Posted: February 5th, 2010 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
Since I gave a little smack down to TC last week I thought I’d give them some props today for taking the high road and apologizing to readers for an interns’ indiscretions. Seems an opportunistic intern was attempting to exchange their scoops for Macbooks. He has rightfully been called out, terminated, and put in the shame tent for his actions.
He’ll probably reappear on TC’s radar in five years as the entrepreneur of one of the start ups they cover.
Posted: January 26th, 2010 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
AOL — you’ve been a bad monkey. Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch was mighty peeved to learn he reported inaccurate information last week, when writing about AOL’s CTO, Ted Cahall, leaving the company. The short version is this: Erick heard a rumor about Cahall leaving and asked the Executive VP of Communications, Tricia Primerose Wallace to confirm or deny the accuracy of this rumor. She denied. Ten days later she sent an email to Erick stating that per their earlier conversation, she found out that Cahall was in fact leaving and wanted to tell Erick “immediately” so he could correct his story (or write a new one as it were).
Erick was miffed enough by this to write a post on TechCrunch calling out Tricia as a liar. Gives me the ickies all over.
Here are the truths of this situation, that we know of:
- Someone at AOL lied to TechCrunch.
- It’s never okay to lie to the press.
- Tricia Primerose Wallce has been humiliated and her career has undoubtedly been damaged profoundly.
Maybe she did lie. But always being one to give people the benefit of the doubt (stop laughing Julia) I would like to believe it’s a possibility that Tricia was originally given false information that she did correct as soon as she knew otherwise. Having dealt with probably every embarrassing PR situation in the book, I’ve experienced more than one time an executive or business owner giving the PR team false information that was then called out by the reporter who it was given too. Businesses large and small hear this: you are doing no one any favors by not giving your communication representative the whole story. PR is not about “spin” (have I mentioned how much I hate that word?) it’s about providing information that is meant to educate, inform, and in many cases, promote. But in all cases, it SHOULD BE honest. And yes, I’ve seen this happen at public companies by well meaning executives who actually thought they were doing the company a favor. Ick, ick, ick.
Now, Tricia had the option not to respond to Erick when he initially asked her to confirm or deny. But if she really was under the impression that the rumor of Cahall leaving was in fact, a false rumor, then it was her obligation as a communication executive to correct that. In which case, she took the right action. I have to believe that a woman in her level of position didn’t get there without knowing how to do her job (as women generally don’t get to those kinds of positions unless they prove themselves 100 times over).
It’s a shame TechCrunch was lied to, by a major public company no less. It’s a shame this woman’s career is probably in the toilet. It would be a bigger shame if none of us learned something from this.
Posted: December 7th, 2009 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
A round of applause for the company that makes Zhu Zhu pets for handling what could have been an extremely damaging situation both quickly and correctly. This is a great example of how companies should manage their crisis comm. Here’s the synopsis:
A consumer site, www.goodguide.com, that tests the health and environmental impact of kids toys, ran a test on one of the Zhu Zhu pets (this year’s hottest “must-have” for kids) and determined that it had high levels of antimony. Antimony is used as a fire retardant in textiles and plastics, and chronic exposure can allegedly cause heart and lung problems and other health effects. Within hours of this announcement, the manufacturer of Zhu Zhu pets released not just a statement, but their entire test results of antimony in their toys. The tests, performed by a well-known independent laboratory, confirmed that the levels were in line with federal standards of safety.
Shortly after, it came to be known that Good Guide used an inexpensive X-ray device to test the toy, instead of performing more extensive solubility tests required by the federal government, as the Zhu Zhu manufacturer has done.
The company did two things right today that probably ensured they will continue to be a runaway hit this holiday season:
1) They communicated with the public swiftly. By not waiting on this important action, they effectively took control of the story.
2) They were totally transparent. Instead of coming up with a trite statement, they were totally transparent and share with millions of consumers the information that most companies keep hidden away.
This post is not meant to endorse the safety of Zhu Zhu pets. This PR pro thinks a dose of healthy critical thinking is always important. But Cepia LLC, the manufacturer of Zhu Zhu Pets, deserves a round of applause for the way they handled this situation and every company can learn from this.
Posted: December 3rd, 2009 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
There’s been a lot of gab this week about Tiger Woods and his…er… indiscretions. But even more hot of a topic is how he (mis)handled the situation. Coming on the heels of David Letterman’s own illicit affair, Tiger is being blasted not only for his cheating ways but for his poor handling of how he’s communicating with his fans.
