The Access Point

Look At Your Ripple, Not Your Splash

I was lucky to attend the sold out Sustainable Brands Conference recently in Monterey, California. The conference was a mixture of insightful research, rich case studies and most importantly – inspiration. The “aha moment” for me came after listening to experts such as KEEN Footwear, green marketing guru Jacquelyn A. Ottman, and 7th Generation President Jeffrey Hollender and realizing that despite the progress of this wonderful movement, most of today’s green brands are making an impact at the front end, but that they need to focus on their entire use cycle – from raw ingredients to supply chain to take back policies. Underscoring this was conflicting research data – at one end of the spectrum is a wealth of research proving out that consumer awareness of the “end-game” is on the increase, yet equally substantial data bearing out that most consumers are still primarily focused on “me” vs. what’s “around me.” 

My role as a communications counselor was reinforced as almost every speaker believed that brands that embraced the sustainability platform have seen positive benefits from not only customers and the media, but also from their shareholders, employees, and partners. The great quote was for brands to “look at your ripple, not your splash.”

Some research highlights:

1. Among consumers, there is a shift from awareness to action. Top-searched environmental term in 2006? “Climate change.” Top-searched in 2007? “Recycling.”
2. Many companies, such as KEEN Footwear, are thinking through the entire lifecycle of their products already, and communicating that to their customers.
3. BBMG a partner agency as we both work with LUNA Bar shared really fascinating information from their in-depth “The Conscious Consumer Report” which combines field research with a national survey of values driven consumers. The 5 values of this consumer and the prism through which they view the world is a must-read for marketers. You can download the report and watch a DVD from the BBMG web site. The good news is that more people are taking some type of green action, whether that involves buying more energy efficient light bulbs or shopping for a hybrid, but they are balancing their ideals with convenience and price decisions. People often equate ‘green’ with some kind of tradeoff or deprivation and want `green’ to be easy, fast and convenient.

Some case study highlights:
Numerous companies shared their stories to conference attendees in a very transparent fashion – openly discussing challenges, friction within their organizations and what they learned. It was refreshing vs. the typical sanitized, chest-beating case study one often hears at conference settings. Of note:

• Two years ago, Yahoo Autos launched an online poll asking whether consumers were considering purchasing an alternative fuel vehicle in the next year. A stunning 60% said yes, and the smart folks at Yahoo spotted a major opportunity to serve a consumer need. Enter the Yahoo Autos Green Center. Last year, the company launched Yahoo Green – a new content channel focusing on “actionable, practical tips for conscious consumers.”
• Bill Morrissey, VP of environmental sustainability at Clorox, shared research and three case studies around Clorox’s approach in three different businesses. Clorox’s research found four key drivers for consumers – in rank order:
  • Personal protection – What’s going in me/on me/around me (and my family)?
  • Cost – I save $$ by reusing/reducing consumption.
  • Status – I let others know that I care about the environment.
  • Altruism – I do it because it’s the right thing to do.

• Bill shared what Clorox has learned and tried across three brands:
  • “In Me” – Brita Water Filters: Clorox created a “Drink Responsibly” campaign promoting Brita filters as a sustainable alternative to plastic water bottles; the brand saw double-digit growth when using this “green” message
  • “On Me” – Burt’s Bees Natural Personal Care Products. Clorox acquired this brand, and is trying not to screw up the formula.
  • “Around Me” – GreenWorks Natural Cleaning Products.

• UPS was brought up for the work the company has done in mobilizing its workforce around environmental sustainability. UPS trucks and vans delivering packages no longer make left-hand turns, even if it takes a little longer to get there. Left-hand turns mean sitting at red lights far more often, which means idling, which means wasting gas. By only taking right-hand turns, UPS is cutting their gas consumption (and gas budget) significantly - 3 million gallons of fuel as of December 2007.
• Jeffrey Hollender, President of 7th Generation gave a “stand-up-on-your-chair-and-cheer” inspirational talk on engaging your workforce to build a sustainable brand. The work that goes into creating and improving their culture was really impressive…and so are their business results growing its business 45%, and 65% over the past two years. Seventh Generation has information on its website detailing everything that’s wrong with its products. Their goal is to “create a business in which all our products are not just sustainable but restorative,” he said. Hollender is pushing the company to aim for “good,” not “less bad.” Hollender’s blog, Inspired Protagonist, is a fantastic resource for any communications professional in this sector. I was really moved by a program they started called WAGES, which enables low-income Latina women, primarily in the housecleaning trade, to create environmentally friendly housecleaning cooperatives so they can own their own businesses and use eco-friendly methods and products that are not only better for them personally, but their clients and the environment as well.

