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.
As we enter year two of the workplace evolution brought on by the pandemic, it’s important to take stock in what has worked well and what could be improved.
If you haven’t done so already, establishing personal office norms can help you be as effective as possible when working from home. Norms can vary widely based on personal preference and work cultures, including your Zoom etiquette, maintaining healthy work life balance, staying active, etc.
One such norm gaining mainstream attention is the idea of wearing shoes, once a common practice for in-person office life that in most circumstances did not require further thought.
With so much attention placed on protecting ourselves from infection and mental health, many are overlooking foot health. With an increased amount of time being spent indoors during quarantine, podiatrists Dr. Mark Weissman and Dr. Tamer Younan suggest that going barefoot around the house is leading to soreness and, in many cases, injury.
“Walking around barefoot, with socks or house slippers can put you at increased risk for foot problems, including plantar fasciitis, tendinitis and metatarsalgia (pain and inflammation in the ball of your foot),” says Dr. Weissman.
While this may feel like you’re giving your feet a rest from constricting work shoes and the daily bustle of pre-COVID-19 days, not wearing shoes puts increased stress on the foot. Thus, experts are encouraging people to wear proper shoes that provide adequate foot support. Wearing supportive footwear indoors may be the solution to quarantine foot.
It may seem silly, but I have a strict no-shoe policy in the house. So naturally I welcomed the bare foot approach initially, especially on hot summer days. It eventually caught up with me as I started to experience some foot pain, so I decided to buy a new pair of comfortable slides with some additional support for indoor use only – foot experts note it doesn’t have to be a traditional closed-toe sneaker, sandals with a good amount of support will suffice.
Foot care experts indicate that not wearing shoes puts increased stress on the ligaments, tendons and around the ball of the foot, which need support and cushioning. Without proper shoes and arch support, people are putting more strain on their arches and leading to foot conditions and maladies. If you are prone to those, or if you’re experiencing foot discomfort or pain, experts recommend wearing shoes in the house.
I can report that after a consistent commitment to wearing house shoes, the heel pain I started to experience in the mornings has dissipated and I also feel like I upped my remote professionalism, even if you can’t see my feet on our next Zoom call.
I’m fascinated to learn how others are approaching foot care while working remotely. Have you embraced the house shoe?
Public relations is critical to brand awareness and reputation, and partnering with the right PR agency can directly impact awareness of your brand, helping you achieve essential business and communication objectives.
But how do you know if it’s time to recruit a team of PR professionals? Outlined below are four business needs that indicate it might be time to consider a long-term solution to your PR needs by outsourcing to an agency.
An Upcoming Announcement
Your company might have to write a press release to announce new products, launches, campaigns or internal team member movements. Not only can PR pros develop the press release, but they can also distribute it to targeted media contacts they know will be interested in receiving the news. They can also arrange and facilitate interviews, help shape editorial coverage, and track coverage results generated from the release. A PR firm can also help extend the life of a press release, so it doesn’t get lost amid dozens of other announcements being made on the same day, and they can lead strategic planning to help companies tell a bigger story – perhaps by teasing future announcements or utilizing core messages from other company content.
Supporting Inundated In-house Teams
Managing PR activities is not an easy job; there are often several moving parts and competing deadlines to juggle. If a company finds that crucial areas of PR are falling through the cracks, it may be time to hire a PR firm. Business leaders can choose what they want their PR firm to manage. For example, they might delegate media relations and blogging to an agency, but continue to own newsletters, speech writing, event planning and social media in-house. PR firms can support these activities and remove much of the burden from the shoulders of in-house team members.
Moreover, PR teams should feel like an extension of your own. They can go beyond weekly calls to offer brainstorms or ad hoc advice. Then, as the needs of your in-house team evolve, you can adjust the work delegated to the PR firm.
Increasing Share of Voice (SOV)
Word of mouth is a powerful tool, but often it is not enough to build a solid brand. Whether you’re a startup or an established company launching a new product, your PR team will be the go-to experts in strategizing the best plan for the campaign. They’ll work closely with your team to determine the proper messaging and develop content and other important pieces of the project such as social, design, video and media relations. Rather than relying on word of mouth, PR pros leverage their long-standing relationships with reputable media and other influencers. As a result, they can help secure articles in high-ranking publications. Media articles generated through PR activities with high readership or viewership help boost brand SOV significantly.
