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What to say

June 4th, 2010 by John Mallen

Over the years as a PR practitioner I have been drawn into numerous situations ranging from emergencies to full-blown crises and many in between. Our role is to help people and organizations with damage control.

One of the major rules is that when it comes time to address the situation, the message should be clear, accurate, consistent and compassionate. You’d think this would be the standard operating procedure.

But it’s not. Crisis management is rich with awful examples of high-powered people saying the wrong things. It’s not easy, when a manager is in the thick of things trying to fix what went wrong or to explain how something happened. It’s especially challenging when an executive is used to being the top dog in speaking to his people — note, I did not say dialoguing with them — in their own paradigm and world view.

How else could you explain this from BP’s CEO Tony Hayward saying “the Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

Honest! I got this from a Newsweek piece that ran yesterday, quoting from The Guardian.

But sometimes you don’t need a crisis to address in order to find yourself in a mess. A LinkedIn forum for PR and Communications Professionals brings this ad up for review:

“What does it say about a company that posts a PR director job opening but in the ad tells unemployed people their applications are not welcome and will not be considered?”

Even those of us not in PR know that statement isn’t good PR. Clearly it’s an ad from a company completely lost without its PR leader. As Cyrus Afzali of Astoria Communications quips Andy Rooney fashion,

“The funny thing is when people who ARE currently employed go in for interviews, all they want to know is why you’re leaving your current position.”

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Posted in Communications, Corporate communications, Crisis Communications, News & Thinking, PR, Public Relations | No Comments »

Know-it-all syndrome

May 27th, 2010 by John Mallen

On a monthly session with members of Business Marketing Association of the Hudson Valley -  a group of individuals with lots of marketing talent - David E. Dirks is presenting his take on key factors about personal branding.

One point he makes I reeally like. He calls it a “know- it-all” syndrome. So very right, and something I’ve seen creeping into my own mindset of late.
knowitallphoto
It’s the easiest of conceptual traps one can fall in. Easy to fall in, I believe? because it identifies an internalize  brand positioning which is a notion about self that accumulates over the years.  With this comes a higly selective process by which certain new information is filtered by source or some other criteria that itself is set by the prejudices of our hardened brand and its world view.

Such a subtle self smugness is something that I have observed within myself in my own process of re-structuring my own future, personal and professional.

My experience is that parking the smugness is a powerful chalkenge if one is to move ahead with personal branding.

This self view, built over time and hardened in the kiln of life must be chipped away or dissolved somehow in order to develop a fresh brand that will work in support of one’s strategy for his or her next stage of life.

I wonder if deconstructing a hardened self-made brand image must be considered for big government or big business?  Is dissolving a know-it-all mindset crucial to effective rebranding anything?

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Posted in Branding, Hudson Valley, Marketing, News & Thinking | No Comments »

ubi sunt

May 25th, 2010 by John Mallen

One of the conditions of having a life that can look back across decades, is a personal sense of the layered meanings in the phrase ubi sunt, the medieval lament over the transitory nature of life and the mutability of all things. Everything changes.

Ratchet forward and you can plot the trajectory of change following the “curve of life,” as Charles Handy calls the Sigmoid Curve.

sigmoid-curve1

Moving along the X axis, the line takes us up the leeward slope stretching to its highest point before beginning its downturn.I like Handy’s view, because there there is a point where change doesn’t necessarily mean riding the curve to its downward termination. Rather at this point, we are wise to start a new curve, moving forward and starting a new curve of growth.

Last night we toasted Gretchen and her move to a new position as director of communications at the Mohonk Preserve. She is going to be great in her new position. She will bring incredible energy, a Molly Brown passion for getting it done, and a fierce commitment to the cause the Preserve serves. It was sad to wish her well, but also exciting to send her off to start a new curve in her professional trek.

gretchenWe have worked together at JMC for nearly seven years, I will miss her. As director of editorial services, Gretchen polished virtually every writing product that moved out of our shop. She handled a wide-range of clients herself, covering topics as diverse as genomics and high-tech ballistic materials that protect our soldiers in Iraq. Being a highly skilled and experienced researcher, it stands to reason that she was and continues to be a sponge for information – not just finding information but then sorting and dissecting it into usable bites. A great, great resource in a marketing communications firm where the next client will come to us from a field as fresh as tomorrow.

Most of all, though, is her heart. Generous and true and trustworthy. She can take her talents across the mountain, but deeper, enduring qualities will forever connect her to all of us who are privileged to call her friend.

