02/14

It helped that the people who run the firm are well-known in their fields and much in demand.   On the other hand, how do you grow a firm like this when the experts retire? Does the firm go with them?  Frequently, this is what happens.

As we talked over the situation, we realized the firm has most of the data in-house that it needs to grow, but the data are in multiple databases and inside its owner's brains.  Our job is to help get that data out and into a format we can use to market the firm's skills more widely.  This can be fun, but we realized there were pitfalls in what we were considering. 

For one, the owners dislike marketing.  They have never needed it and they don't want to be seen as "selling" their services.  The COO decided that what you and I call marketing will be called "strategic planning" internally.  A second factor arose.  The owners had never collected the firm's data into one place to analyze it because -- well -- they never needed to do that.  The firm ran well without analysis.  So, when we collect data and organize it, we will not necessarily tell the owners what we are doing or why.  We'll just do it and say that it is for internal coordination.  A third factor is the most difficult.  The owners need to help with marketing eventually but it is unlikely they will do so willingly.   We have to make "strategic planning" easy for them and show them how it helps their self-interest.  Never an easy thing to do. 

Ultimately, if we stay with a consistent program for four or five years, hammer away and have some luck, we can probably turn the firm around and even call what we are doing "marketing."  That will be a banner day.

02/12

Good PR.  A British-based branding consultancy, called Interbrand, surveyed 1,315 individuals from more than 72 countries to find out what brand had most impacted their lives in 2002 whether positively or negatively.  Guess who won? 

The winner does not advertise and makes no major effort to be well-known except through offering a superior product and good PR.  It was Google -- yup, the search engine outranked Coca-Cola and Starbucks and other heavy advertisers.   There is good reason.  Google has kept its pact with users.  It does not bury them in advertising.  It works hard at improving its search engine, and it is constantly extending its product to handle new search needs.  Moreover, most of the respondents probably use Google several times daily.

Google is unusual in its success.  There are dozens of search engines and none have taken off as well as Google has.  Some shone briefly then disappeared.  Most exist in a netherworld of low usage and more or less product quality.  Google, because it makes money and has high traffic, can afford to pour R&D resources into its engines, and to its credit, it is doing that.  Google understands that a better search engine could come along and knock the firm off of its perch.  All the company has to do is look around at the other search engines it has swamped.

Good PR starts with good products and services then builds.  Press releases can't overcome lousy fundamentals.

02/12

More About News.  Another finding from the Nielsen/NetRating report on news web sites was that Americans are looking at international sites, especially BBC news.    No one knows why but one explanation is that U.S. readers want a perspective other than that from U.S. reporters, politicians and administrations. 

This sounds sensible but there is another explanation as well.  It is easy to do.  Getting to BBC is as quick as getting to CNN.  It wasn't long ago (circa 1995) that getting an international perspective depended on where one lived.  In major U.S. cities, there were foreign papers at news stands, even if the cost was exorbitant.  Outside of major cities, it was impossible unless one subscribed by mail and waited for days.

The Web has made "globalists" of us all.  Anyone can track international, national and local events by country.  Do you want to read about traffic accidents in Australia?  Click.  Do you want to track the progress of Prime Minister Koizumi in Japan?  Click again.  Do you want to know how bad the weather is in Moscow?  Click.

The implications are as great as those of the first earth pictures brought from space.  There at last we could see the WHOLE world without dividing lines, ethnic differences or cultural standoffs.  Suddenly, nothing seemed far away.  The Web has the same effect on news consumers.  We are one world in which reading Singapore news is as easy as reading Le Monde.

Public relations practitioners should not ignore this expanding world view.  Appeals to parochialism and patriotism are not as important as they were.  We're on this globe together, and there isn't any place else to go. 

02/11

Not Surprising.  Nielson/NetRating announced that news site traffic shot up in the past week with the destruction of Columbia and war talk.  I doubt anyone is surprised.  The Web has taken the characteristics of CNN, whose viewership soars when there is a major event anywhere in the world. 

People are searching for updated news where they can find it and as fast as they can get it.  Television has a tendency to repeat the same things while searching for commentators and facts to go with visuals of fragments falling from the sky.  The Internet is faster in posting information for better or worse.  It is worse when information is not vetted as the broadcast media are more careful about doing. 

But still, the numbers were notable.  Time.com rose 112 percent, according to Nielsen/NetRating's press release.  ( http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_030207.pdf ).  Slate soared 101 percent, Newsday.com 58 percent.  The release said it best:  "...the Web is a primary source of news for many Americans." 

Given that, why are so many PR practitioners of the mindset that the Web is fourth in status after print, TV and radio?  We may need a new generation of practitioners to address this lack of balance.  Perhaps experienced practitioners can't bring themselves to treat the Web as seriously as even the news media handle it. 

On the other hand, clients may be the primary problem.  What catches a CEO's attention more?  A Web story or an article from the New York Times?  The fact is a Web story can have as much or more impact as an article in the New York Times, and it has broader distribution. 

The Web will arrive for me when a client asks to place an Internet story first.  We're not there yet.

02/10

It's a dangerous game and all one can hope at this point is that the administration knows more than the rest of us do.  It doesn't look that way.  Saddam has lied repeatedly, and he will lie as often as he can serve his self-interests.  But, the administration has not proven that a policy of containment won't work in the long run.   It asserts that Saddam can neither be trusted nor worked with. 

Let's see, there was another evil empire that had weapons of mass destruction and was known to kill its own people as well as take lands that did not belong to it.  We called it the Soviet Union.  The difference between Iraq and the Soviet Union seems to be one of power.  We think we can knock over Saddam easily.  We never thought we could knock over the Soviet Union so we chose to live with it. 

Power is a blunt instrument of persuasion.  It is better to appeal to one's self-interest in negotiation and strike a middle ground.  On the other hand, Saddam Hussein has shown that his self-interests are not congruent with those of the United Nations.  The Bush administration also has made it clear that it has tried to appeal to Saddam's personal self-interest by delaying use of power, but again Saddam won't listen.  He is like a recalcitrant employee who rebuffs managements efforts  to turn the individual into a team player. 

Yet, there is another way to look at this.  From Saddam's perspective, the longer he can delay invasion, the more he will get world opinion on his side.  He has been successful so far, and his tactics strike me as similar to those of North Vietnam during the prolonged wind-down of the Vietnam conflict.  Remember the arguments over the size and shape of the negotiating table?

Both sides are appealing to public opinion in what is likely to be -- perhaps is -- an historic change to the way American power is perceived throughout the world.  That's the highest PR stakes of all.