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.
Build-A-Bear Workshop’s “pay your age” campaign proved to be too good to be true.
The limited-time-only promotion provided customers with the chance to purchase the stuffed toys, which usually range in price from $20-$35, for the amount of their age.
Only hours after it began, the company cancelled the event due to safety concerns posed by ridiculously long lines and large crowds, with some reports of people waiting in line for up to nine hours.
After leaving customers angry and children disappointed, CEO Sharon Price John described the premature shutdown as “heartbreaking” on The Today Show (Today).
In addition to an authentic apology, John also noted that the “pay your age” promotion will continue all year long with Build-A-Bear’s “Count Your Candles” birthday program, where kids under the age of 14 can “pay their age” for a Birthday Treats bear during their birthday month. Additionally, the company offered discount vouchers valid through the end of August to the disappointed customers who were turned away after waiting in line.
Despite being ready for large crowds due to the promotion with fully staffed stores and fully stocked shelves, the customer response far exceeded the company’s expectations. Extensive media coverage of mobs of kids in tears probably wasn’t what the company had in mind when it decided to promote its birthday program, but from a crisis communications perspective, the company responded well to the debacle.
Specifically, John’s apology on Today will likely be used as a textbook example for PR and crisis management case studies. John’s remarks during the interview were incredibly poised, authentic and forward-thinking. Not to mention, sharing that she is a grandmother gave her the opportunity to genuinely empathize with parents across the nation who know how hard it is when kids get excited about something that doesn’t happen. After apologizing for the mistake and addressing the emotional nature of the pandemonium, she focused on what the company is doing to make it right.
The phrase “there’s no such thing as bad press” is certainly true in today’s media landscape. And if you judge success by column inches, live shots on network television and how much a company is being talked about in the public sphere, then what Build-A-Bear accomplished in terms of earned media is nothing short of incredible. Here are a few takeaways highlighting how Build-A-Bear responded effectively to this PR crisis:
Communicate quickly. In crisis communications, responding quickly with accurate, factual information can help manage a story in a favorable direction. The tone for coverage around any issue is usually set by the first few stories that break within 24 hours following an incident. In this case, the company reacted swiftly and hit the national media with an authentic apology the following day, which certainly set the tone for resulting coverage.
Embrace authenticity and transparency. Mea culpa when necessary. Showing character by apologizing, making wrongs into rights, and moving forward shows good character. John was authentic in her remarks, even pointing out she is a mom of three and empathizing with the parents of disappointed children. She owned the mistake, redirected the conversation to the company’s mission and values, and focused on moving forward.
Have a contingency plan. Even the most thoughtful plans sometimes go awry. While Build-a-Bear did not have one in place for this promotion, the company scrambled to put something together and is honoring a slightly abbreviated version of their original commitment with the discount vouchers and extended promotion.
The Build-A-Bear debacle is an example of how strong brands weather storms, however, what the results of the failed promotion will mean for the company’s reputation with customers in the long run is yet to be seen.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it: Creating a unique podcast in today’s saturated market is difficult – really difficult. But if you can do so effectively and creatively, the resulting success can truly change the way your business’s voice is projected and the way consumers view and interact with you.
A good case study of a strong corporate-made podcast is General Electric’s The Message. This eight-part sci-fi series, released in 2015, follows a fictional team of cryptologists as they attempt to decode an alien message from outer space. The podcast is the brainchild of GE’s in-house agency The Grid, their ad agency BBDO, and the podcast network Panoply. The medium of The Message opened a new way for GE to tell stories and speak to the public. GE’s global chief creative officer Andy Goldberg describes the podcast as a strategic approach to interaction with the same audience yet engaging in an entirely new way, giving listeners a different association with the company.
Thus was born GE Podcast Theater – a throwback homage to old school radio and General Electric Theater of the 1950s hosted by Ronald Reagan. During its eight-week run, the podcast had over 1.2 million downloads and reached No. 1 on iTunes podcast charts – talk about raging success.
Is a Podcast Right for You?
While GE’s success story is the cream of the crop as far as corporate engagement through podcasts, it might be unrealistic for your company to spend hours cooking up artfully crafted, customer-oriented episodes. Podcasts require a lot of effort, time, and commitment to keep up and keep engaging, especially today when it seems like everyone and their mother has one. How will you separate yourself from the crowd? If you’re feeling confident and creative, these considerations might help you determine if a podcast is the right move for your business.
