An organization’s reputation, branding, profitability, growth, and future success depend on how effectively they reach and motivate their targeted audiences. Public relations specialists are communication and media professionals acting as advocates for businesses, hospitals, medical professionals, corporations, universities, nonprofit associations and other organizations. Their specialty is building and promoting positive relationships with targeted audiences for their client.
Entrepreneurs, professional service providers, small business owners and business managers are increasingly looking to Public Relations Specialists for assistance with strategic planning.
What does a Public Relations Specialist do?
PR Professionals or firms handling publicity for individuals or small organizations often deal with all aspects of the job. They are in involved in making and maintaining contacts and relationships, strategizing and planning, and preparation of promotional materials. They either manage or are directly involved in advertising or sales promotional work in support of marketing.
Depending on the organization’s needs, PR Specialists are involved with the following:
* Media relations
* Press Releases
* Press Conferences
* Speaking Engagements
* Media Tours
* Marketing
* Advertising
* Interview Preparation and Coaching
* Governmental Relations
* Employee Relations
* Investor Relations
* Reputation Management
* Crisis Management & Communications
The Public Relations Process
There are a number of widely accepted “Public Relations Process Models”. One of the more popular is the process model by Sheila C. Crifasi (2000) which uses the acronym “ROSIE” to define a five-step process of “Research, Objectives, Strategies, Implementation and Evaluation.”
As with just about any professional service, the project starts with some due-diligence and analysis. Objectives are defined along with the strategies to achieve those goals. Media tools are selected and prepared at this stage. Implementation includes materials preparation and release. Program success or failure is determined in the Evaluation stage.
In recent years the Internet has greatly contributed to the selection and accessibility of media tools with real time feedback. These tools are highly prized by marketing and public relations professionals because they provide immediate information on a program’s effectiveness.
The principal instrument for most publicity campaigns is the “press release”, which provides the mass media with the raw material and background for a news story. There are several on-line Press Release Agencies with targeted syndicated feeds to thousands of journalists world wide, such as PRWeb (www.prweb.com). The better on-line Press Agents provide the original publicist with continual “real time” feedback, including how many journalists have read the News Release.
The client organization’s website statistics is another valuable online analytical tool is. Most website hosting companies provide options for access to a detailed statistical tool such as WebTrends (www.webtrends.com). Statistics are updated on a daily basis allowing trends to be spotted at the beginning of a publicity campaign. This near real time feedback helps provide the necessary information required by professionals to effectively manage a campaign while maximizing impact and ROI (Return on Investment).
Another popular publicity tool is “article submission”. As with the Press Release, there are also good sources for targeted and syndicated Article Submission on the Internet such as GoArticles (www.goarticles.com). These articles are often picked up by other websites generating valuable links and targeted traffic to a client’s website.
Selecting a Public Relations Firm
When choosing a PR Firm an organization is selecting the professionals who will be molding its image for clients and customers, the public and for the media. Image is reality in many societies, this decision can have far-reaching effects.
Here are some suggestions on how to select a PR Firm:
1. Determine your most important PR needs. For Example; Are you launching a new product or service? Are you in a crisis management situation? Do you need to establish a relationship with investors?
2. Determine how long you will need the PR services if possible. Is it a long term or even permanent goal such as establishing and maintaining a relationship with investors, or is it a short term project such as promoting a break-through surgical procedure? Remember most PR Firms will ask for at least a 6 month commitment in order to become established and demonstrate affectivity.
3. Research PR Firms. Ask colleagues and business acquaintances? O’Dwyer’s Directory is a good Internet resource. If you are looking for someone local, specify the geographical region in your Internet search. Many PR Firms and Individuals specialize. When doing Internet research on PR Firms, some may have “Case Studies” which reveal details about strategic successes.
4. Conduct phone interviews with the person who would be handling the account if you were to select that agency. Strongly consider similar experience and personal or corporate compatibility throughout the phone and in face to face interviews.
5. Ask for and check references. Most PR Firms have an on-line presence which usually sports a client list. New or Small Firms will often be less expensive than larger firms have more resources to throw at a large project with time constraints. Smaller firms tend to specialize and may know your business very well.
6. Conduct meetings with the prospective candidates and present your program requirements. Look for genuine interest and healthy idea generation. Larger Firms may send an account representative to a meeting. Ask to meet with the PR specialist who will actually be doing the work, especially if long term compatibility is important.
The Escalating Demand for Corporate Accountability
The need for professional public relations in an increasingly competitive business environment is igniting demand for Public Relations Specialists by businesses, organizations and institutions of all sizes. The value of a company is measured by its balance sheet, but continued success is determined by the quality of its public visibility.
The escalating public, investor and governmental demand for corporate accountability will continue to place emphasis on building public confidence and favorable client image, which are best managed by Public Relations Professionals.
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About the Author
Linda Zanides founded Zanides Public Relations (www.zanidespr.com) in 1984. specializing in placing clients in the public spotlight through broadcast media.
Chris Allison, whom I met on Twitter, IMed me yesterday with the URL of his latest blog post, which explains that he wants to buy Christmas gifts for several people he only knows through social media in order to build authenticity into his relationships them. Me: hiya - that's very sweet. i want a pony. :>) Chris: hahaha Me: so who's asked for presents? Chris: I posted it last night and no one so far. you can learn a lot about people by getting them things Me: it's a gift when someone helps other tweeple, when one in 12 tweets is for others, and one for yourself Me: i think you'll find that money can't buy you love. :>) I don't want to razz Chris. He's a nice guy, and I like him. And I think he'd like to jump start his social media brand. But, as I told him, there's no magic formula, no overnight success. The average overnight Internet success takes years to build and constant work to sustain.
