This is a guest post by Cathy Pittham, Managing Director, Racepoint Group Europe
A recent article, “PR Firms Make London World Capital of Reputation Laundering,” in the August 4th edition of The Guardian has been getting a lot of attention lately. The piece talks about the increasing amount of public affairs work being done by global PR firms in support of countries such as Russia, Sudan and Rwanda – the last being a Racepoint Group client.
This article challenges the reader to think about the kinds of countries that get reputation assistance in Western media and policy markets. If decisions were made strictly based on assessments by NGOs, special interest groups, Western governments and media pundits, many of these countries might not have agencies representing them. The reality is, however, that work done for these countries is often the subject of the same kind of practical assessments that Western governments have made in dealing with these countries for decades.
A good example would be prior to the Nixon administration, when no US government had engaged with China since the 1947 revolution. The widely held view was that it was not appropriate to deal with a Communist regime during the Cold War. Yet Nixon had a vision for a free China based on the notion that opening dialogue and promoting capitalism would generate Western style freedoms. This, in turn, led to an opening of business channels, locating dozens of Western PR firms in the country and a détente that has cemented partnerships between the East and West that, 40 years ago, were unimaginable.
While the jury is still out on whether the promotion of capitalism in China will yield a democracy, what is undeniable is that it has led to a vastly improved lifestyle for hundreds of millions of people.
The argument that countries that have policies we might not like are not entitled to communications representation is a flawed perspective. Opening channels of communication ensures that influence can occur in both directions and provide better balance. And often this communication is in support of agendas that are strongly in favour of the interests of the citizens of those countries. For example, enabling countries in Africa to promote their agendas in the West gives them access to new capital and investment to create jobs, drive technological innovation and ensure a better future for the wider population.
Our work in Rwanda focuses on positioning the country with potential investors around the world, with the international tourist industry and with the Diaspora in order to reconnect Rwandans everywhere. We also promote the extraordinary lessons that the Rwandans have learned in rebuilding their country following the tragic genocide of sixteen years ago – a lesson that can teach ‘The West’ (who largely turned their backs on Rwanda during the genocide) a thing or two.
We have focused in particular on the possibilities extended by digital communications. We have built and launched two online Rwandan communities (Rwanda Fact Check and Friends of Rwanda) that highlight key news and facts – serving to correct misinformation that emerges elsewhere. This is supported by engagement via Twitter, Facebook, FlickR and YouTube. These resources allow us to educate and inform people beyond Rwanda’s boundaries about the challenges and opportunities for rebuilding a country from democratic, judicial, cultural and economic standpoints.
Since September last year, we have increased discussions on Rwanda tourism by 183%, on the economy by 129%. Our two communities online receive approximately 2,000 visitors a month with traffic coming from 21 different countries. Our 1,000 Twitter followers include representatives from the media, World Bank, UN and International Finance Corporation among other key stakeholders.
I’m very proud of the work we do for Rwanda. It encapsulates all the values that differentiate Racepoint Group as an agency. At all times, we facilitate honest and open dialogue that seeks to balance historic perceptions with true representation of the country as it is today. The impact and devastation of the genocide Rwanda suffered is always acknowledged.
Applying oversimplified definitions of Western values is not helpful in a world that is much more nuanced and complex. So, while Mr. Booth’s article suggests one view, in my opinion it lacks the depth of understanding required in assessing such a complex situation.
Infographics are quickly becoming a media and public relations industry buzz word / topic. Why you ask? Two major reasons. As corporations continue to shift into their role as media companies and content curators, they’re realizing the opportunity to package interesting data to the media and consumers in new ways. More importantly, media organizations and editors are now focusing on finding new ways to engage their readership. Infographics happen to solve both of these problems by packaging data in a way that makes it both engaging and easy to read.
A few weeks ago I sat down with Sam Whitmore of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey for Racepoint Group’s video newsletter to discuss how brands and agencies can leverage infographics and why they’re becoming the “new slide shows” for media outlets desperate for engaging content. While Sam cautioned that infographics aren’t B-roll (most media outlets like to play a role in building them), he did pass along some interesting insight into how PR practitioners and marketers can leverage the media’s interest in this new category of content.
