Black Thursday: Forget the Turkey and Your Family and Go Buy More Stuff!!!

Will our ever-growing obsession with Buying More Stuff end up turning the entire 24-hour period now known as Thanksgiving Day into Black Thursday?

Probably. And how depressing. At least The Miami Herald’s brilliant political cartoonist, Jim Morin, managed to convey the craziness with a little humor.

Last year, major retailers including Walmart, Toys R’ US and Target threw their doors open on November 22^nd to throngs of holiday deal-hunters. Consumers by the millions shook off the post-turkey tryptophan lethargy and dashed away shortly after Thanksgiving dinner, afraid of missing bargains on the most in-demand gift items.

And that meant possibly hundreds of thousands of low-paid employees had to forsake their family celebration to be on retail sales floors, ready to smile and cheerfully risk a serious bodily injury to greet the oncoming stampede. Take a look at this disturbing video of a mob scene inside a Walmart store as crazed shoppers nearly climb over one another, screaming and having tugs-of-war over marked-down smartphones. 

Looks like a cattle round-up gone horribly awry, doesn’t it? Well, it also looks like this year a handful of sensible retailers are saying no to the insanity and keeping their stores closed until it’s actually Black Friday.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently announced that, with the exception of three stores in New York City, Las Vegas and Hawaii, all Apple stores will be closed on Thanksgiving so employees can relax and spend the holiday with their families. Several other retailers, including Nordstrom, Costco, Marshall’s and Home Depot have also decided to buck the Black Thursday trend.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I feel that it’s an easy decision to make,” BJ’s Wholesale Club CEO Laura Sen told the Huffington Post, adding that workers deserve “a nice holiday with their families.”

Amen to that. How about just being thankful for what we already have?

Now, I can put on my marketing hat and acknowledge that yes, stores need to remain competitive and yes, the period between Black Friday and Christmas Eve is by far the most important of the year for retailers. In fact, for some, it represents between 20-40% of annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation.

Furthermore, putting in long, grueling work hours during the holiday shopping season has always been a fact of life for retail employees because that’s just the nature of the beast. And they know that.

But isn’t it enough that most big retailers already open at 12 a.m. on Black Friday? Giving employees those few extra hours to enjoy their Thanksgiving feast with loved ones doesn’t seem like too much to concede.

Last year Brendan O’Kane, CEO of OtherLevels (a ThinkInk client), mused in a guest post on Retail Merchandiser – after reading that Macy’s would be open around the clock the weekend before Christmas – about the possibility of a holiday shopping season where stores just don’t close at all.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this scenario actually becomes real within a few years.

And on that wildly cheerful note, I and the whole ThinkInk staff would like to wish our readers and clients a beautiful and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday close to their families and far from the madding crowd at the mall.

Beaming Mobile Messages To Your Brain

A couple of months ago some commuter trains in Germany made global headlines: a rail operator’s passengers were treated to a “marketing wonder” of windows beaming advertising messages directly into the brains of said passengers who’d happened to place their weary heads on the glass.

Called bone conduction and already used in military applications and hearing aids, early reviews of this new type of use have been mixed. Not surprisingly, the ad agency BBDO who produced the ad campaign for Sky Deutschland called it a success. Of course they would. But many responses from a Mashable article read more like: “Is this for real? Just stay out of my head. This kind of invention must be BANNED.”

I agree to a point. It is disturbing how technology this pervasive can be abused. Don’t we have enough bombardment of ads already across multiple screens and devices?

But less than two months later, there’s growing (indirect) evidence of a perceptual shift. A new Harris Interactive poll found that consumer interest in mobile advertising offers has increased sharply since 2009. Nearly half, (45%) of mobile phone owners said they were at least somewhat interested in receiving mobile alerts about new products, sales and/or promotions from preferred brands, compared with 26% of respondents who felt similarly in 2009. And of those more recent supporters, 78% said they found location-based advertising particularly useful.

Does this mean brain beaming advertising glass has silenced its detractors? Um, no. But in light of this new data, it’s not that hard to envision a future where location-aware smartphones (or wearable gadgets) will work together with personalized advertising delivered on glass in trains, buses, planes and on walls in airports, incentivizing even more purchases and “brand/brain engagement.” That includes physical purchases as well as in-app buys. In other words, “mobile” advertising doesn’t always require a mobile phone. And as smartphone adoption rates rise, consumers will grow increasingly comfortable with seeing advertisements everywhere they look.