Tiger makes the claim that he has a fundamental right to some privacy, and turns the blame on the media for making speculative assumptions about what occurred leading up the night he crashed into a tree and his wife “saved” him with a golf club. But communication experts are overwhelming saying that Tiger is missing the boat on how to handle this situation.
Here are some takeaways that any CEO can pocket for the rare crisis communication situation:
1) Take control of the story — If you don’t, the public will and that’s when misinformation becomes damaging.
2) Be honest — The truth almost always comes out no matter how hard you try to keep it under wraps. Admit what you did wrong, apologize, and explain what you’re doing to make it right. Your customers will usually forgive you and the faster you come clean and make corrections, the faster everyone will move on.
3) Don’t deflect blame — It just makes you look weak. People in leadership positions need to appear strong, always, and that means accepting blame for the spiral of mishaps that stem from your mistake.
4) Be accountable — When you put yourself in a high-level position you are accountable to the people that helped you get there. In this case, Tiger is accountable to his fans and his sponsors who have helped make him a billion dollar athlete, and therefore has given up his right to a certain amount of privacy. Harsh, but that’s the reality. In the case of a CEO or other c-level executive, you are accountable to your shareholders, your board, your employees and your customers. Transparency is a must.
Going back to David Letterman now. He is a great example of how to handle a crisis situation. He came clean on his show before anyone else could out him. He owned up to what he did and took full blame. Then he joked at his own expense. His fans and the media moved on very quickly. His wife…maybe not so much. But that’s none of our business.
Posted: October 6th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
By Sarah Hawley, founder and principal of Mockingbird Public Relations.
Hi, all. I’m your last guest blogger as our dear Aly is just about back from maternity leave. I have to admit I’ve been having a bit of anxiety about what to write. Something about people reading my inner thoughts suddenly makes them seem completely blasé!
But, after some false starts, I came back to a thought I’ve been tossing around. The Gut. Yes, mine is full of a fabulous lunch from Four Peaks, but that’s not exactly the one I’m talking about. I’m talking about the Gut that is my divining rod; the one that helps me navigate when all other signs are pointing in circles when I really need to go straight. Each of us has one and I, personally, think that it’s an under-utilized PR tool that has led me on some remarkable career journeys.
In many ways I think that the Gut is just as important to the PR discipline as a media directory, a really well vetted target list or the ability to write a compelling pitch. Unfortunately, in the quest to please clients and generate results, the Gut can sometimes be ignored, told to be quiet or just simply forgotten about. How many times has each of us not pushed back when a client has chosen to submit the wrong abstract for a large speaking engagement? Or agreed to go to a journalist with a story suggestion with a twinge deep down that a) the writer won’t be interested or b) the company isn’t 100% ready to tell the story?
These lapses in judgment can be attributed to a number of things such as not wanting to ask what seems like an obvious question or being afraid you’ll lose the client account if you don’t “please” them (read: do what they want you to do). Most of the time, however, the client will be in a better position if you stop, center and listen to what the Gut has to say. If you are experienced enough to be interacting with clients on decision making, then odds are that the Gut has a good number of years backing up its counsel. If you don’t trust the Gut’s level of expertise on a topic, do what a former boss of mine used to say, “Go ahead and ask the dumb question. Just ask it in a smart way.” And, if you are making decisions that are fear-based, well, that’s another problem for another blog post.
Keep in mind, I’m not advising you to move forward with every knee jerk reaction the Gut has. Rather, ask the little fella what he thinks, allow him time to give you a solid answer, and stop to listen. Compare his answer to your knowledge and to the question at hand, and most times, if you’ve done your homework and know your space, your internal barometer will spout off an answer that you didn’t know you had in you.
And, remember, if the Gut is taking his own sweet time giving you an answer, don’t be afraid to take him out for Four Peaks’ Tap Room Tenderloin sandwich in beer bread to talk it over.
Posted: September 20th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
The following is a guest post from PR Consultant & Author, Linda VandeVrede, who blogs for www.valleyprblog.com and www.lindavandevrede.com
After I earned my master’s degree in communications, I took the road less traveled by, and that has truly made all the difference. Instead of choosing consumer PR or hospitality PR, I attended a seminar at Boston University led by then-Computerworld editor, Paul Gillin. What I heard that night convinced me to choose high-tech PR as a career path. Here are five reasons (of many) why this field ROCKS.
- You’re always on the cutting edge of new technology. You never have to worry about playing catch-up, because if you work in high-tech you are constantly surrounded by the latest developments in software and the Internet. It gives you a huge leg up over your counterparts in the consumer, construction, financial services, and legal industries.
