External

Items dealing with external communications, including media relations, PR, investor relations, and marcomm

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

One message does not fit all

Share This!

On episode 335 of The Hobson and Holtz Report, Eric Schwartzman shared bits of an interview he conducted with Maureen Kasper, senior director of communication at Cisco Systems. In the interview, Maureen addressed an issue that I’ll be talking about during my session tomorrow at the New Communications Forum: the blurring of the line between internal and external communications.

We did create content that was different—here’s the external face to something and here’s the internal face to something. I don’t think you can do that any more. It’s the same. It’s better communication. You’re not worrying about, “Am I thinking externally or am I thinking internally?” What you’re thinking about is, “What’s our message?”

Maureen noted that Cisco employees once criticized the company when they perceived they were getting the same spin on messages as external audiences. Now, she says, it’s a strength. “It goes back to transparency. What you say externally has to be the same as what you say internally, and vice-versa. If not, you’ll get found out very quickly.”

I agree—and I disagree. The core message absolutely must be consistent. The days are long gone (not that this was prudent or ethical behavior when those days still existed) when you could deliver one message to employees and another to, say, investment analysts:

Employees: We’re merging with Acme in order to absorb a major competitor and bolster our earnings.
Analysts: We’re merging with Acme because of the natural synergies between the two organizations and because we’ll be able to better serve the marketplace working together.

However, I don’t agree with the notion that you can craft a single communication for each audience. Whether or not you share your external communications with employees, they’ll see it—or, at least, have access to it. The message to analysts ends in analyst reports which find their way into investment blogs, the media message is published on news sites and from there into the blogosphere.

But employees still need the internal spin, and I’m using that word in the constructive sense. In a merger, analysts care about the impact on value and share price. Employees may also care about that—particularly if they own stock—but they have more immediate concerns that aren’t on the minds of other publics (including local communities, NGOs, activist groups, the government, and so on). They want to know about the security of their jobs, the status of existing projects, where they’ll wind up in the revamped structure of the new company and whether their benefits will change.

Spinning stories (in the good way) to accommodate the unique interests of each constituency is at the heart of effective communication. It’s why we research the audiences before we craft the communications.

By the way, I’m absolutely certain they do this at Cisco Systems and that Maureen didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Her remarks just led me to want to articulate this point of view, which also argues for the continued need for some traditional communication. A single blog post from the CEO about the merger just won’t get the right information into the right hands. Targeted communication can start targeted conversations among publics with different interests.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Brian Solis on Social Media Release

Share This!

The February “Cafe2Go,” IABC’s monthly podcast, is up, featuring an interview I conducted with Brian Solis about the Social Media Release. Brian is an original member of the Social Media Release working group. He was selected for this interview because IABC members—communicators—are the audience for Cafe2Go, and Brian’s background is in communication. Among the members of the working group, he (and Todd Defren) represents the people who will be crafting such releases.

You may be wondering why we’re talking about the Social Media Release on Cafe2Go. The short answer: IABC is assuming a role in the development of SMR standards. An official announcement is slated for mid-week next week that will go into more detail.

The podcast kicks off with the usual discussion between Julie Freeman, IABC’s staff president, and Todd Hattori, the 2007-08 chair. This time around, they’re talking about accreditation; a survey reveals that members do, for the most part, find real value in getting accredited. It’s an interesting talk, but if you want to skip right to the SMR part of the show, it’s at around the 18:18 mark.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

FIR Live Call-In Episode: February 9, 2008

Share This!

Content summary:The live call-in episode on BlogTalk Radio. Our topic: the blurring line between internal and external communication.

[Message from our sponsor: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com.]

Show notes for the live call-in episode recorded February 9, 2008

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 60-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, Concord, California, USA, and all points in between thanks to our call-in participants.

Download the file here (MP3, 27.3MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod, subscribe with iTunes; good podcatchers include Juice and DopplerRadio, and RSS aggregators that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon.)

Listen to this podcast now:

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com; or call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America) or +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe); or Skype: fircomments; or comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR; or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

So, until Monday February 11…

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Live call-in FIR episode set for this Saturday, Feb. 9

Share This!

Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz will host a special live call-in edition of “For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report” this Saturday, February 9, at 10 a.m. Pacific, (1 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. GMT).

The call-in episode will focus on the blurring of the lines between internal and external communications. If you work in external PR, how do employees of your (or your client’s) company affect your communication efforts? If you work in internal communications, how does your role change in order to prepare employees for their growing role as points of contact and brand experiences in the social media sites where they participate?

To listen to the show, just visit the FIR BlogTalkRadio page. To join in the conversation, pick up a phone and call 347.324.3723. If you’re not near a computer, you can call the same number just to listen to the show. (If you’re listening over the phone and want to ask a question, press ‘1’ to alert us that you have a question or comment.)

