Inside PR 3.38: On advertising, PR and choosing an agency 2.0

July 5, 2013 • Martin • PR

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We start this week on a sad note as we remember Arthur Yann, vice president PR, PRSA, who passed away suddenly in June. Arthur was an industry leader, a man of integrity and intelligence and a good friend of Inside PR. His untimely death is a big loss for the PR industry and we want to send our deepest condolences to Arthur’s family and colleagues at PRSA.

You can read tributes to Arthur by Gini and Martin.

We also congratulate Louise Armstrong on becoming the new president of IABC Toronto, the organization’s largest chapter.

This week we talk about two things – some of the innovations advertising has been making in recent months and whether or not PR is in danger of being commoditized – again.

Martin recaps a blog post he wrote on recent changes to the ad landscape including the launch of Instagram video, hashtags on Facebook and Google/YouTube training advertisers how to make their videos more viral.

Gini wonders if PR is just not creative enough as an industry and perhaps that starts with the way we name our agencies, like lawyers and accountants. Joe suggests that it’s not an industry that innovates, it’s the people in it.

Martin mentions an observation by Dave Jones, one of IPR’s founders, who made the leap from PR to the ad and now digital worlds. Dave suggests PR people default to one of three strategies when they develop campaigns: celebrity spokesperson, charitable component or survey. And if you can work in all three, that’s the holy grail. He says the industry needs to liberate itself from that mindset.

And speaking of a new mindset, Joe talks about AirPR, an online platform, just out of beta, that claims it can match clients to PR agencies more effectively than RfPs. Joe and Gini think it may be worth trying, while Martin feels it’s a step in the wrong direction because it places no value on relationships.

And finally we want to thank podcaster and video producer Steve Lubetkin for leaving a comment on Inside PR 3.36. We appreciate your thoughts on the subject of visual storytelling. You can read more of Steve’s insights here.

That’s a wrap for this week. We’d love to hear what you think.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR 3.25: Roy Reid on Outrageous Trust

February 14, 2013 • admin • PR

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It’s Valentine’s Day and while we certainly don’t know the secret to romance, we do know that no real relationship can survive without trust.

And that brings us to today’s topic. We caught up with Roy Reid, APR, one of the partners in Consensus Communications, at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco. Roy had just given a presentation on trust – well, actually he went beyond simple trust to describe something he called outrageous trust.

Here are three actions Roy recommends to achieve outrageous trust:

1. Take responsibility for the relationship.

2. Build from the inside out. That means always acting with integrity and producing excellent work.

3. Be consistent in your communications.

Gini references the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer and the fact that while trust in organizations is no longer falling, it’s still low. She agrees with Roy and says you can’t be trustworthy externally unless you’re trustworthy internally too.

Joe mentions Naked Conversations and the notion that we trust people we know and can talk to and are generally skeptical of business. And if organizations haven’t spent the time to engage with their community, they won’t have much credibility or support when a crisis occurs.

We go on to talk about two recent online crises in the restaurant industry, at Smith and Wollensky (scroll to the end to read what the police had to say) and the tipping brouhaha at Applebee’s.

What do you think organizations need to do to attain the state of outrageous trust with their customers and communities?

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR video interviews with Shonali Burke and Shel Holtz

January 26, 2013 • Martin • PR

As many of you know, we’ve been doing video interviews since this summer in partnership with PRSA and Mesh. And we’ve had an opportunity to talk with some really smart and insightful people.

So we thought we’d share the video portions of the conversations we had with Shonali Burke and Shel Holtz at the 2012 PRSA International Conference. We featured the audio in IPR 3.15 and 3.16

And while you’re at it, check out our new Inside PR YouTube channel. We’ll be doing more interviews in 2013 so as they say in TV land…stay tuned.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 3.13: The importance of participating in real life

October 26, 2012 • admin • PR

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It’s fall and, like many of you, we’re on the learning circuit. Now, I’m not talking about formal post-secondary education (of course, that’s valuable too). I mean attending conferences and events, gaining insights from speakers and meeting new people. We were recently at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco and will be featuring audio and video interviews we did over the next few weeks.

And, on November 7 we’ll be at meshmarketing in Toronto to talk to more thought-leaders and digital innovators.

On this week’s show, we discuss some of our PRSA highlights and feature an interview with Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, and one of the keynote speakers at meshmarketing.

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This year’s conference was filled with standout content and lots of lively interaction between sessions. Highlights include a keynote by Twitter founder Biz Stone, who said ‘creativity is a renewable resource’, sessions on story marketing, a panel let by the CEOs of several major PR agencies looking at where the business is heading and presentations by Lee Odden, Shonali Burke, Shel Holtz.

One takeaway Joe observed is that we’re living in a post-social-media world and looking at a PR industry that’s positioning itself to compete with advertising and digital. We’re interested to hear your thoughts on how the profession is evolving.