For more insight on infographics, along with the latest news and trends in marketing, PR and communications in the technology space subscribe to Racepoint’s “The Point: Tech Edition.
Last night Racepoint Group hosted an event about social media and its return on investment (ROI). As social media continues to become a larger focal point in public relations and marketing campaigns, it’s critical to understand how to articulate it’s value to clients.
Last night’s event centered around a panel discussion with three social media experts: Larry Weber, Chairman of Racepoint Group, Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics and Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing for HubSpot.
After Larry Weber’s opening remarks, Qualman shared how he first dipped his toe into the digital space by sending a company-wide email instead of the standard hard copy memo. View his story here:
Volpe was up next and shared with the group the origins of his marketing career and the way tracking and reporting on ROI is evolving. Watch him provide tips here:
The evening was full of tremendous ideas and recommendations. The five big takeaways from the panel were:
1) Social media is not about technology. It’s about human interaction. It’s about sharing information and making connections. People who are intimidated by the technology aspect of engaging in social media should not view the applications as a hurdle. It’s simply the current mechanism to maintain relationships and reach out to new people.
2) When it comes to tracking social media, its important to focus not only on the quantitative (number of followers, number of re-postings) but also the qualitative. We need to take into account engagement and tone. Qualman said, “If social media is so trackable, we should just have robots running things. The human element is necessary here.”
3) Everyone and anyone can be a content creator, a publisher, a media property. As we shift away from traditional print and broadcast media, both we and our clients have the opportunity to get innovative and create and distribute our own content. Additionally, content creation should not be isolated to the PR and marketing staff. Volpe shared that, “50% of HubSpot employees have written posts for the HubSpot blog.”
4) Although much of PR and marketing is based in the written word, we need to start thinking more visually. We need to tell stories through pictures and videos. We need to make our content more authentic and dynamic.
5) On a personal level, Volpe stated, “The new resume is what comes up in Google when I type in your name.” As digital and social media continue to play an increasingly vital role in our PR and marketing efforts, we too have a digital and social persona, and that is now what employers are most interested in.
Thank you to Erik Qualman and Mike Volpe for joining us at Racepoint Group last night and providing such pragmatic, realistic, useful and inspiring guidance on the social media ROI frontier. Be sure to follow @equalman and @mvolpe on Twitter for real time updates on their social media adventures. You can also view all the live commentary during the event with the #smroi hashtag here.
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter Discussing the McChrystal Mess on MSNBC
Somewhat lost in the full blown media storm around Rolling Stone’s“Runaway General” profile of General McChrystal that ended up costing him his job yesterday, and could be a turning point in President Obama’s attempt to fix the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, was how this all played out behind the scenes. How could someone as bright as McChrystal open the door to this controversy with seemingly no regard for what he was saying to an embedded, freelance reporter with a tape recorder in hand? What was his staff thinking? Was he trying to get fired?
Michael Hastings, the freelance reporter for Rolling Stone who compiled the profile (who is still in Afghanistan BTW), discussed some of those details in an interview with his former news weekly yesterday. And, surprisingly, it only took one email to get access to Gen McChrystal:
“I was Baghdad correspondent for NEWSWEEK for two years, and I left the magazine after covering the elections. I wrote a piece for GQ before Obama took office that raised some serious questions about the direction we were taking in Afghanistan. So it was something I wanted to be writing about. I saw General McChrystal and his new strategy as a way to look at our Afghan policy to see if it’s working or if it’s a totally insane enterprise. I met with editors at Rolling Stone, they seemed into the idea, so I e-mailed McChrystal’s people. I didn’t think I was going to get any access at all. It’s one of those strange journalistic twists. They said yes, come on over to Paris to spend a couple days with us.”
