Archive for the ‘Client Service Results’ Category

Social Media, PR, Clients and Disclosure: Tips for Keeping on the Right Side of the Law

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

Fully Disclosed

Posted by Tom Gable

PR firms are often the driving force behind helping clients build buzz, brand identity and even sales volume through promotional blogging and tweeting, Facebook pages, product reviews, restaurant and hotel tips and more. Beyond advancing the art of social media, firms need to ensure that they are equally up to speed on FTC guidelines or face possible legal action, according to two lawyers from Davis & Gilbert, New York, during a presentation to a quarterly meeting of IPREX recently in Toronto.

The lawyers, Michael Lasky and Gary Kibel, told the PR pros from more than 40 firms on three continents that the FTC has continued to update its guidelines about bloggers and others being truthful and reliable.

“And this isn’t just a feel good; it’s a legal requirement,” said Lasky, who chairs the PR practice at D&G. He provided a handout that summarized the FTC guidelines, including this summary:

“The Guides have been updated to ensure truth in all media, including blogs, social networking sites, and other new media. The basic principles of the Guides remain the same — endorsements must be truthful and not misleading and if there is a connection between the endorser and the marketer that would affect how people evaluate the endorsement, that connection should be disclosed.”

Clients and their PR firms can be held liable for unsubstantiated claims, so Lasky and Kibel stressed that PR firms need policies and procedures about expectations for proper behavior on both the agency and client side of the equation. This includes working with third parties, such as hiring people to blog and tweet about a company and its stock price, services or products, or take negative shots at its competition as well.

The lawyers provided an example in one of their publications about complaints being filed against Ann Taylor for giving gifts to bloggers and asking them to blog about an event. The FTC found that several bloggers posted about the event without disclosing the gifts. No action was taken because Ann Taylor had created a written policy stating that it would not issue gifts to bloggers without first instructing them they must disclose the gifts. There was a sign at the event instructing bloggers to disclose the gifts if they posted about the event. Case closed.

Lasky and Kibel outlined several top blogging practices clients and their PR firms should follow:

  1. Have a policy.
  2. For bloggers, be forthright — disclose any material connection.
  3. For clients and their agencies, monitor their bloggers to make sure they make the necessary disclosures. If you see something misleading, unsubstantiated or not reported accurately, take action.
  4. In hiring a blog service, companies and their agencies must provide guidance and training about the necessary disclosure.
  5. Employees of the marketing or its PR firms should clearly disclose relationships. Such as PR firms blogging about a product from a client.
  6. Even street team members who get consideration (reward points, etc.) for their work must disclose the details.
  7. When celebrities are paid, they must disclose (Lasky and Kibel provided the example of Armstrong Williams, commentator, who was hired by a PR firm to promote the “No Child Left Behind” program on CNN).
  8. Have spokespeople go through extensive media training to ensure they understand the disclosures.
  9. On level of disclosure, analyze the audience.
  10. You don’t know it all. Seek legal assistance.

In another case, an agency was hired to endorse a client’s gaming application. Its people gave the game high ratings. The agency failed to disclose that it received a percentage of sales of the games as compensation.

Disclosure can be as simple as adding parenthetical notes in the copy (“Company X gave me this product to try.” “Product Y was sent to me by the manufacturer.” “Wineries whose names are preceded by an asterisk * provided samples.” “Agency Z is providing blogging and other services for Client A.”).

Some use hash tags in their tweets and Facebook posts, such as #ad, #paid and #sponsored.

Bottom line: disclose, and have the disclosure displayed where it can be easily found. The lawyers said trouble awaits when the disclosure is buried three levels deep on a website.

Looking for a Job in PR? Gable PR Has Tips for Getting Resumes Read, Advancing Toward an Offer

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Standing Out

Posted by Tom Gable

In reviewing more than 200 resumes in the past month for account coordinator positions at Gable PR, our team struggled mightily at times to determine if a candidate should advance to the next round – a phone interview. Those making it through the phone interview then met with team members. The finalists took timed writing tests.

