Author Archive
By George Snell
By George
As marketing departments across big and small companies plan for 2009 budgets, we’ve gotten several requests from clients asking us to help them justify public relations costs to board members and C-level executives.
It’s an easy task.
The core answer is that PR drives business value – at a lower cost than any other marketing function.
For example, we work for a consumer technology company and recently ran an aggressive issues-response campaign that resulted in our client appearing in the New York Times, FOX-TV, Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other trade and online publications.
The results? An increase in Web traffic by 1,000 percent and a sales spike during the media blitz of 6X. This one week of results paid for their monthly retainer to Racepoint for the year – ten times over. Needless, to say, the client was delighted.
In a financial downturn, PR and marketing become even more crucial. Here’s Media Executive Erik Sorenson writing for CNBC:
“Less marketing equals lower revenues, which means more cutbacks. Cut your marketing spend again and you risk even lower revenues. Now you’re forced to cut more costs–-and probably people–but you’re doing it from a lower base, ever closer to the brink.”
Good PR helps spreads those important marketing messages to the masses and to targeted constituent groups (customers, prospects, and even employees). Smart companies will understand that competitors often cut back on marketing and PR during financial downturns and that gives these smart companies a better chance of dominating the market – and defining the trends and issues, and the problems and solutions.
When you’re competitors aren’t talking – you should be.
Todd Defren at Shift PR recently listed five reasons why a PR firm provides value in times of economic uncertainty. It’s a very good list. Here are four more reasons:
- PR Can Create Markets. In this day and age where Joe the Plumber can go from obscurity to an overnight sensation – the power of publicity should be evident. This power doesn’t only work for individuals – but for ideas, products and companies. Good ideas can spread like epidemics when properly messaged and seeded. In recent technology news, look at what One Laptop Per Child did for affordable laptops, what EqualLogic did for iSCSI storage solutions (both Racepoint clients), and what VMWare did for virtualization. All of these campaigns were spearheaded with aggressive communication plans.
- PR Can Help Open New Markets: Marketing in another country can be a daunting and expensive proposition. Tapping into your PR agency’s foreign and domestic operations and strategic partnerships is an excellent and cost-effect way to soften a market for a company’s products and services. It’s an effective way to test marketing messages and massage marketing strategies before investing in more costly marketing programs such as advertising or trade shows. It also provides instant legitimacy in a new market and provides salespeople with impartial and independent collateral.
- PR Agencies Give Access to a Strategic Network: PR agencies have large networks of clients and partners that can often be a goldmine of potential partners and customers for a client. Racepoint often sets up business meetings between clients, introduces clients to our venture capital partners, and provides access to our family of next-generation marketing companies (from Digital Influence Group to Ringleader Digital). PR firms can be a valuable resource beyond the day-to-day communications work they perform.
- PR Agencies Add Depth: A PR agency can become a de facto extension to a marketing and communication department. Companies get a dedicated staff (of between 4-10 people depending on budget) that specialize in the company’s market. But companies can also tap into the expertise that exists through the PR agency – able to get advice and perspective from senior executives with different areas of specialty (from media training to digital marketing) from the entire PR firm.
October 17th, 2008
By George Snell
By George
How do you know when a technology has moved from hot to foundational to cultural icon?
Well, when they start to issue postage stamps in your honor – the technology has probably entered cultural icon status.
That’s the case with One Laptop Per Child – the non-profit organization that has single-handedly changed the way the world views inexpensive computing (especially laptop computing).
And now the organization and its amazing XO laptop has been immortalized on a postage stamp in Uruguay (see the image above). Uruguay has been one of the early adapters of the XO (they ordered 100,000 laptops back in October). Uruguay’s President Tabare Vazquez has been so committed to the program and the prospect of providing XO computers to the school children of his country that he has now honored OLPC with an official stamp.
Full disclosure: Racepoint Group has been working with OLPC for the last 18 months helping the organization with communications strategy and public relations. It has truly been a labor of love.
