High-Tech PR Blog >> Beyond the Hype

And so it begins

As a communications professional, political campaigns always make me crazy.  They are less about communicating than about mud-slinging.  Nothing sickened me more than the last presidential campaign in which a war hero (like him or not, John Kerry was one) was attacked successfully by a candidate who dodged the draft.  One would think that taking the high road when it comes to communications -- something we always counsel our clients to do in tough competitive fights -- would be the right thing to do.  In politics it is not.

Therefore, as a Hillary supporter and independent who always swings Democratic, I grudgingly watched the DNC closing ceremonies last night to get a glimpse of Barack Obama's big speech.  Given the spectacle of Invesco Field, I expected more high-sounding rhetoric that would once again ring hollow in my ears.  Instead I heard specifics for the first time and I saw a candidate who was taking the gloves off and literally and figuratively saying "enough" to his opponents' attacks.  I certainly found it refreshing.  Slate's post on it this morning echoes my thoughts:

It was the single most emphatic word of his address. Change is all well and good, but when Dad says, "Enough," the kids stop fooling around. It conveys an urgency and determination that talk of change simply does not. You could see that single word printed on placards for future rallies.

So now it's McCain's turn today, now that he's announced a surprise running mate, to commission them to hurl the mud as quickly as they can to see if they can cover anything solid and positive their opponent has to say.  And I will get frustrated again and tune out.  But at least for the moment, I'm glad the Democratic candidate isn't "playing rope-a-dope," as one of my past CEO clients described the situation he faced when a much larger competitor was pounding his company unfairly.  He struck back, with our help, and in the end his company fared well. 

Here's hoping for some real communication between now and November 4.

Great tips on successful corporate blogging

In our profession, it's invaluable to have clients that "get" PR and the benefits it brings. It's even more valuable - and rare - for an entire company to embrace social media for collective success. We deliberately stay away from discussing our clients on this blog, but in the rare cases we've done so, it's been to offer best practices and useful tips to all of our clients and prospective clients.

One such company that we've had the good fortune to work with over the years is Arbor Networks, an organization that not only understands the value of PR, but also the impact that social media has on PR as well as communicating with customers and the industry at large.

Specifically, Arbor is an example of a company that has taken blogging to the ultimate social media tipping point: its blog has become a go-to resource for reporters, customers, and industry watchers who are looking for updates on the latest Internet threats. This came into play just this month when the country of Georgia was under both physical attack and cyberattack - an attack into which Arbor Networks' researcher Dr. Jose Nazario had a crucial vantage point. It was due to Jose's unique insight into the attacks as well as his style of sharing that information on Arbor's blog that continues to draw media attention, propelling Jose's reputation as an industry expert and resource.

Given Jose's success as a technical blogger, we want to share his personal tips on corporate blogging for technical writers. I've pulled out a few of his tips here:

• Do show a lot of enthusiasm for what you enjoy about your job
• Do use the blog to highlight your teams work, the product, and its success
• Do use the blog to highlight interesting uses of the product or service
• Do write about what you love, it shows
• Dont reveal customers unless specifically authorized to do so
• Dont badmouth your competition

For marketing people

• Do let your people speak with their own voice
• Do let your team be enthusiastic about the products and services they're building
• Don't edit more than you need to; invest in some good writing help if you need it, but keep their voice their own
• Don't force them to write on certain subjects, let them blog on what they love

His tips are worth following for successful blogging, especially for technical audiences. Now go on, blog away!

And let us know if you have any other tips to add to Jose's.  I'm sure he'd love to hear them.

Don't get Twitter? Don't get Mad

One of the joys of my life is the terrific AMC show "Mad Men". For those of you unfamiliar with it, it follows an advertising agency, Sterling Cooper, during the early 1960s. The show debuted last summer to stellar reviews and a cult audience (that's a nice way of saying small). It is now four shows into its second season and the audience and cult is growing. So much that a few fans took to Twitter earlier this week in the guise of the show's characters including the show's anti-hero Don Draper. Eager fans -- soon more than 1000 -- immediately began following them and interacting with them. You would think that AMC would be thrilled with a groundswell of involvement and support for their show. Wrong. They claimed the Twitter accounts violated their intellectual property and demanded the accounts be shut down. Adrants has a the story here.

