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.
For those of you who know me, I am sure you can appreciate my excitement when I learned there was an opportunity to attend a breakfast talk with the new Seattle Seahawks Coach, Pete Carroll. As a college football fan I have long been enamored with the strength of the USC football program, as well as Carroll’s impressive use of social media, which I blogged about last fall (well before I knew he was coming to Seattle).
So it was with a fair amount of enthusiasm that I headed to the Fairmont Hotel to hear Carroll’s advice to Seattle’s business community. Carroll is a very good communicator – he engaged the audience right from the get-go by using his humor, asking us questions and sharing his perspective in a straightforward approachable manner. He was interviewed by the Puget Sound Business Journal’s publisher Emory Thomas and then took questions from the audience.
Here is my take on his comments.
- Have a philosophy and make sure everyone understands it. For instance, your philosophy might be to do everything you do better than the competition. If so, then everyone on your team (or in your organization) needs to understand it. It needs to be instilled in your culture and ingrained in your DNA.
- Drive is essential. As Carroll looks for the right athletes and coaches on his team, he wants highly motivated, driven types of people. He spoke about recruiting players who “want to be something special.” He explained this is often so innate that they almost have a “chip on their shoulder.” Athletic prowess (height/strength) is important, but so is how an athlete uses those gifts.
- Help me help you. As a leader, Carroll wants his people to know he is there to help them achieve their dreams and maximize their potential. To help his players stay grounded, Carroll also believes it is important to “be a beacon” and be an example. (As an aside Carroll also shared that the Seahawks now have their own yoga coach).
- Act as a team. One person cannot carry the entire load. Great quarterbacking requires effort and support from many people – not one individual.
- Focus on what you can control. Don’t give your power away by focusing on things you have no control over. Stay on your side of the field and take your game to the competition – make them react to you. If you’re thinking about your opponent’s backhand, you are not going to achieve your maximum potential in that moment.
I found his presentation inspiring and extremely relevant to the business world and am eager to read his forthcoming book “Win Forever: Live, Work and Play Like a Champion.” I am going to see if I can get an advance copy to review it on our Web site. Stay tuned.
Blogs touch tens of millions of people in the U.S. and this number continues to grow daily. In fact, according to an eMarketer report from 2009, approximately 96.6 million U.S. Internet users read a blog at least once a month, representing 48.5 percent of the Internet population. The same report predicts by 2013, this number will grow to 128.2 million, or 58 percent of all U.S. users.
Additionally, the frequency of blog updates is growing at a rapid pace. By 2013, nearly 37.6 percent of U.S. Internet users who have a blog are expected to update their blogs at least monthly.
Clearly, blogs are here to stay and will continue to be a great tool to establish thought leadership, provide relevant news, and highlight reviews of products and services. If you currently have a blog, it’s important to engage with your audience to build a strong following in order to be perceived as an expert and leader in your field.
However, if you are a novice blogger or have not yet developed a blog for your business, it will become increasingly important to leverage this medium in order to emerge as an influencer. If you’re still weary about the impact of corporate blogs and engaging with consumers online, consider this:
- Razor Fish survey of digitally connected customers found that 97 percent say their online experience influenced their purchasing decisions.
Once you’ve created a blog, you should think about how you can garner conversations with your key audience. In other words, how are you going to encourage your followers to comment and provide feedback to your content?
As many you bloggers may know, it is often difficult to get people to comment on each blog post. Here are a few tips on how to spark conversations and reach your key audience:
- Choose compelling topics. It’s no surprise the more interesting your topic, the more readers and conversations you’ll garner. Choose topics that are relevant to your audience and provides value. We recently wrote about Help A Reporter Out (HARO) on the Communiqué PR blog. This blog post garnered significant interest from readers because HARO is highly relevant to our audiences.
Another blogger who is good at driving conversation through blog comments is Angie Cox. She chooses topics such as “Fashion at the 2010 Academy Awards,” “The Power in your Wardrobe,” and “How to Wear Denim Shirts,” which have a wide appeal to people interested in fashion; and because of this, she drives lots of conversation on her site.
- Ask your readers questions and solicit their feedback. By asking questions, you are more likely to spark up meaningful conversations. Some bloggers suggest including a question in the heading. In general, you should make sure your heading is enticing and encourages people to visit your blog. While your blog may have an obvious comment section, sometimes people just need the extra encouragement.
- Respond to comments in a timely manner and interact with your readers. When a reader leaves a comment, it is important to reply back. In December 2009, Dr. Elaine Young of Champlain College commented on our blog post titled “Teaching the Facebook Generation.” Melissa, the author of the blog post, responded quickly to Elaine’s comment and began relationship building with her.
