Communications
and PR

Find out how JMC helps your organization thrive in the new era...
start

Archive for the ‘Public Relations’ Category

« Older Entries

Brand Ambassadors

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 by Gretchen Reed

A recent negative experience with an ISP installer reminded me of the often-overlooked role of employees as brand ambassadors.

Especially in service businesses, employees are not only the company’s “face,” but, to some extent, its “product.” The way employees perform reflects directly on the reputation of the business, for better or worse. This interaction is often far more powerful than any advertising campaign or PR effort.

We often encourage our clients to enlist their employees as brand ambassadors, but in order for this to happen, there must be both management commitment and employee receptivity.

First, management must make a considered effort – not just pay lip service to – sharing the company’s goals, vision and values. They also need to lead by example by not only saying what they will do, but actually doing it.

On the employee side, employees who are treated fairly, rewarded for excellent performance and, just as important, called on inferior performance are much more likely to behave in a way that makes their employers proud – and customers happy.

In the case of my ISP experience, the next time a competitor’s direct mail piece arrives or commercial airs, you can bet I will be paying more attention. I guess that makes the installer a brand detractor, rather than ambassador. And just how many of those can a company afford to have?

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Branding, Communications, Corporate communications, Employee communications, Hudson Valley, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, PR, Public Relations | No Comments »

JMC Team Profiles: Sandy Frinton

Thursday, February 18th, 2010 by John Mallen

I entered PR at the turning point. In the old system, public relations practitioners were heavily drawn from the ranks of the media. In the 1980s, that had begun to change. So when Sandy Frinton walked into JMC in 1998, she was an unusual representative of the PR candidates of the past. She was intent on crossing over to the other side, from journalism – then the business team at DowJones’ Times Herald-Record – to the world of PR with JMC.

Sandy Frinton

Sandy Frinton

Sandy, minted from SUNY University of Buffalo, began her career with the Register-Star in Hudson and then moved to the Daily Freeman in Kingston. She went to NYC for a stint as a textiles editor at Fairchild’s Home Furnishings News (HFN) in New York City before returning to business reporting in the Hudson Valley at the TH-R in Middletown.

She has been with JMC for more than 10 years, wearing one hat as director of media relations supporting most every client, and as account leader, currently for Polymer Group, Inc. (PGI) and the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP), and also serves on the JMC team supporting Performance Fibers.

Something Old

Reminiscent of PR in the past, Sandy brings to public relations what so many once did – a deep respect for the working media steeped in a sense of shared mission.

In a recent conversation, it became clear, “I am a writer. I interview clients. I write their stories and I bring the stories to the media.”

To be very clear, Sandy does not see herself primarily as a salesperson selling stories to people in the media. “I see my role as being there to help the media whether it is providing a good news source when they are on deadline, providing a photo or graphic to add to their story, or preparing a bylined article on a timely topic.”

In a sense shared by many former media people now in PR, Sandy has two clients: first, the customer client who hires us and second, the media client with whom we share a professional stem – preparing stories.

“PR agencies need to maintain relationships with the media. We need them and they need us. When I call people in the media, I want to add value for them. I see the writing I do and what I bring from the client as helping the media people do their jobs,” Sandy says.

“I don’t like disappointing the media, as when clients back out of an interview they have committed to do,” this being one of the negative things about her job.

This PR professional has a relationship of trust and respect of the media. “My passion is in getting the story, finding journalists to accept the information and write it. I like having the relationship with the media people we work with. I connect with them as a fellow writer because I am excited about the story. I talk about a client story as a story I would like to write, and sometimes I do because newsrooms are so short staffed these days with cutbacks.”

Something New

Social media is today’s buzz. Coming from her journalistic roots, “I feel bad. The mainstream media is declining. Journalists are losing their jobs and not being treated well,” Sandy says.