- The media and bloggers you deal with are for the most part, razor-sharp. Unless they happen to work for a newspaper, which are sometimes behind in the equipment they supply reporters, your target media are familiar with technology and social media to some degree, and more approachable than other industry segment editors. Many of them are on twitter now and like to be approached that way.
- You get to travel to cool tech cities like San Francisco and Boston, rather than Detroit, Cleveland and Atlantic City (with apologies to all my friends there!)
- Everyone in the field is used to rapid change, so as a PR professional it’s easier to get your executive team to try new PR strategies and tactics because the market changes on a dime.
- The pay is higher right out of the gate. I had two job offers in 1984 when I completed my graduate work. One was for $18,000, working in the financial aid office/PR office at Boston University’s College of Communication, and the other was for $26,000, working for minicomputer company Data General in Westboro, Mass. I didn’t have to think twice about that one.
Posted: September 11th, 2009 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
Melissa Rzeppa, PR & Marketing Director for ZooLoo.com
By: Melissa Rzeppa, PR & Marketing Director for ZooLoo.com
A few weeks ago, I was excited to secure a great placement on a high-traffic blog for the company I work for. That same week, we had some other blog hits that all came out very positively and the marketing team was really excited. When I shared the placements with my boss, he said “Great. Now where are my hits?”
I was momentarily confused, but quickly realized what I had forgotten and what many of my fellow PR colleagues complain about all the time…. the companies we market don’t always see the value in blogs.
My boss, for example, still sees print coverage as the ultimate winner, despite having a background in Internet marketing. This is understandable. In his eyes and the eyes of many others, blogs aren’t “real” journalism, right? It’s too new, too unstable. Print is what business travelers read on airplanes and in hotels, it’s what executives read while having Starbucks in the morning.
But, is it? As print media continues to die and newspapers focus more on the online space, the line between a traditional news article and a blog is pretty blurry. Many reporters not only contribute to the print and online versions of the media outlet they work for, but they also have their own blog.
I recently attended a Girls in Tech panel on Journalism 2.0 at the MySpace headquarters in San Francisco where the topic of citizen journalism was top of mind for many. On the panel were some exceptional journalists and bloggers, including Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal who led the discussion. The result of the conversation told me that bloggers are citizen journalists, and visa versa… generally translated: bloggers are members of the public who engage in journalism.
If that is true, then how in the world can you undervalue the importance of blog placements? When a citizen journalist, or blogger, believes in your brand, they talk about it. They not only talk about it on their blog, but also throughout the social media world. They tweet about it, they share it on Facebook, they StumbleUpon it, Digg it and they spark conversation about it. They respond to comments from readers, they link to the brand’s website, they talk about the brand’s products and suddenly the client has loads of actual feedback and thoughts from current customers and potential new customers. Some comments may be negative, but you can respond in a matter of seconds to that negative feedback (without being defensive) and show that your brand cares about what consumers think. Maybe it doesn’t follow AP style guidelines, and it probably isn’t written in reverse pyramid style, but does that matter?
Print coverage is great to have, but it’s not nearly as measurable or as long-lived. Besides knowing the circulation of a paper, how else do you know how many people actually read the article? With a blog, you can see the number of unique daily visitors, check who clicked which links, find where the traffic was referred from and if you really wanted, you could dig even deeper than that. And, print articles are really just recycled after they are read. Web articles have a long life, and are constantly seen by new eyes through Google searches or links.
I still get that super-high “woohoo” feeling when I secure a big print story or a TV spot and I see the finished product. I still grab extra copies to save, and you can bet that I’ll send the segment link to my mom. But, blogging is where it’s at.
Posted: August 19th, 2009 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Well baby time is almost upon me and when I’m not staying fully engulfed in client work to keep my mind occupied, I’m finding ways to self-induce labor. I’m due, technically tomorrow, to have my first baby. And if you’ve ever met a woman who’s a full 40 weeks pregnant, you know the sense of readiness they feel about making this happen already. Sort of like an entrepreneur who’s been preparing to launch a new venture for the last year give or take. By this point in the game we’re irritable, uncomfortable, fed up waiting and just want to see the fruits of our labor…er…so to speak.
So as I’m working all of the techniques involved to get things moving — walking, eating spicy food, sitting on an exercise ball, negotiating an exit strategy with the baby — it got me thinking that trying to self-induce labor is a lot like getting a communications strategy underway. This occurred to me on my third walk of the day. Much like marketing, one strategy just won’t do the trick. You need to identify several strategies and put them all into motion, consistently and repeatedly, to get results.
