Strategic Public Relations

BP Lost PR Control Before the Oil Spilled

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed on CNN by Josh Levs on one small facet of BP Oil's disaster -- online communications.

Immediately following the interview, I wanted to do a follow-up post. And I was overwhelmed by the amount of potentially relevant links as the story continued to unfold. But this AP article in Sunday's news makes me assume the point I wanted to make is still worth posting.

BP Lost PR Control Before the Oil Spilled.

Here's an excerpt from the interview to underscore my point.

LEVS: So in terms of web strategy, companies all over the world are watching this. What does a company do when it's at the center of a crisis and people are expressing outrage online? What is the strategy? What do you do?

DUGAN: The first thing they need to do is listen. Hopefully they've been doing that before the crisis actually takes place.

The other thing that BP really missed the boat on unfortunately is they weren't very active in social media prior to this. They had two of the four profiles established that you mentioned between Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, but they really had not used them.

And you can't flip a switch like that, and expect to get traction with an audience. As you can see, you know, Greenpeace has been out there participating online for years, and they have a number of folks following them. And it's very easy for them to engage with people whereas it's not for BP, because they waited until this problem happened.

LEVS: This is interesting. You mentioned before we went to air, what a lot of companies do these days,they put information out there online and they hope people will go there and find it. And you're saying what companies really need to do, it's not broadcasting, what you really need to do is engage. What's that about?

DUGAN: Correct, yes. If they had been participating prior to this, they would have established communication with a lot of folks, and would not be trying to do so for the first time. They could engage with them when this happened. It's a very polarizing situation. And people need to express their emotions. Right now, they're using social media to broadcast.
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Is the site BP's built out to address the situation robust and well-intended? Yes.

Is the search campaign they've conducted crisis/search 101 and not the devil's work? Yes.

Would a Facebook page, Twitter stream or other social sites have dramatically altered the situation? CEO Tony Hayward's actions make this a moot point. And to be clear, as the AP article notes, the PR effort won't alter the situation. The leak must be fixed.

My point is that trying to create a conversation after disaster strikes is not going to happen. It's not as if you can have a set of "dark" social media profiles and turn them on when this happens. It takes time to earn engagement. If BP had a social media presence and CEO Tony Hayward magically did not polarize the situation and make it BP against everyone...BP may have had an audience that would be helping them get the information out and help tell their factual, no-spin story. Instead it's BP against the government, activists, the media, and citizens. And that won't change anytime soon.

cover the earth uploaded by sansumbrella

Consumers Valuing Documentation Over Experience

In college, a friend and I compared vacations we'd taken over the years. She had a well-stamped passport and most of my trips were within driving distance.** When I asked about vacation pictures, she told me she didn't take pictures on vacation.

"I'd rather enjoy the trip than take the pictures."

I see her point, but I also enjoy taking pictures. And in a world swimming in technology, platforms and sites that fuel consumer generated media, the documentation of an experience is becoming more important to the consumer than the experience itself.

At Mashable’s Media Summit, Ricky Van Veen used this picture to make this point: “We have a new generation that places documentation above experience.” Instead of watching the President and the First Lady at one of their Inaugural Balls, they watched them through their mobile phones to make sure they got the picture or the video. Younger consumers in some cases even make decisions on their social calendar based on the photo opp it provides.  More here from David Spinks.

It will be interesting to see how this trend unfolds. But it’s another facet of changing media consumption habits.

It reminds me of an excerpt from the book Data Smog: "As we severely limit content, we learn to savor it more. I experienced this paradox firsthand when I asked my brother Jon to film my wedding. He used an old Super8. -SNIP- The three-minute films he created are cherished glimpses into our wedding and reception, in marked contrast to an uninterrupted three-hour video that dulls our senses and renders useless our memories. A medium that captures almost everything conveys almost nothing.”

 

Applying the above trend to your content and experiential marketing efforts – is your brand serving up important glimpses? Are there moments of discovery? Is it easy to share?

