Protect Your Brand In Social Media

The digital playground that is Social Media… A power shift in the way brands communicate.

The digital playground offers brands a chance to go on the Wild Side. Very few limits. Little filters. An immediate way for an executive or brand manager to connect to millions of people in one mouse click.

• It’s about being social and connecting to friends and like-minded people…Thanks FaceBook and MySpace.
• It’s about inviting others to participate in your brand via two-way communication…Thanks user-generated content sites like YouTube.
• It’s about convenience, access and communicating anytime, anywhere... Thanks Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

For the public relations profession, social media is our golden opportunity to build a great brand by engaging customers and building relationships in ways we never had before.But be careful what you wish for. Social media is also our greatest challenge for maintaining our brand.

In fact, I believe that for most business executives, the greatest source for crisis situations won't be product recalls, strikes, service issues, plant fires or natural disaster... It will be the negative consequences caused by Social Media. Are you prepared?

Before you send your first corporate Tweet or blog entry…

• Decide how your brand will live in social media. Define a personality. Is it educational, edu-tainment, sales-oriented, thought provoking or user generated content promotional.
• Look at your marketing goals and business objectives. Ask yourself what you want to get out of social media, what are your measureable objectives, who is your team and how will social media translate into both opportunity and challenge.
• Anticipate how social media will solve an existing problem, cause a crisis and solve a crisis. Develop sample crisis situations and include the support to defend a position. Get executive and legal buy in and then TRAIN.
• Define the players who will participate in your digital playground and train them how you need them to respond.
• Develop a list of key contacts (stakeholders, media, bloggers) and have them at your disposal to communicate quickly.
• Include social media boundaries in your employee contracts and handbook. Most are outdated thanks to technology. Leave no doubt to what is permitted and when.
• Train all employees – from the chairman down – about the consequences of misguided social media efforts. Libel, slander and lawsuits are just a click away!

By being prepared and actively participating in Social Media, brands can protect themselves in the digital playground.

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PR Is More Than Media Relations

When you sit back and look at the winners of the Silver Anvils, most have a couple of things in common.

1. They had measurable results that demonstrated that their strategies and tactics worked
2. The campaign was exceptionally thorough in its integration
3. The campaign was creative, original and innovative

And it is the last point that I want to quickly discuss. When most people think of PR, they think of sending out news releases and getting press hits. And, often, we see many entries come across that are simple media relations programs. Don't get me wrong, media relations is important, but it is not the sole arrow in the quiver.

To achieve greatness in a campaign, PR practitioners need to "own" the third bullet from above (creative, original, innovative) to break through the clutter while framing an issue as only PR can:

Be creative in your approach to solving a problem.

• When a well-known overnight delivery brand was losing market share because of the perception that they just delivered letters, the PR counselor came up with a creative solution that tied the client's delivery system with a charitable cause by delivering Christmas trees and large boxed gifts to military families whose father/mother was overseas.

Implement original content and ideas that few have done before.

• When a hair care company wanted to raise new awareness of its product line, instead of just going the news release route, they created a campaign that 1) encouraged women to love their hair through seminars, training workshops and online chat sessions, 2) raised awareness with teens about hair care and self esteem (think formative years) through a partnership with the Girl Scouts and 3) pulled back the curtain on "Hollywood hair" to show how anyone can be as glamorous as their favorite celeb.

Innovative strategies and executions go a long way in cementing a brand in the mind of a consumer.

• When a body spray company was debuting its product, they wanted to visually showcase how the brand's promise worked in real life for all to witness. In a "live your life through me" type campaign, targeted consumers got to vote on where to send one person to live the brand experience and then, thanks to a camera on the person, watch him use the body spray, become an instant celeb, party like a rock star and be the most popular guy there. Now, this body spray company uses the same before/after spray approach in a multi-million ad campaign... but the heavy lifting was done through PR!

Lesson learned: To be great, don't fall into the box that says PR is all about media relations. Be creative. Be original. And be innovative. That's what makes the best a Silver Anvil.

Know The Difference Between Strategy and Tactic

As we judge the Silver Anvils, there is often confusion in the entries - and the firms entering them - about the difference between a “strategy” and a “tactic.” For instance, we often see "Distribute XYZ number of news releases per month" as as strategy. Media relations is a tactic, not a strategy. Let's take a quick look.

