreadsheets to track the hours they were working. Now, they enter the information directly into Smartsheet and we can access it in real time. We never have to search email for the file. The information is in the cloud and accessible from our desktop PC, home PC, tablet or mobile phone.
Smartsheet is not the only solution. There are myriad web apps and services popping up that are changing how we accomplish tasks, and allowing us to work with the most talented people regardless of their location. Clearly, it is hard (if not impossible) to predict or conceptualize the long-term impact these new tools will have on the agency of the future. However, I believe we will see technology like Smartsheet help the agency of the future improve workflows, priority setting and organizational agility – and I think this future is closer than we think.
Finally, if in the next 10 or 15 years healthcare coverage becomes more affordable to individuals, I think more people will want to work in the PR industry on a part-time freelance basis. Collaboration tools will allow firms to tap the freelance people with the right experience to join account teams and seamlessly add value.
For more on this topic, please check out the following articles:
- How collaboration technologies are reshaping PR
- Managing Moving Parts: How to Collaborate in the Modern Workplace
What do you think the future will bring for PR firms? Please share your comments, and bookmark this page so you can re-read it on Jan. 1, 2028.
When I graduated from college last spring my career path looked more like a complicated maze with no clear direction. I have a background in communications and journalism, but at the time I wasn’t sure how to narrow down my interests to a specific career or how to go about searching for jobs.
My parents encouraged me to reach out to a family friend who owns a marketing and communications agency for guidance. He provided me with invaluable career advice, the best of which was to continue reaching out to people in the communications industry.
Once I realized the importance of building professional relationships I decided to learn more about networking. I came across a book called “Never Eat Alone,” by Keith Ferrazzi, that helped me realize that at its core networking is really just creating meaningful relationships with people. I learned a great deal about making connections from this book, but here are five of the most useful tips I picked up:
Dream with a deadline: If you set specific goals for yourself it’s much easier for others to help you get where you want to go. Ferrazzi refers to goal-setting as “dreaming with a deadline” and lays out a three-step plan for goal setting: find your passion, flesh it out with smaller goals you can achieve, and identify ways to establish connections with people already in that field. Once I realized that I wanted to pursue a career in public relations I reached out to the handful of people I knew who work in PR to learn firsthand about different segments of the industry: How is working at an agency different from working in-house? How does a large agency differ from a boutique? Each person I met with offered valuable insight and new people with whom to connect. The bigger my public relations network grew the closer I came to accomplishing my overall goal of breaking into the public relations industry.
Follow up or fail: The key to establishing a new professional relationship is following up. Ferrazzi says the follow-up is the hammer and nails of your networking toolkit. To ensure you don’t get lost in someone’s “mental attic,” Ferrazzi recommends sending a quick email within 12 to 24 hours of meeting them. Another way to quickly establish a connection is to immediately add new contacts on LinkedIn.
Stay in touch: The most important part of building and maintaining a professional network is staying in touch. Sending quick, casual greetings on a regular basis will keep the connection alive so the next time you see the person you won’t be met with a blank stare. In order to maintain secondary relationships, Ferrazzi recommends getting in touch three to four times a year. I have found that an easy way to do this is sending a birthday note or congratulating someone when they are promoted or start a new job.
Pay it forward: Networking is a two-way street. While you should always be looking for people to mentor and guide you, it is just as important to find others who you can help. If you hear of a job lead that would be perfect for one of your contacts, pass it on. If you meet someone who you think would be a beneficial contact for your colleague, introduce them.
Throw out work/life balance: In general, it’s important to find a happy medium between the hours you put into your job and the time you spend with family and friends. But when it comes to networking, there’s no need to separate your personal and professional life to keep them in balance. Since Ferrazzi’s career is relationship-driven, he says he doesn’t consider it a career but rather a way of life. Although most people don’t feel that way, it is common for your most valuable professional contacts to also be close friends or family. Communique is a shining example of this – our firm’s founders are sisters.
The essence of Ferrazzi’s message is simple – create as many meaningful relationships with as many people as possible. But building relationships is not always an easy task. Are there any networking tips you have found to be helpful?
A pretty significant chunk of our work in the PR industry is about solving problems. Perhaps the problem is huge: Your Fortune 500 client is facing a major PR headache and it’s your job to fix it. Or perhaps the problem is comparatively small: One of your team members is struggling to nail a pitch.