“But there are a lot of good writers in the social media world. Young people are still being attracted to journalism for the same reasons we were but the shape of the industry is changing. It may begin with a blog or a newsletter. People are coming up with different ways of making a living because they have to.”

“The good writers in the social media world have become sources of real reliable news. They are part of the total media today and I respect them and the role they play.”

Tags: , ,
Posted in Hudson Valley, News & Thinking, PR, Public Relations, Social Media, Team Profiles, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »

What Are You About?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 by John Mallen

I just revisited a blog by Steve Rubel called “How the Leading Social Sites Describe Themselves” Steve’s piece is well worth the read. He observes that when one reads how major social Web sites describe themselves — Twitter, digg, Friendfeed and others — it would be difficult to tell them apart by simply relying on the descriptions themselves.

It’s an observation that applies too often in multiple segments and in many vehicles ranging from brochures and videos to ads and even exhibits — maybe especially exhibits.

One of the products most in demand from our marketing communications firm is the JMC Messaging Platform(TM). The platform takes shape as a document in which we distill the essential elements of a brand — things such as how it should be positioned in the minds of stakeholders, or what the value proposition is to a customer group.

But the first and most debated element in virtually every JMC Messaging Platform process that I have worked on is the definition of the business — how the organization describes itself. One would think that such a straightforward statement would be the simplest. Not so! It doesn’t seem to matter whether the organization is a closely held business or part of a multinational organization. When we meet with the leaders in our facilitated brand messaging workshop and begin with that fundamental question, most of the time it opens a lively debate.

When there is little debate, the reason is typically that an official milquetoast-like definition has been developed and the language is, as Rubel observed, so bland as to be meaningless.

No reason to delve into the organizational psychologies at work. That could take forever. But there is good reason to suggest that it does pay for the leaders of any organization to wrangle through a process of clarifying how the company or its brands describe or define themselves. If the message is muddled to those of us on the outside, how must it be to the people on the inside? And contrarily, if the people inside are clear about the definition of the organization, how much more likely are they to relate to and resonate with the publics that enable success?

I’m with Steve Rubel. Describe yourself! It’s job No.1 for any customer-facing activity.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Branding, Corporate communications, Marketing, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Public Relations, Social Media, differentiation | 2 Comments »

Making Communications Part of the Value You Deliver Through Customer-Linked Communications

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 by John Mallen

Many of us recognize that communicating to our markets can augment success. “Advertising sells,” right? But how often have we considered that marketing communications - public relations, online Web communications, and advertising - can be part of the value you offer customers?

In a recession economy where competition is sharper than ever, distinguishing your brand and adding strategic value can be great way to help accelerate your own growth.

I discovered this some years ago as business in advanced materials grew to become a significant part of our client portfolio. Whether metals, technical textiles, plastics and composites, we realized a common opportunity : the advanced materials our clients sold as ingredients delivered significant value and even pizzaz to their customers and, further, to the people who ultimately bought the end product.

Thus a nylon fiber that some time ago had received a U.S. Government “mil spec” for use in ballistic armor - though eclipsed by Kevlar - brought terrific value to soft-sided luggage and became the darling of top brands like Tumi, Hartmann, Samsonite and others. The nylon not only brought direct value to luggage manufacturers, because it was not only tough but took in dyes better than anything else, but became part of the value proposition that led consumers to select  products with “Tru Ballistic” nylon fabric.

Seeing that, we developed tags and end-consumer literature that customers could attach to products in the retail environment. We also produced a training campaign for use in retailers’ sales training programs. Salespeople on the floor could answer questions and help guide consumers to value purchases.

We called this and many other approaches “customer-linked communications.” CLC is more than featuring customers in case studies or arranging for third party testimonials. CLC is communications for, about, and on behalf of a customer. It may involve tangential mention of your brand or no mention at all.

CLC makes sense when:

-  You need to move out of a commodity trap and featuring your customer’s products and services not only helps stimulate and support your sales, but also helps move you from commodity to specialty.