Is there a safeguard against the world becoming one giant digital billboard?  Permission-based advertising – a point the Harris study was quick to address. Consumers must have the ability to opt out of these types of marketer outreach.

Replacing my marketing hat with that of a PR professional’s for a moment, talking glass and mobile advertising appreciation also underscores another need.

PR agencies must make mobile the connective communications tissue of their client engagement and media messaging. Considering mobile devices’ reduced screen sizes, that means thinking smaller; telling client stories in bite-sized nuggets. It also means stepping up the ways in which we promote the importance of mobile messaging and mobile advertisements to clients from the start of our relationships.

“Smart” glass may have yet to hit its stride. But Harris Interactive data confirms that mobile really is everywhere and the pushback from round-the-clock advertising is eroding faster than many communication professionals originally thought. 

How Nonprofits Can Lose Donors through Lousy Customer Communications

I love little seals. And I am concerned about endangered sea lions, orcas and humpback whales. My view is that a healthy marine ecosystem equals a healthy planet - and we all want to live on a healthy planet. But when it comes to charitable giving, marine life has not been on the top of my donation list.

I actually have a soft spot for the wildlife of Africa – lions, tigers, giraffes, leopards, giant wildebeest, elephants and the caracal cats with the hairy tufts on the tips of their ears. Perhaps it was growing up in Australia and exposure to the harsh outback that influenced my feelings towards these rugged species? And perhaps that’s why, about six months ago, I signed up to support Greenpeace’s efforts on behalf of these species when one of its volunteer members approached me on the street.

Then, for six months, Greenpeace automatically withdrew a monthly donation from my bank account. In that time, I never did hear from the organization once… until last week.

Out of nowhere, I received a random email from a Greenpeace organizer asking me to either physically or mentally (through a petition signature) accompany her to Alaska as she testifies in a hearing related to protecting the Bering Sea and the creatures that call it home.

Throughout the email, which bore the tired old subject line “I can’t go it alone,” she addressed me as “Venassa.”

As a result of that one misguided and misspelled email, “Venassa” is no longer a Greenpeace donor.

Perhaps, as a marketing professional, I am being overtly critical but this was such a customer communications no-no that it turned me off the organization and the missions it supports right there and then.

Rule number one in marketing is get your customer’s name right. Rule number two is be relevant.

Greenpeace failed on both counts.

When we give money or time and effort to a cause we care about, we get something in return. We are buying the “warm glow” that comes from “impure altruism,” a term coined in 1990 by a University of California economist called James Andreoni.

We don’t just do it to support a cause. We also do it because it feels good. And when it doesn’t feel good, we stop.

As a marketer, you have a responsibility to create, nurture and retain a relationship with your customer. Nonprofits have the same responsibility to their customers and that starts by getting a donor’s name right – especially when he or she is contributing to their cause.

Whether you are a for-profit business or a nonprofit, how you speak to your customers or donors matters. A lot. Customers want to feel like you truly value their business or their charitable contributions. When you know their names and what they like and don’t like, it shows you’ve taken the time to get to know them, which leads to a stronger – and longer – relationship with your brand.

Readers, this isn’t a takedown of nonprofits or of Greenpeace. It’s an example of what happens when marketers don’t do their homework: they send their valuable customers right out the door for good.

Now, does this mean I’m going to stop supporting the causes I care about? Absolutely not! It just means that I’m going to seek out other organizations that take the time and care to communicate with me.

What are some of the worst examples of poor customer communications you’ve seen? I encourage you to share them with our community in the section below.

Unleashing Your Brand Advocate Weapon, Consumer-Generated PR

Every so often I read an article or blog post that cuts through the digital clutter and states something intuitive, but not entirely obvious.

An article in The Next Web by Henriette Weber gave me my week’s “ah-ha” moment so kudos to her. Happy Friday!

