JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and I’m here at the PR News Media Relations Conference. I’m joined by Mark.
Mark, will you please introduce yourself?
MARK PHILLIPS: Hi, I’m Mark Phillips. I’m the vice president of communications for the USO.
BURKE: Mark, I know that you have a great campaign and a great effort of tying your business results to your PR efforts. Can you share some of the secrets of that?
PHILLIPS: Well, you know, anybody who works in this business knows that it is both an art and a science. The science is getting better, but there’s still a lot of art to it, as well. Some of the things that we try to do to capitalize on the science part are being very rigorous about clearly identifying what our goals are, our communication goals as well as our operational goals, making sure that there is a logical connection between the two, that one supports the other, and then making sure that we dedicate the resources to accurate research before we plan, good planning, execution, and then good follow-up research to determine whether or not we were successful both achieving our operational goals and our communication goals.
BURKE: That sounds like a great plan and a good practice for all of us to follow. Mark, where can people find you on Twitter?
PHILLIPS: Easiest way to find me on Twitter is @mark_phillips, P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S.
At the PRSA 2010 International Conference opening reception, Eric Schwartzman introduced me to Santa’s PR guy, Maj. Brian Martin, deputy chief of staff for communications at NORAD and USNORTHCOM. Ok, he’s not really Santa’s personal public relations consultant, but he does handle PR for NORAD Tracks Santa, and the program has a great PR story to share.
The history behind the 2009 campaign:
Over 50 years ago, a local department store advertised for kids to call Santa on a special “hotline,” but they accidently used the number for the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD). Col. Harry Shoup, received the first call and told his staff to put the rest through. They confirmed Santa’s location via radar, and the tradition of tracking Santa was born. CONAD is now the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). NORAD volunteers still take calls, but they also answer emails and respond to social media posts from kids all over the world who want to know when Santa will be coming down their chimney.
As of November 19, 2009, Stacey Knott, public affairs, social media officer, NORAD and USNORTHCOM says, NORAD Tracks Santa had 719 Facebook fans, and a minimal presence on Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and YouTube. For the 2009 holiday season, they wanted to increase communication with their audiences, improve awareness, and drive traffic to the NORAD Tracks Santa website. Additionally, they looked to increase awareness of NORAD’s brand and mission notes Maj. Michael Humpreys, public affairs officer, NORAD and USNORTHCOM.
Results from the 2009 campaign:
As of January 1, 2010, NORAD Tracks Santa’s Facebook page had 417,608 fans.
13 million unique visitors from over 200 countries visited the NORAD Tracks Santa website.
The NORAD NORTHCOM Facebook page went from 447 fans on October 1, 2009 to 5,911 on January 1, 2010.
As of November 29, 2010, there 17,579 likes for NORAD NORTHCOM on Facebook.
The NORAD website typically has 1,000-3,000 visitors per day. On Christmas Eve 2009, the website had over 90,000 visitors and over 85,000 of them were unique visitors.
Preparing for the 2010 season:
NORAD Tracks Santa is a volunteer operation, so NORAD relies on many partners to help create the website, keep the website from crashing, and help strategize on other tactics. For 2010, some local Colorado schools are helping to develop games for the website. And for 26 hours over the eve of Santa’s arrival, the command staff, families, and other volunteers will run the command center phones and monitor social media to answer questions. Martin says it has been a great way for NORAD/USNORTHCOM to spread goodwill.
“The memories of NORAD Tracks Santa are a real tradition in people’s homes,” says Knott. She goes on to say, you have to believe in Santa after you volunteer to help.
For social media, Humphreys says they decided to focus on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, where they have the most activity – although they previously had a presence on Flickr and LinkedIn. Since they post pictures to Facebook, using Flickr seemed redundant. YouTube is the second most used search site, and they have a lot of activity on there.
All of the NORAD Tracks Santa social media sites and website are “family friendly.” Knott confirmed they spend a lot of time checking to ensure people are not posting mean, ugly posts, or profanity. In the video above, Maj. Martin discusses addressing issues on social media.
