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.
This February, Communiqué PR is celebrating its sixth anniversary. In conjunction with this milestone, we have decided to launch a Twitter contest. You can follow @CommuniquePR to participate in the Communiqué PR Trivia Contest.
Here’s how it will work. Beginning at 6 a.m. PT on Feb. 12, we’ll post the first of eight trivia questions. The first two correct responses to each question we receive via @CommuniquePR will receive a copy of our book, Strategic Public Relations. Please see below for the official rules.
We hope you’ll help us spread the word by sharing this post via Twitter and good luck to all!
Official Rules
1. Eligibility: This contest is open to U.S. residents 18 years of age or older at the time of entry. Employees of Communiqué PR are not eligible.
2. To Enter: The contest begins at 6 a.m. PT, Feb., 12, 2010 and will continue until 11:59 p.m. PT, Feb. 12, 2010. To enter, visit www.twitter.com/CommuniquePR and follow @CommuniquePR to receive trivia questions. Entrants will be required to respond to @CommuniquePR.
Questions will be posted as follows: eight questions will be posted between 6 a.m. PT and 8 p.m. PT, Feb., 12, 2010. Winners will be determined on a first come, first serve basis: the first two respondents to reply to @CommuniquePR with the correct answer will win a copy of Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR.
Winner will be contacted via reply from @CommuniquePR.
3. Judging: Each question will be posted on www.twitter.com/CommuniquePR and participants must reply to @CommuniquePR with the answer. The first two correct answers received by Communiqué PR will win. Judges’ determinations are final. Communiqué PR will select two winners for each of the eight questions. Winning responses will be posted on CommuniquePR.com and twitter.com/CommuniquePR.
4. Prizes: The 16 winners will each receive one (1) copy of Strategic Public Relations, a $28.99 value. Communiqué PR will not be responsible for any loss, liability or damage arising out of the winner’s acceptance or use of the prize. All prizes are guaranteed to be awarded.
5. Redemption: To redeem your prize, you’ll need to provide Communiqué PR with your full name, phone number and mailing address.
6. Conditions: Communiqué PR is not responsible for lost, late or unintelligible entries, lost connections, miscommunications, failed transmissions, other technical difficulties or failures. Communiqué PR reserves the right to terminate or modify this contest at any time in the event of any intervention with the promotion beyond the control of Communiqué PR. In such a circumstance, winners will be selected based on the entries received to date of termination. Entrants agree to indemnify Communiqué PR from and against any and all claims and liabilities arising out of or in connection with this contest. Only one prize per person.
Winners will be notified on Twitter.com. By entering this sweepstakes you agree to the use of your name and likeness and entry for promotional purposes (except where prohibited by law.)
7. Consumer Information: If you wish to receive a list of prize winners, or have any questions about the contest, specify your request and write to: Twitter Trivia Contest, Communiqué PR, 314 W. Galer Street, Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98119.
Recently, I had an opportunity to re-connect with Hanson Hosein, director of the Master of Communication in Digital Media at the University of Washington. Hanson, a former NBC News war correspondent and investigative producer, is passionate about storytelling, new models of communication and social media. I enjoyed chatting with Hanson about the impact of social media on communication. He shared his perspective on how digital media is awakening citizens and changing the world.
The intersection of storytelling and social media is fascinating for professional communicators, because as Hanson and others have articulated, social media enables anyone and everyone to be a broadcaster.
As consumers become broadcasters, they have a heightened ability to broadly influence others, and essentially everyone becomes an advertiser. In addition, more and more consumers are leveraging their social networks for buying decisions. I know this is true for me. When I upgraded my mobile phone, I solicited input from my network on Twitter and Facebook to determine whether I should purchase an iPhone or Android. (The iPhone won out.)
I am not the only one turning to my social network, consider the recent survey results from the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association illustrating that 93.6 percent of mothers with kids at home seek the advice of others before buying a service or product.
Clearly, with more people sharing information there is an increasing issue of trust. How do you know the information shared is accurate, valid, and authentic? False user reviews, erroneous tweets, and paid blog posts should make readers take pause. I believe we still rely on trusted journalists and credible news outlets to validate the points of view of our friends, which means its still important for companies to implement strategic public relations campaigns.
