June 15, 2010 -  The online press release has taken on much more significance than the old school 20th Century version. In the old days (say, 5 -10 years ago), PR agencies and in-house staff cranked out paper press releases and dutifully distributed them via regular mail to slightly overwhelmed, slightly interested reporters.

Man, have things changed – for the better!

Today, PR-educated publicity seekers (you), can not only get your fair share of the publicity-pie, you can now take your info directly to the public.

Reality: If you don’t know what you’re doing in writing and distributing your shiny new press release, you can waste a ton of time and effort.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Solution: Here’s a new, state-of-the-art, no-cost whitepaper:

“Writing Great Online News Releases: How to Release Your News Across the Web to Get the Best Results”.

The whitepaper includes the following essential topics:

• Before you write your release – a list of do’s and don’ts;
• Best practices for every element of your release: the headline, lead paragraph, body, boilerplate, contact info;
• How to optimize your online news release for web searches;
• A list of popular press release topics;
• A final checklist for formatting your release

Download it here.

When:  Thursday, June 17
Where:  Teleconference
Cost:  $99 per registrant

No one needs to tell you that the economy is picking up speed again—with consumers opening up their wallets as they haven’t done in several years. The upshot is that this coming holiday season promises to be a boon … if you can get your product or service in front of product review and gift guide editors now. After all, the early bird gets the media hit when it comes to gift guides—and many outlets are doing their seasonal planning right now. It’s the same for summer wedding gift guides, Valentine’s Day gift guides, Mother’s and Father’s Day gift guides,graduation gift guides and so on.

So what are the new consumer triggers that drive Americans to buy now? What are the new editorial hot buttons that gatekeepers at the nation’s top gift guides require when it comes to products and goods they’ll cover? And how can you get your product or service out in front of them before the competition does? To learn the answers and win a spot for your gift when and where it counts most, join Bulldog Reporter’s PR University for a behind the scenes look at thesecrets of scoring valuable coverage in the nation’s top gift guides—from the very editorial gatekeepers who decide what runs and what doesn’t. They’ll outline what they’re looking for now, this year’s hottest items, the latest consumer buying behaviors and trends—and how public relations can position items for optimal product placement in front of millions of shoppers this promising turnaround year.

What You Will Learn

• The New Consumer Mindset: What cautious consumers and the value-seeking public want now in holiday gifts and products—and from the products coverage they trust
• 2010 & 2011 Editorial Hot Buttons: The gadgets, goods, gear andtop shopping trends editors will be covering this holiday season as the economy gathers steam—and how to emphasize these pegs in your media outreach
• How top holiday gift guides differ in scope and mission—and how to use these insights to get products reviewed in today’s changing media environment
• Early-Bird Techniques: Best ways to pitch embargoed products, negotiate exclusive first looks and manage beta runs months in advance
• Pitching product blogs and websites: How online gift guides differ from their print counterparts—and how to provide multimedia toboost your digital footprint
• Cost-Cutting Tips: Easy ways to get product in the right editor’s hands without wasting time and money on blanket campaigns
• Packaging, pitches and press kits that grabs editors’ attentionevery time
• New Product Protocols: What journalists can (and can’t) receive and how they prefer to receive mailed items and seasonal gifts
• How JPEGs, graphics and four-color artwork can help you edge out the competition for valuable editorial real estate
• Why freelancers could be your back door to coverage … and how to use them as allies when pitching seasonal products to top editors
• How smaller concerns can earn more holiday coverage than corporate giants with deeper pockets (and resources)
• Social Media Update: How these media outlets use social media to source and seek product to cover—plus how you can use tools like Twitter to build relationships with them and even pitch items for them cover
• Advanced Media Relations: How the best PR pros have gained the ear—and trust—of these editorial gatekeepers—and how you can do the same

This seminar is offered as part of Bulldog Reporter’s PR University.  Register Now to make sure you have a spot!