Yes, there's the occasional viral sensation. But those generally fade quickly as they come. What endures is connection, generosity of spirit, and of course, good content.
And if you DM me I'll tell you what color pony to get me.
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Back in 2000, a tiny brand named Jones Soda used their website to ask their mostly teenage customers to suggest new flavors, names, and labels and let other customers vote on which should make it into stores. Since then, they've posted 676,653 user-created labels and become a nationally distributed brand with a cult following.
A PSFK post notes that crowdsourcing flavors, slogans and labels is the latest thing in Japanese beverage marketing.
Which one would you buy? The goal in 2000 and now is to give users a personal attachment to the products, and the brands, through their involvement in the community. You go to the store. You see two brands. One asks your opinion, amuses you, engages you in product development. The other tells you how great they are and could care less what you think they should call their new flavor. Which one would you buy?
To those brands still wondering if they should get involved in social media: doh.
Japanese beverage maker, Calpis has adopted a similar strategy, crowdsourcing flavor combinations from Mixi users for their fruit Caplis series. The collaboration included not only the flavors, but also the packaging design and advertising copy. The winning entry for mixed fruit was a blend of apple, pear, mandarin orange, and banana.
Since geeks spend a lot of time online, and are known to consume huge quantities of instant noodle soups, Cup Ramen maker Acecook created a match made in heaven by collaborating with Japanese social network giant Mixi to create new flavors and community.
According to CScout Japan, the more than 4000 members of the community could vote on flavor variations and even marketing slogans to promote the products that they helped design. Now that the innovation process is over, on November 28th there will be a special party for group members in Osaka to celebrate the new flavors that are being released in a few weeks, including Collagen noodles, Milk Tantanmen, Bacon, egg, & vegetables, and Ginseng Chicken.
Gotta go now. Water for my Ramen Noodles is boiling.
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Here are six words you should never use in contests, promotions, ads or press releases: - first - only - biggest - smallest - best - greatest
There is always someone ready to point out something that is newer, bigger, smaller, better or greater.
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Remember Fucked Company? Now there’s fucked media. Only it’s on Twitter and it’s by an anonymous team posting about magazine closings, newsroom cuts, beat changes.
In an email, one of the founders told me it’s to help the PR industry pitch better by being knowledgeable of newsroom changes. Somehow, I don't think that'll help eliminate terrible press releases or PR pitches from hell.
Why use Twitter instead of a website or wiki? Immediacy, he said. Remains to be seen if anyone will care. They’ve already got 355 followers.
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Sunday’s New York Times has a full-page ad for Barney’s, saying prices are slashed 50% right now, before Black Friday. So that means you can probably buy a $700 pair of shoes for $350. Big deal. I don’t buy $700 shoes, and I don't need $350 shoes. And now I’m annoyed too, because the message is clear: “our prices are so high we’re still making a buck when we sell at 50%.” I agree with University of Iowa marketing professor John Murry, who says "If you can't survive on quality or selection or service, you're not going to be able to survive on price competing against Wal-Mart."
What should premium brands do this Christmas? Emphasize service above all, followed by quality and selection. I know I can get the same shoes cheaper other places, but I don’t mind paying more for shoes from Zappos because I know they have the best service on the Internet.
Lower prices would be great, but I’m going to buy from them anyway because I know and love them, and I know I can count on them. Barney’s? Just last week they were acting too snobby for the likes of me to go to their fancy store. Now, they can keep their 50% off sale!
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What’s the most important question you should ask a reporter before you grant an interview? I've been pitching and talking to reporters for what often feels like 100 years, but I finally learned that magic question this morning.
I bet you'll say yes to all of these questions. I did, until today. It's great to be featured in the media, right? It's smart to be generous in sharing information with a reporter so she/he will think of you as a good source again in the future, right? Love me or hate me, but please don't ignore me.
All of that is sage advice - provided you ask the magic question first. "Will you include the name of my company and a link to it in your article?"
Because, otherwise, what is the point? Do you think lots of people will Google your name to find out how to reach you? Think again!
It’s not only unfair to the interviewee, but as reporter Amy Gahran noted on Twitter, not linking to a source is not transparent to readers.
Nathan Eddy interviewed this morning for a story in eWeek "Six Tips to Build Your Brand" and when it came out, there was no link to my blog, and my neither consulting company, nor my new venture, Pawfun.com, were named. My fault. I didn't ask the magic question.
But after the fact, in a what-the-hell moment, but not without trepidation, I looked a gift horse in the mouth, emailed him and said that I thought there should have been a link. He immediately wrote back, apologized, and added the link. Whew!
I won't make that mistake again. Don't you make it either. Remember the magic question.
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Sure there are success stories among the big companies that have dipped their toes in the social media water. But the vast majority of giant companies are still absolutely terrified of social media, Given that even cornflakes are part of called social media these days, that’s a lot of fear.
