twoolf, Author at Woolf Media & Marketing

October 19, 2009

Understanding the New Consumer

Consumers are turning into Ants, not Grasshoppers

If you haven’t discovered TED Talks, you are missing a great source of inspirational thinking. TED, which stands for Technology, Education, Design, plays host to some awesome pundits and thinkers who have some really insightful stuff to share.

This week, I have been working on a press release for a client, Market Rates Insight, a company that provides competitive rate research to banks and credit unions. Their latest research report reveals that consumers are looking to banks for security; trusting their money to an FDIC-insured institution over other options that may offer higher yields. Even though banks are paying less than mutual funds or stocks, consumers are seeking security for their money. This is part of a shift in consumerism where people are planning for the future rather than spending in the present.

That’s why I found the recent TED Talks recent presentation by John Gerzema so interesting. Gerzema is co-author of The Brand Bubble, a new book that advocates change as the best strategy for brand management in today’s market, and is Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam. If you watch the video, you see that his perception is that consumers have returned to an old reality. They are no longer leveraging their future, and the future of their children. The economic downturn has transformed the grasshoppers into ants that are saving for the future.

Consumers are saving more now. Spending in Q4 dropped 3.7 percent, the lowest in 62 years. Gerzema shares some interesting change indicators. More molars need filling because stress is causing people to grind their teeth. Gun sales are up 25 percent since January according to the FBI. The Cornell Institute reports that vasectomies are up 48 percent. And shark attacks are at the lowest level since 2003 because no one is at the beach.

So what Gerzema is seeing (or hoping for) is that by restricting demand, consumers can control their consumption and be more discriminating. As Gerzema says,

“By restricting their demand, consumers can actually align their values with their spending and align capitalism to not just be about more, but to be about better…”

Gerzema expands this theme, talking about people downscaling their consumption patterns and adjusting purchases to take advantage of reduced costs. Consumers also are demanding more empathy and social responsibility from companies. And they are looking for “durable living,” investing for the long haul. And finally, he points to the “return to the fold” phenomena, where consumers look to their peers to endorse brands and validate brand decisions.

And much of this ties back to social media. People are looking to share their values and empathy through social media outlets, and they are looking for validation of their decisions and values. They are using the Internet more than ever to connect with like-minded people and research their purchases and support this new socially responsible lifestyle. If marketers are going to engage with these consumers, they need to be sensitive to this shift in perception and be prepared to engage with authenticity, empathy, and longevity. The new consumer is all about cooperative consumerism, and the smart marketing professionals will become part of the cooperative.

October 15, 2009

No Matter What Story You Have to Tell, It’s About People

Good storytelling requires empathy - being able to walk a mile in her shoes

From the earliest days in my professional career as a trade journalist through my years in public relations and marketing, I have learned that the crux of good communication is building empathy through good storytelling. You need to develop a connection with your audience and understand what they will be interested in – what they need to know. You need to have empathy, project yourself into the situation of your reader. In short, you have to understand what it feels like to walk a mile in their shoes.

This is why good PR is about good storytelling. You are talking to people about issues that concern people. Whether you are talking about the economy or the latest computer product, it all ties back to how it affects people.

I have been doing a lot of press briefings lately with senior executives who seem to have trouble making that empathetic connection with their audience. They are so busy trying to hammer their message home and justify features, benefits, and ROI that they forget they are talking to people. They forget that the reporter has to come away with something to report, which means the executive interviewee should be making an empathetic connection on two levels; a) understanding the writer’s audience and what they need to know, and b) understanding the reporter’s needs and what it takes for him to write an interesting story.

So I want to share an excerpt from a presentation by Robert Deigh, author of “How Come No One Knows About Us? The Ultimate Public Relations Guide: Tactics Anyone Can Use to Win High Visibility.” If you can make the personal connection by telling a compelling story that is about people, and you will have delivered your message. How do you build empathy with your audience? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

October 13, 2009

Look, Up in the Sky – The Air Force Is Piloting Its Own Social Media Strategy

I am always scanning the Web for informational tidbits, and one blogger I have been following is Jeff Cole of JJC Communications LLC, who posts his PR101 observations every Monday. Last week’s blog particularly caught by eye, “PR 101 – Lesson 31 – Social Media Is Everywhere – Even Places I Didn’t Expect To Find It.” In this installment, Jeff recounts what he uncovered about how the Air Force is harnessing social media to facilitate coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

How progressive! The military embracing an open forum like blogging! Of course, “open” is a relative term when you talk to the government.