(MediaPost’s MediaDaily News)
ABC May Start Online TV Subs
Social, Mobile Sparking Heavier Use Of Media, Especially TV/Internet
Berwick Upped To Bravo President
B2B Ad Revenues Drop Again in 1Q
Triton Offers Free Apps to Media Companies
NBC Rings AT&T, Gets ‘Dial *’ Tone
Ad Firm TRA Gets Cash Infusion From Intel, WPP
Road Trip: ‘Spin,’ Midas ‘Rock The Highway’

(The Daily Dog)
BP Attempts to Reassure Investors that Gulf Clean-Up Won’t Affect Dividends …
Lawsuits have Hooters’ PR Scrambling to Defend Its Image …
Steve Jobs Defends Apple’s Image as iPhone-Factory Suicides Mount in China …

(from mediabistro.com)
Bids Submitted For Newsweek Sale (NYT)
B-To-B Revs Down But Not As Much As Last Year (Folio:)
20 Young Writers Earn The Envy Of Many Others (NYT)
Nielsen Files For A Possible $1.75 Billion IPO (paidContent)
Step Aside, Brand Loyalty; We’re Loyal To Information Now (Nieman Journalism Lab)
How To Make Over A Magazine For The iPad (AdAge)
Anna Holmes Leaving Editor In Chief Position At Jezebel (Village Voice / Runnin’ Scared)
Ebony Magazine Names Amy DuBois Barnett Editor In Chief (FishbowlNY)
Hearst Acquires Marketing Services Firm iCrossing (minOnline)
Publisher Sara Miller McCune Has Serious Goals For Journalism (LA Times)
Why Journalists Should Learn Computer Programming (PBS / MediaShift)
Mark Bittman Debuts A New Column In Parents Magazine (FishbowlNY)
In May, Lower Ratings For Larry King (NYT / Media Decoder)
ABC’s Jake Tapper Tries To Lure Palin To ‘This Week’ Via Twitter (Yahoo)
Management Changes At Canon Communications (Folio:)

For some, the mix of social media with B2B marketing is a tough one to swallow.  While several business marketers were quick to jump onto web sites, the communications tended to be one-way (not interactive), with many web sites becoming little more than electronic brochures that were cheaper to produce and easier to distribute than their paper predecessors.

But with the ‘web came the promise of interactivity.  And that promise is now starting to mature in the form of social media (or Web 2.0).  But what’s a business to do if it sells, primarily, to other businesses?

Thanks to Brandon Bryce, President & CEO of Large Mouth Communications and an article that recently appeared on the Large Mouth web site entitled “Who’s afraid of the Web 2.0?”

Here is a summary of the five tips Brandon offers B2B marketers when it comes to taking advantage of social media marketing:

1. Remember that not all social media platforms are created equal.  Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook all have their strengths and weaknesses.  Those need to be evaluated against your marketing objectives BEFORE jumping into a social media campaign.

2. Listen before you speak.  Web 2.0 is about interaction and the whole concept of interaction requires reaction to stimulus.  If you’re not paying attention to what your customers are saying to you, you can’t react appropriately and with the proper attention to detail.

3. Understand the difference between meaningful dialogue and SPAM.  There is a line that separates engagement from abuse.  Know where that line is.  Understand how close you can come and don’t dare step over.

4. Get personal – but keep it professional.  Web 2.0 requires a different kind of intimacy with the customer and the brand.  That takes some getting used to, but it’s well worth the discomfort.

5. Embrace transparency.  Honesty is the best policy … and no where is that more true than on the Internet.  Resist the temptations (available via technology) to create false cases, phony advocates or trumped up/exaggerated claims.  You WILL get found out and the fallout can be toxic.  Worse yet, nasty facts – especially if they’re true – can linger for years and be easily found thanks to online search tools like Google and Yahoo!  Keep it honest, open and clean.

Of course, this short summary is just the tip of the iceberg.  Brandon goes into much more detail.  The post is definitely worth the read.

Nobody ever likes to think about what they’ll do when things go wrong.  As corporate marketers, a big piece of your job is to make sure things go right.  So, what are you doing to make sure a crisis doesn’t permanently derail your company?

Crisis PR gurus, Deon Binneman and Ned Barnett addressed this in a recen exchange on the PRMindshare Forum.  Deon is from Johannesburg, South Africa has been in the “Reputation Management” business for years and specializes in helping businesses deal with problems tht get out of hand.  (Check out Deon’s blog.)  Ned lives in Las Vegas and has spent years helping clients in healthcare and technology deal with the unexpected.  (Check out Ned’s web site.)

What it boils down to is this – dealing with the unexpected can be expensive and most companies can not afford to have people on staff 24/7 to do it.  Instead, the smart money is spent on planning ad creating a rapid response team that can implement that plan when needed.