For those of you interested in learning how Don is feeling after his car crash Sunday night or wondering about Peggy's home life, I have great news. The smart people at AMC's Web marketing firm convinced them otherwise.

I am very surprised at how unsavvy AMC was here. They are wonderfully creative in promoting the show such as taking out 16 pages in the June 23 issue of Advertising Age magazine to recreate what the magazine was like in 1962 including coverage of Sterling Cooper. I think this incident will be used as a lesson for companies of the power of Twitter and the danger of not understanding it.

The Elite Eight

It's the home stretch of the PR Week blog competition, and we're still standing along with seven other excellent opponents. Our current match-up is with Intake, a blog with a unique focus on internal communications from the folks at Insidedge.

Given the competition from the original field of 32, we're grateful to have made it this far. We have you, the readers of our blog, to thank for that. We'd love your continued support, so please go here to vote for us. Look for our match-up in the top left voting widget. And thank you again!

Twitter, FriendFeed and political convention season

I'm dragging. I'll admit, I love the Olympics and the broadcasts until midnight are killing me. I thought last night how I'm happy they're almost done, until I quickly realized that I'll get no respite next week or the week after.  Presidential convention season starts and the prime time broadcasts will be packed.

But the season will be different for me this time around. My information consumption will go far beyond the networks' broadcasts, NPR and the like. I'm looking forward the effect that Twitter and FriendFeed will have. Many will remember the drama at last March's South by Southwest Interactive caused by the Twitter-induced audience revolt during the keynote session led by Sarah Lacy of BusinessWeek. This became a bigger story than what was happening on stage. Could Twitter (and other microsharing tools) have the same effect at the Democratic or Republican National Conventions?

I'm seeing some interesting evidence that suggests that it will.

1. In the last couple of days, I've seen a few people I follow on Twitter mention how they are going to the convention. This suggest to me that there will be delegates on the floor twittering during the events. You can follow these conversations on Twemes or Twitter search engine, searching by the tags #DNC08 and #RNC08.
2. C-SPAN has a very advanced "Convention Hub" on its web site. In addition to providing a one-stop video archive of candidates' speeches, it is aggregating tweets from anyone that uses the tags above, as well as bloggers at the national and state levels. It also looks like C-SPAN will be using Qik to capture streaming video from the halls. It is very impressive.
3. NPR's social media guy Andy Carvin has set up "rooms" in FriendFeed that are pulling in blog posts, Tweets and other pieces of the conversation through social media in one place. This is for the real political and convention junkie that has all their time and attention focused on the events.

The most interesting aspect to this is how the media is using these tools and exposing the conversation coming from them to their audiences. They are democratizing coverage in the process, but what will be interesting to see is if traditional journalists and policial bloggers pick-up on dynamics of the conversation and work this into their stories and reports. For example, if the rumors are true that McCain will select Joe Lieberman as his running mate, will there be a Twitter-induced revolt on the RNC convention floor?

It's a Wonderful Career (With Apologies to Frank Capra)

George Bailey woke up not to his alarm, but to the persistent beeping of his cell phone.  Mary was already up and downstairs, so he reluctantly rolled out of bed and found the offending phone.   It was a text message from ZuZu.

Can’t make it home this weekend.  Sorry, Dad.  Luv 2 Mom. Z

College kids.

George checked his blackberry, but there surprisingly was nothing new except for some spam. Ever since he was able to turn the Building and Loan over to Mary to co-run with Uncle Billy, he was really enjoying his new career as an A-list Travel Blogger. It was all he had ever dreamed about – excuses to visit exotic places, usually as part of paid junkets, and all he had to do was keep his blog fresh and interesting, offering other wanderlust people like himself tips and advice on where to go and how to make the most of it. His sponsors were advertising regularly. And he got to work from home, in his wonderful old house whose mortgage finally was paid off.

Something seemed odd this morning, though, and George recalled how the day before had ended. He had really lost his temper after receiving yet another bad pitch from a PR person. It wasn’t one of the PR people he worked with frequently, but their lack of understanding of his blog and what he needed really was the last straw. He had told Mary, "I've had it. I wish I didn’t have to deal with PR people at all. Their whole business is obsolete. They should just all go away."

