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.

Your Move!

Posted by Tom Gable

In researching new approaches to reputation management and brand building for the upcoming fifth edition of The PR Client Service Manual, it has become more clear that PR is taking on an increasingly important leadership role in strategic planning and intelligent execution of the most complex communications programs. We are evolving to what I’ll call the three-dimensional chess model, or image-building in 3D.

The PR profession continues to master new tactics and tools that go beyond the flat two-dimensional approaches used in most programs. The concept is to go high, wide and deep in creating images with the substance to break out of the competitive clutter for maximum impact.

Only PR has the capability to strategically and intelligently integrate the many disparate channels of communication and move image in the right direction over the long term. The 3D approach can create extraordinary image momentum and ROI as the game pieces move in an intricate orchestration toward ultimate victory: building reputation as desired.

The importance of adopting a 3D approach has been reinforced by experts at many recent conferences, including the recent Counselors Academy spring meeting. A key message: don’t fall in love with your tools; figure out how to work them strategically for maximum impact.

Envision all your target audiences and their sources of information. What channels do you need to use to ensure they get the right information in timely, strategic fashion to support your program goals? Where do you build your positions of strength and support? As the plans unfold, can you envision five moves ahead, ten and twenty or more?

Analyze the key milestones in your program – the known deliverables, activities, encounters, events, presentations, financial news releases, analyst meetings, government conferences, etc. What exists? Then, look for the holes, the gaps. What exists? More importantly, what doesn’t?

The approach is essential in building new brands, launching new products or technology or positioning and repositioning organizations.

Why does PR lead and not other marketing, management or communications disciplines? Given a fact-based, no-hype approach, it’s where strategy, core values and communications intersect to build a depth of awareness and credibility that paid media can’t deliver.

For a brief case history, Gable PR used the old 2D model several years ago to introduce disruptive technology into a crowded field where all competitors sounded alike: issuing a launch release and holding a press conference at the major trade show of the year. The results weren’t spectacular.

Using the 3D model for a more recent similar challenge, Gable PR established an 18-month plan to manage the flow of information, build relationships and connect to multiple audiences and through different channels. The client had a brilliant scientific advisory board. To begin laying the foundation and also getting critical feedback, SAB members began vetting the technology with some of their respected peers in business, technology and academia.

With the initial relationships built understanding in place, the agency began educating the media – without asking for coverage – six months before launch, preparing for when the client would blast out of the stealth mode with power and momentum for long-term branding. Select media were pointed to academics for background. Analysts were pointed to academics and media for validation. The agency pitched exclusives to media in different categories (dailies, financial media, trades, blogs, etc.). The bottom line: the client exploded onto the scene with major coverage online and in dailies, trades and financial media the first day of the biggest industry conference of the year. The instant buzz at multiple levels and through highly credible channels drove interest from potential investors and strategic partners.

The momentum built from there with a series of academic papers, presentations, speeches and presentations at financial conferences. The client was acquired within two years – ahead of its exit strategy.

NEXT – Nine ways to botch positioning and branding with PR

]]> http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/the-new-pr-building-images-and-reputations-in-3d/feed/ 0 http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/new-research/ http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/new-research/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 17:41:06 +0000 admin http://www.gablepr.webenetest.com/?p=1958

Head of the Class

Posted by Tom Gable

The Reputation Institute just released its annual Reputation Pulse, which measures the corporate reputations of the largest U.S. companies based on consumers’ trust, esteem, admiration, and good feeling about a company while also gauging perceptions across seven rational dimensions of reputation.

The survey named Johnson & Johnson as the most reputable U.S. company first for the second consecutive year, followed by Kraft Foods, Kellogg, The Walt Disney Company, PepsiCo, Sara Lee, Google, Microsoft, UPS and Dean Foods. AIG finished 150th out of the 150 companies included in the survey.