According to Deon and Ned, here are some of the organizational and cost factors to keep in mind:

1. The first phase is a comprehensive site evaluation; an in-depth discovery session sometimes lasting as much as a couple of days.

2. Following the audit and interviews, an outside PR pro will develop a crisis plan – either general or specific, based on the identified needs of the client.

3. A key step in comprehensive crisis planning involves the outside consultant returning to the client’s location to present the plan and walk it through the approval process.

4. While a good bit of the plan can be implemented with internal first responders, most PR consultants will als be involved in helping their client implement the plan – this is a widely variable action as different clients have different needs, resources, etc. 

5. Once the plan is in place, most PR consultants will receive a small monthly retainer to be “on call” and to keep up with the changing needs. Depending on the size of the retainer, some consultants will make a site visit once a year, twice a year or quarterly to assess the environment and submit updates to the plan as needed.

6. The bulk of the retainer is to pay the consultant (or consultancy) to stay up-to-speed so if a crisis breaks, the consultant drops everything and rushes in to help manage the crisis.

7. Keep this in mnd: when a crisis breaks, most consultants operate on an hourly basis.  A typical arrangement is for a consultantto charge 1.5x the normal hourly for week-days and 2x normal hourly for weekends and holidays.  If you can negotiate it, it’s better to pay for crisis management time on a day rate rather than by the hour (crisis situations can rack up a lot of hours in a hurry). 

8. Be sure the PR consultant commits to managing a crisis situation on-site – “remote” crisis management has limits.

So, what constitutes a “crisis”?  It’s not all exploding buildings and earthquakes as Bissett Matheson Communication’s Duncan Matheson points out: “People involved in crisis management spend too much time focusing on the potential exploding type crisis, when statistics tracked over well more than a decade now show that exploding crisis have become very much the exception.”

“The much more common type of crisis is the building crisis – the one management should have seen coming, but because of action or inaction, mismanaged.  This is the more common type (and) is potentially just as devistating.” Duncan points to the most recent report from the Institute for Crisis Management as a reference for building (or smouldering) crisis.

The key take-away here:  Be prepared and work with an objective consultant (or team) who can help you spot the building crisis – not just attempt to expect the unexpected.

Do me a favor, would you?  Give it a few minutes and post a list of one to five “building” crisis in your organization.  I think we’ll be surprized to find that most of them fit within five to ten general categories. I’ll update this post based on the response to this and other requests posted to the discussion boards/forums I follow. 

Thanks in advance.

I suppose it was just a matter of time before the Mancrunch stunt finally raised enough hackles in the gay community to motivate a few curious bloggers to do the legwork necessary to find out what was really going on.  Kudo’s to Lyndon Evans for writing a blog post that provides a fairly concise summary of the whole affair.  A second post debunking the Mancrunch controversy, written by Alex Blaze, provides even more sordid details on the site, its ownership and makes a direct connection between the site and other online dating sites of questionable moral values (i.e. these other sites promote affairs and secret/discreet relationships focusing primarily on sex).

(NOTE: Both links go to sites with gay content and may be considered NSFW in some situations.)

And here’s one other thing of note – it looks like this stunt (and the ensuing controversy) isn’t a first-time experience for Mancrunch’s ownership (represented by Bridge & Tunnel PR’s Dominic Friesen and Elissa Buchter).  As pointed out in a piece appearing in Tuesday’s LA Times (by Dan Neil), another site represented by Friesen and Buchter – AshleyMadison.com – ran the same gauntlet last year, generating tons of press and web links in the process.

The tv guys have caught on, as Mr. Neil reports in his column:

Martin Franks, executive vice president of planning, policy and government affairs at CBS, told Reuters: “A whole cottage industry has grown up out of trying to make use of network turndowns. . . . They’ve found a loophole in an otherwise well-intentioned process.”

So what’s the point of this whole exercise?

It’s all about search engine placement and creating as many in-bound links as possible for the lowest possible cost.  Because search engine placement means traffic and for web sites that charge desperate people a monthly membership fee – traffic means big bucks.  If you were searching the Internet for this kind of site, you would find over 2,000 stories about Mancrunch listed before the first link to a competing site.

Mission accomplished.

It’s too bad they had to hijack the Super Bowl to do it.  But for those of us not in the targeted demographic, we’ll hardly notice.  None of these marketing shenanigans are going to impact the telecast of the game – unless the Mancrunch people have a “Heidi moment” planned for the fourth quarter.