-  You want give priority to certain segments or application niches, and your customer’s success is an efficient way to accomplish this goal

- You want to generate a rush to your product or service from a group of customers who intensively monitor one another, so communicating the success of one customer showcases the value your brand contributes – the value proposition you bring to that customer – and also triggers a barracuda-like feeding frenzy among look-alike customers.

Successfully mounting a CLC initiative is a strategic marketing move that requires coordination among the marketing team, the ad-PR-promotions people and sales. Once organized properly, it can become a dynamic component enthusiastically embraced within the company and among the customers involved.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Communications, Corporate communications, Customer relations, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Public Relations, Value Marketing | No Comments »

Toyota’s Safety Muddle Signals Need for a New Era of Trust Communications — Not the Crisis Communications of the Past

Monday, February 8th, 2010 by John Mallen

On Jan. 27, The Wall Street Journal reported that Toyota Motors’ President Akio Toyoda is worried about how the growing safety recall of more than 8 million vehicles will affect the company’s reputation for quality. Just yesterday, the Bloomberg Business Week’s Insider Newsletter editor Katherine Davis reported that he’s ducking the press as he swishes cockails with the global elite in Davos. “You can’t buy this kind of publicity - nor would you want to.”

Being in the publicity business, I have been drawn to Toyota recall reports like a bug to a bulb on a summer’s night. After all, we in the PR business are always probing “crisis communications” and explicating how they were carried out and what we could have done better. Truth is, crisis communications, crisis management and similar terms are proven to be some of the most popular Web searches for PR. Toyota is on its way to being one of the “big ones” when it comes to crisis commuincations, right up there with Tylenol for J&J and Bhopal for Union Carbide.

What’s surprising to me is how a corporate icon for quality, embracing notions of consumer safety, fell so low. I saw a similar display in the late 1970’s as our client McDonnell Douglas avoided confronting media questioning what was going on with DC-10 aircraft falling out of the sky. We’d been working on behalf of the company after the issues with cargo doors were resolved, when DC-10s around the world were grounded following the crash of American Airlines Flight 191, killing 273 people. Unwilling to discuss details after the bloody negative publicity earlier in the decade, I recall pleading with our account director who was at headquarters as I held The Wall Street Journal’s aviation writer on the other phone threatening to “go” to print with a page one-article based on comments he had gathered from outside the company. It was a dramatic example of, “If you don’t speak for the company they [critics] will.”

That was my PR indoctination into the rules of engagement for crisis communications — a set of principles devoted to guiding institutions away from garnering even worse public opinion and, sometimes, even helping them deflect the blame. Some of this deflection may be underway as information from Toyota points to the flaws being in materials from CTS of Elkhart, Ind. which are used in the brake systems.  Deflection doesn’t really work. In  the end, the best crisis communicators help companies navigate through stormy waters, without sinking the whole ship. I think there is another, more basic role that communications can help with.

Total quality?

What happened at Toyota?  Having gone through years of B2B communications for many manufacturers, Toyota’s “total quality” focus had become legendary and highly respected.  How many hours have I sp

ent with clients from around the world talking about Kaizen (continuous improvement), Kaiban, Genchi Genbutsu (go and see for yourself)?  All of these are more or less part of the larger Toyota Production System (TPS) which led to the company being a hallmark for quality writ big. I recall some years ago receiving a call from a senior VP at then AlliedSignal, telling me one of his businesses had received an award fro

m Toyota for quality and being asked to stiumlate coverage in the Wall Street Journal. The fact is the Journal, as a matter of policy didn’t cover awards, but this was the exception — an all-American brand being annointed by the global leader in quality!

Dig into the Toyota legend and you’ll discover a systematic and passionate commitment to improvement of the product and the production process. But what is going on that such a premier global leader in one of the most competitive economic segments could find itself as today’s successor to the likes of GM (and the Corvair) and others of the mighty American motor industry featured in Ralph Nadar’s “Unsafe at any Speed” blockbuster of 1965?