As a PR professional I speak (and write) frequently about the need for content generation. Whether through social media, blogs, original thought leadership articles, client interviews and tweets, feeding the content beast is a never-ending assignment. And as we expand our client list, the beast grows hungrier still. Brands, too, face similar challenges. The larger they become the more they have to write about their expanding enterprise. According to Rob Fuggetta, founder and CEO of Zuberance and author of Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force (citing his own sources), 28%-33% of marketing budgets goes toward content marketing.

Brand advocates, as Fuggetta rightly argues, can become a brand’s most important and cost-effective weapon. How? True, brand advocates work for free and do some of the heavy lifting for you. But too often marketers today think of their brand advocates as people who require expensive loyalty program catering. Or that outsourced IT teams must design highly engaging gamified portals. While all of these techniques are a legitimate form of marketing and customer nurturing outreach, it’s important that technological wizardry doesn’t trump the fostering of genuine experiences – or obfuscate brand failures.

I’ve written about a number of my genuine brand experiences and so have several ThinkInkers (Honda, BlackBerry, etc). I was once a BlackBerry diehard, eager to defend against all naysayers. Even after I made my bittersweet goodbyes, it wasn’t until I received an absurdly belated email asking for my returned business (nearly a year after I left) did I fully renounce my brand advocacy badge. But I’ve also received personalized emails of late, actual handwritten letters and, yes, even sample perfume from other companies.

None of these outreach methods are expensive. In fact, they’re right in line with what traditional customer retention budgets go toward. But unlike in decades past, where I might have only told a select few people about my positive experiences, via phone or word-of-mouth, I’ve freely given brands hundreds of words of free online publicity. Do I expect something magnanimous from them like a Birkin handbag or a Cable Heart Chain Necklace in return? Absolutely not – only that they empower me with the brand advocacy tools I require. And yes, I would appreciate an engaging loyalty program too. But that’s not what I’m looking for first and brands need to remember that.

Instead of brands banging their proverbial heads against walls trying to figure out what to write and how to afford the effort, why not empower brand advocates to blog, vlog, tweet and post about their most positive brand experiences? Of course, you’ll still need a professional staff to vet and review copy. But if properly engaged there’s a literal army out there of consumers looking to continue your brand’s unique conversation across multiple channels.

And I’m one of your loyal foot soldiers – armed and ready to serve.

Are you a brand advocate? If so, what about the brand inspires your spreading their good word and how do you do it? Share your thoughts with the ThinkInk community in the section below.

Fantastic Collaboration?! Maybe Giving Up the F-Word Would Have Been Easier Than Ditching the C-Word?

Ahh, C-words and F-words. What a lovely way to start a Thursday blog. But considering the disturbing news week with bombings, poisoned letters and a fertilizer plant explosion, perhaps it’s the perfect time to write a follow-up on these lovely gems of the English language.

In February of this year, ThinkInk launched an experiment: could we, as a company, strike (or reduce to a minimum) usage of the word ‘client’ from our copy –especially if its usage was meant to devalue, demean or unfairly generalize the men and women who literally pay our bills and salaries.

Like ex-smokers in the throes of nicotine withdrawal, cutting back on our C-word count proved anything but easy. And, as many ex-smokers do, often we traded one harmful choice for another. Rather than using phrases like “client needs,” or blaming an entire organization for some creativity failure, we instead went the other route, overly personalizing our frustrations and directing that anger toward individuals. In some instances, we adopted new C-words or “curmudgeonly” when speaking about clients.

Curious to learn more, I also reviewed my inbox, searching for C-word references. Let’s just say the results caused an F-word or two to slip out. In dispassionate computer speak, Microsoft Outlook kindly informed me, “Your search returned a large number of results. Narrow your search, or click here to view all results.”

Thank you, Outlook. Granted, some of my staff have titles that include the word “client,” which of course skewed the results. But even an email I sent earlier this week was peppered with our favorite C-word.

Clearly we could have done better.

Perhaps it was the flaws in our original parameters that led to our flawed results. After all, client isn’t a bad word. It’s just how we use it that can hurt. The same goes with personalizing attacks. While it’s OK to disagree and disagree vehemently with our CLIENTS, it’s not OK to treat them with fuses so short that any minor tangle causes an explosion.

Think about how much more slack we give our friends. Do we want to call them F-words and C-words at times? Absolutely. Yet we don’t, because we know there’s a friendship at stake; there’s surge capacity inside all parties to absorb shocks and arguments. So we shrug our shoulders and move on.

