The Access Point

Whither a PR 2.0 Strategy?

It seems like the question I get asked by clients most frequently these days is: “What should we be doing in social media and PR 2.0?” Not surprising, given that one in four online consumers now participates in a social network such as YouTube or Facebook, according to the latest Forrester research. Nearly half are consuming content created in blogs, user-generated video or discussion forums.

The question that’s most important is, how does a company design, implement and execute on a successful social media communications strategy – and it’s something we at Access, spearheaded by our dedicated PR 2.0 team, are investing a great deal of time in understanding. What we do know is that the rules of engagement have been irrevocably altered. Even as we’re able to create more intimate connections than ever before with customers and consumers, they are feeling increasingly more empowered in the decision-making process, thanks to the tools and technologies that give more volume to their voice in the social media dialogue.

What we know from helping clients navigate new courses in social media is the imperative of authenticity – keeping it real. Consumers today – across every demographic – demand a new engagement…one that is interactive, empowering, democratic and personal…these are the attributes that must inform any social media strategy.

We are in the process of unveiling a new Access website, even as we are amidst developing social media strategies for several of our clients. In the meantime, we showcase in this edition of Inside Access the results of three successful campaigns on behalf of clients in security, remote collaboration software and gaming. As always, I welcome your feedback, insights and thoughts.

Susan G. Butenhoff, President & CEO
susan@accesspr.com

Plymouth Sloe Gin Bi-coastal Launch Parties

When we first started working with Plymouth we knew right off the bat that we would be doing a launch event for the arrival of Plymouth Sloe Gin to the U.S. I’ve had the opportunity to work on about 15 events in the past 5 years and always love doing them. However I have never worked on bi-coastal events within a 48 hour span of each other. This was going to be exciting and luckily our team is headed up by PR rock stars based in our SF office.

Out of the gate we knew we wanted the venues to have a speakeasy, hip, distinguished vibe so we chose The Back Room in NYC and Bourbon & Branch in SF. The spaces are fabulous and they are both renowned for their mixology. Our RSVP lists were stacked with stellar media from publications like 7x7 Magazine, Complex, DailyCandy, Food & Wine, Gourmet, GQ, Men’s Fitness, Paper, San Francisco Chronicle, Saveur, Splendora, and Town & Country.

The NYC party was first and the Plymouth Sloe Gin cocktails were received by partygoers with great fanfare. Plymouth’s Head Distiller was our guest of honor at both the NYC and SF events and we were even able to get real sloe berries (used in Plymouth Sloe Gin) for viewing — some even tasted them although they aren’t normally eaten as they are pretty bitter. The party was a huge success and just about the time when the team was about to wind down and pat ourselves on the back — we geared up for round two in SF!

In SF the party went off without a hitch — guests were delighted with the cocktails, there was a great turnout and everyone had a good time. Now that the SF event is over we’re working on the official launch of Plymouth Sloe Gin which is slated to arrive in select bars across the country in May. Next time you find yourself pondering what cocktail to order try asking your bartender for The Wibble or my personal favorite the Gin Genie — you will be glad you did!

-Beth Gardiner

The MMO Money We Talk About, (Isn’t) The MMO Problems We See

The year was 2004 and some friends introduced me to the first video game I’d played since owning an Atari 2600 in the late 70s. The game was called City of Heroes – an online, virtual world where you were able to slap on a cape and use your super powers to be a do-gooder. I was quickly hooked and much preferred interacting real-time with thousands of other people playing superhero to spending my time planted in front of the TV being force-fed mindless glop like American Idol.

In City of Heroes, I quickly realized an aspect of the game that I never expected - social competition very similar to team sports. Success is dictated by a single term – the more time you have to spend improving your character and earning in-game wealth; the more successful you are perceived to be. At least I thought that was the case until I learned the dirty little secret of the MMO – gold farming and grey market currency sales. Organized groups would essentially hire workers to grind day-in/day-out for whatever currency a particular MMO featured and then turn around and sell it online to other players willing to pony up real world cash. While the premise of using actual money to artificially advance one’s online status seemed rather mundane in 2004, today it is an affliction for the video gaming industry that everyone is trying to solve and profit from.

I will admit that when I made my first (and only) in-game, real to fabricated money exchange, it had all the glamour and class of a sketchy drug deal. I used my credit card online to purchase ‘Influence’ points and then met some random, in-game character in a seedy and poorly traveled part of “Paragon City” to do the ‘hand-off.’ I felt dirty and even though there were no ‘rules’ against it, everything about it seemed counter-culture; like renting a Lamborghini for a day and telling your friends you bought it. But… for $34.99 my character instantly advanced as if I’d put in another 50 hours of my time earning it myself and my in-game status took a major leap forward.