Either way, staying focused on solutions is a key part of being a successful PR practitioner. It’s a skill that employers look for in candidates, and being known as a solutions-oriented worker makes you a desired teammate and a strong contributor to your firm and to your clients.
But sometimes, when even the smallest problems start to stack up, it can be easy to slip into bad habits, give into the negativity that inevitably arises from time to time at any job, and to stop focusing on solutions. To avoid that, and to stay focused on the solutions, remember these tips:
- Ask the right questions. When you set out to find a solution to a problem, it’s important to be armed with the information you need. Your teammates, your boss and your clients probably have a lot of that information. Before you leave a meeting or hang up a phone, get the answers that you think you’ll need. To do that, and to be seen as a problem-solver, you need to ask the right questions. Don’t ask: “Is there anything else that I need to know before I start this project?” Be more specific. Identify what you see as problem areas or missing gaps in information that you can clear up immediately:
– “Who are our key audiences for this article?”
– “What are the business objectives we want to achieve with this proposal?”
- Don’t be afraid of “I don’t know.” Scientists quip that the phrase “I don’t know” is the driver behind discovery and experimentation. It’s inevitable that you will be faced with problems that you don’t know how to solve, or aren’t prepared to address, at various points in your career. This is especially true for young employees without years of experience under their belts. That’s when “I don’t know” comes in handy. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, but remember: There’s a difference between “I don’t know” and “I have no idea what I’m doing.” Make sure that your coworkers know that even if you aren’t sure how to solve a problem, you are bringing ideas to the table and are interested in finding the best solution. To do that, remember…
- … never present a problem without proposing a solution. This is particularly true when you are working with your manager or with a client. Even if you aren’t completely confident, you should always be prepared to propose a solution to a problem. Next time a client emails you with a problem, take five minutes to devise a solution before you take it to your boss’s desk. This shows that you’re focused on the big picture, that you are proactive, and that you are always looking around the corner to see what’s next.
- Stay confident in your skills. I’ll delve into a football metaphor here: When coaches start planning for a big game, facing a superior opponent, too many start to overthink their game plan. A coach with a talented stable of running backs might turn instead to the passing game to trick their opponent, trying to “pull out all the stops” to win the most unlikely of games, rather than focusing on their strengths and trusting their practice. The professional world isn’t that different. When searching for a solution, don’t lose sight of your strengths and the hard work that’s gotten you to where you are now. Trust in your ability and your team’s ability to find a solution to even the biggest problems.
To take a step further, I thought it would be interesting to ask a few of my connections in the PR world for their tips on staying solutions-oriented. Here’s what they had to say:
- “Take a step back. Oftentimes, teams get so caught up in the minutia of projects that they forget to look at the bigger picture, the root of the problem.”
– Communications manager at a national nonprofit
- “Take time to think about the long-term; it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day without planning your long-term strategy. Read what others are doing, not so you can copy their ideas but so that you can learn from them, build from there, and combine those ideas into your own approach.”
– Account manager at a Brooklyn-based digital agency
- “Build solutions around contingencies. Rarely in PR do things go the way we would expect. So it’s important to not be rigid in mapping out solutions, but to create flexible solutions that don’t crumble should one factor of your strategy or challenge change.”
– Director of digital strategy at a global communications agency
- “I put myself in other people’s shoes and consider what kind of questions and needs they are going to have that I should be able to answer or provide.”
– Public affairs specialist at a national fashion specialty retailer
- “It all comes down to communication. How well are you able to communicate with the client their needs and your capacity to fulfill them? If you can communicate well—and here I mean the ability to have a frank and open discourse—the details will help guide you.”
– Digital marketing manager, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C.
What are your tips for staying focused on solutions at work, even when problems are mounting up? Share them with us in the comments!
I recently attended the GeekWire Gala at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) in South Lake Union. With more than 1,000 of Seattle’s tech industry professionals in attendance, GeekWire delivered an event to remember. From the amazing food to the lively DJ to the great conversation, there was no room for disappointment. As expected, the event kept up with the latest trends in technology, yet GeekWire still was able to add a personal touch.
With the recent success of car-sharing service Car2Go, GeekWire saw the perfect opportunity to partner with the innovative company for the event. To alleviate the anxiety of finding parking at this high- attendance event, Car2Go provided cars and easy drop-off locations. To create convenience for attendees, anyone who drove a Car2Go to the gala was offered VIP parking in the drop-off zone, which was very considerate given that winter has officially arrived.
