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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 Forgotten Power of the Phone Call

We’ve all been there as PR professionals. You deliver a pitch to a reporter via email and then you…wait. And you wait a little more and then you send a follow up email. Still nothing. At this point, you realize you have to resort to a call down in hopes of capturing his or her attention, which is often dreaded by us PR professionals. Let’s be honest, none of us like to be greeted with gruff reporters who are on deadlines and don’t want to be bothered.

A similar sentiment can be said for communications to clients and colleagues. We often spend hours writing several emails back and forth when really, all that time could be replaced with a five-minute phone conversation. So why, in today’s day and age, are we so opposed to using a tool that once revolutionized the way we communicated?

A recent blog post from Harvard Business Review’s Dan Pallotta has an interesting take on picking up the phone. He says, “Just Call Someone Already.” Dan claims the telephone which was once an important and valuable domain of communication for exchanging ideas and information is now considered annoying. He claims that email exchanges allow us to avoid authentic communication and cause us to be less efficient and productive. Why spend time drafting emails, reviewing them to ensure they’re clear and that nothing can be taken amiss when we could just pick up the phone?

Dan notes that if you want to be innovative and take a risk, try calling someone with whom you have an issue to discuss, and if you want to be extra courageous, do it without sending emails to set up an appointment. Dan also says, when your phone rings, pick it up. I know I’ve been guilty of letting my phone calls go straight to voicemail, and rather than giving the caller a ring back, I sometimes address his or her needs via email.

However, when I do get up the willpower to pick up the phone, I find that it’s a much faster and personal way of resolving issues, making decisions, coming to agreements and even securing media interviews. Not only is it much more efficient, but I also feel a stronger connection to the person I’m speaking to than I would if I sent an email.

In today’s business world where we experience email overload on a daily basis, I know I would sure appreciate a phone call and the opportunity to replace some of my email interactions with human interactions.

 

 

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Applying the Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy to PR

As a young economist, Michael E. Porter wrote a landmark article for the Harvard Business Review in 1979 that ignited a revolution in the field of strategy. So compelling was his “The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy” that it helped inform and mold an entire generation of academic research and business practice, and stretched across nations, regions, corporations, and lately healthcare and philanthropy.

Porter initially postulated that the essential job of the strategist is “to understand and cope with competition,” the first force, but that managers often defined competition much too narrowly, limiting it to only direct competition. Competition, he asserted, goes well beyond established industry rivals. In fact, competition can include four significant other competitive forces: the bargaining power of buyers/customers, the bargaining power of suppliers, the threat of potential new entrants, and the threat of substitute products or services. These extended rivalries are what define “an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry.”

Michael also introduced the intense and benign nature of those competitive forces and how they affected return on investment and profitability. If, for example, the forces are benign, in fields such as software, soft drinks and toiletries, he surmised, many companies are profitable. If forces are intense, as they are in the airline industry, textiles and hotels, among many, almost nobody earns significant ROI. Industry structure drives competition, he insists, “not whether an industry produces a product or service, is emerging or mature, high tech or low tech, regulated or unregulated.”

How might this relate to your next campaign in the highly competitive PR industry? Porter offers that “The strongest competitive force or forces determine the profitability of an industry and become the most important to strategy formulations. The most salient force, however, is not always obvious.”

Wise PR strategists will take that into account as they begin to build a relationship with a client. Just competing against the client’s biggest competitor will not be enough. The strategist must take a more global, 360-degree view of the market and its structure or structures to gain the upper hand. In Porter’s terms, for example, rivals Airbus and Boeing, and the airlines that place huge orders for aircraft, carry big weight, while the threat of new competition or the threat of substitutes, and power of suppliers, is weaker, or more benign.

Conversely, there was a fierce rivalry in his example of the photographic film industry, where Kodak and Fuji ruled supreme, until the birth of digital photography – where a substitute product then became the first strategic priority.

Wily PR strategists must study and determine the strength of each competitive force affecting their client’s industry or service. Is your client new to the game with a disruptive product or service? Or is it the veteran who must compete with the newcomer?  What is the bargaining power among your client’s customers or potential customers within the given industry? How well do you understand them? Is a new, improved version or substitute about to derail your client’s product or service?

Pay attention to the five forces that shape business strategy. They can also help define and energize your PR strategy as you work to fulfill your client’s business objectives in a competitive landscape.