Why McChrystal’s aides and most likely Duncan Boothby, a senior media aide (who has since resigned as well), gave access so easily is puzzling. Surely, McChrystal also weighed-in on the final decision, but why wasn’t there more consideration of the potential risks in opening the door to an outsider who had previously questioned the strategy in Afghanistan? Perhaps, McChrystal, who has never shied away from the spotlight, saw an opportunity to illustrate once and for all that the President’s strategy / lack of support wasn’t working in Afghanistan? McChrystal stunned the White House back in September of 2009 by making his 66-page recommendation for more troops public – noting that the United States could loose the war there if they didn’t get more troops. At the time, he went on 60 Minutes to get his point across.
“McChrystal, an expert on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, has long been thought to be uniquely qualified to lead in Afghanistan. But he is not known for being media savvy. Hastings, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years, according to the magazine, is not well-known within the Defense Department. And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.”
The stanza or graph, truly gives you an inside look at what goes on behind the lines and the balance a beat reporter must take in building relationships and balancing what they put out in print with the effect it will have on their future access, and how it doesn’t really apply when working with a freelance writer (or columnist for that matter). In fact, it was such an inside-baseball look that Politico pulled the graph later in the day, likely because they were scared of the scorn they’d take from fellow reporters on the White House beat.
Whether Hastings was far riskier than a typical beat reporter or not, the biggest mistake made by McChrystal and his staff was not having a cohesive objective going in. Or at least not appearing to. What was their objective for the profile? Why did they let Hastings tag around for a bar crawl in Paris and spend even more down-time with them as Volcanic ash grounded in them in Paris? If you’re going to agree to any interview, and especially to a profile of this magnitude, you better have a cohesive game plan going in that sets clear ground rules for you, your staff and the reporter. Perhaps a commander of General McChrystal’s ilk couldn’t bring himself to fear something as harmless as an embedded, freelance reporter. Unfortunately, in this case, the reporter was more dangerous than the enemy he was battling on the ground in Afghanistan on a daily basis.
This is a guest post contributed by Micah Azzano from Racepoint Group’s Washington, DC office
As communicators, we continue to hear about the new communications landscape, where two-way communication is necessary for success. Nowhere is this more apparent than in than public affairs industry, where traditional tactics for influencing legislators — lobbying, advertising, writing op-eds and forming physical grassroots communities — can be expensive, limited and ineffective.
This week I was able to attend a panel in DC moderated by Marijean Lauzier, President & CEO of Racepoint Group on this very topic. The panel asked public affairs experts in DC to explore this new landscape and how public affairs teams can use social media to promote issues, reach influencers and engage grassroots and community organizations. Panelists included: Erik Hower of AT&T, Bill Knapp of SKD Knickerbocker and Allison Giles of Cook Medical.
Below are highlights from the panel:
Bill acknowledged that in the past DC and the government has lagged behind the rest of the world in social networking, but that’s changing at a rapid pace. He notes that social media provides a useful avenue for public affairs specialist to push out necessary communications and nullify incorrect or adverse information. The two examples he discussed are his work with Toyota during their recalls and ABC when considering pulling broadcasting in New York. View Bill’s complete response
Marijean followed up by asking Allison about what concerns she has about leveraging social media over time in a heavily regulated environment such as medical supplies. Allison’s response noted their public affairs team is starting out by slowly dipping their toes into the social media world and using it primarily for monitoring and staying updated with key members of the federal government, media and hill staffers. View Allison’s complete response
The conversation moved into the challenges in communications structure moving forward and whether big brands like AT&T view social media as an opportunity or a risk. Erik said that while AT&T has some of the best PR on the traditional side, there’s a lot more they can do in the online social media world. The challenge they’re facing is how to do social media strategically where it will have the most impact, and not just put up a Facebook or Twitter page just to have one.
Themes throughout the morning addressed the way campaigns have transformed and influenced social media uses inside and outside the beltway including the mobilization of the youth community by the Obama campaign. Because of that, it highlighted and illustrated the advantages of using social media not only for messaging but also for fund raising.
The panel also addressed the difference between traditional and social media messaging. The social media messaging is more segmented to smaller niches than traditional media does. Overall, the event takeaways included that while public affairs has a unique opportunity to reach and interact with key influencers and their audiences via social media, just building a community, social experience on a central hub or even simply opening a Facebook or Twitter account is not enough. The experience must be coupled with the ability to reach and engage key audiences on a constant and ongoing basis for the success of future campaigns.
