Contact us

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.

Tips for CMO Longevity: Collaborate, Secure Buy-In and Leverage Expertise

Data has shown over the years that the C-suite role with the shortest average tenure has been the chief marketing officer. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported the average tenure of a CMO slipped to 43 months, whereas the tenure of other C-suite executives is on average longer, with CEOs’ average tenure reported at 88.4 months and CFOs’ average tenure at 63 months.

Given the relatively short tenure of CMOs, it was not completely surprising to see data from Deloitte that found CMOs are the least confident members of the C-suite. Deloitte conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with 575 Fortune 500 C-suite executives to examine perceptions on “CMOs’ contribution to corporate decision making, why CMOs struggle to find their voice in strategic conversations and how they can achieve their place as enterprise wide strategic leaders.”

If on average turnover in the CMO role takes place every three and a half years, that can cause disruption or shifts to the organization’s overarching marketing strategy. As a result, CMOs aren’t then in a position to see the impact of their strategy over time.

The researchers offered some guidance to CMOs:

  • Collaborate with other C-level executives – this can facilitate buy-in and help ensure those other executives know, understand and hopefully support the strategic initiatives the CMO is driving forward on behalf of the enterprise. This also offers an opportunity to validate the strategy and secure additional strategic input from other executives – leading to a more informed strategy.
  • Leverage knowledge of customer journey and experience to help inform and guide peers on the executive team, who tend to lean on the CMO for their expertise. The CMO’s depth of knowledge of the customer can be instrumental in helping other C-level executives be successful in their roles. And by helping peers achieve success, CMOs can foster support across the executive team.

We, too, are strong advocates of securing buy-in and dedicated a chapter in our book, “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR,” to the topic. This section includes a side-bar interview with Bruce Patton, cofounder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and coauthor of the best-selling book “Getting to Yes.” Patton offers the following guidance:

“If you don’t have buy-in or agreement, people won’t be very enthusiastic, and their behavior won’t be consistent with your goals.”

He goes on to state:

“It’s a mark of a competent person to understand there are often multiple ways of looking at a situation and that each might have integrity. There’s a lot of ambiguity out there, and there may be more than one path that leads to success. It can also be profoundly unsettling to have doubt about whether we’ve got the right answer. Often, we want to feel certain there aren’t valid objections and that there’s no chance of making a mistake, and so we don’t want to hear different points of view. If you see the world this way, you’ll have a strong incentive to bully people into not raising objections, but you’ll also be hiding from the complexity of the real world.”

Collaborating, building consensus and leveraging expertise for the good of the executive team will help elevate the importance of the CMO and visibility within the organization, and ensures everyone is working toward the same strategic business objectives.

Read More

Minimizing Cell Phone Distraction in the Workplace

A recently published New York Times’ article featuring economics reporter Conor Doughtery, “How to Turn an iPhone Into a Work-Only Tool,” explores how this NYT reporter recognized the side-effects of constant technology use and made the necessary change of removing his cell phone’s social media apps to offset a problematic work-life balance.

In a 2018 Udemy report, 58 percent of survey respondents indicated they do not need social media to do their jobs yet feel they need social media to make it through the day. The report also points out that 86 percent of people recognize Facebook as a workplace distraction and out of the various social media sites, 65 percent ranked Facebook as the platform that distracts them the most, followed by Instagram at 9 percent, and Twitter and Snapchat at 7 percent.

To mitigate phone distraction, 43 percent of workers turn their cell phone’s off during work hours. While this tactic works for some, others, including myself, worry about the missed emergency phone calls while their cell phone is turned off. This is where Conor’s strategy comes in handy.

As a journalist, Conor keeps news apps such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, along with Audible, maps, airline, and service-oriented apps, on his phone. Everything else is disabled, including his Internet browser. He describes his largest struggle with hosting social media apps on his phone as losing track of the time spent on his apps for pleasure versus work. Now he spends his extra time on things he enjoys including skateboarding and video games.

Conor also explains that he still uses his phone a lot but not as much as he used to, given there is no more “endless stream of [social media] feeds.” While many reporters spend time on social media, he spends his time unearthing great story ideas by reading hyperlocal news, his niche approach compared to other reporters.

Reading is not the only part of Conor’s job. Interviewing is equally important, and he admits to a recent, pricey addiction to an app that transcribes his recorded interviews for $1 per minute.

It may not come as a surprise that social media is a major distractor at work. While Conor’s strategy of removing all social media apps from his phone has worked for him, there are less drastic changes one can make to diminish the urge to check your phone during the workday.

  • Create an “off-limits” folder in your phone. This will help you categorize the apps you should stay away from during the day. It’s not necessarily always social media apps. For example, if you have a hard time staying away from Amazon, news or sports apps, file them in that folder. After work, give yourself a set amount of time to browse through these apps.
  • Turn off your phone’s notifications. I have personally done this and can attest that it dramatically decreases the time I’ve spent on my phone during the day. When there are no notifications popping up on your phone, there is nothing that needs to be checked.
  • Set up “do not disturb” times. If your phone is up to date, you more than likely have the choice to set up “do not disturb” times. Take advantage of this and stop the distraction.