- Filling the air
You should assume that each podcast episode will be at least 20 minutes, if not more. While that in itself might not be too scary, consider that you’ll want to keep podcast publishing reliable in order to grow and maintain a regular follower base. Once or twice weekly is a good basis for publishing episodes. I’d recommend committing to that schedule for at least 6 months, at a minimum. If you don’t have enough varied material to talk about that often, developing episodes can become more of a burdensome to-do than a valuable marketing addition.
- My next guest needs no introduction…
Whether or not your next guest actually does need an introduction, it’s important to have them on your show! Audiences would much rather hear multiple voices and viewpoints in conversation as opposed to a lengthy monologue. Make sure you can keep it varied, or at least relevant, with guest speakers from your company, the industry, etc. Not only do these other voices maintain interest, they also build approachability, an important aspect of the medium of podcasting.
- Build it and they will come…
… or at least we wish this were true. Building a reliable and committed audience following is no walk in the park. Audience trust is a bond built through analysis, insight, and storytelling. Make sure you have the budget and the time to put the work in to marketing, writing, planning, and editing to bring those podcast downloads rolling in.
Creative and innovative businesses with good journalistic abilities should not feel discouraged by the challenges of podcasting. The risk and energy investment can be well worth the significant rewards in community building, publicity and marketing, and customer engagement. Podcasts are having a moment, and you could be the next big player in the game.
In the month of June, our client Spaceflight, the company reinventing the model for launching small satellites into space, shared two exciting announcements detailing future launches with both Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab.
The first announcement we released focused on three upcoming missions with Rocket Lab, scheduled to take place in 2018 and 2019. All three missions will lift off from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and propel the customer spacecraft into Lower Earth Orbit. Spaceflight has procured capacity aboard each of these missions and will work with clients to integrate payloads into the space. Aboard those missions will be some impressive customers, including Canon Electronics and BlackSky, Spaceflight Industries’ geospatial intelligence platform.
Later in June, the company shared that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a mission to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in 2019 with Virgin Orbit aboard a LauncherOne. Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl, a dedicated 747-400 carrier aircraft, will carry LauncherOne to an altitude of approximately 35,000 feet before release for its rocket-powered flight to orbit.
Both announcements are important milestones for Spaceflight and indicate the demand for rideshare launches, a reliable and affordable way for smallsats to access space.
Later this year, Spaceflight is scheduled to launch its first ever dedicated rideshare mission, SSO-A. The mission will take place on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Spaceflight purchased in full.
With all the exciting news, we want to share some of the results. Keep an eye out for more coverage about Spaceflight and the company’s exciting year ahead!
- Spaceflight strikes deal with Rocket Lab for three satellite launch extravaganzas—GeekWire, 6/11/18
- BlackSky, Canon Electronics Sign on for Spaceflight’s Upcoming Rocket Lab Launches—Via Satellite, 6/11/18
- Spaceflight books three Electron rockets—SpaceNews, 6/11/18
- Spaceflight launch services company adds Virgin Orbit and Cosmic Girl to its lineup—GeekWire, 6/25/18
- Spaceflight Boosts Smallsat Launch Range with LauncherOne—Via Satellite, 6/25/18
- While some NW space companies show progress, asteroid miner Planetary Resources is in rocky shape—The Seattle Times, 6/26/18
- Spaceflight plans to send satellites into space on a Boeing 747-launched Virgin Orbit rocket—Puget Sound Business Journal, 6/26/18
- SPACEFLIGHT ENTERS INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH VIRGIN ORBIT FOR RIDESHARE MISSION—Spaceflight News, 6/27/18
- LauncherOne Captive-Carry Test Flight Set For Early July—Aviation Week, 6/28/18
Trade shows have evolved significantly since I started my PR career back in the late ‘90s. In a similar vein, journalism and publishing have also transformed themselves over the years and continue to do so today.
“Back in the old days,” as the PR elders like to say, it seemed like trade shows were packed wall-to-wall with reporters. Publications would send every reporter they could to cover the show-related news and meet with the companies that were exhibiting or speaking there.
Today, however, trade shows – and the media relations activities supporting them – are an entirely different ball game for all of the players involved.
For one, with the emergence of blogs, social media and smartphones, it’s easier and faster than ever for PR professionals and our clients to interact with reporters and build personal relationships. The dependence on in-person meetings is much reduced in comparison to the pre-internet days since it’s far more common and easier to reach out with a simple “like,” a DM, or a text message.
Secondly, publications generally send fewer reporters to cover these events in-person; as such, the journalists that are onsite reporting during a show are tasked with covering the entire event, making their time there for in-person briefings incredibly limited. It’s challenging to meet with companies during a show because journalists are often too busy reporting on keynote speeches and breaking news. This has shaped how and when companies issue news announcements or hold press conferences at trade shows – if fewer reporters are there to attend your live press conference, does it make sense to do it during the event? Sometimes yes, sometimes not.