Too big to care

How does such a great company like Toyota, with an intense focus on quality, find itself skewered in public opinion on the issue of safety?  After all, safety would seem to be a strategic byproduct of safety. Indeed, the issue is not over unsafe designs of the 60s, like chrome dashboards that cause injuries in seat-beltless vehicles. These are brake components that allegedly don’t work all of the time.

The root is far more profound than the CEO cowering in Davos versus confronting the media (though he should have been more up front). The root is an internal view, a culture that has reacted slowly to reports of safety failings, as reported in the New York Times. They have gone a little “safety deaf,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

We in the PR field can help companies set the record straight, as the latest television commercials from Toyota attempt. We in advertising and marketing communications can attempt to shift the attention of consumers from the economic havoc of the past two years to the potential of the future under the guidance of smarter and wiser investor advisors. We can help try to focus attention on one or another perspective in a health-care debate that seems to have more revolutions than Macy’s front door in the peak holiday shopping season. But we cannot affect the fundamental business problem.

The culture of insititutions that take strategic aim at the perpetuation and growth of these organizations may, along the way, have lost touch with the basic purpose of the business and the customers they were founded to serve.

The foundation of trust

A recent PR forum ask people in the practice to come up with ideas about how to restore trust in our institutions. My take is that the communicators can no longer successfully serve their organizations with reactive crisis management campaigns. We need to move in a more fundamental way. Toyota’s recall problem was only a blip, if that, when the trust question was raised. I said then and still believe that the issue of trust cannot begin with a PR or advertising campaign.  It must begin with the culture within an organization, and with that culture enabling members to speak out and be heard when a quality or safety issue is first observed. Such a culture begins with the customer in mind. How does what the company is doing affect those who buy and use our products?

The new role of communications

Professionals like me are hired to help our companies or clients put their best foot forward. Looking to an increasingly competitive future with growing complexities from the integration of advanced technologies, and the new needs to care for the environment and sustainability, I suggest that communications must place an intensive focus on fundamentals — including the fundamental of giving employees a voice, an opportunity to use their voices, and a cultural freedom to hold the organization accountable to its principles.

Tags: ,
Posted in Advertising, Communications effectiveness, Corporate communications, Crisis Communications, Current Affairs, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Public Relations, blogging | No Comments »

Recollections involving the rise of integrity, remembering Peter Sewell, and saluting a new generation of PR leaders

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 by John Mallen

Fresh from the Autumn meeting of  the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN), now 40 agencies on multiple continents, it’s inspiring to experience the energy being devoted to communications that can help energize business and financial success of clients these agencies serve.

Several top-line themes emerge for me, our firm being a member and one of the host agencies here in New York City along with Adam Friedman Associates and Cooperkatz&Company.

1. Central to commercial communications today are the themes of trust, integrity, honesty and sustainability.  While always important, they have become top-line priorites as a result of the economic melt down, governments’ response, and the roaring disaffection and cynicism of consumers and citizens.

2. The responsibility for formulating trustworthiness, cultural integrity and commitments to honesty in our institutions is falling to a new generation of executive leader and communications consultant — those in their mid 40’s (the tail of the Baby Boom Generation) and the 40+ group in the Generation X tribe ( from the mid 40’s to early ’80’s).  Looking at our PRGN members, our corporate guests and speakers from Dragon Search Marketing, Coldwell Banker, Guardian insurance, Polar USA, Davis & Gilbert law firm — there is a wave of intelligent and responsible leaders coming to the bride and taking over the tiller of our institutions.

3. And point No. 3 here involves my reflection on the last meeting the PRGN held in 2005 in New York. We recalled the then president Peter Sewell, a good friend of the earier generation, who has passed away and whose firm has morped from his son Adam Sewell to a new identity (Beyond PR) and most recently new owners, then the  ”pioneering” (for PRGN) survey we conducted about the emerging importance of new media, and our own first media tour — a kind of “coming out” for the group founded in 1999.