If you’re not able to participate live, you’ll still be able to hear the show through all the usual channels: It will arrive in iTunes or whatever podcatcher you use if you’re already a subscriber and you’ll be able to listen directly or download the show from the FIR blog if you’re not. The show can also be heard on the FIR BlogTalkRadio page.

We’re both looking forward to talking with you live on Saturday! 

Friday, September 07, 2007

Dress wrong and you may not be free to move about the country

Share This!

Southwest Airlines finds itself in the midst of a rare PR kerfuffle thanks to the airline’s San Diego staff, which assumed the role of fashion police by escorting a young woman off of a flight to Tucson because she was, in their opinion, too scantily clad. (She was allowed back on the plane after objecting, but only if she covered herself with a blanket.)

The passenger—a college student and Hooter’s waitress—appeared this morning on The Today Show to tell her story. As soon as I saw the segment, I pulled up the Southwest blog, “Nuts About Southwest,” and found a brief post there by Corporate Communication Manager Brian Lusk, who serves as corporate editor of the blog. The post took no position, but merely pointed to the blog of Today show producer Dan Fleschner, who appears to take Southwest’s side:

At first, when she appeared on the set, it didn’t seem like her outfit was so inappropriate. It was clear that her skirt was pretty short, but it didn’t seem worthy of getting a lecture from a customer service representative on how to dress.

But when she sat down, we learned just how short that skirt was—when she flashed our national television audience. Yeah, that skirt was short.

So there are a lot of questions here. What is appropriate dress for flying? Who should decide what is appropriate? Should airlines have a dress code? And without a dress code, can an airline block someone from flying?

NBC opted to blur the explicit image. Fleschner points readers to a poll where they could vote on whether the outfit was too risque.While poll results favor allowing the passenger—23-year-old Kyla Ebbert—to board with what she was wearing, comments support the decision.

That’s the opposite of the comments to the Southwest blog, where all but two comments are outraged; most claim they will never fly Southwest again, and some chide the airline by recalling the suggestive uniforms Southwest flight attendants wore when the airline was new. Several commenters reject Southwest’s assuming the role of fashion cop; even San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Gerry Braun snickers, “I don’t know about you, but one of my big gripes with the airlines is that they just don’t take the time to dispense fashion advice any more.” Braun’s column tells the whole story.

The last time I remember Southwest embroiled in this kind of controversy, it was over the decision to charge overweight passengers two fares to cover the cost of two seats. I doubt Southwest wants to get a reputation as the airline that judges passenger morality, but that may be unavoidable if all its controversies feature morality overtones.

To its credit, Southwest is allowing highly critical comments to appear, including one that begins, “I will write a letter to the office address given on the home page of Southwest Airlines since I am sure my comments will not be posted here or on any of the other blog topics.”

Only two of 28 comments supported Southwest’s actions. I should note that there were 28 when I first scanned the comments. When I refreshed the page, there were more than 70, suggesting that this issue could quickly spiral out Southwest’s control. There are already 55 blog posts that match the search terms Southwest Airlines Kyla.

I’m impressed that Southwest provided a place on its blog for passengers (and others) to express themselves on the issue; certainly, the conversation would have taken place elsewhere had the airline opted not to post an item. Still, I was hoping to see a statement from Southwest, by news release if not on the blog, particularly in light of one comment that noted, “When I contacted the airlines about dress code they said there is no dress code-a bikini would be fine they said as long as it covered all the right spots.”

It wouldn’t take much to suggest that the employee who threw Ms. Ebbert off the plane was acting in the airlines’ best interest but that Southwest would undertake a training or communication effort to reinforce the company’s actual policy to ensure such mistakes weren’t made again.

If you were handling PR for Southwest, what would you advise?

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

What’s going wrong at Best Buy?

Share This!

Electronics retailer Best Buy is in hot water. Near as I can tell, they shouldn’t be. What’s gone wrong at the Minneapolis-based company seems to be a lack of coordination rather than the underhanded scheme that characterizes reporting about the crisis.

And it is a crisis, make no mistake. The company stands accused of maintaining a “secret” intranet that duplicates its consumer website but with higher prices. When customers come into the store asking for the price they saw on the web, employees reportedly show them the look-alike page on the intranet claiming the price isn’t as low as they thought, forcing them to pay more.

