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 majority of my Communique PR teammates, along with their friends and families, have begun receiving their COVID-19 vaccines, including a significant number who just received shots from Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
So, when federal health authorities recommended pausing the use of the J&J vaccine to investigate potential rare, but dangerous, side effects of blood clots, there was significant discussion about it in our daily meeting on April 13.
That morning, several colleagues had woken up to text messages and phone calls from concerned family members, wanting to alert them of the news and encourage them to keep an eye out for symptoms.
To alleviate concerns, most of our colleagues reminded loved ones that only a tiny number of people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine experienced these rare but serious clots. They pointed out the Food and Drug Administration FDA and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided on the pause after just six people out of approximately 7 million experienced these side effects.
While this should be of tremendous comfort to people, it’s often hard to get our heads around numbers. As Dr. Ellen Peters, the Philip H. Knight chair and director of the Center for Science Communication Research (SCR) at the University of Oregon, points out in her book “Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers,” a substantial percentage of the U.S. population struggles to understand or process data.
“The news doesn’t always present numbers in ways that people find as easy to grasp as stories about individuals,” said Dr. Peters. “When presenting numbers like the rare but serious clots possibly associated with the J&J vaccine, communicators should tell the public about the 6 people who experienced clots and also about the approximately 6,999,994 people who did not. Advising the public about the likelihood of other more common side effects, such as the appropriately 50% of people (about 3.5 million so far) who are likely to experience pain at the injection site, may also help by putting the rare side effect into perspective.”
Consider the language that acting chair of the FDA, Dr. Janet Woodcock, used in her introductory remarks at the April 14 press conference.
Dr. Woodcock said that “out of an abundance of caution, [the FDA and CDC are] recommending a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine due to reports of six cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot following vaccine administration.”
Then she spoke about wanting to understand events so they can provide information to healthcare providers and vaccine recipients. She stressed “these events appear to be extremely rare,” before bridging to the message that “COVID- 19 vaccine safety is a top priority for the federal government.” [1]
As we know, this had an immediate impact across our nation as pharmacies and healthcare providers canceled J&J vaccine appointments, or when possible, switched people to first doses of Pfizer or Moderna.
The longer-term implications of the pause remain to be seen. The J&J vaccine was a critical part of the Biden administration’s plans to get the country fully vaccinated.
On March 10, President Biden announced plans to buy an additional 100 million doses of the J&J vaccine.[2] The J&J vaccine is particularly important for reaching people in areas where there is limited refrigeration, which is required for both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, or where it may be difficult for people to get two doses. If the pause is not lifted, it is unclear what will happen in these instances.
Then there are those who were already wary of the vaccine. According to a poll released on March 31 by KFF, “13% of respondents overall said they will ‘definitely not’ be vaccinated, signaling that significant hurdles remain in the nation’s vaccination campaign.”[3] The day before the halt of the J&J vaccine, two young women working at my local grocery store said they weren’t going to get vaccinated because of concerns.
Given all this, it’s essential that public health officials assure people that they’re being diligent with administering vaccines. They must also help people understand the much higher risk of contracting COVID-19, becoming seriously ill and dying from it, and how this compares to the risk of experiencing a rare side effect from the vaccine.
This is no small communication task. Public health officials will need to be deliberate in their messaging. They’ll need to carefully consider the examples and data they share.
While people’s abilities to process and use numbers vary, communicators should not shy away from sharing quantitative information. According to Peters, studies show that people prefer actual numbers as opposed to more qualitative verbal descriptions.
In her book, Peters shares the results from a study on breast cancer and mammography risk information. When people use qualitative labels such as “low chance” or “common” as substitutes for numbers, there are varying interpretations of what those labels mean. In these instances, actual numbers are better.
In the coming days and weeks, many of us will carefully monitor and assess the news closely for honest, transparent, clear and timely information from public health officials. Leveraging numerical data can help effectively convey the important messages they wish to send.
[1] “FDA and CDC announce a pause in administering the Johnson ….” 13 Apr. 2021, https://news.yahoo.com/fda-cdc-announce-pause-administering-145001962.html.
[2] “Biden announces plan to purchase additional 100 million ….” 10 Mar. 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-announce-deal-additional-100-million-johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine-n1260408.
