Time for companies to get real

Like a lot of people I start my morning with the Today programme on Radio 4, where a continual succession of politicians, captains of industry and celebrities queue up to be interviewed. If they are lucky they get the mild-mannered Justin Webb or if unlucky James Naughtie or John Humphrys in a particularly cantankerous mood.

As a PR person one thing I notice very quickly is if the interviewee has been over media trained. You can hear the key messages and soundbites being introduced into the conversation (often with a complete lack of subtlety), the practised swerve away from difficult questions and an overall replacement of any personality with a mechanised response.

Obviously anyone speaking to the press (and particularly to Humphrys, Naughtie or Paxman) needs to be trained – the car crash interviews when spokespeople are completely unprepared are toe-curlingly bad. But in too many cases the message overwhelms any personality that the spokesperson has – the lines could be delivered by a robot rather than a human being. This may be fine if the speaker is a third undersecretary at a government agency, but not good if he’s your CEO and essentially the ambassador for your brand.

And this malaise isn’t confined to senior managers and politicians. I see a lot of entrepreneurs and heads of growing companies who shut down when they have a camera pointed at them or a microphone shoved in their face. All the energy and enthusiasm they have for their wonderful product drains away to be replaced by a tongue-tied mouthing of platitudes.

So what can spokespeople do to get their personality and message across? I’m not going to provide a full media training session in this blog but it revolves around five key areas:

1              Preparation
As Ben Franklin said, “Fail to prepare and prepare to fail.” Take the time to research who you are speaking to, the audience of their programme/readership of the magazine. What has the journalist written recently? What is the angle of the interview? If you have a marketing or PR person they should provide you with this information ahead of time – read it well before the interview (not 5 minutes before).

2              Know what you are going to say
Have 2-3 key points that you want to get across, particularly for broadcast interviews. But say it in multiple ways – repeating the same soundbite again and again is going to put listeners/viewers off and makes you sound like a stuck record. Back up what you are saying with examples or figures that prove your case, particularly if they come from a reputable third party.

3              Be human
People relate to people, not to dry words. Use stories and anecdotes that build pictures in the audience’s mind – and make them personal. Things like ‘I saw on my way here that…..’ or ‘I was talking to one of our customers and they said……..’ show empathy and involvement. Just make sure they are true and not PR spin.

4              Be enthusiastic
Particularly for a start-up, if you can’t be enthusiastic about your product, how do you expect others to buy it? You may be repeating details for the thousandth time and feel you  are having to dumb down the language around your wonderful new innovation but explain clearly, simply and with energy what it will do to change people’s lives for the better. You’ve got passion for your start-up – get it across when you speak.

5              Get training
If you’re not sure about how good you are at speaking publicly then make an investment in training. Not necessarily media training, but coaching in public speaking is an invaluable way of building up your confidence and providing methods for getting your message across without losing your humanity.

There’s a reason that the same spokespeople keep popping up on radio and TV – from the likes of Richard Branson to Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management (a mainstay of Radio 5 Live). They provide consistently interesting and punchy answers, without letting the message overwhelm their own personality. It is time for entrepreneurs and spokespeople everywhere to follow their example.

Where’s the money going?

In a week that saw the publication of the long-awaited Cambridge Phenomenon book, celebrating 50 years of innovation in the area, some more sobering figures concerning continued investment have been published.

Punting in Cambridge, UK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Research from tech-focused investment group Ascendant found that while generally VC investment is up in Q1 2012, money doesn’t seem to be coming to Cambridge. £307m was invested in tech companies in the UK and Ireland – with £188m going to London-based outfits, and £27m to Irish ones. Cambridge (and Oxford) saw very little new money.

While it can be misleading to generalise based on three months of data this could be a worrying trend as centralised government action to boost London’s Tech City draws potential funding (and talent) away from the Cambridge ecosystem. After all, as Rory Cellan-Jones points out in his BBC Blog, Cambridge has potentially a better chance of creating world-class tech companies than London as it has already developed an ecosystem with research at its heart to feed innovative ideas to the market. But investment funding for Cambridge is key – not just in ‘scientific’ spinouts such as Owlstone and ARM but the more internet-style businesses and the thriving cleantech sector that Cambridge also supports.

So how does Cambridge compete against the media-savvy Tech City community when it comes to gaining funding? I may be biased as a marketer, but really feel that public relations has a strong role to play. There is still a tendency amongst Cambridge startups to treat PR as an afterthought rather than an intrinsic part of how you create a company and drive its success. You need to know your audience and deliver the right message to it at the right time using language they understand to succeed. Otherwise the risk is that Cambridge will become seen solely as the domain of technical wizardry rather than as a driver of customer-focused innovation that leads the UK tech scene.