Spokespeople Need Media Training
Media training is a tactic public relations firms use to help spokespeople deliver consistent and compelling messages. If your company utilizes employees to address the public, each person must be on the same page regarding key messaging. PR firms are media-relations mavens. Therefore, they understand what practices work well when talking to reporters and the public. Agency professionals can help company spokespeople prepare for interviews and press conferences by outlining common reporter questions and tips for best answering those questions. They can also lead preparation sessions with spokespeople to practice answering questions and provide real-time feedback.
One final but important note. It would be best if you considered PR as a long-term business investment, not because it takes a long time to generate results, but because it involves creating a presence, developing relationships and maintaining those relationships. In addition, one press release isn’t likely to move the needle. Just like if you want to run a marathon, running one time isn’t going to set us up for success. instead, you need a training program that is maintained over time.
I hope these thoughts are helpful as you consider whether it’s time to invest in a relationship with a PR firm.
In the past 18 months, we’ve all been through significant change. The pandemic disrupted our work and personal lives with work-from-home requirements, laws around wearing masks, supply chain issues, childcare issues and more.
Given this, it seems like the perfect time to consider how good one is at handling change. And, while I like to think that we as a company are pretty good at it, there hasn’t been a way to quantify this ability until now.
In the July-August 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review, David Michels and Kevin Murphy, both partners with Bain, introduced “a new system for measuring (and improving) your ability to adapt.” It’s a nifty rating system that identifies nine essential traits that companies should possess to succeed at change.
And before you dismiss the importance of possessing an institutional change-management skillset, consider the following:
The Significance of Change Power
According to the research done by Michels and Murphy, “Change power is a strong predictor of performance. Companies with high change power scores are more profitable, grow revenue faster, offer better shareholder returns, have leaders and cultures that are more highly rated, and are home to more engaged employees.”
The authors share the example of Delta Air Lines’ response to the pandemic and point out that its change management acumen led to its decision to remove the middle seat in plans. This decision had a significant impact on the airline’s operations and business. One outcome was on revenue. In Q4 of 2020, “Delta’s revenue was 12% higher than the average of American, United and Southwest combined – a difference management sees an indication that its customers were willing to pay for the extra space.” The airline also saw its Net Promoter Score (NPS) reach an all-time high during this period (see below).
Calculating Your Change Profile
To determine a company’s change profile, the authors designed a system in which employees are asked to provide a score “on statements related to each of the nine traits.” The survey is then scored and compared to an index, and the research found that organizations who score in the top quartile of the index have a more robust capacity for change.
They explain, “Each move into a higher decile on the index (from, say, the 50th to the 60th percentile) correlates with a margin of improvement of 150 basis points and an increase in total shareholder returns of more than 250 basis points.” And this shareholder return is just one benefit.
Companies with higher capacity for change also tend to have employees who view their leaders and cultures more favorably and state they feel more inspired and engaged than companies in the lower half of the index.
The Connection to the Net Promoter Score
If you’ve worked in PR and marketing, you’re probably familiar with the Net Promotor Score (NPS), but you may not know it, too, was developed by Michels and Murphy’s Bain colleague Frederick Reichheld. Today it is a very popular predictor of business success, so much so that we often included it in our clients’ press materials.
Consider one of our clients, Kantola Training Solutions, as an example. During its 35 years, Kantola has focused on continuously improving its platform and client service approach to drive superior levels of customer satisfaction. As such, it has achieved a world-class Net Promoter Score of 70 with its clients.
With the Change Power Score, I soon predict more of our clients will want to include it. I also wonder if Bain has additional research planned to determine a correlation between these two scores or systems.
The article is written by Dr. Clāra Ly-Le, Managing Director at EloQ Communications. It was originally part of the blog “Using social media during communication crisis in Vietnam”, which was published on EloQ’s blog.
Many businesses may have a solid social media presence with a high volume of engagement, but the quality of their engagement is mediocre. It is important to remember that engaging widely does not mean engaging wisely. Especially during crises, a good social media crisis management plan can help guide a company’s outreach efforts to ensure it’s engaging with relevant audiences and using influential channels to better manage its message. This social media strategy can be categorized into three groups: people, platforms, and preventative actions.