[3] “Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Drops Among All Americans, New ….” 30 Mar. 2021, https://khn.org/news/article/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-drops-among-americans-new-kff-survey-shows/.
Image credit: Carbon Robotics
On April 13, our client Carbon Robotics, introduced its Autonomous Weeder, a 10,000-pound autonomous robot that leverages computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI), and laser technology to safely and effectively drive through crop fields to identify, target and eliminate weeds.
Carbon Robotics’ groundbreaking application of this technology is revolutionizing agriculture. The company’s robots are designed to self-drive up and down furrows on specialty crop farms (farms that grow vegetables we eat, including broccoli, onions, peppers, asparagus, etc.), eliminating weeds as they go. Utilizing the thermal power of the robot’s eight lasers, the machine can eliminate 100,000 weeds per hour without herbicides, tilling or manual labor, reducing costs, enabling consistency and predictability, and creating an economical path to organic and regenerative farming.
This news was incredibly unique in that its technological innovations and agricultural application make it relevant to a broad range of audiences. Additionally, because it is designed for farms that grow the vegetables consumers eat and it presents a number of environmental benefits, it’s also appealing to national publications.
To effectively announce this amazing innovation, we offered the news to select technology, agriculture, local and national reporters under embargo. We hosted several interviews with reporters both before and after the announcement published so they could speak to Paul Mikesell, the CEO and founder, about how the company started, what the farmers are saying about the technology, and how the Autonomous Weeder is poised to impact the industry.
The announcement led to coverage from a range of outlets that reach farmers, consumers and technology enthusiasts. Below is a list of the coverage that has published so far, with more to come in the next few weeks.
Congratulations to the Carbon Robotics team!
Carbon Robotics Coverage
- Ken Goldberg on robotic grasping; Carbon Robotics’ new weeding robot—The Robot Report, 4/16/21
- Pizza, picking and swimming snakes—TechCrunch, 4/15/2021
- “Like science fiction,” Seattle startup sends laser-equipped robots to zap weeds on farmland—The Seattle Times, 4/16/2021
- Autonomous Weeding Tech Picking Up Steam—Precision Farming Dealer, 4/16/21
- Farming Startup Unveils Self-Driving Robot That Uses AI To Zap Weeds—Slashdot, 4/14/2021
- Isilon founder lifts the hood on farming startup Carbon Robotics and its weed zapping machine—GeekWire, 4/13/2021
- Video: Autonomous weeding robot improves crop yield, costs—Engineering360, 4/14/2021
- Laser-armed robotic weeder hits the market—The Irish Farmers Journal, 4/15/2021
- This startup says its new laser-powered weeding robot is already sold out for 2021—AgFunder News, 4/13/2021
- Carbon Robotics releases new autonomous weeding robot into farming industry—Robotics & Automation News 4/13/2021
- Carbon Robotics Autonomous Weeding Robot—Robotic Gizmos, 4/14/2021
- New weed-zapping robot unveiled by US firm—Industrial Vehicle Technology International, 4/14/2021
- Carbon Robotics unveils a new generation of weed killing robots—Mobile Robot Guide, 4/13/2021
- Seattle company launches third generation laser zapping weed robots—Food and Farming Technology, 4/14/2021
- Agricultural start-up unveils autonomous robot that uses AI to eliminate weeds—Eminetra 4/14/2021
We’ve all heard the old saying, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” But what comes first, the passion or the passionate effort?
For instance, professor Scott Galloway with the NYU Stern School of Business has often heard guest speakers at his business school tell young people to “follow their passion.” And he has a very pointed take on this advice.
“What utter bulls***,” Galloway said during an author lecture in 2019. “If someone tells you to follow your passion, it means they’re already rich.” Instead, Galloway encourages young people to find what they’re good at, apply the time and effort, and strive to become great at it.
It’s true that we’re often told to follow our passion when it comes to work and professional careers. Yet we are finding that passion not only can come later, but also be developed. Often, finding what you’re good at and passionate about takes time.
This recent article from Inc.com details that while passion can spark effort, effort can also spark passion, which often happens with entrepreneurs and other successful people. Two notable examples of this are Steve Jobs and Mark Cuban.