UPDATE: 02/03 @ 10:00 pm – Popped back into the office this evening and found a link to an article covering this issue that included an interview with me.  Big thanks to Michael Tripplet at Mediaite.com for taking the time out of his day to call me and talk about this entire situation in more detail.

So much time is spent talking about audience engagement; and as marketers we often use the word “audience” to mean “customer.”  So much time and effort is spent trying to identify appropriate prospects and then doing what it takes to capture their attention, we often forget an audience who, if engaged, can generate a significant increase in the bottom line performance of almost any company.  Who are these people?

Your employees.

So often overlooked and very often ignored – most employees in most companies often feel disassociated from their employer’s balance sheet.  Sales and production goals are (very often) dictated and abstract, received without any kind of context to the work-a-day world in which most employees operate.

That’s why internal communications programs can do more than just improve morale.  Properly designed and implemented, they can work wonders when it comes to  improving operational performance.

To create the kind of marketing R.O.I. we’re talking about, managers need to think about profitability over top-line sales.  Improvements in operational efficiency can yield better margins (meaning more profit) on the same or lower sales.  Increased awareness of product and service offerings can lead to increased sales to existing customers (through the cross-selling of services) leading to both sales gains and profitability gains through reduced ramp-up times.

Internal communications programs that get employees on board when it comes to spotting new business opportunities can also result in bumps in top-line sales gains, too – although of all the employee-directed campaigns, this appears to be the most difficult to implement.

I would be interested in hearing your success stories (and your disasters) for future stories here at Brand Central Station.

(Editor’s Note: This is one of my favorite blog posts – not just for the comments it generated but for the way it addressed a re-occuring theme: that, somehow, PR is dead and Social Media killed it.  C’mon people.  Get over it.)

I’m going to try and infuse something that’s been missing from this whole “Social Media is killing PR” meme that seems to be sweeping through the Blogosphere/Twitterverse lately. 

A little common sense.

This maelstrom has been whipped up, primarily, by PR’s and journalists/bloggers working in the technology space.  And the echo is practically deafening.

While there have been plenty of valid points raised about the nature of public relations, the profession’s current and future place in the enterprise, the role of blogging and other Web 2.0 apps in brand building, sales and CRM – I’ve come to one major conclusion:

Social media “experts” need to get over themselves and PR people need to stop looking over their shoulder to see who’s trying to do them in.

First, a little history
Thanks to Al Krueger and this post on his Comet Branding blog.  Al was actively pimping his online radio show via Twitter yesterday (listen to it here) by sending out about a dozen tweets to his followers (I’m one of them) including a re-tweet of a pimp from some other Twitterhead shilling the podcast.  While I’m not crazy about Al’s method, I was curious, so I checked out the podcast and an earlier post and podcast, from September, on the same subject (you’ll find the post here and the podcast here).

Al did a good job of linking to several posts by bloggers (Scoble, Calacanis, Ruebel and Arrington) and a journalist (ZDNet’s Jennifer Leggio) raising questions about the value provided by PR people who either don’t know how to pitch a story or, worse still, don’t know how to take “no” for an answer.  Look, it’s not vinyl siding sales folks, it’s public relations – show some discretion and restraint.

How “death” looks to the PR profession
All of these bloggers, journalists, PR folks and social media experts seemed to agree that the profession has some serious issues that need to be addressed.  The conversations on the podcasts seemed to sum up this way:

1. PR – as a “brand” – is going through a crisis of identity.  No one seems to know what it means, anymore.
2. The practice of pitching stories can’t continue today the way it was done years ago as a result of social media effectively removing the PR person as the filter between the journalist and the story.
3. Social media requires its own kind of “professional” in order to be effectively used on behalf of a company or brand.
4. There needs to be more professional education and standards in the PR profession that will help re-establish its credibility.
5. PR pros are often in a “no-win” situation when it comes to dealing with journalists who don’t need them nearly as much as they need the journalists.
6. Start-up companies with a dynamic CEO probably don’t need a PR person’s help.

Now a big part of the problem with this entire discussion is that most of the offending PR folks, complaining journalists and put-out bloggers deal in the tech industry.  This is an industry that adopts technologies (like social media) early and falls in and out of love with digital solutions in a never-ending quest to find the “next big thing.”  It’s not the real world.  It’s the echo-chamber of the tech world.

