Inside PR 3.48: Transparency and Disclosure in Media Relations

October 9, 2013 • thornley • PR

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On this week’s Inside PR podcast, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley tackle an issue raised by Gini in a post on Spin Sucks: disclosure by PR agencies of business interest in media relations pitches. Gini kicks off the conversation by asking the question, “Should media disclose every time they work with a PR person in preparing a story?” Martin tells a story of a lesson earned through experience and Joe argues that the real issue isn’t the activity of PR agencies, but the notion that PR agencies are attempting to influence objective news gatekeepers. And we go from there.

Also this week, Martin also recommends that PR practitioners should take a close look at Google’s recent Hummingbird search algorithm changes.

Finally, in this episode, we talk about taking Inside PR on the road. We’ll be covering MeshMarketing which takes place in Toronto on November 7. If you are a marketer near or in Toronto, this is a conference well worth attending. You can find details on the schedule and registration here.

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We would love your thoughts.

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 3.46: Google introduces In-depth articles

September 20, 2013 • Martin • PR

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Earlier in the month, Gini wrote a blog post about Google’s In-depth articles. She discovered them when she was doing a search for a client and, in addition to the regular results, noticed a series of three other links listed at the bottom of the page.

She dug a bit deeper and found Google launched In-depth articles in August to feature longer-form content people are talking about – usually from mainstream media outlets. (Note: a search of ‘google in-depth articles’ did not include any in-depth articles, but did show Gini’s post.)

Recently Google has been using three elements to determine ranking: recency and relevancy, popularity and authority. Now, in combination with these measures, content creators should consider developing longer-form pieces like ebooks or white papers.

These are more reflective pieces that should demonstrate the writer has done their research, cited credible sources and has the authority to offer a perspective on the topic that adds value.

Agencies and organizations will want to experiment with longer-form articles to determine what works and how it affects the perception and discoverability of their brand.

Joe says it’s interesting to watch where search is heading and recalls that four or five years ago you would get really interesting links when you searched a topic. Now, in top-level searches he’s seeing is the equivalent of ‘network television’ – that is, links from larger outlets rather than the independent voices that often provided a fresh point of view.

Martin wonders whether this is Google’s way to re-legitimize media outlets as publishers and point people back to them.

For our Canadian listeners, In Depth Articles don’t work in Google.ca, so you’ll need to search in Google.com. Right now, it only seems to be for top-level searches.

Are these shifts toward more mainstream results harkening back to the brochure-ware websites we used to find online? What happened to the individual voices we know are out there? Will the average person understand how to refine their searches in order to find independent voices? What’s the impact on communicators who want to reach a wider audience?

We’d love to hear your ideas on where you think search is heading.

And as we mentioned, here’s the link to the new subscription-based ‘Netflix for books’ app, Oyster.

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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 3.38: 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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Inside PR 3.36: Inside SXSWi – an interview with Hugh Forrest

June 19, 2013 • Martin • PR

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This is the second of the two shows, Gini, Joe and I recorded at PRSA Counselors Academy Conference in Austin – our annual must-attend agency leader event.

We’ve just watched Hugh Forrest, director of South by Southwest Interactive Festival – or as he likes to call himself, the community manager – present a keynote on SXSWi and how it’s grown to become a major social media and tech event.

Hugh was there from the start as the first employee of SXSW. He was hired by the organizers in the mid-90s when they heard you could migrate a database to a computer and asked him if that was possible. When he said yes, they asked if it could be housed on his computer – he had an early Mac – and a career was born.

The lesson? You need to have the right technology at the right time.

In an interview after his talk, Hugh tells us about how the acronym P.E.A.C.E. describes their approach to the growth of SXSWi:

Patience over profits. It took SXSWi five to 10 years to incubate and grow to where it is today.

Early buzz is good buzz. SXSWi is involved in a 10 or 11 month planning process that starts in July and they try to get people talking about the next year’s festival not long after the current one is done.

Acknowledge your mistakes. If there are issues (and there usually are), be honest and explain to the community that you understand there were problems and you’ll do what you can to do a better job next time. Whenever you’re innovating, he says, expect to make mistakes.

Customer service leads to customer advocates. WOM endorsement and publicity has always been important to SXSWi. They try to create customer ambassadors by communicating often, listening to criticism and establishing a two-way conversation with the goal of turning ‘haters’ or people who’ve had a bad experience into advocates. And that’s what they’ve done.

Encourage massive creativity. SXSWi is not a technology event, it’s all about creativity.