Our team, including those with experience at other agencies and on the client side, wondered if new entrants to the work force weren’t given much guidance in school or otherwise on solid approaches. As a public service to help future applicants to any PR job, the Gable PR team put together this short guide to things they liked or didn’t during the hiring process.

Likes:

  • On subject lines in email, grab our attention. Do something to stand-out. Be clever. Show personality (most don’t). Let us know why you’re a great candidate rather than simply “responding to AE advertisement.”
  • Have a focused, relevant cover letter, including some enthusiasm for the position and evidence you looked at the agency’s website and know something about the business. Highlight what you learned in your PR or news internships and how it applies to the agency.
  • Put the cover letter in body of the email to make it easier for the team to read.
  • Attach a resume with your name as the file name (more than half of the submissions are just called “resume,” which means we have to give it a new name if we like what’s there. We cover this on our Contact Us page).
  • Provide references and writing samples if you have them.
  • Include a photo (but not from a bar, the beach, or the group photo from Facebook, etc.)
  • During initial phone interviews or in-person interviews, be honest. Let us know about your passions/interests, long/short term goals and areas where you know you need to improve. If you are more interested in other fields such as advertising, HR, web design or other discipline and not PR, please let us know before we go to the next step with an interview.
  • Dress neatly and professionally for the in-person interview.
  • Bring clip folders of college and internship work to the interview; good writing samples help candidates rise to the top (Gable PR also has a timed writing tests for the finalists).
  • Ask questions beyond “what’s a typical day like?” Take an interest in the company you may work for. Do background research on company history, current and past clients, awards, honors, individual achievements and if any team members have LinkedIn recommendations. Our favorite candidates treat an interview like an interactive dialogue and are genuinely excited. They show their personalities, including senses of humor and willingness to debate issues.
  • Agency teams hit it off best with candidates who are thinking of PR as a long-term career choice and are excited about the profession.
  • PR is a team sport, so think about how you would fit into this team and contribute to its success.
  • Fast follow up with a thank you email or card.

Dislikes:

  • Common shortcomings: misspelled words in the subject line (including the name of the agency!); no copy in the cover email; vague introductory copy (obviously being sent to different categories of potential employers); misuse of words (“I will attribute my skills” to the agency instead of contribute); misspellings in the resume (we get a lot of these from people who list “detail oriented” as one of their key attributes.
  • Interviewee showing up in jeans, too casual in attire; for women, chipped fingernails; for men, sloppy clothing, unkempt look, wrinkled clothes (we need to know our future colleague can meet with clients and the media and come across as professional; this doesn’t require an expensive wardrobe; neat, clean, thoughtful in choice of attire).
  • Showing up without a resume or samples. No follow-up email or thank you note. The combination shows a lack of interest and demonstrates that you are missing an incredibly valuable trait in PR: preparing diligently for every meeting where you need to make an impression (client, media, potential employer!).
  • A disinterest in news, writing and the media.
  • Not being able to match your interests, skill sets and preferred career path to the position. Having an interest in human resources or advertising or sales may be fine for another interview. But we are looking for passionate potential PR team members. Tell us how your skill sets and drive are going to get results for our clients and help build our agency.
  • On skill sets and experience: no PR or journalism in school; no relevant internships.
  • Most common bad answer to why you want to get into PR: “I really like people!”

 

 

Eight Easy Ways to Damage Your Brand Image, Lose 1 Million Customers and $8 Billion in Market Cap the Netflix Way

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Blowing up the Brand

Posted by Tom Gable

Recent analysts reports, coverage in the major media and the Twittersphere are being less than kind to Netflix and its two recent corporate announcements: raising prices by 60 percent; and coming back two months later to apologize while announcing the split of the company into two (Netflix and Qwikster). In looking at it from a strategic planning and PR perspective, the best companies incorporate image as a part of corporate strategy, especially when one has built such a strong brand. They do things right and also do the right things. Netflix appears to have advanced toward bursting its own brand bubble through eight easy steps:

  • Raised prices seemingly without much consideration for the existing customer base, its needs, wants, expectations
  • Went for a big number rather than incremental increases
  • Provided a rationale that didn’t ring true and made many long-term customers feel betrayed by the brand
  • Did it all top down and one-way in a CEO voice rather than human voice
  • Didn’t join the conversation; didn’t use social media to actively engage its many audiences
  • Waited a couple of months to apologize and then do it with an amazing lack of sincerity
  • Seemingly as an afterthought, changed a successful business model to confuse customers, analysts, and the stock market
  • Gave competitors openings to attack, reposition the company, declare pricing advantages

And if you are really successful, here’s what you can expect: 50 percent drop in stock price and market capitalization, enmity versus admiration, lack of support in the financial community (buy and sell side analysts), a zillion Twitter and Facebook comments, a Hitler meme or two, and confusion among consumers on how to order and from whom when you split the company, create a new brand name and dilute the brand image.

David Pogue, columnist for The New York Times, parsed the apology:

“Ah. O.K., good. We’ve seen this movie before. Corporation bumbles, apologizes, makes things right. Business schools take note. Life goes on. But this time, Mr. Hastings did not follow the formula. He only pretended to. He goes on to say that the new higher prices will stick — and, worse, Netflix is about to break off its DVD-by-mail feature into a completely separate entity, called Qwikster.”

The PR and marketing blogs offered good insights.  Mr. Media Training cited six reasons why the apology failed.  Liz Goodgold, of Redfirebranding, provided four ideas Netflix should have used before going down the primrose path to greater profits.

In summary, another NYT story delved into the reasons for raising prices (to generate more income for acquiring content from the major studies for streaming). The “self-inflicted” wounds could have been avoided with better planning for an integrated and strategic evolution of what were in actuality major change initiatives at Netflix.

Crisis PR by Candlelight

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Romance not included

Posted by Tom Gable

When power went out in our office at about 3:45 p.m. on Sept. 8, we assumed it was the building, or a local substation, which had trouble before. We quickly learned it was a massive outage stretching from Arizona to San Diego and Orange County into Baja California. At 4 p.m., the Gable PR team was alerted by text messages and emails from one of our clients, a major wireless carrier, that emergency response teams were being mobilized on the ground and virtually to deal with whatever issues arose.

We participated in the first client call at 4:30 and would monitor almost every hour into the night. The virtual response team used processes honed in preparing for hurricanes, such as Irene, to keep San Diegans connected. The backup generators and battery systems deployed as designed when the blackout hit. The network experienced a surge in congestion as San Diegans turned to their cell phones to find out what was happening, locate relatives and friends and deal with the complex issues of having no electricity. The tremendous surge in demand resulted in heavy congestion on the network.

The client response team had anticipated this potential pressure on the backup systems and within thirty minutes of the outage had mobilized its service fleets, technicians and other resources and dispatched them to priority sites throughout the county. Since they weren’t sure how long the outage would last, the team secured extra generators from throughout Southern California as additional backup, plus a fleet of fuel trucks to keep them running.

As client emergency response teams and technicians worked around the clock to restore service, the regional PR team asked Gable PR help in creating statements for the media. They wanted to go on record before the nightly news on local television stations, even though the stations might not be broadcasting and the region could still be without power to watch TV.

So, for the first time since writing on classic Olivetti manual typewriter in the Saigon Bureau of Stars and Stripes during a wartime blackout, I composed by candlelight. This time, I had the benefit of laptop computing. I monitored the regular update calls by the emergency response team on a landline and gathered color for future reports. The local utility warned that the blackout could last a day or two. To ensure our client was on record as early as possible, a draft statement entered the approval chain (PR, technical, legal, etc.) by 9 p.m. By 10:15 p.m. it had been approved and distributed via email to regional media, with follow up calls to the daily newspapers to see if anything else was needed.

Fortunately, power started being restored by 11:15 p.m. in some areas. My power kicked in at 1:15 a.m. The county was almost 100 percent restored by 6:00 a.m. We drafted copy points on the details of the emergency recovery effort and began responding to media queries by 9 a.m.