That’s why I was glad to see level-headed analysis from bloggers in the space like Jeremy Pepper get back to the basics of PR, discuss the value of social media as a tool for media relations and offer some basic rules for its use.

The report of PR’s death is an exaggeration (with apologies to Mark Twain)
Let’s take a look at each of these mortal symptoms and evaluate them in a little more detail. 

But before we do, it’s important to make one significant distinction between this screed and many (if not most) of the others you’ll read online: my perspective is that of a person who works with clients almost entirely outside of the technology space.  That’s where most of the people in this world live and work today and it’s to those businesses this blog (and this post) is directed.

First, PR’s identity crisis.  It’s nothing new.  If you’ve worked with PR people in the past you know the good ones are always a little paranoid – always worried about what other people think and if they’re doing everything they can to ensure a positive outcome.  That’s good. That’s what you want in a PR person.  Unfortunately, that trait also leads to a perpetual, professional self-esteem issue that’s maddening.

It’s this constant self-questioning of PR’s value as a discipline that leads the profession into episodes of mental masturbation over “advertising equivalency values” for story placements or obssesive arts and crafts projects that result in massive, three-ring binders full of clips.  I attended a presentation once where a senior PR person said “all we do is generate oceans of ink for our clients.” 

Yuk.

PR is more than that.  PR is about helping clients get their “story” right so it accurately conveys the essential qualities of their brand in a meaningful and engaging way.  And that story has to be told to several “publics” (hence the name Public Relations) which include employees, customers, shareholders, communities and other groups of vital interest to the client in addition to the press.

Second, the process of pitching stories has got to change.  I don’t disagree with that at all.  But the focus shouldn’t be on the pitching process (the number of calls made or the tools used) but rather on the quality and relevance of the story itself.  Not only are PR pro’s often guilty of being lazy and not finding the best angle to present to a reporter, blogger or editor – those same journalists are often unable or unwilling to consider well-crafted stories from brands they’ve never heard of or PR’s they don’t know.

If there’s a reason to take a closer look at the impact of social media, this is it.  Social media can put a journalist in direct contact with a source and eliminate the PR “filter” – there’s no arguing that.  But that same media channel can put the brand in direct contact with the consumer and eliminate the need for the journalist.

It’s already happening.  They’re called “bloggers” – maybe you’ve heard of them.

Many bloggers wear dual hats of journalistic hack and PR flack.  The debate of exactly who or what social media is killing should probably be expanded.

This gets me to the third point about the need for a social media “expert” or “professional” to effectively use the channel.  I don’t get this.  It seems that “social media” by its very definition should be usable by “society” – right?  Having to hire a social media expert seems a bit like having to hire a professional cocktail party gadfly to flit about telling people what needs to be told.

But who decides what needs to be told?  That’s where the value in the profesional relationship is, isn’t it.  Whether that’s the domain of a public relations professional, a marketing consultant, a wise dutch uncle or your consigliere – that’s a call made by the business, not by some professional standards board or association.

Which leads into our next item – and PR folks are famous for this – when all else fails, make a call for more professional standards training and pseudo-academic credentials.  Whether it’s an IABC credential or certification from PRSA, the only thing that establishes credibility is performance.  CPA, JD, MD, PhD after a name may mean something to some people.  But when your accountant, lawyer, doctor or professor screw up, you find another one and make the change.  Your opinion of that one “bad apple” doesn’t spoil the reputation of the entire profession.  Unless, of course, he’s a lawyer.

The fifth point is part of the age-old pity party PR folks throw for themselves when it comes to their relationship with journalists.  Social media (or its absence) won’t change that.  If PR folks do their real job (not just pitch stories willy-nilly), they’ll quickly realize their value with their client exists before they ever pick up a phone or send an e-mail to a journalist.  That self-confidence (and a well-crafted pitch) make the roller coaster ride of rejection and eventual acceptance by journalists easier to take.

PR flacks are going to get told “no” a lot.  They’ll get lied to frequently.  They won’t get their messages returned and they’ll occassionally get a scolding.  Deal with it.  It’s the job.

And finally, some companies don’t need a PR person or firm to help them.  A lot more think they don’t need a PR person or firm to help them.  Whether they’re right or wrong, it doesn’t matter.  You see, they’re the client and it’s their money and their problem.

PR people should work with clients who want to work with them.  This doesn’t mean these clients will understand what PR is, how it works for their business or what a PR person does.  But if the interest is there, that’s something you can work with.

