Archive for March, 2011


The Evolution of Media Measurement: Dr. Jim Grunig, University of Maryland, Interview with Johna Burke at the 2011 PR News Measurement Conference

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Transcript –

JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and we’re here at the PR News Measurement conference. I’m joined by Dr. Grunig.

Dr. Grunig, will you please introduce yourself?

Dr. JIM GRUNIG: My name is Jim Grunig, or James Grunig. I’m a professor emeritus of public relations from the Department of Communication at University of Maryland.

BURKE: Also, very humbly, one of the new inductees into the PR News Hall of Fame, rightfully so. You know, part of your career has, I’m sure, seen the evolution of measurement. What are some of the biggest changes that you’ve seen in the growth in the industry over the last few years?

Dr. GRUNIG: Actually, the questions that are asked seem to be about the same as they were in the 1970s when I first started working on research and measurement and evaluation as a consultant at AT&T. People still want to show that they have some sort of measurable effects. I think there is an interest, I hope, in moving beyond just program evaluation, which there’s still a great deal of interest in–that is, how do we measure the effects of media relations or employee relations or marketing communications consultant–to get into the longer-term kind of value of the communication function to an organization.

And I think that’s best done through measuring relationships, and this is something that I’ve probably several articles on that’re published on the website of the Institute for Public Relations. And I think the emphasis on reputation is something that has occurred probably mostly in the last 10 years, and I think reputation can largely be explained by the quality of relationships that an organization has with its publics. And in turn, that can be explained by how the organization behaves. So our greatest value, I think, is in changing the behavior of the organization as much as changing the behavior of publics.

BURKE: Great. Thank you so much for your time. And I think that after that it’s no surprise why you are a highly revered person in the measurement community, and we’re so grateful to have the time with you today. Where can people connect with you online or in social media?

Dr. GRUNIG: Well, you can reach me by e-mail at jgrunig@umd.edu. I’m also on both Facebook and LinkedIn if you would like to contact me there.

BURKE: Thank you so much for your time.

Dr. GRUNIG: Thank.

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Posted in Industry Events, Media Measurement, Media Relations, Online Video, Public Relations | 4 Comments »

Can We Talk? Social Media’s Impact on Human Relations

Monday, March 28th, 2011
Rich Gallitelli*
Up in the Air

I was watching the movie Up in the Air the other day and a scene, or rather, the idea within the scene has stayed with me. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, George Clooney plays an executive who travels the country dutifully firing people for corporations. Anna Kendrick plays an ambitious young executive eager to climb the corporate ladder ten rungs at a time. Clooney’s character takes Kendrick’s character along on his firing trips to mentor her. The reason for this? Anna Kendrick’s character helped create a program in which you fire someone via video conference. No face-to-face meeting, no real human interaction, just a video screen and a script to follow.

According to Nielsen Media, in the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone — land line, mobile, voicemail and all. Even on cell phones, the amount of money adults spend on voice usage has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.  It’s apparent, as we moved closer to being more interconnected, we are becoming more and more disengaged from one another. Let’s examine some of the other aspects of social media that have affected the way people interact, keeping in mind we are on the precipice of firing workers via video conference becoming a routine part of HR and business. 

How many phone calls do you make during your work day? How many do you receive? How about outside of work?  Now compare this number to the emails you receive, and then the number of your texts, tweets, Facebook updates, etc. Walk around your office; how many people do you see on the phone? I bet you understand my point. John McTigue, an executive VP and co-owner of Kuno Creative, an inbound marketing agency based in Avon, Ohio, discusses three issues agencies face when offering social media as a service. He sums up his post by saying that marketing has changed so much that it is essential that marketing companies adopt a social media engagement strategy. Furthermore, marketing agencies are now being asked to be their client’s social media presence. How many business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions now take place without company representatives in the same room?  

Social media is about relationship growth that does not need to take place with face-to-face meetings. It can expand your circle of friends, acquaintances, and advisors without geographic limits and has the propensity to give you access to a host of interesting thinkers to learn from.  The same can be said for businesses engaging their clients and contacts through social media and digital technology. However, more often than not, it seems we limit our social media message to those who only agree with us, that’s when we’re not just pushing messages out rather than creating two-way dialogues. Thus, to me, it appears we stunt our limitless opportunities to expand our knowledge base and evoke real change. 