Related articles

• VIDEO: Views on the ‘Cambridge phenomenon’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Start-up Britain – Cambridge v Tech City (bbc.co.uk)

Disconnecting at LinkedIn?

LinkedIn Centipede Participants in the 2010 ING Bay to Breakers (Photo credit: smi23le)

We’re clearly doing much more of our business networking online, so why isn’t LinkedIn more of a success? Obviously it has a huge number of registered users (over 150 million globally according to some figures) and revenues last quarter of $167 million, but it doesn’t seem to be able to take centre stage in the same way as Facebook. People use it, but in many cases more out of duty than desire.

So what’s LinkedIn doing wrong? Here’s three key things I’ve picked up, with additional points from an entertaining Pitch and Mix discussion on LinkedIn a few weeks back.

Just not clever enough
Having the CVs and career details of 150 million people should allow LinkedIn to both suggest serendipitous connections and also flag up relevant jobs to members. Yet I tend to get the same new connections suggested, simply based on my existing network. Putting a bit of intelligence behind it how about suggesting people based on my interests, location and profile, rather than just the groups I belong to? And, while this may just be me, the jobs that are flagged bear no relation to my experience level – unless LinkedIn really believes I should start again as a PR account executive?

Push to monetise subscribers
Obviously LinkedIn isn’t a charity, it’s a public company, but over the last year I’ve seen a creeping change as the network tries to push people more towards premium subscriptions. Less information is available for free and all you can see on many profiles are basic details. It doesn’t encourage me to expand my network if I can’t tell if someone would be a good contact or not.

Spam, spam, spam
LinkedIn Groups are a great resource to discuss relevant issues with like-minded people. Or they would be if they weren’t regularly invaded by spammers and people trying to sell me a new website. Ditto random invitations from people within groups that I’ve had no interaction with at all. I know a lot of this is down to those that run the groups but it is LinkedIn that suffers as people abandon potentially useful groups and consequently don’t log on as frequently.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe LinkedIn is a great resource. It just has to focus on its users and their needs if it is continue to grow and provide the right service to the B2B community.

A Duke Nukem tweet is Forever

Image via Wikipedia

You’d think that PR professionals would have realised that both (a) social media is now a key channel for talking to the press and wider audiences and (b) it is public and once in cyberspace will be there for a long, long time.

But no, following negative reviews of the new Duke Nukem game, US PR agency Redner Group publically tweeted that, essentially, those that gave bad reviews wouldn’t get copies of the next game. The agency quickly realised its mistake, took down the tweet but not before it had been captured by the likes of Wired. The result? Duke Nukem’s publishers 2K has fired Redner, losing the agency its largest client.

What amazes me, beyond the poor judgement in not realising a negative tweet would be picked up, is that this is really poor PR practice. One of the primary functions of PR is to promote a positive image of a client, and in many cases that involves long term relationship building with journalists that may not understand or like your client or what they are doing. Taking your ball away is not only petty but counterproductive as well as it reinforces press perceptions. That for me, is the biggest lesson that PR people need to realise after the Redner debacle.

 

Related articles

• The PR Man Whose Duke Nukem Forever Tweet Got Him Fired Speaks Out [Public Relations] (kotaku.com)
• DUke Nukem nukes PR (broadstuff.com)
• Twitter tantrum sinks Duke Nukem Forever PR agency (zdnet.com)

A Coalition of Communicators?

Image by The Prime Minister's Office via Flickr

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen the coalition government pause on NHS reforms, make policy changes on vital issues and launch poorly thought out stunts like Start up Britain. I thought we were meant to have a coalition government made up of professional communicators? It amazes me David Cameron and Nick Clegg, trained public relations people, haven’t seen the PR downside of some of their initiatives – or been able to communicate better on key issues like NHS reforms.  Remember Nick Clegg, PR Week’s 2010 Communicator of the Year? It seems like a long time ago now.

Amusing though it would be I don’t want to take cheap shots at Cameron and Clegg – blogs are meant to be short and focused after all. But why has it gone so wrong on the communication front? Three things stand out for me:

 

1) Confusion between the message and the messenger
In the PR business the aim is for the messenger to be just a conduit to get the story to key audiences. Yes, you should have a presence but if people are focused on your personality and what tie you are wearing rather than what you are saying things get very confused. As PR people Cameron and Clegg should know this, but the pressure of trying to be message and messenger has simply overwhelmed them. The long drawn out departure of comms chief Andy Coulson hasn’t helped, removing expertise and an alternative spokesperson from the scene.