The story was originally broken on February 9 by Hartford Courant consumer watchdog reporter George Gombossy, who spoke with consumers who were taken in by the practice and a couple of employees who confirmed the existence of the site. Best Buy denied it, but the Connecticut Attorney General launched an investigation, after which Best Buy confirmed the site’s existence. In his follow-up, Gombossy wrote:

Based on what (the Attorney General’s) office has learned...it appears the consumer has the burden of informing Best Buy sales people of the cheaper price listed on its Internet site, which (the AG) said “is troubling.”

What is more troubling to me, and to some Best Buy customers, is that even when one informs a salesperson of the Internet price, customers have been shown the intranet site, which looks identical to the Internet site, but does not always show the lowest price.

Blumenthal said that because of the fuzzy responses from Best Buy, he has yet to figure out the real motivation behind the intranet site and whether sales people are encouraged to use it to cheat customers.

The story is spreading like wildfire. On one blog, a comment refers to Best Buy as “Those miserable, low life, scum sucking, bottom feeding, slime of the earth.” A Technorati search on the very specific query “Best Buy,” “intranet,” and “secret” produces 374 posts, 24 from blogs with a lot of authority. Google News produces nearly 200 results.

Thing is, I don’t buy it. I’ve done some work with Best Buy (although it’s been a few years), and I don’t believe for a second that they’re so stupid to think they could get away with a tactic so blatantly unethical and so easily exposed. What’s more, there’s nothing “secret” about the intranet, despite the fact that the adjective initially employed by Gombossy has been picked up by virtually every media outlete and blogger reporting on the story. Two years ago I had Best Buy representatives speaking at Ragan Communications’ Intranet Academy; they’ve also presented at other conferences.

The intranet is accessible by employees on the in-store terminals. From here, they can get to their benefits information and other typical intranet content, but also material that helps them serve customers (such as white papers on high-definition TV). The site is actually very impressive, a best-practice for providing intranet content to employees on the store floor that is relevant to their work.

So what is going on? We can only speculate, which is what CIO Insight has done:

The initial question raised by the reports were whether this was simply a matter of having Web site prices for Web purchases—requiring the delay of shipments for the consumer and the lack of brick-and-mortar costs for the retailer—being different from in-store prices. But the initial defenses offered by Best Buy—both to local media and to the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office—make no mention of this. If that were the case here, one would think it would be the first defense offered.

and…

The initial reports of the incident suggested the possibility that Best Buy was simply displaying a local version of the Web site, so that consumers could peruse their Web content but be unable to surf over to a competitor’s site or a price-comparison site or even to a publication such as Consumer Reports.

If that had been the case, then the pricing disconnects might have been nothing sinister, but merely a result of the fact that the external Web site is updated much more frequently than a static version in the stores.

But some of our own conversations with Best Buy employees March 3 cast doubt on that theory, with employees saying that they are only aware of the public version. (Gombossy’s reporting also found many Best Buy employees who were unaware of two sites.)

Whatever is happening at Best Buy, we can be certain that communications are in the toilet. Employees aren’t clear on what this intranet page if for or what they can and can’t do with it. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine some aggressive employees on the floor using the page for purposes beyond its original intent. The communications coming from the corporate office are uncoordinated to say the least, incompetent at worst. (There’s not even a statement or press release dealing with this on the corporate site.) It strikes me that there is probably an explanation for this, but that the company has thoroughly mishandled the communication, landing it in much hotter water than it needed to be.

I’ll definitely be watching this train wreck unfold.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Where trust resides

Share This!

Stowe Boyd posted an item responding to the citation of a Telecom Express survey cited by the BBC, but says, “I will continue to contend that more American are finding information on the Internet more credible than conventional media sources. It looks like TV and print journalism are falling dramatically in their credibility.”

Stowe may want to revisit that conclusion.

The Telecom Express item revealed that 66% of the Brits responding cited national television as the most accurate and was trusted as highly as family and friends. “National, regional, and local newspapers were chosen by 63% of respondents, and radio was chosen by 55%. Only 36% of respondents rated websites and 24% rated blogs.”

Stowe notes “It’s unclear what a representative sample of 1000 in the US would say.” But the Telecom Express survey is not the same one I cited, which did include US representation. That survey, called ”Trust in Media,” was conducted jointly by the BBC, Reuters, and the Media Center. Its methodology included 1,000 people from the US, in addition to respondents from nine other countries. Even with the U.S. factored in, the results are pretty similar:

National TV was the most trusted news source overall (trusted by 82%, with 16% not trusting it) - followed by national/regional newspapers (75% vs 19%), local newspapers (69% vs 23%), public radio (67% vs 18%), and international satellite TV (56% vs 19%). Internet blogs were the least trusted source (25% vs 23%) – with one in two unable to say whether they trusted them.

Stowe, however, refers to a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project that asserts the Net is becoming the primary source of news and information about science. While I’m not sure how that would help a company making an announcement about a recall of dog food, let’s move on.