We had switched to the cloud from our own server, so could access client and agency files via the Internet, including media lists (we had been without email before for three days when a flood knocked out power to the substation serving our office).  Now, for a couple of lessons learned:

  • Whether you are on the cloud or not, have backup copies of media lists on your laptop, or home system, or both; plus printed copies
  • Use landline phones (I used the fax line phone)
  • Text don’t call on your cell phone
  • Have at least one extra laptop battery (or a second laptop)
  • Have a battery-operated radio to monitor news, disaster reports
  • Keep a detailed chronology and save your copy after every sentence
  • Have printed copies of media lists at home and office
  • Know the email addresses the media use for breaking news (e.g. cops@nctimes.com; breaking@uniontrib.com; desk@kfmb.com)
  • Use a hashtag for Tweeting about the incident (#sdblackout)
  • From a standard disaster preparedness standpoint, have flashlights, extra batteries and even camping lanterns for light
  • Drink lots of water
  • And have a good bottle of wine handy to sip late into the evening

 

Making Headlines and Subject Lines Shine (and Getting Your PR Stories Read!)

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Getting their ear

Posted by Tom Gable

How to break through the clutter and connect with your PR story when shrinking news staffs among most media have resulted in writers and editors being besieged with hundreds of pitches a day? A quick survey of some of the most-besieged journalists provides two simple guidelines: get creative with headlines and subject lines.

Headlines and subject lines need to excite, entice and entertain. For headlines, the best grab the editor’s attention in a short amount of space and lure him or her into a story. The headlines create evocative thoughts and images.

For subject lines, the creative PR professional and writer need to think like a combination of Stephen Spielberg, James Cameron and Stephen King using Twitter. What can be packed into 10 words or less? Can you communicate bigger ideas on why the story is important? What has changed? Can you pose a provocative question?

Whether for headlines or subject lines, a few good tricks are to look for communicating: cause and effect (the new technology will increase productivity 50 percent or more), before and after comparisons (from getting winded on one flight of stairs to running marathons), interesting contrasts (Surfing scientists hold board meetings – the suits are all wet; Soccer mom launches tech support service for others) and the unusual (Air Force sergeant gets bachelor’s degree from Afghan combat zone).

Here are some quick tips for writing better headlines.

  1. Read the media you are trying to reach and see how they write headlines and organize their stories
  2. Think about the ultimate target audience – the readers – and what’s important to them
  3. What’s the news (breaking, feature, investigative, opinion)?
  4. Can you get creative and stand out from the crowd?
  5. What style can that embody (fact-based, humorous, the ever-present pun, positioning and visionary, provocative, diplomatic)?
  6. What are the top three to four facts and impressions you want to leave with the writer and ultimately your audiences?
  7. Be a stickler for AP style

Beyond the bigger ideas are the details to consider in writing headlines:

  • Brainstorm on key words and tags to use for search engine optimization
  • Use a two-line headline and two-line subheadline wherever possible to make it easy for the reader and search engines to put it into context
  • Have the client name in the first line wherever possible
  • Use active verbs
  • Have complete thoughts on each line
  • Have logical line breaks and balanced lines as best possible, as you see in the media you are trying to reach
  • Be smart about punctuation (including commas, semicolons and dashes)
  • Use the “So What, Who Cares?” test to see if you’ve got it right
  • Read the headline and subheadline aloud and see if it flows
  • Edit, edit, edit!

Biggest Issues for PR 2.0, 3.0 and Beyond?

Monday, August 8th, 2011

Future PR News?

Posted by Tom Gable

In advance of a workshop on “Managing For Results” at the annual PRSA Counselors Academy spring conference, I conducted a survey of attendees on the most important issues facing agencies in the U.S.

The survey listed 25 current issues and trends in the public relations profession. The top rankings from the Counselors Academy workshop were:

  1. Connecting PR to the C Suite
  2. Demonstrating ROI
  3. Measuring Results
  4. Providing Authentic, Strategic Counsel
  5. Mastering Social Media
  6. Recruiting and Retaining Talent

The survey has just been updated to include PR practitioners on the client, agency and academic sides of the desk. Please provide your input so we have a large sample size to work from. A link to the survey is being posted here and also linked to from different professional groups and sites.

