Strategic Public Relations

"Math is Hard"

The latest Goofus goes to Mattel on how NOT to promote a brand.

For years, Mattel has made missteps. Just look at product development—from the infamous Barbie that claimed "Math is Hard," to the pregnant Barbie that came with a removable baby. Two words of advice: focus groups.

But more recently, the movie Toy Story shows how clueless the company can be. It blew off Pixar's request to participate in the popular film. Clearly they learned the error of their ways as demonstrated by Barbie's role in Toy Story 2.

Now a lawsuit is asking Mattel to pay $1.8 million in court fees. This is based on a lawsuit Mattel filed against an artist using nude Barbie dolls in his artwork. Mattel felt the images might hurt its brand and its spokesperson is quoted as saying "Mattel is still very committed to vigorously protecting our intellectual property."

Mattel lost the case—handily.

And while I agree that you should protect your brand, especially a cultural icon like Barbie, you should also be realistic.

As a personal expression, art equals freedom of speech. Freedom of speech trumps an icon any day of the week. Putting intellectual capital at odds with artwork is silly. Barbie is a toy, not a person. The brand can stand a few negative representations in artwork.

So who gets the Gallant? With no clear winner, I'll default and give it to GI Joe. More on Goofus and Gallant can be found here.

Dead Zone

On the surface, the Summer seems to be a business to business marketing dead zone. Vacations/holidays are in full swing from June through August. Trade publishers lay off trade shows and publish their annual directories. Public relations folks call these directories editorial-free phone books.

We're still working hard, but you probably won't see a new product or campaign launch this time of year. What ARE we doing? Preparing for the final, end-of-year push. This usually involves planning and budgeting for the next calendar year. Many company fiscal years do not correspond with the calendar year. We’ll be in fiscal 05 in September. Another client hits fiscal 05 in July. So you find yourself pretty busy during this seemingly quiet time.

The key here is to make sure planning stays ahead of the budget. Far too often, budgets define strategies. Marketing teams should already be reviewing 2004 efforts and results to fuel the most informed 2005 plan possible. A buttoned-up plan incorporating success measurements will allow you to review your accomplishments during the 2006 planning process—rather than defend your actions.

Based on posting frequency at most of the public relations blogs, I am guessing most of us are on vacation or similarly focused. This blog will be no different. Our new business efforts are in full swing thanks to a recovering economy. As a result, I’ll be out of pocket for the next two weeks. But this is temporary.

Strategic Public Relations is not going to be a Summer dead zone. Global PR Blog Week will be here the week of July 12. And I'll be back before then. So keep coming back and, in the meantime, check out the links to the right. Thanks.

Google Blinks, Considers RSS

The giant has blinked and is considering support for RSS webfeed* technology, in addition to Atom, according to CNET. CNET notes it is a step towards neutrality while the technology evolves.

Personally, I think that Google is taking baby steps to head all the way over to RSS and abandon Atom. They simply do not want to cause a stink similar to the one emitted when Google's Blogger endorsed Atom. Note to non-techies—I also had to re-read, "Google's Blogger endorsed Atom," to make sure this was English. But I digress.

Google is a leviathan. The gravity around their technology decisions could sway a new technologies adoption if they endorsed it early enough. I mean, people are seemingly selling their kids on eBay to land an Orkut invite or Gmail account. Unfortunately webfeed technology was already out of the gate by the time they sided with Atom.

Bottom line: Google would not need to offer RSS unless it was clearly emerging as the dominant webfeed technology.

Webfeed news shows us the storied evolution of this technology as it struggles to not become the next Pointcast. From RSS being wrapped into browsers, to folks worrying that RSS readers will clog the Web, webfeed technology makes for a good story. You can follow some of that story here. But for an excellent source on RSS overall, visit PR Opinions.

Footnote: Contentious editor Amy Gahran created a movement to rename RSS. After a contest, webfeed was deemed the best option, realizing that no substitute would be perfect. I agree with Amy and commend her on all things webfeed.

The Blog-Only News Diet

Congrats to Steve Rubel on the success of his experiment to consume news for one week using only blogs. He received a passing grade from Poynter Institute's Steve Outing. In Outing's report, he notes that "perhaps Rubel's experience will spur more serious research into the blogging phenomenon."

Well we certainly have the tools to start out. In addition to Google, blog-only tools including Technorati and Blogpulse can help us conduct some quantitative research easily enough. They are not exhaustive, which limits how you apply the results, but these tools allow you to quickly test theories to see if they're worth developing further.

MarketingSherpa’s Best Blog Awards

MarketingSherpa just announced its list of top marketing, advertising, and public relations blogs. Based on this reader survey, it appears that Strategic Public Relations won the write-in vote for the 2004 MarketingSherpa Best Blog Awards. Twenty-nine blogs across six categories were judged by readers on personality, usefulness, writing style, usability & design and the readers’ likelihood to revisit it.

The best public relations blog winner was Colin McKay’s Canuckflack, with an honorable mention going to Robb Hecht’s PR Machine. Congratulations to all winners.

As these award-winning public relations bloggers will tell you, this survey did not offer an exhaustive list of candidates. There were many worthy blogs not on the list—most notably Tom Murphy’s PR Opinions. Murphy is the “PR Blogfather” and deserves an award for shining a light on all public relations blogs to further blogging and to drive excellence in our industry.

So be sure to check out the blogs to your right, or simply stop by The New PR Wiki for Global PR Blog Week 1.0. The week of July 12 will bring together public relations bloggers from around the world to “focus on some key issues and attract attention to the emerging role of PR bloggers in developing and spreading knowledge about public relations.”