As it 2005, it has been a rainy in New York as it moves across the threshold from fall to winter, as we in PRGN move to a new season and a strong position of leadership in a field that has become increasingly crucial in this world.  These are my recollections.

Tags: ,
Posted in Communications, Corporate communications, News & Thinking, Openness & Transparency, PR, PRGN, Public Relations, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Describe Yourself!

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 by John Mallen

I have just been led to a compelling piece “How the Leading Social Sites Describe Themselves” by Steve Rubel. Steve’s piece is worth reading, but his view applies to far more than the social Web, and touches on a favorite peeve of mine.

Rubel’s blog follows his return to the City from the Bay Area where a high penetration of Digerati (I love that term) is accompanied by a parochial focus of these tech-savvy folk, as evinced by how popular social Web sites introduce themselves. It really would be difficult for someone who is not a member of the cognoscenti to make an intelligent choice from among Twitter, digg, Friendfeed and others.

I find the same condition far too often in too many places. Take trade shows, where in my experience the more high-tech the exhibitor the more undifferentiated their presentations. Glitzy to be sure. Clarity of what they are, not much. The same carries over to brochures, videos, Web sites and other marketing materials. You really need to dig to understand just what they’re about.

I’m with Steve Rubel. Describe yourself! It’s job No.1 for any customer facing activity.

Need help? Just call us or any of our 39 colleague firms in the Public Relations Global Network.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Communications effectiveness, Marketing Communications, New Communications, PR, PRGN, Public Relations, Social Marketing, Uncategorized, differentiation | 1 Comment »

How to drive business development for small business

Friday, January 30th, 2009 by John Mallen

How do you drive business development for your small business?

There are numerous sources of business ideas. Many are excellent and proven. I want to bring your attention on one tool we all use — but too often left to fend on its own — communications.  Call it advertising, promotion, public relations (PR) or anythiong else. But all of these are in the communications bucket. In small business (and often larger ones) communications is the empty seat at the leadership table. But it is a powerful success enabler.

“Okay,” you say, “let’s get out there and run some ads.” Let’s get a promotion going.” Not necessarily bad, not necessarily good either. What you need to start is a business strategy which is well-supported by a communications strategy. Let’s take it by the numbers.

First — be clear about your business strategy. If you have been moving along from one year to the next, stop. Take stock of where you stand, what you want to achieve and how you will get there. All this sets the foundation.

Second – market research. This can be as simple as listening well to customers or asking questions of customers and prospective and listening to their answers. Market research could be results of a highly sophisticated study conducted by your trade association. It could be as basic as having your people ask a similar set of questions of everyone they deal with for a period of time, and systematically analyzing what they say. Research means understanding the context of your market, the dynamics affecting behavoirs and the impressions shaping opinions about your firm or the future.

Third — explore how communications can work in the marketing environment to accelerate your organization’s stratgegy and its progress toward realizing your goals. Central to success here means stepping away from tendencey to type cast marketing communications, and in, “Let’s get out there and run some ads.” Ads to do what?   Knock on the door of your customers’ attention to get awareness, share of mind, or generate traffic. Understanding how communications can contgribute to your business strategy means setting communications goals and developing a strategy for communications — all in support of the business growth plan.

Fourth — do it. Create an affordable, executable plan of action. Using one communications tool effectively is far superior to using a set of tools that fail to achieve, because you cannot achieve the frequency needed, or they don’t reach the right people, or any of dozens of reasons these efforts so often fail.

The greatest cause of failure is the fixation on the tools that we personally understand and find appealing versus the tools needed to drive the strategy — if there is indeed any strategy at all.  These four steps can be extremely difficult to execute with any discipline, especially when you’re taken with the daily challenges of running your business. Being so close to your business does not provide the vantage you need to move effectively from step one to implementation. If you can, it would pay you to enlist the support of a professional or a small brain trust of advisors to help you set the course.