 

 

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Timing is Everything: When to Send a Press Release

Have you heard the saying, “Timing is everything”? Well, it applies to not only relationships, but also the business world, especially when it comes to press and media releases.  Once you’ve spent the time crafting the perfect messaging for your release, you want to ensure it makes the right splash. To do so, you definitely need to consider carefully when you send pitches and press releases.

Ragan.com recently posted an article on the topic, “The best (and worst) days, times to send press releases,” that highlights data gathered from wire distribution service, Marketwire.

Compare securing news coverage to meeting a celebrity: You have a better chance of meeting a celebrity and shaking hands if you are one-on-one, than if you see a celebrity in a sea of thousands of adoring fans where you’ll  likely get lost in the crowd. The same is true for a press release. You don’t want to compete with thousands of other press releases going across the wire at the same date and time to grab the attention of a journalist or reader.

Marketwire’s data suggests that Mondays and Tuesdays are the most popular day of the week to send out a press release. Tuesdays attract the most releases, with Fridays being the least popular day of the week.  Marketwire has also found that 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET are when the majority of press releases cross the wire. Most organizations that we work with typically select this timing because the belief is that the early bird gets the worm, but this means stiff competition at the editor’s desk. It can be hard to get noticed amongst the crowd.

Here are some tips to help you get the attention you need:

  • Try a unique time slot. One of my colleagues at Communique shared that PR Newswire advised her to send out a press release at an odd time– for example, at 11:47 a.m. This can help elevate visibility because it’s not received in a larger flood of releases scheduled for typical times (like 9 a.m.).
  • Change it up. If you have flexibility, test out different distribution dates and times and pay close attention to the analytics that many of the wire services offer. You can see when a press release secures the most pickup and tailor your distribution approach accordingly.
  • Do extra work on the side. Don’t rely solely on the wire. Post the press release to your company’s website, spread the news via social media and email the announcement to targeted editors.

The right timing could help you make the splash you are hoping for. Anyone in the PR industry can appreciate the time and thought that goes into a press release—let it live up to its full potential by thinking through the timing it crosses the wire.

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Social Media Replacing Traditional Media? Not so Fast, Says NASCAR

People who think they know me well are still stunned when they find out I am an auto-racing freak.  I love NASCAR. I watch it most Sundays during the racing season and have since I lived in Virginia and followed Ricky Rudd’s no. 10 Tide car. (My family used Tide to wash our clothes. Ricky was from my home state. A racing fan was born. Go figure.)

So as we come upon the opening of the 2013 NASCAR season with the running of the Daytona 500 this weekend, I thought it time to reflect on lesson’s learned from last year’s race that involved a spectacular crash, a driver tweeting from his car, and the “ah ha!” moment that moved Twitter and TV out of the dating phase and into true love.

Last year at the Daytona 500, as one of the drivers was rounding a turn, his car’s steering column broke and the racecar slammed into a large Jet Dryer truck on the track. The crash set off a huge fire ball explosion which was carried on live television in prime time. Remarkably, neither driver was hurt. But the accident caused a two-hour delay while the track maintenance crew had to figure out how to clean up all the spilled fuel on the track before they could resume racing. (As an aside, the solution they came up with was covering the fuel spill with Tide and then washing the detergent off with a fire hose. Once again, go figure.)

During this lengthy delay, the cars were stopped on the track, the drivers were wandering around the asphalt and clearly getting bored. Turns out, one of the drivers started Tweeting photos live from the track while the race was stopped. Thanks in large part to live TV coverage of his tweets, Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) nearly tripled his Twitter followers that night, increasing from 65,000 followers when the race started, to nearly 200,000 following the two-hour race delay.

What started as a spectacular crash resulted in some of the most notable lessons in social media in the past year. Among them:

Twitter needs TV and vice versa. Whenever a new communication technology enters the market some are quick to say, “This will be the death of radio, print, TV, or (fill in the blank).” In reality, most media compliment each other, because each has its own unique properties. In this case, Keselowski gained Twitter followers because FOX TV broadcast his tweets from the track, showed live images of the other drivers gathered around his phone, and broadcast a graphic of his rapidly increasing number of followers.

Under most other circumstances in most other sports, a two-hour delay would kill television ratings as viewers tune out. In this instance, viewers stayed to watch what the drivers were doing. It’s logical to assume some heard about the crash on social media and then turned on their television to see what happened. Today, we see hashtags embedded on the screen during many of our favorite TV shows. Social media references are now incorporated into other live shows, like the Oscars or the recent Grammy Awards. But what has become commonplace today was unusual just a year ago.