July 18th, 2008
By George Snell
As business issues around globalization, sustainability, green IT and social responsibility become crucial for any corporate communications strategy, Racepoint Group is excited to announce today a deepening and expansion of our corporate and public affairs capabilities.
Racepoint has added David Whitmore as executive vice president of our new Washington D.C. offices. David will be heading a growing office that now includes: Brian Lunde, senior consultant of issues management and government relations; Timothy Binning, senior consultant of issues management and government relations; and Rich Blewitt, senior advisor crisis and issues management (who joined Racepoint several months ago).
The new Washington D.C. office will join our offices in Boston, London and San Francisco.
Using Racepoint Group’s expertise in digital and social media, the Washington D.C. practice will deliver a next-generation corporate practice to help companies enhance their reputations and navigate the challenges of 21st century communications.
For more information, read our press release on the new offering.
June 16th, 2008
By George Snell
David Carr, media columnist for the New York Times, admits that he’s a word guy.
On September 11, 2001, Carr was dispatched to cover the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. A few block from Ground Zero, Building #7 in the World Trade Center complex collapsed. An enormous cloud of dust and debris rolled down the street where Carr was stationed.
He dove under a parked automobile where a pigeon had also taken cover.
“We had an inter-species moment,” Carr said. “Both of us were looking at each other as if to say, ‘What the freak are we doing here?’”
Under the car, David found a copy of Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style.” He put it in his pocket and still cherishes the edition. He admits he can’t write as eloquent as the guide advises, but he believes the book solidified his passion for words.
Carr was putting this story in the context of Web 2.0 and the changes in journalism, communications and public relations at the second day of the PRSA Digital Impact Conference in New York City today. He spoke to a packed room of PR professionals about his transformation from “Fred Flintstone” into a journalist utilizing the tools of the Internet – from blogging to video.
Carr said in today’s world professionals are faced with “hellacious clutter” from living modern, technology enabled lives.
“While I’m talking you’re all going to be checking your mobile phones, iPhones and checking email,” he said. “I don’t blame you, we’re all too busy. We all get hundreds of emails a day. We are all fighting for our content to be noticed.”
Carr has moved from being a wordsmith to experimenting with online videocasts and a New York Times’ sponsored blog called “Carpetbagger” – a blog about the Oscars.
“We are in a pull world, not push,” Carr said. “And if you are in the push business, well, time to rethink.”
Carr suggested that PR people embrace new technologies, but to be cautious about listening to anyone who claims to know what going to happen next. “No one can anticipate what’s next in this market,’’ he said. “It’s moving too fast.”
June 10th, 2008
By George Snell
Forrester VP and Author Outlines Four Steps to Digital Relations
By George
Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research vice president and co-author of the upcoming “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” kicked off the PRSA’s Digital Impact Conference in New York City today.
Bernoff, who focuses on social technologies for the research firm, got right to the point. “Concentrate on the people, not the technologies,” he told a crowd of about 200 public relations people during his keynote address.
Bernoff said that marketers and PR people need to understand that controlling the conversation on the Web is an impossible task. He said he wrote “Groundswell” with fellow Forrester analyst Charlene Li as a manual for using social technologies effectively. Bernoff said participation and a willingness to engage freely are the keys.
During his presentation, Bernoff outlined his four step process for engaging with what he calls the groundswell of people using social and digital technologies.
1. People. Companies first priority should be assessing their customers’ social activities. What technologies are their customers using? How are they communicating? Where can they be found online?
2. Objectives. Companies then need to decide what they want to accomplish with social and digital media relations. What are the goals? Is digital and social media the best channels?
3. Strategy. Thirdly, companies need to expend the energy up front to plan for how social and digital media relations with change relationships with customers. What are the short and long-term consequences of engaging on the Web?
4. Technology. Lastly, companies need to decide which social networks, widgets and tools are best for them and their customers.
June 10th, 2008
By George Snell
By George
The power of public relations can change perceptions and do a lot of good in the world. One of the accounts that Racepoint Group is extremely proud of is our work handling all of the external communications for One Laptop Per Child – a visionary organization that is dedicated to educating poor children in the developing world through technology.