And it won’t kill you.

It’s the perpetual marketing question: “How do we know what we’re doing makes a difference?”  And it’s a question that’s only answered by the most ambigious phrase known to man …

“It depends.”

The inability to quantitatively answer the question and all it’s related derivations (e.g. “How do we know it will work?  What is going to work best? etc.) is the underlying cause for the continuous contraction and expansion of in-house marketing departments.  It’s also the driving force behind job changes for marketing people (average tenure is less than two years), the tendency for clients to look for new agencies every three years and the high dissatisfaction level with “Chief Marketing Officers” at major brands.

We live and work in an industry that is, by its very nature, creative and changing with the times.  As a result, it’s extremely hard to quantify.

And things that are hard to quantify are hard to measure.

But now, in the Internet age, where we can get “granular” with “metrics” and buzzwords (obviously) abound, there are some hard and fast rules about measuring performance that marketing professionals should follow.  The great thing is that these simple rules do not require marketing research departments, trade association memberships, sophisticated studies of consumer panels or even the knowledge of how to add Google Analytics code to your web site.

These rules are intended for any-sized business.  They should provide perspective on the business ethic of setting goals and measuring performance.  And they should be easy enough to implement right after you read this post:

Rule #1 – The client defines success.
This is probably the most difficult thing for those on the client-side of the relationship to understand.  But if the client owns the business and the challenges it faces, the client also owns the resolution of those problems … and that’s the definition of success. 

It’s important for the client to define – in quantifiable terms – where it would like to be and to challenge his team (whether in-house, outside or both) to find the best solution given the budget available and the time allowed. 

Be prepared for questions, though.  As soon as you start putting measurable objectives in place, marketing people like to know more.  “We want sales to go up 15%” is likely to be followed with a “Which products have the best growth potential?”  This kind of give-and-take is healthy and can be productive in its own right.

Once the client has defined “success”; the stage has been set and the productive work can commence.

Rule #2 – Understand the communications process that supports your marketing effort.
One of the great frustrations clients experience is acheiving a stated advertising or marketing goal and then not seeing the anticipated result on the bottom line.  How can you generate awareness and get the attention of a customer and then not make a sale?

It usually happens when clients (and their marketing team) don’t fully understand the relationship between their communication and the sales process.  There’s only one real cure for this problem: spend time making sales.

If that means shadowing a field sales rep for a while, invest the time to understand the myriad of minor challenges he or she has to overcome just to make the presentation to a client or new business prospect.  If you’re in a consumer-facing business, spend time on the front line, customer service desk or sales floor.  The insights gained from a day or two of one-on-one, customer interactions can change a marketer’s entire perspective on creative, messaging and the use of media.

More importantly, it helps re-set expectations for advertising, PR and other marketing strategies and their relative importance in achieving “success” in the eyes of the client.

Rule #3 – Identify key influences on the process.
As a client, you can only control so much of the information delivered to the customer about your product and/or brand.  Setting marketing objectives in an environment that doesn’t recognize the role or impact of outside influences is dangerous (and possibly career-ending).  More than one marketing director has been brought down because of a “blind spot” (either intentional or not) to the competition.

And while clients need to keep their eyes open to possible outside influences from competitors and peers, their agencies and marketing counselors need to keep their minds open to alternative media and marketing opportunities that may be “the next big thing” and capture the imagination of consumers.  National and international influences (whether they’re natural disasters or man-made problems) can also impact a marketing effort (who would have built in “Cash for Clunkers” into their marketing plan eighteen months ago?).

Rule #4 – Understand that things change.
Consider it job security for marketing people – but the world is a dynamic and changing place, and when you’re in the business of shaping opinions and riding the wave of pop culture, nothing stays the same for long.

As a result, the client’s definition of success this year is bound to change next year.  Not only does the client’s own success (or failure) change their perspective on what’s achievable but all those outside influences we’ve discussed also weigh differently on a brand from moment to moment. 

Understanding and accepting this change means that clients need to be “okay” with not hitting 100% of the desired outcomes 100% of the time.  In fact, some desired outcomes might be very un-desirable by the end of the year.  By the same token, some outcomes that might have been considered “stretches” may have become very attainable over the year.

As a result, successes and failures need to be evaluated in context.  Results should be booked and then used as a baseline for the next year.