“There has been a major debate in the Air Force over social media. There was an “old-school mentality” over its use, [U.S. Air Force Captain David Faggard, Chief, Public Affairs for the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing] said. From talking to Faggard and reading about the Air Force’s social media efforts, I think the senior commanders are having had the same debate many C-suite executives are having. The Air Force commanders are in their late 40s and 50s. They grew up reading newspapers and watching television news. In their worldview, those mediums still dominate. They are not sure about social media, what it is, and what it can do.”

As Cole notes, bloggers have become field reporters like Ernie Pile in World War II. And why not, Twitter is playing a major role all over the world any time a disaster or political upheaval strikes. When traditional communications channels close, the Web is still there with fresh information. And I noted a story on CNN today that military recruiters have met their goals this year for the first time since the draft was discontinued in 1973. The report said it may be largely due to the economic downturn, but it also has to be due to the fact that the military is now hipper than ever with pages on Facebook and channels on YouTube.

Of course, the U.S. military is still erring on the side of caution, and there isn’t a consistent policy. There is still a huge concern about data leakage. The U.S. Marines banned use of Twitter, MySpace and Facebook from its networks as a security risk – see the article in Wired. Letting the social media genie out of the bottle clearly can have some disastrous side effects as well, but the same concerns are true in any corporation.

I have been working on a project for a client, FaceTime Communications, which just shipped a new unified security appliance that monitors and records Web 2.0 traffic to prevent data leaks and promote compliance. Theoretically, with the right policies in place, it prevents Facebook data leaks such as status posts like “Our patrol attacked this well-protected village today,” or a LinkedIn query such as “We are working on a multi-million dollar deal with Acme and I need information…” As Faggard notes:

“In my personal opinion, the military is still trying to figure it out… Of course, anyone talking to a blogger, or writing a blog, cannot violate standard Air Force rules. You cannot talk about war plans for instance or about operational plans.”

But like the Internet, the blogosphere cannot be controlled, which is what scares both the military and corporate leadership. However, they can control the message by being proactive, and embracing the social medium that will help them deliver the message (with apologies to Marshall McLuhan). This means attacking the problem on three fronts:

Taking a proactive approach and embracing social media, as the Air Force is clearly doing with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube;
Using a reactive approach where you are using social media tools to track the conversation (both good and bad) on the Web – check out the Air Force’s “Counter Blogging” strategy and their Web, Posting Response Assessment; and
Applying strict policies and procedures, bulletproof security technology, and common sense to prevent leaks of sensitive information.

The U.S. military has been fighting its battles in the public press and in the trenches for as long as we can remember. Social media is too powerful a tool for them to ignore, and could be the most effective weapon in their PR arsenal once they figure out how to use it effectively.

October 11, 2009

Why Are Marketers Ignoring Social Feedback?

Marketers are stumbling blindly when social media can give them direction.

We all know the potential social networking offers to connect with customers and prospects. Social networks offer an unprecedented ability to connect with people you care about in a way that is meaningful and insightful. Yet a recent study by PRWeek and communications agency MS&L shows that most marketers are ignoring their followers:

Almost 70 percent of marketers say they never made a change to a product or a marketing campaign based on consumer feedback from social media sites.
Another 43 percent say that a lack of knowledge and expertise prevents them from using social media as part of their marketing programs.
And 39 percent say they are not convinced of the value or ROI from social networking.

By way of counterpoint, let me share the following from the first chapter of Paul Gillin’s book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing:

“Social media challenges nearly every assumption about how businesses should communicate with their constituencies. The most important change to understand and to accept is that one of those constituencies now have the capacity to talk – to each other and to the businesses they have to patronize. In the past, those conversations were limited to groups of at most a few hundred people. Today, they are global and may include millions of voices.”