Now as he logged onto his computer, he braced for the flurry of emails, pitches, requests for meetings, press releases from new resorts, invitations to openings of new hotels or cruise ships. It usually took him a good hour and two cups of coffee to get through the results of the night before. It was light this morning. No invitations at all. There were a couple of what he guessed were releases, but they read like marketing brochures and were very very long. Didn’t get to the point at all, so he gave up reading. He had sent out some requests for interviews with the heads of two new resorts in the Caribbean that he felt would be hot this winter season and, surprisingly, there were no responses. Usually he just had to blink and someone would set up the meeting for him and, often, even fly him down for it so he could do a tour as well as meet the executives.

He checked his Facebook account, thinking maybe everyone had listened to his pleas and started using FB as a way to communicate with him so he could truly connect with the people he trusted and considered FB friends.  There were just some new photos of his grandchildren posted by his eldest, Tommy. No new messages.

Oh, well, on to the blog. Yesterday’s post about the new Four Seasons that opened in Florence should have sparked some comments. Only a couple and one was from Mr. Gower.  Finally retired, the former pharmacist is visiting Florence right now and said he went to the Four Seasons to check it out after reading George’s post. That’s great. But usually he’d expect anywhere from 10-25 comments. Quiet morning.

Mary called and said business was light at the Building and Loan today. She was hoping their quarterly earnings report would have generated some interest from the media, but no one called into the audio conference and there were no follow-up calls from media.

George had promised to meet Mary for lunch so he walked into town and ran into his brother Harry, now the editor of the Bedford Falls Times. Harry asked George if he had heard anything about old man Potter deciding to redo his entire board of directors before he finally retired. Harry said his reporters had been calling Potter’s company all day, but were getting stonewalled. "The only thing Potter’s assistant would tell us is to check their website," he told George. "The website doesn’t help us. We need an interview with Potter or some company spokesperson, but no one is even returning our calls." Harry had to run, as he was holding page one of the afternoon edition for the Potter story and he was going to have to scramble to fill it if he couldn’t get the content he needed.

George pondered these strange happenings while waiting for Mary at Martini’s Bar and Grille. He was surprised when he looked up and saw Clarence sitting across from him.

"Howdy, George," Clarence said. "You’ve been given a great gift today -- a chance to find out what the world would be like without PR people. It’s what you asked for, remember?" George started thinking about the strangeness of the day and the drastically reduced communication, the odd long and boring press releases, the stonewalling of Harry, the lack of interest in the Building and Loan’s earnings. He understood now. The missing piece was PR people to make those things happen or at least work more smoothly. They WERE missing and it just didn’t feel right.

"Take me back, Clarence," George said. "I want to communicate again."

See You in September?

As we move into mid August, the inevitable question of whether it's a good or bad time to make an important announcement comes up.  Historically, the approach has been to conduct business as usual through the second week of month, but to then defer anything important until after Labor Day.  The thinking was always, who's going to be around to read it?  Won't everyone that matters be on vacation? 

The question is still a good one to ask, but the answer is not as clear as it used to be.  Why?  Well first, there is the fact that the news today, particularly about technology product and services, is broken online.  The print versions of the publications, which have become frightfully thin, reserve what little space they do have to cover news for only the most important announcements from the major vendors.  Yet, for a long time many clients continued to view coverage in the printed product as having more value.  Somehow being able to hold it your hand conveyed an extra degree of gravitas.  Hey, I'm still a fan of the printed product.  I like to spread my newspaper on the table and scan the headlines.  I enjoy flipping through magazines on the plane, on the beach or in a hammock.  But the idea that the story is somehow intrinsically better because it's in hard copy just doesn't ring so true anymore.    

We operate in a 24/7 always on world.  We're always connected.  Even when we're on vacation.  Who truly disconnects any more?  Our mobile devices ensure we're always just a ring tone, buzz, vibration or tap from the latest news that matters to us.  Through alerts, RSS feeds, Twitter tagging and various forms of social media we keep abreast of the latest developments. 