Additionally, as digital and social media continue to expand as integral parts of media planning, it will continue to grow as the central influencer and information source for many. However, this means public affairs professionals must be prepared to further pare down and segment their messaging to address the needs of extremely targeted audiences.
Shankman started HARO as a Facebook group in 2007 and the following grew so large he took the concept to the web in March 2008 at www.helpareporter.com.
HARO has been acquired by Vocus, Inc. one of HARO’s largest and most loyal advertisers. According the video below of Shankman and Vocus representative, Bill Wagner, nothing about the service will change. HARO will still be free. Shankman will still write up front notes about where is in the world and what he’s up to.
The only thing that will change is that HARO will now grow in new ways, with these additional resources. One example, Vocus plans to expand HARO to other countries.
HARO is a perfect case study of an entrepreneurial idea come to life. Shankman saw a need and created a service. The service grew in popularity and reach and became a direct competitor to long time paid service ProfNet (read RaceTalk’s post about how they could have merged, but didn’t). Now, HARO has been acquired (a major win for Shankman) providing the service with fresh momentum.
Shankman is also employing a critical PR necessity: transparency. As soon as the acquisition was final, Shankman took to the blog not only providing a written update, but a video message. HARO supporters heard the news directly from him, as it happened. This is key in building customer loyalty and trust, which is the cornerstone of a strong brand.
As long time subscribers to HARO, we look forward to being a part of what’s next for this growing service.
The creator of the @BPGlobalPR Twitter account wrote a blog post for Gizmodo, explaining why he decided to start the account. Although he doesn’t provide his true identity (a smart move) the points he makes about BP and online image is spot on. Below is a brief excerpt from the post:
I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR. First of all, who cares? Second of all, what kind of business are you in? I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company? One pickledick actually suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me into their actual PR outreach. That has got to be the dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could possibly offer.
Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.
BP seems to only care about maintaining their image so they can keep making money
Over the past week the fake BP Twitter account has become quite popular – attracting over 55,000 followers in just over a week. In many of their tweets a fictional character named Terry is mentioned, who can best be described as an epic #fail.
Well, today BPGlobalPR is expanding its Twitter presence, as they have just announced that Terry has joined Twitter as bpTerry.
While this is great news for Twitter users that enjoy a laugh throughout the day, it’s just another dark cloud in BP’s public relations nightmare (it’s also a smart move for the owner of the BPGlobalPR account, in the event that BP attempts to have Twitter terminate the fake account).
While it’s hard not to take pleasure in anyone telling Michael Arrington the way it is, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz’s run-in and f-bomb dropping with Arrington earlier this week at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference undoubtedly made PR folks squeamish.
But it got me thinking. A few year’s ago, you could wrap this one into a case study for how not to fall for a reporter’s baiting. You don’t see on camera that Arrington asked Bartz if her marketing pitch about Yahoo’s strengths relative to rival Google was “BS.” After-all this is what Arrington wanted to get from Bartz. A public, unsavory reaction that could draw more attention to his interview and the conference.
He got it and more, but was it a PR #fail for Yahoo!? While there were those who quickly berated Bartz for her comments as too publicly defensive, rough, knee-jerk and unbuttoned, others were quick to back her comments as “refreshing.”
At the very least her passion for defending Yahoo! bears resemblance to the passionate way Steve Jobs defends Apple. Yes, he’s not dropping f-bombs on camera in public settings, but it is refreshing to see CEO’s so passionate about their company’s position that they respond to questions, without vetting their words through their team and consultants. And the media, traditional or otherwise, love it.
I’m not saying executives should go off their rocker like this more often (not everyone has Jobs or Bartz make-up or power), but sometimes being yourself in the right moment can come across as a positive thing in the social media age. Every company wants and needs to be reputable, believable and trustworthy in the digital age – should executives be any different??
Today Racepoint Group is launching a new offering – Racepoint Labs – to help companies, communities, causes and countries leverage the power of social media. To mark this launch we sat down with W2 founder Larry Weber, to get his thoughts on what this means for the overall digital marketing landscape.