I returned back to San Francisco even more inspired to promote the sustainability efforts of Access and our clients.

-- Jennifer Fellner

Goodbye to a Great Communicator

This post isn’t about public relations per se, but it is about communications; it’s about someone who was one of the great communicators of the last fifty years, a master of wordplay and a true American court jester for our uncertain times.

Nothing was ever sacred, out of bounds or off limits with George Carlin, who died unexpectedly of heart failure at 71 on Sunday; he always walked up to the line of cultural propriety drawn by our self-proclaimed protectors of decency and boldly stepped over it, didn’t matter if you were a Republican, a Democrat (although not so frequently), fat or thin, smart or stupid, rich or poor, corporate or blue collar, gifted athlete or celebrity superstar, or even, perish the thought, God…if you had grand pretensions, delusions of grandeur, mendacity in your heart or greed in your gut, were trying to sell us something totally worthless or, better yet bad for our health, or had trouble telling the truth to him and the American people he directed his humor toward, it was open season and you didn’t stand a chance against one of the sharpest minds ever to unleash a verbal volley.

When I heard early this morning that he had died, I spent about an hour listening again to those classic Carlin standup albums from the early 70s – “Class Clown” and “Toledo Windowbox” in particular. They’ve never failed, and they didn’t this time either; Once again I was laughing so hard -- deep, deep laughter that always feels so, so satisfying – after the first brief opening bits of Class Clown; whether Carlin was riffing on religion (couldn’t tolerate it and spent 40 years of his career lampooning the fatuous, blind obedience of organized religion and its followers), modern society (we inherited America – well, actually stole it from the Indians and Mexicans but who wants to remember that? But anyway, look what we’ve done – we’ve created a nation of shopping malls in between mini malls next to minimarts beside muffler shops…), the pharmaceutical industry (“Womb Broom! Preg-Not! And one that doesn’t work all the time – Baby Maybe!” in exposing the relentless pursuit of any prescription medicine the industry could market to guileless Americans to extract ever greater profits at the expense of health and reason), and of course, the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television!” (still can’t, by the way).

I was thirteen years old and my emergent adolescent view of the world around me was reflected in large measure through the lens which George Carlin used to view America…I spent many, many nights crouched over my brother’s turntable, he and I and a couple of like-minded acolytes straining to listen and to not laugh too loud because even though my parents were relatively enlightened, they couldn’t “get” the long-haired hippie with the unbelievably dirty (but incredibly razor sharp) mind, and once they overheard the extended bit on the couple having sex while the guy’s dog Tippy struggles with bad gas at the foot of the bed, George lost his housing privileges at the Regan home.

I will truly miss George Carlin; not afraid to say that I was deeply saddened this morning when I heard the news (if this were a piece of notepaper rather than a collection of X’s and O’s, there would be a tear stain right about here.) I always felt like there was balance in our culture when he was working – he called comedy an art and he was meticulous about his craft, but he really worked to deliver an unvarnished product that just happened to be about the funniest stuff you could ever get for $19.99 a month with your HBO subscription (George did many, many HBO specials), $13.99 for Class Clown on CD or, now, for free in the YouTube generation because classic Carlin clips are all over the internet. There was never any bullshit, certainly no facades, superficiality, or affected status and it was these characteristics of his art that I felt helped keep me honest and grounded as I matured and felt the constant struggle and tug of artifice and pursuit of false hopes in modern America.

When I entered the public relations profession – a fraught pursuit of truth if ever there was one – I only ever needed to put on a Carlin album or watch George on HBO to stay tethered to the real truths and laugh that deep, deep truly satisfying laugh at all the lunacy and folly around us that George so easily skewered. George, wherever you are (and I know, if it were up to you as an avowed atheist, you wouldn’t be anywhere around to receive this note in any shape or form), here’s one more heartfelt thank you…and, dare I say it, “God bless” to a great communicator of great truths.

-- Brian Regan

Off The Record at the DEMO Party

Last night the Access Team was out in force at the DEMO Alumni party hosted by Chris Shipley at the Rockit Room in the Inner Richmond. The bar was packed with more than 600 DEMO alumni, emerging technology companies, PR professionals, journalists, and filled with music from Don Clark’s band Off the Record.

We ran into a bunch of hot start-ups including MEDgle, a medical education website and Kosmix, also known as another generation of Wikipedia and engine that creates websites for every topic and company. Other companies in attendance included XOBNI, an Outlook inbox organizer and search engine and Pocobar, a mechatronics consulting firm that delivers Mechatronics, Embedded Systems, and Software Development solutions called Pocobar looking to exhibit at this year’s DEMO.