Clients aren’t our friends. They’re business partners, cultivated over mostly successful PR results. They wouldn’t be clients, otherwise. But their feelings can be hurt just like anyone else’s. The reality is, if I’m finding a client conversation difficult, it’s likely they’re finding the situation challenging as well. Neither of us is happy.

So before we reach for an arsenal of C-words, F-words, expletives and snarky nicknames, let’s tweak our experiment. “Client” is back in play at ThinkInk but client-bashing remains off limits. Take a deep breath. Count to a thousand, eat a sandwich and channel your peeves into passion – steadfastly solving problems and finding solutions – don’t whine about them.

That way, we can all celebrate another F-C combination: Fantastic Collaboration. Three cheers for that!!!

When it comes to successful PR, those are words we should all be proud to say.

On Mobile Marketing: Why Being First Isn’t Always Best

I was inspired to pen the following article after a whirlwind tour of mobile marketing conferences on the east and west coasts in January. At both the Mobile FirstLook Summit and the Mobile Marketing Association’s North America Forum, there was much talk of “mobile first.” I got to thinking, why mobile first and not mobile always?

While I cannot overstate mobile’s growing importance, influence, and indeed its multichannel “glue-like” properties, connecting one marketing channel to another in overlapping and complementary ways, trumpeting “mobile first” can also imply that all other mature marketing channels are less important, lower in the marketing pecking order.

It may not be as sound bite-ready as “mobile first” but, sometimes being first is not all it is cracked up to be.

Without further ado, here is the entire article in Mobile Marketer, “Why be mobile-first when you can be mobile-always?”

To continue reading, click here.

Is “mobile first” a term you are hearing more often?  Do you think is the right approach for marketers?  I would love to hear your views.

Tuesday’s PR Lesson: Flood Your Clients with Facts and Figures

I love it when a progression of news stories works out like this... Yesterday, I posted a blog about how PR companies can learn to speak the economic and business language of their clients, adding to their marketing skill sets. My advice boiled down to this: become your enemy. Or, in Star Wars geek-speak, PR execs must learn to use “the force” to understand the mindset of their number-crunching counterparts, essentially getting inside their heads.

I also suggested the recruitment of business-background employees, expanded roles for in-house accounting departments and the taking of free online economic courses which have gained not only popularity of late but also legitimacy as quality teaching vehicles.

But there are other ways to demonstrate PR’s worth. It’s time for a little bragging so get out your batons.

Today, while traditional newsrooms have atrophied, PR has helped blur the lines between paid media, earned media and owned media. According to the latest estimates, the ratio of public relations professionals to journalists has increased from 1.2:1 (in the 1980s) to upward of 4:1 in 2010. Meanwhile, The Holmes Report, which ranks PR firms, estimates global PR revenues at $10 billion per year and Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a media investment group, predicted US PR spending would rise 8.3% in 2012 to $4.2 billion. Between 1997 and 2007 average agency salaries went from $38,735 to $50,499. Clearly we’re doing something right.

Then there’s recent acquisitions news with AdAge reporting that PR buys are “red hot” this year.  While AdAge was quick to point out that some of the recent buying frenzy was spurred by expected tax code changes, it reaffirmed that much of the interest lay in advertisers and marketers realizing the value of what PR companies bring to the table.

Phil Palazzo, founder and president of mergers-and-acquisitions consulting firm Palazzo Investment Bankers sized contemporary PR up like this: “PR agencies have become very adept at delivering strategic and targeted solutions over multiple channels – varying from experiential to crisis to social media to events – and for that reason they've been capturing a growing share of marketing dollars." 

Go us!

Of course, industry snapshots, in isolation, do little to convince a potential client of your agency’s worth. But whether it’s drafting that initial proposal, the weekly phone call, or the periodic visit to client headquarters, infusing your written and spoken narrative with these industry facts, can’t be a bad thing. There is a reason why pack mentality works. If everyone is choosing PR firms, why aren’t you, goes the implied subtext. The next step is placing what your individual firm does in the context of this macro-industry data.

It may astound some clients, but PR communications have been around since the days of classical antiquity. And if you go back further, information management and agenda-focused storytelling have been central to businesses for as long as business has existed.