 

2) Short term thinking
Again, communicators preach the need for a long term strategy and that results don’t come quickly. But politics is different, hence knee jerk initiatives like Start Up Britain designed to create an immediate buzz. There seems to be no risk assessment of the potential pitfalls, just a rush to get things out the door and onto the next project.

 

3) No real mandate
The coalition government was obviously formed as no one party had a clear majority. And this lack of a real mandate means that the public, and in particular the press, is suspicious and analyses every policy announcement in minute detail. So flaws that may have been previously glossed over are now front page news – whether in the papers or on social media.

 

So what does the coalition need to do to turn around its communications? It isn’t a job I’d want, but to borrow a political slogan it needs to get back to basics. Ditch the gimmicks, take a longer term view and spend time explaining what they stand for and how it relates to the man in the street. That would really earn Clegg his PR Week Communicator of the Year Award…………..

 

Related articles

• “I’m not a punchbag – I have feelings (newstatesman.com)
• Government to ‘pause, listen, reflect and improve’ NHS reform plans (guardian.co.uk)
• Nick Clegg’s social mobility plans should not be lost amid mockery | Julian Glover (guardian.co.uk)

Social media – the ultimate contacts book

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve blogged at length about how social media gives PR people in particular, and companies in general, an unparalleled chance to engage directly with the end users/buyers of products and services. It opens up conversations in a very democratic way – there’s no place for preaching or talking down if you want to build a rapport with your customers.

For those that don’t get it, or feel their audiences are still not on social media, the other powerful argument for platforms like Twitter is that this is where more and more journalists find stories and information. And this is backed up by recent research by PR agency Brunswick, who surveyed just over 1,000 business journalists on the increasing importance of social media.

Globally 43 per cent said that blogs/Twitter and message boards had become more important to them over the last year. Nine out of ten journalists had been prompted to investigate an issue after seeing it on social media. While only 14 per cent of stories actually originate solely from social media, it is clear that Twitter et al now have a firm place in a journalist’s little black book of contacts. So for those hesitating on the social media brink, now is the time to jump in – or miss out on the important conversations.

Digital – is Don Draper worried?

Image via Wikipedia

As every marketing textbook will tell you there are five main promotional tools when it comes to reaching your customer – advertising, public relations, direct marketing, personal selling and sales promotion and all have distinct advantages (and pitfalls).

In the real world, outside the textbooks, a hierarchy has developed, certainly when it comes to big brands and their campaigns. Advertising is king, taking the largest share of budgets, driving the ideas and generally providing Mad Men-style glamour. PR has always been the poor relation, while direct mail and sales promotion have been relegated to the bottom of the list, seen as mechanical methods of distributing content. Salespeople rarely see themselves as a promotional tool so have headed off on their own outside marketing’s control.

As in many industries, the advent of the web disrupted this cosy status quo, but the model pretty much survived. Web and email were put into the direct marketing category and ad agencies continued to receive fat cheques for their work.

But there are now real signs that the world is changing – it isn’t a command and control model anymore. We’re not watching TV (or TV ads) as much (as a recent Deloitte report pointed out most people now have hard drive recorders) and new digital channels, like social media, are much more about conversations and content, not just slick one-way ideas. Adland is worried about losing control – bringing in PR people for their content skills, investing in swish digital agencies and generally reinventing themselves through new services. The question is – can they change fast enough or will savvy PR agencies step up to the mark? Time will tell, but if the PR industry fails to skill up it risks missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity to lead integrated marketing campaigns.

Related articles

• Will PR Agencies Suffer the Campaign Mindset? (worob.com)
• Seven Ways Agencies Must Evolve in 2011 (adage.com)
• Havas Worldwide Takes Majority Stake in Social Technology Startup: Socialistic (prnewswire.com)

The leading, innovative, best blog

Image by *spo0ky* via Flickr

While all professions are guilty of jargon, there’s a definite tendency in PR to reuse and recycle the same tired old phrases when it comes to press releases. Leading, innovative, solutions, unique – as in “company X, the leading provider of innovative and unique solutions, today announced……”

At best they don’t mean anything and at worst hide a potentially good story as any self-respecting journalist has nodded off at the end of the first paragraph.

Often we’re told we can’t change them by clients as they are part of house style and that they set the company apart in its messaging. A useful piece of research by Adam Sherk, quoted in the Johnson blog in The Economist, explodes this myth. By analysing words and phrases in press releases on PR Web, he found that leader and leading, for example, were used over 200,000 times. That’s a lot of leaders – are there no also-rans?

This isn’t the first research that there’s been in this area, and all PR people have had sarky comments back from journalists on this subject, but it should act as a wake up call for press release writing. Start with messaging that is clear and differentiated. Then explain things simply, without hyperbole but with a range of language – as Adam’s research shows it might actually make you stand out from the crowd.