 As the urge to continually check our phones increases in today’s social media frenzy, adopt personal guidelines to keep yourself on track during the workday.


Read More

Assessing Risk in Business

In business, we often make decisions without as much as the information as we’d like or need.

When Colleen and I outgrew our office space on the top of Queen Anne, we had to find a new location. In a rapidly growing city, this was not easy, and there is no crystal ball for projecting our firm’s growth or the stability of the economy. Finding a building and assessing the risk of signing a five-year lease was our responsibility.

That’s why I was intrigued by Carl Richards’ article about feedback loops, confidence and humans’ tendency to form self-serving bias. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a self-serving bias is formed when a person takes credit when they achieve desired outcomes and assign blame to another place when things go poorly.

Richards’ article was focused particularly on how overconfidence impacts investing, but I think this story also contains some important reminders for business leaders and managers. Here are some of my take-aways:

  • When you assess risk, don’t just rely on your own experience or feedback loop. You should consider external factors that may play a significant role in the outcome. In the lease example, the health of the economy may play a factor on our ability to grow or the pace of our growth, which may have a direct correlation on how much office space we need.
  • Albeit an imperfect science, assessing risk is important. Managers may want to institute formal processes in their organizations around this when making significant decisions. This might be a process as simple as listing all the possible consequences and assigning a probability to them. 
  • It’s also vital to consider the worst consequence and consider whether you can live with it. Richards uses an example of assessing avalanche risk when backcountry skiing. One consequence of an avalanche on a slope you’re skiing is death or serious injury. Being mindful of this may completely change your decision – or maybe influence taking up backcountry skiing at all. Similarly in business there are likely many risks that wouldn’t be taken if people thought about the absolute worst-case scenario before moving forward. 

The next time you’re faced with an important, yet risky, decision, I hope some of these ideas are helpful. If you have interesting examples of risk assessment done well, or even examples when things have gone awry, we’d love to learn about them.

Read More

A Recap of Business Wire’s Meet the Media

On Sept. 5, 2019, I attended Business Wire’s Meet the Media luncheon to connect with journalists based in Seattle to learn more about how to effectively engage with them. The event had an impressive lineup of journalists from various media outlets, including broadcast journalists, managing editors, reporters and business editors.

The luncheon was structured similar to speed dating. Each journalist sat at an assigned table and attendees had three 15-minute sessions to ask questions. As there were more journalists than sessions, I met with journalists I hadn’t worked with as closely and whose outlets had varying target audiences.

Below is an overview of each of the sessions and my key takeaways.

Rami Grunbaum, The Seattle Times

My first session was with Rami Grunbaum, the business editor at the Seattle Times. Rami shared that the digital publication of the Seattle Times has become a focus for the publication and that the unique visitors per month (UVPM) continues to see impressive growth. Also, the Seattle Times has become the second largest publication on the West Coast, behind the Los Angeles Times. Rami did indicate that, while there is a digital focus, it doesn’t influence or change the stories they’ll cover in the business section.

Key Takeaway:

For the Seattle Times’ business section, large enterprise business stories are effective, especially those that focus on trends impacting the region. When I asked what trends were most interesting to him, Rami informed me that he believes real estate will be an important one to monitor.

Patranya Bhoolsuwan, KIRO News

Next, I spoke with Patranya Bhoolsuwan, an anchor and reporter with KIRO News. Recently, we’ve supported multiple clients with broadcast stories, and I was eager to speak directly with a broadcast journalist to determine if there were any new approaches or ideas that we had not previously leveraged. Patranya shared that when she evaluates a story, she wants to see diversity, personal perspectives/angles, and hard-hitting news. And, of course, an interesting visual element always helps. Additionally, because broadcast news moves so quickly, she encouraged us to be more aggressive in our pitching efforts.

Key Takeaway:

Patranya mentioned that following her career in journalism, she may consider offering media training services. When asked what she thought the most valuable piece of advice for on-camera interviews would be, she said, “Don’t look at the camera and stick to your message.”

Karen Weise, The New York Times

Finally, my last session was with Karen Weise, a technology reporter for the New York Times based in Seattle. Karen joined the New York Times about a year ago and largely (almost exclusively) focuses on Amazon. While no one in this session was tied to Amazon, she still offered interesting information about the outlet at large and the tech trends she finds interesting. She said as she continues to settle into her role with the publication, she would like to expand her beat to cover business-to-business and startup technology. While this is not currently a part of her beat, she is still open to receiving the news.