The word to pay attention to in Stowe’s note is “becoming,” since even Pew notes the Net is second “only to television” for news and information about science.

But Stowe cites another report, this one from The Pew Research Center For The People And The Press. In this instance, he says “media credibility in general is dropping.” I agree with this, but dropping is a far cry from “dropped,” which means it cannot (yet) be ignored. This Pew report does not provide comparisons to online sources, yet still is enough for Stowe to believe that “more American are finding information on the Internet more credible than conventional media sources.”

This report, Stowe notes, cites an increase in the use of the Internet. What Stowe doesn’t mention is where online these folks are going. The study notes that the primary online sources of news are:

• AOL or Yahoo! News (the highest ranked and populated heavily with press releases)
• Network TV news websites
• Local TV/paper websites
• National newspapers websites
• Online magazine/opinion sites (the lowest ranked)

In each of these cases except the last, the source of the news and information would be the same for the Net as it would be for the print publication or TV station: traditional, mainstream media. Only the delivery mechanism is different.

Again, Stowe and I agree more than we disagree. Trust in mainstream media is declining...and with good reason. But there is more research than the Telecom Express and BBC/Reuters/Media Center studies to support the notion that most people still rely primarily on mainstream media. I’ll cite two:

• The recently released Edelman Trust Barometer found “Traditional media sources such as newspapers, TV, and radio remain more credible than new media sources such as a company’s own Web site and blogs.” This was the result of a survey conducted by StrategyOne with respondents in 18 countries, with the US representing more respondents than any other.
• Lexis-Nexis conducted a study that that also confirms most trust resides in mainstream sources: “LexisNexis asked consumers which news sources they are more likely to trust for information about the news that interests them the most. On average, consumers are four to six times more likely to feel that traditional media is more trustworthy than emerging news sources for news they feel is most interesting.”

Even the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press—the study Stowe cited—notes:

Americans’ news habits have changed little over the past two years. Network and local TV news viewership has been largely stable since 2002. Daily newspaper readership remains at 42% (it was 41% two years ago). And the percentage of Americans who listen to news on the radio on a typical day is virtually unchanged since the last Pew Research Center media consumption survey (40% now, 41% in 2002).

The Net has increased, as Stowe points out (from 22% in 2002 to 25% today) and cable is declining. But national and local news is holding steady, as are newspapers and radio.

There are even studies that carry this conclusion to demograhically-defined groups. Take The Parenting Group’s 24/7 MomConnection study, which concludes, “Newspapers and magazines are moms’ most trusted sources of information, followed by web sites, radio, TV and doctors’ offices.” In terms of media moms consume,

100% of moms have watched TV, been online, listened to the radio or received a direct mail promotion; 91% of moms shopped at a retail store; 88% of moms have read a magazine; and 86% have used a cell phone. And, moms are using emerging media, but not on a regular basis - in a typical week, only 33% have watched video-on-demand, 32% have read a blog, and 17% have listened to an iPod.

There are a lot of companies out there—perhaps not Sun Microsystems, but nevertheless—who need to reach moms.

Finally, since everyone is likely to agree that citing statistics is a dicey proposition, it’s worth pointing out that there is even research to suggest trust in news delivered on the Net is declining. This comes from the ”State of the News Media 2006”:

Yet for all its obvious advantages, access and interactivity may also be part of the Internet’s Achilles heel as an information source. Last year we reported that even as the Web was becoming a ubiquitous and accepted news source, there was evidence that trust in the Internet was declining.

And new survey research shows that the trend continues. In 2004, the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School found that the proportion of users who believed that most or all of the information on the Internet is reliable and accurate had declined for the third consecutive year, to just 49% — a steep decline from 58% in 2001.

News Web sites are as trusted as traditional news media, according to the data. A majority (68%) of those who go online say they believe “almost all” or “most” of the content on their primary online news site, according to survey research done by Consumer Reports. That level of trust is about equal to those who trust newspapers and television news.

So what does all this mean? At one level, Stowe and I agree that the Net is becoming a more important resource for news. What that means to organizations communicating those things they need to communicate, though, will probably continue to be a source of disagreement. I still believe professional communicators need to use the channels that are most credible. That is not the web alone...or even, to date, primarily. It also means that “the conversation”—vital and critical as it is—is not the be-all and end-all of communication today, and the idea of formal, institutional communication occurring by “just blogging” (Stowe’s original assertion) continues to strike me as just as preposterous as it did when this whole kerfuffle began.

You don’t have to like it. (You can imagine how thrilled I would be if I could counsel all my clients to conduct all their communication through conversation-based channels!) But you do have to accept it.