And to top it off, online stories live forever and deliver long tail value.  More people will find them.  And once they appear online, think how many people you can connect to a story you think is important through email, blogging, posting it on forums or in your social networks?  It's beyond orders of magnitude greater than what you can be done with the hard copy. 

So the next time you weigh the pros and cons of making an announcement during this time of the year don't assume that nobody will be around to read about it.

The PR Paper Chase

One of the recent stories from the storage space was Asigra suing ROBObak for libel. The case stems from two press releases ROBObak issued recently. What interests me about this case is that ROBObak's PR firm was named. I only know about this case from some stories in the storage trade pubs, and do not know anyone at the agency or at the two companies.

The case is a reminder of what a PR agency person needs to think about when anything with their name attached goes public. This is especially true  with social media and more agency PR people representing clients in public online forums such as blog comments, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

In light of this case, here are some of the principles that I think PR people need to abide by:

1. First off, dust off the old Comm Law 101 books and make sure you know what to worry about. Libel is written defamation and slander is spoken. And there are three get out of jail free rules that make speech not equal defamation: Truth (the Yankees are not in first place), privilege (around government/judicial issues) and fair comment (ie: I believe the Yankees do not have the pitching this year to make the playoffs.)
2. Second, your name (and if you are at an agency then your agency's name) are on those press releases. No agency person can hide behind the "well, my client told me to do it" excuse, and internal PR cannot blindly follow what product marketing says. A communications professional has to understand all of the consequences of a pitch. And a person without a rock solid belief in what you are pitching is little more than a hired megaphone. That belief in your product/client logically means that you will think every consequence of public communication through thoroughly.
3. Indemnity clauses are your friends. Even with taking proper caution, PR agencies have to rely on the information given to them by their clients. If that data is flawed, there is only so much an agency can do. That is why personal/professional liability clauses should be part of any agency/client contract relationship.
4. Get everything in writing. If you have concern, have it in writing. And if you really feel passionately enough about it, ask to keep your name off it. It may raise an issue with the client, but we live on our reputation.
5. On the client-side, you should expect that your agency team knows the nuances of libel and slander and can counsel you when to be cautious. 

What do you think?  Is there anything else that should be added to this list?

Brave New World of Communications; You're In or You're Out

We're pleased to share with you the first of an ongoing series of guest columns Lois is writing for O'Dwyer PR.  This was published on August 7.

It must have been extremely odd for the live actors of early radio and TV broadcasts when very few people had radios or TVs.  It was like putting on a play for an empty theater.  Unless they were performing before a studio audience, they would have no idea if they were playing to a handful of people or to no one at all.

This is where we all are venturing these days in the wacky and wonderful world of social media. “You need to be part of the conversation” is a refrain you will hear from all social media consultants.  We have used the phrase ourselves when educating our clients about how the world of communications has changed so dramatically in recent years. 

But the big questions are: what conversations? With whom are you conversing? Where are the conversations taking place? And, most importantly, is anyone listening when you do converse?

When I began doing PR in the mid-80s when hair bands reigned and shoulder pads were huge, our tools to “get the message out” were phones, voice mail, snail mail, faxes and live tours or press conferences (if it was really big news). 

Over the last 20+ years, the fashions of communications have changed more gradually until about six months ago, when social media truly exploded (in my humble opinion).  That’s when the impact of blogs was documentable.

The credentialed journalists building strong blog presence contributed tremendously to this shift.  The implosion of the print publications, particularly in the technology industry, shifted into high gear during this period, pouring many great writers into the blogosphere where they quickly found work writing for an existing blog or beginning their own. 

Email is omnipresent and continues to be tough to manage.  Snail mail is almost prehistoric (in some ways it grabs attention, as it is so unusual to receive an invitation on paper these days.) Instant Messaging is in full force, with most people being bilingual (AIM, YahooIM, etc.) And Facebook is a site for grownups too, alongside LinkedIn and MySpace (for professionals much younger and more daring than me.) 

Adding Twitter to the mix means you can have micro-blogging conversations with hundreds of people at the same time all day and night long.

So just like the adventurer who decides to climb Mt. Everest, the business professional venturing into this scary new territory of social media needs expert help.  They need to find the right Sherpas to summit successfully, safely and cost effectively.