The outstanding work Racepoint has conducted on behalf of OLPC has won us numerous industry awards – but last week came on of the greatest honors a public relations agency can receive. The United Nations awarded Racepoint Group the 2008 United Nations Grand Award for Excellence in Communications for issues of high importance to the UN. The award was to celebrate and acknowledge the global communications plan we conducted for OLPC for the last 18 months. It is a humbling experience to be praised by the UN. Here’s Racepoint Chairman Larry Weber’s reaction:
“The One Laptop per Child campaign is a great example of Racepoint Group’s ability to use both traditional and social media to deliver powerful messages that inspire both individual and governmental action. We are proud that our work for OLPC supports an organization whose mission is in line with the goals of the United Nation.”
The campaign Racepoint undertook for OLPC helped shape public opinion in favor of OLPC and the XO laptop the organization has developed. Racepoint secured more than 20,000 print and broadcast features and 60,000 blog posts (yes, you read that correctly!).
As a result, the campaign helped persuade governments such as Uruguay and Peru to commit to OLPC, and purchase hundreds of thousands of XO laptops for their school children. In addition, a giving campaign targeting North American consumers raised more than $35 million, enabling the delivery of more than 100,000 XO laptops to children in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Ethiopia, Mongolia and Rwanda.
You can read more here: United Nations Press Release.
June 2nd, 2008
By George Snell
Anderson Discusses Wired’s New Social Networking Site (Kind Of) and Then Tries to Defends His Practice of Banning PR People
By George
Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, was the keynote speaker at the Media Bistro Circus in New York City yesterday. Anderson was supposed to announce a new social networking project being sponsored by the magazine, but the deal isn’t completed so his lawyers ordered him not to talk directly about it.
But he did give the audience of mostly journalists some hints. He said social networking isn’t a “destination” site in and of itself (like Facebook and MySpace), but should be part of any thriving online community. He said social networks need to be less about “friending” and more about everyone having an identity.
“MySpace and Facebook aren’t about anything except themselves,” Anderson said. “They are generic sites. That’s why they have proven to be difficult to monetize.”
He predicted that micro-social networks – those networks that target extremely specific topics – would be the winners. He said social networks need a laser-focus because “they need to be about something.”
“If you get the right ad with the right content, the ad feels like part of the content,” he said.
It should be interesting to learn in the next few days what Wired has up its sleeve. Anderson runs a social networking site on robotic airplanes (known as unmanned aerial vehicles) called DIY Drones. The site is dedicated to “amateur UAVs, contests, resources, and more.”
Anderson, who moderates the site, explained his methods for thwarting bad behavior on the site (which he said fell into two categories: profanity and personal attacks).
First offense, Anderson said he left polite public comments under a violator’s post explaining the rules. Second offense, Anderson set them a private message and pointed them to the section of the DIY Drones site explaining the rules of the site. Third offense, he would ban them – but privately because he didn’t want to embarrass them in public. Why?
He said it was important for social networks to be civil and to “just be nice” to people — even those using bad behavior.
I was in the front row of the audience and during the Q&A, I challenged Anderson on his civility comments and how he reconciled his kindness mantra on the DIY Drone site against his very public banning of PR people on his Wired blog – where he blocked PR people from his email account and then publicly reprimanded them (calling them lazy flacks) by publishing their email addresses.
“I was waiting for this question,” he said. “”I would do it again in a second (ban the PR people). I did this after years of abuse.”
By “abuse,” I think he meant PR people sending him emails. And then he made the rather startling statement: “We will publicly execute people if we need to.”
Now Anderson wasn’t being literal – he meant that some people displaying bad behavior deserve to be punished and/or banned from sites — even publicly. It was an odd answer after his rant on being civil and nice. It certainly leaves Anderson wide open for being called a hypocrite.
It seemed to me that Anderson advocated being civil and polite – but only if he wasn’t personally involved. Do as I say not as a do? For example, why didn’t he just block the PR people and send them private messages as to why? Did he really need to be so publicly vindictive?
Because I agree with what he said at Media Bistro. We could all be more civil and nice. Too bad that, in this instance, Anderson didn’t follow his own advice.