Key Takeaway:

While Karen’s beat is Amazon, she said that she is open to covering stories about bigger themes that relate to Amazon, such as workforce, e-commerce, etc. Another important takeaway not exclusive to Karen, but worth sharing, is that the New York Times almost never covers funding, unless it’s an exorbitant amount.

There was one common theme across all my sessions with the journalists: If you pitch them and the story isn’t quite the right fit for them, but they believe it will be for a colleague, they’ll likely pass it on. So, while finding the right reporter is key, it really comes down to having a strong story that meets the needs of the publication. If you target the wrong person, but have the elements for a compelling story, they’ll work with you to get in contact with the right journalist.

Thank you to Business Wire for hosting a valuable event, and thank you to the journalists who took time out of their day to share these insights!

Read More

Infographic: Tips for Writing Irresistible Headlines

As PR pros, we’ve all had writer’s block when it comes to developing an attention-grabbing headline. As content marketing efforts have increased dramatically, so has the importance of writing catchy, clickable headlines.

Whether it’s for an op-ed, blog post, email blast or press release, the title of your piece needs to grab the reader’s attention and entice them to continue reading (I’ll let you be the judge on whether I accomplished that feat today).

There are several aspects that make for an effective headline, including the four “u” rule by the American Writers and Artists Association. More than anything, you need an interesting story. Even the greatest headline writer in the world will fail with a boring or confusing story. That’s because the best headlines aren’t necessarily the ones that make people click — they’re the ones that promise great stories and then fulfill that promise. While challenging, the process of writing good headlines can make your story ideas better.

Which is why I was thrilled when I came across a recent PR Daily article titled, Infographic: How to write irresistible headlines, from A-Z, outlining a whole alphabet’s worth of headline-writing tips and tricks.

PR Daily’s editor, Robby Brumberg, highlights a handful of helpful takeaways from the extensive infographic of which I also believe are some of the most helpful ideas included in the infographic.

“Posing a question … remains one of the best ways to engage the reader.”

I find myself clicking headlines if they ask a question on a current topic and promise to answer it. It has always served as a teaser for me. But if this technique is used without providing answers, it can deter readers. It’s best practice to make sure this is only used if you are answering the question and providing some direction.

“What’s in it for your audience? What does she or he have to gain if they carry on reading? In the headline, tout a substantial benefit that a reader can pluck from your piece.”

My best advice is to keep it simple, clear and to the point. A good headline lets readers know the content has value and isn’t just clickbait (because it isn’t, right?). Headlines should convey that readers will either learn something new, glean impactful advice or be entertained and moved by the words coming next. Answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”

Nike’s campaign for its Black History Month collection is a prime example that utilizes just the word “EQUALITY.” The word means so much to people and piques interest for broad engagement.

“Decisions are based on emotions”

Brumberg suggests that you “hit your readers directly in their pain points. Use visceral language that stirs emotions and lets your passion for your subject shine through in the headline.” Consumers are inundated with headlines and advertisements on multiple platforms, so their attention span is increasingly limited. The New York Times’ behind-the-scenes experiment of testing which headlines resonated with readers found that the headlines with the most success are clear, powerful, and written in a conversational tone.

Brumberg’s article is a helpful one-stop shop full of resources and ideas to get the creative juices flowing when developing your next headline. It’s one bookmark every PR pro should have saved on their browser.

Read More

BitTitan Empowers MSPs to Reach New Business Heights With Rollout of New Products

It’s been a busy summer for the folks at BitTitan.

The global leader in managed services automation launched two major and innovative products in the cloud services market, enabling MSPs and IT professionals to provide new cloud-migration services to customers and further grow their businesses.

On July 9, BitTitan unveiled Microsoft Teams migration capabilities to MigrationWiz, its industry-leading SaaS solution for mailbox, document and public-folder migrations. The new migration capabilities allow IT professionals to migrate instances of Teams as well as the individual components within that instance, including Teams, Channels, Conversations, Permissions and Files. These features are among the first of their kind, as a clear path for tenant-to-tenant Teams migration had not previously been established.

Media outlets took notice, as the news was published in more than a dozen trade publications. Two contributed articles about MigrationWiz Teams migrations also ran, which were authored by Mark Kirstein, BitTitan’s vice president of products.

BitTitan wasn’t done. On July 15, BitTitan debuted Voleer at Microsoft Inspire 2019 in Las Vegas. A new IT automation platform, Voleer centralizes and automates the day-to-day IT needs for engineers and administrators, helping them package and sell new services and grow revenue.

The Voleer announcement was covered by trade outlets and resulted in eight published articles.

Two significant product launches has certainly made for an exciting summer, but BitTitan has more to unveil with its innovative new products, as it continues to rollout updates and new features through the end of the year. At Communiqué PR, we couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with such a dynamic and forward-thinking company that continues to look ahead at delivering the next big solution to shake up the cloud-migration market.

Microsoft Teams

Voleer

Read More