As we outline in our book, this changing landscape has swelled media fragmentation, led to a saturation of information and increased susceptibility of a brand’s reputation to scrutiny. These trends are driving business communicators away from traditional advertising to public relations.
Communication professionals need to evaluate and incorporate these trends and social mediums into their strategies in order to be successful. A critical component to successful public relations is the ability to craft a compelling story. Effective storytelling can engage, build trust and influence perceptions.
Given this, I was excited to learn that Hanson is writing a book about storytelling in this new landscape. The working title, “The Storytelling Uprising: How to Connect in the Disruption of the Digital Age” is tentatively scheduled to be published later this year.
It is an exciting time for public relations. As the industry continues to experience significant change, it is wonderful to connect with thought leaders such as Hanson. If you’re interested in hearing more about his perspective on digital media you can hear Hanson speak at Tedx Seattle, April 16, 2010.
Last week, our client Digonex Technologies announced its partnership with the Cleveland Cavaliers on a price analysis consultation pilot. This pilot officially marks the Cavaliers as the first national sports franchise to leverage Digonex’s Sports & Entertainment Analytical Ticketing System (SEATS), a dynamic commerce engine that analyzes sales data and provides price suggestions based upon econometric and behavioral principles.
While sports teams and franchises have traditionally used a tiered-pricing structure, which is typically set at the beginning of a season, unexpected factors throughout the season are causing teams to evaluate alternative ticket pricing structures and technologies that enable them to demonstrate their commitment to the fans.
Digonex will perform analysis on fan-based pricing structures for single games and will make instant price recommendations to the Cavaliers for selected games and other arena events. Digonex plans to begin working with the Cavaliers following the All-Star break.
We helped Digonex promote this exciting news through an integrated approach, which included reaching out to a select number of media who cover the ticketing industry and sports business via buddy e-mail. We also distributed the announcement during INTIX, a leading international ticketing conference, as the news was extremely relevant to the attendees given the content of the show. Lastly, we recommended Digonex tweet the news on its handle (@Digonex) to drive viral conversations around the news.
As a result of our outreach, we secured three pieces of coverage in target trade publications, including Sports Business Journal, Venues Today and TicketNews.com. Additionally, the news was widely tweeted about on Twitter by a number of INTIX attendees, ticket professionals and journalists including Eric Fisher of Sports Business Journal.
This integrated approach for distributing the news helped Digonex raise visibility of this key partnership and extend its thought leadership in the dynamic pricing market.
I recently returned from Amsterdam where I attended and presented at Enterprise Social 2.0. What a fabulous experience. The speakers and presentations were first rate. Here are some of the highlights from the gathering.
Ramon DeLeon, Domino’s Pizza (@Ramon_DeLeon). This guy is an amazing presenter with outstanding energy; but beyond his exceptional presentation skills, he shared some wonderful examples of how he has used social media to drive business to his six Chicago stores.
For instance, he told us about a simple, but effective promotion he used to gain exposure for his stores on Facebook. He simply updated his status to say “However many minutes it takes you to respond to this message is the amount you’ll pay for two pizzas.” A woman posted a response on his wall in two minutes and received two pizzas for $2. The benefit for Ramon was that he gained significant awareness / exposure with this promotion by engaging many others in responding and telling their friends about the campaign.
Ramon’s primary goal with social media is to motivate people to tell their friends about his pizza. He wants them to do this via word-of-mouth, Facebook and Twitter, and is a master at creating compelling content and promotions to make this happen. He also understands that “people do business with people they like and trust. Without customers you have no business.” This is a guiding principle for him.
Adam Wallace, Roger Smith Hotel New York (@adwal). In his presentation, Adam focused on showing how they have used social media to generate excitement and enthusiasm for the boutique hotel. One of the key takeaways from his presentation was to make sure the folks on the front line know about their impact on perceptions. For instance, the Roger Smith Hotel became extremely well known with its online followers for its crispy, mouth-watering bacon, but the guy cooking it had no idea. It is important for the people creating the real-world customer experience to understand they will have an impact (good or bad) on what people say on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. Click here to link to an interview with Adam.
Ellen Petry Leanse, Google (@chep2m). Ellen is such an inspiration. She shared interesting information about social media. She also delivered her presentation using Google Wave – Google’s personal communication and collaboration tool – which I had not seen in action. She was able to use the Wave technology to integrate links to articles, videos and more. To learn more about her thoughts on Google Wave, you can click here to link to an interview she conducted wih Remco Janssen (@remcojanssen).