Kristina Halvorson: content as a complicated beast

According to Kristina, the web is content. That’s one of the primary reasons we go online, whether to consume or create content. Businesses are waking up to the fact that we need to be focusing our time and energy on it – and it’s not easy; content is a complicated beast.

That’s because many organizations aren’t properly structured to identify the kind of content that’s needs to be created, how it’s all going to work together, who’s going to develop it, where it’s going to be published and who’s going to maintain it over time.

She believes companies need to start by having a group therapy session; a series of candid conversations where they can share their challenges and work toward a shared solution to create a more effective content strategy with clear goals.

You’ll be able to hear more from Kristina – and Lee Odden – at meshmarketing.

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Inside PR 3.08: Rob Flaherty and the PRSA 2012 International Conference

September 17, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, we air a special episode of Inside PR. Martin Waxman catches up with Rob Flaherty, the co-chair of the PRSA International Conference and CEO of Ketchum.

The 2012 International Conference takes place in San Francisco between October 13 and 16 and focuses on the intersection of technology and media. Here’s where to go to register online.

Flaherty talks about his role, and how he, along with his co-chairs Jack Martin, Global Chairman & CEO, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Janet Tyler, Co-CEO & Founder, Airfoil Public Relations, worked on planning the conference. He says it took a lot of bright and intelligent people to bring together such a strong line-up for 2012.

Flaherty also talks about an exciting panel on The Agency of the Future, hosted by himself, Jack Martin, Tyler and Fred Cook, CEO of Golin Harris.

If you are attending PRSA, you may catch Martin at this panel. You can also catch Martin at his own session, Social Media Barometer, on Sunday.

This year’s conference theme is ‘The Future is Now’, which represents how we are entering a new era of public relations and communications. Everything from radical transparency to globalization of PR.

To support the theme there will be keynotes by some of North America’s leading entrepreneurs, thinkers and innovators:

Biz Stone, Co-Founder, Twitter
Tim Westergren, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Pandora
June Cotte, Ph.D., Consumer Behavioral Expert
Michael Steele, Political Analyst, MSNBC

But, PRSA is not all about the keynotes, there are a variety of networking opportunities to meet other greats minds in our industry.

If you have the opportunity we encourage you to check out the conference in San Franciso between October 13 and 16. Make sure to look out for Inside PR we hope to see you there!

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Special edition of Inside PR: talking Digital Impact with Eric Schwartzman

April 2, 2012 • admin • PR

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PRSA’s Digital impact conference is happening in New York April 2 and 3 and we’re pleased to announce Inside PR is the official podcaster.
Martin talked with Eric Schwartzman, digital marketing consultant, entrepreneur, author, podcaster and founder/co-chair of Digital Impact about this year’s program. Now in its fourth year, the sold-out event is designed for PR professionals, marketing communicators, speechwriters and even entrepreneurs who are trying to integrate social into their strategy. Its focus is earned media through social communications and it’s tailored to the PR community.

This year’s keynote lineup features:

Caryn Marooney, vice president technology innovations, Facebook, talking about How to Thrive in a Connected World.
Matthias Lufkens – chief communications person for the World Economic Forum in Davos, speaking about the Role of the Social Media Architect.
Timothy Jordan – one of the key developer advocates for Google+ presenting the business case for having a Google+ page.
Richard Binhammer – Dell’s director of social media and community discussing how to build in social networking across an entire enterprise and connecting employees to customers.

Other sessions include a panel on PR and Wikipedia and whether or not PR people should be allowed to make changes on pages they manage; a communications professor talking about copyright, trademark and what you are and aren’t allowed to share; and several sessions on understanding influence, which tie directly into this year’s theme, ‘Influence and Persuasion’.

You can follow the hashtag #PRSADIconf Twitter.

We’ll be recording interviews with some of the presenters and keynotes. And if you’re in New York, please drop by to say hi.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.84: Are your measurement goals quantifiable and time-bound?

January 13, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, we feature another interview from the PRSA International Conference. We talk to our good friend Shonali Burke, communications strategist and author of the Waxing Unlyrical blog, about PR and social media measurement, a subject all PR people should pay attention to because it demonstrates the value of our work and whether or not we’ve achieved our goals.

Shonali calls out three problems in the way we approach measurement:

The concept of measurable objectives has been lost – our objectives must be quantifiable and time-bound.
Buzz is not a goal – because people don’t know what they’re trying to achieve, they’re not approaching communications strategically.
People overcomplicate. Don’t focus on the tools but on what you’re trying to track and how.

Shonali mentions the Blue Key campaign, which asks Americans to donate $5 to raise awareness and support for refugee issues and how they track the program using custom URLs, Google Analytics and other tools to identify emerging trends.