Cross posted to my work blog, Social Study.

Journalism, Curation and Changing Face of News Sources

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
McChrystal's Balls - Honorable Discharge
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Two seemingly unrelated pieces of news help me make a point. The first is above from The Daily Show. Jon Stewart rails on mainstream media for dismissing Rolling Stone for landing the McChrystal interview. 

"The American news media finally realized they kind of suck."

Well the General had an agenda and Rolling Stone got the story. But I enjoy Ricky Van Veen's observation:

Here’s a journalist covering a comedian covering TV new personalities’ coverage of a journalist covering a subject.

The second story is more of a research factoid. Half of American adults surveyed trust Google more than they trust traditional media. And they trust Twitter and Facebook as much as they trust traditional media.

The research on trust in sources speaks to social media's impact, but I think the point it makes is the power of curation more than anything else. Twitter and Facebook is saturated with links to other sources. My assumption is that adults trust traditional media, they just get their news first from links pushed over Twitter and Facebook. 

This long post to make a short point is that conventional sources are changing. Are you changing your approach to determining which sources you pitch?! I've been hearing a lot about social media experiments. It may sound like semantics, but we should be focused on more strategic test and learn opportunities instead of shiny new experiments. And while this change has impacted traditional media relations, I'm not hearing about media relations experiments, much less test and learn opportunities. Our industry still seems focused on an end game that is increasingly becoming less of an option and more impossible to achieve. /rant

Marketers Need to Think Venn, Not Silos

This research from Get Response tracks with my own experience: “A distinct minority of small-to-mid-sized-business (SMB) marketers use social media links or icons in their promotional emails.” And I’ll argue that even larger businesses do not consider steps like this…not instinctively.

Marketers are so busy, we can sometime think in silos. It’s a result of focusing on a project. It’s understandable and I think it happens even more in social media. Most everything we read notes how we need new rules for social media and how different social media is so it’s no surprise that we sometimes throw golden rules out the window as we create new rules.

New tools usually do require new tools. For example, social media is an engagement tool, not an awareness tool. And you can tell which brands understand this by ticking through their Facebook pages. Which brands are trying to engage you and which ones are simply broadcasting the same message in a different channel?

But some golden rules do not change. Audience and goals win the day no matter what medium you’re knee deep in. Brands have hard-earned touch points established with their customers. The email newsletter mentioned in the research above is usually one of those touch points.

Marketers need to step back from the retweets and Like counts and look across these touch points. A 360 degree view lets you see unnecessary duplication as well as untapped opportunities. Doing this would drive down the results from Get Response’s research I suspect.

So let’s think in Venn Diagrams and not in silos.

Perhaps to a fault, I’m a very visual thinker. I tend to sketch my ideas (poorly) to explain them and to test their validity. As a result the Venn Diagram and I became fast friends somewhere in between when John Venn created them and before they became pop culture icons. It’s just one tool we can use to remind us to step back and take in the view from time to time.

Posted to my work blog, Social Study

Starbucks and the Social Media Expert

 

Starbucks’ Chris Abruzzo, VP of Brand, Content and Online, did double duty during Internet Week NY speaking at CM Summit and the Mashable/CNN event. As you’ll see in this video, Starbucks is using social media to invert the way it goes to market for product launches.

Many folks participating in social media would probably agree that Starbucks’ is an expert when it comes to its use of social media. But my favorite part of Abruzzo’s presentation is at the beginning when he shrugs off the hard-earned descriptor. 

“I’m here to be the practical example guy. We [Starbucks] really don’t know very much. We know very little about this whole space. We know more than we knew a few years ago. But we still really don’t know very much. But we do know Starbucks very, very, well and that has been the source of everything we’ve done.”

“It’s the Brand, Stupid”
Working with clients, it becomes very clear very quickly how much they understand their brand. They know what differentiates them from competitors and they know what their focus must be to succeed – regardless of what tactics are chosen to realize marketing goals. You can’t take this for granted. It’s an important point.