Connect the people
Managing an organization’s social media platforms requires more than one person. A crisis management team is the first thing to consider in a crisis plan. Since a company’s social media presence can be largely connected with its brand value, the management of social media platforms needs to be a joint effort by management, the marketing team, as well as the digital experts.
Besides the crisis team members, it is also helpful to include strategies on internal communications within the plan. Internal communication is a two-way relationship within an organization, enabling an exchange of information management and employees. If reporters or other people ask an employee for opinions on a crisis, and the employee does not know what happened or what s/he can or cannot say, a misstep can sensationalize the story. Therefore, a company should strive to keep employees in the loop at all times.
Identify the platforms
This is one of the most overwhelming steps in social media planning, as there are so many channels to choose from. Crisis managers, or social media managers, must first identify the target audiences, in order to determine which platforms are ideal for effectively reaching those audiences. Target audiences can include – investors, shareholders, suppliers, customers, employees, and even the government. One single message cannot be suitable for all those audiences. The company must decide which target audiences are of higher priority, or another option is to use social media so it can customize and tweak its messaging accordingly.
Much research suggests that it is better to use an “owned channel,” such as a blog, forum, or organization-generated community, than to apply a third-party platform, such as Twitter or Facebook. An owned channel is believed to be a more effective way to build a credible and meaningful online presence than relying on the communication flow and audience of an existing platform. Moreover, if the crisis is minor, it is easier to broadcast the response on these channels, as the company can control the statements, tone and material.
However, communication channels dimension does not include only the owned channels. Conclusively, there is a plethora of channels out there, and a company must always ask itself which social media channels should be used and why, and how it will use these channels effectively.
Work on the preventative actions
The first preventative action to consider is pre-draft updates. While an online crisis can hardly wait for a response to be approved by many levels of management, crisis managers can pre-draft templates for Twitter messages, Facebook posts or blog entries, with blank sections for the case details. The templates can be approved by the legal team beforehand so that the crisis team can disseminate the message on the appropriate platforms as soon as the details are confirmed.
The next action is creating a terms-of-use policy, which is outlining how people can or cannot behave. This is a way to guide the conversations and prevent people from taking the issue too far on the company’s owned channels.
Scooping up the negative domains and usernames is a proactive way to control the easy to remember names that can share destructive stories about the company. Norton (2013)’s example was if a hateful party owned the ihatestarbucks.com domain and started distributing negative stories about Starbucks, people tend to remember the domain and spread the stories more effortlessly. If the company gained control over the names first, they cannot be used against its campaigns [1].
Another action is dark sites, which are online hubs that remain in the dark until a crisis breaks out. They contain pre-made resources, such as message from CEO or hotline contacts, and the blank parts to be filled out with the crisis details. These sites are used to respond to a crisis in the most professional and timely manner.
The last preventative action is targeted advertising, which is used to control search results to make sure Google or Bing shows the correct and suitable messages when a searcher types in a relevant keyword. Beside its preventative characteristic, this action can also be used for responsive purpose. This tactic has been employed by BP during its Deepwater Horizon crisis, when BP tried to use PPC advertising to tone down the news of the disaster. Crisis managers should consider a list of potential keywords, as well as a search landing page (such as a dark site) to prepare for the upcoming crises.
Conclusion
While the application of social media during a crisis may still be up for debate, it is still important to develop a social media crisis management plan in advance to manage the information flow. In a time of crisis, social media can be an effective tool for companies to inform and engage target audiences and better control the message in real-time.
[1] Norton, C. (2013). Online crisis management. In R. Brown & S. Waddington (Eds.), Share this too: More social media solutions for PR professionals (pp. 159-168). Cornwall, UK: John Wiley & Son, Ltd.
Our client Spaceflight Inc. is no stranger to executing industry firsts. In December 2018, the company launched the largest number of satellites from a U.S.-based launch vehicle, and in Feb. 2019, the company launched the first privately funded lunar lander on the first-ever rideshare mission to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO).