Many thanks, in advance, to all who participate. Results will be shared in articles, future workshops for the PRSA Counselors Academy, and in the Fifth Edition of The PR Client Service Manual, Managing for Results, to be published later this year.

 

 

Innovative Solutions Aren’t

Monday, July 25th, 2011

Words of Wisdom

Posted by Tom Gable

In the past few months, we’ve participated in three repositioning and branding sessions – two for clients and one in a seminar by a respected branding guru. We found a common thread running through all of them and one we wish could unravel quickly: the creative types all relied on hackneyed, trite and empty phrases in trying to position or reposition a company, then promote its attributes.

PR is decidedly different from advertising and marketing. In trying to earn our media coverage, we rely on telling a good story with facts. Branding and positioning sessions are designed to create distinctive personalities and voices for an organization or institution that resonate with the multiple target audiences. The basic concept is to develop a tag line or tag lines, core values and the supporting evidence to support the brand position. All well and good, except when the attributes and supporting evidence slide into vagueness.

For journalists, PR professionals on the hunt for earned media coverage or any other students of the English language, branding exercises can be painful, particularly when the die has been cast. Good manners prevent one from chiming in when the host digresses into the new core message for the client saying that it is “a leader in the evolving XYZ industry.” Plus, the client delivers “innovative solutions” that are “at the forefront” of this “evolving” industry. With two evolvings in two sentences, it is obvious that this organization is truly leading Darwinian change in its industry.

The three brand masters promoted use of “leading” in many ways, without proof of principle. The claimed attributes include words such as unique, progressive, leading-edge, next generation, industry standard, prestigious and world class, among others. I won’t bore you with additional details. Previous screeds covered the use of leading and solutions, ad nauseum.

Big questions we can all ask in trying to position our clients or the organization we work for: can we truly differentiate against the competition, in what ways and can we provide ongoing proof of principle over the next two to three years with real stories, facts and details, not vague words? If so, you have made a major advance in branding success to the ultimate benefit of image, reputation and even achieving desired business and marketing goals.

 

Mastering “The Accidents of Style – How Not to Write Badly”

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Words for the Wise

Posted by Tom Gable

This classic book by Charles Harrington Elster contains 350 of the most-committed errors in writing.  It starts with “every day or everyday” and strides quickly and eloquently through conundrums and confusing choices PR and news people face every day (this is correct!).  A few:

  • A lot or alot
  • Can not or cannot
  • Anyway or any way
  • Their, they’re or there (This includes a sample of the Elster humor that runs through the book: “There is no there there,” wrote Gertrude Stein in a rare moment of lucidity at the end of one of her notoriously incoherent sentences.)
  • Imply or infer
  • All right or alright
  • Be careful with Very
  • Avoid the lazy mechanical use of Basically (when you see an adverb, kill it; good tight writing has no unnecessary words)
  • Misuse of less for fewer
  • Overuse of Impact (The sad thing is that this powerful word, which traditionally connotes considerable force, has lost all its forcefulness through incessant repetition.  The only power impact has retained is the ability to cause a headache.)
  • Penultimate does not mean Ultimate or Final

Elster quotes several of the classic tomes, including “The Elements of Style,” “Simple and Direct,” “The Careful Writer” and the “Dictionary of Troublesome Words.”  He uses turns of the phrase and creative metaphors and analogies to make his points with clarity and humor. The book is highly recommended for anyone (versus any one) interested in honing their wordsmithing skills.

 

Media Tweetups: beyond digital – valuable face time with followers, media, new connections

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011
Hello my username is... tweetup

Going Live!

Posted by Trish DaCosta

Tweetups with the media are my new favorite thing as a PR professional. When I heard NBC San Diego was hosting a Tweetup to “meet their followers,” the PR light bulb over my head turned on immediately: this would be a great chance to kick off relationships with the news team! Having just started at Gable PR two weeks prior, I was eager to build the relationships that could benefit our clients and the Tweetup could be a good start.