Abruzzo’s humble clarification is refreshing. It reminds me of something Josh Hallett said in passing at a conference I presented at in 2007 (UGA Connect). No one is a social media expert. Not Chris Brogan, not Steve Rubel, not you and not me. Not even brands as well-established in social media as Starbucks.

Some professionals have been participating in social media longer and helping their internal/external clients create strategies and execute plans with results at the end of the rainbow. But they’ve made mistakes, they’ve done test and learn projects (maybe even well-intended crash and burn projects) and they’ve built out from it. And they’ve shared their findings like Abruzzo.

Social Media Expert and Other Obscenities
There’s a lot of baggage, angst and content created around the term social media expert. Some of it’s understandable. Some of it’s elitist. Some of it’s a defensive move to keep the competition out of their billable hours.

I like Abruzzo’s approach and Hallett’s approach. There are no experts. And I’ll throw in a quote from Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.” So here’s to doing it.

Cross-posted to my work blog, Social Study.

Journalism and Another Social Media Paradox

A recent tweet from Jay Rosen reminded me of another social media paradox.

Rosen's tweet leads to a Yahoo! Finance job description that requires an interesting set of skills.

"We’re looking for a natural leader who isn’t afraid to get his or her hands dirty. He or she must see the big picture but also be detail-oriented."

It sounds like a tall order, but only if you think of the traditional company -- or in Yahoo! Finance's case, the traditional news organization that's not reacting to the impact of citizen journalism and social media. Start at the bottom of the traditional corporate hierarchy and consider how work is distributed. As you go up the hierarchy, the hand work decreases as the head work increases.

Social Media Scrimmage
Social media is a participatory sport. You have to get your hands dirty to understand it, much less use it to the benefit of your brand (personal/employer/client). But execs do not have scads of time to surf the web, following, liking and checking in. The reason why is obvious. But it means a change of focus when discussing social media in the c-suite.

Because this is the paradox: The various social media platforms, concepts and how they fit into a larger picture require participation to truly understand. But the execs required to bless social media projects usually do not have the time or inclination to participate in social media.

Try throwing out terms like organic and long tail to a CMO with a board of directors wondering how marketing is impacting the quarterly earnings.

Part of this is simply tailoring your message for your audience. But using the above paradox as a filter it's much easier to discuss social media strategies in a way that will be more easily understood and supported.

Vote for Bad Girls with Good Ideas

You do not need coffee in the morning if you run into Candace Klein first. She's the force of energy behind Bad Girl Ventures a microfinance organization that is designed to literally invest in woman's dreams.

"Bad Girl Ventures believes that women should have the chance to build a business. Our role is to help women realize their dreams and build sustainability and growth into their own business models."

Candace just launched Bad Girl Ventures and is already getting national attention. She is in the running to get her own show on Oprah's OWN network. But Candace needs your help. I could give you ten reasons to vote for her**, but I'll let her video do the talking.

If you decide to vote for her? Pay it forward and share her story with someone else.

**Candace met two of her first Bad Girl Ventures applicants by attending a Cincinnati Social Media event. It’s #CincySM’s mission to help shine a light on the vibrant social media/business scene in Cincinnati. So I'm twice as excited for her success.

"If It’s Good, It’s Been Done"

Early in my career, I was on a team prepping for a BIG new business pitch. It was for a product and the creative copy we used was something along the lines of “Better Torque, Better Horsepower, Better Grip, Better Get One.”

As I drove to the pitch that morning, I passed a billboard for a bank with copy along the lines of “Better Interest, Better Checking, Better Sign Up.” I had nothing to do with the creative copy. But it reinforced a phrase I've heard many times over the years: if it’s good, it’s been done.