So here is my social media call to action: Please stop the tweets that you just had pizza.  Please stop updating your Facebook with pet pictures.  Stop texting movie quotes to each other and do something with this forum. I want to see this really accomplish more within our neighborhoods and with hyperlocal initiatives.  If we truly believe the power of social media’s influence on what is going on in the Middle East, why don’t we try empowering our friends to begin helping those less fortunate and make a real difference. Organize a charitable event for someone we do not know.  Those are the tweets that I want to see! 

I am not going to discredit it; but, as of right now, social media is not going to save the world.  Are most of your friends tweeting about Egypt these days? I didn’t think so.  In my BurrellesLuce previous blog, I discussed the affects social media has had on the Middle East, specifically the uprisings in Egypt. I’m not going to ignore or debate the social impact social media may have had on that revolution, but again, I will say great movements require great leaders and a galvanizing leader has yet to take up the mantle. Social media cannot supply the great leader.  It hasn’t proved to be anything more than a mechanism.   

During the onset of World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would secretly meet British Prime Minister Winston Churchill aboard a battleship somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Do you think the agreements to supply the Allies with weapons from 1939 through 1941 would have manifested through text messages or status updates?  Do you think the invasion of Normandy would have been better planned if it was tweeted between allied generals?  Or if video conferencing was used to remove an ineffective world leader from office? Of course not!  All great things are accomplished through face-to-face meetings; whether it’s birth of a nation, the emancipation of it, or its liberation, history has shown that we humans demonstrate our best qualities when things are worse and we come together to right a wrong, no matter how popular or unpopular the issue.

What has happened? Is it the technology or is it us? At this point the answer to this question is trying to delineate Dr. Frankenstein from his monster. What do you think? Can we talk, face-to-face and in person? You can send me an invite from Facebook, but be prepared to meet me somewhere, in person, and not via a video screen or message board.

***

*Bio: Richard Gallitelli brought a wealth of sales and customer-service experience when he came to BurrellesLuce in 2007. His outstanding performance as a sales associate and personalized shopper for Neiman Marcus (he also has worked for Nordstrom) earned him a nomination by Boston magazine as “Best of Boston” sales associate for high-end retail fashion stores. Rich’s talents also won him praise and a profile in the book, “What Customers Like About You: Adding Emotional Value for Service Excellence and Competitive Advantage,” written by best-selling business author Dr. David Freemantle. Rich majored in English Literature at William Paterson University, and is a published poet and short-story writer. Facebook: BurrellesLuce Twitter: BurrellesLuce LinkedIn: BurrellesLuce

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Posted in Client Services, Public Relations, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Missouri State University PRSSA Day: Media Myths

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

mascom_PRSSA_smallLast week, I was honored to be a part of Missouri State University’s PRSSA Day as a speaker on social media misconceptions. One of the myths that we discussed was “Social media will soon replace traditional media as the most viable source of news,” and I wanted to elaborate on that point. 

At least once every week, or so it seems, someone comes out with a “Traditional media is dead” article or warns that “We shouldn’t waste time on traditional media and advertising.” As a matter of fact, I read an article several months ago about a survey on the subject by PR/PA agency mergers and acquisition consultants, StevensGouldPincus. SGP managing partner, Art Stevens was quoted as saying, “If this trend persists within the next two years social media will replace traditional media as PR/PA’s primary tool for reaching client audiences with news and information. When you consider that traditional media have been the bedrock of professional PR/PA practice for more than 100 years, the implications are profound.”

I’ll concede that the preferred vehicle for news distribution is definitely shifting to digital, real-time and even mobile platforms and I’ll agree that the implications are profound to communicators and consumers alike; however, the source of most of that content remains the same: The percentage of original content found on social media pales in comparison to traditional media. In reality, most news content is first published in the print or web editions of major news outlets, and then syndicated or picked up on social media networks and blogs, confirms this BurrellesLuce newsletter on “Social Media Myths and Misconceptions“.

In fact, according to a Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism study last year, “Blogs still heavily rely on the traditional press — and primarily just a few outlets within that — for their information. More than 99 percent of the stories linked to in blogs came from legacy outlets such as newspapers and broadcast networks. And just four — the BBC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post accounted for fully 80 percent of all links.”

So, let’s face it, without traditional media, in whatever form, there would be very little news to fuel social media. Will that change in the future? Perhaps. But as of today, traditional media is NOT dead.