The Mommy Meganiche Strikes It seems doubtful that Motrin was anything but fearful when a swarm of thousands of mommy bloggers and Twitter moms attacked their ad about baby slings last weekend. Motrin took down the ad within hours, substituting a humorless email that Seth Godin described as “the carefully crafted non-statement of a committee.” And a missed opportunity to connect to the mommy meganiche to build bridges.
Before you could say “pain in the neck” someone calling themselves “imperfectparent” had posted a funny “Motrin commercial alternative” on YouTube, where it's had 8,000 views in just one day. At least someone had a sense of humor!
Instead of responding with their own good-natured and humorous response, Motrin has remained deadly serious, ending up looking rather silly.
Fred Goes Swimming It’s easy to see how social media can confuse CMOs and CEOs alike, not to mention ad agencies. Fred, a 15 year-old boy who sounds like he inhaled helium, has had 11 million views of one his recent "Fred Goes Swimming", and 70,000 comments. A video featuring nothing more than a pair of "daft hands" gets nearly 26 million downloads and 83,000 comments, and a video of the young men belonging to those hands eating cornflakes quickly got 17,000 views.
It’s doubtful that most corporate types even know that these videos, or sites like YTMND and 4chan exist, let alone that they get more pageviews in a week than many corporate sites get in a decade.
Niche Bites Man YTMND stands for “You’re the man now, dog”, a line Sean Connery said in the movie Finding Forrester in 2000. The site, supported entirely by Google ads, hosts tens of thousands of user-created pages that combine a background image, a sound clip, and rudimentary animation. It gets millions of unique visitors a month, more than 100,000 of whom have contributed pages.
Big brands: you’re the man now, dog, and the woman. You need to engage in some serious research and school yourself on what is happening online that doesn’t come from the usual suspects – you and your corporate buds.
Time to try candor, humor, real dialog. And to meganiche or be niched.
UPDATE, November 20: I'm going to join Jim Turner at One By One Media Blog in his challenge to Motrin, Johnson & Johnson and McNeil Consumer Healthcare - the marketing team for Motrin - asking them to respond to this post to prove that they have begun to monitor social media. And to prove that they are, in fact, willing to join the conversation and to leave a comment on this post within the next day or two. I would very much, and respectfully, like to hear your point of view, and I am sure my readers would too.
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As you know if you read this blog, either here or in an RSS feed, I'm a big supporter of President Obama. The post in the photo is praising Obama for putting his weekly address on YouTube. And if you click on the permanent link to the post, what you'll see is an ad for a group of right wing nutjobs called Citizens United, who are anti-Obama. Thanks Google, is that your idea of contextual advertising. It's definitely not mine.
Said Luke Armour in an email today: "Thought it was an interesting juxtaposition, the comedy and tragedy faces of Obama. Makes you wonder at all times, "do you know what Google is doing to your web pages?"
Sheesh!
I banned all the nuts' URLs, and realized that I need to pay closer attention to the Google ads on my blog. Sadly, their ad preview tool doesn't work on a Mac. Doh.
This reminds me of the article I wrote for Internet Day in 2000 with the headline “The Traditional Press Release is Dead". On that page: a huge ad for PR Newswire. :>)
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UPDATE 8 p.m. Amy Gates at Crunchy Domestic Goddess blog reports that Kathy Widmer, VP of Marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare, maker of Motrin has contacted her and other mommy bloggers to say "We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. …Please know that we take your feedback seriously and will take swift action with regard to this ad. We are in process of removing it from our website." UPDATE 5 p.m.: The post below was written Sunday afternoon. By Sunday evening this ad had been removed from the Motrin site and someone using the screen name @motrinmoms was posting on Twitter, claiming to represent Motrin. However, the Motrin site is down. Has Motrin woken up?
Adrants’ Steve Hall said on Twitter "1way of looking at this Motrin thing is that since it's all getting resolved now, it'll never hit the "real" news. Only us geeks will know." Actually, some of us geeks, Hall and a lot of mommy bloggers included, have some pretty broad reach. Stay tuned.
It’s an inside joke among bloggers that you can cause quite a bit of trouble to a corporation if you post about it on a weekend because most big companies don't monitor their brand 24/7. This weekend, the joke - and the firestorm - is on Motrin.
This Motrin ad about moms who wear their babies in a variety of slings has set off a fire-storm on Twitter, where #motrinmoms quickly became the topic of thousands of angry tweets, and in blogs from mothers and lots of others, like me, who find the ad condescending. A Facebook group of moms who find the ad offensive quickly followed.
Clearly, nobody at Motrin, or its agency, was paying attention today, Sunday. And by Monday, you can bet that you'll hear about this on the evening news and in dead tree media. Sure, Motrin will respond, or take the ad down, withdraw it from its rotation, etc. But the damage to the brand, among the very large and vocal niche they were targeting, is done.
Lesson to Motrin: any company that wants to participate in social media and use the tools better know how to walk the walk. Social media is a 24/7 community and at the very least you need to Google your brand name several times a day. Better yet, before spending million dollars or whatever was spent on that ad, ask real moms what they think about baby slings and whether they thought they needed Motrin to solve the problem you think they have.
What should Motrin do: 1- Apologize. Waste no time. Do it right now. 2- Ask mommy bloggers for help. 3- Listen to what they say. 4- Spend money creating a socially responsible program that helps real mothers with a real issue - preferably one they vote on.