Fast forward to 2008 and gold farming in the MMO space has been included as a topic in such mainstream publications as Newsweek and Businessweek. Now in my 3rd year of playing World of Warcraft, I couldn’t fathom supporting the gold farming community because in-game ethics are now very well established and understood in the mainstream. Constant reminders of this epidemic come via annoying in-game spam, social pressure to not ‘cheat,’ and fear of having gaming privileges revoked for disavowing a game’s end user license agreement. How times have changed in just a few short years.

As fate would have it, this week Access Communications helped launch a very exciting company called Twofish, Inc. that will empower video game publishers with the tools to better handle in-game item sales and control supply and demand in this new world economy. Rather than letting the players have the control over arbitrage, video game publishers will be the ones to regulate and profit from in-game item sales instead of sweatshops selling currency illegally on the grey market.

The idea of a ‘virtual economy’ will soon cease as we know it because it is indeed becoming a ‘real economy’ which will follow the laws of pricing driven by supply and demand. Eventually – many believe – even taxation of virtual goods will occur and everything we see in the real-world economy will transition to this new frontier. And for some gamers like me, who are short on time – having these options available will drastically open up our video game experience as we are able to spend less time 'grinding' and more time 'enjoying' the content. Even today, co-workers often tease me (and I love it) about the amount of time I spend playing massively multiplayer games in spite of the fact that video game public relations is Access’ forte. I just smile and take the brunt of the joke but secretly wonder when they’ll be able to apply their beloved “America's Next Top Chef/Model/Idol time” to something business related like I am currently able to do. It is so nice to get paid to do something you truly love.

Clint Bagley

Case Study Palooza 2008

Let’s just start with this: I was dreading the thought of having to present a case study in front of all of the Senior Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents and the CEO of Access. I haven’t spoken in front of a group since college public speaking 101, and honestly, I got a B- in that class.

The Case:
2K Sports’ ‘Urban Hour’ – An event held in New York’s hottest club that reached the urban media, an untapped resource for 2K Sports and NBA 2K8. 

Prep Time:
Some of my fears were lessened when I sat down with my CSP team, Clint and Ami, two seasoned presenters and patient teachers. We got started right away, having the skeleton of our presentation done before the holiday break.

In checking the versions of our PowerPoint presentation there are more than 15 versions – needless to say there was a lot of refining and rearranging over the next month.

About two weeks before D-Day, January, 16, the 2K Sports Team started running through the presentation – we’d rehearse in front of any staff member that would listen and eagerly await their constructive criticism. We made a conscious decision to not rehearse scripts as we wanted to present the cast study as a story.

D-Day:
An hour before our presentation we decided to practice two more times – expecting to hone our skills – to our surprise we butchered the entire presentation, complete with mid-slide emotional breakdowns and cursing. We were nervous heading into the boardroom, still shaking from the botched rehearsal.

To our delight – we presented seamlessly, tip-ins and all. And then it was time for the Q & A, none of us were actually at the event or even on the account at the time so we didn’t know whether or not we’d be able to answer the questions convincingly. After 11 painful questions we exited the boardroom to await our evaluation. While waiting we were still reeling from the Q & A but feeling really confident about the presentation portion.

The evaluation was less scary than I had anticipated: it only lasted about 10 minutes and we all received great compliments on out public speaking and were given some areas to work on. I still need to work on my fidgeting and my ‘likes’ and ‘ums’ while in front of a crowd.

As if this wasn’t enough – we still had the award ceremony! Team 2K Sports ended up winning Best Q & A! We were shocked!

Looking Back:
I’m already looking forward to next year’s CSP – although “Rookie of the Year” isn’t possible anymore there’s always that elusive first place! I also learned that although CSP was incredibly difficult, even painful at times – I got through it, I didn’t freeze and die. I’d tell CSP first timers to enjoy it – there’s nothing like presenting to all of your bosses and then partying with them mere hours later.

Jenna Galloway

Fast Company, Slow Coverage

As you probably know by now, Rob Scoble (formerly of Channel 9, Scobleizer and PodTech fame) is joining the "traditional media" crowd with his move to Fast Company to start Fast Company TV. Michael Arrington wrote about it in December. Well, that time has come and Rob posted the details this week.

