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.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced it has finalized revisions to its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials. The new guidelines, which will go into effect on December 1, 2009, provide an outline of rules governing advertising endorsements and testimonials, and apply to consumer-generated media, such as blogs and social networking sites.
According to a blog post from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) on July 22, 2009, the FTC enacted these revisions because it was concerned about the “rapidly growing instance of bloggers reviewing products and services provided to them at no cost by public relations professionals and other marketers.”
Essentially, the new guidelines state that all bloggers or media reviewing products and services for editorial coverage must fully disclose which company they are reviewing the product/service for and whether they are being compensated with cash or in-kind payment. This is in an effort to provide full transparency so readers can assess for themselves the bias, accuracy and usefulness surrounding each review.
As social media continues to gain momentum and organizations turn to influential bloggers to secure reviews, it’s important to always be transparent in order to avoid conflicts of interest. When reaching out to bloggers and journalists, make sure you identify the company you are representing and what you’re asking of them. In addition, because the guidelines also affect employees’ use of social mediums, it’s a good reminder to make sure you inform your employees that if they are promoting the company’s products or services online, it is important to disclose which company they work for.
To read the full FTC Guides online, click here. Additionally, The Council of PR firms as well as The Fight against Destructive Spin (F.A.D.S), among others, have published information on the new guidelines.
Obtaining buy-in with key stakeholders is an important process of building a successful PR program. Building consensus ensures that everyone in the organization supports the PR activities and the approach you’ve chosen.
Another reason that building consensus is important is that it provides the opportunity to obtain additional ideas and understand objections that may not have occurred to you. When you solicit others’ opinions, you obtain new ideas, data points, and perspectives that lead to a better PR program. By failing to build consensus, you risk missing opportunities to leverage the power of PR and how to best leverage it. Think of the political genius of Abraham Lincoln and his effectiveness at bringing together his rivals to create hi cabinet after he won the presidency. In her book “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin documents how Lincoln, by embracing a wide range of opinions, was able to develop a course of action that ultimately allowed him to preserve the Union and win the Civil War.
Similarly, PR managers can make wiser decisions by asking executives, the board of directors, and other key stakeholders to scrutinize their PR program. To develop the best course of action, they need to surround themselves with people who don’t always agree with them, listen to them carefully, and incorporate the best ideas into their program.
Building consensus for PR helps you develop lasting relationships with key stakeholders within the organization. It helps make them feel included and empowered and that their opinion is valued. Conversely, failing to obtain buy-in can quickly lead to bruised egos. People may think you purposely keep them out of the loop, or they may get fired up, believing that you’re not doing what they think needs to be done. Ultimately, they may fail to understand the value of PR and cut your budget in favor of other organizational priorities.
In “Getting to Yes,” authors Roger Risher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton discuss how critical it is to allow others to participate in the process. “If they are not involved in the process, they are hardly likely to approve the product. It is that simple,” they write. “If you want the other side to accept a disagreeable conclusion, it is crucial that you involve them in the process of reaching the conclusion.”
To read the contributed side bar from Bruce Patton, cofounder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and coauthor of the best-selling book “Getting to Yes,” and to learn more about building consensus for PR programs, read “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR.”
Written by Jennifer Gehrt & Colleen Moffitt with Andrea Carlos
Last week, the 2009 CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference came rolling into San Diego. For those of you who don’t know, CTIA is one of the largest mobile and wireless tradeshows in the country drawing users, carriers, developers and manufacturers together to discuss mobile business.
CTIA can be a fantastic platform to launch a product, establish thought leadership or drive awareness and buzz for a new company or service. We recently helped Mobile On, a company that empowers organizations to quickly and affordably create compelling smartphone applications that work across any platform – without any software development skills or resources, devise a strategy to build relationships with key industry analysts, educate them about the features and benefits and show them a demo of the company’s flagship product, BuildAnApp, which is expected to launch later this fall.
As a result of our outreach, we succeeded in securing six meetings for Mobile On and garnered insight on BuildAnApp from respected analysts with Gartner, Aberdeen Group, IDC, ABI Insights and J. Gold and Associates.
We leveraged briefings to secure press references and analyst quotes about the product and category. If you’re interested in learning more about how to get the biggest bang for your buck at tradeshows, check out our recent blog post entitled, “Are you Ready for Fall Tradeshow Season?” on this topic.