On the media side, Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat stopped by the event and shared his thoughts on E3 and his new position with the blog. He noted VentureBeat is in the process of creating a separate, Digital part of its site and in the process of building out these details and this content now. He seems to be enjoying his new position and ability to keep a more clear focus.

We also ran into Sam Diaz, previous reporter of the San Jose Mercury News and Washington Post. Sam recently returned to the Bay Area and is currently freelancing while he determines his next steps, planning to maintain a focus on technology. Sam strongly supports the movement from print to online and believes an even stronger idea would to cut back print edition to twice a week.

After 19 years, DEMO is going strong and still the hottest show in town. We’re looking forward to DEMOfall 08 in San Diego.

-- Kathryn Green

PR 2.0 is Not Just About Social Media and Blogging

Tom Foremski is calling BS on PR firms who claim to have social media practices that don’t have blogs and is generating a bit of a wave. While he made a good point – you can’t know it unless you use it – the comments on his post tell a more rounded story. Several firms weighed in, noting that practicing PR 2.0 encompasses more than simply blogging, but being active multiple platforms and using a variety of tools. At Access, we’re testing a range of Web 2.0 technologies with clients, including Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, wikis, blogging, podcasting and SEO press releases.

But what no one (as far as I can tell) is discussing is how PR firms are changing their structure and management using Office 2.0 tools to actually be more productive internally. I portend that PR 2.0 is also about being able to work more collaboratively amidst the Web 2.0 data storm.

Most still shuffle tons of paper, clog up inboxes with Excel grids and PowerPoints, use Cision MediaSource as a phonebook and have to dig through archaic server hierarchies to find historical documents. The PR workflow has been ingrained in our ethos after years of experience in agencies or on the corporate side, however, it is inherently flawed – it is a social consciousness and oral history that relies on old, disconnected technology.

Take tracking the stories we’re working on and keeping clients updated, as an example. We all know the drill: Keep all your media opportunities in an Excel grid, prior to the client meeting, e-mail it around to the team for updates, spend a half an hour reformatting it, fixing print areas, typos, searching for coverage that’s supposed to hit, then once it’s ready, shooting it off to your client.

But that’s all over now…our teams at Access are now able to track and manage all their interactions with reporters and upcoming coverage all in one place – online – entering data once and our reports are always up to date, no matter when our meetings with clients are or where we are. Expected coverage rarely goes unnoticed and reporter follow-up never slips through the cracks.

We’ve got PRBase.

What is PRBase? PRBase is a custom on-demand application that combines the tracking of media opportunities, campaigns, trade shows and media with PR workflow and reporting needs. We created it in-house using Intuit QuickBase without writing one single line of code. [Please note: this post is not meant to be a case study or a sales pitch – Intuit is a client and we’ve been collaborating with our internal clients for years using it.] PRBase is designed to follow our PR workflow and can be customized easily for any client or team.

PRBase does exactly what we need it to, in exactly the way we want it to:

• Track open & closed media opportunities. See where pitches are in the news cycle, next steps and which team member is working on what. Keep time-stamped follow-up notes. Find resulting coverage (attachment or link) or the reasoning behind why the reporter didn’t write about your client.
• Manage workflow. Stay on top of opportunities with “Follow-up on” dates. Just tell the system when you need to contact the reporter again and it’ll e-mail you to remind you. PRBase even e-mails you when your article is expected to hit. Reports like My Open Media Opportunities show users everything they’re working on at a glance and color-codes opps that are past due on follow-up.
• Manage your media list. Houses your entire media list and allows you to keep and search data MediaSource can only dream of. Photos, blog URLs, IM handles. The application associates every opportunity with the media contact, giving us a full history.
• Manage pitch campaigns. Easily see when they start and stop to plan for the future. Plus, associate campaigns with media opportunities to track how many opps resulted from your efforts.
• Reports, Reports, Reports. What opportunities are we working on, what coverage is expected? How many briefings did we do it March? How many reviews did we secure in technology trades in 2007? What have we briefed Entrepreneur Magazine on in the past two years? How many articles did we get as a result of the launch? Customizable reports enable us to better serve clients with quick answers.
• Roles. PRBase can be customized for any number of roles, which is especially helpful for large accounts with multiple business units and internal clients. Role-based dashboards show team members exactly what they need to see when they log on. Role-based reports eliminate clutter.