May 21st, 2008
By George Snell
By George
There’s another storm in the blogging world – this time about PR firms and press releases. It started months ago with Chris Anderson of Wired publishing the names and email addresses of PR professionals he accused of spamming his inbox.
A new front opened recently when Gina Trapani of Lifehacker banned the IP addresses of PR firms she said were sending her unsolicited press releases.
And, yes, Racepoint Group was one of the dozens of firms banned.
It’s been the A topic on PR and media blogs for the last week. It’s unfortunate that some PR firms reacted to this news by begging for forgiveness for the sin of pitching clients to media outlets. One such apology came from Shift Communications.
Here’s an excerpt:
“I have written many times about crummy PR practices, and have acknowledged more than one mistake of our own, over the years. I empathize with your frustration and regret that we added to it… If you can dig up offending email from Shiftcomm.com address, I will publish and critique it on my blog, and will include any of your personal comments as well. We’ll gladly fall on the sword if it’s in service to improving our agency and our profession as a whole.”
I’m not sure what Shift is apologizing for (they have a good reputation in the industry). Gina and her blog cover technology companies and PR people respect her coverage and opinion enough to want to inform her about what their companies are doing. So they send her news releases hoping she’ll take notice.
If Gina isn’t interested in the news contained in an email, she can do what everyone else does: hit the delete button. It takes about one second.
As a former journalist of 12 years, I’m constantly amazed by these flare ups by the media. Being approached by PR people is part of the job – and when I was reporting some of my best stories came out of conversations with PR flaks. They could also annoy me, but I understood that PR people are the gateways into companies, politicians and organizations. It’s the way communications works these days.
At his blog, Stowe Boyd proposes something called “MicroPR” and suggests that PR people engage one-on-one with bloggers and journalists. He wants to be pitched on Twitter – so the pitch can be completely open (clearly here’s a journalist not interested in exclusive news and interviews). The goal of all outreach to journalists is for one-on-one conversations. The point of a pitch or a press release is to vet out which journalists are interested in that conversation and which ones are not.
I’m not sure what these journalists are so angry about. It’s not possible for every pitch and news release to be relevant to them – every single time. If they don’t want to work with PR people, don’t want to be pitched story ideas, and don’t want to receive new releases then perhaps these people should consider career changes (maybe in PR? We’re hiring).
With tongue firmly planted in cheek, I was going to suggest that PR agencies and corporate communications departments respond to these media flare-ups by banning journalists who constantly complain about being pitched, write inaccurate news stories, use poor grammar and spelling, and who don’t understand basic technology concepts.
But then I decided that banning people isn’t very nice — or practical.
May 14th, 2008
By George Snell
By George
One of the first questions we get from clients interested in starting a corporate blog is:
“Who is going to write it?”
Good question. Blogs are like baby birds – constantly hungry. But rather than worms, it is necessary to feed them content. As anyone who has ever been responsible for a corporate blog will tell you – keeping the content new and exciting can be a challenging endeavor.
The first step in creating a corporate blog is to decide what kind of blog to publish. Racepoint has identified seven types of corporate blogs to consider. Deciding on what kind of blog to publish depends on many factors, including:
- The corporate culture of the company
- The primary goal of blogging
- Lead generation
- Reputation enhancement
- Customer communication
- Advocacy
- The time and monetary budgets
- Who will be in charge of writing the blog
Here are the seven types of blog to consider and examples of each.
CEO/Senior Executive Blog
Nutshell: A blog written by the top dog is extremely effective in communicating strategy and overall corporate philosophy. It also can attract media and analyst attention. However, as we noted above, blogging is time consuming and not many CEOs and senior executives have the time to devote to blogging.
Example: Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president of Sun Microsystems, has been an active blogger for many years. His blog is called Jonathan’s Blog. Schwartz uses his blog as a direct communication to his constituency groups to great effect.
Corporate Voice Blogs
Nutshell: This blog is written by several people in an organization in the voice of the corporation – so there are no individual bylines or personalities. There aren’t too many of these blogs in existence as they often lack the personality, point of view and strong voice necessary to sustain a viable audience.