The most citical professional support initially is not the development of an ad or drafting of your press releases. These skills will make sense, but only once you have identified a strategic plan for communications. In many cases, it would be preferable to execuite simply so long as it is focused and sustainable. By this I mean having one well-targeted promotion, or driving awareness through one well-aimed direct marketing ad campaign.

Communications is one means of driving devbelopment for your small business. Following these steps will ensure that whatever communications you deploy drive success.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Advertising, Communications, Communications effectiveness, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Public Relations, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Something Old Something New

Friday, January 9th, 2009 by John Mallen

newsroom-by-fullcodepress3

Earlier in the day, one of the clients pounded the table. “Out! Push the message out! I want to get the message out. I want to get people behind this!”  Visions of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking services danced in my head.

“We need ads! ” said the client.  Nothing in the county has a greater impact than does Ulster Publishing,  independent producers of  six weekly newspapers. Read that to mean the dominant Daily Freeman and it’s companions dailies, The Poughkeepsie Journal and Times Herald Record are not seen as driving opinion. 

“Let’s talk about on-line social networking,” I said. 
Later today, a link to a friend and colleague’s blog landed in my e-mauil in-box.  It’s all about setting up meetings with media people, include influential boggers. It’s by one Kelly, a senior account exec at Landis PR in San Francisco. Nice job. The piece has solid tactical points. I’m thinking of “borrowing” it for a series on PR basics.

Next comes an email from another friend and colleage in PRGN, our network of independent PR firms.  Jay Van Vechtan  emailed a compelling e-mail responding to Kelly’s post.

Says Jay: “In days gone by I loved them, but over the years the opportunities for booking a client on a locally produced TV talk, news or radio show has waned at best.  Locally produced morning talk programs have been replaced by syndicated shows.  Morning, noon and drive time news programs have been cut to the bare minimum, all but eliminating time for live, in-studio guests.  Newspapers are in a free fall, with staff cut backs and reduced circulation.  The magazine industry is floundering.  And so where does that leave us?”

Jay moves along with sound, practical suggestions for conducting a media tour in the new Millenium. He recommends outsourcing the work to a group that does satellite media tours, hitting mainly the second rung ADIs.

All the preceding is fine and good. But are those of us in professional communications hanging too long on mainstream media (MSM) and too little on  Web 2.0 social marketing? Sometimes I want to jump up and down waving red flags and say, “HEY it’s changed!”  Sure we have MSM on the one hand and social media with long-tail marketing on the other. 

Listen to Robert Scoble, one of the top bloggers (and representative of Microsoft) talking about social media back in 2007:   “When I say “social media” or “new media” I’m talking about Internet media that has the ability to interact with it in some way. IE, not a press release like over on PR Newswire, but something like what we did over on Channel 9 where you could say “Microsoft sucks” right underneath one of my videos.

“I don’t really care what you call this “new media” but you’ve got to admit that something different is happening here than happens on other media above.”

I’m reacting to messages from clients and colleages at both ends of the day. Yes I really like MSM; indeed grew up as a reporter for The Providence Journal-Bulletin. But Web 2.0 Internet is bringing a tsunami of creative distruction to MSM. Many of us in professional communications find ourselves working harder and harder to get any exposure we can in MSM outlets that are reacing fewer and fewer people with vehices that have less and less content.

Meanwhile Internet communications continues to get larger and larger, more and more focused, faster, slicker, more compelling and tunable than any other media. Individuals can talk back, even have a conversation with one another as well as news makers.  

With all the foregoing passion, I admit that as professional PR and comms resource too many are way under-engaged in social media. It’s not iinertia or blindness, not really. We’re all doing some. What we need is a full-blown process, spec development, and  execution that’s easily managed. Something easy tha all of us can use.

Photo with permission from Full Code Press

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Hudson Valley, PR, PRGN, Public Relations, Social Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

« Older Entries