So, the next time you find yourself on that unpleasant client call (admit it, they do happen) take some inspiration from this blog and flood ‘em with facts and figures, remind your clients that PR’s worth is often a lot more than what industry metrics state and prove to them why their business cannot live without yours.

Proving PR’s Business Value Easier Said than Done, But Not Impossible

Here we go kicking off another week full of media pitching, content marketing, social business and thought leadership strategies, pitching for new business and, most importantly, keeping ThinkInk clients very happy. How do we do that?  It’s not easy but we start by demonstrating and creating value in everything we do.  Why do it otherwise?

So this week’s theme is all about value – what we create for our clients and ourselves.  We’d love to get your views on demonstrating value to your clients, whether or not you’re in PR.  What are the biggest hurdles you face? And your advice to others?

Please share your comments below.

“To know your enemy you must become your enemy” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ancient Chinese military treatise

The above quote might sound a little harsh, especially as it relates to public relations and determining its business value, but this is essentially what Kristin Jones, CEO of Wallop! OnDemand, suggests in a recent post on Bulldog Reporter article without directly saying it.

Jones argues that in order for PR execs and their companies to maximize their value to clients, they must begin thinking like them. In fact, not just think like them, but propose solutions and pitches that demonstrate an ability to act like them too. While clients certainly aren’t the enemy of PR companies, sometimes the economics-based and direct dollar value language they speak is so foreign to communications industry pros (who know more about marketing campaigns, crisis management and the sometimes-fuzzy ad value math) that those aspects of a client’s business can feel adversarial. The result is a PR team reduced to second- or third-place status rather than being an integral component to boardroom “elites” or partners.

Jones recommends the following steps to counter this problem:

·         Educate yourself on the economics behind value

·         Make value creation your mission

·         Step out of the shadows

But after reading her article again I was left with this nagging question…. how do PR execs actually educate themselves on the economics behind value?

The answer: they must become their enemy.

Mind you, this is not an easy task. Many in the PR industry claim to have gone the communications route partly because their brains “aren’t wired for finance or business.” Let someone else crunch the numbers I’ve heard many a time. Earning an MBA might seem impractical for more senior executives, but perhaps PR agencies should begin recruiting those with business backgrounds – much in the way they’ve hired ex-journalists to help tell more compelling client stories. Another approach might be an expanded role for a PR company’s in-house accountant, an individual most likely to appreciate and understand your client’s by-the-numbers needs.

There’s also continuing education on the cheap. Coursera, founded last April, is a for-profit online educational outlet that provides free web video courses and has gained significant notoriety in the past several months, attracting some $22 million in venture capital. Courses, which include topics on economics and business strategy, (among many others) are broken up into multiple pre-recorded sessions along with quizzes and the occasional written assignment. How much or how little the student does is entirely up to them.

So perhaps PR agencies should carve out additional time for staff to make use of resources like this. It won’t raise your company’s business IQ overnight. But it could make a lasting, positive impression whose “compounded interest” – an economic term we all should know – really adds up.

And isn’t that what PR is about after all? 

Channeling Mobile’s Four ‘Es’ – Enhancement, Engagement, Experience and Enjoyment – into 2013 Success

Many end-of-year or dawn-of pieces open with the obligatory “My, hasn’t time has flown by?” or a “What a year it’s been!” statement. I will skip both, but go on record to say that 2012 was the year where mobile finally got top billing, a year where experts predicted that by 2017, more than 4% of all ads will appear on mobile phone screens and where the mobile mindset matured.

More than the technology itself, was how consumers used that technology and how brands capitalized on those uses.

No longer are consumers tethered to one place. And the type of engagement that users gain from their mobile experiences differs depending on location, whether it’s the beach, kitchen, office, train, or elsewhere.

For marketers, this means an unmatched opportunity to tailor their messages to these places of use while at the same time capitalizing on the four E’s – enhance, engage, experience and enjoy.

Now on to the technology itself and some of the trends we will see in the year ahead.

Setting off the proximity alarm: Geo-marketing is gaining traction
At times, I am shocked by how much farther this technology needs to advance. Of course, smart digital signage still lit up screens as it did minds in 2012, but I did not feel as though its “future had arrived.”