As the article notes, Jobs had other passions prior to starting Apple with his business partner Steve Wozniak, such as calligraphy and Eastern mysticism. It was only after a computer retailer purchased 50 fully assembled Apple I computers for $500 each that Jobs ultimately found his career path and created one of the world’s largest tech companies.
Similarly, Cuban advises against following your passion and has spoken about the importance of focusing on where you put your effort. He has given examples of other passions he’s had that didn’t pan out, such as pursuing athletic careers in baseball and basketball. His advice is to invest your time in things at which you excel.
“If you put in enough time, and you get really good, I will give you a little secret: Nobody quits anything they are good at, because it is fun to be good,” Cuban said. “It is fun to be one of the best. But in order to be one of the best, you have to put in effort. So don’t follow your passions. Follow your effort.”
Business experts like Cuban and professor Galloway are not alone in their assessments. In fact, scientific research backs them up. A 2014 study in the Academy of Management Journal, which investigated changes in passion as an outcome of effort, hypothesized that while many believe entrepreneurial passion drives entrepreneurial effort, the reverse can also be true. The study found that entrepreneurial passion does increase with effort.
For instance, when creating a startup business, the more time and effort that entrepreneurs invest, the more passionate and engaged they become in that business. Each success and business gain further drives that passion.
But this isn’t limited to entrepreneurs. Many folks become passionate about their work, even though they may be doing work that they didn’t initially set out to do. That is the essence of cultivating their passion with time and effort.
As success can breed success, effort can breed passion and vice versa. And experts like Galloway are quick to point this out.
“Once you’re great at something, the economic accouterments at being great at something, the prestige, the relevance, the camaraderie, the self-worth of being great will make you passionate about whatever ‘it’ is,” he said.
So put in the time to spark your passion – it can only pay off.
With an increasing number of Americans getting vaccinated and many cities easing their social distancing guidelines, more businesses are announcing plans for employees to return to the office.
Some companies are even accelerating their plans. Uber, as reported by NPR, has moved up its back-to-the-office plan from Sept. 13, 2021 to last Monday (4/3/21), on a voluntary basis. According to the article, “the ride-share company said only up to 20% of employees can opt to work from the office.”
But are we ready? When I read the NPR article on Uber’s plans, my anxiety started building. What will returning to the office be like? How do we return to the office in a safe manner? It seems I am not alone in these worries. The New York Times recently reported on this emotional impact in the article “Returning to the Office Sparks Anxiety and Dread for Some.”
Employees want and need to understand what returning to the office will look like, what the expectations are, and how they can stay safe. For example, many employees may have such questions as – has my company updated its cleaning procedures/frequencies? Will I be expected to be masked and will my employer be providing masks? How will my employer modify workspaces to minimize contact? Will my employer be conducting health screenings?
Companies can help address these questions and alleviate employee anxieties by creating some preparation beforehand and implementing effective internal communication practices. Clear, direct and consistent communication will be critical in making the return to the office a success for both employers and employees. Outlined below are a few recommendations on how employers can successfully navigate the transition of having employees returning to the office while also instilling confidence and clarity throughout the process.
- First, gather Information – Some organizations are conducting internal surveys to understand employees’ perspectives and concerns on coming back into the office environment. After a year or more of working remotely, employees may have moved farther away from the office. Others are continuing to care for school-age children and conduct school remotely from home. So, an employee’s decision to start coming into the office is a personal one and can create added stress.
According to Glassdoor’s survey of U.S. employees who are working from home due to COVID-19, “nearly 9 in 10 (86%) say they would prefer to continue working from home at least part of the time.” Another interesting aspect reflected in PwC’s workforce survey of 1,515 US employees illustrated that “employee priorities are shifting on location, benefits and skills.”
For employers, understanding your employees’ needs and priorities can help inform not only future policies and procedures around returning to the office but also in how employers communicate such plans with their teams.
- Establish Updated Policies and Procedures – Employers should work with HR, legal and operations teams to ensure internal alignment on policies on how to minimize risks and potential for exposure within the office environment. Managers should receive training or guidance on these established policies and procedures. For example, will staff who are on site be required to participate in health screenings? Will vaccines be required of returning employees? How will the company manage and mitigate possible exposure at the office.