Kees Mulder, Kodak (@keesmulder). Another fantastic presenter was Kees Mulder with Kodak. It was interesting to hear how Kodak has reinvented itself in the digital era and how they’re engaging customers. Kees spoke about a campaign they launched to name a new camera where they asked people to send suggestions via Twitter or by posting a comment on the company blog. The winners of the contest were invited to participate in a special launch event in Las Vegas at 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) (this was an all expense paid trip), received cameras and recognition as the contest winners. Kodak also randomly chose 100 other participants to receive the camera. Needless to say, the campaign was a big success. Kodak gained a lot of free publicity via social networks and mainstream media and also got a winning name (The Kodak Playsport) for its innovative camera.
Participants in the panel discussion I led on damage control in social media included Ramon DeLeon, Ellen Petry Leanse and author Mike Moran. We discussed how companies such as Facebook, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota and Dominos have responded to recent crisis situations and shared best practices before, during and after a disaster.
Other noteworthy presentations and discussions were led by LEGO, L’Oreal, Siemens Swift, Vodafone, Nokia, SAP, Philips and Airbus. The conference organizers KGS put together a winning two days and I feel honored to have had the opportunity to connect with so many world-class leaders.
Back in January 2009, we wrote a blog post about our experience working with Mobidia, a provider of data solutions, and raising awareness of the company with third-party influentials leading up to Mobile World Congress.
In the past year, Mobidia has made significant progress and has executed more than 14 network lab and field trials with mobile operators in Europe, Asia and North America. In fact, on Jan. 19 the company announced performance results from recent testing and trialing on a tier-1 European network. The results showed an impressive average of 25 percent increase in efficiency on the tier-1 mobile operator’s network during peak load times.
Given this news, we decided it was time to reconnect with some of the industry analysts following the company’s activities.
Thus far, we’ve coordinated discussions with the following analysts:
- Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis
- Abraham Joseph, Inteligentis Limited
- Michele Pelino and Chris Silva, Forrester Research
- Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
- Godfrey Chua, Amy Lind and Elisabeth Rainge, IDC
- Michael King and Sylvain Fabre, Gartner
- John Fletcher, SNL Kagan
- Chetan Sharma, Chetan Sharma Consulting
- Rob Bamforth, Quocirca
Mobidia also will meet with analysts from ABI Research, Strategy Analytics and Rethink Technology Research in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress 2010. It has been a pleasure reconnecting with some of the analysts that we briefed in 2009.
We look forward to connecting with even more analysts and other third-party influentials on behalf of Mobidia. To learn more about the company visit http://www.mobidia.com/ or send us an e-mail at info@communiquepr.com.
On Fri., Jan. 22 our book, “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR” jumped to the number two spot on Amazon’s most popular books on public relations. While our book has received strong reviews and positive mentions in several publications, including The Costco Connection and PRWeek.com, this was quite a jump in the rankings and it was due to an increase in the sales of our book.
So what led to the sales increase and jump in our book’s ranking on Amazon.com? Our book was not photographed on the floor of Tiger Wood’s car, nor was “Strategic Public Relations” selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
Instead, as part of our integrated communication strategy, we decided to advertise the book on Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO). In the ad, which Peter writes himself, Peter included the following testimonial about our book,
“Check out Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR – A new book that I read, liked, and recommend. The principles in the book are straightforward and simple, so they can be applied to any business.”
The HARO e-mails reach a targeted audience of more than 100,000, many of whom are focused on public relations and communications. This, coupled with a 75 percent open rate, ensured the message about our book was going to reach individuals interested in strategic communications.
The HARO e-mail helped spread the word about our book and Peter’s endorsement influenced readers to purchase our book. The day our ad appeared on HARO’s morning e-mail, sales of “Strategic Public Relations” significantly increased.
We are thrilled with the results. We anticipate January will see our highest number of sales from Amazon since the book was published last year. We have also seen an increase in Web site traffic.
The bottom line is that we are huge fans of Shankman’s HARO. If you have a product or service that is relevant to his audience, we encourage you to reach out to HARO as it can be an excellent vehicle for increasing visibility and driving awareness.