STRATEGY involves the “big picture” – the overall plan, how the campaign will achieve organizational goals and objectives. It involves deciding who the important publics are and which of them will be the recipients of your messages (i.e., “target audiences”).

Strategic planning determines how the organization will be positioned; how important publics will learn about the organization and how it can help them. It will also create a reason why the audience should believe and support the organization, and it will help develop a consistent message and focus for the organization to uphold.

Each strategy must be considered on its own merits, and must be a viable option to be judged on its own strengths – one that definitely will solve the problem. Any approaches that will not solve the problem independently should be eliminated. If a combination of approaches can solve the problem, consider the combination as a strategic alternative.

TACTICS are activities specifically created and selected to reach specific and measurable objectives. Tactics are the actual ways in which the strategies are executed... such as sending out a news release... to targets that key audiences actually are exposed to. Tactics include:

• ACTION EVENTS: Non-written tactics such as special events, demonstrations, exhibits, parades, community contributions (manpower, talent, advice, money) and other non-verbal activities.
• COMMUNICATIONS TACTICS: Verbal tactics (oral and written) that use words or pictures. These include newsletters, flyers, news releases, brochures, direct mail, advertising, themes, slogans, the Web, social media and other initiatives that use words and language as their basis.

From The Silver Anvils to Your PR Campaign: Lessons To Learn From

As a Silver Anvil judge for PRSA over the last four years, I've seen some very good entries that deserved to win our industry's most prestigious award and ones that made me scratch my head. In both cases, there are things that all public relations practitioners can learn from. Over the course of the next couple of blog entries, I will provide some insight on the good, bad and the ugly.

The first topic of discussion is measurable objectives.

The best campaigns are those that state a clear and defined objective that is accountable through a specific measurement. In my view, measurable objectives address behavioral and attitudinal changes with a target audience to clearly demonstrate that the "needle has moved" from preliminary research indicating a need or opportunity. And those who win the Silver Anvil Award clearly state the above.

For instance, to increase positive awareness of a brand by 20 percent within a core audience is a good defined measure. From a baseline study to a study conducted afterward, data can be collected to demonstrate that an action has occurred because of a specific strategic effort. So too are tier 1 objectives such as increasing share of voice, changing perception levels and increasing brand value or equity. Even a tier 2 objective such as driving traffic to a sales channel, such as Web or call center, is good as long as it can be measured.

Yet, in many, many instances, we see generic objectives that have no stated outcome or goal. For instance, we see "increase overall awareness" come across our desk in nearly 75 percent of all entries. Does that mean 1 percent or 1000 percent and how does it impact a specific need. Same with "increase media coverage." These are not a good objectives because there is no measurement to determine overall effectiveness. And the latter, increase media coverage, is a tactic that leads to a attitudinal objective rather than an objective itself.

Simply put, a good objective is one that can be measured through data that clearly demonstrates change or progress within a target audience. If you can't measure what you're trying to do, then why do it?

In later entries, we'll discuss creativity, research, execution and evaluation.

Rise of the Virtual Marketing Department

As the economy continues to crumble, the trend of the virtual marketing department is increasing.

What is a virtual marketing department? In most cases, it is an outside marketing, PR or advertising agency serving as the internal marketing dept. with a corporate VP or director overseeing their effort. The virtual marketing department has several advantages for any corporation... small or large:

Improved focus: You can put your energy into your organization's core competencies. If you have a marketing department, that also applies to them. You can free them of certain responsibilities—so they can play to their strengths.

Reduced overhead: You'll reduce or avoid the cost of additional office space, computers, vendor relationships and credit—plus compensation, benefits and training costs for the marketing team.

Read the rest by clicking here.

With Tight Economy, More Companies Outsourcing Their Marketing

According to a recent survey, more companies are outsourcing their marketing functions to firms in order to control costs while maximizing results. The survey, in my opinion, is right on the mark as companies figure out that hiring a "virtual marketing department" is not only a wise choice, but an essential one.

Here is the start of the story with a link to it:

Seeking a competitive advantage in a tough economy, companies are devoting a higher percentage of their budgets to marketing, according to the 2008 Business-to-Business Marketing Mix Survey.

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