After the hassle-free travel to the event, there was plenty by which to be entertained inside. My personal favorite was Mind Flex, a game that tested your brain waves against an opponent. After being assisted in placing a monitor on my temples and a clip on my earlobe, a battle ensued against my colleague, Sarah, to move a ball across a path toward the opposite side. Though I lost in this futuristic game, it provided entertainment and good laughs.
Also scattered throughout the venue were screens projecting a live Twitter feed. This allowed you to stay slightly connected with the masses of people by seeing pictures and reactions to the night’s events.
However, instead of allowing the Twitter feed to be dominated by people attending the event, GeekWire made it personal by responding to, what appears to be, every tweet. Looking at the outlet’s Twitter feed, it’s dominated by “thank yous” and “great photo.” Not only did they use technology to reach out to individual guests, but they also had GeekWire Chairman Jonathan Sposato at the front door introducing himself and welcoming guests as they arrived. As my first event of this magnitude, this aspect was comforting and a personal touch that I was not expecting.
The night overall was enjoyable and something I will look forward to next year. Technology can be perceived as cold and impersonal, but GeekWire was able to use it as tool to get personal as well as adding in some old school techniques. It seems they have found the perfect balance, and in a world often dominated by technology, a personal touch can go a long way.
Every two weeks our team sits down over lunch to discuss client campaigns that are underway or upcoming and to reflect on recent successes and challenges. Aside from being a great team bonding experience, these lunches offer an opportunity to exchange ideas and to learn about new trends and effective media outreach practices from our trusted colleagues.
During our most recent lunch, two of my colleagues were detailing a laundry list of successes on behalf of their clients, and as someone who has been struggling to secure coverage for a small, startup client, I was eager to learn their secret. Why were these other clients generating so much media coverage when on the surface, their stories weren’t particularly “sexy”?
The answer is also not that sexy: They have data and data opens doors – or it at least gets writers to respond to your emails.
As PR practitioners, we’re more likely to lean toward the power of words to communicate the defining qualities of our clients, but advances in technology have brought us a whole new language and it’s based on numbers. Access to client or industry analytics, statistics and numbers helps us better understand consumer usage and how it impacts our clients’ (or their competitors’) success. More importantly, this data helps us to frame a story or trend that will be relevant to writers who are hungry for meaningful content and reliable sources.
If your client doesn’t already have data to share, encourage them to invest in the research. Consumer behavior is generating massive amounts of data across digital channels and according to McKinsey & Company (see graphic below), companies using big data in their marketing efforts are generating an average of 6 percent higher profits than their competitors. They’re probably also generating more media coverage.
Data can also help us to justify a larger campaign budget or increased resources, so it behooves us to opt out of the age-old theory that PR practitioners can’t do math (we actually can; we have calculators) and to opt in to the numbers game by participating in the conversation with our clients and with media.
For more information about the big impact that data can have on business, check out the following infographic:
Early in November, I was lucky enough to acquire a few passes to attend Dreamforce, Salesforce.com’s annual conference. The four-day conference, which takes place in San Francisco, drew more than 100,000 attendees from the technology industry and is considered the third biggest tech industry event, following TED and CES. Big-name speakers from this year’s event included Deepak Chopra (Founder of the Chopra Foundation) and Laurent Lamothe (Prime Minister of Haiti).
I was fortunate to attend the keynotes of two leaders in the technology industry whom we often read about, but that I’ve never heard speak in person: Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. We’ve read and discussed Sheryl’s book, “Lean In,” at Communiqué PR, and continue to see a constant stream of news about Marissa Mayer’s direction for Yahoo. As such, I was excited to hear what they would offer up in their keynotes.
Marissa Mayer
Marissa Mayer, president and CEO of Yahoo (formerly a long-time executive and key spokesperson for Google), has received quite a bit of media attention over the past few years, especially with her ascendancy as CEO of Yahoo. She was listed as No. eight in Fortune’s 2013 list of most powerful businesswomen, No. 32 on Forbes’ list of the 100 most powerful women in the world, and was the first woman listed as number one on Fortune’s annual list of the top 40 business stars under 40.
Employee number 20 at Google, Marissa is a powerful and impressive figure in the technology world. Under her supervision, the stock price of Yahoo has doubled and the trajectory of Yahoo continues to be an interesting one, especially with the semi-recent acquisition of Tumblr.