In June of 2021, Spaceflight executed another industry first by launching the first-ever electric propulsion orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-2 mission. Spaceflight’s SXRS-5 mission was also the first time the company had launched two Sherpa vehicles, Sherpa-FX2 and Sherpa-LTE1, from a single mission. This important milestone not only demonstrated the company’s leadership in the industry, but its commitment to innovation and creating tools and services that enable their customers to get their satellites to the orbit they need on their timeline.
We worked closely with Spaceflight’s marketing team to craft a plan that would create excitement about the launch in the weeks leading up to takeoff.
First, we considered the compelling elements of this story. Then we strategized three key outreach campaigns as well as when to share them publicly and how to offer them to journalists in a strategic way.
We started our campaign by introducing the details of Spaceflight’s SXRS-5 mission in a press release. This included information about the number of payloads onboard, the customers flying, what Sherpa vehicles would carry satellites and which had propulsion units.
Next, we knew the hardware Spaceflight had constructed, its two Sherpa vehicles, would offer a unique visual story. We worked closely with the team to offer behind-the-scenes tours of Spaceflight’s integration facilities so journalists could get a close-up look at the hardware, technology and integration process.
Finally, we wanted to highlight Spaceflight’s engineering prowess and the unique, modular design of its Sherpa vehicles. To do this, we crafted a press release that broke down the Sherpa vehicles from a technical standpoint and described their versatility, the subsystems used to construct customized vehicles and the benefits that provides to customers.
Once we had these three key elements in place, we worked with the marketing team to brainstorm other ideas and mediums to build buzz and share interesting information about the mission. This included targeted outreach to industry podcasts, sharing customer missions through blogs posted on Spaceflight’s website and shared on social media, and finally a series of videos in which the mission and Sherpa vehicles were described in “bite-size” pieces for our audiences.
The series of campaigns have been a strong success, leading to eight media briefings, six customer stories and the list of coverage below.
We continue to be impressed by the Spaceflight team’s ability to develop and execute ground-breaking missions. Congratulations!
- SpaceX Launches Transporter-2 Falcon 9 Rideshare Mission – Spaceflight Insider, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX launches 88 satellites into orbit and nails rocket landing – Space.com, June 30, 2021
- Watch live: SpaceX to launch 88 satellites on Transporter 2 mission at 3:31 pm ET – Space.com, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX delivers 88 satellites to orbit lands first stage onshore for first time in 2021 – TechCrunch, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX delivers 88 satellites to orbit lands first stage onshore for first time in 2021 – Yahoo! News, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX launches satellites in rare polar orbit mission – CBS News, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX launches satellites in rare polar orbit mission – Yahoo! News, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX Rideshare Launch Carries Array of Smallsats to Orbit – Via Satellite, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX launches second dedicated rideshare mission – SpaceNews, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX launches 88 spacecraft into orbit — including two of Spaceflight’s orbital tugs – GeekWire, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX Delays Launching Rideshare Mission of 88 Satellites Due to Possible Interference With a Plane – Tech Times, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX Launch Scrubbed At The Last Second Due To Violation Of Restricted Airspace – Republic World, June 30, 2021
- SpaceX successfully launches Transporter 2 mission with 88 satellites – NASA Spaceflight, June 29, 2021
- SpaceX rocket launch carrying 88 satellites delayed by a wayward plane – Space.com, June 29, 2021
- Cygnus supply ship departs space station after four-month mission – Spaceflight Now, June 29, 2021
- SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch This Week: Rare Polar Mission on Southerly Coast-Hugging Trajectory From Cape Canaveral – Science Times, June 29, 2021
- SpaceX’s satellite rideshare rocket carries the industry’s next era – Quartz, June 29, 2021
- SpaceX postpones launch of 88 satellites in rideshare mission – Space Daily, June 29, 2021
- SpaceX launch this week will feature first onshore rocket landing since December – Spaceflight Now, June 28, 2021
- Spaceflight to launch two OTVs on SpaceX’s Transporter-2—Geospatial World, June 24, 2021
- SpaceX rocket ready for second rideshare launch with 100+ small satellites—Teslarati, June 23, 2021
- Inside look: Spaceflight ships out Sherpa orbital tugs to give 36 spacecraft a ride—GeekWire, June 1, 2021
- Spaceflight Inc. in Kent Valley preparing to launch satellites into orbit aboard SpaceX mission—KING 5, May 27, 2021
The disruptions of the pandemic have left a lasting mark on corporate culture around the world, particularly in terms of where work occurs. A recent report from Accenture PLC found that 83 percent of workers viewed a hybrid work model to be optimal, and companies, from Microsoft to Ford Motor Company, have indicated they plan to accommodate this preference moving forward.