The social media revolution will change marketing, whether marketers choose to embrace it or not. The real challenge is that most marketers aren’t used to embracing dialogue. They would rather show how good they are as marketers by telling you what people want. Think of the cast of Mad Men sitting around brainstorming the latest advertising campaign. Or I can recall any one of countless PR strategy meetings where the PR team and the client sit around and imagine what will appeal to their target audience.

Why not just ask them? Social media lets you do that.

Some marketers seem to feel there is too much risk in embracing social media. The risk is they will be rejected, that their customers will tell them they are wrong. Isn’t that the point?

As Einstein once said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” Social media is a new concept that requires all of us to abandon old thinking. Embrace the new. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

October 9, 2009

The Skeleton of a Crisis Communications Plan

I wanted to expand on a recent blog post about creating a crisis communications plan. There are many details you have to worry about when building out an effective crisis plan, but the framework for an effective crisis communications blueprint is the same, no matter what your market. Here are some of the basics you should keep in mind:

Understand how to define a crisis. A communications crisis is any event that could adversely affect your organization’s reputation, integrity, brand, and ultimately your business. Remember that to be considered a crisis, there has to be a victim; someone who is directly affected and harmed, whether that person is a customer, employee, stockholder, or some other entity such as a special interest group, the community or the environment.
Know the common elements of a crisis. Every crisis is a surprise. If you can see the train wreck coming then you should be able to prepare and control the message, so there is no crisis. There also needs to be an imminent threat; an element of danger or risk to employees, customers, the environment, somebody. And there needs to be a need for a short response time.
Set goals to handle the crisis in advance. Of course, our primary goal is to protect the reputation of the organization. Beyond that you need to assess additional goals, whether it is to protect employees and their families, serve the needs of the public, protect key stakeholders, or some combination of multiple goals. You need to be clear about your objectives before you can formulate an effective game plan.
Form a crisis team. Have your crisis management team (not necessarily your spokespersons) tapped in advance and create a master call sheet and a plan to make sure you can rally the troops quickly.
Prepare your spokespersons. Once you have your goals and your messaging, you can prepare your spokespersons. Effective preparation extends beyond the immediate crisis. Most companies make sure their corporate spokespersons go through intense media training so they know how to deal effectively with the press in the event of a crisis. Practice promotes perfection and it keeps your team cool and controlled under pressure.
Have background material ready. Make sure your fact sheets and executive biographies are up to date, and you have information you can hand out to the press to help them get their facts straight.
Manage the crisis. This includes managing uncertainty first through quick and definitive outreach to all the parties affected, including the press. Then you can respond and resolve the situation, including setting compensation and memorializing the event so the victims can feel they have been honored and their needs met.
Close the books. During the crisis you should maintain a communications log of all calls and e-mail communications with reporters. When the smoke clears, go back and make sure you have successfully closed each open issue in the log. Also be sure to perform a post-crisis analysis – Why did the crisis occur? Could it have been prevented? Was it handled properly? How did the spokespersons do? What would you do differently next time? Take this information and refine your plan to prepare for the next crisis.

These are just some of the myriad of things to consider when developing your crisis communications strategy. And there’s lots of great material available online to help you refine your crisis plan. One of the most useful I found was a written by Sandra K Lawson Freeo at Newsplace.org. The PRSA and other groups have additional ideas. We’ll be fleshing out components of the crisis communications plan in future posts but in the meantime, be prepared!

October 8, 2009

10 Tips on How NOT to Build You Social Media Empire

One of my clients, NETSHARE, is an expert in executive career management, and the company has introduced me to some of the leading experts in career transition and executive job search. One of my favorites is Randy Block, a career transition coach and consultant, who hosts NETSHARE’s Ask the Coach member support calls as well as their San Francisco regional meetings for executive job seekers. Randy recently shared some advice on social media as it relates to job search and posted it on The Obvious Expert. The result is an article outlining 10 (okay, 9) things you should NOT do in social media marketing. I am sure you will find that these points are enlightening as to what NOT to do:

1. Don’t prepare. Jump into your social media marketing without a plan. Don’t consider the objectives you want to realize or what your competitors are doing in their efforts on blogs.
2. Be first on the block – Be the first in line to try new platforms and technologies before you know if they will be effective or a waste of time.
3. Control the interview – Don’t let go or listen but dominate the conversation so it’s all about you and your needs.
4. Spill everything – Share your innermost thoughts and secrets online and hold nothing back because you want the world to see the “real” you, right?
5. Look everywhere but in the eye – There is an online equivalent of not looking the party in the eye. Don’t engage with your audience in a direct and personable (not personal) way
6. Trash your boss – Always be negative about your boss and the competition because that says so much about you.
7. When in doubt, bluff – No one checks, right? So make stuff up because the Internet doesn’t promote transparency; how will they find the truth?
8. Show desperation – Make it clear to your online followers that you are desperate for their business because it will make you so much more attractive.
9. Take notes throughout the interview – Admittedly, this one doesn’t translate well from career coaching, but the point is to pay attention to the other party, not your own agenda.
10. Don’t ask questions – As with item 3, assume this is a one-way conversation and that you know more than the other guy, so don’t ask for advice or insight.

I assume you get it. If you look at the common theme here, it’s about dialogue, and working with other social media contacts to demonstrate your value, your brand, and your insight, and to invite them to share their value, their brand, and their insights. Social media is about exchange – you show me yours and I’ll show you mine, but it’s not about showing off.

Many thanks to Randy for his insight

October 5, 2009

Crisis Communications Means Hope for the Best but Prepare for the Worst

I have been working on a project lately for a financial services client; a crisis communications plan designed to help them deal with a variety of public problems. We developed scenarios to cover financial meltdown, executive malfeasance, data loss or theft, robbery, fire, flood, pestilence, and a plague of locusts. The client was pleased – “Very thorough” was the response – but in the process of developing the crisis plan I recalled a number of points I had forgotten about crisis management.

The first revelation was that in order for there to be a crisis, you have to have a victim. This seems obvious, but I have known a number of chief executives who look at an internal product failure or a bad fiscal quarter and decide it’s a crisis that needs addressing. Unless the public, or employees, or stockholders are going to be affected (and usually in a dramatic way), there is no crisis.

I also discovered that NOT having a crisis communications plan in place can be expensive. You can’t just think in terms of losses in revenue, reputation, or brand equity. The premiums for E&O insurance are higher if you don’t have a crisis plan waiting in the wings. After all, statistics show that every organization will encounter a public crisis sometime in the next five years.

It’s also crucial that you not only identify corporate spokespersons in advance, you need to train them! CEOs think that talking to the press is the same as schmoozing a venture capitalist or addressing the board of directors. They are wrong! Crisis communications requires a level of understand and finesse that is unlike any other type of PR. If you have doubts, go to YouTube and look up any CEO dealing with a company crisis. If they have prepared, it shows.

What’s wrong with this picture? Would you trust this man with your crisis message?

The real trick in crisis communications is being responsible and admitting there is a problem without pointing fingers or assigning culpability. This is a fine line that can be very hard to walk. If you speak frankly and address concerns quickly about what you know, and stay within your area of responsibility, you can avoid laying blame or making statements that you will have to recant later.

Above all, crisis communications calls for authenticity It’s not just about saving the company’s reputation or shoring up stock price. It’s about being a stand-up corporate citizen that cares about customers, employees, or the planet – whoever has been affected by the company’s error.

So if you haven’t revisited your crisis strategy lately, it’s time. Make sure you have assigned your crisis team, refreshed your contact list, and trained your spokespersons. There’s nothing worse than getting caught unprepared. And when you are caught unwares, repairing the damage to your reputation and your brand, and rebuilding your sales could take more time than you can afford to invest.

October 3, 2009

Is Social Media Training Right for You?

Have you noticed how many social media experts have emerged in the last two years? It seems as though anyone with a background in PR or communications has become a social media whizz kid. If you have been working in marketing communications long enough, integrating new channels like Facebook and Twitter into your current marketing strategy is mostly common sense. As with any communications program, the objective is to deliver the right message to the right audience in the right way.