With print ad revenues are down, reporters are getting laid off left and right and are looking for just about any gig they can lay their hands on. And the old boys of print media are getting a new funky makeover for '08 (e.g. BusinessWeek's new formula) to try and stay above water.

I don't get this. If you work in a "fast industry," such as public relations that must always stay on top of what's going on in the industries we serve, reading hundreds of articles, blogs and press releases every day, on top of talking to reporters and counseling clients, do you have time to sit there and watch a 15-minute streamed video preceded by a 30-second ad? Probably not. The proliferation of RSS demonstrates our need to quickly scan a large amount of publications, blogs and headlines to get to the content that's important to us.

We don't have the time to watch video news at work — it just takes too long. So will Scoble be a success? We'll see, but I can't wait to see what Fake Steve Jobs says.

Stepping Up for Case Study Palooza

Yesterday at Access we kicked-off our annual two-day review of client work that we call Case Study Palooza. 

“Palooza as it is known, or just “CSP,” is time for us as an agency to step back, review and contemplate the great work we have done for our clients. CSP is a lot of hard work, grinding deadlines and late nights over pizza and Chinese takeout as our entire staff from Account Coordinators through Account Supervisors, pull together case studies based on actual client work and prepare to present them in front a panel of judges comprised of senior agency leaders and an outside judge. CSP is characterized by high energy and tough competition as teams compete for cash, prizes and year-long bragging rights. Doing this of course while handling a full account load.

Each three person team must prepare and present a PowerPoint case study highlighting a real client’s communication challenge, describe how Access creatively and strategically addressed the problem and showcase the communications results and business impact achieved. The goal is to convince the judges (acting as prospective clients in a new business scenario) to “hire” Access based on the quality of the case study and the presentation skills of the team.

Teams are judged based on a published scorecard and often endure withering questions from the judges on every aspect of the case study, the clients’ business model and competitive landscape.

As CEO, what is really exciting for me, beyond seeing the great work we’ve produced in the past year, is to watch is how each staffer, whether they have three months of PR experience or seven years, steps up and brings their A-game. I continue to be impressed with the talent, creativity and intelligence of our team.

Palooza is tough, it’s meant to be, and I know it can be intimidating for some of our staffers, but it is also a rite of passage and rallying point for our agency each year and is part of our strong commitment to training and staff development that is unmatched in the industry. I’m so incredibly proud of everyone who presented this year and I’m deeply grateful for your passion, dedication and enthusiasm.

Now, on to the fun stuff…the awards ceremony, cash distribution and of course the after-party and celebration.

Video Good, Yahoo Bad

The evening was dramatically entitled “Media Predicts 2008!” and so with great anticipation I accompanied several Access staff and clients (Disney, PayPal and Intuit) to our sponsored table at the Silicon Valley PRSA dinner at the Computer History Museum. Although the attire was black tie optional, there was more Abercrombie than Armani on display. Another only in San Francisco feature, was that we were entertained during the cocktail hour with the musical stylings of “Off the Record” a band compromised of journalists who seemed to have a better time at their mics than at their keyboards.

With great anticipation, hundreds of us waited to hear the wise words of journalistic luminaries that included Victoria Barret from Forbes, Don Clark of The Wall Street Journal Jim Goldman of CNBC, Rob Hof of BusinessWeek, Robert Scoble of the highly influential blog Scobleizer, and Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of The Wall Street Journal. While there were no stunning revelations about future predictions, the panel was thoroughly engaging and caustically funny, and provided an excellent reminder to the PR folks in the room that we are very lucky to have the opportunity to interact with such lively intellectuals who are sadly frequently inundated by poor pitches (Note: Clark claimed to get 100s of pitches a day, many of which should have been directed to other writers at the paper or were just not good. Tip of the day: do not pitch him on one company but on multiple companies that support a compelling trend.)

The friendly combative exchange between the journalists was intriguing. Swisher (who refuses to read or participate in anything that is traditional media) and Scoble (who is adamant that video is the next dimension of communications) punctuated their commitment to new media by using their cell phones to video record the panel responses for use on their blogs.

Other unconventional moments included multiple very, very disparaging comments about Yahoo. Comments ranged from the observation that Yahoo made the biggest mistakes in 2007 and needed to fix things fast, to the prediction that Yahoo will get acquired in 2008. What made these comments especially bold (and a tad uncomfortable for the audience) was the fact that Yahoo was the supreme sponsor of the event and had a very large version of its logo posted on the wall behind the journalists and a large table of guests right in front of the panel. (Note to PRSA: recommend that in future you remind the panelists who the sponsors are in advance of the session.)