 

“Bubbas” have smart phones too. According to the 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Project, 46-percent of American adults owned smart phones at the time of Daytona 500 last year, noting that “nearly every major demographic group—men and women, younger and middle-aged adults, urban and rural residents, the wealthy and the less well-off—experienced a notable uptick in smartphone penetration over the last year.” This is a reminder that communication plans and strategies should be multi-faceted and involve as many channels for distributing information as makes sense for your audience. It also shows that market research is important to avoid stereotyping your audience. The Pew Internet study did not include racing fans as one of their research groups, but if you consider the amount of technology and advanced engineering involved in racing today, it makes sense that race fans would be considered early adopters of smart phones and own Twitter handles.

Tweeting, while in a car, is a bad idea. It’s worth repeating that Keselowski’s car was parked and not running when he began tweeting from the track. He did not get fined by NASCAR that night for his actions either, since there were no rules against tweeting from the racecars at the time.  There are now. Keselowski was fined for tweeting from his car in November of last year after NASCAR disallowed it.

Keep creating content. Sometimes a person or a company can have their 15 minutes of fame but is never able to capitalize on the initial attention. No matter how brightly your star shines, you need to keep creating content and engaging with your audience in order to keep growing. Just three months following the 2012 Daytona 500, NASCAR and Twitter created its first ever sports and social media sponsorship when they joined forces and encouraged fans to tweet while watching NASCAR races on live television, thereby moving Twitter closer toward an editorial media than a pure social media.

So, whatever happened to @Keselowski? He went on to win five races in the season and claimed the Sprint Cup title in 2012. He now has more than 360,000 followers on Twitter.

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Looking for Inspiration? Three Excellent TEDtalks

As I mentioned in a past blog post, TEDtalks remain one of my favorite resources to learn about new things and find inspiration from others.

If you’re unfamiliar with the organization, TEDtalks is a daily video podcast of talks and performances from TED conferences, TEDx events and TED partners. TEDtalk’s motto is “ideas worth spreading,” and they are comprised of the “world’s leading thinkers and doers” giving “the talk of their lives in 18 minutes” (source: TED.com).

TED.com provides highly curated content, and in that spirit, I’ve further narrowed down its lecture offerings. Here are my three personal favorite TEDtalks that inspire and motivate me both professionally and personally.

1.)    Simon Sinek: “How great leaders inspire action”

 

How do you explain why some do well and others do not? In this TEDtalk, author Simon Sinek explores inspirational leadership by looking at the examples of Apple, Martin Luther King and the Wright Brothers.

In his talk, Simon asserts that there is a pattern to great leadership, which he has codified into why, how and what. “What” is what an organization does; “how” is how the what comes to be; and  “why” is the purpose and cause behind an organization’s existence.

Typically, people move from what to how to why. However, Sinek argues that inspired leaders work the opposite of the status quo; they think, act, and communicate from why to how to what. Sinek argues that in life, people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

Sinek provides a well-articulated and well-researched argument that resonates with anyone who has worked on branding and messaging. Furthermore, his talk provides educational and informative content about the purchasing choices people make that anyone will find interesting.

2.)    Elizabeth Gilbert: “On Genius”

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the famed “Eat Pray Love,” speaks in this TEDtalk about the history of both the concept of “genius” and the perception of creative brilliance throughout time. Incorporating anecdotes from her own career, Gilbert discusses the pressures placed on people to be genius—especially those in creative fields. Gilbert suggests a radical and freeing change in popular opinion on genius – perhaps all of us have genius, at different moments throughout our existence.

The talk is refreshing, personal, and provides a strategy on moving forward in the pursuit of genius without becoming overwhelmed.

3.)    Brené Brown: “The power of vulnerability”

Brené Brown is a research professor in social work. In this talk, Brown speaks specific ally about how she came across one of her most poignant discoveries in her work as she attempted to understand human connection: Why do some people feel that they have a strong sense of love and belonging, and some do not? What Brown’s research concludes is that vulnerability appears to be at the core of self-value. However, vulnerability is simultaneously something that people can be apprehensive of and actively work against.

Brown’s discussion will have you rethinking your approach toward and mentality about vulnerability in both your personal and professional life, and is truly stirring.

TEDtalks are a great resource to learn about new material and to hear what experts in particular fields are saying. I look to it when I’m having trouble finding inspiration or looking for something interesting to wrap my mind around. Whatever your purposes, if you have the time to check out a few TEDtalks, I highly recommend the three above.

For more excellent TEDtalks, see:

 

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