I’ve said this before and I'll say it again: an ad agency is the last place a company should go when it wants to use the tools of social media. Before you venture into social media, hire creative talent that has already created successful social media marketing campaigns for major brands. Everyone and her dog says they're a social media guru. That's just not true. Don't believe the hype. Look at the track record instead.
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WooooooHoooooo! You can't see me, but I'm dancing a little jig right now. Beginning this Saturday morning, the Washington Post reports, President-elect Obama's weekly address will run on YouTube as well as on radio - yet another historic new media first.
The video will also be available on the extraordinary Change.gov, where transition co-chairman Valerie Jarrett released a two-minute video yesterday to summarize the goings-on in the past week.
Heralding a new level of communication between the White House and the public, the YouTube channel is the Internet-era version of President Franklin Roosevelt's famous "fireside chats" between 1933 and 1944. During the campaign, Obama's team uploaded more than 1800 videos which have been viewed over 110 million times.
Corporations: Wake Up! All this is happening when really major corporations, and many so-called professional communicators still have no idea what social media is, let alone what it means. Besides leading us through the end of an error, President Obama's example will hopefully encourage corporate America to jump into the online age in a meaningful way.
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The war in Iraq is over! Bush to face high treason charges, Universities to be Free, according to the gloriously fake New York Times. A team of people involved in the elaborate hoax distributed 200,000 copies of the paper - issue date July 4, 2009 - in locations throughout Manhattan this morning. I got one when I went to get coffee this morning. Gawker reports that the hoax is the work of The Yes Men, whose website leads to BecauseWeWantIt.org.
The spoof isn't as well-written or funny as The Onion or The Borowitz Report, and the joke soon wears thin. But it certainly is an ambitious project, and a strange one. My favorite headline in the fake business section declares: “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.”
“We want to maintain maximum mystery around this, for as long as possible - at least for a couple of days." said a message from the group to collaborators. Silly people! Every blogger and person with a Facebook site hopes for a scoop! Nothing like this is going to stay secret for a couple of hours, let along a couple of days.
The hoaxsters went to the trouble of creating a companion website, www.nytimes-se.com where servers are apparently overloaded, and to print all the copies, which had to be expensive.
To their credit, the real NY Times has gamely tried to exhibit a sense of humor.
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I just spammed everyone to whom I've sent email - and that's a lot of people. That's because SocialMinder (nope, I won't link to them) is a spamming scam that I and a lot of other web savvy people fell for it.
I’m fuming, and I don't suffer silently. SocialMinder violated my trust and my contacts' privacy. I profusely apologize if I have spammed you through them.
Because my friends are a pretty well-connected group, I often get invites to Betas of new software and sites. So I didn't check out SocialMinder's privacy policy, and went ahead and signed up. It was a big mistake, and a dumb one. I should know better.
If I spammed you, I am sorry. I changed my gMail and LinkedIn passwords, and suggest you do the same if you've gotten email from SocialMinder.
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A recent article in Wired, and then an echo chamber of other posts, declared that the individual blogger is a thing of the past. In fact, my stats show that What’s Next Blog has more readers now than any time in the past seven years.
In a supreme example of link bait, Paul Boutin wrote:“Scroll down Technorati's list of the top 100 blogs and you'll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.” Magazine Format Blog Posts Overwhelm And he’s right. A lone blogger can’t keep up with writers cranking out 30 posts a day. But then again, neither can readers.
You will not convince me that anyone reads all of the hundreds of posts published every day on Huffington Post, or most other magazine format blogs. Scores of thousand-word-plus posts, 10-minute videos, seemingly endless podcasts are all too much for anyone to keep up with in our multi-tasking world.
Blogging was also declared dead in 2004, 2006 and again in 2007 when Hugh Macleod said, wisely, “of course you realize this is all crap.”
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Follow me on Twitter Keeping up with social media is a daunting task. The Number One question I’m asked when I speak at corporate seminars and mention that I recently wrote my 7,000th Twitter entry is “How in the world do you have the time for social media?” The answer: I don’t. I make time.
Here’s the secret: Pick a couple of social networks – mine are Twitter and LinkedIn – and concentrate on those. You can’t be everywhere and you don’t need to be everywhere - unless you want to be like this dog chasing its tail.
Because social media is my business, I try every new platform that comes along, opening an account in each one so I can see how they work, who’s using them, and what kind of usefulness they could have to me or my clients. But I don’t go back to most social networks unless buzz on them picks up suddenly. And I know when that happens because Twitter’s open on my desktop all day. I also check my RSS feeds and Google Alerts regularly.
Email comes last. I hate email. It’s out of control. Anyone who is likely to get a quick response from me knows better ways to reach me than email. Like the phone. I know: phone calls! What a concept!
Yes, there are people (like Robert Scoble, who follows 21,000 people on Twitter, and has 38,000 followers there) who manage to be superstars in every known social network.
For us mere humans, the key to effective social networking is to be selective, then listen, link, respond, and give more than we take. And, hey, Rule One is still that social networking is fun.
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What a night! Thank you America for giving us something to believe in for the first time in so, so long. Cheers rose up all over the city of New York tonight and socres of people, like these people at Columbus Circle, ran outside to dance in the streets. My whole city - and my country - is smiling. And, even if it turns out to be only for tonight, it seems that, indeed, yes we can!
It seems like a dream to have President Obama moving into the White House with a puppy for his young daughters.