With this shift, the way workers collaborate will also need to change. According to a survey conducted by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), three out of five corporate meeting organizers responded that they expect to hold at least one hybrid meeting in 2021. The survey also showed that, while 71 percent of respondents said meetings with a combination of remote and in-person attendees were not part of their previous programming, 65 percent are now interested in holding hybrid meetings.
As this new form of collaboration gains traction, it is in our best interest to establish norms around hybrid meetings and find ways to elevate the experience. To guarantee that hybrid meetings are efficient and effective, it is important to keep three things in mind: inclusion, facilitation, and follow-up.
Inclusion is key
By definition, a meeting brings people together to achieve a shared objective. For that to be accomplished, each participant, regardless of physical location, must be able to participate and engage with other attendees. The most consequential effort organizers can take in planning a hybrid meeting is to focus on inclusivity. The goal is to have every participant feel engaged and productive, no matter their location.
To involve all, it is critical that participants can hear what’s being said. After a year of engaging entirely over videoconference, attendees will have a baseline expectation of high-quality audio. No remote participant should ever need to ask for a comment to be repeated. A conference room outfitted with a quality audio system is an ideal location for this sort of meeting. However, the same effect can be accomplished using strategically placed microphones or by passing a microphone among participants.
It is also important to ensure that all participants have equal visibility. While it may seem like a simple solution to have each participant, those physically in the room and those joining virtually, log into a video conference platform with their own laptop, that defeats the purpose of meeting in person. The goal is to give every attendee a clear view of the faces of the other participants, regardless of location.
A simple but effective way to accomplish this is to connect several laptops equipped with webcams to a conferencing platform. One laptop can be set on each side of the meeting table with the camera capturing the attendees on the opposite side. The remaining laptops can be arranged to share the meeting visuals, such as presentation slides or a wall of post-it notes, with off-site participants. Such a set-up gives each visual component of the meeting space its own position on the remote participants’ screens. Similarly, to keep remote participants top of mind, it may be helpful to display individual remote attendees on monitors positioned prominently in the room.
Providing virtual participants an accurate and complete view of the meeting space also translates into comprehensive meeting recordings which, a recent study by Panopto and Wainhouse Research found, 86% of daily video conferencing users value.
Videoconferencing technology is rapidly evolving to bridge the distance between remote and in-person meeting attendees. Providers like Microsoft and Zoom have announced that they are leveraging innovations like facial detection and optimized gallery views to better simulate a meeting room.
Intentional facilitation
The next step is to bring all these pieces together into a cohesive, collaborative experience. This is where facilitation comes in, and care should be taken to test the technology and rehearse the flow of the meeting. By involving participants in this step, meeting organizers can let attendees know what to expect and give them time to prepare.
It is also useful to assign an onsite meeting facilitator to ensure that remote participants are not forgotten and that subtleties present in the room are translated to those not co-located. The facilitator should draw the remote participants into the conversation and make sure their voices are heard. One creative way, suggested in this Harvard Business Review article, is to connect each person joining remotely with an in-person attendee or “avatar.” These participants are linked by a direct line of communication so that the remote attendee can get assistance without the discomfort of interrupting the group. This could be anything from clearing a blocked camera angle, or discretely asking a quiet participant to speak more clearly, to placing a post-it note in a brainstorming exercise.
Thoughtful feedback
As with any new initiative, feedback is a crucial step to ensuring that hybrid meetings are productive moving forward. By soliciting feedback in a thoughtfully designed survey, organizers can fine tune their process and improve the experience of remote and in-person participants in the future.
At its core, making the most of hybrid meetings requires creativity from organizers and participants. It’s clear that this new form of collaboration is here to stay, and we can ensure effective hybrid interaction by creating an environment where every participant, regardless of location, is on equal footing.