PRBase is just one application we’ve built. We’re also using it to manage our vacation calendar, new business pipeline, measurement and have several more apps in the works. And they’re all hosted on one online portal. Stay tuned for more info…

-- Jared Leavitt

Talking Digital

Rumblings from the PRSA Digital Impact Conference in NYC

Day 1
So it seems like a lot of PR professionals are getting the hang of this 2.0 thing. Over the course of my two-day PRSA Digital Impact experience, I shared tips with my new PR friends about how to subscribe to Tweets (aka Twitter posts) posted by others attending the conference and learned how to use TWhirl and Summize applications on Twitter. Oh but that’s not all…the conference was chock full of useful tidbits to help get me more acclimated into the digital world. Here are some of my thoughts.

Josh Bernoff, social technology industry analyst at Forrester and co-author of “Groundswell, Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies”, kicked off the event with the morning keynote. His discussion touched on how social technologies are creating a groundswell of viral opportunities where people connect with and draw power from each other. He discussed how essential it is to create and stimulate conversations without attempting to control the message. He also gave some colorful examples about how brand can be affected by social technologies, including the YouTube video of the Comcast technician sleeping on the job, or how you don’t want to stir the Internet hornet’s nest because you might get stung.

If you haven’t already picked up Bernoff and Charlene Li’s book, it sounds like a must-read.  Groundswell’s Social Technographics Ladder is also a great tool to help understand the impact of social technologies. If you want to learn more, click here or, of course, just buy the book.

The media lunch session presented a good networking opportunity, but not much value in terms of learned lessons or discussing 2.0 trends outside of those I already follow. The panel included Stephen Baker, BusinessWeek, Michele Gershberg, Reuters, Betsy Alexander, Early Show, Richard Wilner, New York Post and Jude Biersdorfer, New York Times. But I have to say, it’s always nice as a west coaster to get the chance to get face to face interactions with NY-based media – people with whom I’ve developed relationships over the years. It’s always good to show your human side.

Oh and by the way, people can’t stop talking about Google: how to optimize your press release and marketing materials on Google, how to do research on Google, how getting visibility on Google will make or break your launch, etc. Google would have been flattered by all the attention.

The finale…a moderated discussion with Spencer Ante from BusinessWeek who talked a little about his book, “Creative Capital” and a lot about his perspective on offline and online media and how advertising on social media will be an interesting topic to track in the next year. Ante’s on Twitter, but only for professional reasons and don’t try to become his friend on Facebook…reporters don’t need more spam. 

Day 2
David Carr from the New York Times opened the morning, talking about his years in the business, his Carpetbagger column and how he likes to cover the Oscars. 

However, what I found most useful was Paul Gillin, author of “The New Influencers”, who gave a how-to talk about new social technologies and practices – which ones to follow and which ones can empower you to become your own SEO or SEM. I definitely feel smarter about the technology and about ways in which I can help measure the impact of PR in the blogosphere, in social media and beyond. Conversation mining tools like Nielsen BuzzMetrics and CyberAlert seem like handy PR tools that help get an accurate read on client’s brand affinity in the social media-sphere. These were obviously just the highlights, but I’m sure there’s more detail that can be found on Paul’s blog here.

There are two kinds of people in the 2.0 world, those inside and those outside the 2.0 bubble –basically those who get it and those who don’t. Fortunately, I think I can now say that I’m actually in the bubble, and I hope this bubble doesn’t burst. There’s a plethora of cool opportunities and unique tools at our fingertips and us PR folk are tasked to evolve along with the trend or get ahead of it.

-- Danielle Brincko

Under The Bright Lights

As a PR professional, there is no better feeling than watching a client hit a media grand slam, and our non-profit client, Pat House of the Mary Mae Foundation stepped up to bat with Fox Business News on Monday – and hit one out of the park!

After securing a coveted interview, myself and Access CEO Susan Butenhoff accompanied Pat to the Intel Museum in Santa Clara on Monday morning, where she had the pleasure and privilege to be a part of Fox Business News’ ambitious goal – infiltrate Silicon Valley and conduct live back-to-back five minute  interviews with 30 top CEOs in three days for a series titled "Three Days in the Valley". The companies on the roster were impressive. Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Twitter – ever heard of them? The focus of this series is exclusively on Silicon Valley, given that much of what happens just off the 101 freeway between San Francisco and San Jose shapes the technology that people use from here to China and back.

Under the bright studio lights, Pat House sat down with Fox News’ Liz Claman to talk about The Mary Mae Foundation, a multi-million dollar philanthropic effort aimed at building 100 cost-effective, comfortable homes for quality teachers. Liz’ interview and questions for Pat were thoughtful and engaging, and true to form, Pat, the co-founder of Siebel Systems, was smart, charismatic and really brought the Mary Mae Foundation story to life. The experience also reminded me that while so much of the media we consume is either online or user generated, a la YouTube, broadcast journalism is still alive and well, and it’s rather exciting to watch the magic happen.