She’s tired of PR professionals saying they’re not good at numbers and advises us to, ‘stop getting freaked out by math!’

Gini mentions that it’s not impressions or ad equivalencies that are important, but how we deliver the kinds of results that mean something to a client’s business. Joe adds that being in PR, we’re dealing with digital data all the time and need to get good at that. Martin suggests that as professional communicators we are all in business and, as such, should learn and understand the fundamentals of business.

Are you measuring your programs effectively and in a way that demonstrates real value to your clients or organizations? Do you have any thoughts or cases to add? We’d love to hear from you.

And thanks Shonali.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.76: The world of Global PR

November 15, 2011 • admin • PR

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This week Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman talk about the new Plus in Google+, Google+ Pages for businesses. The team watches this breaking news as it unfolds. Gini checks out the Muppets page, Martin checks out the Pepsi page, and Joe checks out the Toyota page. The team looks forward to following the world Google+ pages and how it will develop.

But first, Joe starts off by sharing with everyone his adventures over in sunny, snowing Whistler, BC at the IABC’s Western Canada Regional Conference. Joe was very lucky because he actually won his pass to the conference, and he thanks the folks at IABC Toronto for that.

Then, Joe introduces an interviews from the Public Relations Society of America Conference with Dan Tisch, incoming chair of the Global Alliance. The Global Alliance is the confederation of the world’s major PR and communication management associations and institutions, representing 160,000 practitioners and educators around the world. The Global Alliance’s mission is to unify the public relations profession, raise professional standards all over the world, share knowledge for the benefit of its members and be the global voice for public relations in the public interest.

The Global Alliance is something Martin, Gini and Joe think will become very important very soon, so, make sure to check it out and listen to the full interview with Dan Tisch.

We would love to hear your opinion on the Global Alliance, or if you have any comments, insights or opinions on Google+ Pages. Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.74: On the road with On the Record Online

October 28, 2011 • admin • PR

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We’re on the trade show of PRSA International Conference in Orlando talking with Eric Schwartzman – on a special joint episode with On the Record Online and Inside PR.

Like us, Eric also records his podcasts over Skype but prefers face to face interviews when he can. And he’s a veteran, who started in April 2005, just after For Immediate Release and around the same time Terry Fallis and David Jones began Inside PR.

Gini, Joe, Eric and I discuss the state of podcasting and Eric talks about his approach:

– He’s feature-oriented, as opposed to news focused, so his shows have a longer shelf-life.
– He continues podcasting because he likes to learn and finds when there’s a mic and recorder, he gets the best answers from experts.
– He sees which shows people love based on the stats, but doesn’t chase the audience; he does what interests him.
– He spends a good deal of time – about eight hours per episode – preparing, conducting interviews, editing and producing, writing and publishing show notes and publishing. It is a time commitment, but he gets nearly 1,000,000 downloads a year.

The discussion ends when a band starts up in the booth behind us.

Do you have an idea for a topic you would like us to discuss? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.73: Live from the PRSA Conference

October 20, 2011 • Gini Dietrich • PR

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Coming to you, live, from the PRSA International Conference…and we’re all in Orlando together.

It’s a far better experience to record in person than with Google Hangouts and our Zoom recorders. Body language is easier to read, even though we use video, and we can play off one another better.

We hope you agree!

Soledad O’Brien was the conference opening keynote where she talked about diversity and media relations.

She, as she says, is a “mixed race person.” Her dad is Irish and Australian and her mother is black and Cuban. During her keynote she describes systemic racism and how far we’ve come, but that we still have a long way to go.

Her parents were at Johns Hopkins and living in Baltimore as an engaged couple. They couldn’t get married in Baltimore because, in 1958, it was illegal. So they got married in DC and lived illegally in Baltimore as an interracial couple.

You may be wondering what this has to do with the communication industry.

The PRSA conferences have always had programming that drives toward a greater purpose. Our job is about serving more than the master; it’s our job to not accept things as they are, but to communicate views in order to move things forward.

The keynote Soledad set the right tone for the conference and for any kind of organization…that is: communications should serve as a higher purpose.

She also talked about storytelling being the foundation of everything. She said, as PR professionals, we have to tell her stories and then trust her to take our stories and create something useful for her audiences.

It really bothers her when she is pitched by people who haven’t bothered to watch what she does. She says it’s offensive to receive those kinds of pitches and this is something the three of us discuss at length during the podcast.

Also some news for Joe and Martin at the end…so don’t tune out early!

Coming soon: Interviews from old friends and new, including Pierre-Loic Assyag, Dan Tisch, Shonali Burke, Abbie Fink, Jay Baer, Mary Barber, John Devaney, Eric Schwartzman, and more!

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Do you have an idea for a topic you would like us to discuss? Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pron Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.