I’ve blogged and written regularly about the importance of investing in image as a part of corporate and organizational strategy. Beyond just making a list, companies enjoy significant benefits from having a positive reputation, according to the Reputation Institute; a company’s reputation score has a positive and direct link to consumer attitudes and behaviors. It reported that having a strong reputation in 2010 yields “more recommendation, more benefit of the doubt and more purchase behavior than ever before.”

In comparing the Top 10 to the Bottom 10 measured companies, the institute noted that the general public is:

300% more likely to verbally support or give the benefit of the doubt;

200% more likely to consider products; and

350% more likely to purchase products of highly regarded companies.

“In today’s tough economic climate, corporate reputation is critical to sustaining and growing business,” said Anthony Johndrow, Partner & Managing Director, Reputation Institute North America. “This year’s results illustrate a direct correlation between how well a company manages its reputation and how likely consumers are to recommend or reject the company. A good reputation is not just a nice-to-have; it’s a bottom-line business imperative.”

It Pays to Communicate

Respondents who indicate they have bought a company’s products or utilized a customer support service tend to rate those companies higher, indicating that direct experience has the greatest impact on corporate reputation. Third party messages, from the media, online or other people, tend to have a negative effect. Reputation Institute’s findings show that respondents who were reached by companies’ corporate actions and/or communications initiatives scored them 3 points above the U.S. mean.

In fact, a consumer who has encountered a company’s marketing, branding, public relations or social responsibility efforts on average rates the company higher regardless of their reputation ranking—even companies with weak reputations can gain from telling their side of the story.

Johndrow sums up the key insight from this reputation driver analysis: “We all know that people care and talk more than ever about the companies behind the products and services they use and they are talking about them. Join this conversation and tell your corporate story to create the support needed in tough times. Corporations can create deeper connections than products can alone, essentially deploying who they are as a company to drive business results.”

The Importance of Reputation and Authentic PR

The survey and news release make good points. But the concept of putting value on a reputation requires more historical perspective. The Reputation Institute was founded by Charles Fombrun, Ph.D., who serves as its chairman. He was one of the first to measure the impact of reputation on company fortunes. He published the results in 1996 in his classic book, Reputation – Realizing Value from the Corporate Image. He followed later with Fame and Fortune. Excerpts from his first book are worth noting because the findings hold true some 15 years later. Here are a few highlights:

A reputation develops from a company’s uniqueness and from identity-shaping practices – maintained over time – that lead constituents to perceive the company as credible, reliable, trustworthy, and responsible. In turn, a company’s established reputation helps to protect it from rivals trying hard to imitate its practices. Reputation builds strategic value for a company by granting it a competitive advantage that rivals have trouble overcoming. To achieve that advantage, however, a company must develop appropriate practices, or character traits, as it were, that rivals find difficult to imitate.

What Capitalizing on Reputation Gets the Firm

If being perceived by constituents as credible, reliable, trustworthy, and responsible is the hallmark of good reputation, it pays off because well-regarded companies generally:

• Command premium prices for their products
• Pay lower prices for purchases
• Entice top recruits to apply for positions
• Experience greater loyalty from consumers and employees
• Have more stable revenues
• Face fewer risks of crisis
• Are given greater latitude to act by their constituents

Corporate reputations are perceptions held by people inside and outside a company. To acquire a reputation that is positive, enduring, and resilient requires managers to invest heavily in building and maintaining good relationships with their company’s constituents. It calls for practices that measure and monitor how the company is doing with its four top constituencies: employees, investors, customers and communities. Doing so pays off in the long run because favorable reputations produce tangible benefits: premium prices for products, lower costs of capital and labor, improved loyalty from employees, greater latitude in decision making, and a cushion of goodwill when crises hit. (57)

A good reputation generates consistent, shared, and favorable impressions among observers about what a company is, what a company does, what a company stands for. In this way, a company’s reputation is itself identity defining. It helps us assess our understanding of the companies with which we do business.

Marketers, advertisers and public relations specialists help to create attractive images of a company. Indeed, many companies rely quite heavily on PR professionals to shape the perceptions of those looking in from the outside – principally the customers. But unless those images are anchored in core characteristics of the company and its products or services, they will decay. In general, what companies want and need are reputations that are both enduring and resilient: able to withstand scandal and attack, to overcome crisis and assault.