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When I went to the Crumbs bakery to buy goodies for election parties I'm going to tonight, I found that New Yorkers have voted. The Obama cupcakes were sold out when I bought the last two Obama Rocks cupcakes at 1:30 p.m.
None of the McCain cupcakes had been sold. The shop began to cover McCain's name with Obama's, to the cheers of the people waiting in line.
If you haven't already voted for real, please get to the polls right now!
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No matter who you vote for, please, please get to the polls today. My grandparents would have crawled to cast their vote because they knew what it meant not to be able to vote. Please vote responsibly, and do your best to convince one other person who might have blown it off to go to the polls - rain, shine, lines, and all. God bless America. We're still the greatest country in the world. Keep it that way. Do your part. Get out and vote.
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Meijer’s headless horseman rode again last night as part of the 180-store mid-western chain's Halloween celebration. This time, the horseman rode with 4,000 zombies who gathered to break the world record for the largest zombie walk.
The event was organized by college sophomore Rob Bliss, using absolutely no other tools besides Facebook! It shattered the previous record of 1,375, set just a few days earlier in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville. (Monroeville Mall was the setting of George Romero’s cult classic, Dawn of the Dead.)
Meijer teamed up with Bliss to provide donation support to help the local community, where many are struggling to make ends meet in the face of economic hardships. The company provided 3,000 cans of food to the local Second Harvest food bank. Meijer also awarded $1000 to one of the several hundred people who followed the headless horseman's instructions to text the company.
Meijer produced the event with the following team: DeVito/Verdi, SpringThrough, BlueWater Technologies, SmartReply, Harvest Music+Sound Design, Storytelling Pictures, Integra.
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Rewards are sweet for voting this year, especially for social media participants. Ben & Jerry's scoop shops will be giving out free scoops on November 4th from 5-8pm to "celebrate democracy." The company has more than 289,000 fans on Facebook, where it lists its election day events and has an interactive map showing where your nearest store is located.
And if you show Krispy Kreme employees your "I Voted" sticker on Election Day, you'll get a free star-shaped doughnut, according to NPR.
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I have been immersed, to say the least, in the launch of a new business for the past couple of months. And today, the Pawfun.com site pre-launches with the Pawfun Blog and our first caption contest. You MUST comment on this photo so you can enter the first Pawfun Creature Caption Contest. We're still figuring out the prize, but it'll be fun.
Pawfun.com is the umm, pet project, of my partner, Caimin Jones, me, and a variety of our four-legged friends. We hope you like Pawfun!
We launch the retail site on November 10th. BennyBix Ochman Labradoodle Puppy is way happy today, and we hope you will be too. When Pawfun launches on November 10th, you'll be able to upload a picture of your dog, cat, horse, gerbil, parrot, hamster or goldfish on a top-quality photo t-shirt you design and we print.
Your comments, suggestions, photos are most welcome.
You don't need to be a geek or a technical wizard to create a work of art featuring your pet on a PawFun photo t-shirt. If you can put together a Word document you can use PawFun.
In addition to selling t-shirts, we'll be using Pawfun.com as a showcase for social media marketing. Please stay tuned. Wooooooof!
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When Jason Calacanis posted the link to this adorable video on Twitter, I thought it was made just to support Barack Obama. But it turns out that it has two messages: Promote Barack Obama and boost tourism to the small fishing town in Japan that shares his name. According to my clients in Japan, the town is very proud to have the same name as our next President. They hope he wins. And, not coincidentally, they hope his victory will promote tourism to their town. See, Obama is helping the economy already. :>)
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With a remarkable and powerful set of tools available to anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and a following, citizens are flocking to social media to make their voices heard in the Presidential Election. If nothing else, this endless campaign will go down in history as the first of its kind.
Today, October 30th, from 1 to 9 pm EST, a live webathon (internet streamed video) will be broadcast by Women Against Sarah Palin, featuring dozens of American women reading some of the 200,000 letters from women all over this country, articulating their fury, dread, and outrage at John McCain's vice-presidential pick.
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Sadly, in recent American elections, many people arrived at the polls to find broken machines, outrageously long lines, incorrect records, even dress codes that kept them from voting. This Election Day, we'll know about voter suppression in real time, while something can still be done about it.
On November 4th, the Twitter social network and a small army of citizens and activist organizations will join a coalition of organizations in a citizen-driven, groundbreaking real-time watchdog called Twitter Vote Report. It will allow tens of thousands of citizens to identify issues as they happen, 140 characters at a time, map them, and call for immediate action.
A National Crowdsourcing Effort Rather than leaving voter protection to lawyers, or worse yet, political operatives, Twitter Vote Report will let thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of citizens really rock the vote, by reporting in real time, on their experiences at the polls. The Twitter Vote Report coalition will then identify and call for solutions to voting problems in real time.
How long is the wait in Cleveland, Ohio? Are the new optical scan machines staying up and running in Palm Beach County, Florida? Is failure to bring ID to the polls thwarting first-time voters in Indianapolis? With Twitter Vote Report, we’ll know the answers to those questions straight from voters from all over the country.
Volunteer programmers, designers and activists across the country held giant online and real world coding parties were held nationwide to build Twitter Vote Report in under a month.
How to Participate Anyone with a Twitter.com account will be able to use their cell phones or computers to send a message notifying voters, election monitors, and the media of problems around the country. A web map will display incidents in real-time.