- Make it easy to leave a comment. If your comment section is hard to find or difficult to navigate, your reader is less likely to post a comment.
We hope you find these four tips helpful. We welcome any additional tips or insight on this topic. We are always looking to build followers and meaningful relationships with our key audience.
As businesses and organizations realize the power of strategic public relations, they are increasingly seeking the help of a PR agency or contractor. We thought it would be good to share our perspective on what to look for when selecting a PR partner.
Below, we have compiled a list of things to keep in mind when going through the process of selecting a firm. Consider the following:
1) Determine your objectives and clearly outline them to prospective PR partners. It’s important to be well-grounded and clear about your business and communication objectives, goals, target audience, timeline, budget and how you will measure success. With the proper information, prospective agencies will be able to come up with meaningful proposals that align with your expectations for your consideration.
2) Request a scope of work that is realistic and within your budget. To ensure that a project yields the desired results, it’s important to disclose your PR budget whenever possible. This will allow your potential PR partner to develop a plan that maps to your organization’s communication goals and resources.
3) People and chemistry matter. Get to know the agency and team that will be working with you. Take the time to meet or talk with the people who will work on your account. This will enable you to get a better feel for the team members’ personalities, their work ethic and if they will be a good match. Robert Dilenschneider, author of “The AMA Handbook of Public Relations,” explains, “After all, you are likely to be working with this team for a long time, and it will be more fun, not to mention effective, if you like and respect one another.”
4) Check references. Don’t be afraid to ask for agency references and actually call them. Heather Logrippo, of Expose Yourself Public Relations in Boston shares her experience, “PR agencies are sometimes referred to as ‘slick salespeople’ — the results don’t match the promises made when firms are trying to win the business. You can tell the true value of a company and the results they drive by speaking with their current clients.”
5) Share the outcome. Let the PR firm know in a timely manner whether you are hiring them or not. Agencies typically put a lot of unbillable time and effort into developing a PR proposal and presentation specific to a prospect’s unique goals, market opportunity and competitive landscape. Be respectful and take the time to inform the agencies competing for your business of your final decision. Even if you are not hiring a particular firm, the people who put time and energy into a response deserve the courtesy of knowing the outcome — and maybe even the rationale for it.
Please check out our book “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR” for more information about how to select your PR team. Jennifer Gehrt and Colleen Moffitt have devoted an entire chapter to the topic.
Clearly it takes time to interview agencies and solicit proposals, but selecting the right partner is likely to be critical to your company’s ongoing success.
I admit it – I can’t stand the thought of not being connected. Whether it’s e-mail, the Internet or checking social networking platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, I find it hard to be unplugged. The growing popularity of smartphone devices coupled with Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile WiMAX is only proliferating our “always-connected” culture. So it’s no surprise that airlines are looking toward inflight Wi-Fi offerings to help passengers stay connected while they travel.
Over the past couple of years, several airlines have begun offering inflight Wi-Fi services as a way to build customer loyalty and create additional revenue opportunities. Communiqué PR has been working closely with Alaska Airlines to help build buzz around its inflight Internet initiative. Last spring, we helped the airline launch a trial of its inflight Wi-Fi service which garnered some excellent results with local and national media as well as technology and aviation vertical publications.
On Wed., Feb. 24 the airline announced it would partner with Aircell to offer its Gogo Inflight Internet service on all of Alaska’s aircraft. With Gogo Inflight Internet, Alaska’s passengers will be able to browse the Web; access online music, games, podcasts and webcasts; send and receive e-mail; and connect to virtual private networks (VPN) while flying.
In order to drive awareness around this news, we recommended developing press materials with succinct messages and conducting targeted outreach to national, travel, aviation and technology media and bloggers as well as local media in Alaska’s key markets along the West Coast.
Communiqué partnered with Alaska Airlines and Aircell to conduct joint outreach to national, travel, aviation and technology media and bloggers. Specifically, we were responsible for reaching out to technology media and bloggers to help spark interest in the news. Overall, the launch was a huge success with coverage from Associated Press (which garnered more than 60 picks ups in outlets such as USA Today and MSNBC), Aviation Week, Boarding Area, PC World and Anchorage Daily News to name a few.
As a result of our outreach, we were able to secure coverage in Puget Sound Business Journal, Wireless Week, FierceBroadband Wireless and Informationweek.
The news was also widely tweeted about on Twitter by key media and analysts who cover Alaska Airlines as well as the airlines’ customers.
Have you ever wondered how your company or nonprofit organization is perceived by the broader community? Or maybe you simply want to measure awareness of a particular feature on your new widget before you promote it in your next PR campaign?
These are questions many of our clients ask as they work to make informed decisions about their business and communication strategies. For instance, imagine you have a software solution like PDFill that allows people to more easily and conveniently edit PDFs.
