The Access Point

Search Finds Twitter

The announcement from Google (and Microsoft) earlier this week to partner with Twitter was not a shocker – it’s about time. And, it makes sense. Here’s our take at @AccessPR on this newly incorporated offering, and how we plan to use it to help our clients.

Most importantly, this news is an acknowledgement that Twitter is truly the standard for real-time news. Now that tweets are Google and Bing searchable content, they will certainly reach a wider audience beyond Twitter and potentially be viewed side-by-side with traditional media, online media and blogs.

Second, this is a defining moment between mainstream search and social media. For communicators, it’s now more important than ever to stay on top of your brand and your messages, because search rankings mean greater reach and resonance for your company’s narrative. Where messaging was once staid and architected, it will now become more fluid and responsive to customers and communities. Living the brand and the message just took on a whole new dimension.

Finally, here at Access we will need to expand our measurement processes to evaluate the connection between search and Twitter. It remains to be seen whether tweet volume will impact search rankings, but suffice to say everyone will be paying more attention to the intersection of search, traditional media, social media and real-time news.

As a social media PR agency, we’ll be incorporating this new process into our existing proprietary measurement offering which tracks influence and engagement across social mediums. Hopefully Facebook will jump on the bandwagon next and make that trove of consumer content and behavior Google/Bing searchable.

Andrea Holland
Access Communications
@andreaholland

The New Power for Brands is in Letting Go

The old saw attributed to former House Speaker, Tip O’Neill that “all politics is local” may be in need of a refresh. After the 2008 presidential election, you could argue that all politics is social and we might attribute some of that shift to Jonathan Kopp, Ketchum’s new Global Director for Ketchum Digital.

Jonathan would know. As a partner for SS+K, he served on Barack Obama’s national media team and was tasked with reaching and registering 18-34 year old voters. Last night in San Francisco, Access co-hosted with Ketchum a conversation with Jonathan on lessons corporate marketers could learn from the campaign. Jonathan outlined four strategic imperatives the campaign used to engage this target audience and change the rules of the game:

1. Involve brand advocates by engaging them where they live psychologically and physically.
2. Inspire then empower them to believe they can do it, they can have it, they can be it.
3. Amplify the effect by giving the audience the tools to act.
4. Respect your audience and your respect will be rewarded.

When it comes to political campaigns, Obama changed the rules of engagement and Kopp believes that the Obama campaign can provide many lessons to brand marketers. “Let the game come to you and don’t over-push the brand,” recommended Kopp who claims that in as much as Gen-Yers want to discover and share, it is important to start small and “avoid doing an open mic with the biggest megaphone”. 

In addition to discovering the message, consumers, especially younger audiences, want to personally relate to the message and that means that they want to feel that they were involved in the evolution of the message. They want to hear their words, in their voice and in their medium of choice. Many of the most powerful headlines that fueled the Obama campaign marketing came from the users. Of course the market at large has learned the power of user generated content, and Obama is the first politician who truly empowered the youth demographic to register, act and vote.

As social networking has overtaken email as the internet activity used most, brand owners may be concerned about the shift in power to the consumer, but Kopp believes successful marketing lies in giving consumers the tools they need to have conversations about their brands and let those conversations happen without interruption. Kopp pointed out that there is a lot of power in letting go and embracing the distributed power of the consumers (or in the case of Obama, the voters), but it requires a shift in thinking, and dare I say, some hope and change?

- Susan Butenhoff

Turbulence Doesn’t Bark, It Exposes What a Company Is

Part Two on My Time with Jim Collins

“No one has the right to whine about their industry,” announced Jim Collins. Harsh words for a small room of CEOs who for the most part have all experienced a significant downturn in their business and personal financial investments. It was clearly tough love time for all of us as we absorbed his words of wisdom. Collins went on to tell us that every industry is undergoing change and experiencing challenges and that these are not sufficient excuses for a company’s poor performance. His proof point was the airline industry, under siege for years, and yet Southwest Airlines delivered the top ranking returns for all publicly traded companies from 1978 – 2002, despite the effects of de-regulation and 9/11. Southwest Airlines’ founder Herb Kelleher claims their success is largely due to the airline having accurately predicted 11 of the last two recessions, meaning they consistently managed their company as if a recession was around the corner. And even when they made the wrong prediction, such fiscal conservatism was good for the company.

The message is that the paranoid succeed and that a company that gets giddy on market growth exuberance is greatly at risk. In fact Collins strongly argued that it is senior management’s ability to stay consistently focused on internal, controllable dynamics that becomes the cultural touchstone for a healthy company. It is the 20 mile marchers, disciplined about running their companies based on their own consistent metrics, that succeed. In contrast, those companies that exuberantly draft behind the growth market end up building a reliance on external factors that they don’t control, ultimately sealing their fate. In the public relations industry we saw this with agencies that chased the dot com tidal wave and became a casualty when the wave crashed. More recently, a similar addiction to explosive but ultimately unsustainable growth expectations led to the fall-out we are all living with now. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been directly and negatively affected by the market exuberance hang-over.

“Turbulence doesn’t bark, it’s what you don’t see that has the greatest impact. Turbulence exposes what a company is.” This Collins adage goes to the heart of his premise that turbulence amplifies the strengths of strategic, well managed companies, and it amplifies the weaknesses of companies that fail to run themselves based on strategic consistency.

What does strategic consistency mean for the public relations industry? For Access it has always meant a fundamental USP (unique selling proposition) built around high touch client service that is only possible by deeply valuing our staff and giving them opportunities to grow and prove themselves. This also means making hard staffing decisions and understanding that opportunity and intention don’t make the wrong person the right person.