Voters reporting on Twitter will include the code, or hashtag, #votereport on Election Day to report on problems they experience while trying to vote – or to say everything went well.
Voters can also send a message to Twitter Vote Report by: * Sending a text message to 66937 beginning with #votereport * Calling to (567) 258-8683 (258-VOTE) to leave a message by touch tone keypad * Downloading the Twitter Vote Report iPhone application
A wide range of organizations are participating in the Twitter Vote Report project including the Election Protection Coalition, Rock the Vote, Credo Mobile, Common Cause, Plodt, YouTube, Twittervision, NPR’s Social Media Desk, Independence Year Foundation, The Center for Community Change, Student PIRGs, PBS, Video the Vote, Election Suppression Wiki, Women Donors Network, and Demos. In addition, Current TV will be using the #votereport information as part of their special election coverage throughout the day.
Andrew Rasiej, founder of techPresident, said, “Power and control is shifting from politicians and campaigns to people and we’ll be able to see that in real-time on Election Day.”
Twitter Vote Report was inspired by a techPresident blog post on October 6th proposing the use of Twitter for election monitoring. In less than a month, volunteers across the country, with no other resources than their know-how and volunteer time, built Twitter Vote Report to stream individual messages from Twitter and aggregate them into maps and graphs.
Now we just have to hope the Fail Whale, which signifies a Twitter crash, stays home on Election Day.
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I was one of the people interviewed in a video (below) shown at a Council of PR Firms Critical Issues Forum at the Yale Club last week. The topic of the meeting was the future of public relations." And some pretty dangerous ideas came out of the mouths of people who really should know better - like the CEOs and Sr VPs of some of the biggest PR firms in the world.
The CEO of a huge PR firm, for example, said "There is always someone out there with a new idea. Our job is to steal their ideas and put them into our DNA." When I asked "Did you really mean to say that?" he said "Yes".
A Bronx cheer I don't see it that way. I think it's the job of professional communicators to create rather than steal new ideas. The best and the brightest always have, and always will have that concept in their DNA.
There are plenty of smart people working in PR. But there are more of us who just became disgusted with the way it's done these days and turned our talents to new media. That's why I left the PR field in 1996, and I've met lots of other recovering flacks along the path.
And here's a robust Bronx cheer for another member of the Critical Issues panel said "Reporters have some sense of objectivity standards … Newspapers still have a basic tenet that you try to present both sides of the story and check facts." In new media, he said "instead of legitimate information, we have individuals expressing opinion." Why would the tired subject of whether bloggers are journalists still be discussed by "professional communicators" when we've been part of the landscape for more than 10 years?
Dinosaurs rule PR With leaders of major public relations firms espousing views like those, it is no surprise how low the level of the industry has fallen, in practice and in public and media esteem.
PR people are still woefully behind the sea change that has taken place since the dawn of new media. Some firms talk a good game, but the basic belief system is still that mainstream media is "real media," and that blogs, forums, social networks, content sharing sites, virtual communities and other new media are bogus substitutes for "real" communications.
“It bores me too" The industry has failed to educate either its employees or its clients about current reality. That's why interns are charged with "blogger outreach" and other media calls. It's why press releases are so boring that one flack recently told a blogger "I found [that release] kind of boring too — and I wrote it.:)"
And a senior manager of another PR firm told me, in email when I complained about a terrible pitch from his firm: "I think you're a lot like me: highly professional and frustrated by the dolts we run into every day. You know how it is; when you go into business you have lofty aspirations, but due to many factors they often are not met.
One of the things we train our people to do is explain it to the people we call "as if they were a six year old". Sometimes it works, and frankly sometimes it backfires. We're trying to refine this approach …" Thanks for lunch Given the state of the global economy; the fact that bloggers are now part of the news landscape and we're here to stay; that nobody wants to listen to corporate BS anymore and that we haven't been listening for at least 10 years, it's time for the PR industry to take a good hard look at itself. Too bad industry leaders didn't do that at their own Critical Issues Forum. But hey, lunch was delicious.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein
I nfoPinions posts on the forum too, asking students what they think of the "dangerous" issues.
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Today was PR pitch from hell day around here. I'll just tell you about two of them. PR people: go stand in the corner!
“Carnival Cruise Lines is rebranding with two HUGE record breaking events coming up in the next 2 weeks." One involves a big beach ball and other involves a pinata. I can sort of see the beach ball, even though I think it's lame, but why the pinata.
The flack responded: "The pinata is all about fun! No? Would you be into posting something about the stunts once I have some assets for you?
Assets? WTF? Ummm. No.
Then a flack who sounded about 12 called to ask me if I got her email about a new website about webisodes.
When i asked her who was deciding what the best "webisodes" (i hate that outdated word) are, she didn't know.
When i asked her if the client's site is a search engine, she didn't know.
When i asked her where the videos come from - youtube, blip, ??? - she didn't know. She was clueless. totally clueless.
She told me that they just launched the website and were calling bloggers to get them to cover it. yes, she said that.
PR people: Don't do this stupid stuff anymore. OK?
Dear Flacks: We're in a recession, You need to play like every move counts. Don't do stuff like this.
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Founded in 1934, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Meijer is a family-owned chain of 180 Wal-mart-type superstores with 60,000 team members in five states. The company is sponsoring FrankenPlaza with the city of Chicago, and "beamvertising" above is part of the fun.