Even if it is, perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing after all… Because as Seth Godin recently wrote in a post entitled, Bring Me Something Dead: “Dead means that they are no longer interesting to the drive-by technorati. Dead means that the curiosity factor has been satisfied, that people have gotten the joke… Only when an innovation is dead can the real work begin. That’s when people who are seeking leverage get to work, when we can focus on what we’re saying, not how (or where) we’re saying it…”

What do you think the future holds?

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Posted in Industry Events, Media Relations, Public Relations | 1 Comment »

BurrellesLuce Newsletter: Branding in 2011: 6 Tips to Help Optimize Your Efforts

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
Marketing Funnel resized

March 2011

People typically equate a company’s brand with the company’s logo. But a brand is much more than a stylized name: It is a primary symbol of an organization’s purpose, vision and values. Indeed, the act of branding represents a strategic endeavor that encompasses a range of corporate functions—marketing, public relations, and customer service, not the least, among them.

Branding also includes the way employees present their company to its various constituencies, whether intentionally through the communication of key messages or incidentally through everyday emails, social-media engagement and phone conversations.

Digital’s Impact on Branding

Before the advent of digital technology, buyers in both the business-to-consumer (B-to-C) and the business-to business (B-to-B) space would be open to receiving sales communications from a number of brand ambassadors. They may have been exposed to messages pushed to them from dozens of companies, clients, or products from which they could reduce the pool of realistic choices to those offerings that were closely aligned with their needs.

Marketing and other communications professionals relied on this traditional “funnel” approach, and reached out to their prospects and audiences at specific intervals in the selling cycle—most often at the point of “consideration.” The ball was essentially in the seller’s court.

Things are very different today. “Consumers in both the B-2-C and the B-2-B markets still want a clear brand promise and offerings they value. What has changed is when—at what touch points—they are most open to influence, and how you can interact with them at those points,” David C. Edelman states in this Harvard Business Review article. “In the past,” Edelman explains, “marketing strategies that put the lion’s share of resources into building brand awareness and then opening wallets at the point of purchase worked pretty well. But touch points have changed in both number and nature, requiring a major adjustment to realign marketers’ strategies and budgets with where consumers are actually spending their time.” He goes on to suggest that consumers are now most open to influence at the “evaluate” stage and not at the “consider” stage.

Read more about digital’s impact on branding and learn six tips to help optimize your branding efforts in this month’s BurrellesLuce newsletter.

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Posted in Advertising/Marketing, BurrellesLuce, Client Services, Public Relations | No Comments »

The Art of Storytelling

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Communicators need to shift from providing information to showing outcomes in their writing. This was one of the points at a recent Washington Women in Public Relations (WWPR) professional development lunch to help PR professionals tell their organization’s stories effectively.  

Flickr Image: Jill Clardy

Flickr Image: Jill Clardy

Panelists Cindy Atlee, partner, The Storybranding Group; Nancy Belmont, CEO, Belmont Inc.;  Danny Harris, founder, People’s District, and moderator Donna Savarese, director of communications, Innovative Solutions Group revealed ways to find and craft an effective story. Atlee lead the panel by asking attendees to choose a character from a list (i.e. every person, lover, jester, caregiver, hero, etc.) they felt most like that day and then tell us why. The panelists agreed that offering role names can often encourage people to open-up about their emotions toward a product, place or organization, and you can then find the emotion behind the story.

Harris says stories can have a magical construction, where you don’t realize there is a call to action. He reminded the group every good story has three parts:

  1. Challenge
  2. Struggle
  3. Resolution

Belmont encourages creating and finding deeper connections with your audience. She added we should look for the “like.” The more detail you can get into the story, the likelihood you will find something in common with your audience and the more likely they will like your story. She used the example of her client the U.S. Army. They look to tell the story of the everyday soldier, who we all like, not the war.

Not all organization’s stories seem interesting, so Savarese says she uses case studies to tell her organization’s stories. She always looks to give the resolution meaning to everyday people. She encouraged adding visuals, pictures and video, to help pull the reader into the story.

(In a recent Fresh Ideas post, my BurrellesLuce colleague Tressa Robbins addressed the issue of overloading your press release with too much information, and gave some great tips for crafting a story-based release.)

The panel also encouraged communicators to look outside the communications department, when looking for an organization’s story. Everyone should be involved and recommended several books on effective story telling:

How have you used storytelling to promote your organization or client? What were the challenges? Do you have any advice for BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers?

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Posted in Industry Events, Media Relations, Public Relations | 3 Comments »

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