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A Certain Calling

May 21st, 2010 by John Mallen

A week ago I attended an open house celebrating a new gym that has been installed in The Wingate, an assisted living community in Highland, here in Ulster County N.Y. I responded to an invitation from Genie Keating, Wingate’s NY Regional Director of Marketing, a colleague in the Business Marketing Association of the Hudson Valley, but found myself arriving at the tail of the afternoon open house. The political and business networkers had come and gone.

It was time for the cognoscenti of nursing home and home care to kick back and share stories. I was the only male at the table, and the only non-medical institution professional. Around me were managers, staff pros, people working in this facility or others in the region and a legacy of serving in many medical facilities. This is a small coterie of pros, and they keep up with what’s going on in he field. I mean, they could name virtually every facility between Times Square and Albany.

Being a fly on the wall has its merits. While the chairs around the table were refilled several times with these wonderful people stopping by to catch up with their associates and the news, I had the opportunity to listen. From smartly dressed managers to hands-on staff dressed in those maroon, shapeless medical sets, from the salaried set to the hourly workers I began to see something beneath the surface – call it a fire, a certain calling.

What motivates one to devote a career to taking care of elderly people in the latter chapters of their lives?

“I remember when I started working in this field. I remember I was bathing this resident. As I washed her hair, I recall the smile on her face. Nothing can equal that feeling. Nothing.” I listen to this, recalling decades past when my grandmother was, reluctantly, placed in a nursing home, where the care was magnitudes less than this and where, I swear due to neglect, Nanna contracted pneumonia and died. Incredible, there are people who actually take pleasure in treating our senior most friends well.

Conversation flowed, like the river nearby, taking this notion of commitment across the landscape and along the years – each of those present with snippets of similar stories. There is a subculture of people who work at the Wingates and other facilities like it who are not just committed, but who are enthusiastic with all the small steps that add up to be Quality care.

I learned that there is a class of manager, supervisor, nurse and health-facility worker who embody this viewpoint. Sometimes they work in wonderful corporate organizations, like Wingate, formed 22 years ago and which operates 18 additional facilities. They also work for, have worked for and know of other groups which have different values, where profit trumps quality, where good care is delivered because of the committed staffers and managers – in spite of the ownership. All owners don’t exhibit the deep commitment evinced by Wingate.

I want to acknowledge too the sobering statement one at our table made. “We know someday we can be here as a patient.”

At the table, I listen, and realize I am in the company of of individuals who represent legions of others like them who’ve come to America from the four corners of the world, who are busing to their jobs via Ulster County Rural Transportation (UCRT) or New York City’s MTA Bronx lines. I am not only privileged to listen. WE are privileged to have them among us.

To all who bring your management skills, your medical skills, your care, your concern, dedication, your compassion and your care, I say thank you on behalf of all those whom I have loved and who were quietly and professionally cared for.

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I’m too busy for social media

May 19th, 2010 by John Mallen

As much as I am enamored with life online, life offline regularly steals the show. Every now and then I find myself in a conversation tiptoeing about a dirty little secret that there isn’t all that much time for social online connecting, and buzzing about “how do they do it?”

This came to me squarely some weeks ago while having a conversation on the mobile phone with one of my all time favorite people to be social with, my cousin Susan Kunz. She was speaking via mobile phone, using her freeway time to catch up. Being younger and definitely more hip, I’d asked about establishing more frequency on Facebook or some other digital app. “I don’t have time!” she said. “I don’t read e-mail, I don’t do any of that. There just isn’t time!” Even the household land line is seldom used. So a cell phone call is it with her. If she isn’t available leave a message and she’ll get back to you from some Ventura County freeway.

Then came the interesting comments from President Obama, the most tech savvy of all recent U.S. presidents, “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”

That comment, made at the May 9 commencement ceremonies at Hampton College, Va., was itself like a shot heard round the world – prompting The AtlanticWire to ask, “Are techies more zealous than gun owners?” “By the looks of their reaction to President Obama’s remarks on “iPods and iPads,” maybe so.”

His comments brought about a round of conversational twitter about the massive flow of information and opinion that, well, overwhelms. The President had a valid point to make. He bemoaned the fact that ‘some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,’ in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets. ‘All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy,” said the AFP in its report.

“We can’t stop these changes… but we can adapt to them,’ Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers. ‘Education… can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time,’ he said.

Well said. Thoughtful. A personal issue of significance as Susan Kunz and many others in my circle have declared. We adults need personal information management strategies, and our kids need great education, I agree.

Two days later direct from The White House (president@messages.whitehouse.gov ) I receive a message advising of the President’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court – along with a dandy video. I don’t even want to count the number of articles and commentaries that emanated from this! I’m too busy.