Meijer has long spent millions for newspaper inserts, but realizes, according to spokesperson Jon Dodge, that "people are changing the way they consume media, and we had to jump in."
The company has "dabbled" in Facebook and MySpace, but nothing has really taken off. "This video is not typical of our general corporate culture," Dodge said, "but that's changing with the times." The video was produced in-house. Posted by B.L. Ochman
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That’s mainly because I love their clever and adorable online campaign for selling season tickets. It makes me want to sign up. And they're 3,000 miles away.
The campaign is personalized to each viewer and I won't spoil it's surprise. Go try it. Go Zags!
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By B.L. Ochman Brilliantly, Seth Godin sent everyone who pre-ordered his new book, Tribes, an advance copy a week ago.
He asked us to read it, and then, if we liked it, to give the copy we paid for to someone else to spread the ideas. (I’m going to give my copy away some time in the next couple of days to one of my followers on Twitter, so watch for the tweets please.)
Quit yelling Like all of Godin’s books, Tribes is simple, direct, and spot on. He says marketing used to be about advertising, which was about yelling about the junk you wanted to sell. “Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.”
The next frontier of marketing, he writes in a thought-stimulating blog post, “is in leading groups of people who are working together to get somewhere.” The proliferation of social media has given everyone who wants to be a leader the tools to reach an audience who will spread his/her ideas and become a tribe.
People matter, not companies Godin writes about what I, and a small core group of Internet marketers have been telling clients for years – it’s not enough that your product exists. It has to add value to people’s lives. That can range from being helpful to being amusing, but it has to be more than just another toaster, car, store, wine, book, or widget. What you sell has to fit into the lifestyle and the values of people who are kind enough to give you their hard-earned cash. Your product or service has to make people want to tell their friends good things about you.
When your product or service helps people in some way, it is transformed from a mere commodity to something to recommend to friends. We all have the tools to make our opinions heard. We listen to each other, to people we trust, not just to the company, agency or person who yells the loudest.
Banned It’s so simple. People matter, not companies. In this new landscape, you have to give to get. Anyone who only self-promotes will soon be banned.
It’s a sea change and it’s still hard for a lot of companies to grasp. But once you get it, you see that all the connections between people are really the biggest opportunity for success that’s ever existed.
We’re all just humans Join the conversation. But tread gently. And remember, we’re all humans, and we’re all in this together. Change is not only unavoidable, it’s good.
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Blecch! The Ricola Cougher, that disgusting slimeball who coughs in crowds and then gives you money if you give him a coughdrop, is baaaack.
They have him go to hair salons, movie theaters, malls, parties and parks and cough. I'm not making this up. I could never make up something this lame!
The Ricola Mystery Cougher is, without a doubt, the most ill-conceived promotion in the world. It's not fun, funny, interesting, clever, or sanitary. And it seems that it will never end. Stay out of New York you piglet. We have enough to worry about.
And lemme give you weirdos a word of advice: people in New Yawk don't like to be looked at, let alone coughed on. A New Yorker with a short fuse — who, let's say, just lost his Wall St job, or had her house foreclosed — might kill a freakin jerk who offers him or her a cough drop because they think they'll get a million dollars for the gesture.
Kill the cougher already. We'll come to the wake.
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Even Geeky Beeks know how important it is to register and vote in the upcoming presidential election. These collectible, limited edition, hand-painted GeekyBeeks, from our client and friend, GardenFun.com are meant to bring some levity to what just might be the most serious election in America's history.
Don’t have a yard to put them in? I keep mine on the windowsill.
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Unsurprisingly, Sarah Palin has a lot of people laughing not just at late night talk show monologues but also on the Internet. A currently anonymous copywriter and friends have put together this fun Palin as President web page where you can mouse over to get a view of what the world might be like with madame Palin as president after McCain is apparently out of the picture. It immediately went viral.
Monty Python's John Cleese has a go at her on YouTube "…the truth is that Sarah Palin is no way good enough…to run the United States. Monty Python could have written this!"
Got more Sally P comedy? Please add links in comments.
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Fourteen year-old McKenzie "Kenzie" Church is missing. I've interviewed her Dad, Geno Church. The online community on blogs, Twitter, and FriendFeed is trying to spread the word to help find her.
Two days ago, a standard "missing" poster was issued and spread through several hundred sites. Then yesterday, this new poster was issued, along with this poignant blog post explaining why.
Please pass this post on to your network.
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UPDATE: I first published this study in 2007, but Brains on Fire updated the data for me yesterday and you can read it in the Results section. Company:Fiskars Brands, Inc. Location: Madison, WI Industry: B2C Annual revenue: $206,000,000 (2007) Number of employees: 3925
Quick Read: Though by no means cutting edge in the usual sense… scissors and related tools help drive the $30 billion craft and hobby industry (per the Craft & Hobby Association). Fiskars Brands, Inc., a global brand based in Helsinki, Finland, with U.S. headquarters in Madison, WI, was losing sales of craft tools—including its famed specialized scissors—to commoditized, cheaper products available in Wal-Mart and other chain stores.
The solution? Create a community of Fiskars supporters who could spread the word that authentic Fiskars products are worth not only their price but also any special effort to obtain them. And target younger consumers, who are more active online. The result? Spectacular!