By the way, very big shout out to Swisher who held nothing back and entertained us with comments like “Of course we are going to cover the green revolution like the ridiculous sheep that we are”, as well as calling Google (in what was supposed to be a compliment) “the Pablo Escobar of the tech industry”.   

For those who didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy the evening (with surprisingly tasty catering), stay tuned for my next posting, Tuesday (the 11th)

Say it Ain’t So. Crises Create Communications Carpet Baggers

John F. Kennedy once said: “When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters — one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.” Sadly this quote is extremely apropos when it comes to the public relations industry’s pathological need to convert a human crisis into a communications opportunity.

Members of our profession looked at the recent devastating wildfires in Southern California, which forced the evacuation of three quarters of a million people and wrought the eventual destruction of over 1,800 homes, not as a human tragedy, but as a marketing opportunity. Within days bulk email pitches were burning up the in-boxes of journalists everywhere — pitching everything from experts on telecommunications networks (for all those displaced workers whose offices had gone up in flames) to a pitch for the real crisis facing Americans, the lack of funds for university-bound students.

Like those carpetbaggers who swept into the post war Southern states exploiting the Confederates’ poverty and misery, there is sadly a current version of such opportunistic behavior in today’s PR profession where executives sit around a table frantically brainstorming news hooks that the crisis de jour may provide for a pitch for a company and its products, however tangential they may be to the issue at hand. We witnessed this during an equally high profile tragedy when the shootings at Virginia Tech University last year brought mis en scene pitches from PR people representing cell phone texting and messaging services. An important new technology with obvious implications in situations like this? Absolutely! Did it smack of crass, mercenary opportunism? Without question. One pitch even went so far as to say the tragedy could have been averted had its client’s system been adopted by the University in advance. Is it surprising that journalists respond to such efforts with disdain?

Of course, just when we think that our profession has hit an all-time low, the current Administration in Washington demonstrates that it can trump us with acts so amateurish and blatantly manipulative that if it were the basis of a movie script you would find it too ridiculous to be true. I am talking, of course, about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s phony news conference about assistance to those victims of the wildfires in southern California. Now if any organization had a credibility issue that needed resolution, it would be post-Katrina FEMA. For some reason, a number of senior officials there thought that a news conference that was not announced to beat reporters, allowed only television crews with no reporters/producers, and was populated entirely by FEMA employees asking the “hard” questions of FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson , was not only ethical, but believable. It is hard to imagine that in the midst of pulling this charade together, no one stopped and wondered how this Barnum & Bailey side show could be successfully pulled off. Even Michael Chertoff admitted, “I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government,” which has to be a pretty low bar.

The question is, have communications professionals — whether they reside in Washington D.C.’s halls of power or the board rooms of PR firms — created a world of spin that defies logic, intelligence and humanity?  Was the FEMA faux conference simply a tell-tale reality of the media world we inhabit, where the news is less important than the pitch, the stagecraft employed to sell the story more important than the story itself? 

So where does this leave us? These moments of shame should really be moments of truth for our profession. Even in the rush to pitch, pitch, pitch (which becomes ever more frenzied as cable and now the Internet have shortened news cycles to minutes) we must slow down and ask ourselves, “what is the right thing?” and not “what is the right pitch, right now?” If we really want to close the divide between the flaks and the hacks, we need to do a better job crafting our pitches so they provide journalistic value and humanity. If we do this, we may succeed in overcoming the image of public relations professionals as carpetbaggers in the digital revolution.

Green Communications Should Equal Hope Not Hype

We’re continuously bombarded by the new eco-consciousness which defines everything we experience, from cars to vacation destinations to the media coverage de jour. Not a week goes by where there isn’t a cover story of some sort extolling the promises and challenges of the new green revolution. Whether it is HBO’s documentary “Too Hot Not to Handle” with the dire sub title “Global Warming is the Most Urgent Threat Facing Humanity Today,”  or Good Magazine addressing the threat of corporate green-washing, it’s obvious that green is the new black.

This became even more obvious when I recently attended the Oceana 2007 Partners Award gala. (Oceana is the largest international environmental advocacy group dedicated to protecting and restoring the world's oceans and sea life). Dozens of paparazzi were madly shooting photographs of the celebrities, who ranged from Oceana co-founder and board member Ted Danson, and other entertainment celebs including Brooke Shields, Jeff Goldblum,to high visibility politicos California Attorney General Jerry Brown and of course Nobel Peace Prize recipient Vice President Al Gore.