I do note it’s reported that she does listen to all sides of an argument. Wonder how much social media she has time for?

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Posted in Communications, Digital Influence, Marketing Communications, New Communications, News & Thinking, Social Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

Lots of social about social . . .

May 7th, 2010 by John Mallen

. . . Social media, that is. Interesting as I listened Wednesday night in on a presentation by Ric Dragon and Ric opens with his recommendations, the makings of recipes in a social media cookbook. I’m taken by the questions from the 32 people in the room here at the SUNY Ulster Business Resource Center and the dialogue back and forth among them, Ric and two members of his team, Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy and Etela Ivkovic. The event was sponsored but SCORE.

Each of the ingredients in the recipe for successful social media communicating triggers enthusiastic discussion. Here’s how Ric says to start:

Take up Google Reader and follow 10 blogs. Use Twitter and follow 10 individuals, sign onto Facebook and follow 25. Go to LinkedIn and follow another 10… and now – just this week – says you can follow companies. Make sure to create profiles in your social media sites and in doing so it’s good to have a folder of images so you have neat pictures of yourself in easy reach. Ric’s Recommendations, in a far more formal version, appear in this blog.

But what is really interesting are the discussions and there are lots and lots of conversations buzzing through the room. “I want concrete social media tools,” says one audience member, echoing a sense of the buzz in the room. Atta boy, Ric. What’s going on is the prowess of social media is making headline and people are listening, and they really need to learn how to use the media.

“How do you find in Twitter people you are sincerely interested in following?” Early on, in the old days of Twitter, says Ric, if you wanted to find followers you would find people and elect to follow them, and in doing so you’d build up your following. But Twitter rapidly became far more vast then friends following friends. Some people have 10,000 followers, and says Ric many of that number are not paying attention. For today, Ric suggests we begin by searching for terms or phrases of interest to you, such as “Hudson Valley.” You will identify people you want to follow. Another way is to find people you respect and follow their followers, and a third approach would be to identify authorities – for example, authors – and develop lists of these topic centered experts. You can then elect to follow people on the list.

How do I get social media on my smart phone? Go to the app store or go online and access the social media site’s mobile phone. “My best suggestion,” says another in the audience, is “go to the AT&T store and ask them how to do what you want to do? There is this skinny little guy there and he’ll take your phone in hand and do it for you free!”

Google Universe

To a lot of the questions, Ric recommends what he calls “The Google Universe. “I like all things Google.” Google profile; Google Reader where you can read blogs and also follow people; and Google Local. It’s a freebee; go to Google with your browser, select Google Maps, and then, add your business. It’s important so long as you yourself are your business, even if you don’t have consumer traffic. The Dragon Search team jumps in with more concrete advice: “You have to verify, and your response will be followed with a postcard from Google or phone call from them.” Then you can go in and edit it. Then ask your clients to post reviews of your localized listing.”

Blogging

Write a blog per week. Blogging is the meat and potatoes of social media. The best for people in business is for you to host your blog on your Website. Second, say the Dragon Search Marketing experts: use Wordpress – the broadest app being used in blogging today. But if you don’t know what you are doing and are scared, try Google’s Blogger. “It’s a great deal for $10.”

And comment on blogs. Think about adding relevant comments to others’ blogs. Maybe the blog missed a point, and this can be your chance to augment. Good practice: Post a blog. Then go to your Twitter account and write that you just posted. Go out to other blogs of similar themes and mention that you just posted a blog covering the same address.

Goals

It’s important to start with goals and objectives. Examples would be to use social media to sell more product. Then you can ask what are some of the objectives, such as to build an audience of people who we can dialogue with, the audience who will potentially make a purchase, down to the evangelists.

Other points:

Panoramio is great for geo tagging photos. It’s like Flckr, but you can post pictures to your profile and you can place geographical location for this.

Use Facebook to add a Fan Page for your business. The Fan Page is built from your personal Facebook page. Then you ask your friends to go to your fan page. There is a solid business reason for Facebook in business. “ We think we are selling our service or product, but we are actually selling our passion, emotion,” Claudia said.

“What is social media but having conversations. You cannot just go out and promote, “says Etela Ivkovic, who with Claudia is part of the Dragon Search Marketing team.

What is the worst that can happen in social media? One day SUNY New Paltz lost all of its fans. Happened to one of our clients. You can store this, Facebook FBQL to bring up XML list of all your fans. You will have to ask all of them to return. How can this happen? On Facebook you can have more than one admin, and one could have deleted. Facebook will never send you an e-mail.