Take foursquare, a location-based social networking service. It has “only” reached 25 million users in the last three years. Compare that to Facebook, whose membership now exceeds 1 billion, or one-seventh of the human population.

With more people using more mobile more often, it is only natural marketers tap this resource.

Of course, there have been some encouraging 2012 examples ranging from KLM Airlines and its Meat and Seat social media program that allowed travelers to choose who they’d like to sit next to based on the sharing of personal information via social media, to a California-based organic foods company that launched a successful Twitter campaign.

Considering these successes, (and others) perhaps 2013 will see the growth of “hyper fencing,” or proximity-based offers and deals within a single shopping outlet or mall or airport?

Mobile payments and wallets usage will grow, but not prosper – yet
Mobile payments became a hot topic among industry experts and consumers in 2012, with 66% of the latter believing that mobile payments will eventually overshadow card payments.

Perhaps no better example of this trend emerged than with Apple’s Passbook, the loyalty program and gift card aggregator. The app has seen more than 20 companies join its ranks and the latest upgrade rumors hint at the possibility of NFC.

But Passbook is not mobile payments, and technologies such as Near Field Communication – NFC, or radio frequency contactless payments – that herald a new age of mobile wallets, doing away with paper cash and plastic card, have yet to mature.

The limited number of NFC-enabled devices – only 12 attendees at an NFC conference had the NFC enabled phones (ironic, no?) – as well as nagging security risks, namely third-party digital eavesdropping and the theft of personal data, will tend to keep NFC and the mobile wallet game a spectator sport – even if Passbook performs some kind of NFL-style NFC punt.

Augmented reality will augment the face of mobile
What used to be considered a fad that would eventually disappear has undergone a significant turnaround.

Augmented Reality, or AR, superimposes digital data, gathered from the Web and social media networks and places that information over physical objects or pictures.

Recent Juniper research already predicts AR smartphone apps will generate $300 million in global revenue this year.

One company, Layar, began its AR focus on real estate in The Netherlands but has since moved on to print publications, banking the technology will prove most entertaining for consumers and revenue generating for marketers there.

Of course, to its detractors, AR might cause one to yell, “AAAARRRRR!!!!!” as it is not where prognosticators predicted it would be. But continued media interest reaffirms AR will augment the face of mobile – eventually.

Enhance, engage, experience and enjoy
Ultimately the four E’s are what matters most. Not just for consumers, but marketers as well.

When Motorola’s brick phone started us on our mobile path more than 30 years ago, few could have predicted how far and fast technological miniaturization would evolve.

The first mobile phones were not envisioned as enjoyable, engaging experiences but utilitarian devices performing tasks.

For marketers, though, that is the furthest thing from a successful product.

LIKE THOSE EARLY mobile models, many of the trends highlighted in this article – proximity, mobile payments and augmented reality – have yet to fully hit their stride.

But that is what prediction and prognostication is all about.

I, for one, am betting on mobile’s continued success – in the mindset and the handset.

This article originally appeared in Mobile Marketer on January 4, 2012. To read the entire article, please click here.

My Hopes for the PR Industry in 2013

With so many year-end forecasts and predications out this month, I thought I’d take a different approach and focus on my hopes for the PR industry in 2013.

Doctors, it is said, are often the worst patients. Why? Well, not to generalize too much -- but many feel compelled to interfere with their own health management, trampling the jobs of accomplished nurses and other qualified physicians because, after all, they are doctors too. And damn it, they know what’s best for their own bodies!

True enough. But doctors aren’t the only professionals blinded at times by their own confidence and arrogance. Many others are guilty of letting pride block rational thinking, stymieing best courses of corrective action.

Countering the signs and symptoms of a communications illness  

Right up there with MDs are our very own PR professionals. As we close out 2012 and face a New Year, I fear our industry has developed an infection -- caused in part by an outdated way of measuring our own “health” (or revenue and client success) and the failure to cede some of our communications control to others in our industry who might be able to heal our ailment. Maybe we should call it acute communicative technological undermining and paralysis, or ACTUP for short.