He mentions they’re starting a festival offshoot called SXSW V2V, August 11 to 14, in Las Vegas focused on startups and entrepreneurs. It’s going to be a smaller and more intimate event than Austin and they’re excited about the possibilities of extending the brand.

Gini, Joe and I discuss Hugh’s points and our take on community building, something Gini spoke about in her Social Capital keynote. Have a listen and let us know what you think.

Have you ever been to SXSW? What do you think about the event? Are you planning to attend in 2014? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Inside PR 3.18: An eclectic look at different cultures, a new digital strategy certificate and an NPR experiment

December 7, 2012 • Gini Dietrich • PR

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The team is back together and catching up on some exciting events that have happened in the past few weeks.

Gini Dietrich shares her stories of her trip to the great land of Holland. She regales us with tales of her journey to Amsterdam. You will get a little chuckle when you learn why she was thrown out of the red light district.

Gini’s trip also sparks the conversation of how different cultures respond to people in different ways. The hosts talk about the art and culture of listening in different parts of the world, and the importance of being a good and active listener, especially in the industry of public relations and communications.

Martin Waxman announces that he will be part of a new digital and social media program created by the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. They will be launching a three-course Certificate in Digital Strategy and Communications Management in January 2013. The classes are geared to communications and marketing professionals who want to fine tune their skills and learn how to adopt a strategic approach to digital and social networks. You can read his blog post on the program here.

And last, but most certainly not least, Joseph Thornley shares an NPR Facebook experiment that determined what kinds of local stories drive engagement. The result were the following nine type of local stories: place explainers, crowd pleasers, curiosity stimulators, news explainers, major breaking news, feel-good smilers, topical buzzers, provocative controversies, awe-inspiring visuals.

This study can help your organization determine what kind of stories to share to ensure engagement with your local audience.

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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 3.16: Measurement – Shonali Burke style

November 22, 2012 • admin • PR

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Martin recaps meshmarketing 12. Among his highlights are singer/songwriter David Usher’s creative presentation that combined storytelling, images, video, and illustrating his points in song; and Kristina Halvorson’s observation that much of what passes for content on websites is online garbage. She urges us to start thinking more strategically and stop polluting. Watch for the upcoming video interviews we’re producing with Lee Odden, Kristina Halvorson and David Usher.

This week, we feature a PRSA International Conference interview with Shonali Burke, VP, Digital and Marketing at MSL Washington and creator of the Waxing Unlyrical blog. Shonali talks about one of her favourite topics: measurement and why it’s important to communicators.

She advises us to shift our mindsets from output to outcome and embed this type of thinking into our programs in order to demonstrate how our work actually achieves business goals.

She encourages communicators to perform measurement tests and present the results to clients as a way to educate them on how PR and social media programs can correlate to business outcomes.

Looking ahead, Shonali thinks we must all pay more attention to measurement and understanding analytics ; we should focus on storytelling – that is going back to what PR is really about and; we must learn how to become community managers and tell our stories directly to the audiences we’re trying to reach.

It’s always a real pleasure catching up with Shonali!

And on behalf of Gini, Joe, Kristine and me, we want to wish all our American friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!

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Inside PR 3.14: Content Marketing Secrets from Lee Odden

November 5, 2012 • admin • PR

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Following up on our last episode, Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joseph Thornley, talk about another great interview they recorded at the PRSA International Conference in San Francisco.

This week, we feature Joe’s discussion with Lee Odden about his successful approach to content marketing.

Odden is the author of Optimize – ‘How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing’. He is also the CEO of @TopRank Online Marketing, a Minneapolis based digital marketing agency specializing in strategic internet marketing consulting, training and implementation services including: content, search, email and social media marketing.

Joe and Odden talk about the book, the ‘people’ behind the SEO, and how to strategically integrate other distribution channels beyond social media and email marketing to promote your content.

Lee Odden is one of the featured speakers at the 2012 meshmarketing conference in Toronto on Nov. 7.

Inside PR will also be there to talk to more thought-leaders and digital innovators and keep you up-to-date with digital trends in our industry.

Watch the video interview on the Inside PR YouTube channel:

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Inside PR 3.11: We’re baaaack…

October 13, 2012 • admin • PR

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Well, it’s fall 2012, our extended summer vacation is over and we’re excited to be starting a new season of Inside PR.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our collection of interviews and want to thank our listeners for being patient and to welcome all of you back.

This week, we catch up by mentioning a few of the changes that have happened since our last recording including the fact that Google has eclipsed Microsoft as the second largest technology company by market cap. Byng is getting closer to Facebook and that’s making it a more relevant search engine. And Twitter’s closing the gates to their API and leaving some of the developers who’ve helped build the service behind.