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Posted in Best Practices, Digital Influence, Hudson Valley, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Social Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web Seminar, blogging | No Comments »

Come and learn why we need to “Give Housing a Voice”

May 6th, 2010 by admin

Give Housing a Voice is an awareness campaign developed for The Ulster County Housing Consortium. The program makes its debut today, Thursday, May 6, 2010 at a gathering of business, civic and government leaders at The Birches at Esopus. The Birches at Esopus is a dramatic model of outstanding affordable housing that looks and feels like fine luxury housing, giving seniors a great opportunity to enjoy the richness of a mutually supportive neighborhood community.

Give Housing a Voice Invite

This community is based in the Town of Esopus, just off Route 9-W just South of the Ulster BOCES education complex. You would turn into the recently re-named Dick Williams Lane, at 9-W and Van Loan’s Discount Beverages.

Join in if you can. For information contact me via Facebook or Joan Lawrence-Bauer, who heads communications at RUPCO.


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The Speech is the Thing

March 16th, 2010 by admin

By: John Mallen

For eons, one of PR’s fundamental missions has been speeches – writing or helping to write good ones, rehearsing and training people to give them and assisting with the staging of the speech.

JMC, like many, many other PR consultants, includes speech prep in the basket of offerings. And like many others, we frequently are informed that such support is not needed. “I do this all the time. I don’t need any help!”

Ah, we smile as we’re ordered to cram more bullet points into a gawdawful, boring PowerPoint deck that any audience member should be paid to sit through. Consider the refreshing review by Alissa Walker of “the most horrifically devastating keynote presentation in SXSW history” in yesterday’s Fast Company blog.

The speech’s content was the announcement of Twitter’s new @anywhere app. The story was about the dismal presentation. “If only they could have reduced the time I spent at the Twitter keynote. Love the app, guys, but I would rather have heard about it @Anywhere but there.”

Ms. Walker is a talented writer, gelato-eater and walker in L.A. as well as, I might add, an experienced speaker.

Ironically, I just received a call myself, inviting me to keynote an event.

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What should be the voice of a brand?

March 1st, 2010 by John Mallen

By: John Mallen

Special circumstances aside, I believe that a brand should be a stand-alone entity. In our world, the brand is JMC Marketing Communications & PR – long name but it communicates 85 percent of what we do. We have a tag line, and just the other day, a contact of ours got the tag line and wrote about it as being the brand: “You folks are communications in the real world.”

I’d never thought about the tag being a stand alone, but it really is – maybe even better than the brand itself!

My point here is that a brand has a place within the organization that owns the brand and in the minds of customers and other stakeholders. But when the organization speaks, the brand doesn’t.

The company can be the first person narrator, as in “We greatly appreciate your business.” But the brand is always referred to by the speaking organization: “We value your selection of Acme products. Acme consistently outperforms competitors …”

The key principle is to always make the brand stand alone as third person, that which is being referred to. Even when “we” the organization are speaking, we treat the brand as a valuable third person entity. We call it by name and speak to its attributes.

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Posted in Branding, Corporate communications, Marketing, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Public Relations | 1 Comment »

Most Trusted Brands

February 23rd, 2010 by Gretchen Reed

by: Gretchen Reed

Market research firm Millward Brown recently published its “Most Trusted Brands” list and there were a couple of surprises.

As reported in Brandweek, though consumer packaged goods dominated the survey, two service brands – Amazon.com and FedEx, topped the list, which is based on a “TrustR” (trust/recommendation) score compiled from polls conducted by Millward Brown in the U.S. and globally.

The top ten brands listed were:

  1. Amazon.com
  2. FedEx
  3. Downy
  4. Huggies
  5. Tide
  6. Tylenol
  7. Toyota
  8. WebMD
  9. Pampers
  10. UPS

Surprised to see Toyota on the list? Well, data for the study was collected in 2009, prior to the disclosure of Toyota’s recalls, which could account for the brand’s standing.

But notice the number 6 brand – Tylenol. Here is a brand that has been plagued by multiple recalls and PR crises, but has weathered the storm. As Eileen Campbell, global CEO of Millward Brown noted, “Doing well in a crisis actually builds trust.”

Maybe Toyota can learn from Tylenol’s example, although the recent ads I’ve seen lead me to believe that they just hope the crisis has magically disappeared – or that a rebate or discount can erase the damage done.

It should be interested to see who does – and doesn’t – make next year’s list.

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Posted in Branding, Corporate communications, Crisis Communications, News & Thinking, trends | 1 Comment »

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