As the vice president of marketing, you are chartered with driving downloads of this software. As you work to create the right awareness, you’re interested in knowing how many people are aware of your product and what they think about its usability.
You decide you want to conduct a perception audit. The trouble is you have limited dollars for this research and cannot afford to hire a prestigious firm to do the work for you…. Well we have some good news to share with you.
A business associate of ours has taken a very innovative approach to market research. He uses Zoomerang to create his surveys and then finds people to take them using Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk). For those of you who don’t know, mTurk is a marketplace where workers (people) are waiting to do small, simple tasks on the Web. And, for a small fee, these workers are eager to complete surveys.
Here’s how it works. Each time our associate has a survey he needs completed by a group of people, he submits what is called a hit. Each hit has a tagline, a description of the work that needs to be done, the number of workers needed and the fee to be paid to each worker. Typically, for a survey containing 15 questions, our colleague pays each person $.11 to $.25 for his/her work.
Once the hit is published, workers accept the hit and begin work on their assignment. When the work is complete, they submit for approval. For surveys, our colleague uses a complete code that appears at the end of the survey to verify that the worker has completed the hit.
With this process, our business associate has been able to glean all types of information from all over the country. For a survey completed by 700 people at $.25 per response, he paid just $175.
Clearly, this type of data gathering is not right for everyone (especially if you need a very select demographic to participate), but we thought this was a fabulous idea and look forward to trying it out in the future.
If you live in the Northwest, you probably have seen PEMCO Insurance’s innovative marketing “We’re a Lot Like You” campaign. Maybe you even have a favorite profile, such as socks and sandals guy, the recumbent bike computer, relentless recycler or the Marymoor off-leash dog lady. Have you ever wondered about the history of this campaign?
This week I had the opportunity to hear Rod Brooks, CMO with PEMCO, speak at the Puget Sound American Marketing Association Luncheon. His presentation was terrific because it clearly demonstrated the importance of knowing your customer and positioning. It was also fun to hear Rod talk about how the campaign has been extended from traditional ads to outdoor advertising, social media, PR and more. It is another fabulous example of the power of integrated marketing communications.
Anyway, I selfishly wanted to make sure I captured some of the salient points of Rod’s presentation so I decided to blog about it. Here are some of the highlights:
Before creating its campaign, the insurance company did significant market research. They made their first use of “ethnographic research” and sent folks (trained researchers) out to the homes of customers and potential customers to glean information, study their environments and generally find out what was on their minds. Here is what was learned:
- People in the NW are fiercely independent;
- We are leaders in innovation – Rod joked that in the eyes of our NW neighbors, anything invented that is GOOD probably came from the NW;
- We’re proud – This is evidenced from the above bullet;
- We’re incredibly green – And act as if we invented composting and the whole idea of recycling; and
- We love Main Street. Local trumps large; personal trumps price. Rod explained people in the northwest like to go to our local pet store, even if it costs a bit more than a big chain pet store down the road.
The goal was to connect core Northwest values to PEMCO. PEMCO wanted to own the local market. After all, from a brand positioning perspective, this was a message that the large, national insurance companies would not be able to own. This was important to the overall brand strategy as PEMCO is a challenger brand, which means PEMCO competes with the big boys (and girls) who are all national players and have far greater resources.
As a challenger, Rod explains that PEMCO lacks economies of scale. The company must have well-defined strategies; be highly creative, innovative, resourceful and nimble; and be willing to challenge the establishment – starting with the internal sacred cows that graze inside the organization. Finally, relevant to all of us, PEMCO must capitalize on word of mouth from loyal customers and advocates.
Rod also explained that PEMCO’s overarching business objective is to “sustain profitable growth” and consistently deliver a “world class customer experience” at every touch point. He said that “a perfect storm or convergence of internal forces” has come together at the right time and place to make this goal a reality. They include: 1) The marketing BHAG: to never have to pay for a lead again (they want to grow through referrals); 2) The PEMCO culture: to foster a culture where the company leads with its relationships; and finally, 3) Commitment to hearing and responding to the voice of the customer: to stand in the customers’ shoes each and every time a strategic decision is made. These certainly are lofty goals, but it was important that the campaign helped PEMCO move toward these goals.
In closing, Rod shared how the campaign has been extended from traditional ads to banners on buses, social media and even the WALLY van (a clever acronym for We Are A Lot Like You). The WALLY van provides PEMCO with the opportunity to stay connected with the community by travelling to events around our state. To view Rod’s presentation titled, “Word of Mouth Marketing: Blending Online and Offline Approaches,” click here.
All in all, it was a fabulous presentation. Rod is an inspiration and it was valuable to learn more about the strategies and tactics of this successful brand strategy.