As detailed in the WSJ article “Companies Wrestle With Hybrid Work Plans—Awkward Meetings and Midweek Crowding,” businesses “are grappling with what new schedules employees should follow, where people should sit in redesigned offices, and how best to prevent employees at home from feeling left out of impromptu office discussions or being passed over for opportunities…”
- Communicate Regularly and Often – Most organizations have increased their internal communication outreach practices since the pandemic began. This has been important as teams are more dispersed and office norms have been disrupted. To help prepare for, adjust to and hopefully thrive with future changes, employers will benefit from upholding these increased internal communication practices. Ideally, outreach can take a variety of forms (e.g., Slack, email, intranet, etc.). Employees need to know where to get information, who to talk to regarding their specific needs/situation and know that their needs regarding safety are being addressed.
MIT Sloan Management Review offers helpful guidance on steps leaders can take “now to make employees feel supported and safe before they resume in-person work.”
At Communiqué, we are working with our employees to gauge their interest and concerns around returning to the office.
Are you preparing for your team to come back into the office? What steps are you taking to ensure it is a success? We’ve love to hear your input and feedback on your company’s experience so far.
In a fast-paced work environment, professionals tend to address problems with the same, overused solutions. This copy-and-paste maneuver is an efficient use of our brain’s energy but tends to treat unique problems with generalized solutions. What if we could hack our brain and force it to think in more creative ways?
Dr. Shelley Carson, author of “Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life,” has created a model of seven brain states of creativity. She has named these states as the “CREATES brainsets.” We can think of a brainset as “the biological equivalent of mindsets.” The seven brainsets are:
- Connect
- Reason
- Envision
- Absorb
- Transform
- Evaluate
- Stream
Each brainset relates to a different type of thinking. Understanding brainsets and how to use them can help us steer the creative problem-solving process through this creative, focused thinking and then come up with more novel solutions. I will go over the three most important brainsets: connect, absorb and envision. These brainsets are the easiest to invoke and are the most applicable to the workplace.
The connect brainset helps us to generate multiple ideas and make connections between disparate concepts. This brainset can be invoked through the process of riffing or brainstorming. A group that is riffing often generates both a wide range and a high number of ideas. Ideas are written down but are not evaluated until the riffing process is over. The key to riffing is to draw connections between outside concepts and build a long list of potential ideas. Only at the end of riffing do you decide to narrow down the list of possibilities to find your creative solution.
The connect brainset can also be invoked in smaller ways through posing unusual connections and word combinations, using juxtaposition or employing metaphor in your writing.
The absorb brainset is all about paying attention to the world around you. The human brain tries to conserve energy by ignoring excessive stimuli in our daily lives. A person invoking their absorb brainset scans the environment, notices new things, and treats new ideas with respect and suspends judgement. Intentionally activating our absorb brainset allows us to override the cognitive inhibition that leads us to filter out sensory inputs and judge them as irrelevant. Absorbing information is helpful for seeking new problems or seeking information to solve new problems.
Practice engaging the absorb brainset by trying to write in colorful and concrete detail. Include words and descriptions that help activate all the senses.
Finally, the envision brainset encourages us to think visually about a problem. Many of us get into the habit of only thinking in verbal thoughts; however, the human brain has an incredible ability to envision and engineer objects and spaces in our minds. Evoking the envision brainset is a quick trick to bypass thinking about previous, overused solutions and instead to visualize something new. It will help us to prompt visual solutions to existing problems, give insights into how spaces are used and solve what-ifs of future or unknown scenarios.
Practice your envision brainset by visualizing the solution to your problem or imagining an unfamiliar or future experience. Including pictures and graphics in your work can also help to prompt the envision brainset.
I hope you’ll try activating these brainsets next time you find yourself in a creative rut at work. Try engaging in a riffing session to find a novel solution by connecting seemingly unrelated ideas. Or search for overlooked details in the world around you and write with colorful imagery. Try visualizing your problem before beginning to write out a solution. Applying these brainsets to your workplace will inspire creative solutions to any problems you are facing.