I was there with Access account supervisor Heather Silverberg on behalf of our client Piaggio/Vespa. We’re helping Piaggio educate consumers on how motorized scooters, like Vespa, can quickly reduce oil consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and traffic congestion

As I watched the parade of guests arrive in their gas guzzling limos (I traveled there in a bio-diesel Mercedes that ran on corn oil and gets 70 mpg), it was easy to become a little cynical about what green hype and its associated communications machine had created.

However, when Oceana CEO Andrew Sharpless addressed the crowd, he reminded us in stark terms of the crisis we face – that 90% of the “big fish” are already extinct from over-fishing; that fishing operations discard 16 billion pounds of unwanted fish every year; and since the industrial revolution, our oceans have absorbed 150 billion tons of carbon dioxide, threatening the existence of coral reefs everywhere – it was clear that even if this green cry for help seems to be taking over the media, the scale of this crisis warrants the millions of pages of paper used to tell this story in the media.

It’s also evident that successful communications is critical to our hopes that we may turn this problem around before the polar ice cap melts (which Gore predicts will occur in only six years). Whether it’s Hollywood blockbusters that win Oscars, a new generation of green blogs, or mainstream media embracing the latest in eco-journalism, it’s clear that the power of communications is perhaps Mother Nature’s greatest hope.      

But there is a yin and yang to all of this. On one hand, mass communications has successfully elevated these issues in our collective consciousness, and transformed that into a call to action. But we’re almost causing our own form of pollution — content pollution. If we’re not selective about the messages we create and help disseminate, we will go into intellectual and emotion sensory overload, and audiences will tune out and shut down.

PRWeek’s Oct. 1 issue addressed the greening of PR, as did CNN, and touched on the challenges that await as companies and their communicators try to appear greener than thou. We want to avoid Hype 2.0, and a repeat of the dot com era when messages were more about style than substance. Our industry must be selective about the claims our clients make, who the green leaders are, and what stories we are looking to tell. Because in order to make a change, we need to make sure we know the difference between what is marketing and what is real.

Authenticity is key, as journalists are already recoiling from corporate green-washing. Reporters, and their readers, want to know what companies are doing that’s a genuine long-term commitment, not just wrapping themselves in green. The media and public are already jaded with corporate insincerity; we don’t need to throw another log on that fire. If we are to retain our value as counselors, we need to make sure our clients look beyond quick media hits, and help them make bold commitments that will win hearts and minds for the long term.

Rewriting History

Winston Churchill observed that history is written by the victors. But rewriting history can be an embarrassing proposition for PR practitioners who do it on the sly in Wikipedia, the open-source online encyclopedia. Consider the case of ExxonMobil. According to The New York Times of August 19, 2007:

"In 2004, someone using a computer at ExxonMobil made substantial changes to a description of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, playing down its impact on the area's wildlife and casting a positive light on compensation payments the company had made to victims of the spill."

The covert rewrite was one of many uncovered by California Institute of Technology graduate student Virgil Griffith. He created a device called the WikiScanner. It connects the dots between anonymous edits and the IP addresses at which they were made. When the New York Times piece by Katie Hafner ran, Mr. Griffith had churned through 34.4 million Wikipedia edits performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals since 2002.

Among the embarrassment of switches unearthed by his WikiScanner:

• Someone at a Diebold computer deleted paragraphs about the company's electronic voting machines;
• Someone at a Wal-Mart Stores address changed an entry about employee compensation at the retail giant; and
• A person or persons at a Dow Chemical address deleted an entire section on the 1984 Bhopal, India, chemical plant disaster that cost 20,000 lives.

Mr. Griffith, who sometimes refers to himself as a ''disruptive technologist,'' says the digital acreage he’s plowing is so huge that more treasures are bound to turn up.

So what is a hardworking PR professional to do when faced with a Wikiepedia entry that is odds with their own version of the truth? If it’s a simple factual correction – your company is headquartered in Denver, not Des Moines – just make the edit.

But Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikipedia Foundation, suggests taking more substantive matters to the discussion page that sits behind every Wikipedia entry. There you can support your edits with solid facts and well reasoned arguments. Always identify yourself and the organization you represent. Enlist outside advocates to pipe in by appealing to their sense of truth and fairness.

Working the backroom of Wikipedia may be more time-consuming than simply slipping in and changing an entry that another reader may subsequently alter. But by playing it straight, you stand a better chance of changing the minds of readers. And you obviate the risk of having your credibility being called to task by the WikiScanner.