With PR, as with most things in life, it’s impossible to focus your energy everywhere. A strategic approach to PR means concentrating your efforts only on those areas that support your most important business goals, and building consensus for PR right from the start ensures that everyone will rally behind the specific plan you end up implementing later down the line.
As you consider leveraging PR to help you accomplish your goals, it’s critical that you gather support among key stakeholders in the organization. This means building support for PR as a strategic tool, some of the major PR activities you plan to implement, and the level or resources your organization is willing to spend on PR. By building consensus at the beginning, you eliminate the shots across the bow that will otherwise occur once you’ve developed your PR plan and have begun rolling it out. You can ensure that the specific plan you develop is in line with your organization’s resources.
If key stakeholders in your organization haven’t bought into PR you can expect them to raise questions later during the process. They may not understand why PR is a priority. Or they may not have bought into the importance of the particular program you develop, failing to understand how it will bring about the company’s business objectives. Suddenly you’ll be operating in fire drill mode, wasting precious energy responding to people’s complaints rather than proactively implementing your program to achieve the results you seek for your company.
To learn more about how building consensus with key stakeholders can benefit your organization, look for next week’s blog post, which will outline how building consensus can provide the opportunity to obtain additional ideas and understand objections that may not have occurred to you.
Excerpt from Strategic Public Relations, written by Jennifer Gehrt & Colleen Moffitt with Andrea Carlos
We recently reached out to science reporter Dan Vergano of USA Today to pitch a story surrounding the phenomenon of fuel slosh on behalf of our client Tecplot. As a result, we sparked his interest in writing and gained a mention of Tecplot in the article which appeared on Sept. 25 in the “Science Snapshot” section.
We connected Dan Vergano with Tecplot’s customer Dr. Sathya Gangadharan of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) to discuss the phenomenon of fuel slosh, its affect on spacecraft and the aeronautical industry, and the university’s research around eliminating fuel slosh in spacecraft.
Fuel slosh is a term used to describe the movement of liquid within another object, such as a tank, which is typically experiencing the same rate of motion. Recently, ERAU determined how to simulate fuel slosh using computers versus physical lab tests and also validated that computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models can be used to research this phenomenon.
The article positions Tecplot’s customer, ERAU, in a very positive light and also includes simulation images from Tecplot. Dr. Gangadharan of ERAU commented, “It was a nice article and we are very thankful for the support.”
Click here to read the full article entitled, “Mercury Ready for a Rare Close-Up.”
As a University of Oregon alum it is not easy for me to acknowledge how impressed I am with USC’s head football coach Pete Carroll’s use of social media. The guy is doing a phenomenal job of galvanizing support for his players and team.
Consider this, today Carroll has more than 53,000 followers, and when USC running back Stafon Johnson (number 13) was badly injured in a weight room accident, Carroll provided updates on the situation via Twitter and called on people to show support for him. Specifically, he published the following tweets.
Oct. 2 – “how many follow Friday mentions can we get for @stafon13? Let’s leave no stone unturned!
Oct. 1 – “RT @stafon13 – Hay Twitt world its SJ feeling better & better by the hour with the love and support I appreciate this… Fight on”
Sept. 29 – “I’m visiting with stafon…he wants to say…he’s coming back and through his yrs as a Trojan he’s learned to be strong and fight on.
Another example of how Carroll is using social media includes his YouTube video blogs, which he posts regularly. See below for links to a couple of these blogs:
Video blog #4, UW Game Week and Ohio State recap, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ht_YKAAXnA
Video blog #5 – Overcoming Challenges, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1if8jRkss
Finally, I want to point out that Carroll appears to be deliberate about the information he shares. You don’t see him posting willy-nilly comments about politics, food, or what he is doing. He shares information about his team, other athletes, and trivia like the song of the day (#SOTD) that will resonate with this key audience – USC college students, faculty and staff as well as alum.
Although I am not a Trojan, I am impressed with how he is keeping the Trojans top of mind and securing support for the team. You can find Pete Carroll on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Petecarroll, on Facebook or check out his Web site http://petecarroll.com/
I believe more CEOs and leaders could learn from Carroll’s use of social media.
This graph (courtesy of www.twittercounter.com) shows how Carroll’s followers have grown from the week of July 4 through October 2.