Example: An excellent corporate blog is maintained by Marathon Technologies (full disclosure: they are a Racepoint client). Marathon uses their blog to showcase issues, share news and announcements, and point readers to ongoing trends.
Company Group Blogs
Nutshell: A corporation has a series of blogs by different executives, consultants and employees on different topics. This approach is very effective for companies that provide a wide-range of products and services. The company selects experts in each area and empowers them to blog about it.
Example: Consulting firm Accenture has a strong group of individual bloggers writing on various topics – from high performance business to convergence insights.
Worker Blogs
Nutshell: There are two types of worker blogs – those run by individual employees of a corporation or groups of employees by a corporations. Many companies don’t like this approach as the average employee doesn’t technically speak for the company – so official communications can be confused with information found on the worker blog.
Example: Southwest Airlines has a successful worker blog because it doesn’t touch on corporate communications – but more on the lives and jobs of the employees who doing the blogging.
Advocacy Blogs
Nutshell: Advocacy blogs are used more by organizations and non-profits than by corporations. These blogs are focused on advocating for a specific issue – like handgun control or tax relief. They can be controversial, but often draw a lot of media attention.
Example: The Democratic Party has a blog called “Kicking Ass” which advocates for the positions of the Democratic Party – to get effect.
Promotional Blog
Nutshell: A promotional blog is just that – a blog designed to promote an event or a product. These blogs generally have a limited lifespan – running a few months to serve as a marketing and publicity tool for the event or product.
Example: The Media Bistro event in New York City next week has been using a blog as a way to attract attention and participants.
Advice Blog
An advice blog is one that a corporation uses to dispense ideas, news, and advice about issues where it feels it has expertise. It has little focus on the corporation and is used as a service to customers – and to build leadership around a certain market segment.
Example: The company Stacks and Stacks runs a successful advice blog called “Clutter Control Freak Blog,” which offers up ideas about organizing living spaces – from homes to offices (its also an excellent example of a group blog).
May 13th, 2008
By George Snell
By George
Has the tipping point for newspapers finally arrived — again?
Trees in Wisconsin are breathing a sigh of relief and the newspaper industry is holding its collective breathe as the Madison, Wisconsin daily paper – The Capital Times – abandons its print edition and goes completely digital.
Readers in the Madison region will no longer hear the thump of a hard-copy land on their porches, driveways, and flower gardens. From now on, the only way to get the local news from the 90-year-old Capital Times will be with a Web connection.
This is from the Capital Times editorial that explains the all-digital move:
“Instead of printing on paper for distribution each afternoon, we will produce a Web-based daily newspaper that will be accessed for free on the Internet at www.captimes.com. Additionally, we will produce a weekly journal of news and opinion that will be available free of charge and more broadly than the current paper.”
The newspaper concludes: “We will keep on giving the people the truth and the freedom to discuss it, and all will be well.”
The opinion from readers on the switch seems to be mixed.
The newspaper industry continues to be one of no growth and losses. Lay-offs have been ripping through the industry. In fact, the Capital Times fired 20 employees as part of the move online. Closer to home, the Boston Globe recently let about 25 reporters go (avoiding lay-offs with buy-outs). The big newspaper chains have been reporting revenue losses so far this year.
Newspapers need to embrace their online identities more aggressively if they hope to succeed. The industry continues to mourn the loss of readers, wring its hands at the fate of their print editions, and pine for the good-old days. This isn’t a recipe for winning.
Newspapers need to deal with a startling fact: the print edition isn’t the product. It’s a channel for news delivery. Once they realize that the product is the news – and start delivering it the way people want it (online, mobile, video, audio, text, RSS, etc.) the better off newspapers will be. They can win the news delivery wars – but only if they stop with the defeatist attitudes.
In the past, RaceTalk has offered some suggestions on how newspapers can start becoming more aggressive and more relevant online.
And, of course, we wish the Capital Times the best of luck as it truly enters the Internet age.
April 28th, 2008
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