So here’s our" Social Media Sherpa’s Guide to Becoming Part of the Conversation."  Taking a page out of pop culture magazines, we’ll take the usual components of a communications program and then suggest what tool is “in” today, was in “five minutes ago” and is just plain “out.”  [Click on the "full screen" arrow in the top right hand corner of the widget below.]

The Presidential Digital Divide Widens

Barack Obama and his campaign people have been sending me emails daily for a while now, keeping me informed of his movements and positions and asking me to donate. Now I learned through the blogosphere that I can be informed of his vice presidential running mate decision over email -- yet another indication of the enormous difference between the two presidential candidates, as well as the growth and importance of social media today. And if you're not an email person, you can sign up to have this message texted to your cell phone the second the announcement is made. Marshall Kirkpatrick on his ReadWriteWeb blog commented on what a momentous shift this represents in political communications.

"We expect that if many people do learn about the selection by SMS first, it will likely be an emotional moment that helps advance Obama's mindshare at the very least. Nothing is as immediate as SMS and we think it's a wise move politically to spend political capital like this, in a nod to the new generation of communicators."

He contrasts it with John McCain, whom he says doesn't even know how to use a computer. [Who knows? Maybe McCain will revel in his "old school" back-to-basics style and announce his choice via smoke signals.]

And Kirkpatrick speculates whether the media and bloggers will break the story before it is texted and emailed to the faithful. It certainly is going to put a lot of pressure on the traditional media. If the story is delivered directly to their audiences by the candidate without them, what exactly is their role in reporting on this election, after all?

It evokes the struggle newspapers in particular are having right now with the rapid shift to online advertising and internet-based communication directly with consumers and customers. The Philadelphia Inquirer -- perhaps McCain-like -- recently announced through an internal memo from their managing editor that they are changing their blog policy and publishing certain stories online only after they appeared in their print edition. As reported in The Editors' Weblog,

"In a memo to his staff Mike Leary, Philadelphia Inquirer's managing editor, announced that the paper would now publish "signature investigative reporting, enterprise, trend stories, news features, and reviews" online only after they have been published in print, but that the paper wouldn't stop publishing immediate breaking news online.

Bloggers may be the ones who have to adapt the most to the new policy, since they may work on content that may 'end up as subjects of stories or columns in print first,' according to the memo. "

Some bloggers took umbrage with this approach, declaring it backward and a lame approach to saving a print medium that essentially is dead. It clearly is trying to differentiate the print publication from the online offering, which is understandable. I know many of our clients still prefer to appear in the print version of a publication rather than just in the online version. It still carries more weight, even if circulation and page numbers are down. As a former Philadelphian who grew up with the Inquirer and its former afternoon rival, the Philadelphia Bulletin, I hope it is an attempt to make sure that the print version stories are thoroughly fact checked and accurate. Even the best journalists we know who write for publication blogs acknowledge that the speed of posts requires a different kind of due diligence than the print editions demand. This is one reason they are willing to post updated versions if someone finds an error and points it out to them.

But, alas, it may just be a ham-handed attempt to stem the tide of online publishing and blogging. And if that is the case, then Mike Leary is like the little boy trying to plug the hole in the dike with his finger. It just isn't possible to go back to the days when print ruled. Print certainly is a more comfortable medium for reading longer articles and it's much easier still to view accompanying photos and graphics in the print publication than online. But online and blogs are growing daily in importance and use and nothing is going to reverse this trend.

I will be interested to watch how this experiment works for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wondering when they will have to admit defeat. 

Meanwhile, though, I wonder why Obama is only using email and text to announce his VP candidate and isn't also including Twitter. Thoughts?

UPDATE: A long-time friend and business associate, Angelo Santinelli, sent a comment to this post to me via e-mail that is too good not to share.

Now, about your blog.  I am in charge of the McCain smoke signal core and would like to know if you would like your signal in analog or digital?  Since when does the leader of the nation, or any company for that matter, need to be technology savvy?  Not sure it's a necessary skill.  The Chinese athletes probably have a less technical approach to their training and they seem to be cleaning up pretty well.  Come on Lois, that was a cheap shot.  After all, all the president needs to know about technology is this - black button calls your secretary, red button launches nuclear missiles.