This is why I find it increasingly fascinating that more and more social media universities have been springing up. I have sat through a number of webinars, offering great insight and revelations as to how to harness social media for wealth and fame, only to come away scratching my head, waiting for the big revelation. Many of those offering social media nirvana were selling Ponzi schemes in another life. Social media snake oil seems to run rampant on the Web. However, there are a number of respected professionals like Paul Gillen and David Meerman Scott who do understand how to leverage social media for effective marketing and offer sound thinking with minimal hype.

So how do you decide of social media training is going to be beneficial? Social marketer Larry Brauner has a seven-question litmus test to determine if you will get what you need from a social media training program. I want to share them here for your consideration:

What are your needs and expectations? What are you really looking for from social media? Is it about building your business, changing careers, making money? If you are clear about what you are looking to accomplish you will be better able to find the right program.
Does the course match your needs? Once you understand your objectives, you can assess whether the curriculum is on target for you.
Does the course justify the cost in time and money? Assess what kind of return you are looking for from social media and invest accordingly. And don’t expect a fast return. Any course that promises overnight success is snake oil.
Do you qualify for the program? Make an honest assessment of your social media skill set, including your web skills and your strategy. Are you prepared to follow through on your social media plan?
Are you sufficiently motivated? Effective social media programs are long-term, and require an ongoing commitment. If you are ready to run the marathon and make the commitment required to yield a return, then you may be ready. Consider the commitment carefully before moving ahead with a social marketing program.
How qualified are the instructors? This is where you need to apply the sniff test – if the training program smells a little off, it probably is. Make sure the instructors can walk the walk as well as talk the talk, and get references.
Can you afford to lose your investment? If the course costs more than you can afford to lose, then don’t do it. Social media is not a magic bullet and will not yield instant returns that will cover your costs.

September 29, 2009

You Can Lead The Horse to Twitter, But Can You Make Him Buy?

I have been working on a social media strategy for one of my business-to-business clients. We have been going back and forth for some time on the real value of social media, and whether or not applying limited available resources to a social media campaign is going to pay off in the long run. One of the biggest challenges in PR and social media is measuring results. Sure, you can track the number of article clips, or the number of followers you have on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook, but is measuring quantity of any real value? My client, in fact any client, is interested in leads, not followers.

So how do you turn your social network into prospects? No one seems to have an easy answer here. Yesterday, I saw the most recent blog post from Marc Hausman, The Strategic Guy at Strategic Communications Group, talking about his latest social media initiative. The client was pleased with the increase in repeat traffic, but the program was a failure:

“You’d think we would be hitting high fives and chest bumps. There is a problem though. While important, awareness and positioning are not our benchmarks. It’s lead generation and in this area we have fallen painfully short.”

As I tell my clients, social media is part of a “long tail” strategy whereby you have to continue to invest in social media to get a return. But you need a solid conversion mechanism. In the case of Marc Hausman, he’s betting on a webinar. I’ve been trying to come up with alternate strategies for my clients, but converting followers into believers seems to be hard to do, especially in the B2B market.

I recently saw a presentation by Dominique Lahaix, cofounder of eCarin, an interesting online application designed to help you monitor and manage social media conversations and blog content. What he had to say about his service was interesting, but his approach to social media conversion was more interesting. As a B2B marketer, Dominique uses his blog and social media channels to nurture online conversations and develop followers, but then he carries it to a logical conclusion with an actual sales call. Rather than going through multi-tier marketing and qualification strategies, he engages in direct conversation, offers a demo, and makes a face-to-face sales call.

Apparently this approach, while not novel, is highly effective. And given the specialized nature of his service I can understand why.

Finally, I want to point you to a very poignant rant by one of the bloggers I follow, Olivier Blanchard of The BrandBuilder Blog. Olivier is a pragmatist, which is why I like him, and he regularly calls out the Social Media Snake Oil Salesmen. He has a lot to say about what works and what doesn’t in social media, but common sense still counts for a lot. If the strategy smells bad for some reason, or you can’t quite follow the logic of the social media argument, it’s probably because there’s nothing behind the curtain. Beware of the three card monte, and make sure that your social media conversion strategy measures something meaningful, like potential buyers. Gathering a lot of competitive followers, or consultants, or interested kibitzers isn’t going to move the sales needle, and it’s not how you should measure your results.