A friend of mine launched a web redesign recently. The designer that worked on it did a great job. My friend then received a note pointing out the similarities between the new site and another company’s web site. It’s a tough situation to be in. My friend did some homework and confirmed this similarity was completely coincidence.

And more obvious are logos. Last night I was reminded – again – of how similar the Washington Nationals and Walgreens logos appear. Coincidence? There are plenty of examples of similar logos. And plenty of reasons why this happens. But what's a brand to do in a situation like this?

The phrase “if it’s good, it’s been done” is well-intended, but what do you do if you’re epiphany does not hold up to a Google search, or a patent search? Even worse, it passes all these things and doesn't become apparent until after the launch.

As the big honking w's in this post make clear, it's not always as easy as simply tossing it out and starting over.

Stickybits: Mobile App Turns Consumer Goods Into Media

Whether or not it created the most buzz during Internet Week New York is up for debate. But Stickybits holds major potential for any consumer packaged goods brand.

According to Techcrunch, Seth Goldstein considers the mobile app an evolution of online media.

"In 1996, webpages became media. In 2001, search became media. In 2005, people became media. In 2007, status updates became media. Last year, places became media. And in 2010, objects will become media.”

Stickybits lets your smartphone take a picture of the barcode on any product or object (via Stickybits barcode stickers). The user can then view content from the brand, content from other users or add their own content to the object – from video and text to photos and audio comments. All content bcomes a threaded conversation and users can rate content they experience.

As Pepsi is already working with Stickybits, they offer a great CPG example. Download the app, scan a Pepsi can and you’ll see content from the brand and its consumers.

Options for consumers and brands using Stickybits are limited only by the imagination as you can now check-in with an object much in the way Foursquare lets you check-in to a location. Here are just a few ideas for brands.

• Attach an instruction video to a product, eliminating paper and possibly extra packaging
• Add a wine review to the bottle or a movie review to a DVD
• Host a recipe contest where every recipe attached to the barcode is voted on by customers who ultimately select the winner
• Serve up a video on a product with details about a new product or detailing a cause marketing push
• Push out a coupon for a complementary product offered by the brand

Transform Products into Owned and Earned Media

Over time, as the user base grows, companies like can mine this information and serve up relevant coupons for brands based on the information gleaned from each barcode.

And as the accuracy of geolocation continues to evolve, CPG brands may even be able to optimize shelf space based on what they learn from Stickybits. The concept of turning an entire product line into owned and ultimately earned media is powerful. As a result, we recommend CPG brands spend some time with this emerging app.

Cross-posted to my work blog Social Study

Twitter Goes Geo-Loco for Twitter Places

Twitter Places was just unveiled and is designed to provide more context for tweets.

The location option has been available since April, but now you can see who else tweeted recently from the same location. It also shows nearby locations, and points of interest -- everything from restaurants and retail to churches and more.

In fact, by integrating with Gowalla and Foursquare, users can also see who’s checked into these locations using those services. Twitter is also offering access to its API to encourage third party apps to add this functionality.

Anyone that’s used a third party app knows these interfaces already work pretty hard at offering a clean view of more information than you can view using Twitter. It will be interesting to see how Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and mobile apps like Twitteriffic serve this up.

More Context or More Noise?
The new functionality makes sense in that it taps into our geo-location fascination. But it will surely raise the privacy discussion. While Twitter Place will not serve up protected tweets, there can be implications to offering your location. And from a practical standpoint some users may wonder if Twitter Places is not just more noise in the stream.

I'm in a wait and see mode. It's only been a few hours, right?! In general I'm all for convergence -- where it makes sense. But in far more extreme examples we've seen situations where just because we can does not mean we should. I'm thinking of the initial Google Buzz roll out and the Facebook F8 integration.

To be clear, comparing those situations to this new functionality is like comparing apples to oranges at best. I'm just looking forward to seeing how users embrace places.

Related
Fast Company: Twitter Finally Going Places
Mashable: Twitter Launches "Places"

Cross-posted to my work blog: Social Study