So today I started having contractions. Yay! The result I was looking for. Was it the walk this morning or a culmination of the 10 walks I took since Saturday? Or perhaps the Indian food last night or maybe the Mexican food on Monday. It could have been the exercise ball that did it. It’s really hard to say which labor-inducing strategy did it. But that’s the point, it probably wasn’t any one thing, but rather each activity leveraging and building upon the one before.
The same is true with a communications campaign. The media relations is pretty good on its own, but works really well when combined with social media, some webinars, a case study or two, and some good old fashioned networking.
It tends to drive some people crazy to not be able to directly measure each and every marketing strategy back to the results. I know, I get it. It’s frustrating for us too. So here’s what we do: we take a step back and look at the big picture. Were customer acquisitions up consistently quarter over quarter? Was website traffic up? Are the quality of inbound leads stronger and conversations increasing? If the end goals are being achieved, then chances are your combined communications strategy is working.
We had a client this week ask us what else they should be doing with their marketing. They must be missing something as subscriptions for their product are up and down, up and down, day by day — no consistency. Their marketing consists of media relations, social media, a lot of networking, tradeshows, pay-per-click, print advertising (really), direct mail and search. The CEO was frustrated. She can trace jumps in customers directly to most of these but was so focused on the ups and downs of new subscribers every day she was missing the big picture. I had her take a look at a few metrics over the last three months: overall web traffic, number of inbound leads, and number of subscribers. After charting it out, she saw the all three metrics were up cumulatively month over month. THAT’s how she knows it’s all working.
Here’s the thing: with marketing, as with labor, there is seldomly one silver bullet. It takes time, consistency, and several well-thought out strategies that work together and leverage each other. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go for a walk.
Posted: July 24th, 2009 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
So this is long overdue. Blame it on summer slowness? okay, we’ll do that. A little while ago I posted a blog about the importance of including face time as part of your communications strategy. We’re so hyperfocused on connecting online and using tools that keep us from needing to interact, that we’ve seem to forgotten how effective a face to face meeting can be. Here are just a few face-time strategies that should be included in your marketing plans:
- Networking — Sounds so simple. Get out and go to a networking event. For small businesses especially, this can be a goldmine. If potential customers have heard about your business but haven’t been motivated to check it out, sometimes all it takes is having a conversation with someone, in person, to get them to consider buying. If you’re on a super-tight marketing budget, then this is even more beneficial to you. Customers aren’t hearing about you as often as they should through other marketing so you need to spread the word yourself. Just like any other marketing strategy, have some patience with networking. You probably won’t get business from going to one event every couple of months. You have to be consistent to see the payoffs. Pick a couple professional groups and then commit to going to their events once a month for at least three months.
- Tradeshows and Events — Whether it’s the local BtoB conference or the national user group conference, tradeshows are a really important place to show your goods to customers, press, analysts and partners. This can be an expensive proposition for many companies so take the time to really think about where you’re going to get the most bang for your buck. Maybe it’s just two shows a year, but the audience is so highly relevant (meaning, concentrated with your potential customers) that its worth the expense. If you can afford it, make the commitment to exhibit at the show and not just attend. Doing this gives the you opportunity to demo your wares to attendees (press too!). A lot of conferences also allow exhibitors to lead workshops, speak or sit on panel discussions — another great way to showoff.
- Ask ‘em to lunch — Again, seems so simple yet it’s so underused. If there’s someone you really want to get in front of, send ‘em a note asking them to lunch (or coffee). It gives you one-on-one interaction, hopefully without distractions. Like with networking events, you may not make a sale with one meeting, but you will be on this person’s radar (and hopefully top of mind) so when the time is right, they’ll think of your company to fit their needs. BTW, I’ve rarely had someone say no to me buying them lunch. And every client we have right now I can tie back to a casual meeting over lattes at some point. uh-huh.
We could get a lot deeper with this topic, but for many entrepreneurs, it’s adding just a few simple face-to-face tactics like this into the game plan that makes all the difference. Don’t think for a minute that this strategy are any less important than media relations, social media, or any other part of your communications plan.