Tweetups are a somewhat odd concept. The host can be anyone or anything – a company, a celebrity, bar or restaurant, news organization, or a random party organizer. Moreover, objectives can vary considerably. NBC San Diego did a stellar job indicating the purpose of the event which opened it up for just about anyone to attend. Others use the occasion to ‘celebrate’ a milestone, such as getting 500,000 followers, or promote an event, grand opening or other milestone. Whatever the reason, the Tweetup is prime networking time, and here’s why PR Pros must get on the guest list:

  1. Meet new people, or more specifically, media people who could one day be essential to your work.
  2. Build existing relationships with industry insiders or media.
  3. Make connections with potential new leads. Who doesn’t like new business?
  4. Generate buzz for yourself, your company, and your client. A fellow Tweeple in attendance might know that editor you’ve been trying to reach for months. She can formally introduce you. Or better yet, you can meet the editor face-to-face and tip her off on an exclusive right then and there with your client. Win-win!
  5. Practice your pitch. Hey, now is the time to fine-tune your presentation skills, which should come in handy when you reach out to editors over the phone.

The Tweetup is far more than a social mixer; it’s a watering hole of eager, hungry professionals all looking to make some kind of connection. Attending one, or several, gets your name out there to potential new businesses, editors, and mentors. Don’t rule out Tweetups that may seem irrelevant to your company either. You may work strictly in fashion PR, for instance, but that lifestyle editor you’ve been trying to reach may very well be attending a Tweetup party focused on technology. You never know who’ll be in attendance. So make the time to go, grab your smart phone and your business cards and get going. Oh, and don’t forget to tweet about it, too.

Check out pictures of Gable PR at the NBC San Diego TweetUp on our Facebook page and on NBC San Diego’s website

Reuters DC News Editor Provides IPREX Meeting with Newsroom Insights, Tips

Friday, May 6th, 2011

Quest to be First

Posted by Tom Gable

The information-packed IPREX annual meeting in Washington, DC, drew partners from some 35 cities on three contents to learn from experts and share best practices in public relations and public affairs in closed sessions among this global brain trust. One of the early sessions featured Kristin Roberts, Washington news editor and deputy bureau chief for Reuters. The high-energy journalist started by reading a collection of bad news releases received by her bureau just this morning – several embarrassments, including for major PR firms who did go unnamed.

From there, Kristin offered some quick tips for the assembled PR pros, many of whom were ex-journalists:

  • To connect with the news media, don’t go to the bureau chief of editor. Find the person covering the beat. Do some research.
  • Be straightforward. You have news, you have background, or you have a potential resource for future background on a specific topic.
  • Be persistent if it’s a good story and you don’t get immediate responses to your voice mails or emails.
  • The daily email flow is daunting. Editors will always open email from a trusted source. For others, the subject line needs to be compelling.
  • The news cycle churns by the second. Reuters aims to be first and measures itself against Bloomberg and Dow Jones in seconds.
  • A media outlet might have only a 30-second lead in breaking a story. The great ones can sometimes hold up for a day until the other media catch up, as happened with Kristin in breaking news of the Iraq Surge under President Bush.
  • When managing coverage of the killing of Osama bin Laden, she woke correspondents up all over the world before the President’s talk. The lead writer worked from home, away from distractions. She ran to the office in her running shoes, but got called to the White House because their correspondent was solo and needed help. When asked if she went in sneakers, she said no and gave a fashion tip: she had high heels in her gym bag and kept them everywhere (office, car trunk, home).
  • When asked about Twitter: “I hate it. I am too old for Twitter (she is 36).” She said she doesn’t trust it and isn’t comfortable with it. They double check anything and everything from Twitter that might be a relevant news lead. This includes whether the Tweet is real or bogus.
  • PR is important to the news business. She was amazed that the Libyan rebels had a spokesman in one week and were issuing news releases.
  • Reuters aims to be objective in the news. Blogs are different, where it’s not the content that’s important, but the tone. She admitted to being “snarky” in her blogs, but snarky to all. She bragged that no one knows how she votes, not even her husband.