-- Cristin Zweig

King for a Day

For months we have been promoting a video game called Don King Presents Prizefighter on behalf of our 2K Sports client. We coordinated media tours, a special newsletter, an event at Madison Square Garden, and most recently our proprietary interview sessions that we’ve perfected between a game’s producer and several dozen video game websites. By providing these media – who generally don’t have a lot of access to developers and publishers – a chance to interact with the people behind the scenes, these sessions enable us to build brand and game evangelists. For this particular session, I was moderating the call and was tasked with announcing Mr. Don King’s special dial-in appearance. While I could predict he would speak at length and sling his slang in a way that would entertain the media, his decision to toast me caught me completely off guard. How cool is it that the world’s greatest promoter was shouting my name? Very cool, indeed. To hear the praise, click here.

To check out some of the gaming community’s coverage of this session, click here, here, or here, or just listen to the audio of the entire session.

-- Chase

Pop Goes the Champagne Cork

Here I was, on a whirlwind trip to New York in hopes of bringing home the silver! We’re “dressed”, in a theater, with hundreds of the industry’s top professionals. Waiting and wondering will we win. Our name comes up on the screen and we finally see who we’re up against, some big guns – Kodak and Rosetta Stone. Fingers crossed, deep breath, fingers crossed, deep breath. And the winner goes to…Intuit and Access Communications. We did it, we won! Flashbacks of all the hard work and amazing results fill my head with satisfaction. Thank goodness for smart phones because I immediately report back to our team in San Francisco. Pop goes the champagne cork.

The icon of PR best practices to the Oscars of the industry, no matter what you call it winning the PRSA Silver Anvil is a prestigious form of recognition. In our tenure with Intuit, we have developed two Anvil-worthy campaigns. The most recent win came just this week in the Marketing Consumer Products category for our work to inspire Americans to Just Start. The campaign included an integrated approach of traditional and 2.0 communications tools that drove impressive and tangible business impact.

At a time when our world is consumed with concerns of recession, war, and the environment the Silver Anvils exposed us to many campaigns driving meaningful change for heartfelt initiatives including natural disasters, health and wellness and helping our war heroes. The common denominator for all the Anvil Winners was a strong call to action. Media coverage is not enough, what separates good campaigns from winning campaigns is what the media coverage motivates its audience to do.

To all the Anvil winners, a well deserved Congrats and we hope to see you again next year.

-- Lindsay Scalisi

Access Makes it to The Finish Line

This past Sunday, Access colleagues Jen Campbell, Jillian Fisher, Jenna Galloway, Andrea Holland and I participated in the Rock N’ Roll Marathon in San Diego, CA. As part of the Team in Training program to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Access team combined raised over $14,000 for the Society while training for more than four months leading up to the marathon event.

On the day of the event, we woke up at 3:30am to eat our LUNA bars, pin our bibs and tie our beautiful personalized “Access PR” hair ribbons (thanks, Jenna!). Three hours later we’re at the starting line and ready to run...once the sun rose of course.

It was a great excuse to get in shape, but also an invaluable opportunity to bond with colleagues outside of the usual work grind. Along the way, we were inspired and supported not only by our colleagues, but also by members of the Team in Training organization, leukemia and lymphoma survivors, friends and family. I speak for everyone when I say it was a life-changing event and will always remain as one our greatest life accomplishments.

Thanks to Access for their support and for cheering us on!

-- Danielle Brincko

Meeting the New Generation

As we go about our daily jobs, constantly trying to grow our agency, clients and careers, it’s important to remember that the future of our industry does rely heavily on recruiting new talent. To do our part for a thriving profession, we try to make regular outreach to those eager college students who think there just might be a future for them in public relations.

Recently, Access Communications hosted a group of soon-to-be college grads from San Jose State University’s PRSSA chapter to give them a glimpse of life inside a Bay Area high-tech PR firm. Twenty students toured our agency to learn about a day in the life of a PR professional and ask questions about how to break into the industry. Access staffers, including Senior Vice President and fellow SJSU alum Matt Afflixio, shared tips on the importance of internships in helping decide what part of the PR world is right for them, as well as how to turn an internship into a full-time job and a successful career. We learned a few things from this group too, especially some astute predictions on how they perceive the PR business as traditional media gives way to UGC and social media.

For those who are wondering…Access is hiring! Access is currently filling positions for summer interns and entry-level Account Coordinators. Complete job details are available by clicking here.

-- David Conner