The Challenge: Crafting is a $10 billion dollar industry with everyone from mom-and-pop stores to big-box giants selling a wide range of products. There isn't a clear leader in this flooded market when it comes to sales, or to making a connection with passionate customers.
In recent years, Fiskars Brands found itself losing market share to commoditized, cheaper rivals. It had a traditional website without much creativity, and no way to know who had influence in the crafting community. Its brand audit became a complaint session about consumers' problems with the brand.
“Fiskars customers had no emotional connection to their tools, scissors, crafting knives," recalls Brains on Fire Word of Mouth Inspiration Officer Geno Church. "We had to find a way to create a close relationship with both customers and mom and pop stores."
The Campaign: Fiskars hired corporate identity consultants Brains on Fire in 2006 to help come up with a new image. Brains on Fire looked for how people socially discuss crafting, how they make their connections and who the influencers are. It set up 150 interviews with members of Yahoo crafting groups and joined conversations about crafting on message boards and other online communities.
The agency's research found a social and robust crafting community—and its age skewed younger than expected. It decided that it needed to create brand ambassadors to help connect Fiskars and the crafting community.
After dozens of in-person interviews, it selected four women from various walks of life to become "The Fiskateers." The ambassadors preside over a blog-based community, and they are paid for 15 hours a week of brand ambassador time.
The goals of the Fiskars campaign: * Increase awareness and credibility * Increase online conversations * Create a community of hundreds of empowered, kindred spirits
Brains on Fire hired blog researcher Umbria to do data mining in crafts blogs and public forums. It found that, at least online, crafting actually skews young. Previously, Fiskars had been targeting crafters in their 40s to 60s. This information was passed on to the Fiskateers, whose duties included blogging.
Fiskateers received three days of training. One part of the day spent on transparency and explaining why they should not be "pimping" Fiskars. The blog exists as a venue for crafters.
Fiskateers know that the company values their opinions, and that makes them feel important. The only way to join the Fiskateer community is to be invited by one of the four head Fiskateers.
However, since actual crafting is done offline, most of the Fiskateers' duties involve participation in offline groups called "crops," where scrapbookers meet to share stories, tips, and techniques while getting some pages done. The crops help Fiskars feel "socially connected" to its customers, Church says.
The four lead Fiskateers attend tradeshows and lead classes in scrapbooking at stores in their regions (and beyond). They build relationships with storeowners. They also have online chats with product developers so corporate officials can feel their customer excitement and passion.
The Fiskateers' enthusiasm and dedication to the program is authentic. "This truly is a movement of devoted crafters just wanting to have fun and share their love," says Stephanie, one of the four Fiskateers.
The program is not directed by Fiskars management. "We figured the Fiskateers would be smarter," Church says. "They do events for Fiskars and are important to the brand." Fiskateers can engage in conversation and spread the word about the company, taking the onus off management for doing so.
Conversations on the Fiskateers blog can lead to big changes. For example, a woman complained about paper (from Fiskars sub-brand Heidi Grace) that had a glitter coating , saying that the paper was curling when she mounted it on a harder stock paper, and also curled up when she left it in her car. It turned out that heat was causing the paper to curl. Heidi Grace changed the manufacture of the paper before a huge amount of it was printed—saving potentially thousands of dollars in printing costs.
And when Fiskars introduced a new paper cutter, it learned that the Fiskateer community hated it. The product was promptly redesigned. By listening to its community, Fiskars has gained consumer trust.
The Fiskateers program is run by the PR division, not advertising, and reports to the PR director.
Results: "It was our goal to create a long-term, sustainable movement," says Spike Jones at Brains on Fire. "And I’m happy to say that’s what it happening."
Branded mentions of Fiskars products are up more than 600% mentioning Fiskars products by name (not including the Fiskateer blog and website, from 400% in 2007) on a per-week basis since the program began.
There are now more than 5,000+ (up from 1,200 members in 2007) of the Fiskateers community, and each one is a brand ambassador who spreads the message to other crafters. Sales are up, although Fiskars declines to say by how much. The program successfully de-commoditized Fiskars tools and made crafters value them beyond price.
Additional 2008 Results Update:: - Visitors to the site from 5
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With a remarkable and powerful set of tools available to anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and a following, citizens are flocking to social media to make their voices heard in the Presidential Election. If nothing else, this endless campaign will go down in history as the first of its kind. 
Sadly, in recent American elections, many people arrived at the polls to find broken machines, outrageously long lines, incorrect records, even dress codes that kept them from voting. This Election Day, we'll know about voter suppression in real time, while something can still be done about it.
How long is the wait in Cleveland, Ohio? Are the new optical scan machines staying up and running in Palm Beach County, Florida? Is failure to bring ID to the polls thwarting first-time voters in Indianapolis? With Twitter Vote Report, we’ll know the answers to those questions straight from voters from all over the country. 
I was one of the people interviewed in a 
Today was PR pitch from hell day around here. I'll just tell you about two of them. PR people: go stand in the corner!
Would you be into posting something about the stunts once I have some assets for you?
Besides baseball, basketball is the only sport I understand well enough to watch. 
By B.L. Ochman 
Blecch! The 
Even 
Unsurprisingly, Sarah Palin has a lot of people laughing not just at late night talk show monologues but also on the Internet. A currently anonymous copywriter and friends have put together this fun 
Fourteen year-old McKenzie "Kenzie" Church is missing. I've 