As many of you know, Gini has just finished 25 weeks on the road, launching her new book, Marketing in the Round and she talks about some of the things she’s learned.

She said she was most surprised by the length of the process – a full year to sign a contract, write, edit, publish a book and then another few months for people to start reading and talking about it and for the authors to know if they’re making an impact. That’s very different from the instant gratification we get from blog posts and online social interactions.

She also found traditional sales measurement lacking. It takes a couple of weeks to receive reports and they only track hardcover sales and not special sales or ebooks. She says she’s used to working in a fast-paced world and publishing is more traditional and slower.

So what’s on the horizon for Inside PR? We’re happy to be partnering with PRSA again. Joe and Martin will be at the International Conference recording video and audio interviews with some of the speakers and thought leaders. Martin’s also presenting a session called Social Media Barometer. So if you’re there, please say hi.

We’re also excited to be sponsoring MeshMarketing 2012 in Toronto. We’ll be talking to some of the presenters including Kristina Halvorson and the organizing team and will be roving reporters at the event – which always features innovative thinkers in the social and digital space.

And we’re interested to hear from you and any ideas you have about what you’d like us to discuss.

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Inside PR 3.05: June Cotte, PRSA International Conference keynoter, on ethical consumption

August 27, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, Martin talks with PRSA International Conference keynote speaker, June Cotte, associate professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ontario and the school’s George and Mary Turnbull Fellow.

Professor Cotte studies consumer behavioural and purchase issues, also the subject of her presentation, ‘When Will Consumers Pay to Be Good’.

Cotte and her colleagues conduct research on socially conscious consumption including recent experiments where consumers are exposed to certain purchase conditions and then asked to respond in order to determine how and why people behave the way they do and when they’ll pay more for ethically produced products.

In addition to paying a premium for ethically produced products, she found consumers will penalize brands by paying a lower price for goods when a company’s corporate behaviour is in question. Consumer attitudes are cyclical and Cotte observed that ethical consumption was important in the ‘70s though less so in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The current prevailing sentiment toward socially responsible behavior began to emerge again in the 2000s. She contends a cultural zeitgeist drives the change and that is where PR can come in, to explain the story and the benefits of an organization’s positive behaviour to consumers. This is especially important in an economic downturn where price becomes more of a consideration.

And because firms can get into trouble when they oversell a claim, communicators can help organizations strike a balance between explaining what they’re doing and the effect it has and help them deliver the story in the right tone.

It’s a fascinating study and you can hear more at the PRSA International Conference, October 13 to 16, 2012 in San Francisco.

Gini, Joe and Martin will also be at the conference and we look forward to meeting you there.

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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR and PRSA present: Silver Anvil Awards Finalists – Part 2

June 5, 2012 • admin • PR

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This week, Inside PR and PRSA present the second of two special episodes featuring Martin’s interviews with Silver Anvil Awards finalists.

Adrienne Hayes is the general manager of consumer marketing at Edelman in New York. She led the team on its campaign for Church and Dwight called ‘Trojan Pulls Back the Sheets on Sexy Tech’.

Focusing their strategy on making the subject matter more approachable, they leveraged ‘adjacency categories’, that is industries that were also known for product breakthroughs. They decided to treat the new Trojan products as cool ‘tech gadgets’ and launch them at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And while some media were red-faced when presented with the story, they quickly understood the tie in; it appealed to media who wanted something new and fresh to write about.

They continued their creative approach during the second part of the year when they took the show on the road and launched the ‘Good Vibrations Truck Tour’ around Manhattan to give people an opportunity to ‘see, touch and feel’ the different products. They used social media to drive awareness of where the trucks would be and encouraged consumers to talk openly about what has traditionally been a taboo subject.

Doug Piwinski, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Toms, tells us about the company’s ‘One Day Without Shoes’ initiative, which began as an April Fool’s gag and developed into a global campaign. Tom’s is unique as a business because they don’t rely on traditional advertising and instead build relationships with customers through social media and word of mouth. Each year the company activates its community by asking them to give up wearing shoes for one day in order to experience what life is like for children who don’t have shoes.

The program comes to life through a series of grassroots events in cities around the world and is promoted via a microsite which encourages people to plan and post events.

They worked with Ketchum PR in LA to craft a phased strategy and weren’t expecting the snowball effect that took place this year including stories on the home page of AOL and MSN and becoming number one trending topic on Twitter. Toms effectively uses an influencer strategy to inspire people to engage, raise awareness for an important cause and think about social entrepreneurship in a new way.

This year’s Silver Anvil awards will be presented in New York City on June 7, 2012. Inside PR will be there.

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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.