Posted: July 2nd, 2009 | Author: aly | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
Okay, I know I owe a “Part II of ” the Face Time blog — planning to get to that soon (talk about NOT eating your own dog food). But I came across this list by Guy Kawasaki, “A Dozen Dont’s for Entrepreneurs” and it’s rather clever. I have to admit, I’ve not been in the Kawasaki camp for a little while, ever since the Twitter spamming, not-really-him shenanegans. But he’s a smarty and I generally enjoy his candor. Here are the 12 dont’s according to Kawasaki:
- Don’t worry, be crappy. Perfectionism, first of all, is an illusion. Nothing is perfect. Even worse, perfection stands in the way of revenue and truly learning what customers think because nothing is in their hands yet. When your product is “good enough” (but not “perfect”), ship it, and see what happens.
- Don’t give out lofty titles. Just because a roommate was there during the drunken weekend when you came up with the idea for your company, doesn’t mean he should be CTO. Someday, you’ll need to hand out titles like director, vice-president, and chief whatever officer, so keep them in reserve. Until then refer to each other as “co-founders” and describe the area of responsibility: for example, “programming.” If your roommates aren’t cool with this, they’re doing you a favor by showing their colors now.
- Don’t hire your family. The probability that your spouse or relative is the best person you can get for a job is 0%. The probability that people will hate working at company with spouses and relatives is 100%. The probability that one of you will have to go someday is also 100%. Never hire out of expediency. Always hire the best person you can get. This usually means not hiring your family unless you’re Jack or Suzy Welch.By the way, if you both hire your family and give them a lofty title, you are truly a bozo.
- Don’t sweat valuation. This is easy for a venture capitalist to say, but your company is either going to die or make you more money than you imagined. Whether you have 10% or 15% and whether your pre-money valuation is $2 million or $3 million isn’t going to really matter. Do the math: 15% of $0 is $0, so stop negotiating, take the money, and build something that’s worth more than $0. Whatever valuation a venture capitalist offers you, increase it by 20% and counter her offer. This is just enough to show that you’re not a pushover, but not too much that it will prolong or blow up the negotiations.
- Don’t believe venture capitalists. Having said that you shouldn’t sweat valuation, you shouldn’t believe venture capitalists. It’s not that we’re all liars—we just don’t finish our sentences. Rule of thumb: add “as long as things are going well” to everything a venture capitalist tells you. For example, “I am investing in your team” or “I will be there for you.”
- Don’t create lofty forecasts that you call “conservative.” You know you’re pulling numbers out of the air. We know you are too. You know we know. We know you know. So why would you forecast the fastest ramp in the history of capitalism? (It’s more likely that I will play in the NHL than you will achieve $2 billion in sales in year four.) Just project $25 million in year four, and we’ll all be in agreement about your lie.
- Don’t believe that the exception is the rule. This is called the Twitter Effect. It goes like this, “We’re focusing on usage and eyeballs like Twitter. We’re not that concerned about revenue right now. Look how valuable everyone thinks Twitter is. We’ll be just like that.” Twitter is the exception. Facebook is the exception. YouTube is the exception. There, I listed all the exceptions. Everyone else needs revenue asap, or you will #fail.
- Don’t focus on partnerships. “Partnership, noun, a relationship between two parties that does not increase the profitability of either.” If your partnership doesn’t cause you to edit your Excel spreadsheet, it’s meaningless. Focus on customerships, not partnerships if you want to succeed. When you’re a big, dumb, slow-moving company, then fabricate all the partnerships you want.
- Don’t build out your infrastructure. Sure, your conservative estimate is for a growth curve that makes Twitter’s look like a blip, so you need customer service, technical support, and racks of servers. I’ve never seen a company achieve even its “conservative” projections—I take that back: I’ve seen plenty of companies reach their overhead projections. The odds are that you’ll run out of money before you’ll run out of infrastructure.
- Don’t assume you’ll ever raise another round. Most projected timelines should contain a event that’s called “This is where the miracle occurs.” A much better assumption is that no miracle occurs, it takes years of grinding it out to succeed, and you’ll never raise another dime, so you must reach profitability with what you already have. Miracles happen in movies, not startups.
- Don’t compare your intentions to other employees’ results. Most people compare their intentions to the results of others. In this way, you’re never at fault or a failure. For example, you intended to ship on time, but the sales gal didn’t achieve her expected results. The effect of this is poor morale and chasms between people. You need to face the facts: you probably delivered less than you intended. Maybe others did too, but at least you’ll be more humble.
- Don’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do. This is the Golden Rule of business. If you wouldn’t fill out ten fields of information and provide a credit card number for a free password, don’t expect your customers too. If you wouldn’t work on weekends stuffing envelopes, don’t expect your employees to. If you wouldn’t invest in your company, don’t expect venture capitalists to.
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