The signs of ACTUP include:

·       The reliance on dated metrics like advertising value equivalency, as well as the Web’s equally rickety ad value formula that is as much substantive as it is subjective. While both formulas no doubt strive for empirical accuracy and consistency, they fail to incorporate the vagaries of a news story’s importance to a reader, and whether the length of an article is truly a measure of its worth. In other words, bigger isn’t always better and color (versus black-and-white) may not always bring in more green (cash).

·       Failure to appreciate that in many circles, public relations gets some rather bad press -- even from within its own ranks. An October 2012 study by research firm Edelman Berland (part of the Edelman PR empire) found that when asked the question “Which profession provides the most value to society?” only 11% of consumers felt “PR Professional” met that standard. Think marketers themselves would reach a healthier conclusion? Think again. Less than a third of those working in communications (23%) felt their job held societal value. Coming from an industry that prides itself on message management, this is an abysmal finding.

·       An almost allergic reaction to many forms of social media. And in the select cases where it is adopted, its integration into the messaging plan is haphazard and ad-hoc. Sometimes that means big failures with little impact. Case in point: a little error, one keystroke long, caused quite the embarrassment for the United Nations in November 2012 when UN Information Officer Nancy Groves tweeted about the UN General Secretary’s desire for a 1-state Palestinian solution when in fact his official position supports a 2-state resolution. Oops.

PR patient prognosis: healthy if we ACT now

To be clear, I’m not saying I have ACTUP’s cure. Nor have I been holding out all this time as the PR industry was ridiculed both privately and publicly earlier after it tried to give itself a new definition of what exactly it does -- the first attempted definitional overhaul since 1982. I won’t bore you with rehashing it, but suffice it to say it’s loaded with enough jargon and wordsmith gobbledygook to make you hang your head in shame and consider a new profession. Doctor maybe? But as we begin 2013, the adage remains sound: recognizing there’s a problem is the first step toward recovery. It’s the conversation starter that inspires feedback, makes waves and, frankly, gets sh*t done. 

In fairness, the fact that the PR industry has tried to redefine itself speaks to the beginning of that conversation. However, that’s not good enough. Traditional metrics aren’t likely to change much any time soon. But as the Web, carried by smartphones and tablets, grows ever more complex and critical for communications, we must as an industry better embrace these technologies. Not as gimmicky add-ons and apps, but through integrated, ground-up measures.

Although we may struggle to define ourselves and ad values remain notoriously suspect, there’s no doubt that in the tech-savvy, 24/7 news world we live in, our services are vital to the clients and corporations we serve. So we better get healthy and ACT fast.

Here’s to a happy New Year knowing we’re actively addressing our communications shortcomings. And here’s to a healthier one as little by little, brainstorming session by brainstorming session and conversation starter to conversation finisher, we tackle and triumph over each of our collective symptoms! It won’t happen in a day, a week or a month. But as with medical professionals, nothing inspires us quite like a challenge and the discovery of a new illness.

Together, let’s prove we can be better patients after all.

I would love to hear what your hopes or wishes are for the PR industry in. Feel free to email me at vanessa@thinkinkpr.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn or visit my company’s website at www.thinkinkpr.com.

Here’s to a healthy and successful 2013!

PS – the above article originally appeared in Marketing Daily on December 27, 2012.

Black Friday About to Steal Cyber Monday’s Thunder Thanks to Mobile

By: Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer

I’m about to date myself, but remember the “Happy Days” theme song? You know, “Sunday, Monday, Happy Days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days. Thursday, Friday”… you get the point.

Aside from the jingle’s addictive tune, it also had a point: every day was a happy day. There were no distinctions.

And despite all the marketing, retailing and consumer hoopla over the recently passed Black Friday and Cyber Monday – once billed as distinctly different days, one largely an in-store affair and the other mobile – the truth is mobile commerce has become an essential component to all types of shopping on any day of the week.

Happy now?

A recent infographic posted by Mashable along with an article on the holiday weekend underscores that point. Over half of in-store Black Friday shoppers, 58%, used their mobile phones to augment their brick-and-mortar buying. In addition, tablets of all sizes were getting in on the buying act too with iPads being the distinct frontrunner. Fully 88% of traffic to the mobile web came through iPads, garnering 10% of total online shopping.

But wasn’t online buying supposed to be on Cyber Monday or Mobile Monday as some pundits began calling it not too long ago?