We recently had the opportunity to support Dell EMC’s presence at the 2018 NAB Show, the annual event for the National Association of Broadcasters, which brings together industry professionals in the media, entertainment and technology industries. NAB is a massive show: More than 102,000 people attended this year’s event from more than 160 countries.
Given the shift in the way that major industry gatherings like NAB are covered by media, we wanted to offer some best practices we learned based on our work with Dell EMC for this show.
Start media outreach early. Depending on how large a show is (100K versus 1,000 attendees) it makes sense to start planning PR pitching efforts at least four to six weeks before the show begins. For Dell EMC, we developed and sent out a “save the date”-style pitch a month or so before NAB that was light on details but allowed us to get meetings booked early with several key contacts. Schedules fill up fast at these events! You can always follow up with more details about show-specific announcements and activities later, after your target media contacts have confirmed their availability to meet.
Keep the conversation industry-level. After the initial save-the-date pitch, we shifted our efforts to focus on Dell EMC’s predictions for both the show, and the broadcast and media industries at large. This allowed us to discuss broader trends and challenges (for example, the industry’s increasing “elastic demand” for resources), and how Dell EMC and its solutions portfolio addressed those. Rather than sending out a salesy, buzzword-filled pitch that centered on Dell EMC’s products only, we elevated the conversation to address higher-level industry-wide issues. As a result, we were able to secure a byline with a key broadcast publication, and a briefing with a key industry association’s publication.
Create and leverage content assets. In addition to media relations, we developed a blog post for Dell EMC around what demos and products attendees could expect to see at the show (“One Technology Provider for All Your Media Pro Needs,” April 9, 2018). Content like blog posts can not only be helpful for PR teams to secure media interest but can be leveraged by sales and business development executives within the organization to send to clients and prospects to secure meetings at the event.
In total, we secured seven press and analyst meetings for Dell EMC’s media and entertainment team, comprised of both phone interviews and onsite meetings at the show. The resulting coverage included the following:
- postPerspective TV, April 13, 2018 – “NAB 2018: Dell EMC’s Tom Burns”
- NAB Show Live/Broadcast Beat, April 17, 2018 – “NAB Show Live, Wednesday”
- postPerspective, April 26, 2018 – “High Performance Flash Storage at NAB 2018”
- Digital Production Buzz, April 26, 2018 – “Thomas Burns: Scalable, Flexible Storage for Media Collaboration”
Regardless of your department, level or industry, it’s likely that you’ll be faced with the task of giving a presentation or speaking in front of large or small groups at any given point of your career. From pitching your ideas in a meeting, presenting in a new business meeting, or speaking at an industry trade show, elements of public speaking creep into our daily lives, and for some, can trigger feelings of fear or high anxiety.
Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an article titled, “Assessment: What’s Feeding Your Fear of Public Speaking?” As the title alludes, the piece shares an assessment for readers to take measure of where they fall on the public speaking “fear spectrum,” compared to other readers who took the quiz. With “Completely at Ease When Presenting” at one end and “Fear Public Speaking Worse than Death,” at the other, I landed somewhere in the middle with a score of 67 (slightly more comfortable public speaking than the average assessment participant, who received a score of 62.6).
Public speaking and the associated fear comes in all shapes and sizes. I recently attended a pun-off battle where the participants were challenged to tell stories weaving in puns related to specific themes. Watching these contestants triggered a little fear in me, and some of my friends who attended felt awkward themselves because they knew they would have a hard time doing what these individuals were doing and, even more so, coping with the unknown response (or worse, silence) from the audience. The first round found the contestants telling prepared stories on a theme of their choice, but the rounds following and after judge eliminations, were on unknown themes that each contestant drew out of a hat. With no time to prepare, they had to quickly scramble and tell a “punny” story.
This contest, although in a casual brewery environment, is public speaking nonetheless, and I was extremely impressed with a majority of the contestants’ abilities to clearly tell stories in front of such a large audience, especially without preparing materials. I am not sure how they would assess or rank their own fears of public speaking, but I imagine they would receive more than a 62.6 on HBR’s “fear spectrum.”
The HBR assessment provides 24 “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” questions taken from scientifically validated tools used in psych research. Each question aims to measure how individuals manage their emotional responses in six key areas: confidence in expertise, extraversion vs. introversion, ability to empathize, self-esteem, optimism vs. pessimism and response to perceived threats. It is no doubt that the pun-off contestants had confidence in their expertise, puns at the top of that list.