NORAD Tracks Santa’s Strategies, Tips and Best Practices—
Link back to the main website as often as possible
Have a consistent message across all media (mainstream media and social media)
Encourage interaction by looking for questions and try to respond to as many posts as possible
Further the conversation
Interact quickly
Have an engagement protocol and enforce it
Be trusting
Continue engagement throughout the year
Post pictures and videos
Humphreys says success comes from constant engagement on social media. Martin adds that NORAD Tracks Santa continues mainstream media outreach to print and web publications and with satellite media tours for broadcast stations.
I know I have great memories of watching the news to learn when Santa might be coming to my house. Do you have similar memories?
The BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas readers would like to hear how you’ve taken an old program and made it fresh with social media. Do you have any tips to share?
JOHNA BURKE: Hello, this is Johna Burke with BurrellesLuce, and we’re here at the PR News Media Relations Summit. And I’m here with Yanique.
Yanique, will you please introduce yourself?
YANIQUE WOODALL: Yes. My name is Yanique Woodall, and I’m the vice president of enterprise public relations at 1800flowers.com.
BURKE: And, Yanique, you’ve led a session that I think is invaluable for communicators and PR professionals especially, talking about how you targeted your audience, and the research and the focus that you used with your existing audience. Can you share how you did that?
WOODALL: Specifically, when I joined 1800flowers.com, it was important for our internal in-house–our internal PR team, as well as our external PR agency, to align ourselves with the marketing partners to really understand our target audience. But for us it was not just about knowing who the target audience is, because 1-800-Flowers services anyone from 18 to 54, basically anyone with a credit card, we wanted to know the sweet spot of the audience, the brand influencers, the ones that were going to move the needle. So we knew that when we put together a PR campaign, it would affect that audience and we could show measurement at the bottom line.
Specifically, it was important for us to be a part of the focus groups, be a part of the surveys, be a part of the opinion polls, to understand the customer. And once we figured out that customer, we understood she was a social media maven and she was in Twitter, she was in Facebook, and she wanted to engage with brands through social media tactics. Specifically, once we found that best media vehicle, which we understood it would be social media tactics, we needed to do some research to understand if that vehicle was going to have an impact on our brand. And through some research, we did find out that social media has a great impact on the brand, and we decided to go about that route.
Looking ahead, we did a case study for Mother’s Day around our Spot a Mom Movement. Basically, we’re encouraging all of our customers, our best customers, to celebrate every mom in their life. In this case, we saw an increase in multiple purchasing and we saw an increase in total transactions, so we knew that that was a success.
BURKE: Fantastic. And where can people follow you in social media?
WOODALL: If anyone has any additional questions in reference to social media, they can follow me on Twitter @woodallpr.
I recently attended the Social Convergence and The Enterprise conference held at The Graduate Center of CUNY. I listened to more than a half dozen speakers discuss the importance of social media in their organizations. There was one underlying message that everyone seemed to get across: companies who try and jump on the bandwagon of social media without a concrete plan will ultimately end up failing with this initiative.
There’s been a 230 percent increase in social media since 2007. The growth is staggering. Yet, the question remains – how are companies engaging in social media successfully? Brian Renny, CMO, Harvard Business School says we need to understand the sociology of engaging social media to connect with our audience; otherwise we’ll fall short of success. Just because a company tweets or has a Facebook fan page, doesn’t mean the organization is successful. It’s all how the organization is using the social media tools available to them and how they’re leveraging them to connect with the community.
Conversations, good and bad, are happening everywhere. As we all know, a successful public relations campaign is always well thought out and planned. So why should this be any different with the way we handle social media? Matt Peters, creative director, Pandemic Labs, says building a solid social media platform is essential to the organization’s success of future initiatives. Although social media has certainly changed the way we do our jobs, the core concept is still the same. We still must identify how we communicate with our audience.