Rule #5 – Take time out to look, learn and re-load.
Contextual evaluation of results is critical to on-going success in the marketing arena.  It’s one thing to list off a set of objective achievements or failure, it’s entirely different to really understand what those successes or failures might mean in the bigger picture.

We break this process down into three pieces: Look.  Learn.  Re-Load.

Look at the numbers and make sure you’ve measured and tracked all the critical pieces of data you need in order to complete a comprehensive (and meaningful) review.

Next, learn from your analysis of the data.  Turn all those bits and bytes of data into information by understanding where things sit in the larger landscape.

Finally, re-load your goals for the next year.  Keeping some of the goals the same (or, at least, on the same scale) is helpful because it provides a helpful year-to-year measurement.  Other goals, though, may need to be scrapped entirely or invented from scratch.  Don’t be afraid to do either.

Hopefully, these five simple rules will help you develop a new perspective on how you build and implement your marketing communications programs.  These same simple rules (with a few tweaks) also serve as a great foundation for evaluating your communications efforts aimed at employees or your peers in the industry.

Just remember the golden rule:  “The guy with the gold makes all the rules” – and if the guy with the gold can’t figure out how well you’ve done, he’ll rule you out.

It started off inocently enough.  But Beth Brody from BrodyPR made a simple mistake.  She e-mailed the same pitch to a big list of contacts and included that contact list in the CC field which ignited a series of “Reply All” responses that, in tun, went to the same distribution list.

Over and over again.

It’s sort of like the media relations equivalent of being at a rock concert and the audience gets more caught up in keeping that damn beachball bouncing around in the crowd than they do in what’s going on onstage.  Then, the next thing you know, the grumpy musical purists start yelling for people to sit down and the kids start complaining that nobody ever lets them have any fun anymore …

Lucky for me (I guess) that I was at a client meeting while all this was going on and I just walked in on the carnage afterward.  Today there’s been a virtual pile-up on the social news media highway – and I’m viewing it as a first responder.

Maybe “pile up” isn’t nearly as accurate as “pile on” when you see how other PR professionals took advantage of Beth Brody’s lapse in judgement to cast dispersions, fluff up their own reputation and build blog traffic.

Here’s what looks to have happened:

• Beth Brody sent out her pitch in the morning (7:45 am CDT).
• Approximately 17 minutes later, Donna Maria Coles Johnson of Monroe, NC “Replied All” in response and the die was cast.  Everyone on the first distribution of the release received Donna Maries response.
• A half hour later, Shel Isreal replied back to Donna Maria – again using the “Reply All” function.
• Within minutes, folks were starting to “Reply All” to let everyone know not to use “Reply All” to reply.
• People started getting a little snarky shortly after that and the sniping started.
• Ken Wheaton, of AdAge, weighed in at 11:19 am CDT and threatened to expose those perpetuating the email chain reaction.  Although Ken didn’t follow through with his threat (entirely), he did write about it on the AdAge web site.
• Not to be outdone by AdAge, John Capone of MediaPost offerred up a stoning at an OMMA conference to offending PR’s.
• By a little before lunch, things went from snarky to mean-spirited with people insisting they be taken “off this fucking list” and moving to have BrodyPR put on a blacklist of PR firms who spam.

By the time the email “spamalanche” was over, things were just starting to heat up on Twitter.

• In three hours, there were nearly 100 tweets about BrodyPR and the entire kerfuffle.
• A few PR’s dominated the online tar-and-feathering; most notably serial-tweeter Chris Abraham (@chrisabraham) with nearly 20 tweets on the subject.
• Others were tweeting and blogging about the event and there were those (including yours truly) who were blogging about the blogs and the tweets about the event.

So, what does all this tell us? 

First off, some people must have too much time on their hands. Honestly, the entire number of additional emails in my Inbox due to Beth Brody’s foul up and everyone else’s over-reaction to it totalled about 30 emails.  If I had been really put out by the entire matter, I could have set up a rule in outlook to delete anything with the subject header and I never would have seen any more emails past the first four or five.  (Read your Outlook owner’s manual, people!)

The second lesson is that the irony of fouling up an email pitch for a book on using social media for small business is more likely to hurt Beth and her client than all the pundit arm waving and chest beating.  Shel Isreal responding with a “Reply All” email to Donna Maria’s request is either blatant astroturfing or a huge blow to Shel’s credibility as an expert.  Neither is a good thing to have happen to your PR client.