Yes. But from a PR perspective, it’s entirely possible the names we’ve ascribed to these retailer do-or-die days are failing to keep pace with technological reality. Think about it. Even the term “Cyber” sounds so nineties and may need upgrading. Cyber, it turns out, (thanks to cyberspace) comes from the word cybernetics, first coined in 1948 by author William Gibson and his novel, Neuromancer, and was a prefix common during the early Internet. Today we have words like: cyber security, cyberbullying, and yes, cybersex.

The same type of misnomer applies to Black Friday too, which has morphed into nearly a two-month-long holiday in and of itself. Which, of course, is augmented by mobile. So whether we call them Black Friday, Smartphone Saturday, Cell phone Sunday, Cyber Monday, Tablet Tuesday, Web Wednesday, or Tech Thursday, mobile shopping and mobile price comparisons have woven themselves through each and every day of the week.

In other words, “Goodbye gray sky, hello blue [mobile’s here and you know it’s true”]

Communication Gap and an Un-American Decision: Sandy Sinks More Than Property

By: Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer

Sometimes 140-characters isn’t enough.

In my continuing efforts to practice what we preach at ThinkInk when it comes to the importance of social media, yesterday I tweeted about two retailers, The Gap, and American Apparel and their careless  (some would add heartless and foolish to the list of descriptors) marketing ploy. Both tried to weasel their way into “competitive advantage” following the devastation and destruction wrought across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic by hurricane/super storm/nor’easter/post-tropical storm/Frankenstorm Sandy.

Both companies reached the absurd conclusion that marketing to customers during a tempest that rivaled the ferociousness of weather not seen since 1888 was a smart idea - and a novel way to win loyalty.

Wrong. And this Tweeter needed to go on her own tear.

American Apparel’s 36-hour, 20% off “in case you’re bored” sale was geared toward residents in nine of the 11 states in the grip of the crisis: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Why Rhode Island, a New England state where summer cottages fell into the sea and West Virginia, pounded with some 3 ft. of snow in higher elevations, were left off the “generous” list remains unknown. For its part in the PR fail, Gap sent out a tweet that while telling people to be safe, also nudged them to consider a dose of retail therapy.

Needless to say, the public reaction has been swift and the Twitterverse is alive with derision, with “the lowest of low,” being a very common tweeted and re-tweeted sentiment.

Misery loves company as the saying goes, so of course there are plenty of examples of Gap and American Apparel-like PR blunders. Just last year Kenneth Cole’s Twitter account tweeted:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”

Really?

But returning to the recent crisis at hand, as a PR professional I wanted to go on record and add my voice to the chorus of disapproval. It’s truly disturbing that someone, somewhere, likely paid a decent to very decent salary, had the light bulb go off in their head and thought, “Wow, I’ve got the brainiest of ideas! Let’s use a natural disaster for our own gain and corporate greed.”

Well, I’m sure that in many Gaps and American Apparels across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic their light bulbs (and their heat, and phone lines, and computer systems) really are off now. Perhaps time spent in the cold and dark, thrown back for a moment to simpler times, will remind executives and higher ups at these retailers and beyond that the almighty dollar is not always king.

Many of our clients speak about the importance of driving quality experiences. Having a dose of humility and knowing when not to hard sell, soft sell, or anything-else sell is also a respectful way to move beyond the pettiness and triviality of our daily lives.

When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a staunch Republican, praises President Obama for a job well done handling this historic calamity, you know you’re approaching the humility, honesty and transparency of which I write.

Eventually, every state impacted by Sandy’s arrival will rebuild. Beaches will open for summer. Amusement parks will charge overpriced tickets. Communities will come together and the lights will come back on. Just know that for every American Apparel and Gap blunder, there are other companies, nonprofits, communication companies, and everyday citizens all-too-eager to lend a hand and help.

None of them come 20% off. They’ll be there 100%.

Shame on American Apparel and the Gap – two companies whose despicable actions won’t fast be lost to the waves, nor this PR executive.

And if you would like to help your fellow citizens who were impacted by the storms, here are a couple of links where you can donate money or blood to the relief efforts.  If they were half-clever, that’s what American Apparel and Gap should have been encouraging people to do, not banking on others’ misfortune.