When trying to optimize content and boost rankings on search engines, many marketing pros look to search engine optimization (SEO) as their north star. These three magic words (and letters) help teams measure and increase general brand awareness and engagement with target audiences. By investing in SEO, businesses interconnect their marketing efforts with the architecture of their website so that all content produced, and shared aids in increasing the visibility of their website. When a company makes it easier for key audiences to access content, they can drive more traffic to the website, and as a result, create greater opportunities for new business.
SEO can be a daunting area to fully master. As with any communication objectives and accompanying strategies, it is critical to identify and track metrics that will help marketing teams measure the success of such efforts. There are many metrics a company can use to track SEO performance such as organic traffic and clicks, time on a page, Domain Authority or keyword ranking. Google Analytics and Moz’s proprietary authority metrics offer insights that can help companies measure their SEO efforts. For specific guidance on metrics and how to track them, consider reviewing Moz’s Tracking SEO Performance page.
Just as there are many metrics to help track SEO performance, there are also several ways to boost SEO. Updating content such as website copy, images, URLs, navigation panes (and location of this content) on a company website can help improve efforts. For example, updating website copy to include keywords that your target audiences are using to search for businesses or solutions can help optimize the website. A couple of other best practices are to make the URL friendly to search and share, and to add a physical address on the website pages so that the company comes up in local searches. Listing a business’ address on the website can drive local traffic and generate business leads.
In addition to website architecture, a promising way to boost SEO is through blogging. According to SEO leader, HubSpot, “Blogging helps boost SEO quality by positioning your website as a relevant answer to your customers’ questions. Blog posts that specifically use a variety of on-page SEO tactics can give you more opportunities to rank in search engines and get customers to visit your site.” This means that there is an opportunity to improve an SEO score in each blog post and web page.
Below are a few intuitive yet impactful ways to boost SEO efforts through developing and distributing content on a company blog.
- Set editorial guidelines. When kicking off blogging efforts or revisiting the overall blogging process to ensure it supports a company’s SEO strategy, teams should first set guidelines for all future posts. This includes the length and quality of the blog post title, the meta title and description, article tags, blog word count, images and other elements that involve the content structure. By considering these elements, companies make their blog post more attractive and digestible to readers, which can increase the frequency they visit the blog and the time they stay on each post, which are both factors that calculate into search engine ranking. For helpful elements to consider when setting your blogging guidelines, visit HubSpot’s article, “The Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post.”
- Don’t forget the keywords and phrases. Remember, it’s quality over quantity here. In addition to setting and following editorial guidelines for blogging, it is critical to integrate keywords and phrases. These words and phrases are the terms that target audiences are using to search to locate relevant businesses or solutions. With that said, quality is chief over quantity. Just because a blog has 50 ranking keywords, does not mean it will be a valuable blog post for SEO. Instead, the keywords should be specific to the target audience and relevant to the blog topic at hand. Teams can improve these efforts by creating target customer personas and ensuring the phrases they include in posts meet the needs and interests of those individuals.
- Include links to external and internal pages. Adding links from other blogs or websites can help increase the likelihood of receiving a link back. Backlinks from other websites to your homepage can help increase page rank as well as drive traffic and trust. In addition to including external links to drive backlinks, companies should also include links to other pages on the website in their blog posts. Internal linking can improve usability and inform how audiences navigate the site (i.e. by directing users throughout the website). This can also help increase page views and site conversion rate, as audiences and prospect customers read travel throughout the website.
- Review traffic and engagement with blog posts. Make changes as needed. As the number of blog posts increases, it is important to review the data behind these articles in line with the previously determined metrics. If the team sees a blog performing exceptionally well, they can share it on social media or replicate similar efforts on other existing posts and remove old content or content that is under performing. Additionally, taking time to update or repurpose content on the blog or other company channels can help attract viewers and increase searchability.
SEO is a long-term, multifaceted strategy. It requires commitment and consistency to ensure all content checks the relevant boxes to be considered “optimized”. As companies evaluate how to improve their SEO ranking, blogging is a great strategy to explore. Not only can blog content strengthen a company’s SEO investments, but blogging can also reinforce a company’s thought leadership and topic authority, which will build trust and credibility among target audiences. For more on this topic, visit Communique PR’s growing library of SEO related blogs.