Can your organization invest in reputation as part of long-term strategy? What does it stand for? Then, can it commit to providing ongoing proof of principle and walk the talk over time? That’s the essence of authentic, fact-based PR.

PRSA International Conference Hotel, San Diego

Posted by Tom Gable

In an era dominated by millions of corporate, institutional, government and other voices clamoring for attention through every communications channel possible, members of the PRSA Counselors Academy responding to a national survey, ranked “demonstrating return on investment,” “providing authentic counsel” and “mastering social media” as the top three issues to be addressed in helping their clients and advancing the future of the public relations profession over the next two years.

The survey was conducted online during October among 450 members of Counselors Academy, a professional interest section of the Public Relations Society of America dedicated to providing principals and senior counselors of public relations firms with the resources to grow their firms and the counseling skills of their people. Membership is limited to accredited counselors (PRSA or Canadian Public Relations Society) or consultants with 10 or more years experience in the profession. Eighty-nine responded, or almost 20 percent of those surveyed.

The results were released on Nov. 9 during the PRSA International Confernece in San Diego and served as the foundation for a panel discussion on “How to Tackle the Three Toughest Issues Facing PR Counselors Today.” The panel was chaired by Tom Gable, APR and PRSA Fellow, CEO of Gable PR, who designed the survey. It included Sydney Ayers, APR, president and CEO of Ayers Public Relations and chairwoman of PRSA Counselors Academy, and Joel Curran, APR, senior vice president and managing director, Manning Selvage & Lee, Chicago.

The survey asked respondents to rank from 1 to 5 their impressions of different internal and external issues facing the profession in 2009-10 in four major categories, with 1 being “Very Unimportant” and 5 being “Very Important.” The top four issues in each category:

Client Relations: demonstrating return on investment (ROI), 4.60 and No. 2 overall; providing authentic, strategic counsel, 4.55, No.3 overall; measuring results, 4.43, No. 5 overall; and connecting PR to the C-suite, 4.25; and raising agency fees, 3.63.

Media and Technology: mastering social media, 4.70 (No. 1 overall); enhancing technology capabilities, 4.53 (No. 4 overall); the 24/7 news cycle, 4.31; and decline of traditional media, 4.24.

External Issues: the economy, 4.34 (No. 6 overall); government regulation, 3.59; losing business to consulting firms, 3.20; and dominance of the biggest multinational firms, 2.80.

Partnerships and Resources: values and ethics management, 4.23; developing strategic partnerships, 4.18; recruiting and retaining talent, 4.13; and expanding agency services, 3.98.

Respondents represented a cross section of agency sizes: under $500,000 in annual billings, 27.3 percent; $500,000 to $999,999, 42.4 percent; $1 million to $4.99 million, 21.2 percent; $5 million to $9.99 million, 9.1 percent; and over $10 million, no responses.

Those responding were largely senior practitioners: less than 10 years in the profession, zero percent; 10 to 15 years, 6.1 percent; 16 to 20 years, 3.0 percent; 21 to 30 years, 57.6 percent; and more than 30 years, 33.3 percent.

From the data, the panelists provided insights and action plans for addressing Client Relations, Social Media and Changing the Way PR Firms do Business.  Next: lessons from the panel; connecting with the client.

“For business, public relations is an increasingly vital marketing tool-especially as traditional forms of advertising struggle to catch consumers’ attention.” The Economist (2)

That observation from The Economist was supported in part by a landmark study conducted by marketing giant Procter & Gamble in 2005. When P&G employed a marketing mix model for six brands over a one to three year period, it found:

* PR drives sales, often on a par with advertising;
* PR delivers stellar ROI (275%), much greater than advertising;
* PR Provides a halo effect over other marketing tactics.

The essay goes on to provide nine reasons for hiring a PR firm — definitely worth sharing with colleagues throughout the profession.

Posted by Tom Gable