Trevor Cook’s brainchild is really taking off with discussions planned throughout the week on a variety of topics, including: PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism, Corporate Blogging, Making PR Work: Creativity and Strategy, Crisis Management and The State of the PR Profession.

There are already some interesting interviews secured for the event. Micropersuasion’s Steve Rubel will interview Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News and Jay Rosen the chairperson of NYU’s Department of Journalism. Profnet’s Dan Forbush will be interviewing Socialtext’s Ross Mayfield on Blogs, Wikis and Expert Networks.

Mark your calendars.

Marketing's Role in Organizational Change

Harvard Business School Press just published a Q&A with author Nirmalya Kumar on marketing's role in organizational change. Kumar's new book "Marketing as Strategy: Understanding the CEO's Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation" argues that marketing must help drive organizational change.

And while you won’t be shocked that I agree with the strategic role of marketing, let me tell you why. I have seen marketing drive organizational change.

A client recently reorganized their structure to eliminate some service issues it was facing. Change is not welcome in any company and, while their aim was to make customers happy, they now needed to clearly communicate the changes and what drove them to their employees. An internal brand launch helped educate employees about all of the changes and an awards program helped incentivize them to implement the changes. Then the client implemented a marketing program to raise industry awareness of what the company was doing.

Now, all of the above is useless if the company does not actually deliver on its industry-facing promise to deliver better service. A lot is on the line with this approach. But they are changing. Examples of better service and customer feedback are now channeled to the company’s intranet and the awards program is also promoted there. Were it not for marketing, the changes may have occurred, but not as quickly, efficiently or effectively. The key was marketing's early involvement in the process.

Kumar hails from the London Business School and feels that management has forgotten, or never realized, the ability of the marketing function to help drive organizational change. In this interview, he discusses how the burden is on marketers themselves to rise above the tactical level and drive organization-wide initiatives to deliver value to customers.

Yet at the same time, The Harvard Business School Press includes an excerpt from Kumar’s book entitled the Market-Driving Checklist. A list of bulleted items helps promote a business book quickly and concisely. But if the book is a call to action for marketers to look at the big picture, perhaps a different excerpt should have been chosen?

Regardless, a shout out to Harvard Business School’s "Working Knowledge" Web site which offers a wealth of substantive content.

The 2004 Silver Anvil Awards

Where better than a blog to toot your own horn? My team won a 2004 Silver Anvil from the Public Relations Society of America.

We entered under the Marketing Business to Business Products category for work we did on behalf of AK Steel Corporation.

Our entry focused on the second year of a product launch campaign. We moved from awareness to lead generation during this period and also unveiled a project designed to show the product in use in a unique and compelling fashion.

According to PRSA, the Silver Anvil "is annually awarded to organizations that have successfully addressed a contemporary issue with exemplary professional skill, creativity and resourcefulness. Silver Anvil Awards recognize complete public relations programs and must meet the highest standards of performance in the profession."

Congratulations to the entire team.

Event Blogs Take Center Stage

Yahoo updates us on the Democratic National Convention's use of blogs. The Boston Globe first covered this a month ago with an oft-linked to article “Blogs Colliding With Traditional Media.” In addition to providing a select group of bloggers with press credentials, the DNC created its own blog for the event.

Disclaimers: I leave it to the folks at Poynter to decide if bloggers rubbing elbows with journos is the end of civilization as we know it or simply another perspective covering the event. This is also not a political post, but considering a blog is a personal op-ed page, I will note that the technology seems to be perfect for politics.

What intrigues me about this story is how it shows event-based blogging is one of the best uses for a blog in a corporate setting. In fact, “temporary blogs” based on a time-sensitive subject may be the key to corporate America adopting this technology.

The Event Blog’s Impact on Corporate Blogging could be considerable because they:

• Establish Boundaries. If a company knows the blog will only be used actively for a defined period of time, they may be more comfortable in handing over the publishing reigns. Michael Schrage coins the phrase plogs—for project Web logs in a recent CIO article and shows how they might help support project management (great reader comments attached to this one). Post-project, the blog serves as an online archive for future reference, or it can be revived for the next project. I built a time-sensitive blog covering a specific current event that will not be updated after this summer. The fact that you can update a blog instantly does not mean you have to.

• Minimize Risk. Many companies weigh the decision to blog based on what they already know about blogs. There are not a ton of great business blog case studies out there just yet. The perceived risk of launching a corporate blog is still high. A hard deadline like an event date might help establish a comfort level by minimizing the risk of starting a corporate blog.

• Relinquish Some Control. There is no need to "police" the blog. And corporations will be more agreeable to putting a publishing tool in employee hands if they know they'll get the tool back.

• Enhance Traditional Media. Take the show daily for example. More than half of this standard trade show publication is laid out prior to the show and does not reflect the bulk of the real show news. Blogs are perfect for up to date event coverage and it encourages show attendees to contribute their own take on the show.

• Get Attention. Event blogs are more likely to get a test run. How many times have you seen companies "experiment" at trade shows to get more booth traffic? Sometimes is has painful results, but overall, companies are willing to try something “unconventional” and new when planning an event in an effort to stand out. The DNC blog is certainly helping the Democratic party do this.

• Provide Metrics. In addition to measuring blog traffic, quantitative feedback is readily available through a blog. Even more so for an event blog. After most events and projects, there is typically a "post-mortem" discussion where everyone analyzes what worked and what didn't. These discussions yield feedback pretty quickly allowing you to determine the impact the blog had on the show.

In any event...wading into blogging will involve some mistakes, but sometimes that's the best way to learn. Event blogs help address the concerns most corporations have about blogs. We'll surely see a variety of corporate blog experiments in the next 12 months. Hopefully none of the side effects will involve legal action.