Some of the most successful PR campaigns and crisis communication resolutions in recent times were well-thought out plans that connected with the audience via social media. As my colleague Denise Giacin points out in a recent post on the BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas blog, Jet Blue is a great example of a company using social media to manage PR communications and engagement. When the Valentine’s Day brand disaster occurred in 2007, the company quickly turned to YouTube to connect with their customers. Founder and former CEO, David Neeleman, went on the Internet first apologizing to the employees of Jet Blue and then to their customers for going against everything the company stands for. He ensured something like this will never happen again. The quick response and admittance of fault allowed the public to forgive the airline and move on.
Jenny Dervin, director of corporate communications stated that the company built the brand on goodwill through daily engagement and cashed in on that when the disaster occurred. Dervin said it’s important that you’re proactive with social media on daily basis and people will be more forgiving, should a crisis occur. Another important point Dervin made is that social media allowed the company to directly speak with their audience, rather than using traditional media channels as a middle man. People perceive the company as being more genuine and sincere when the message is direct.
So before you send that tweet, or create a fan page, have a concrete method that parallels the goals of your business and/or your campaign or crisis and do your research. Once you have the appropriate channels in place remain sincere and proactive when connect with constituents. Otherwise, if you jump in too soon without thinking, the chances of your success with social media or handling crisis communication will diminish.
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*Bio: As a Senior Account Manager at BurrellesLuce, Tom Kowalski works closely with New York-based clients and PR agencies. Tom brings extensive knowledge of the PR industry with more than 7 years of agency experience. He hopes to stimulate readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas by sharing useful information related to the communications industry and business in general, as well as different perspectives on customer service. LinkedIn: Tom Kowalski Twitter: @BurrellesLuce Facebook: BurrellesLuce
I wasn’t able to attend this year’s Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations Summit workshop (in New York) in person earlier this month. However, I did have the opportunity to attend virtually.
Speakers for the panel “The Future of Public Relations: Seizing the Opportunity” consisted of:
Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100
Matt Harrington, president and CEO of Edelman U.S.
Peter Land, SVP, communications, at PepsiCo Beverages Americas
Martin Murtland, VP, solutions for corporate communications for Dow Jones Inc.
I’ve listed some of the key points that I heard in the podcast. (NOTE: Unfortunately since there was only audio and no video, I was unable to keep track of exactly who was speaking at some times – so my apologies, in advance, to the panel if I’ve not credited you with your quotes.)
Hynes talked about marketing, advertising, public relations, etc. all being separate departments with separate budgets, as this is the business model that’s served well in the past. However, in reality, the future of the industry is about communicating the brand of the organization. What are the goals as a whole and what are the skill sets that match those strategic goals? This is the time for organizations to think about the fundamental concept of moving away from managing information or news to shaping and directing conversation.
Companies must influence the influencers. The concept of third-party advocacy has never been more important than it is now.
As in any discussion of PR these days, the conversation moved to changes in ROI and measurement and analytics. We all know we should get away from ad value equivalency, but what do we use in its place (aside from media value)? How do you know your campaign is a success? There are many tools out there that measure “online buzz.” Yet what does that really mean? It goes back to where you start – when you set your goals, they must be measurable. Measurable goals will drive your reporting and allow you to determine which strategies were successful.
So, what does the future look like for public relations?
PR now has more opportunity and voice as it relates to corporate strategy. In other words, PR professionals are gaining more access to the C-suite.
The future (of PR) is about confidence and being nimble. According to Land, we must be able to move incredibly fast and confident to walk into our CEO’s office and make suggestions.
The move away from “agency of record” was briefly discussed because corporations have multiple needs (e.g., advertising, digital, creative, B2B, direct to consumer, etc.)
The next decade in public relations is predicted to be the most exciting in history thus far. It may seem like it’s “back to the future,” as some have lost sight of fundamental best practices, but we must now come back to this strategic consulting in shaping views, per Hynes.
What would you add? What does the future of PR look like in your mind’s eye? If you attended the conference virtually, what are some of the points you took away from it. Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
end up failing with this initiative. 
I wasn’t able to attend this year’s 