After completing the assessment, the algorithm provides advice around how to manage fears, increase comfortability and manage stage presence. Below is a list of the six areas and the exact advice I received after I finished the quiz. I encourage you to take the assessment and incorporate the findings you receive to help improve your relationship with public speaking. You can find the quiz here and the advice for a score of 67 below.
- Confidence in Expertise: “Your answers indicate self-assurance: You believe that you have something valuable to share with your audience and that your thoughts and ideas are worth hearing. Stay confident, but avoid crossing the line into arrogance. Remind yourself that when you’re presenting, you’re not doing it for yourself — you’re doing it to bring something of value to those in your audience. Keep your focus on them.”
- Extraversion vs. Introversion: “You lean toward extraversion. Because you enjoy people — even those you don’t know well — you may enjoy speaking to groups, viewing it as a chance to connect with others. In the audience, your fellow extraverts will respond in the moment to ideas and concepts. They’ll give you clear visual signals that they like (or don’t like) what’s being said. But don’t assume everyone will react that way. You’ll probably also be speaking to a fair number of introverts, who prefer to carefully consider ideas before responding to them. Know that you may not get much immediate feedback from them — it will come at a later time.”
- Ability to Empathize: “Your ability to identify how others are feeling and thinking makes the prospect of addressing a group less daunting than it would be otherwise. You have a natural tendency to pick up on body language, which can help you interpret how your audience is reacting to what you’re saying. Leverage this empathy by adjusting your content or style of delivery as you present, responding to the cues your audience is giving you. For instance, if people seem disengaged, increase your dynamism to draw them back in.”
- Self-Esteem: “Your self-esteem seems strong, and that can help you take the stage with confidence and ease. Be aware, though, that high self-esteem can lead to a false sense of security and a tendency to underprepare. Frequently, highly confident people feel comfortable winging it when they present. Sometimes this works in their favor, but often it does not. Don’t let your confidence deceive you into thinking you don’t need to work hard on your content and your delivery.”
- Optimism vs. Pessimism: “Your willingness to believe that good things do happen may help you maintain an open, positive attitude toward presenting, increasing the likelihood that you will speak with courage and assurance. Still, things can go wrong when you present, possibly undercutting that positivity. Before your next presentation, spend a few moments thinking about what could go wrong, and then picture yourself overcoming those obstacles with skill and grace.”
- Response to Perceived Threats: “Because of your natural ‘fight’ (rather than ‘flight’) response, you’re likely to step onto the stage with a commitment to succeeding, even if public speaking isn’t your favorite thing to do. Build on this tendency by taking as many speaking engagements as you can. See each experience as an opportunity to continually improve, challenging yourself to become even more comfortable, dynamic, and empathetic.”
In June, I had an opportunity to participate on a panel – Fake News vs. Media – moderated by Luis Fonseca, managing partner for Emirec Consulting, a marketing and communications consultancy in Portugal and a PRN member agency.
My fellow panelists included Vitor Norinha, reporter with Vida Economica; Uriel Oliveira, vice president at Cision Portugal; and João Pina, CTO for MeshApp. While we all have different roles in the industry, it was clear from the discussion that each of us is impacted professionally by fake news.
The panel agreed that while fake news has been politicized recently, it has always existed. With the rise of the internet and social media in particular, the way news is spread has changed. Access to content is immediate via mobile devices, and it is much easier to share content. To that point, according to Pew Research Center’s “Digital News Fact Sheet,” 93 percent of Americans receive news online and “more than eight-in-ten U.S. adults (85 percent) now get news on a mobile device, up from 72 percent in 2016.” According to prior Pew Research data, 47 percent of those receiving alerts clicked through to read the story.
Furthermore, findings from a study by Columbia University and the French National Institute revealed that “people are more willing to share an article than read it.” Arnaud Legout, the study’s co-author explained, “This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper.” Unfortunately, this can perpetuate the dissemination of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news.
As articulated in the report, How to combat fake news and disinformation by The Brookings Institute, “Everyone has a responsibility to combat the scourge of fake news. This ranges from supporting investigative journalism, reducing financial incentives for fake news, and improving digital literacy among the general public.”
The report details the responsibilities of governments, the news industry, technology companies, educational institutions, and the public to “promote timely, accurate, and civil discourse in the face of false news and disinformation.”
Similarly, the panelists and I seemed to agree there is no one solution. We all have a responsibility to combat fake news.
PR professionals are instrumental in protecting their clients’ reputations and credibility by scrutinizing information they intend to disseminate, ensuring proof points to validate and support any claims and content so it is accurately communicated and understood. For more on this topic, read: Why PR Pros Should be Worried about Fake News – And How We Can Fight It.