It means honoring the commitment of having senior people stay tightly involved in clients’ business instead of chasing new business. It means saying no to new accounts that aren’t right for us because we felt that we weren’t the best partner for their needs for a variety of different reasons. It means always hitting our key cultural and operational metrics even when hard decisions have to be made because staying focused on core benchmarks means we can react quickly when external dynamics change.

So how does innovation play into this? We are all beneficiaries of Silicon Valley’s abundance of innovations, but history has shown that innovations frequently come at the expense of strategic consistency. Innovations create and expand industries and have created billions in market capitalization; however, the alarming side of this equation is that research has found that only 13% of high tech innovators become leaders in their respective markets and that 50% of high tech innovators fail outright. As business managers we must always ensure that investments in innovations do not come at the expense of our core business.

So much to share and so little blog space, so again I must leave you with the promise of more to come...

Today’s Corporate Lesson: It’s All about the Tortoise, Not the Hare

I recently had the opportunity to spend time with the expert on the golden rules of transforming good organizations into great ones. As a man who can see around corners, Jim Collins’ most recent research and wise words are about how greatness can be attained in environments characterized by immense turbulence. Considering that Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha whose financial acumen is undisputed recently commented that the economy “has fallen off a cliff”, Jim’s words are especially timely, so I will share my take-aways in a series of blogs.

Jim’s headline is that true leaders are able to build something great even amid periods of great turbulence. Reassuring words, considering every day seems to be plagued by unprecedented financial news. Jim is a great believer in the philosophy that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” and that the companies that not only survive but are also positioned to thrive coming out of a downturn are those companies with a strong sense of values, people and process.  Similar to Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare, Jim believes that strategic consistency, rather than the exuberant inconsistency exhibited by companies chasing steroid-type growth, determines a company’s long-term success. In Jim’s words, “a great company is more likely to die of indigestion from too much opportunity than starve from a lack of opportunity.”  Jim also expanded quite a bit on his 20-mile march philosophy: this is about the company that executes with reliable consistency on a 20 mile march across the country will always outpace  the company that sprints out of the gate and quickly into major troubles. In summary, if a company’s growth accelerates faster than its people’s ability to successfully execute across the longer term, it will fail.

In essence, turbulence is a lens through which we get the best optics on the true measure of a company. It amplifies the deficiencies of weak organizations and seemingly infuses great ones with the uncanny ability to gain market share. We see this evidenced acutely by those companies who manage with great rigor and discipline during normal business cycles – they are frequently among the rare organizations who excel in truly challenging times  Key to their success is the discipline that must be consistently applied to talent acquisition, to securing only top quality personnel and not diluting the corporate gene pool with mediocre talent when money and growth opportunity mean anybody becomes the right body. This irresponsible hiring practice is usually driven by the objective of achieving headline-making hockey stick growth, rather than a relentless focus on the 20 mile march through consistent financial performance. Like Goldilocks, companies successful over the long term look for growth that is not too big and not too little, but measured and balanced against realistic forecasts and viable business objectives. Based on Jim’s research, companies who are more consistent with their strategy over time are always more successful than those who weren’t. And for those Silicon Valley companies who believe they are immune to such discipline due to the power of innovation, Jim’s research indicates that innovation will never compensate for a lack of discipline.

Most telling, there are 5 key elements that separate those companies that will do well during turbulent times from those that will become an asterisk in financial history. For that and more stay tuned to my next blog….

Susan Butenhoff

The Worst of Times Need the Best of Leaders

I recently attended a private conference with Jonathan Schwartz. In addition to his position as Sun Microsystems’s CEO and president he is also the poster child for CEO blogs (in fact his blog gets 15,000 hits a day). It was clear from our discussion that he truly understands what it takes to be a leader during difficult times.

 

He should know today Sun announced that it is laying off about 18% of its global workforce, about 6,000 people, and in the last 18 months Sun has shrunk from an $18 billion dollar company to $11 billion.

 

As Jonathan noted, “I watched the deflation of Sun and it was not a smooth descent.” He shared his leadership tips with a roomful of CEOs equally concerned about how global economic conditions will affect their business in the short and long term.

 

Jonathan provided four fundamental leadership tips. While some may appear obvious, they serve as both reminders and true compass points during trying times.

 

 

Tip #1: Have an opinion on where the world is headed and what that means for your company. Jonathan believes that 10% of an audience will always hate your opinion and it’s how you respond to that 10% that converts the fence sitters who are typically 70% of the audience. According to Jonathan, naysayers are very healthy for an organization because they force the leader to avoid ambiguity and clearly communicate their vision while addressing any perceived weakness in the strategy. Of course part of this process requires making people feel safe about disagreeing, which can be hard to embrace when a company is fighting for its revenues and profits.

 

Tips #2 and #3 are interconnected. He believes that the most important job of any leader is to communicate. In fact communications takes up 50% of his time: “the number one accelerant to change is communications with unified messaging. Strong leaders recognize that a successful company is really a community defined by its shared understanding of where it is heading next. And while communications takes up half his time, 90% of his energy is spent on the hardest part of his job: motivating his teams.

Key to motivating people is a strong belief in what you are doing, which brings us to...

 

Tip #4: It takes courage to lead, and leaders are required to step up and drive change especially during volatile times. This necessitates collaboration, succession planning, pace setting and a demand for innovations. As Jonathan pointed out, “the challenge for any company is reprofiling yourself based on where the market is heading.” Jonathan left us with a parting thought: while the task of a leader during times like these may appear daunting, all leaders should remember that “no one knows as much, cares as much, sees as much or understands as well as you do.”

 

It is clear to me that that strong and effective leadership may be the secret ingredient that will separate the companies who thrive from those which merely survive in the coming year.

 

-Susan

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