In her keynote, Marissa focused on the importance of design and mobile in technology, and gave some insight into how Yahoo operates internally as well as the future of the brand. Marissa’s full keynote at Salesforce is here; my own takeaways follow:
- Design needs to be user- and mobile-centric. Marissa’s keynote focused especially on design, something that used to be an afterthought, but is now a core component for how companies think about products. We’ve heard again and again that mobile is the future and this point was emphasized by Marissa—Yahoo is completely on board with mobile.
Marissa stated specifically that when defining the Yahoo brand, it became clear that Yahoo aims to entertain, inform and inspire—three things that translate into its mobile products. In addition to designing for mobile, Marissa emphasized the idea that, for a product to gain traction, the design needs to be user-centric, meaning that it is “useful” to the user, not just “usable.”
We work with quite a few companies that focus on the mobile space—to name a few: Medio, a predictive analytics provider centered on mobile; Mobidia, a mobile data usage provider; and Smartsheet, a collaboration tool that emphasizes the functionality of its mobile app. Given the developments we’ve seen in our own clients’ businesses over the past year toward mobile, it was interesting to hear Marissa’s perspective on designing for mobile for a large business like Yahoo.
- Expert level attainable within 1–2 weeks. According to Marissa, you’ll know you have a well-designed product if people feel comfortable using it within 1–2 weeks. As an example, she discussed Xerox. While Xerox has plenty of features, we all know what the big green button does. Design should prioritize the “big green button” piece of a product. This anecdote reminded me of Smartsheet, which we’ve discussed on the blog before—the intuitive design is what makes it such a great tool for us at Communiqué PR.
- Operational transparency and efficiency are top priorities at Yahoo. The keynote gave insight into how business has changed at Yahoo since Marissa took charge. In order to maximize efficiency, Marissa has involved all employees in operational tasks like reporting issues that are making their jobs more difficult, and providing input on the decks that are presented to the Board of Directors.
One particularly interesting method Marissa has employed is “PB&J,” (process, bureaucracy and jams), a system through which employees are able to report roadblocks they experience during tasks. Once something is reported 100 times, management addresses the issue.
- On a personal note: prioritizing and “balance.” While the keynote focused primarily on Yahoo’s direction and current work, Marissa did offer an anecdote that was interesting and inspiring, especially for people that may feel overwhelmed by the idea of maintaining a work-life balance. Marissa noted that she’s constantly asked how she maintains balance in her own life, and for her, it’s all about setting priorities—literally, by listing them out everyday.
However, Marissa made an interesting point—rather than being upset that you never get to the items at the bottom of your list, think of this as a good thing. You wouldn’t want to be wasting time on things that you consider relatively unimportant. As someone who makes a to-do list at the beginning of everyday, I found this to be a refreshing perspective.
Sheryl Sandberg
Unlike Marissa Mayer’s keynote, the “Lean In” author spoke mostly about her book and message of female empowerment in the workplace. The only insight onlookers received into Facebook was through occasional anecdotes. This was to be expected, as the keynote was titled “Lean In With Sheryl Sandberg.”
I was particularly excited to see this interview, as I’ve read Sheryl’s book twice now (once when it was released, courtesy of my father, and again this year in book club). I’ve discussed the subject matter and perspective at length with family, co-workers and peers, and was excited to see Sheryl discuss her ideas in an open, conversational forum.
Sheryl’s full “Lean In” keynote can be viewed here. I had the following takeaways:
- Open the dialogue. Sheryl’s message of “leaning in” is not just to inspire people to take action, but to get people talking about issues of gender bias and insecurities. Solving these problems requires active discussion and Sheryl is encouraging the development of “Lean In Circles” everywhere—and the equal participation of men and women in these.
- Leaning in—it’s about men, too. Sheryl mentioned explicitly that men should take an active interest in workplace equality, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it can benefit their careers. Being viewed as able to work well with women can only help men in their careers.
- Let’s try it. One of the quotes that really stuck with me following the keynote was Sheryl’s response to a question she constantly gets asked: Do you really think the world/business/fill in the blank would be better with more women in power? Sheryl’s answer: Let’s try it and see what happens.
- Addressing insecurity. Another inspirational point Sheryl made was addressing insecurities by identifying fears. Sheryl has a Tumblr dedicated to the idea of “what would you do if you weren’t afraid?” She shared an anecdote of a teenage girl she met who is keeping a list of everything she’s avoided because she was afraid—with the goal of crossing each of those things off.
It was inspiring to hear both of these technology leaders speak, and I hope I’ll attend Dreamforce again in the future.